/Kun of the Ju/'Hoansi-San

I've barely met /Kun, and doubt he remembers me at all from last week, but I wish he were closer so I could get to know him.  He's a guide at the Living Museum of the Ju/'Hoansi-San, outside of Grootfontein.  My U.S. friends K&K and I visited the museum, a recreation of a traditional Ju/'Hoansi village, during our tour of mostly, kind-of, north-central Namibia.  The museum is a great place, which I recommend very highly to Namibians, permanent or temporary, and visitors to the country.

/Kun introduces himself as Elias, which he uses as his English name.  He paired up with an older man, N/a!ad, whom he mostly called 'the hunter', to take us on a walk through deep, reddish sand and abundant bushes and trees.  They showed us how their ancestors started fires with two soft-wood sticks and a lot of dried grass, set snares, shot antelope with small bows and smaller arrows, and how they found water, poison, medicine and something to smoke in trees.  "We scrape the bark," he explained about the smoke-ables, "and pow it, and mix it with rabbit dung.  Then smoke."

/Kun has a gorgeous, frequent, infectious smile and great English.  He was very willing to answer a few questions and let me film a short video of him speaking Ju/'Hoansi.

First he wrote his name and the hunter's name, with help from several women colleagues:  the hunter is N/a!ad: pronounced n(clicking noise like when you say 'tisk tisk' but only one 'tisk', and it's really more 'tsk')a(popping noise like you're imitating a cork coming out of a bottle)ad.  Elias is just the 'tsk' sound followed by Kun.  Easy, right?

/Kun in traditional dress, holding arrows and a drinking straw.

/Kun is 27, though he looks about 17.  He lives with his wife and 3-year old son, his parents, four sisters and three brothers-in-law and a brother.  They are spread across six houses in the family group.  (I only had the back of my business card on which to write his answers to my questions, so I took brief notes and can't quote him directly.  Oh, how I wish I could.)

He works as a guide at the Living Museum "every day there are visitors."  He wears his traditional short-shorts or whatever that is whenever he's at the museum, and Western clothes when he's home at the modern village.  He says he prefers the traditional clothing, and if he could be a nomadic hunter, he would be.  I don't know whether the guides are coached to say things like that to hook tourists better, but he certainly seemed very happy in the hour or so we spent with him.

/Kun follows the hunter through the bush.

He attended primary school in the modern village near the museum, and went to secondary school in Grootfontein, about 80 kilometers south.  He left school after grade 10.  He has also been to Tsumke, about 150km east of his village.  That's the farthest he has traveled, he told me.  He speaks Ju/'Hoansi as his first language, and also English and Afrikaans.  He seems really smart.

I asked him what he would do if he suddenly had lots of money.  He said he would buy clothes, and help his sister pay her school fees, and pay for transport for sick people in the village to get medical help.  I infer this sister is the youngest; she's at secondary school in Grootfontein, living in the hostel for students there.  She maybe wants to be a teacher.

Thank You, Life

I had a really wonderful experience last night, and I'm not sure it qualifies as an uniquely Namibian moment, or a Peace Corps moment.  It could probably happen a lot of places, in a lot of jobs.  So I'm just saying, 'Thank you, life,' for presenting me with this glimpse of pure joy -- but I'm also recording this rare event as one of the especial joys of my Peace Corps service in Namibia.

I had stayed a bit later than usual at the office, as did Silas and Ester.  We split up near the bakery, since they had errands to run and I didn't need the temptation of All-Gold Tomato Sauce flavour, Mrs. H.S. Ball's Chutney flavour and Creamy Chedddar flavour Simba chips, especially as I recently had the brilliant idea that I should buy all three sometime and mix them up in a bowl together.  Seriously, they're tasty delicious and there's no Starbucks whipped cream drinks here to pervert my healthy lifestyle, but there's no way you can negotiate the Simba chips into the menu plan and claim they're health food.

Anyway, I stepped along solo and heard singing about a block from the bus stops.  Gorgeous singing.  Beautiful, a capella, small group singing, right there on the street corner.  I had my camera, which felt serendipitious as I don't usually carry it to work, so I pulled off the lens cap and shot this video.  I hope you love it as much as I do.

I talked to the singers when they finished, to be sure they didn't mind my recording them and posting the footage. They are youths (youth are roughly 16- to 35-year olds here) who were practicing for a performance the next day in the local Lutheran church.  I have a prior commitment for that one, but I'm going to watch out for future opportunities to hear the sublimely lovely music they make together.

A Festival of Whiskies

Looking back to March 2016:

There's some controversy about the spelling of the ancient beverage of Celtic lands: whisky or whiskey?  Wikepedia just told me that, essentially, it's with an e in Ireland, with and without in the USA, and without everywhere else.  So that's why Swakopmund hosted a Whisky Festival in March 2016.  This was Namibia's first whisky festival, and I suspect it was successful enough that there will be another.

Why was I there?  Well, fellow PCV J. wanted to get the Vs from our region together during the school break in March.  I was all for it and suggested climbing Brandberg (highest peak in Namibia, and quite near all of us), camping at Spitzkoppe (beautiful peak that requires technical climbing skills but has trails for the amateurs with lots of millenia-old rock paintings), or climbing and camping at Soussusvlei, the world-famous (trust me; other people have heard of them) dunes at more-or-less the conjunction of the Namib desert (the world's oldest) and the South Atlantic coast.  M. said he had friends going camping at Erongo Mountain, and we could mooch off of them for invaluable transport assistance, and that sounded good to me, too.  I've never seen any of these magnificent, meaningful sites.

Spitzkoppe's mystical beauty

Somehow we wound up in Swakopmund, my ruddy shopping town where I go twice a month, with 9,000 other PCVs, at a whisky festival.  I dunno.

It was school vacation time, you see, so every Education project volunteer in Namibia, pretty much, was at large.  And Swakop is a great vacationland.  Plus:  whisky!

The door stayed shut at night.

The lovely S. threw wide her narrow door and allowed about 48 of us to sleep on her floor, completely freaking out her bunny-rabbit companion, who'd only been living there a week and needed a little more time to make the adjustment before she welcomed company.  However, my sleeping bag was overdue for laundering anyway, and K. brought super-tasty blueberry and cranberry breads, and S. made veggie scrambles one morning with the veg I brought from Dreamland Garden, and it's a lovely walk from Mondesa to the center of town.

Bun-rab and volunteer

The fest itself was a bit pricey, but I think I'd do it again.  The organizers dressed up the new-ish convention center elegantly in spots, with other places showing their infrastructure, which made for a nice mix.  Admission came with seven tokens redeemable for whisky, which cost one to four tokens per taste.  Chivas charged two for 12-year old whisky and four for 18-year old; Glenlivet charged two regardless (but ran out of 21-year old early); Bains utterly crap whisky was one token.  I tried Glenlivet 18-y.o., and quite nice, and then went to the Jameson booth with J. and Y.  Jameson was only pouring one whiskey (Irish 'e'), the special reserve, and for two tokens, so yay.  But just as the server lifted the bottle over my glass, I asked, "How long is it aged?" and she said, "Five years."  Whaaatt??!  I started to say, "Oh, never mind, thanks," but decided that would be ungracious, unadventurous and self-indulgent in the bad way, so I accepted the pour and walked away.  Took a sip.  Winced.  Took another sip.  Dumped the rest into J's glass.

Africa!

I was a bit pouty after that, with just three tokens left, and went to the mixed-whiskies booth that had Maker's Mark, several Scotches and a Japanese thing.  Two tokens mostly, but the Japanese one and one of the Scotches were three.  "Do you like a stronger whisky?" the pouring woman asked, and I confessed I probably rather do.  "You should try the Caol Ila, then," she advised, and I agreed to it and dropped my last three tokens on the bar.  She brought over the bottle and lifted to pour, then paused and said, "Do you want to smell it first?"  "Sure," I answered, and she held the bottle out so I could take a sniff.  And ohhhh.  It was like crouching over the fireplace in my musty living room in Ireland twenty years ago, flapping a hand enthusiastically as the peat logs finally started to catch.  So I asked to sniff the Japanese thing, which smelled like dirty coins.  "Definitely the Caol Ila," I said, and carried it away just sniffing for about five minutes before I took a sip.  Ambrosia.

The organizers did some good work: there was a trapeze artist or two, who also did that thing where they twist themselves up in a gigantic scarf hanging from the ceiling and then unwind themselves dramatically.  It was fun to watch, and fun to speculate as to when people would be drunk enough to try boarding the trapeze or one of the many, many Harleys scattered about the floor.

The conference center is at The Dome, which offers enough ceiling height
for people to dangle about in mid-air.

There was also a 'sensory zone'; I watched mystified from a high, steep bleacher-style seat while a chef did something to some charcoal in a skillet.  Why charcoal in the skillet?  There was a chocolatier from Walvis Bay who gave me a bon bon gratis - maybe the first thing I've been given in Namibia?  The worst thing about the fest was the lack of food available.  The chocolates for sale, and some salamis and olives for sampling at the Pick 'n' Pay booth, was about it.  I hope next year they'll ensure a supply of carbs; you shouldn't have people drinking at that rate and not give them an opportunity to shove in a sandwich from time to time.

Every cooking demo I've ever seen live seems to take forever,

and you just sit and watch getting hungrier and hungrier.

There were some comfy couches in one side-space, and you could go in and out with your wristband, including to an expensive little deli that closed before I broke down and bought some bread.  You could buy more tokens for $10 each.  Y. and J. were talking about doing so, and a woman sitting nearby offered to sell them her nine for $50, which deal they took happily.  They got drunk.

Free pours from the scarf lady - Bains :-(

 

Note motorcylce in background.

 

Dreamland Garden

I wrote a few months ago about the Ûiba Ôas Crystals Market, one of my principal clients for business advice and support.  My other main client is Dreamland Garden, whom I introduced when I wrote about the Handing Over Ceremony in August 2015.  Dreamland Garden is an impressive enterprise with a lot of challenges and many, many strengths.

Spinach and parsley and Theresia and Elizabeth

Its primary strengths are Elizabeth and Theresia, two hard-working agricultural enthusiasts who keep the place running.  Elizabeth is the equivalent of the CEO of the enterprise, having co-founded it a decade or so ago with her husband.  They were out of work, with three young children, and needed food.  Elizabeth grew up near the northern border of Namibia, where there are rivers and this weird soil that is actually deep, soft sand in which plants apparently are willing to grow.  Bravo, plants.  I would never have dreamed you could push a seed in that stuff and ever see a result.

Co-founder Joseph building a seedbed that will hold a manure-sand mix,
as the un-enriched soil you see here does not inspire agricultural achievements.

Elizabeth smiles brilliantly when she remembers gardening with her dad when she was a girl, and she brought what she learned from him to her marriage and then to our decidedly un-fertile desert town.  She and her husband started their garden just as a way to feed their family.  When they managed to coax more than they could eat from the desert back yard, they sold and traded some of it to neighbors, and gradually expanded their plot.  Their church supported them; the town supported them; eventually my foundation and the Social Security Commission supported them.

We took an inspiring field trip to my Zambian neighbor's backyard garden.
Febby loves her veggies; Elizabeth started a compost pile.

Now they have a greenhouse – to provide shade more than warmth! – and numerous outdoor beds; water storage tanks; raised seedbeds and an automated irrigation system that isn’t yet in operation for various reasons.  They raise the plants in a mixture of goat and sheep manure and sand, and they grow the most gorgeous spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, spring onions, occasional beets and cabbage and brilliant, deep green, crispy parsley.  I’m getting hungry typing.  They sell it both at the retail level here in town and in lots of 50-100 300g bags of spinach and what have you to the supermarkets in not-that-nearby towns.

Manure-sand soil ready for transplants.

I have never been a big fan of lettuce.  It’s just been a helpful filler for sandwiches, and a base for the good stuff in salads.  The lettuce at Dreamland Garden, last winter and spring, smelled delicious.  It tasted like a real vegetable, with an unique, clear, vibrant flavor.  My U.S. lettuces -- romaine and red-leaf, mostly - were just crispy water.  I bought a head every week or so at Dreamland and walked to the office sniffing it like a bouquet of roses.  Only hungrier.

Tastes good, smells good, looks good.  Healthier than fatcakes.

The number one challenge facing the Garden is the high price of the water they need in high volume to keep things growing in this hot, dry climate.  We’re looking together into the possibility of using ultra-violet technology to sanitize gray water, or finding a sponsor who’s willing to assist in the effort to help agriculture thrive in a place with very little, or maybe just maybe finding a water source nearby through their own borehole.  Not likely, that last one – even if we did locate water underground here, it would probably be very brackish.

Eggplant, spinach and spring onions from Dreamland = a feast tonight!

There are plenty of other challenges, of course, but also tremendous possibility (and really tasty veggies).  I love working with this group.

Theresia and Elizabeth came for the feast, having provided much of it.