what I did on my Christmas vacation...

I learned to dive! Now, I realize that it's a bit ridiculous that I worked at the Aquarium for two and a half years without ever learning to dive, then travelled halfway around the world to Mozambique to learn but that's how it went. And I have to admit that diving in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean was wonderful.

My friend Simona and I spent four days over Christmas on Praia do Barra, or Barra Beach, in central Mozambique getting certified as PADI Openwater Divers. We loved it there so much that we actually ended up staying on for an extra day and doing our first deep dive at Manta Reef, where manta rays come to relax and be cleaned by little cleaner fish. It was definitely worth staying as seeing these huge rays from only a few metres away was one of the most beautiful, and amazing, things I've ever seen. On the same dive, we also got to go snorkelling with a whale shark (huge but plankton-eating so we were in no danger), prompting one of the dive masters to tell us that we might as well give up diving now as we had now seen two of the things divers wait their whole life for...on our fifth dive ever!

And, if the mantas and whale shark weren't enough, we also saw hawksbill turtles, a wide array of different moray eels, and more tropical fish than I could have imagined...just during the five days we spent on Barra. After leaving Barra, we squeezed into a packed minibus and headed up the coast to Vilanculos. This is the jumping-off point for the Bazaruto Archipelago, which is another hotspot for marine life (they have a small resident population of dugongs!) where we ended up going on two more dives. Didn't see any dugongs, alas, though we did see some dolphins (while we were relaxing on the white sand beaches of one of the islands), another turtle (while diving), and more fish.

Then it was back down to Maputo for New Year's. We spent forever trying to find a restaurant in Maputo that would be open on New Year's Eve (apparently everyone in Mozambique celebrates at home with their families), but finally ended up at a place down at the waterfront, watching fireworks and listening to live music. Left the next morning for Jo'burg, where we spent an evening with friends of Simona's parents before flying back to Windhoek.

Here are some pics from the trip. All of the underwater photos are from our qualifying dive, which was on Christmas Day!

Looking out towards Praia do Barra, from the braai area outside our room

All okay! (I'm on the left and Simona's on the right, if you can't recognize me under all the gear)

Blue-spotted ray, hiding in the sand

Moray eel

Psychedelic fish...a juvenile angel fish of some sort

Looking out towards the Bazaruto Archipelago from our hostel in Vilanculos

My photo for my PADI card...taken on Christmas Day!

Namibia...land of many sand dunes (November)

As promised in my earlier post, here are some photos from a trip I did in November. One of the things that Namibia is known for is its sand dunes. Most of those National Geographic photos of red, red sand dunes that you see are taken in Namibia. So, in October, Simona and I piled into a tiny rental car with some friends and set off to see Sossusvlei (pronounced Saw-suss-vlay), which is one of the places in Namibia where you can visit these dunes.

The road to the dunes...which actually turned out to be the long way. What looked on the map like the most direct route ended up adding an extra hour to the drive and made us go up and over a pass on a very narrow gravel road (this was taken as we were coming down from the pass). But the scenery was gorgeous so it all worked out in the end. The drives there and back also made us very familiar with a common phenomenon on Namibian gravel roads in this area: a sudden steep dip in the road, sometimes marked by a sign with an exclamation mark on it, sometimes not marked at all. These dips are caused by water running across the road--essentially the road goes through all sorts of tiny streambeds. Now, with the exception of the few hours after it rains, these channels almost never have water in them so they aren't that difficult to drive through. But after driving through several hundred of them, I had a much greater appreciation for culverts, which Namibian road builders don't seem to have heard of.

When we arrived at the Sesriem campsite (this is the campsite closest to the dunes, inside the same national park) at 10 AM Saturday morning, it was already too hot to try to visit the dunes before the evening. So instead we went and explored Sesriem Canyon, where at least there is some shade from the canyon walls, and then spent most of the afternoon in the pool.
Around six that evening, we drove about 10 kilometres into the park to climb Elim Dune, which is right on the edge of the dune field, and watch the sunset.
Because Elim Dune is on the edge of the dune field, you see the valley that the campsite is in and the rocky Namib-Naukluft mountains in the distance in one direction and the dune sea in the other direction.
One of the best moments of the trip...after spending about an hour climbing to the top of Elim Dune, Simona and I enjoy the beers we brought up with us while watching the sun set behind the dunes.
At about 4:30 AM the next morning, we got up and drove into the dunes. The road goes through the wide, flat valley shown above, which is bordered by dunes on both sides. Although there was no water to be seen, the valley is actually the course of the Tsauchab River, which runs into the Namib Desert here and disappears into the sand at Sossusvlei. A vlei is actually a pan, or dry lakebed. Like most other pans in Namibia, the only time Sossusvlei has even a drop of water in it is during the rainy season. The road ends at Sossusvlei, and from there the dune sea of the Namib Desert extends for 50 kilometres to the edge of the Atlantic.Yet another dune that we climbed. This area is known for having some of the highest sand dunes in the world, which Simona and I can confirm after climbing several of them. The tiny black specks along the ridgeline of the dune are actually people, to give you a sense of how big this dune really is. It's called Dune 45, because it's 45 kilometres along the valley from the beginning of the dunes (and about 15 kilometres from Sossusvlei itself). We joined a long line of people silently climbing to the top of the dune in the first light of dawn in order to watch the sun rise. It felt like we were all on a pilgrimage.
A picture from the vlei at Sossusvlei, which had a few trees, both dead and alive, scattered across it. They provided some of the only contrasting colours in a world that was otherwise either orangey-red (the dunes) or blue (the sky).
Taken from the top of the dune we climbed at Sossusvlei, looking off into the dune sea. Amazing to think of there being nothing but dunes extending for kilometres and kilometres, until you reach the ocean.

I am a bad blogger...

as you can tell by the fact that it has now been about three months since I've posted. And it's not that life here has been so boring that there hasn't been anything to post about--more like the opposite issue of having too much to do, especially at work where I was finishing up the last few months of my contract. Add in needing to send off grad school applications and trying to figure out what to do when my contract ended at the end of February, plus spending some time in the field for work, and somehow blogging fell off my "to do" list.
I will try to make up for this over the next few weeks--I have a bunch of photos to post and trips to talk about. So for those of you who had lost faith in me ever updating this blog, please keep checking back.
In the meantime, my exciting news is that although my contract with UNDP has ended, I'm going to be staying on in Namibia for a few months, doing some consulting work with a local company. I've actually already started with them--my contract ended last Monday and I started at my new job on Tuesday. As much as I miss everyone back in Canada, I'm excited to have the chance to stay on in this beautiful country for a few more months.

I'm dreaming of a warm Christmas?

So it's about 30 degrees outside and I'm sitting in my non-airconditioned office and finding it hard to believe that it's only a few weeks till Christmas. We've been having "Buddy Week" at work, which means that we all get a secret buddy who we have to spoil with little gifts all week, culminating in a big gift exchange at our Christmas dinner tonight. Went shopping for this gift yesterday and found myself in all of these shops that were lavishly decorated for Christmas and playing Christmas carols like "Jingle Bells" and "Sleigh Ride" and "White Christmas"...all of which seemed a bit out of place when I stepped out of the store into the heat. And then, on my way home from drinks with some friends last night, I saw the City of Windhoek Christmas decorations--brightly lit snowflakes hanging from lampposts all the way down Independence Ave (the equivalent to Main St). Which goes well with the palm trees in the park across the street. I really think that someone has to write some new Christmas carols for the southern hemisphere...if only to reduce the cognitive dissonance that comes from trying to get into the Christmas spirit when it's the middle of summer. The funny thing is that in Canada, I am someone who loves almost everything about Christmas (with the exception of the excessive consumerism) whereas here I haven't even tried to pull out the Christmas carols I brought with me.
The other odd thing about the Namibian holiday season is that it begins in November. People have been going to end-of-the-year parties since the first week of November (ours is late by Namibian standards) and almost no one will be at work by next week. I have been told that during the actual holiday season, Windhoek becomes a ghost town. Everyone leaves the city for the north (where most people's families are) or the coast (because it's cooler there). Apparently even the paper stops being published for a week or two. In any case, I'm going to miss most of this because I'm going to Mozambique with my friend Simona. So it'll be a sandy Christmas for me...

my eventful weekend

So my camping trip with some friends this past weekend was a bit more eventful than originally planned. We skidded on some loose gravel coming round a turn on the entrance road to the farm, spun around, and ended up with the VW van we were in on its side. Lots of reasons to be thankful, though: we were all wearing our seatbelts so no one got hurt; my friend Andre, who was driving, wasn't going that fast so we just went over onto one side rather than rolling; all of this happened 6 km from the farm we were headed to and in a patch where we had cell phone service so we could call for help (considering that we'd just driven 160 km of gravel roads with farmhouses with no phone service and a house every 40 km or so, this was amazing); and, we were able to drive away once we'd gotten the van back onto its wheels with the help of the farm's 4x4 and some rope.
Anyways, here a few photos from the whole thing: the van on its side, Andre and the farmer enjoying a well-deserved beer after the van was upright again, and the sunset we saw from our campsite that evening.

Only in Namibia: zebra roadkill!

Oshiwambo, English, Otjiherero, Khoisan, Damara...some thoughts on language

These were some musings on language I jotted down a week or so ago, when Blogger (or my sometimes unreliable internet connection) wasn't allowing me to post anything.

Before coming to Namibia, I did not truly understand how privileged I am to have a mother tongue that is the dominant language of world affairs. Not do I get to conduct all of my affairs in my own country in English, I can also assume that if I work with an international business or organization I will most likely be working in English. Contrast this with most of the people I meet here in Namibia. With the exception of a few ex-pats from English-speaking countries, everyone I meet here speaks English as a second language.

Namibia has five major language groups, each of which can be split into many regional dialects—Oshiwambo, Otjiherero, Damara-Nama, Lozi, and Khoisan (for those of you who remember the film The Gods Must Be Crazy, the “bush men” featured in the movie belonged to the San peoples, which include several different languages that generally are known as Khoisan languages). Plus, given Namibia’s colonial history (it was a German colony till post-WWI, then administered by South Africa’s apartheid government until gaining independence in 1990), you also find a fair amount of German and Afrikaans. In fact, under the apartheid government, Afrikaans was the official language and students were actively discouraged from speaking their native languages. After independence, English became the official language. This means that anyone over 30 grew up speaking their mother tongue, learned Afrikaans in school and used it in civil society, and then had to learn and use English after independence. I think about this and suddenly Canada’s issues with bilingualism seem quite trivial.

The question of language permeates daily life here. The major local newspaper includes an Oshiwambo section, while one of the other papers is published exclusively in Afrikaans. I was at the Annual General Meeting for a small conservancy (land area managed by the local community) last week which was conducted in both Damara (the local language) and English, with a bit of Afrikaans thrown in. Practically this meant that everything took a long time as someone had to translate everything that was said into one language or the other. It made me wonder how often translation difficulties caused mis-understanding—it’s hard enough communicating when you have a language in common. But I also think that perhaps those who chose to have the official language be English were wise. Not because there is anything inherently good about English, but because it means that everyone is in the same boat. Everyone is working in a language that is not their own, which, in theory, means that no one has the advantage. (It also means that what ends up being spoken is often Namlish or Namibian English but I’ll write more about that later.)

In any case, I'll never take the privilege of being able to function in all aspects of my life in my mother tongue for granted again.

Camping in Namibia

Some photos from a camping trip that we did in October to a guest farm about two hours south of Windhoek, just above Gamsberg Pass, which leads down into the Namib Desert. Guest farms are a very Namibian phenomenon--huge areas of land (thousands of hectares) on which their owners raise livestock. In order to qualify as a guest farm, they also have to have a few rooms that they rent out or a small campsite. That said, the guest farms that I've visited never seem to have anyone else staying there, so I'm not sure how many visitors they really get. I've visited this particular farm with friends twice and there's never been anyone else there. And the campsite is one ridge over from the farm house so it truly feels as though you are the only people for miles and miles.
This photo shows the view from our campsite...and my friend Simona just getting something from the tent. I should mention that that's my little tent that I brought with me from Canada. Typical Namibian tents are huge dome tents made of canvas that are ridiculously bulky and heavy. As a result, people tend to be quite skeptical about my light backpacking tent. Most Namibians camp when they go back to their home villages for weddings or funerals or other major events, rather than going camping for pleasure. As a result, camping generally means that you bring everything but the kitchen sink with you. They even sell little folding cots/beds that you can use instead of a camping mattress!

My friend Andre's hand next to what we think was a leopard track. We found while out hiking around the farm, and made sure that we kept an eye out carefully after that!


And the tree below is a fine example of a sheperd tree--named for the shade that they provide to sheperds who are out tending their goats.



This photo is for Mom, who is always taking gorgeous flower photos on every hike or camping trip I've been on with her.
And a gorgeous shot of the mountains and more mountains that spread out on every side from this spot, which is one of my favourite places in Namibia so far!

Searching for the "real" Africa...

One of the things that's been on my mind a lot since arriving in Namibia is all of the ideas we as Canadians (or North Americans) have about Africa. I've had a few people here (all ex-pats) tell me that Namibia is not the "real" Africa. Which has made me wonder what it is that these people define as the "real" Africa. Does having infrastructure disqualify a country? Is it that Windhoek is perhaps not as culturally vibrant as Maputo or Dakar? Is Namibia's poverty not visible enough?
A friend of mine talks about "World Vision Africa", this idea that all of Africa is the same and therefore everywhere in Africa must have some desert and some savannah and some lions and elephants and some starving children and some women in brightly-coloured dresses and so on...we seem to assume that everything we associate with the African continent is found everywhere in Africa. Which is stupidly naive, considering that sub-Saharan Africa contains 47 different countries. That's more individual countries than you find in Europe...and we would certainly never assume that Bulgaria and France must be the same since they're both European countries.
In any case, I would contend that though Namibia may be different from some other African countries, it is still a "real" African country (in that it exists and is part of Africa). And since I don't know of anywhere on the continent that embodies all of the characteristics Westerners associate with Africa, I suggest that we stop imagining that we can judge where the "real" Africa is to be found and instead start appreciating individual countries for their own characteristics.

Lions and springbok and gnus, oh my!

At long last, here are some photos from our trip to Etosha National Park iSeptember. We were incredibly lucky and saw all sorts of game while we were there. Before leaving a friend had told us that within a day or two, we would become blase about some of the animals ("oh, not another ostrich"). I have to admit that though we swore that we would never reach this state, by the end of the weekend, zebras were no longer very exciting...and I may even have said "it's just some more zebras" at some point.

In addition to all the pictures below, we also saw rhinos (they were at the waterhole in the evening so none of my pictures turned out), ostrich, kudu, oryx, sable antelope, hartebeest, a monitor lizard, jackals, and more. The picture above is Simona, Robyn, and I at the waterhole at Okakuejo, the camp where we spent our first night. The waterholes at the three fenced camps in the park are the only places where you can see animals without being in your car. Elsewhere in the park, you drive and see everything from the safety of your vehicle, the rationale being that large predators like lions don't associate cars with people so as long as you are in your car you are safe. Which seems to be accurate as the lions we saw were napping by the side of the road (the male is shown below as he woke up), and at one point we were within 10 feet of them (inside our car) with almost no response from them. Anyways, enjoy the photos!




Woke up and got out of our tent at Okakuejo (Oh-kah-kway-oh) on Saturday morning, only to find this elephant on the other side of the fence!











A camelthorn tree with a sociable weaverbird nest in it...these are birds that live in colonies and build these incredible communal nests. They were all over the campsite at Okakuejo.

And no, the 4x4 and roof tent below is not ours. We actually had a small rental car and normal dome tent that we used. One of the ironies of Etosha is that you see all these tourists dressed in khaki and driving 4x4's, yet the roads through the park are some of the best gravel roads I've driven in Namibia (no 4 wheel drive needed), and even if you're camping, the rest camps are very posh--hot showers, electricity, a restaurant, a pool, and even a little store in case you forgot something. Plus since you can't ever get out of your vehicle, there is no need for khaki or bush clothes. In fact, I spent most of my time in the park wearing a skirt!







The first animal we saw after driving into the park was a giraffe...and even many more later, I'm still not tired of them.
















Our first lion! The lioness is hidden behind the bushes to the left.














Zebra and springbok crossing!













This one is for Dad--it's a gnu, his favourite choice when we played the Animal Game growing up. Also known as a blue wildebeest.
















Sunset at Namutoni, where we spent our second night.