I will post photos soon to complement this narrative...but I wanted to report on a recent trip to Luderitz. It is an interesting place; it is extremely remote - unbelievably so! It takes over 10 hours to travel there from the capitol of Namibia, Windhoek. See the map below:
Luderitz was founded as a port city, and grew in importance when diamonds were discovered nearby. The architecture, at least in town, is very German/European in style. It is also well known for the dolphins, seals and penguins that inhabit its coastal waters.
Kolmanskop, about 5 miles outside of Luderitz, is an actual ghost town! It was founded to feed the diamond industry, and was abandoned in 1950 when more and better diamonds were disovered in Oranjemund, also in Namibia. Today, the ghost town is losing in the battle against nature - sand dunes have literally taken over the formerly grand structures.
Both Luderitz and Kolmanskop are extremely remote and rugged. A local told me that only the most rugged Namibians can survive in Luderitz. There are stores there, including 2 grocery stores, but it is difficult to get supplies, and they are imported and thus quite expensive. Unemployment is also high.
Perhaps it is due to the holidays, where many Namibians head north to their home villages, or stick close to home, but both towns were very ghostly and quiet. For me, as a German American, I found Luderitz ghostly for another reason. The German architecture is beautiful, yes, but it is also an ominous reminder of a dark past of the German occupation of Namibia. The architecture looks grossly out of place. The remnants of German control can be felt in many places in Namibia. Just this morning, I attended a church service conducted completely in the German language. (There were 2 black Namibians there - the rest were white Germans or Namibians.)
On another note, I feel a noticeable shift in my perception of time. In Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, Simple Abundance, she warns against addiction of all kinds. Often our addictions seem innocent. Living in Namibia and experiencing time in a new way has given me insight into my own addictions. In the U.S., I was extremely addicted to overscheduling, technology and the need to always be in touch and to communicate. By necessity, that has changed here. We have been taught from the beginning to accept and embrace ambiguity and flexibility. It is not an easy adjustment, but it is teaching me a lot. Recently, I spent a few days not evening knowing what time it was! It felt like a completely different way to live, simply going with the flow of the day and the contours that surface. Neither way is better or worse, simply different. I may have been "more efficient" at home - but perhaps here I am coming closer to unearthing the things that really matter to me, and catching glimpses of how I can best be of service. I think this is part of all of our journeys; thank you for letting me share mine.
Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
As the holidays wind down, I have been given some time to reflect.
The primary goals of the Peace Corps are to provide development assistance to countries who request it, and to foster understanding between the U.S. and other countries of the world. Above and beyond that, the journey is deeply personal. We are here to serve, and this often manifests on a deeply personal level. We aim to support, to accompany, and to mentor the students and community members in our villages. We also know that each of us, as Peace Corps Volunteers, will also be deeply transformed. Within this personal transformation lie many complexities and tensions. I will discuss some of these here.
Throughout my Peace Corps training and service thus far, I have observed a turbulent war within myself. It is one between finding and claiming my voice, speaking out against injustice, yet at the same time needing to take a step back, LISTEN and let the local community lead (for they know their culture, needs and local community best), and be culturally sensitive. It simply isn’t my place to always be vocal about my beliefs or convictions. Namibia is not my country or my culture and my role is to accompany people on their journey to realize their human rights, to facilitate discussion, and to encourage and foster local leadership. Positive examples I follow and admire are Margaret Wilson and Rita Conceicao of Bahia Street, Nancy Bacon of Sou Digna, and Molly Melching of Tostan. The quote by Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist, sums it up quite well,
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
So, on a personal level, my journey is to reconcile the advocate within with the need to step back, to listen and to remain culturally sensitive. What I have discovered is that this may mean that I progress and move forward in some ways, while seemingly reverting in others. In the end, we must have faith that life is revealing the lessons that we are meant to be taught.
Howard Zinn also discusses a compelling conflict or tension which I find relevant to my experience here. In a lecture he gave at Reed College, Zinn talks about professionalism, the commonly accepted concept of professionalism vs. challenging the status quo. He talks about a new definition of professionalism, of redefining one’s profession, contributing, enhancing, and challenging when necessary, but not to adhering to a static or stale definition of professionalism.
At this juncture, and for the rest of my life, I am attempting to embrace these tensions and complexities, working to accept and embrace them. I strive to reconcile and to piece together the contrasting pieces of the puzzle, to form a more informed worldview and a more nuanced approach to development.
For this is a journey whose destination will never be met – it will be an ongoing journey of give and take. For now, I will work to embrace my own voice while also remaining culturally sensitive and stepping back for local leadership to take the helm. I will work to realize my authentic, creative self and try to cast aside doubts regarding a seemingly less-conventional path. And finally, I will work to live Zinn’s definition of professionalism as also challenging the status quo, working to realize progressive ideals and creating new definitions of what it means to be a professional.
The best any of us can do is try – to strive each day to do our very best, and to constantly challenge and move beyond real and perceived boundaries. I have come to believe that everything you do matters.
As Lao Tzu said, “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
This can be scary, but also exciting. Let us start now! And let us contribute to the collective consciousness of the world in a positive way. It is despite, and even because of these tensions and challenges that we can seek to serve and to be our best selves, to be of service to others, to our communities and to the global fellowship of those seeking justice.
Stand up today; the time is now.
As stated in the Namibian national anthem (see end of blog post), Namibia is truly a land of striking contrasts. Here are a few that stand out:
- Namibia is a true rainbow of people: colored or mixed (these terms may sound strange to Americans, but they are used widely in Namibia), white, black, Asian (mainly Chinese) and many more
- Reconciling a history of colonialism and then apartheid with today’s modern, integrated Namibia
- Small, primitive villages vs. the modern capitol of Windhoek which resembles an U.S. or European city
- Language: Afrikaans vs. English vs. the many tribal languages. In 1990, when Namibia achieved independence from South Africa, the language of instruction in schools changed overnight from Afrikaans to English. This was also when Namibia invited the Peace Corps into Namibian schools to help bolster the education system and the transition to English as the language of instruction.
- In terms of geography:
o Sand dunes vs. ocean
o Desert vs. jungle
o Dry landscapes vs. floods in the north
o Cool, humid coast vs. unrelentingly dry and hot desserts in the middle and south of Namibia
- Lifestyles and people:
o In the small villages of the north: homesteads and huts, usually no electricity or water, inhabitants have to carry water in jerry cans for many miles to meet their basic needs
o In the south, there are many modern, contemporary structures. There is westernized architecture and housing. The reason for the big difference between infrastructure in the north and the south is that under German colonial rule and then the South African apartheid regimes, southern Namibia was built up and modernized with roads, water pipelines, electricity, etc., while northern Namibia was left mainly to the native people and not “developed” as much in terms of infrastructure.
- Namibia has great inequality. It is one of the countries with the highest Gini coefficients (measure of inequality within a country - 0 being the most equal, 100 being the most unequal). Compare Namibia (63.9) to the U.S. (40.8) and Brazil (54.7) in terms of their Gini coefficients. This is strikingly apparent – in Windhoek, one can see many people driving luxury vehicles and dressed to the nines; meanwhile, in many of the townships and villages, people are literally on the brink of starvation, fighting to survive day to day.
- One can also perceive a contrast or struggle in terms of the human rights movement in Namibia. The liberation struggle was led by the current government party (SWAPO – Southwest Africa People’s Organization), championing ideals of freedom, liberation and democracy. However, there is today a conflict between some of the human rights organizations in Namibia who accuse the government of acting too slowly to realize the human rights language that is in the Namibian constitution into an applied praxis for Namibians. The government has been known to vocally criticize these organizations for accusing them of not realizing human rights ideals when they are the “liberators” of the country. It will take time for human rights norms to truly be actualized and embedded in the fabric of Namibian society – but this can be said of most nations of the world!
There are many more contours and contrasts within Namibia, but these are some of the most apparent. It is a diverse, multifaceted, beautiful country – and one that I am constantly learning from and about. Below is the Namibian national anthem, which as I mentioned, emphasizes Namibia as a land of contrasts.
Namibia, land of the brave
Freedom fight we have won
Glory to their bravery
Whose blood waters our freedom
We give our love and loyalty
Together in unity
Contrasting beautiful Namibia
Namibia our country
Beloved land of savannahs,
Hold high the banner of liberty
Namibia our Country,
Namibia Motherland,
We love thee.
(** Also, as soon as I return to my site I will post photos from recent holiday travels. ** ) HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE! Sending big love and light to all family and friends!
Imagine you have carried a baby to term, you have started to love it, felt it kick inside you. Yet, a few days after it is born, you leave it in a garbage dump a few miles away from where you make your home in the informal settlement.
This is exactly what happens on a regular basis here in Katutura, a vast, sprawling neighborhood of Windhoek, Namibia’s capitol. Before we jump to conclusions about the mother, let’s explore with compassion the likelihood that she may have felt she had no other options. She was staring the gun of poverty which was pointed straight in her face. Of course it is wrong to dump your baby, but so is poverty. Human rights violations are rampant in the slums of Namibia, and in informal settlements throughout the world. Inadequate sanitation, dangerous streets, under-resourced schools with teachers who may or may not teach, violence against women and children – these are all facts of life for many. What is really apparent as you drive through the slums is the expanse of Namibia’s ‘shebeen,’ or bars. As an outsider, it is so easy to judge, “why do people spend all of their money on beer?” Yet when you feel that the mental escape of an alcohol-induced buzz is all that will numb your pain, the choice seems easy – drink your cares away. Of course, drinking, alcoholism, and drugs make it all worse – tearing apart Namibian families, whittling away at the fabric of the society. Yet, the roots of these ills isn’t people’s ‘poor self-control,’ the alcohol itself, or the young women’s act of desperation as she makes the heartbreaking choice to discard her baby and try to forget. The root of most social ills here and all over the world, is poverty, and the growing gap between rich and poor. Where I am staying now in a nice part of Windhoek, entire houses are looted and cleaned out because people are desperate and angry at always having nothing.
So if poverty is the perpetrator, what can be done? What I see here in Namibia is that a system of political apartheid has been replaced by a system of social and economic apartheid. Patrick Bond has written extensively about global apartheid and makes a compelling case in his book Against Global Apartheid that something must be done to disassemble and drastically rethink the international financial institutions of the World Bank and the IMF, which primarily serve the interests of the global elites, the most-developed nations and the international corporations. Africa and heavily-indebted poor countries have little voice in these very-powerful institutions.
Visionary leadership is needed at all levels – from the grassroots to the middle class to the upper levels of political, economic, policy and legal frameworks. The situation is David vs. Goliath, yet the Davids of the world must unite against and hopefully with the global Goliath, the nebulous and insidious system of global apartheid. President Pohamba of Namibia himself fears violence if there isn’t a quick solution to the unjust system of land distribution in Namibia. And so it is all over the world – the Melian Dialogues states, “The powerful do what they can, and the weak suffer the most.”
Bill Grace writes about this eloquently in his new book, Sharing the Rock. He urges humanity to champion “the common good.” This must happen on a personal level, in our very thoughts, habits and actions, but also in the broader political and policy systems that we collectively create as humans inextricably bound on Earth. We cannot deny how interconnected we all are. Part of Bond’s argument is that we must also not blindly and fatalistically accept our fates before, and the inherent injustice of, global apartheid. We have the capacity to envision and create a more just and equitable world, where perhaps some have to accept just a bit less, but many can inch forward toward a realization of their most basic human rights. Let profit not continue to come before people.
So I am brought back to Katutura, where I was last night. “It is just down that road, where a lot of baby-dumping occurs,” my Namibian friend tells me. I ask how often. Very. We hear of it on the news all of the time here. Later, I ask my friends if they think the citizens here in the informal settlement are OK. They think yes, that they often come from northern Namibia where they also have led very simple lives. Yet when I consider how hard it would be transcend that situation, to rise up out of poverty, when it seems all the odds are stacked against you, when your only role models frequent the shebeens every night, it seems arrogant, naïve, somehow wrong not to acknowledge how extremely difficult it would be to claim an education and a brighter future for yourself. (Consider that Namibia has over 40% unemployment.)
It is possible, but we also need mechanisms for people to help themselves, to get support, to transform the systems that keep people stuck in the cycle of poverty. My friend said it very well. He is a well-off Namibian whose family has a nice home and two cars. For this reason, he doesn’t open his mouth in Katutura, he dresses down and keeps his head down. People can tell, even then, that he is not from there. He doesn’t have the pain of survival etched into his face that most people in Katutura do. You can’t show weakness there, and soon that hardness becomes a part of your face. Yet if you wake up in your own bed, your friends and family love you, you have the luxury of a nice breakfast and your favorite things, this kind of necessary survival, of fight, of hardening, doesn’t finds its way into your face. This is only to acknowledge the many disparate realities that each of us face. It isn’t to diminish one person vs. the other’s experience. No matter what, we all, as humans, face pain.
Perhaps by becoming increasingly aware of this, by advocating for social, economic and political reform, and be experiencing compassion for those who feel confined by their choices, we can together work for a brighter, more just and more fair tomorrow.
Here is Namibia, the remnants of apartheid are at times very apparent. In Swakopmund, where I am currently staying, there are many indicators of the post-apartheid era. Some restaurants, bars, salons, etc. display signs that say “Right of Admission Reserved,” and some have bells which require staff to “buzz” patrons in. I have been told that these are sometimes used in a racist manner. Perhaps during apartheid, these measures were legal. After independence, these overtly racist practices were eliminated. However, in reality, the legacy of apartheid lives on. A World Teach Volunteer here was dating a white Afrikaaner who suddenly broke up with her for “being too nice to black people” after he saw her walking down the street with a black colleague.
As shocking as this initially sounds, it is important that we, as Americans, be very honest about where we are ourselves in our journey of race and reconciliation. Depending on where one lives or our individual realities, such overt racism may be less common and less accepted. However, in the U.S., many of our systems are engrained with institutionalized racism. Michelle Alexander makes a compelling case about this in her book, The New Jim Crow. Alexander argues that the war on drugs and the system of mass incarceration are systemic methods of enforcing legalized racism. Due to many factory and other jobs being lost during industrialization and globalization, some poor and often black individuals turned to drugs for income, and were in turn sought out and jailed for drug crimes at an extreme and disproportionate rate. Law enforcement agencies were rewarded for harsh crackdowns on drugs, and most arrests were of young black males. Additionally, black neighbourhoods were policed much more strictly than others. Today, the vast majority of our population’s inmates are young, black men. This exacts a tragic toll on African American communities and on our society as a whole.
For our Peace Corps Namibia ReConnect Conference, one of our trainers, another Peace Corps Volunteer, and I presented on white privilege and comparing and contrasting the Namibian and U.S. Journeys of race and reconciliation. This fostered a vibrant discussion on the topic. A main point of the session was how we, as people of privilege, also have associated obligations. We talked about the importance of being an ally, and using one's relative privilege to champion the common good. When I studied and worked in Kenya, this was a lesson which our professor artfully instilled in us. Here in Namibia, it is equally important.
Apartheid ruled Namibia only 23 years ago. Namibia is still young in terms of an integrated society. Perhaps Namibians can learn from the U.S.' struggle for race and reconciliation, and from our history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, civil rights, the war on drugs, affirmative action, and our own grappling with systemic and institutionalized racism. This is part of our work as Peace Corps Volunteers, to share the best parts of the United States and our culture, while being honest about our own societal flaws and challenges. We must work to build bridges and inroads of understanding between the U.S. and other countries. In turn, we will learn just as much from Namibians. We must also take these new understandings home, trading and exchanging the best parts of our cultures and ways of life, each mutually learning from our histories and the many lessons contained within our unique histories.
Our group is currently spending some time at the coast. The Namibian coast is gorgeous - sand dunes, beautiful sandy beaches, and a gorgeous ocean and sky. The weather here reminds me of Seattle - gray and overcast.
December in Namibia is like December in a lot of European countries - things basically shut down for the holiday period. Many Namibians head to the coast for holiday.
I am enjoying seeing new and different parts of Namibia, and hope to do some dune hiking and a lot of beaching.
Again, happy holidays to all, and much love!
This week our group is at the Peace Corps ReConnect conference - an opportunity to compare notes, gain more training, and to take our language test. My language test was for Afrikaans, which I definitely need at my site. I was so happy to test higher than at the end of my training. Thank you to my tutor, Nathalia! :)) It has been great to see everyone.
Now we are headed to the coast to celebrate the holidays. I will post more stories and photos soon.
I wish ALL of you an amazing holiday soon. Sending love and light your way!
