Stretch

My yoga practice is not the most advanced.  I do a sun salute most mornings, and have done for decades.  In the 1990s and early 00s I took yoga classes once or twice a week when I could find them for cheap (thank you, HMO!), but when I moved to DC I never got myself yoga-organized.  However, a lot of my fellow PCVs are fairly advanced practitioners, and they have kindly shared videos and podcasts, so I can do a structured routine a few evenings a week.  I really love it, though stilling my 'monkey mind' feels like it will just never happen.  Sometimes I manage for a breath or two or even three (by three breaths I get so excited the monkeys just come stampeding back), so I shall remain modestly hopeful.

One of my PCV colleagues wrote about his varied life and how he came to, and uses, a yoga practice on his blog.  I highly recommend this piece.  Even if you don't care about yoga, the writing is worth reading for its clarity and beauty, and Andy has an interesting background.

Sunsets of Namibia

Sunset.  The French call it "le coucher du soleil", which is approximately "the putting itself to bed of the sun"; I love that one.  In Afrikaans I've learned "sononder" -- 'onder' meaning 'under' -- but Google translate likes "sonsondergang."  My dictionary has both.  I'll see if Fabiola knows the Damara if I remember at our next tutoring session.  Update:  she says it's "karah," but isn't certain that spelling is correct.  Also, Silas has weighed in in Oshiwambo; she says it's "etango lyanigina" up north, which means approximately "sun under."  She is also not confident in spelling.  I told her it's mostly just Americans who look at the blog, so probably no one will call her on it.

Sunsets are usually highly visible in this big-sky country, so here's some photos, mostly taken at my desert home.  (Click the link to get the whole portfolio.)  My local sunsets are mostly gentle; pale washes of tangerine with shreds of pastel pink.  When the clouds amass (rare in the low humidity of the desert), more spectacular things start to happen.  I do, though, appreciate tremendously the low-key, quiet beauty of the cloudless evenings.  The dramatic ones make for better photos, however.

Otjozondjupa Region, November 2013.  That's a termite mound, or what the locals call an anthill.

Etosha National Park, November 2013

The Waterberg Plateau, November 2013

Otjozondjupa Region, November 2013, with secretary bird.

Otjozondjupa Region, May 2015

Erongo Region, June 2015

Erongo Region, July 2015

Erongo Region, August 2015

Erongo Region, same day in August - a sunset to be glad you had your camera for.

Erongo Region, same day again.  Wow.

Yup.  Same day.

Moon at sunset; Erongo, August 2015

My birthday sunset at home.  Gentle.

Khomas Region, September 2015

Kunene Region, October 2015

Wild Life

Friday 28 August 2015:  Tonight I saw a giant, dark bug skitter across the room and settle under the dining table.  When I got up from my desk to chase it out, it zoomed across the floor under the desk.  I opened the front door and collected my broom.  Standing well back from the desk, I used the broom to hook my chair and pull it away, and then hook my knapsack by a strap and pull it out, too.  The bug fell to the floor as I did that; I guess it had settled on the knapsack oh ick.  I swept it, with no effective resistance, outside and slammed the door shut.  And locked it, ha!

Have you ever found a gigantic black beetle in your first-world home?  I have, several times.  There were two kind-of noisy ones behind my futon on Park Drive in the Fenway, around 1985, that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to kill with a single shoe, and there’ve been plenty more since.  Big bugs are not exclusive to Namibia.  Occasionally I remind myself of things like that.  The electricity failed more often in McLean, Virginia, one summer than it has in my six-and-a-half months in small-town Namibia. 

Monday 31 August 2015:  Tonight I saw my first spider:  an humongous one; a flat, brown, not-especially-hairy spider high on the wall outside my bathroom.  I did not enjoy seeing it.  I got the spider book Peace Corps provided me and estimated it was probably a wall spider, harmless to humans.  Then I got my tape measure and plastic-tacked it to the wall, kind of near the spider, and took a picture from floor level.  The photo was pretty useless, so I got a chair and stood on that, and moved the tape measure a little closer.  Spider didn’t like that and skittered away, fast and toward the floor; a very kind direction on its part, given I was on a chair.  It rounded the corner into the hall and camouflaged itself against the dark baseboard.

It just would not pose.

I did not want it wandering around while I was trying to get to sleep, so I fetched an Indian take-away container wide enough to trap it, and got as close as I dared, container poised, cardboard ready, front door unlocked and kicked partly open.  As soon as I began my swoop, that thing skated off about 90kph and vanished in the vicinity of the back, across-the-hall bedroom door.  Maybe it went in the room; maybe it was camouflaged elsewhere; I do not know.  I pulled that door closed, sprayed Doom bug repellent all around that door, my bedroom door, all the baseboards, my bed, the bathroom window, and the front door.

The one in this picture looks much spottier than mine.
Key point:  "Harmless to man."

October 2015:  When my PC boss, her assistant, and our new country director stopped in town to deliver a package for me (TWO cases of Kind bars; thank you, C&K!), I showed them around my house, explaining that the back, across-the-hall bedroom door stays closed because a big ol’ wall spider ran in there one night months ago.  They all understood.  Ephraim, assistant boss, opened the door and took a look around, but closed it up again kindly.  (Actually, a streetlight shines in through that window and illuminates the whole hallway, and even into my bedroom, so I'd keep the door closed anyway.)

November 2015:  I invited several PCVs to my place for Thanksgiving, informing them that I have lots of bedrooms, a couple of mattresses, an oven and a microwave - and that I had seen only one spider in four months.  In the week or so after I sent the e-mail, I spotted two or three tiny ones that the spider book did not identify, because they could not have been highly cytotoxic, six-eyed sand spiders that, despite being about the size of my thumbnail and living (very well camouflaged) in desert sands where they occasionally poison and consume an insect unlucky enough to step on them, can kill an entire human being with one tiny bite.  What evolutionary sense does that make?  Anyway, while I refuse to believe these tiny bugs are those most dangerous ones, the spider book says nothing about small, harmless spiders.  So I accord them considerable respect and stay well back.  Mostly I catch them in a take-away container and liberate them in the glorious outdoors, where I believe they will be much happier.

Key points:  "leg span up to 30mm" (roughly one inch);
"Strongly cytotoxic.  Can be fatal."
Not mentioned:  whether it can bite through a hiking boot.

J. arrived around mid-day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and A. and Y. in the evening.  I had soup to stir when the latter arrived, so I asked J., who’d had the house tour, a desert walk and a showing of 'Dr. No,' to show A&Y to their room, and as I stood in the kitchen their distant murmurs changed abruptly to shrieks of, “Jesus!” “Don’t chase it!” “Mother, that thing is fast!” and such.  Oh, no.  It really is the spider’s room.

There've been a couple more since.  Here is my technique for wall-spider removal:  Spray it with stinky Doom; the repellant kind not the killing kind.  That will mess the poor thing’s central nervous system up enough that it gets a bit slow and staggery, and you can trap it in the take-away container and escort it to a more agreeable location.  Wash your hands really well when you get back inside.

Peace Corps issue!  I do not display them in a beautiful Omba basket (a Christmas
surprise from the M'ville family, arranged I know not how), but usually keep
them hidden under other books.  They are full of grisly photos and info.

Seriously, the spider book is not good bedtime reading.

Where I Live Now

So I made it through PST, and out into the desert.  My new home is a small town, built about an hour's drive from the coastal town of Swakopmund in the 1970s to provide housing for mineworkers.  The next closest town is another hour in the other direction; this area was probably never settled in any permanent way given how arid it is, how hot the summer days are and how cold the winter nights.  Probably nomadic people came through here at intervals for tens of thousands of years, but they wouldn’t have settled.

Foreground:  probably more less what it's looked like here for thousands of years.
Background:  former company town.

When a big mine began operations here, workers had to come a long distance to dig the ore, so the mine operator created a town for them.  The original idea was that the mine would be worked out within about 20 years, and the town would be abandoned.  However, by the time of independence in 1990, it was clear that the mine would be productive for at least a decade or two longer than originally projected, and the town housed many people unaffiliated with the mine.  So the mine operator deeded the property, buildings and infrastructure to the nascent nation; the national government created a local government; and the local government eventually determined that they wanted to create a ‘sustainable town’ that could survive and thrive independent of the mine.

It’s a small town; I could probably circumnavigate it in about an hour, maybe ninety minutes, walking.  That would be winter walking; in summer I would melt before I got even a quarter way around.  I haven’t tried the circular route yet because it would be pretty boring.  Sand and scrubby bushes on one side; houses on the other.

A street in town.

The houses look largely alike.  Wood is not an abundant resource anywhere in Namibia, and certainly not in the Namib Desert.  All the buildings – houses, markets, administrative centers and churches (one Lutheran and one Roman Catholic) – that the mine operator built are made of concrete.  They are all single-story buildings, as is the norm in Namibia.  You see high-rises in Windhoek, and two- and three-story buildings in Swakopmund (I haven’t been to any of the other ‘big cities’), but they are very rare in towns and villages.  It gets extremely windy in the desert, especially on winter nights, so maybe the lower profile is sensible from that perspective; I think it’s also less expensive to construct single-story than multi-.  Forty years after their construction, the houses still look very similar to each other – they’re too close together to do much adding or altering – except in color.  We have everything from soothing desert hues to eye-popping citric green, hot fuchsia and deep, pastel orange.  Yards are sand, most with at least some sort of plants, usually hardy succulent-y things, but some with more elaborate gardens.  Many of the streets are paved; a few are well-established sand surfaces.

Longer view of a street.  Bicycles are actually quite rare,
which may be why I took pictures of two of the few I've seen.

A lot of people in the town work at the local uranium mine, or at others in the area.  Mining is, with caveats, a major industry for Namibia.  The principal caveat is that it employs only a very small percentage of the population; less than 5%.  Mining’s importance is measurable more in terms of exports:  despite its relatively small size, this country is one of the world’s leading producers of both diamonds and uranium; Namibia also exports gold, tin, copper and other minerals and ores or whatever the correct term is.  Much of the mining is done in the extra-sparsely populated southern half of the country, where I live.

The uranium is very low-grade and about 10K from town,
so poses little measurable danger to inhabitants.

Other locals work in the several shops we have here – one chain and one independent grocery store, a chain clothes shop, three banks, and a number of small market stalls, where people sell onions, apples, carrots and other produce basics, or hats and t-shirts, or chips and knick-knacks.  There’s an open-air barber shop or two, hair salons and nail salons and two or three lunch places that typically sell stewed meat, some kind of starch and maybe fatcakes.  People also operate these kinds of businesses from their homes.  The town is only about 8,000 people, where I think Okahandja has about 20,000 or a bit more and Swakopmund is around 60,000, but I suspect the number of shebeens (bars) per capita is much lower here than in those towns.  I’ve only seen one car wash, but there may be another tucked down a side street somewhere.  We also have a gas station with convenience store and a post office, and a vocational school that has an excellent reputation, I’m told, throughout southern Africa.

There aren’t a lot of cars, and drivers here tend to be more thoughtful of pedestrians than I experienced in Okahandja or Windhoek.  My neighbors often play loud music outdoors at night, but otherwise the town seems fairly quiet.  It has a big mix of tribes, unlike the more naturally-occurring small towns and villages; people speak Damara and Nama and Oshiwambo and Otjiherero and Kavanga here, and usually revert to Afrikaans as the common language if they’re over 30 or from the south, and to English of very variable fluency if otherwise.  We have a senior library for teens and adults (one large room quite full of a mix of literary fiction, genre fiction and non-fiction, in English and Afrikaans), and a junior library for children.  The town swimming pool recently re-opened, after many years, but I haven’t been there yet.  So far, I’m entirely content to be living here.

Coming Home

So 18 June 2015 was Swearing-in Day – or Graduation Day – and, for me, Coming Home Day.  Home for the first time, that is; I hadn’t been near my new town before, nor ever lived in a desert.  I’d been told I’d have a big, yellow-walled, concrete house to myself in a small, desert town in mining country, and I could expect a fridge and oven and three-quarter size bed.  The Peace Corps combi had picked me up at Wilhelmina’s house early that morning so I could transport my giant suitcase, big backpack, medium duffle, small suitcase, knapsack and sleeping bag to the training center, and Lou, my supervisor, and I loaded all of that, plus my new, PC-issued water filter and mosquito net, into the Foundation bakkie (pick-up truck), and headed west.  For about three minutes, and then Lou had to stop at a well-regarded biltong (dried meat; like jerky) shop.  He said his daughter had requested it, but I’d guess she didn’t have to ask.  He looks like a biltong guy to me.

Farewell, Okahandja!  Thanks for everything!

We traveled a four-lane, well-paved highway with 120kph speed limit that soon narrowed to two lanes, still fast and well-maintained.  Lorries (big trucks for transcontinental transport) can only go 80kph, so we would occasionally overtake one, which was usually easy given long sightlines and limited traffic.  The scenery outside was the semi-arid savannah of Okahandja for the first hundred kilometers or so, with grasses, lots of big bushes (say 3-5 meters tall), and plenty of trees (up to 10 meters tall, I’d guess; maybe some even a bit taller), in shades of green and yellow.  Mountains heave up intermittently, though the road is mostly flat.

Semi-arid savannah, about three months after rainy season ended.  It was
a lot greener two months earlier, and would get a lot yellower and browner
before the rains came again six or so months later.

As we traveled, seeing very few signs of human habitation for scores of kilometers at a time – you could be in South Dakota, maybe – the landscape gradually grew scrubbier.  Over the next hundred kilometers or so, the trees got shorter, and eventually pretty much stopped; the bushes got smaller, and the grass sparser and yellower.  The sandy soil was more exposed and looked rockier.  There were a few small towns right on the highway, with filling stations that offered gas, clean restrooms with toilet paper for $2, bottled water, snacks and energy drinks.  Or you could just refill your water bottle in the restroom, since tap water is safe to drink all over Namibia.  Yay Namibia!  This is, of course, not even vaguely true in much of the developing world and parts of Washington, DC.  (There was a big arsenic problem a few years ago that cut water supplies to several neighborhoods there.)

Desert at dusk, with town in the distance

Outside the town of Usakos, we stopped at the Ûiba Ôas Crystals Market, one of the small businesses my foundation works to support.  The market is a project of a small-scale miners’ cooperative; the miners are mostly men, and their wives, mothers, daughters – and some men – sell the stones they mine locally at the market.  Ten years ago they had some rickety tables by the side of the highway; with the help of the Foundation and various grant-makers (the EU, the US Embassy, the Namibian Social Security and others), they’ve expanded to a solidly constructed, three-room showcase with mostly open roof.  Lou introduced me to the sellers, and many of them invited me to buy stones, which I had to decline with regret.  I am bewitched by the aquamarines – maybe that’s related to my fascination with water – and I like the deep purple of an amethyst.  Amethyst, incidentally, is from the ancient Greek for ‘not intoxicated’ and the stones, per those Greeks, was believed to prevent drunkenness.  They don’t really.  The miners also find garnets in the local rocks and mountains, which are supposed to support solitude.  I am not bewitched by garnets; solitude seems to come easily to me.

They also mine many colors of quartz, topaz and other stones.  I’ll write more about Ûiba Ôas in a later post.  There’s a lot to say.

Crystal seller

Eventually we made it to my new town.  We stopped by the office; the building also houses the town library and I met one of the librarians, a lovely woman.  I was so excited to have a library right next to my office!  There was also a custodian/janitor/handyman, whose handiness would become highly meaningful to me over the next few weeks.  We then traveled on to my house, where I met a local plumber who was putting the finishing touches on my toilet, and my Foundation coworker Anna.  Anna had been putting the finishing touches on my furnishings, and brand new sheets on my bed.  “It’s inhuman to ask you to come here and not even give you sheets,” she told me the next day.

She had also provided silk flowers in a shining vase, sweets and chips on a golden platter, a welcome card, and a bottle of sparkling apple juice to toast my new home.  Lou and Anna and I sat together at my new table and wished each other joy and success in our coming collaboration, and they promised to see me bright and early the next morning.  After they left, I kicked a few suitcases out of my way and went, somewhat gingerly, to bed in my soft lilac sheets – with my sleeping bag on top for much needed warmth!