Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Swakopmund

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well in the States. I just had an awesome weekend in Swakopmund.

Let me first say that the desert is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it my life nor do I think I ever will again (unless I come back here of course). It was a four-hour drive from Windhoek to Swakopmund, going north towards the coast. The landscape gradually turned from beautiful mountains to arid desert. Mountains are weird here. They just seem to rise up out of nowhere, and then you drive by them and they’re gone. Another interesting note about the drive: along the side of the road I saw a pipeline. Being an American, my first assumption was that it was oil, because oil is an important natural resource in our society. But then I thought more about it, and realized that it wasn’t oil…it was water. Namibia is a desert; therefore water is the most important natural resource. Duh! Also, as another note on the landscape: Namibia has mostly ephemeral rivers, meaning that the river is only there some of the time. The river might not even run for years, but a sign is still there tell you that there’s a river. Instead of a river, you see a bunch of plants growing in a dried-up riverbed. It’s pretty cool actually. Swakopmund also has an interesting feature unique to the area: the fog. Every morning and evening (I think) fog rolls in from the ocean, and that’s the only way anything grows in the area. The plants and insects get a lot of their water from the fog. When we first drove in, we could see the fog rolling in from the ocean. And it wasn’t like normal fog. It was sort of like a low-lying storm cloud that just made everything sticky and humid. Oh, and it was pretty cold. In Namibia, it’s colder on the coast. And I, assuming that we were going to the beach where it would of course be hot and sunny, didn’t bring a jacket. Big mistake. But I never really had the time to buy one because I was so busy. Which I’m about to get to.

Friday night our advisors took us out to dinner. It was at a steakhouse that had a Native American theme. It was weird. Then we all just went out afterwards to a place called “The Lighthouse” – right next to a lighthouse in fact – that had a really good view of the ocean. Of course it was too dark to really see, but I had my first view of the Atlantic Ocean from the other side.

Saturday morning was Sandboarding. There were two options for Sandboarding: lie-down or stand-up. I took the lie-down option because I have no skill in Snowboarding, and just wanted to have fun without having to learn how to do it. Well, they took us out there and I had my first view of the sand dunes. They were huge. Majestic is a good word. Like I said, you’d never see anything like them outside of Africa. Absolutely beautiful. Anyways, out of the large amount of people going Sandboarding, only four of us did the lie-down boarding. It involves sliding down on your stomach face-first on a flexible piece of board down these gigantic dunes. They’re also very steep. First of all, the walk up is brutal. Walking in sand is tough anyway, but when it’s a huge steep dune and you’re carrying a big piece of board, it’s much harder. Also, I’m afraid of heights. So when I got to the top and got ready to go down for the first time, I was terrified. In fact, every time I got ready to go down the dunes, I was terrified. They’re very steep, and you’re falling face-first with you face inches from the sand. It’s really intense. It got better though. It was also better when I screamed. Once we got to the biggest dune of all, I was not going down it. I was getting on the board and I kept telling the guy “No, no, I can’t do this.” Well, eventually he got tired of it and he just pushed me. If he had not pushed me, I would not have gone down it. But I’m glad I did. Also on this last dune, they clocked our speed. The fastest I went was 63 km/h, or around 40 mph. That is the fastest I have ever gone outside of a moving vehicle. Just imagine going face-first with your head inches from the sand down a huge, steep sand dune at 40 mph. It was intense, to say the least. Total, I went down 6 times, each time on a different dune. I’ll probably never do anything like that ever again. It was awesome.

The best part was that after we were all done and I had poured all of the sand out of my shoes, they gave us sandwiches, water, soda, and beer. This was all included in the price of N$250, or around US$25. What a great deal.

Later that afternoon, I went horseback riding through the desert. That was nice. Definitely not the intense experience of earlier. Not much to say about it really, except that the desert is absolutely beautiful, which I’ve already said. By the end of the day I was exhausted.

The next morning, I went on a desert tour. This time I took my film camera to get some artsy pictures. The tour itself was like 5 hours long. Our guide was a really cool person too. We saw lizards, snakes, skinks, and chameleons. The skinks were the interesting ones. They’re basically lizards with no arms, legs, or eyes. They’re not snakes. Strange. We went driving around the desert in these huge vehicles and sometimes went directly over the dunes at crazy angles. That was scary. At one point, we went to see the “roaring dunes.” We stopped at the very top of this large steep dune. Then the driver killed the engine and let the vehicle slide down the dune on its own. Then we could just hear the sand grinding underneath us, roaring if you will. It was really cool. Honestly, one of the coolest things I saw in the desert was the old South African Railway, built in the 50’s, abandoned in the 80’s, due to sand. All that was left of it were old concrete slabs and twisted metal wires strewn over the dunes. It was quite a sight to see. I got some really good pictures of it. Overall, the tour was just really great to see the desert. It’s not something that I’m going to get to do again anytime soon.

So, that was my trip. Now I have to get back to work. Come April 1, I’ll be in Mariental! See ya!

Monday, March 16, 2009

Hello!
I have arrived safely in Namibia. Let me first start out by saying that the internet is almost non-existant on the campus, contrary to what we were told. We have been told to bring our laptops to the IT center, but one student has already done this and they only gave him a proxy to connect to - not solving the problem. So I don't know when if at all I will get actual internet on my laptop, so I may just have to stick to internet cafes (which cost money and have a time limit) and no Skype or pictures.
In general, everyone speaks English. People are either nice to you and will say hi, or they just stare at you. Before, we were told all these things about how to not look like tourists, etc, but it's just impossible to fit in when we're the only white people. So I've sort of given up on that.
Let's see, what can I tell you about my trip so far that would be short? Windhoek is an absolutely beautiful city. The weather is beautiful, the clouds are pretty, the city itself is bright and colorful and there are mountains surrounding it that just seem to rise up out of nowhere. There is a nice large park in the middle of the city. It actually reminded me of Key West a little bit in that the buildings are painted with bright colors and a lot of the residences are surrounded with high walls. The house that we (the girls) are staying at is awesome! We have a large house with a big kitchen and common room and dining area. Since we are technically off campus, we have our own security guard as well as walls and a gate around our house. You also need to unlock a gate in front of our door and the door itself, and there's an alarm system triggered by motion that we can set when all of us are away. Our individual rooms also have locks. So security is pretty tight.
As for our activities, so far we have found a great italian restaurant with good pizza. The exchange rate is about N$10 for US$1, so everything is cheap. 30 minutes at the internet cafe is N$10. The pizza is about N$6. We've also done a few touristy things while we were here. Peet (our prof. and advisor) took us on a bus tour of the city. We went to Katatura, a sprawling community outside of Windhoek. Most of these houses are very small, but also brightly colored like the buildings in Windhoek. Next we went to the "informal settlements." These were houses made from whatever these people could find - mostly corrugated steel. They were large enough maybe for a few people to lie down in. And these houses just stretched for miles over the landscape. I encourage you to look up pictures of the city of Windhoek and Katatura, since I can't upload my own pictures. We also found a really cool place to hang out near where we are staying - The Cardboard Box. Not only is a good hang-out place, it's also a hostel. We met a few European travelers and an American from Virginia who was looking to retire in Namibia. It was very nice.
So my weekend was great, but the party's over now. We have to get to work. Today my project group and I will visit the DRFN to meet the people we will be working with. We will most likely be giving a presentation to the DRFN tomorrow as well. We have a presentation on Thursday an a new draft of our methods section due next Tuesday. Every Tuesday morning we will have lessons on the Herrero language, which will not be very useful to those of use traveling to other parts of Namibia. I wish I could just hang out and be a tourist for 2 months, but that wouldn't get me much credit. Oh well!
My half-hour is almost up. I may not be able to get any emails or anything for a while. I'll try to come back to the internet cafe within a week. See you!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Off to Africa

Well, I'm about to leave for Namibia. I won't have access to the internet for a few days, so this won't be updated until then. But I'll be sure to update it as soon as I have internet access. Until then, here are my contacts:

Email: michelle.e.terry1@gmail.com
Phone (Skype): 240-436-2747

Wish me luck on my 17+ hour flight!