Week Five: Home Far Away from Home

by Hannah Davidson & Clara Randimbiarimanana

One of the best parts of studying abroad is the homestays, it is a special way to emerge into a new culture and also to learn in an unstructured and experiential way. Homestays are a period of time in which we are matched with a family and given the opportunity to live with them and get to know the culture through people that quickly become our extended family. Last week was our second homestay with CGEE after Soweto in Johannesburg. For this home stay most of us were matched with families in Katutura and Khomasdal, which are areas on the out skirts of Windhoek.  

Clara’s Week:

My host family is Tswana speaking and has lived in Katutura for as long as three or four generations. I only learned so much in such a short period of time during my stay there. My host mom is very passionate about social justice and women equality in Namibia and she was kind enough to share her experiences with me.

"This is a picture of my host mom
and myself after church", Clara.

Like in many other countries, gender inequality is still a big issue in Namibia. Women sometimes are expected to follow certain social norms and expectations. One of the questions I was asking was about young Namibian women clothing standard. My host mom usually wears a dress, which looks really nice but I was just wondering if it was her personal choice. However, she said that it all started when she got married because dresses are seen as respectful clothing and “lady like”; thus her husband expected her to wear dresses even though she did not like it in the first place. Although I’m aware that not all Namibian women have had the same experiences, her story made me think about gender expectations in general and the way women internalize and accommodate to social expectations. The cultural values associated with gender sometimes start as simple as clothing, but can go all the way to what is the “normal” way for women to behave. Furthermore, we need to acknowledge the power dynamics behind the perception of gender role in general and the space of socialization such us: culture, background and family. Family is the primary place of perceptions about different concepts. 

During my homestay, I see my mom doing most of the chores: cooking, cleaning, serving, etc. and I can’t help but think that this phenomenon is not exclusive to Namibia, because I see a lot of similarities in the household I grew up in. Each and every one in the family is assigned a certain role. The issue is that that’s where women start to develop their identity according to the type of family and culture that they grow up in. In short, my host mom experience is very unique and I could not generalize all the Namibian women as being the same. However, this experience made me realize about the socialization and formation of concepts like gender and cultural identity.

Hannah’s Week:

Throughout this trip I have met some amazing children, especially in the last week. We were staying with host families, and I had the pleasure of having an energy filled eight-year-old sister.

This week I also started at my internship, which means I met my 20 five- and six-year-old students. I am an education major, so many kids have come in and out of my life, always seeming to shake things up for me a bit, and make me look at things in a new light. But this was a different sort of shaking up that my past with kids hadn’t been able to prepare me for.

I walked in to my first day of being a real live teacher with a backpack full of tricks, a white skirt, and candy jar with a skittle for anyone who followed the rules. I left at noon with a backpack of broken and ripped tricks, a light tan skirt, and a full candy jar. Even a game of duck, duck, goose had miserably failed. My first day as a real teacher was less then successful, but it was only the first day and I had quickly realized that teaching these students in the same way I would teach a class of students in the US was not going to cut it. I left feeling unsure of how I was going to actually be a sufficient teacher for these kids. 

Hannah's host home for the week.

As my week continued I felt blessed to have my host sister and mom to go home to. My host sister was rambunctious, but the cozy feeling of family and being loved gave me energy. Every night my sister would play with my hair as we would co-read a chapter book together. Being able to have this comfortable space to call home was probably why my patience continued to surprise me with my students. 

I survived all three of my internship days with some sort of grace and I hadn’t completely wrecked the kids yet, so there were definitely positives in my week. I found myself comparing what my students and host sister knew and how they learned to students that I had worked with in schools in the US. My students here struggled to sit through a whole picture book and my host sister was taught subtraction in a way I had never thought of before. The idea that context has a direct effect on how students learn and actually do school has definitely been ingrained in my mind going to school to be a teacher, but seeing it like this was a whole other thing. Trying to consider if a book will actually fit in my students frames of reference or letting my host sister show me how she does her math homework are some of the things that I know are going to make me a better educator now and in the future. As I continue to learn (and struggle with) these children that are coming in and out of my life, I hope I can learn how to be the teacher that they need, rather then getting frustrated that they aren't the students I am used to. 

This last week was one, that for most of us, we will share and grow from for many months. Although each of us had vastly different experiences, we were given an opportunity to learn and explore a new culture in a way that pushed us outside our comfort zones or made us wonder and question. This is something that is truly invaluable.  We are so blessed to be welcomed into these families’ homes and lives. 

Week Four: Hooked on Windhoek: Introduction to Namibia

by Jeremiah Chamberlin & Hannah Johnson

At the beginning of the week, the CGEE group had the opportunity to engage with students from the University of Namibia (UNAM) in an informal discussion. This became an invaluable experience; for many of us, it was the first time we were able to interact with Namibian peers and dually analyze some the experiences that have shaped our lives as students. The topics of discussion ranged from our favorite hobbies and involvement in campus life, to deeper issues such as racism and discrimination on campus.

One of the topics that emerged from conversation are the barriers to accessing education at the collegiate level. For many of us at CGEE, we echoed the idea that financial considerations present the largest challenge in the United States, compounded by the realities of institutional racism and economically diverse backgrounds. From the perspective of the UNAM students, race did not play as important a role in college choice and acceptance rate. However, they did emphasize the role of the education system in Namibia, especially concerning regions outside of Windhoek. It was surprising to learn that the quality of teachers and curriculums is low in many regions, and this has impacted the demographics of students that attend college. For example, particularly in the Northern regions, teachers are underpaid and schools are understaffed. From both the US and Namibian perspectives, we were surprised on how many similarities we were able to draw between education systems.

On Tuesday, our group spilt into subgroups to explore the various facets that Katutura, a former black township in Windhoek, has to offer. We received itineraries for the day and were accompanied by guides from Young Achievers, a local youth organization. On this ‘Katutura Quest,’ we visited a diversity of both government and non-government organizations and programs that are involved in the community. One such program is the Katutura Community Arts Center, which is open to the public. Within the arts center is the College of the Arts (COTA).

During our tour, we had the opportunity to sit in on a staff/student meeting where the changing financial policies of the college were discussed. Many of the challenges that small colleges face while moving forward are connected to some of the topics we discussed with the UNAM students on Monday regarding education. Among the concerns is the increasing cost of tuition as a government-subsidized college, which has put pressure on many students of low-income backgrounds.

In our interview with Joost Van de Port, head of the Media Department at COTA, he explained that the college and students need be able to gain more agency to receive national recognition from the state. Currently, COTA is not listed under the Ministry of Education, and therefore, not seen as a priority. As Van de Port explains, the college is in the process of gaining status to be listed under the Ministry of Education, which allows greater funding for the college, particularly from the National Arts Council. Van de Port claims that media literacy, particularly under the department of the Media, Arts, and Technology, is crucial for all Namibians to learn. 

Those of us with internships began officially on Wednesday, with a full day at our individual organizations. These included The Namibian Chamber of Commerce, Planned Parenthood, Namibian Women’s Health Network, Friendly Haven (for victims of domestic violence), along with a number of others. Because many of these organizations work with vulnerable populations, these first few days of interning were emotional for some individuals. For a few of us this meant hearing heartbreaking stories of domestic abuse; for others, it means coming face to face with the inadequate funding and understaffing of specific educational institutions. Naturally, it’s not all negative; there are organizations like Sister Namibia which are doing incredible work to empower Namibian women in surprising ways, while simultaneously challenging gender stereotypes. Collectively, these shared experiences are giving us a fuller, more complex understanding of the Namibian story.

One of the highlights of this week would have to be Thursday’s ‘Community Day’, held at the Elisenheim Guest Farm. While we may have complained about waking up early, the day became an insightful opportunity to reflect on our experiences. The day also gave us the chance to get closer to those we are sharing our experiences with, especially other members of the CGEE staff (specifically Evelyn, Jenobie, Sarah, and Passat). Initially playing games like ‘Seven’ (learned from our Katatura tour guides), the day began on a relaxed, informal note. We shared simple secrets about ourselves, like facts about our families or our favorite memories. It was a welcome reprieve from the emotionally intense schedule of Johannesburg. 

Elisenheim Guest Farm on Community Day.
ables are set up for our various identity stations.

However, as the activities progressed, the subject matter became much more personal. Entering ‘identity stations’, individuals were asked to share in small groups their personal feelings on aspects of their identity, such as race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, class, and nationality. Many of us were reduced to tears in the process of hearing each other’s deeply held thoughts and emotions, yet the overall sentiment was one of openness and acceptance. 

Friday marked the first day of actual class: Race and Resistance in Southern Africa and the US taught by Albertina. This included a field trip to the Owela Museum, which records the lifestyles, cultures and practices of Namibia’s indigenous tribes. The museum also addresses some of the injustices faced by these groups, like those suffered by the San people. Dubbed ‘Bushmen’ by early German colonizers, members of the San were considered evidence of the ‘missing link’ theory connecting apes and humans. In an effort to record data on what they considered an evolutionarily incomplete group, German ‘scientists’ made molds and casts of San people’s faces and body parts. Skewed information was then published, propagating racist narratives of white supremacy which are sadly still influential even today.

Molds of actual San people created for the Germans'
racist interpretation of the 'missing link' theory.

Despite the tragic reality of colonization and discrimination, the Owela museum remains an important place for appreciating Namibian history and heritage. Named after a board game common among many Namibian tribes (similar to Mancala), Owela stands as both a tangible and symbolic representation of the larger Namibian identity. The shared story of the nation is as beautifully haunting as the unique communal experiences which are braided into its past. As we acclimate ourselves to this new environment, we begin our journey backwards in time to the tumultuous formative age of disillusionment.

Week Nine: Rural Homestay

by: Beatrice Misher, Dashawn Peterson, Molly Weilbacher

On Tuesday, March 22nd our group woke up at 5am, brushed the sleep from our eyes and tried to conquer our nervous energy, to depart for an eight-hour drive up north to Outapi, Namibia. As the hours went by, the temperature increased but so did our excitement. We finally got to meet each of our families and were welcomed with loving smiles and high energy, even though we were four hours late. CGEE students hopped in the beds of trucks as we departed into the sunset to see our families’ homesteads and what our life would be like for the next week.

We each found ourselves on homesteads, based off of the traditional Oshiwambo homestead structure. Each of our homesteads had a few man-made cement structures, but the rest of the homestead was set up in a maze of wooden fences leading to different huts that were each used for a distinct purpose: cooking, storing food, drinking tea, living and sleeping, and mahango pounding. Our families had common crops on our farms, including mahango—a grain used to make porridge, which is central to our families’ diet and can be found at all meals. Their farms also included watermelon, beans, and corn, and animals including cattle, donkeys, goats, chickens, dogs, and pigs. Our families all cooked meals over the fire. As the sun set, they would start preparing the food to put on the fire. Many of us experienced eating by torchlight, or guided by the light of the moon and stars, since there was no electricity. We would go to the bathroom in outhouses outside the homestead with a long drop toilet, and if we had to pee we would typically pee in the same area we washed. We would wash by dunking our hair in a basin and splashing water onto ourselves in a secluded area both blocked by the house and by a maze of sticks.  We would often be in bed by 10pm at the latest, due to exhaustion from the intense heat. 

After our first night with our families, we were picked up by the CGEE vans and all went to the Outapi War Museum—the museum was a converted bunker originally used by the South African Defense Force during their fight against the liberation struggle. Outapi has a rich history when studying the liberation of Namibia because it was where the bulk of the war for liberation took place. SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization) was the liberation party that fought against the South African Defense Forces against Apartheid in what was then South-West Africa, and has been the ruling party since 1989. PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia), the military arm of SWAPO had their military base in Angola, and Outapi being so close to the border of Angola meant that many civilians were caught in the crossfire between the South African Defense Force and PLAN. At the museum, we were guided by the director who joined SWAPO at the age of fourteen to help fight for Namibia’s liberation. We also got the chance to meet two women who were teachers during the war, who spoke to us about their duties and involvement with SWAPO and the equal gender breakdown within the SWAPO. It was very surreal to speak to people who helped Namibia gain independence, who reminded us how fresh this history still is—so fresh that many people are still dealing with PTSD from the war, and still have a hard time sharing this piece of loaded history with others. Many of our host families spoke of their involvement during the war, from hiding supplies in the fields for SWAPO members in exile, to getting tortured by the South African army. 

At the end of our week we all came together with our host families to celebrate and thank our families for their hospitality. They lent us traditional Oshiwambo dress for the occasion and we ate traditional food prepared by our host mothers. Both the students and the families expressed how grateful they were for this partnership and the chance to learn and connect with other cultures. The connections we made with each of our families allowed us to have varied experiences and reflections. In the paragraph below you will find a personal reflection from each of us about our homestay, as it is important to nuance the experience:

Bea: I stayed with Mame Naango and Tate Tobias, along with their children. My host family welcomed me into their way of life for the week, sharing their daily routines with me and family history. Something I struggled with over the course of my stay was the ethics of our homestay experiences. We as American students entered these welcoming homes ready to learn and broaden our perspectives, but what were we giving back in return?. Before both my urban and rural homestay this was something I consciously considered, and tried to carry out by sharing stories of my home and lived experience when they were gracious enough to share with me. However at times the inequality of the exchange became apparent such as the fact that we were sent to our homestays with boxes of food that the family would not normally keep in their house, or when I pulled out bug spray one night and realized it was a luxury to my homestay family, even though they are the ones living in a malaria-prone part of the world.

DayDay: Comfortability and access are things I take for granted, and was a big aspect of the rural homestay in my opinion. Living in an apartment building where water and electricity is included I took for granted that privilege. Going up north having to take a bucket shower with limited water and having very little electricity really pushed me out of my comfort zone but also made me reflect how spoiled I am to be living the way I do in America. I was able to experience the world through different lenses and realize that the way the American society believes life should be lived is not the only way to live.

Molly: My time at the homestead made me think about how we choose to qualify life. Watching my family take a break from 11am - 4pm, sitting under the tree together because it is too hot to do anything else made me anxious, as I was itching to do something. I realized that my discomfort came from the fact that I’m not used to just sitting and being with one another, as I come from an American mentality that is so focused on how much you do, how many people you see, how much you buy as a means of measuring how successful one’s day is. We view how much we produce and our outputs as a way of qualifying our daily lives, whereas in my homestead my family was content with sitting and letting the heat pass because there is a different emphasis on what the success of a daily routine means. I ended up loving sitting, eating watermelon, drinking cola, watching the sun move, and playing soccer when it got cool enough. It made me realize how important it is to constantly be checking our internal biases--even around something as abstract but real as the quality of life.

Week Thirteen: Finding an Antidote to Hopelessness

By: Emily Campbell

Three months ago, we sat in a large Methodist Church in the center of Cape Town, transfixed by the words of Reverend Alan Storey. The insights he shared have stuck with our group throughout our time in Southern Africa and this week, his idea that we are “addicted to hope,” ran through my head again and again. Right now, I feel pretty hopeless. Every time I read a headline, I seem to lose faith in the world we live in. Terrorist attacks in Paris, civilians taken hostage at a hotel in Mali, dozens of American governors refusing to accept Syrian refugees, people denying the existence of racism on college campuses, and close to home for many of us, the shooting of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. The world didn’t give me much to be hopeful about this week.

As all of these events continue to fill my newsfeed and consume my time as I read about them. I have felt stagnant. I’ve spent the semester learning about social change, about development, racism, and resistance. And yet I couldn’t seem to find any way that what I’ve learned here could create meaningful change in a world that seems so broken.  Maybe Alan Storey was right. I am addicted to hope, and without it, I struggle to see any path to progress. 

On Tuesday, we had our final development class in which we read “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” a speech Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave in April, 1967. The speech seemed incredibly relevant to our present day situation. And instead of giving me hope, the speech only seemed to further push me into the spiral of hopelessness. Why, nearly 50 years after Dr. King so poignantly warned us about “being on the wrong side of a revolution,” do we continue to make the same mistakes? King wrote, “this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges.” When I read this, I wasn’t thinking of Vietnam. I was thinking of each of the headlines I’d read that morning and asking myself why we aren’t moving forward. 

As my knowledge of South African and Namibian history has grown, I’ve learned about two countries that have made a lot of progress in only a few decades. Both countries have grown significantly since freeing themselves of apartheid rule in the early nineties. But as we’ve learned how much things have changed, we’ve also learned how little things have actually changed. Both nations exist in a state of “economic apartheid.” While racially biased laws are no longer in place, little has been done to change the economic situation of formally oppressed people. As such, I could probably replace the term “formally oppressed people” with the phrase “historically and presently oppressed people.” I want to take the title “Rainbow Nation” at face value, but my time in Southern Africa has shown me how similar Namibia, South Africa, and the United States are in their inability to truly establish racial and economic equality.  

Annie and I attempt to overcome hopelessness by working with
a coalition that seeks an end to gender-based violence.
[Designs by Annie Dierberger]

In my search to rediscover hope, I sought out local activists. Annie and I began volunteering with Women’s Solidarity Namibia, an organization that we visited for class a few weeks earlier. They’re currently preparing for 16 Days of Activism, a worldwide event that draws attention to gender-based and sexual violence. We designed promotional materials and prepared a newsletter for the organization. As I did research for their newsletter, I read statistic after statistic that told me that gender-based violence both in Southern Africa and worldwide is not dissipating, but rather growing in its prevalence. Despite the hard work of people the world over, this devastating problem continues to worsen. Reading these statistics slowly chipped away at the hope I held in a system of grassroots activism. 

And so as we sat in development, discussing Dr. King’s speech, current events, and the inevitable reality that soon we’ll be boarding a plane back to the United States, I reflected on my inabilities to see the positive in a world that seems to continually highlight the negative. But, as they have every other time I’ve dramatically claimed the world is falling apart, my classmates reminded me that this world is not hopeless. For every heartbreaking headline I read and every racist post I saw on Facebook, there was a headline about activists promoting justice and change, a classmate who had chosen to take action where they saw injustice in our world. Women’s Solidarity Namibia may not have ended gender-based violence, but through a staff of two people, they have managed to provide shelter to survivors of violence, to educate men and women alike about preventing violence, and to lobby in parliament for legal change. Small things like these began to pour some light into the darkness that had consumed my worldview. Maybe these people are clinging to the hope I seem to have lost or maybe they too feel a little hopeless, but have refused to let their hopeless justify inaction. Ultimately, I don’t think being addicted to hope is a bad thing. Without hope, we may all end up in that spiral of hopelessness and inaction in which I have felt trapped. 

We attempt to overcome hopelessness by standing with
protesters back home, even when we’re 12,000 miles away. 

I had intended to end this blog post with a hopeful and somewhat cheesy story of finding hope in a broken world. But instead, I’d like to end it with a call to action. If you’re feeling hopeless, do not succumb to the darkness in the world around you, but find hope through action, through surrounding yourself with people who truly seek to address the problems they see. March with Black Lives Matter. Write your representatives about taking in Syrian refugees. Design promotional material for an NGO about which you feel passionate. Allow yourself to occasionally wallow in hopelessness, but do not let it trap you. As Gertrude Stein once said “the artist's job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.” Whatever your antidote may be, it’s time to start pursuing it.

Week Nine: A Canvas of Understanding

By: Annie Dierberger

She had deep wrinkles that ran asymmetrically through her face like a thousand roads on a map, but the destination came together like a meticulous work of art. Each line etched into her skin seemed to hold a story or a memory that I desperately wanted to understand. Her eyes were lulled in the shape of half moons but held a sharp glint of youthfulness wherever she happened to look. Her name was Meme Albertina. She was the village headman, and yes, I had no idea what that meant and maybe I still don’t, but I thought of her like Yoda, full of wisdom and perfectly executed one liners. Now that last part I may have fabricated a bit, seeing that I actually had no idea what she was saying and it was evident from the start we had a language barrier. I spoke English, she spoke none. She spoke Oshiwambo, I knew how to say the How are you? and the word snake, making our conversation limited beyond the context of “the snake is good”, which it ultimately never is. The woman I am describing was my host mom for the week in the town of Outapi, a rural community about nine hours north of Windhoek. All of the students were living with various families and this was to be mine.

What inside the homestead looked like. Various huts for
different purposes surrounded by an endless maze of sticks.

After a few minutes of exchanging confused facial expressions and hand gestures, I ended up in a truck bumping along the gravel until a fenced off home came into view. Once inside the gate, I was given a tour around the homestead by one of the eldest daughters in the family who knew a few words of English. She led me outside the gate towards a tall circular enclosure of sticks and stopped just before to also show me where the pigs slept. To say it nicely, these pigs would not have been cast in the next Charlotte's web sequel as Wilbert. I saw them as beasts that wouldn’t hesitate to destroy me. My eyes stayed glued on the pigs until I was nudged by the daughter to indicate the bathroom beside them, which consisted of a pile of bricks in the shape of a triangle. I kept my face composed but I will readily admit that internally I was whispering, “oh dear god.” The next stop was the shower which was again an enclosed circle of sticks with a bucket inside. Now, at this point, I was extremely nervous that there wouldn’t be enough water for me to shower and that an eyoka (a snake) was going to bite me in the bathroom. I was out of element in a state of discomfort and I knew it, so I decided to do the only thing I could, which was to completely embrace it. To not only look at these lines that ran like roads on the face of my host mother but to travel them just as she had lived them.

Very quickly within the next couple of days I fell into a routine. I would wake up around 6:45am by either one of the children shouting, “Annie, wake up!” or a rooster sounding like it was violently choking. As I stumbled outside into the bright light one of the children would point to the shower and say, “Wash.” I not only learned that a bucket of water was more than enough for a shower, but doing so outside while peering over a fence into the dry abyss was wonderful. I loved being woken up to cold water and the smell of fire already circulating through the cool morning air. After the shower, I would make my way through the maze to the place where we ate our meals. My Meme would see me and say, “Wa­lelepo nawa?” which translates to “Good morning, How are you?”, to which I would reply, “Eeya, ove walelepo tuu?!” and then we would both exhaust ourselves with multiple “eeye’s”, which means “good” and is what I learned to be the key to the Oshiwambo language. When it doubt, just say eeye. People will either mockingly laugh or be extremely impressed with you, sometimes both.

As midday approached, so did the blazing heat. Almost every day the temperature would hit 100 degrees or higher. Shade became your close companion, and water was your new best friend. I was fortunate that my classmate Henrik lived close by, so most afternoons, we would meet up and endure the heat together. We would find a nice spot of shade that wasn’t overpopulated by donkeys and sip, no, chug on ice cold coke from one of the local shebeens.

Henrik, avoiding malaria at all costs.

When 6 o'clock approached, all of the neighboring children began running towards the soccer field for the nightly game. This, I got the impression, was my young host brother’s favorite part of the day. The goal posts were made up of two sticks with a line of cans strung together at the top and very rarely was there a goalie, if lucky a toddler sat distractedly inside the goalposts drawing pictures in the dirt. Some nights I played and other nights I preferred to just sit on the side and watch with amazement. The Namibian sunset would begin to fill the sky with a canvas of reds, oranges and yellows like something I had never seen before. The children would be laughing and doing hilarious after-goal dances and then there would be Henrik, passing out high fives and cheering enthusiastically in English like an elementary school gym teacher. The kids had no idea what he was saying but loved it anyway. Moments like these are what would bring tears to my eyes. Moments where we didn’t need a language to communicate because we had so many other things, things that didn’t need to be vocalized. As the sun completely vanished my host brothers and sisters held hands and walked home together, singing songs. It was a powerful connectedness of pure happiness and enjoyment of one another’s company.

At 8:00 pm the whole family would gather around the fire and watch enticingly as dinner was prepared. The little kids would climb on my lap and sing Amazing Grace repeatedly until flying into one of their own songs and dances. When we weren’t singing or dancing, I had my notebook out and was learning Oshiwambo from Tina, one of the eldest kids who was in school. I would write words or phrases, she would translate and then laugh at my pronunciation. Without any electricity or lights, the world would turn dark and to see my hand in front of my face I would take out my flashlight. There was one night when I took out my light to see where I was stepping and my grandmother looked at me and shook her head repeatedly. She then began speaking in Oshiwambo and pointing up to the bright stars that littered the sky magnificently. She kept pointing up to the stars and then took my flashlight and turned it off. We both smiled in understanding and looked up at the stars together.

Trying to make friends with the donkeys and not succeeding.

That night I sat studying everything like a priceless work of art, absorbing everything that I had grown to love so passionately in a week: the kids, their bright smiles as we played tag throughout the home, and how later they could help cook dinner or carry a baby on their backs with the strength of a teenager; my host mother, despite being at least seventy years old, dancing freely without care like she was a child again; the sky and all of its unity of contrast, completely defying everything we think we know in color and clouds; the stars and gazing up at them in awe, and an hour later realizing you are just as lost as you were before, and feeling content with that. During my rural homestay week, I have lived modestly in material but lavishly in everything else. It was a week that seemed like a year in what I saw and learned. I found richness in simplicity. I found love in silence. I found sacred art in normality. A picture that is worth a thousand words but remembered as a thousand moments.

Week Seven: To Swim in the Storm

By: Annie Dierberger

The view from standing on the dock.
The desert lying just beyond the ocean in the distance.

It was the first Thursday we arrived in Swakopmund, a beautiful city on the coast of Western Namibia, and our frantically absorbing eyes matched the tapping excitement of our feet. For the previous two weeks we had been daydreaming about our trip to Swakopmund, an escape from classes and a routine that we had yearned for at the start of the trip but now craved the absolute abruptness of adventure. That night for dinner we sat in Jetty 1905, a restaurant that sat on the edge of a long wooden dock amidst the ocean. Through the glass of the wall behind us the waves crashed violently below a sky of grey that seemed to disguise itself into the ocean. The weather was dark and ominous and being seated in the middle of the mayhem while classical music played around us felt like someone picking flowers in a warzone. I followed by gaze back to the murmur of conversation within the guests and then up to the bustling movements of the waitresses and waiters. There was a different kind of pandemonium happening inside, a one thickly veiled in misconception. The bright lighting and clinking of glasses seemed to assure me that the roaring ocean just below us was just a figment of my imagination. I swiveled behind me and sure enough, there it was. I looked around the room to see if anyone else was noticing what was happening just outside of the thin glass but there eyes seemed stuck within the confines of the luxury around them. It wouldn’t be until Sunday afternoon until I thought of this night again.

Within the next couple of days we would take full advantage of our fleeting vacation around us. Many people in Windhoek had told us about the town’s stunning beauty but seeing the startling contrast of the vast ocean on one side and the blazing desert on the other was truly magnificent.

Us climbing Dune 7

On Saturday we ventured out and climbed Dune 7, no let me rephrase that, we crawled like confused infants up Dune 7 and then continued to act like children at the top. As we all tumbled down as ungracefully as possible and acquired what seemed to be most of the sand of the desert in our hair and mouth, life at the moment was playing our own sorts of classical music. Sure it was mixed with our shrilling shrieks and belly flopping grunts, but it was a song of bliss nonetheless. As I looked around and saw all of my friends, once tentative strangers in the airport but now close companions, all laughing with giant grins on all of their faces, I couldn’t help but feeling fortunate for our friendship. The tune continued playing as we went ATV’ing the next day in the dunes. All eight of us traveling in a line through miles of sand, and our R.A. Attila trailing dangerously far behind with his scarf billowing through the wind, his upright posture and slow speed making him look like an elderly person on a motorized scooter, weaving through the streets of Paris.

That night we all went to bed smiling from a satisfactory day, a day that was filled with events offered on the front page pamphlet of Swakopmund. The following day we would experience things that weren’t commercialized for the average visitor, things that required a detour off of the main road. It began with a tour through Modesa, the main township in Swakopmund. For those who are unaware what a township is, I will regretfully inform you that they are a commonality throughout Africa. Townships were segregated areas of living for basically everyone who didn’t have white skin during the Apartheid era and yes, they still exist today. The houses consist of three or four rooms and the farther in the township you venture, the smaller the houses become till your eyes are squinting from both the sun and the reflecting tin of shacks. SWAPO flags fly proudly and people greet you warmly, but viewing the conditions that were emplaced forty years ago still continue in the present brings a certain sadness that melts into anger. We were shown the empty houses that sit in the distance, substantially larger and according to the people, substantially so far more expensive that no one can even afford to live in them. How cruel that an empty promise can be your next door neighbor and how different the music can begun to be heard. Unfortunately, throughout this trip, it’s been the same realization: that while there is beauty that surrounds us, there is immense despair in both the history and the present. That here, like in life, you can choose to ignore the harsh reality of things if you wish, and listen to that classical music while completely avoiding the storm outside. And that the sad truth is... many people do.

That Sunday afternoon I thought back to the first Thursday we arrived in Swakopmund, sitting in the restaurant we sat stretched on a long dock amidst the ocean. I thought about people and how they differ. How there are those who choose to ignore the storm that is roaring just beside them. How there are those who intensify and add havoc, and those who see it but only talk about it. William Blake once said, “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.” I believe it’s a bit like sitting amidst the ocean studying the waves and their intricacies and then doing the same within the scorching desert. They are there to show the gap of difference between their existence and it’s up to us to bring these places that act as two different worlds together. That instead of having one road that shows the pleasant and another which shows the pain, we must walk the same one together. That there is a song that all should hear and it is the song of justice, so please excuse me while I stop talking, unplug the classical music from the wall and dive headfirst into this ocean instead.

Week Six: Unifying a Separated World

By: Grace Corbin

I am sitting here trying to figure out what to write for this blog post, because I have too many topics I want to/could write about and I can’t make up my mind.  For goodness’ sakes, I should just pick one, right?  Unfortunately, I’m very indecisive.  For starters, this was a regular week (if you could ever call spending a week in a foreign country regular) of classes, going to Zumba, hanging out with each other and people we have met in Namibia, and finishing the reading and homework we have been procrastinating on until the night before. A pretty regular week.

This is what it looks like to be trapped in a world of separation.

Well, during this “regular week” of classes, I found myself reflecting on divisions between people quite often. Learning and discussing about apartheid and race all of the time has me bogged down about how people perceive differences to be bad. And I continue to ask questions, because, as my classmates in Namibia have learned, I love to ask questions. Questions I ask do not have an easy answer, but I will discuss them anyway because they are important. These are some of the questions I have been dwelling on.  What causes divisions?   Why do we focus on our differences?  Why can’t we see that everyone has similarities, but we are not the same, and that our differences are beautiful anyway? 

One thing I’ve noticed is that we like to put things into boxes or categories. White, black; red, blue; good, bad, etc. Apartheid put people into boxes, for example. During apartheid, people were forcibly put into different areas based on the perceived color of their skin. White Europeans got away with separating people of different skin colors into sectioned off places of the world, hoarding what they could, and leaving the leftovers for people of color. People were put in one of three categories: black, colored, or white.  But, as we know, there are not only three skin colors. Putting people into racial categories allowed people of white skin color to say that they are better. Apartheid legally enforced divisions, but skin color is not just black, white or colored. The world is much more fluid than some people perceive it to be or try to make it.

There are many things in this world which are not black and white (I would argue that most things are not), but sometimes it seems like the world is insisting that things are black and white. Class, gender, religion, ethnicity, are some examples of labels that are imposed on people either by themselves or others; labels that are treated as if you can only be one or the other, but that is many times not the case. Things are much more fluid.  An example of fluidity in religion is a woman we met this last week for classes who is a traditional healer and a Christian. For those of you who do not know, a traditional healer is someone who is a doctor and pastor to a sick person. Traditional healers call on their ancestors for help to cure the sick person. The woman we met with, Lesego Edith Movshosi, is, what I consider, a strong Christian woman whose love for Jesus radiates through her. She relied on Jesus to help her call her ancestors who would then show how to find a solution for her patients’ problems. She also believes prayer is an integral part of healing for her patients. This beautiful way in which she unites two religions together shows that there is no need to compartmentalize ideals or beliefs into boxes. Why do we put things like religion into boxes? Why do we put things in boxes when they only separate us further?  

My attempt at an answer is this: it’s easier. Associating with people who look, speak, act just like you is easier than truly getting to know someone who doesn’t have the same characteristics, or beliefs as you. I think of a story Annie told after she came back from her urban home stay. She was walking around with her host family at a mall, and they found people looking at them. Her host family told her that it’s weird for a white girl to be walking around with black people. In many places here, I have felt that segregation between race is still very present. Segregation by differences is easier for people.

Now, how do we overcome that? My answer comes from my experience in yoga class. Yoga, for those of you who do not know, is not only the act of stretching your body in crazy ways, but also, and mostly, a spiritual practice. Yoga is about unity of your body, the Earth, and the Divine. Isn’t that beautiful? I believe the goal of yoga is to realize that we are not separate bodies, but energy connected to the whole universe. We are all one: one with each other, one with the universe, one with the Divine. Even if you do not agree with that statement, I hope you appreciate the beauty of it. How can differences separate us if we are all one?

Laughing: something that happens every night in the CGEE house.

You might be thinking, ‘that’s nice, Grace, but come on, that won’t happen.’ But I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I? Even if it’s hard to see ourselves all as one, I know that I find glimpses of unity in everyday life at the CGEE house. We’ve had many nights here spent laughing and laughing at each other, without a care in the world. We find solidarity in each other: a small group of U.S. students who look similar, but who have all walked very different paths in life, and if we can come together, maybe, just maybe, the world will find unity someday too.

Week Five

By: J.D. Mechelke

As commanded by our week’s community leader Amanda, we were all wearing our PJ’s. I had this yellow and hole filled shirt, sporting a “Life is Good” logo and the phrase, “Remember where you came from.” The smell of pizza permeated the room. It was pretty good except for the vegan pizza, which tasted like old cigarettes (God bless Emily for her ethical decisions). We had just gotten back from our Urban Homestay. It was good to be together. We had become a family of sorts. The seven of us sprawled in a circle across the living room floor along with Attila, our mother hen. Amanda had shuffled a deck of cards and spread them out in between all of us. I picked up the first card, not really understanding what the heck was going on. I laid my card out in front of everyone; an ace. Amanda picked up her notebook and found the question associa ted with the ace: “What fulfills you the most in life currently?” While I’m definitely one of those people who likes to speak before thinking, this time I really had no idea what to say.

The day before, my host brother Donovan drove his siblings and I to a farm outside of Windhoek. It was hilly like South Dakota combined with the dryness of New Mexico. There was a big army tent set up across from this towering tree. It reminded me of all the trees mentioned in Genesis: the places where death and life happened, an orienting place, a place of reunion. Under this tree was where the people in my host parents’ generation cooked food all day long. The farm was, for today, the setting of a first of its kind family reunion. The matriarch of the family hadn’t yet seen all of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in one place. So for her 72nd birthday, she wanted a family reunion.

At first I was very conscious of difference. I was the only white guy around, the only one with a full beard, the only one whose first language was English, and the only one who was comfortable burping and farting in front of old people. It was about 10 in the morning when the assembly of young and old clustered under the old army tent. Great-grandma sat on the long side of the tent in the very middle. Everyone found a seat in a semi-circleish thing around her. My host-mom grabbed me. She had me sit next to her so she could translate form Afrikaans into English. Someone could’ve turned her speech into a cliche “trip down memory lane.” But even for a foreigner, it was easy to tell that this was something different. You could tell from the look in her eyes as she smiled down at her great-grandchildren. “Remember where you came from,” she said, like a mother spreading a blanket over her new-born.

She told us the story of her life. She had walked through a land ravaged by Apartheid. She had raised her children through Apartheid. She had seen the liberation struggle. She had seen the revolution. Though these statements are all true, Apartheid was not the main subject of her reflections: it was family.

The week away from the Center on Simpson Street was a week immersed in difference. But it was also, for me, a time to remember where I come from. The time spent accepting the hospitality of strangers reminded me less about difference and more about our universal desire to belong. I saw this struggle to belong with the little girl who’s complexion was lighter than the rest. This struggle was also evident with a gay man who was constantly denied respect and responsibility from family elders. And I saw this struggle with myself, not quite sure where I was supposed to stand.

It was Sunday evening when we got dropped off from our homestay’s. That night our unconventional family of seven plus mother hen was sprawled across the floor in a circle. Amanda read me the baffling question: “What fulfills you the most in life currently?” There’s a lot of ways I could’ve answered the question. And most of them would have been truthful. But being with each other, laying around in our pajamas and our communal breath of pizza smells, made me realize that I belong.