Okuhepa: Another Business Trip

Looking back to October 2015...

You remember Dreamland Garden, from my February post about events of August? Well, in October, three of the gardeners, my boss, Lou, and I traveled to the Oshana region to consult and advise on some other Social Security Commission gardening projects.

[an aside: Regions are roughly equivalent to states in the U.S., and there are 14 of them. So none of them is much bigger than Rhode Island. And they don't make their own crazy traffic laws; that stuff gets done at the national level. Anyway, six of the regions touch the northern border of Namibia, but only two of those, plus two that don't, are called 'the North.' Those four are also sometimes called 'O-land,' as their names are Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena and Oshikoto. If you are going to Epupa Falls, which is pretty close to the northernmost point of Namibia, you cannot say, "I'm going up north," because Epupa is in Kunene region, and Kunene region is not 'the North.' You have to say, "I'm going to the northern part of the country." Otherwise you are lying. Same thing for Rundu, Namibia's second-largest city and a popular crossing point into Angola on the Okavango River. Rundu, although practically tipping off the northern border into another country, is not 'the North.' You get used to it after a mild confusion or two.]

Source: http://www.mapsofworld.com/namibia/namibia-political-map.html

Lou had to do all the driving, as Peace Corps does not allow me to drive (I get it; I get it - though I've ranted about it more than once...) and our three companions don't have licenses and probably don't know how to drive. It's about an eight-hour trip. Lou and one gardener are from the North, and the other two are from Kavango, in the northern part of the country, and they were very happy as we got far enough along our route to start losing the sere scenery of our desert home and into the trees and grasses of the savannah. Trees! "Now it looks like Christmas," one Kavanga said, "with everything turning green." Things start turning green in October because that is the very, very beginning of the rainy season, which usually hits its peak in January and February. But at any time of year, the savannah is a lot greener than the desert. And oh my gosh they have trees.

trees plus pigs

We four women spent the night at a guesthouse, three rooms, each with its bathroom. (Lou went to his mother's.) In the morning there were pigs wandering around outside, then goats and chickens and a dog or two. We were supposed to have breakfast with the rooms, but the guesthouse had gotten a bit disorganized and wasn't expecting us, so no breakfast. We had stopped at a grocery store the night before to buy provisions with our per diems, and thus were able to snack on our supplies of various non-perishables.

Our first visit was to the Social Security office, a very lovely, modern-style building constructed by a Chinese contractor. There are a lot of Chinese firms doing business in Namibia, and often winning the suspicions and resentment of locals as they are perceived to import Chinese laborers even for unskilled jobs, and there's some feeling that the Chinese get preferential treatment when competing with Namibian firms. I have no idea whether any of that is true. After the office stop, we went out to a nascent gardening project, bumping along minimally-established tracks in the deep sand for quite some time before we came to a large stretch of sand earmarked for a garden that would support some number of youths ('youths' are defined as somewhere between 16 or 18 and young adulthood; sometimes as old as 35).

Not my idea of Eden.

The soil is amazing. It's quite literally sand, like I'd expect to find at the beach: deep, fine, white sand. I dug my toes into it and everything. And I would never, ever have thought vegetable crops could grow in it, but my Kavanga gardener was almost keening with regret for the fertile land of her girlhood. "You can grow anything here," she said, lifting a handful of sand and letting it run back through her fingers. Where she now lives, a few streets from me, you try shoving a hand into the ground you're going to break at least a fingernail, if not a finger.

The compost must be kept covered in the dry season, which is exceedingly dry.

The next day we went to a composting project, another garden and a food pantry serving people with HIV and AIDS and their families. They're all related; all supported one way or another by Social Security. Our gardeners were able to share a lot of good ideas, and everyone seemed to feel encouraged and inspired by the interactions. We spent a third night at the guesthouse, because it's an all-day drive to get back home.

Second-day garden, much farther along. Shade nets and irrigation lines.

Before we set off that last morning, we stopped at an open market in Ondangwa for special treats like kapana (stewed meat) and Kavango oranges (many other names, and an interesting, squashy, wet, segmented fruit in a hard spherical shell; Andy has a picture on his blog, where he calls it an eguni or bushman's orange). Then Lou drove for many, many more hours, including a generous detour through Etosha National Park! Lots of photos to come.