Shadow Days

In early June, we PCTs got another great practical learning opportunity:  three days shadowing a current PCV (Peace Corp volunteer), with one day at either end for travel time -- which meant a chance to figure out how travel works locally.  Flagging cabs comes into it...

On Wednesday, we partnered up with each other and a trainer or two.  The PC staff wasn't going to turn us entirely loose on our first solo-travel venture!  My gang was three PCTs in the back of a small car with our KKG language trainer and the driver in front.  We were off to Windhoek, where I would debark and spend the next three or four days while the others connected to long-distance combis (vans) that would take them farther south.

I did brave the street with my camera, briefly, to snap this shot of the
Namibian Crafts Centre where I did my shadowing.

Windhoek!  Yes, I got sent to Windhoek for shadowing.  The national capital, by far the largest city in Namibia (viz, about 300k people, so, y'know, not exactly Nairobi, Sao Paolo or Tokyo), the land of delight and danger.  Delight in the form of THREE MOVIE THEATERS, maybe wifi everywhere, and an Indian restaurant; danger in the form of knife-wielding muggers, purse snatchers, extortionist cab drivers, broken-bottle-wielding muggers, and rampant housebreaks.  Yikes.

So simple; so beautiful.
At first I thought they were cartoon-y, but they got to me.

My host (if I was her shadow, what was she to me?  My shadow-caster?  Is there a word for this?) was straight from my own demographic (age, sex, education, professional experience), and had been a community economic development volunteer for a year.  Her insights, which she shared with a generous openness for which I am deeply grateful, were very helpful and honestly come by.  She'd been through some stuff, you guys, and not just living in danger city.

San jewelry, made from ostrich shell fragments.
They get the darker colors by heating the shell in the fire.

Her job was unlike mine in that she was assigned to a single long-running, mid-sized business that she helps out with marketing and organizational management support.  I now work with many different, mostly very small and new, companies.  Her organization is called Omba, and they work with what are called 'formerly-marginalized' communities in local parlance.  They started their efforts with the San people, who call themselves !Kung and Ju'/hoansi.  The second word means 'the harmless people' or 'the gentle people.'  They are the oldest-known human inhabitants of this area, and maybe the original click-and-pop speakers.  Omba has helped them develop their traditional artwork into marketable decorative art and crafts.  My host spends most of her time in the Omba office behind their shop in Windhoek, but occasionally goes out into the bush with a tent and sleeping bag to meet with the San artisans and do trainings or planning sessions.  Fun mix.  They also work with Himba and other peoples.

Traditional San drawing style -- these are reminiscent of the 30,000-year old
rock paintings in the Namib -- transformed into prints for textiles.
Really high-quality textiles.

One of the less-discussed dangers of living in Windhoek is that there are movie theaters and Indian restaurants, and even a few high-end shops.  Excellent in themselves, they sadly tempt you to spend money you maybe just do not have.  My host has chosen to spend some of her 'America money' on taking the lovely one-bedroom flat that comes with her job and turning it into a super-lovely, welcoming home with luxuries like mattress pads, salad forks and coordinating colors.  It was such a pleasure to come 'home' to each evening, and wake up to each morning.  Kiss that good-bye; I am stingy with America money and my walls on site remain pockmarked with prior residents' picture hangers and picture-hanger divots, and my furniture is office cast-offs.  But it was a gorgeous place to have a few days sightseeing.  And we ate well.

Baskets from a drier northern area (not San) use commercial dyes because
natural resources of leaves and nuts and things are in tight supply.

I got to do a lot of database-updating for my host, and sit in on the weekly meeting, and meet her boss and co-workers.  One of the co-workers taught me the Damara greeting, "Matisa," which means more-or-less "How's it going?" and one I use frequently to excellent effect.  There wasn't any wifi.  I didn't get mugged.  I made it back to Okahanja with tremendous success.  I did not make it to the movies or the Indian restaurant, which I don't regret too terribly, as one day I shall see "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and maybe it will be all the better for the long, long wait.

Baskets from more fecund areas use natural dyes.  Judicious representatives
of all these works helped make my host's home elegant and special.

For the most part, I did not dare take my camera into the streets of Wild Windhoek, and didn't want to take any chances with my host's privacy, so the pictures are just of the her shop and its crafts.  I hope you find them as beautiful as I do.

A little info on San artwork.