TIA

Life seems unfair for some people. On Wednesday, Melissa came back from her internship at the pre-school bawling. Distraught, she sputtered the story out through fits of tears and snuffles. She was angry.

She told us about a twelve year old boy who was hit by a taxi driver while walking to the school. He was probably going for lunch, since he was twelve and certainly not in pre-school anymore. But they did have a lunch offered free at the school. Anyway, the boy was hit just down the hill from where everyone was. The boy’s friends encouraged him to get up and walk to the school, but he was bleeding profusely from the head, leg, and stomach. His body was pretty mangled

When they finally made it to the school, Mel became frantic to patch the boy up. She definitely knew what she was doing considering she has worked for years being an EMT, one of those people in the ambulance who saves your life. I could imagine her being calm when it happened and doing a thorough job attending to the wounds. After she was finished, she carried the boy home for two kilometers through Okahandja Park, an informal settlement in Windhoek.

Informal settlements are created because the people cannot afford to live in houses. They simply build their own shacks out of zinc. Most of the people in these settlements come to the cities from rural areas seeking work which remains difficult to find. The unemployment rate in Namibia is estimated to be around forty percent. HIV/AIDS is also much more common among the poorest of the poor. It is estimated that anywhere from twelve to twenty percent of the Namibian population is infected. A good majority of the people probably would not even know if they had it.

Upon arriving at the boy’s shack, Mel was shaking violently. She has battled tough things in her life, including cancer. She made it through somehow, but there has been a problem with her shoulder near her collarbone the past two months. There is some sort of cut that is infected, so she has to constantly cut her own shoulder open and drain the pus and blood that has built up. It is often difficult for her to use her right arm. So I can imagine that carrying the boy for two kilometers was incredibly painful. Not only that, but she had to worry about the boy’s blood getting near her wound which was patched fairly well.

When she finally placed the boy down, the father was wondering what had happened. By this time in the day, about noon, he was already drunk. When he found out that the boy had been hit by a taxi, he kept calling the boy stupid for not moving out of the way. Mel emptied her wallet and urged the father to get the boy to the hospital, which she later suggested was highly unlikely. She was able to scrounge up one hundred Namibian dollars (about ten U.S. dollars) to give to the father. She kept seven dollars and fifty cents for taxi fare to get back to the house where we stay.

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Today, Mel returned to the pre-school for graduation. She found out that the boy had been reported as “missing.” There is no doubt in her mind that he is dead.

She can not help to hate the circumstances that led to this. After she had gotten back to the house, she repeated, “I hate this fucking country.” She was angry with the father who was drunk and who would not take the kid to the hospital. She could not do it herself because she is not the boy’s guardian. She was yelled at by the father to leave. He called her names and degraded her womanhood. Mel could not understand why things were the way they were in this country.

TIA.

Just Take it all in

We just got back from a trip to the coast for a five day weekend. We stayed in Swakopmund and also visited Walvis Bay. The trip was pretty amazing. I got to climb a huge sand dune, kayak with over 50,000 seals and some dolphins, swim in a freezing cold Atlantic Ocean, tour a uranium mine, and experience a different part of Namibia. It was definitely a fun trip.
The kayaking with the seals was by far the highlight of the trip. They would come right up to our two person kayak and play with us. If you stuck your paddle out, they would bite on the end of it. They also liked it when you scratched them with the paddles. Some of the seals would do handstand type maneuvers where they would stick their butt in the air. I think they were farting at this moment, because it smelled pretty awful. However, I did touch 3 of the seals on the butt. That was a pretty cool experience.

When we went out from the shore a little ways into the deeper water, we saw dolphins swimming and jumping. If you came up along side of one of them that means that you could start racing it. At one point, Melissa and I were racing two dolphins on opposite sides of the bow of our kayak. It was one of the most incredible things I have seen. The dolphins were about a meter and a half long, and there were a good 30 playing out in the water where we were. It was so nice to be in a kayak on the water enjoying God’s creation. I bet the people who were in motor boats watching for dolphins and seals were jealous.

Once again there was much inequality in these two towns. The blacks lived on the edge of the townships right next to the desert, while the whites lived on the coast in beautiful, huge houses. I just cannot believe that there are two completely different worlds less than four kilometers from each other. What can be done? The whites and a miniscule upper class of blacks own all the land. It feels like there is no hope. As long as people with resources are content where they are, not thinking about others, this situation will be in place. Maybe someday things will get better. All I know is what I can do. I can choose a simpler lifestyle and not to ignore the poor and oppressed. It is too easy to just hide in our bubbles that we have built, in which we do not see or think about the harsh plight of others.

The Beginning of Home-stay Two: Katutura

So the last couple of days have been really busy. We started classes yesterday with history, and then we went on our home-stays last night. This home-stay should be interesting. We had liver and onions for breakfast this morning along with some eggs and bread. The culture is definitely different than what I am used to and that makes it hard. It’s easy to be around the American college students here because there isn’t much culture to overcome. However, living with an African family is tougher simply because it is such a different culture. It is exhausting just socializing because I have to put in lots of effort to really partake in conversation, while if I’m with someone of the same culture, we don’t have to put in so much effort because we understand each other better. But I also really respect the fact that my family knows English and many other languages, whereas I know none of the Namibian languages.
My host family is great though. They are Oceavambo. It should be quite an interesting weekend. My parents are Oscar and Hilma, and their children are Matthew (15), Anna-Marie (12), and Sarafina (9). Tonight we are going to a memorial service at a Lutheran church for an elderly person in the congregation who died. Then tomorrow we will actually go to the funeral service. On Sunday we will go to church. So my weekend is pretty well planned out. I’m hoping for some down time to relax and read, but we will see if that happens. I won’t be able to be on the internet, but I am sure that I will post sometime next week with a more enthralling update.

Ten Days Discovering Jo-burg Ways

It seems like such a long time ago I was in New York awaiting the flight to Johannesburg. It has been about twelve days now, and I can say I am finally getting settled. I was living out of my suitcase the whole time at Jo-burg, and when we got to Windhoek yesterday, Jason (my roommate) and I were not able to move in due to construction on our room. So we stayed at a B & B last night, which was fine. However, I just finished unpacking, and I have to admit it feels great to finally settle in. I really lucked out by having only one roommate. It isn’t because I don’t like the other guys. Rather, it’s simply because it’s more comfortable and easier to live with fewer people, especially when you are in confined spaces.

Johannesburg was quite the experience. I soaked up so much information in those ten days there. We learned all about the brutality of the apartheid regime, and how the country is developing since. What makes it so interesting is the fact that apartheid was only ended recently. It’s hard to imagine that I was actually alive when South Africa was under apartheid. The Apartheid Museum was almost too much. We spent three hours there, but I didn’t feel like that was enough time. You cannot fully ever know what it was like. But the museum was informative nonetheless. We heard tons of speakers too. They talked on a wide variety of topics dealing with the government, history, and the state of the country currently.

South Africa is the country with the widest gap between the wealthy and the poor. There’s no mistaking that. In Jo-burg, you could be in one area with tin shacks cramped so closely together that a car wouldn’t be able to drive the dirt streets between the houses, and then about a football field away would be very elaborate, elegant houses. It is truly disturbing. That is what the country is dealing with now however. They have to learn how to distribute wealth evenly. It seems like some people are profiting greatly at the expense of others. Some of the residents of Soweto (one of the poorest areas in South Africa) were telling me that businesses would hire illegal Zimbabwean immigrants and pay them poor wages, rather than hire the educated and more qualified citizens of South Africa. That seems unfair, both to the Zimbabweans who get paid crap and barely scrape by, but also for the South Africans who have excelled in their studies and cannot break into the work force. Some employers simply seem to be greedy. If that country is going to continue to be stable, they will have to have a more equal distribution of wealth or all hell will break loose.

Those are just some of my thoughts on South Africa. I have more philosophical thoughts however. It seems that when you are a child, everything is black or white. It is right or wrong. They are innocently ignorant of intricate details. However, as we grow older, situations and decisions become muddled. There’s not a black and white. It is simply gray. And then we have to choose to do what is right, but sometimes it is hard to see what is right. Sometimes, it is easier to choose ignorance than to choose the hard road that leads to something better. I bring this up because the ANC (African National Congress) seems to be corrupt now. The majority of people are suffering, while the ANC leaders are becoming very rich. I sense much corruption amongst the leaders who claim to be fighting the same fight before apartheid was done away with. They are politicians and damn good ones. I ask myself what I would do if I was given power. Power corrupts. Jesus knew that, and that is why he denied Satan’s temptation that included all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus did not want worldly power. In the same way, I would not want it.

That’s quite enough for now. Let me know what you think. I’ll be updating more regularly now that I have internet. And I'll write about the first homestay soon. It went really well.

The Night Before...

So I leave tomorrow, and I thought I would write real quick. I'm not really anxious or nervous, but I definitely don't know what to expect. I think I am just going to take life as it comes on this journey and soak up every moment of it. I have plenty of reading to do on the flight tomorrow, so I will stay busy. Anyways, I'll write more when I have more meaningful stuff to say.