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Namibian life

It’s been a long time since I last updated our blog and I realised it’s probably because we’re so used to life over here now that we forget that some of the experiences are so different to those at home, and that it’ll be good to have a written reminder of some of these in years to come.  So this entry is a collection of observations and bits and pieces of Namibian life.

Over the past few months we’ve managed to keep ourselves motivated with work by continuing to deliver Community Based Rehabilitation training to the rural communities in our region.  One such trip was to Tsumkwe, in the remote far north of the region, not far from the border to Botswana.  It takes about 5 hours to get there, 3 of which are on a gravel road…if you’re lucky one or two cars will pass you on this road, but as we found out when we got 2 punctures, the likelihood of someone having the correct shaped locking wheel nut spanner is pretty slim!  Tsumkwe is home to the San community, or ‘Bushmen’ – the hunter gatherers of Namibia and surrounding countries who speak the ‘click’ San language (using not only letters but !, / and // for the sounds of the different clicks).  They are a nomadic population who traditionally will spend hours or even days tracking and hunting their food down on foot using bows and arrows, and are very much in tune with their environment.  Many people in the villages choose to sleep outside under trees rather than in their very basic straw huts.  Community-run conservancies have been set up in areas such as this so that the local people can manage the wildlife numbers and ensure that over-hunting and grazing does not occur.  This is a great concept, but also means that more San now lead a less nomadic lifestyle and are based in one place with access to lots of cheap, home made alcohol.  Overcrowded living conditions and lifestyle choices mean that TB prevalence is very high and also HIV/AIDS, which often goes hand in hand with TB.  

Tsumkwe 'town'

Warming up before a game of netball!

We had a productive week training in Tsumkwe which was focussed on TB rehabilitation, so we had taken along volleyball nets, footballs, netballs and other exercise equipment to include some practical elements to the training.   

At the same time as we were delivering the rehabilitation training to the 10 CBR committee members, a beadwork workshop was underway for people with TB.  The San people love their beads, whether they are made from ostrich shells or from coloured glass and making jewellery is a way of boosting moral and peer support between people with TB as well as offering them a means of generating income.  In the community hall about 40 men and women all gathered to make the most of the trailer-full of boxes and boxes of glass beads that we’d brought with us to make all sorts of different jewellery.  The men sat on the chairs at the tables and seemed to favour the larger, less fiddly beads, whilst the women sat on sarongs on the floor with piles of tiny beads making really intricate designs with babies strapped to their backs or boobs and toddlers crawling around.  It was great seeing such industriousness.  At the end of the workshop the local lodge agreed to sell some of the jewellery to tourists whilst other samples were taken to retailers in Windhoek to hopefully establish some bulk orders.

Whilst the names of most San people are difficult if not impossible to pronounce without spitting the clicks out, the variety of names amongst other Namibians and particularly Zimbabweans are often entertaining.  The Zimbabweans seem to favour names of traits which they wish to instil in their children.  Of the people we work with we have Clever, Trust and Patience.  Both the Namibians and Zimbabweans also like to choose some good old fashioned English names, like Macdonald, Gladys, Geoffrey, Eunice and Ebenezer, and then there’s just some random ones – my neighbour in Okakarara called her 2 year old son Titus!  Clearly some of the names come from the colonial era, and during Apartheid Namibians had to have at least one European name by law.  However, I’m not sure on the origins of Titus.

Kavango cultural group practicing outside our house

Ant with his friends, Lucas and Siene, outside our house

Women at work at the Clay House Project (our home)

Since Ant’s parents visit in October (they have promised to write an entry for our blog so I won’t spoil the story) we have spent pretty much every weekend here in our home town of Otjiwarongo.  There’s not a lot going on, but we’ve established a routine of early morning 4 hour walks to get us in training for Kilimanjaro.  On a Saturday this is followed by hiding inside our clay house to escape the heat but also the hundred or so kids who descend for the day to use the paddling pool, volleyball net and playground area. We have befriended a couple of boys, Lucas (9) and Siene (11) who join Ant for a short distance when he runs past their corrugated iron shack several times a week.  They now come to the Saturday swimming session and we give them lunch and drinks – we’ve had to tell the other kids that Ant’s their uncle to justify their ‘special treatment’.  The other form of entertainment in the Clay House compound is the Kavango cultural group.  They meet a couple of times a week to practice their singing, dancing and drum playing in beaded skirts and won the regional cultural group competition.  They’re off to Opuwo (Himbaland) next week for the national final, and judging by the number of times we’ve heard the same songs over and over they’ve had plenty of practice!

Our training experiences with work have been varied.  Last week I was in a village called Otjituuo where it’s predominantly people from the Herero and Damara tribes.  As a generalisation, people from these tribes are known for needing a rocket up their backsides to do anything!  They’re quite happy to survive on a handout culture and if given the chance would often spend their day sitting outside their house doing nothing except moving to follow the shade.  So, training these groups can be quite a challenge!  The whole VSO concept of letting the people generate their own ideas and trying to be as hands off with facilitation as possible is all well and good, but totally impractical in this setting where handholding seems to be the only way that things get done.  I had been to Otjituuo in June to deliver some training and support the CBR committee to generate an action plan for their activities.  Of the 8 people present in June, only 2 were present this time…with an additional 6 new members.  When I asked what had happened to the previous members it turns out that some can’t be bothered and some have got jobs or moved away.  Had they implemented anything that they had learnt since the last visit? No.  The first question I got asked was where are our T-shirts and bags...I explained that they had to actually DO something first to warrant getting something in return.

Africa time is a whole different concept to European time….if you say 8am people will turn up at 10am or maybe 11ish.  Once everyone has eventually arrived, there needs to be some time for people to have a general chit chat amongst themselves and to get up and wonder off somewhere else for a bit.  Eventually the training can begin at say 12.30pm, to then be followed shortly after by lunch (which always has to be from 1pm until 2pm – I don’t know what would happen if this had to be changed, I imagine something awful!).  During the training people will happily answer their phones and send texts, and sometimes walk off to do something else for a bit.  You can start to get a complex that maybe it has something to do with your training style, except that it doesn’t matter who is delivering the workshop or how interactive it is, people just don’t seem to be able to focus for longer than a few minutes.

Outside of the training sessions I still find it difficult to occupy myself in the rural communities.  Mainly because if I go out to chat to people and wonder around then I get descended on by men who think that because I’m white I must be rich, and of course that I will accept their marriage proposals.  I got a great story this time by a guy who was drunk and told me that there had been a lion on the outskirts of the village which had been a threat to all living here.  He said he had captured the lion and was keeping it in a shed and that now he is known by the community as being a brave man, and why wouldn’t I want to marry such a brave person?!  All credit to his active imagination! 

We have 3 more weeks to go before our Christmas trip and are heading back to Tsumkwe for a follow up evaluation and training visit.  We are also celebrating the International Day of People with Disabilities in Osire, the refugee camp.  We have now delivered all 16 modules of the CBR training to the Osire CBR committee and they are the first committee in the country to have completed the training – quite an achievement.  We are combining an award ceremony and some speeches with the remainder of the programme of dances and poems on the 2^nd December.  Along with the certificates we are providing the committee with testimonies so that hopefully they can use these to gain employment in the future when they are no longer refugees.

Amazingly the Ministry of Health’s regional transport budget has not yet been exhausted, but I think by January it definitely will be.  So from January onwards our activities will be limited to Otjiwarongo, but we do have a good project to keep us busy.  We have been donated about 45 second hand wheelchairs and the same number of walking frames from Germany via a company called Ohorongo Cement.  It has taken about 4 months to get them transported from a Pastors house in another town to a storage unit at the hospital in Otjiwarongo (Africa time).  However, now that we have them we can begin the process of assessing for repairs before issuing them to patients, some of whom have been waiting years for a wheelchair.  The likelihood of getting any funding from the Ministry of Health for the repairs is slim to none as we have only had 2 new wheelchair purchases approved for the entire year (and there are about 40 people waiting for them).  As a consequence we are going to start a fundraising campaign to buy things like seat cushions, new footplates and tyres for the chairs….watch this space and Facebook for more information if you would be willing to contribute!

Our Christmas adventure begins on the 16^th December.  We’re travelling by bus and train across the continent through Zambia to Tanzania.  We’ll be spending Christmas on Zanzibar where we have a few nights booked in Stone Town (lots of history – slave trade, spice trading) followed by a few days on an idyllic, sandy, palm tree lined beach where we can scuba dive, snorkel and, if we’re feeling crazy, have a go at kite surfing.  After the relaxation we head towards Kilimanjaro where we commence our 8 day hike on 2^nd January to the summit, Uhuru Peak.  We’ve had the luxury of plenty of time to do training so now the only concern is altitude sickness, but there’s no predicting who will be most affected...Martina Navratilova apparently had to be taken off the mountain and was hospitalised due to it, so fingers crossed that doesn’t happen to us!  We’re very excited about the whole trip and it’ll be our last excuse to have a long holiday before returning home to the UK.

We have our flights booked now and return home on 3^rd April!  Both of us feel ready to come home, particularly as we’ve really missed our social life, but I’m sure it’ll be a real shock to the system when reality hits.