Two Weeks Gone By In the Blink Of An E ye

Hello from Namibia!

I've finally decided to get the ball rolling (finally) with this blog. It's taken me a full two weeks since we got here.... Oops. The last fourteen days, though, have been an absolutely incredible and eye-opening experience and I've hardly found any time to brave the slow, unpredictable internet and write a post.

I guess the only place to start is from the beginning! I am abroad for the semester in Southern Africa, primarily an awesome little country called Namibia. I landed in Johannesburg, South Africa two weeks ago today (January 16th) with 22 other students from all over the US. With no time to ease ourselves in, we dove right into a packed schedule of speakers and home-stays!

We spent a good deal of our time in Johannesburg learning about the South African Liberation Movement. I thought I knew at least a decent amount about it before coming here. Not true in the least bit! What I understood to be the details of the movement before this trip are only the most basic of concepts surrounding the whole movement. In 1994, South Africa had its first free, fair, and equal election, electing Nelson Mandela as the first black president, and ending Apartheid, South Africa's system of dividing the country strictly based upon race.

Our first day trip was to Soweto, which stands for Southwest Townships. It was created during Apartheid as an area for non-whites to live, so that they would be close to Johannesburg and could work, but far enough away so that they wouldn't "bother" the whites, who completely dominated everything up until 1994. No amount of preparation could have readied me for the sights, sounds, and feelings experienced there. The estimated population of Soweto is somewhere between 3 and 5 MILLION people, and is the largest township in the southern hemisphere. The estimate is so vague because of the disorganization and sheer size.

Driving through for the first time, I felt like it couldn't possibly be real. South Africa wouldn't be the country we know today without the existence of Soweto, though. During the height of the Apartheid, Soweto was a hotbed for political activity, and the setting of the June 16, 1976 student uprisings, which forever changed South Africa. The uprisings were a sign of the beginning of the end for Apartheid. The events that ensued as a result of and after the uprisings turned the country ungovernable and led to the triumph of the movement.

Over the second weekend in Jo'burg, we set out in groups of 2-3 to stay with families in Soweto - to actually meet and get to know real South Africans! I stayed with the two other guys on the trip, Pat and Joel. On Friday afternoon, we got dropped off at Flossie's Bed and Breakfast, in Pimville, a district of Soweto. It was so great to get to know Florence, our host mother. She runs a B+B out of her home and has quite the business going! We had a lot of fun getting to know each other, helping out in the house, and getting to know her friends and neighbors as well.

After the homestays, we traveled to Pretoria, South Africa's capital city, for two days. From there, we finally flew to Namibia last Wednesday! We've spent the past week getting acquainted with Windhoek, our new home! It feels like we've been here so much longer than five full days. I already feel fairly comfortable in the house and in Windhoek overall. There's still MUCH to be learned about the city. We took a tour of Windhoek, traveling to the nicer suburbs, then to the townships, then to the outskirts of the city, were thousands of people live in informal settlements. Most of the informal settlements are made largely out of corrugated metal. It was definitely a sight to see when we stood on top of one of Windhoek's many large hills, and see the settlements sprawled out, reaching many kilometers away from the center of Windhoek.

Tomorrow is the first day of my internship at the Working Group on Indigenous Minorities of Southern Africa - or WIMSA for short. From what I've been told, I'll be helping distribute information about the rights of the San people - one of the oldest human societies! I'm SO excited, and a little nervous at the same time. We'll see how it goes!!

Now that I've finally committed to this blog and gotten it started, I expect to post far more often, so things will be more detailed, fresher in my mind, and hopefully more interesting. For now, though, wish me luck for tomorrow!