September is over!

September 30, 2011

September is over, time has really flown. I can’t believe that I have been in Namibia for over a week and a half. From Windtoek we drove for 10 hours to get to our basecamp in the Palmwag Concession called Wereldsend or “World’s End” in English. The drive here was uneventful until the last half hour of our trip. In the pitch black and on a desolate dirt road in Damaraland the car that I was in, Pewa, got a flat tire. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if we could find a flashlight. Apparently flat tire’s are a common occurrence, supposedly one per car ride, great. I’ll be an expert tire changer by the time that I get home. The other car, Luna, suffered a casualty as well, the lights didn’t work so they drove the last hour in the dark guided by Pewa’s headlights. The first night we made spaghetti with sautéed onions and peppers for dinner and then went to bed.

                I have to say Wereldsend feels like home. ‘Home’ consists of six 10 x 10 canvas tents lining a pathway that leads to our common area which is a roof covered cement floor with a folding table in the middle. Along one wall is our kitchen station which is a portable gas two burner stove top. On either side of this area are two ‘rooms,’ one of which is our pantry which holds all of our food (primarily canned goods), and one which is our ‘library’ which holds all of our educational literature and our two portable fridges. We do have ‘electricity’ if you can call it that which is provided by four solar panels. This powers our two fridges and one light. At night we get light from three oil lamps. Our water source consists of two green jugs full of water which we pump from a well nearby. We live simply but it’s comfy. We rotate cooking, so far I have cooked once. My cooking partner was Ellie, who is also my tent mate. For breakfast we made oatmeal which I thought I knew how to cook, nope. Correction I know how to make some mean oatmeal in a microwave, unfortunately Wereldsend does not have one of those. Lunch consisted of leftover rice from the night before mixed with three cans of beans, pepper, onion, tomato, cucumber and parsley. Nothing here is wasted, we eat what we’ve cooked until it’s gone. We also made hard boiled eggs. Unlike eggs in the states eggs here have very thin shells. Lets just say we had many exploded eggs. But we still ate them and they tasted damn good. Dinner was a bit of a struggle, mostly because we couldn’t get the rice to cook. When cooking in the open air make sure that a gust of wind hasn’t come by and blown out the burner that you are cooking on. For fifteen minutes we thought that we were cooking rice when really it was just sitting in water, cool. What we cook usually is dictated by what is starting to go bad in the fridge mixed in with four cans of something. We made a curry bean thing with spinach, onions, peppers, and tomatoes. I will be a much better cook when I come home for sure. It’s weird not relying on a recipe. One cool thing that we do here is bake our own bread over the fire. We are pretty far from civilization so if we want bread we have to make it ourselves. It’s pretty tasty but always such a tease since we bake it at night while we eat dinner around the fire but cannot eat it until lunch the next day.

                So far I love everyone who I am living with. Everyone is super quirky, easy going and fun to be around. We all get along really well which sometimes makes doing our readings for discussion a bit of a struggle but the work always seems to get done. It’s weird to think that I am in school. This is very different from Midd but still a lot of work. Everyday we are assigned readings which we then discuss as a group. This is what I’d call our formal in class time. But in reality we do the majority of our learning in the field. We will go on “nature walks’ where Vehi will stop every few steps and point out a plant, track or scat and give us detailed information about what it is, how it can be used, and any special characteristics about it. We have over six pages of species to cover for our final exam. We also go on game drives which consist of riding on top of the Land Rover and looking for animals. On our first game drive we counted 123 zebras, 15 oryx, and 25 springbok. So far we’ve seen zebras, oryx, springbok, kudu, giraffe, blacked back jackal, Rupple’s Koran, Ostrich, and Baboons to name a few more well known animals.

                There have been a few things that I was not expecting. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this but since we are in the great outdoors all of God’s special creepy crawlies come with it. I honestly think that all of the animals of the earth are very special and important but that doesn’t mean that some don’t freak me out. This animals is snakes, I really don’t like snakes. I don’t mind large, slow moving, non poisonous ones. It’s the fast moving deadly ones that I worry about. Here in Namibia we have two poisonous snakes the can be found in Wereldsend. It is because of these snakes that we are not allowed to go to the bathroom alone at night. The one that I have encountered so far is called a Puff adder. This snake is slow and fat but packs a seriously harmful bite which slowly destroys muscle as it kills you. One night as we were walking to the bathrooms as a group to avoid a possible run in with one we actually came across one crossing the path right outside the toilets. The funny thing is that the first two members of our group actually completely missed the snake and walked right over it. Freaked me out but it does show you that unless really provoked a snake isn’t going to attack. My other snake story so far is one time when I was walking down the path from the office to our living area a gecko ran out in front of me. About a foot behind it was a snake chasing it. At this I let out a very girly scream and jumped up in the air, pulling myself up the solar panel pole that I was standing next to. Luckily the gecko got away, maybe my scream helped. I can be a complete whoosie sometimes. The other creepy crawly that we have here is scorpions. On the first day we were warned to shake out our sleeping bags and shoes before we put them on. Needless to say I have been doing that religiously. However, I’ve been looking for relatively large black scorpions in my stuff. One night Bekah came out with a black light and showed us scorpions on trees. They were tiny compared to my mental image. Guess I need to start looking harder. The only good news is that they can’t kill me, just hurt like hell. I don’t know why this third thing came as such a surprise to me but the point has been made very clear after only a week and a half of living in Namibia. Dust and dirt get onto everything, including your body. Although we have showers we are only supposed to use them every three or so days in order to conserve water. So far I went five days without a shower. Pretty gross but I think that by the time I come home I’ll be pretty accustomed to being dirty. This has also made me really appreciate taking a shower. Along the same lines of dirtiness, we do all of our laundry by hand. Standards for cleanliness of laundry have been severely lowered. Now instead of trying to get all of the dirt out (just not possible) my goal has become making them smell nice.

                So far we have left Wereldsend once to go practice bush camping. This entailed driving down a dry riverbed for about three hours until we decided we wanted to stop. This drive felt like a Disney ride. The Land Rover was bumping along through thick brush and reeds with dust flying in through the windows, pretty fun. We set up camp which included me pitching a tent on my own for the first time. I managed but it took me a long time. In the late afternoon we hiked up a near by hill to watch the baboon troop that hung out on top. As I was walking along the ridge of the hill, looking out over the valley and across the hills and plains of Namibia as the sun slowly set I was over come with the realization of what an absolutely incredible and special experience I am having. I am so spoiled to wake up and do what I am doing for the next three months. This place is literally breathtaking. I am so fortunate to have this opportunity.

                I miss you all, I still can’t believe that its nearing October. Hope all is well.

All my love.