Final Firsts

By: R. Gail

It was a full week of getting into the rhythm of things. We finally started classes, had our first day of internships, got to explore Windhoek further than walking distance. We also had our first and only birthday celebration while we are together.

This week we set the tone for the rest of the semester with "community day;" we dove straight in talking about religion, sexual orientation, race, class, etc. What I loved about the community day was that the students didn’t just reflect on all these issues, but also the staff did too, who are mostly Namibian. Personally, I found it very informative to talk to the staff and see their views on these issues and how they compare to the Americans. It was a great platform to reflect and reaffirm my thoughts and beliefs on some of the subjects we touched on during the day. We played games to get to know each other a little better and got to teach the game Ninja to the rest of the staff. I was getting a bit worried when d (the housekeeper) was jumping around and almost falling on her pregnant belly! Thankfully, she did not.

The whole CGEE gang trying to figure out how the game of Ninja works.

 

Tuesday we went on a “Katutura Quest” with some young people that are from Katutura, a township that was created to forcibly moved Black people there during the Apartheid. Katutura has so much to offer from the amazing food of Kapana to the elder community we got to meet with during out “Katutura Quest.” For the quest we were split into two groups; one group went to an art center and my group went to the only old folk's home in the city. We talked to the man that ran the center and he told us that residents must be able to take care of themselves, have a low income, and be overall in a healthy condition; meaning that the residents were able to care for themselves and did not need constant medical attention. Usually, when I visit retirement centers or old folk homes I get quite sad, but at this one everyone, for the most part, was all smiles. We sat in on a bible study in what I assumed was the Afrikaans language. Since I could not understand the language the bible study was in, I observed the room and something dawned upon me: I was sitting in a room with Black and White people who grew up during the apartheid era. To think that they grew up separated by law, and now live together only a few years after the end of apartheid was amazing. We later found ourselves eating the most deliciously prepared meat: kapana, a cow that is very freshly cut and prepared with the richest spices and luscious fat on a grill. We ended the day by preparing for the first day of our internships (unfortunately I was MIA for this)!

Wednesday we all started our internships bright and early! My internship is with the Namibian Women’s Health Network which is a community-based organization that empowers people who are affected by HIV and AIDS in Namibia. This organization also seeks to provide educations, skills, and information to women who are living with HIV and AIDS in Namibia. What is currently happening now is we teach reading and writing in English and food preparation to women outside of the city of Windhoek. Most of what I have been doing is lesson plans to teach basic English literacy. The idea of this current program is to give the women the tools they need to be able to find a job or even create a small business of their own. I hope to teach as much as I can and learn more about and from these women throughout the time that I am with them.



(Jimmy & Alexis) Our first day of our politics class!
We couldn't be more excited!

Thursday we finally had our first day of classes! In our politics class and political development class, we had speakers come in and talk to us about what Pan Africanism is and how it was mostly for people who were outside of Africa to reconnect with their roots, but is now a uniting idea among all Africans. We also had someone come in a talk to us about the relationship Namibia has with China and North Korea. The two countries have great political relationships with Namibia because after the liberation struggle Namibia needed some help and reached out to other countries but only really received help from China and North Korea. Especially with the Chinese, the relationship was abused. The Chinese would build factories in Namibia to acquire cheap labor from the Namibian population. The Namibian government allowed the Chinese to overwork their workers, left them sick for the rest of their lives, and let them break the laws of the worker's rights of the Namibians. Namibia’s government overlooked these conditions because they were in great need for jobs at the time. I am already learning so much of Namibia’s history and how that has shaped Namibia today.

 

To wrap up this busy week we headed to the theaters to watch Black Panther, which lived up to the hype. We went out to dinner and got pizza with a very rude waiter, it was great. It was also Hal’s 21st birthday! We all bought him an inflatable shark for the pool (he has yet to take it into the pool though…). After he showered we pushed him into the pool in all his dry clothes. We went on a hike in search for a lion, thankfully we did not find one considering we were still in a city. Now that we are settling into our new home I am excited to see what these next few months will bring us here in Windhoek, Namibia.

I was just helping Hal jump into 21!
(HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAL!)

 

Till next time!

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 Eight: The Many Shifting Layers of Identity

by: Amanda Siskind, Katie Bosse & Monique Lillis

Ashly, a female identifying person,
and Patrick, a male identifying person,
showing how gender is often identified by
a person’s clothing and physical appearance.

In our classes this week, as well as throughout our time in Windhoek, we’ve been talking a lot about identity. At the start of her presentation, Immaculate Mogotsi took Taylor and Monique to the front of the room and asked, “What do you see?” The class identified them as male and female based on hairstyle and clothing. This exercise was intended to help students understand the difference between gender and sex. As we discussed that day, sex is the biological organs that leave a person with male or female organs or genitals; or a combination of the two. A person is born with their sex, however gender is part of a person’s identity and the identity they typically ascribe to is defined by their culture. For example, Monique identifies as female and she could be identified as such by the dress she wore, and her long hair. However, gender roles are not fixed, they are different in every society; therefore, there is not one identity for females in Namibia because there are many different tribes that ascribe different roles to a woman. For example, we learned from Sara, one of the staff members, that in the Himba tribe the women are in charge of taking care of the livestock while in the Owambo tribe it is a duty ascribed to men. This is just one example of how the identity of women and men and the gender roles that are given to these categories are culture-based and different around the world. 

Identity is not only defined by the cultures into which we are born, but also by the cultures in which we immerse ourselves. For example, in a country entrenched with racist and classist social boundaries, as well as visible physical contrasts, we as Americans have a unique ability to exist in both spaces as third party persons without the label of direct oppressor or oppressed. As we are learning, Namibia’s history has been one of colonialism and genocide of native Namibians by both the Germans and the South African apartheid regime. Yet, because all CGEE students occupy neither of those titles, many of us have felt we are free to navigate through spaces that usually have their set identities and occupants with very little room for integration. 

Our house in Windhoek West

We have both reflected and analyzed our own individual and collective identities as they exist here in Namibia, and how our shifting identities change as we move from one space to another. As a geography and urban development and social change major, I (Katie) could not help but notice how apartheid spaces continue to exist and how that has influenced communities socially. Positioned in Windhoek West, our community house rests in a neighborhood that situates us in an equal distance to stark opposites, Katutura and Klein Windhoek. Because of this unique setting, the CGEE students participate in both areas for different reasons.  

The Katutura Township is a product of the South African apartheid state, where a mix of Namibians from various tribes coexisting in what was known as the “old location” were forcibly removed to live in neighborhoods based on language groups. By doing such acts of othering, Namibian identities changed from one collective existence into identities defined by language group history. This, as we have observed this semester, was a powerful tactic in separating the masses, as now there are language group conflicts and language group inequalities. Nevertheless, despite their personal language groups, the people in Katutura are all united in a collective identity of being black, which is why the apartheid state put them in these townships in the first place. 

More than just a tool for separating tribes, the township was also designed so that white people never needed to enter and the black people only had to leave for work. These rules might not exist anymore, however I see white and black Namibians continuing to follow these reverberated historical norms. There are small houses, informal settlements, outdoor markets, people selling anything they can on the side of the road, shebeens (local bars), and a ton of people walking outside among unkempt trash and blaring house music. Yet it is very rare to see a white person walking in this area.

The white colonizers who did not want to intermingle with black Namibians historically occupied Klein Windhoek and other white-only suburbs during Apartheid. Still today, Klein Windhoek is set aside so that one can only reach it intentionally, not by merely passing through the city. The majority of residents of this area are still white Germans and Afrikaners, because the high housing prices and lack of public transportation prevents the migration of black Namibians from moving into the area from other neighborhoods around Windhoek. Here, one will find farmers markets, expensive restaurants, private schools, newly erected malls, and more-recent development. There are clean streets and very rarely will you see a street taxi roaming around looking for clients.

Katie, Sydney, Molly, and Siri out to dinner at Andy’s,
one of our favorite restaurants in Klein Windhoek.

As three white American women, it is important to critically examine what our identity means in each space we occupy here and to further acknowledge how we are able to exist in both of these areas as somewhat of a third party actor. On a larger scale, what does it mean for a group of comparatively privileged Americans to come to this unique space and ask for the people in Katutura to educate us on their oppression here and the history of their struggle? What does it mean, further, when at the end of the day we go to Klein Windhoek to eat at a nice restaurant or spend our Saturday mornings at a farmers market buying fine cheeses, fresh bread, and local crafts? As a group of American study abroad students we must continuously reflect on our individual and community identity here in Windhoek West and the implications it might have on the people here.  

Even as we’ve been learning about the identities of people in Windhoek and our personal identities, we’ve also been creating a new group identity. We are no longer those strangers from the first nights in Johannesburg. We know each other’s personalities, we’ve learned about important moments in everyone’s pasts, and we’ve built a collective history together here. We’ve settled into a comfortable group identity that allows us to encourage and support each other. We’ve had many discussions in our living room or over dinner about what we’ve learned, what has made us uncomfortable or challenged our views, and what role our identities and privileges have had in the way that our experiences have played out. These discussions can be tough to have, especially when we are already often out of our comfort zones living in a new city and a new country far away from our friends and family. But thankfully we are all in this together, and that has let us feel more supported as we continue to dive deeper and learn more about these issues of identity. 

One of the main things we’ve learned about identity is that it’s complex, layered, and varied depending on where you’re from and your life experiences. We’ve all had unique experiences here in Windhoek, but we’ve also all been studying and living here together, and that is a part of our identities that we will keep beyond this program.

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 Four: Getting Acquainted with Windhoek

By: Amanda Knipple

We had the weekend to get settled into our new home in Windhoek, but after that we were constantly out and about to get a feel for the city. I could feel the excitement of the group when we talked of all the potential that Namibia had to offer. For some of us, the new landscape brought the realization that we still had so much to learn and as far as we had come, our journey was nowhere close to being completed.

Now in Namibia, I finally started my internship at Friendly Haven Shelter for abused women and children.  Friendly Haven is one of the oldest and best functioning shelters in Namibia, as well as a model often used by similar organizations. I’m grateful for the opportunity to meet all the amazing people behind the operation. Working with issues of gender-based violence can be very taxing, but they’re there day in and day out, constantly pushing for change in the community while educating and empowering the women staying at the shelter.  My role at the shelter will mostly be within the realm of raising awareness of gender-based violence and the existence of the shelter itself. I’m excited to try to take on this role because gender-based violence is so prevalent in Namibia and throughout the world. While reading up on Friendly Haven’s work, I came across a statistic from the Legal Assistance Centre that claims that 1 in 5 women in Namibia is in an abusive relationship. One shelter is nowhere near enough to combat such widespread violence. Raising awareness and educating the community can be such powerful forms of outreach in order to inspire more people to take action.  Gender based violence is so normalized that some people might not recognize the signs until they are explained. If more people can be equipped with the knowledge of gender-based violence and how to recognize the signs, perhaps we can move towards a more equal and peaceful society.

A guided tour of Windhoek was one of the first things we did as a group in Namibia. The intention was to get a broader view of the cultural and economic realities of the place we shall call home for the next three months. The group was driven around the city with a local guide. We saw all kinds of things, from shopping malls and busy streets to the informal settlements that house a large portion of Windhoek’s population. We weren’t mainly concerned with tourist attractions, but rather with the lesser known areas that have been shaped by the country’s history and the organizations that are working to create positive change.

Embroidered vest from
Penduka Village

One of the places we visited was called Penduka Village, which aims to provide jobs for women and teach them skills so they can provide for themselves. Projects included sewing, embroidery, and jewelry making. Lots of their products are made from recycled goods in order to make the operation more sustainable. I was very touched by the organization and all its efforts to help women; it reminded me of the fair trade cooperatives that I’m so fond of. Empowering women, giving them the confidence and tools to make a living can be one of the most important things you can do for a society.  Their organization is combating a variety of important issues in Namibia and the world today: unemployment, lack of skills, a large amount of waste, and a poor local economy.  The women of this village are able to support themselves and their community in a sustainable way that deserves much more recognition. We learned that unemployment is rampant in Namibia, and that it doesn’t affect solely women. In an attempt to find work, many jobless men line the streets in the hopes of being hired for a day job or some kind of manual labor. At first this seemed ridiculous and confusing to me, but what’s even more ridiculous and confusing is that the Namibian government has legitimized it.  You can now become a registered MSR (man on the side of the road) to try and be linked to work opportunities.

At this point in my journey through Southern Africa, I probably should not have been surprised by the poverty that I’ve encountered.  But yet again I was struck by the conditions that part of the population are accustomed and subjected to. I don’t yet fully understand the system, so it is possible that my criticism may be unfounded, but it seems to me that more should be done than just allowing people to sit on the side of the road all day hoping that something comes your way. And of course, when we made our way out to the informal settlements, we were again faced with vast fields of small, tin shacks much like in Alexandra and in the Cape Flats (mentioned in previous blog entries). I just remember standing from a distance, overlooking hundreds of shacks tucked neatly between the sandy hills. 

Overlooking the informal settlements

Learning about Apartheid for these past few weeks has rendered me very conscious of how privilege has been abused in history. I think it’s very important to be aware of what privileges you do have in your life so you can check how you use them. The intersectionality of privilege cannot be ignored. There is no way to talk about privilege and oppression without looking at all of the ways that they affect people’s lives. Being on this trip has exemplified this idea. One of my favorite things about the CGEE so far is that dialogue is constantly flowing and there’s a lot of opportunity for contact with ideas that differ from your own. It has helped me a lot to see things through the framework of other people’s thoughts. In one of the many relevant and enriching discussions our group has had, I was introduced to ideas about class and privilege that I hadn’t considered before and I felt grateful for the opportunity to listen to this new perspective. I learned that “class” isn’t just a measure of someone’s wealth. Too often, I considered my socioeconomic privilege to be a product of my family’s income, but there are more that goes into it. Class can also be determined by experiences. Education, travel, exposure to culture, etc. can be a huge part of where you see your place in the world. Not everything is as cut and dry as we’re led to believe. The glaring inequality is everywhere. Standing on that hill above the shacks in the informal settlement in Katutura, I had a hard time reconciling my place in all of this. I realized that I am deeply privileged in the simple fact that I can be here, thousands of miles from home, learning about all of this injustice.  I don’t know where we go from here, or how these inequalities can be rectified, but acknowledging their existence is an essential first step.