Namibia

Feb 16
       First of all, I have no voice right now. And I haven’t for three days. At first I enjoyed singing Britney Spears songs and laughing at how I sounded, just like I used to do in eighth grade if any of my elementary classmates may recall, but by this point, I am overly frustrated. Tomorrow morning my vocal chords better be ready for action. I’m lossenging them back to health.
       We have one day now before we get to South Africa, the country I am most excited to be at on this whole trip! I am anticipating amazing things.
       But maybe I should tell you about the amazing things that happened in Namibia first. I am going to go through it step by step because there were a lot of firsts had as well as a lot of challenging emotional moments, and I really want to write down my feelings while they are still rather fresh.
       We dock at Namibia and are first told that they are stamping our passports, but they happened to only bring one stamp, so it might be a couple of hours. Very efficient. It’s okay though because we have a diplomatic briefing to go to. They tell us general cultural outlines of Namibia. The country is as big as Texas and is populated by only 2 million people. Just think about it for a second. Nobody lives there. That’s what makes it awesome. Animals live there instead of humans. Good for them.
       So a black man speaks to us, he is from New York and has lived in Namibia in his diplomatic position for two and a half years. The crime label for Namibia is high, having only recently come down from critical. The crime level in South Africa, in comparison, is critical. He tells us this charming story about the night he heard a scratching at his window, went to open, and there found a man all in a black who proceeded to stab him with a screwdriver through the window. So he picked up a wicker chair and battled him for seven minutes! That is a very long time, especially in crisis mode. But finally, after a valiant chair battle, the guy fled. But he ended his talk by telling us not to be scared, just wise. Good advice I guess, but kind of hard to follow after he just told us a story about a guy in Namibia that was ballsy enough to rob a guy with just a screwdriver, and not even that, but freaking stab it through the window at him then proceed to still try and get in. Ballsy.
       So off we go feeling very safe.
       We all flocked to the seventh deck where we could see, far below us on the port deck, a girl’s children’s choir singing to us. It was an innocent and beautiful sight. There were perhaps fifteen girls singing, one playing a drum, all dressed in kind of Wilma Flinstone-esque outfits in animal prints. There are some very young girls, perhaps 6, and they are the best dancers, by far. What is it with African children? Are they just born with the beat? Are any of them not? They were great, the songs were in the local language, Afrikans, and were very culturally unique. The girls were all so animated. They had these great choreographed dance moves, and then had some songs where each girl got a chance to break it down freestyle. When we were able to exit the boat, which was much sooner than we thought, we were able to talk with them, hug them, and take pictures with them. They were so sweet and smiling and loved posing with us.
       The children in all of these countries always make a lasting impression on me. It just kind of blows my mind that there are actually people that grow up in other countries. Do you know what I mean? Like, I am amazed by every person I meet that grew up in a different country, because that is a totally foreign concept to me. No pun intended.
       I start on the trek out of the port with Nancy, Katherine, Tessa, and Whitney. This walk out of the port, at a normal pace, is no less than 25 minutes. Gotta love ports. In fact everything about our port city, Walvis Bay, just seemed very roundabout to me. From the ship I could see the bay about three quarters of a mile away, if only I could find a route to walk to it. But there is none, so you have to take a five minute taxi ride.
       We explore town for a few hours. The people are very friendly. I have definitely felt more welcomed in Namibia than anywhere else. We had not one but three separate people, some policemen some not, come up to us and tell us to keep our purses close to us because there were bad people around. And a lot of other people just came up to chat with us. And still many other people asked us for money.
       We made our way back to the bus after walking around town for a few hours and eating lunch by the bay at a restaurant called The Raft. There we had two of the most delicious pizza I have ever tasted. The bay is beautiful and many different birds, huge pelicans, and seals can be seen everywhere.
       We packed up our stuff quickly and changed to make our way to Dune 7. We headed there, a group of ten of us in one taxi van. We bartered with the guy and he agreed to drive us to the dunes, sit for three hours until we were done, and then drive us to Swakopmund, for 80 Namibian dollars each. 80 Namibian dollars= 8 American dollars. Think about it. It was an amazing deal and he was so nice.
       So we have this thirty minute drive through the desert to get to the dunes. The drive is beautiful, ocean on one side, endless stretching desert on the other, with these little bushes growing about every ten feet. When we finally get to the dunes, I am amazed. The san dune is the size of a small mountain, bigger than anything I expected. And soon I would be flying down it. We stop at this little hut where you can rent the sandboarding equipment, go ATVing, and other things. Also a bar. This little hut is the only thing for miles and miles. They also had a freshly kept patch of grass. That really cracked me up. I wanted to rent a snowboard at first, but it was 40 dollars compared to the 5 dollars to rent a sandboard, and going down with a snowboard was apparently very slow, hard, and not worth it. So I rented a sandboard, which is basically a big piece of wood. A board of wood, about five foot long, two and a half feet wide. You lay down on this board on your stomach, headfirst. Crazy.
       All ten of us hop in this truck with our beers, all squished in and cozy, and the driver takes off and drives us about halfway up the dune, which is already really really high. From there we hike to the top. The hike is tough but I was happy for the exercise, and the view is gorgeous. The dunes are eerily beautiful, the wind threw the sand right over the side of the cliff. The left side of the mountain was more curvy, that’s where I figured we would go down. Wrong. We were going off of the extremely steep, almost straight down side. Oh my god. It is so high up, I thin about 300 meters. Which means it is so far down. On the left side are trees and on the right side there is an ominous bush and some wooden pegs, so we needed to go down the center path. Even the center path isn’t so great because there is this rocky patch that you may or may not go right over depending on how fast you are going.
       Oh well here we go!
       I was the third person to go down, and everyone said I went really fast. I wasn’t that scared until about halfway down…that was when I had a pretty serious face on because I realized how fast I was going, and after I caught air after hitting a bump I was really getting nervous. So I just dug my toes in some to slow myself down a little, but it really didn’t help. At all. So I was at the fate of the sand gods as I sped along. I ended up coming to rest just barely before the rocky patch. I scratched up my knuckles and elbows some, but all in all it was a blast, and five of us got another ride up to go again! I have a great video of it I’ll show you later, it really shows how high up we are.
       We go back down and decide to go WATERBALLING. I caps lock this word because it was so so so so fun. Basically it is this huge hamster ball that they put some water inside of. Then you go in it and roll down a cliff. Hahaha it was fantastic. Nancy, Mary, Alicia and I all went together, all at the same time! The first time we had no idea what to expect, so when they pushed us off this 15 foot cliff we screamed but we loved it, it was a blast. The ball rolls but the water slips along with you so you stay in one place. We liked it so much we did it again!
       This entire day of fun only cost me thirty dollars, including taxi. Way worth it. Everything is very cheap in Namibia. A lot of people went ATVing but I didn’t want to because our insurance through the ship program does not cover us for motor vehicle accidents as we are not supposed to rent them. We also aren’t supposed to any extreme sports though so oh well.
       I spent my Valentine’s Day with a group of great girls, and we have a great video of us all cheering our beers and saying Happy Valentine’s Day ladies.
       Finally we make our way to Swakopmund. The taxi drops the girls off at their hostel and Alicia and I off at the house. It is a beautiful home, two story, three bedroom, three bath, kitchen and living room. Nicely furnished. Pretty much beach front. It was like Spring Break 09 in San Diego. A ton of kids rented beach houses all along this area. One house that I went to a couple of times had 40 people in it. It happened to be the house right behind Brangelina’s beach home. That’s how nice these homes are. The whole city is really nice, it is a mostly German town, with German architecture. German, English, and Afrikans are all widely spoken in Namibia, and the tourists that frequent the country most are German. All of the menus are in German and English.
       So we settle in, watch the sunset, I take a shower and walk downstairs to a home cooked dinner being served to me, macaroni and hot dogs on regular bread. Kind of strange but we made it work. We had about 10 people stay in the house this night…Taylor, Alicia, Rosalee, Megan, Chazz, Nate, Justin, Leah, me, maybe someone else I’m leaving out. The alcohol supply was high, and we all partook. We had a couple of visitors that night, two guys from South Africa that were living in Namibia, they brought over three bottles so we loved them. After hanging out at the house for a couple of hours we decided to head over to the house with 40 people where they were apparently having a party.
       Also the 14th was Anthony and I’s one year anniversary, so I was a little sad off and on. But I was able to talk to him for awhile and that was nice.
       We hung out at the house for awhile, I knew a few people staying over there, then we walked back to our house around 1 am. That was when all of the real drama ensued. Somehow Nate got left behind the group, and when he finally found his way back to the house, he had sliced his foot open pretty badly. Badly enough that an insane night of trying to find him medical care ensued. Alicia made many many phone calls to MedEx, our insurance, hospitals in the area, and so on. Quote from Alicia, “It is ridiculous how hard it is to get medical treatment in this country.”She called the emergency number for the Walvis Bay police because we didn’t have the Swakopmund number. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the number for either the Swakopmund police department or the hospital. WHAT??? None of us could believe it. This town is only thirty minutes away! That’s Africa for you. The other problem was getting a taxi, or any transportation, to the hospital, when they finally found a hospital that was even open. The nearest place to even possibly get a taxi was a fifteen minute walk away, and Nate definitely wouldn’t make it. They finally were able to get an ambulance to come pick him up, after many phone calls and a lot of hard work, and they would have to pay for it. So Taylor, Alicia, and Nate finally get to the hospital around 4 am. It is dark. No one is there. They bang on the door and a woman comes to get them. Alicia said it was exactly what you would picture an African hospital looking like. Bugs everywhere. Old fashioned equipment. A doctor finally did see them and flushed out a still drunken Nate’s wound, pulling objects out of it. He then got five stitches. They paid him about 100 dollars, and none of us really carry that much cash, so they asked to pay in credit card, and they were not too happy about that. Basically everyone they talked to anywhere wasn’t helpful in any way or nice. Except for MedEx, which is a great insurance program. And thankfully, the doctor gave all of them a ride home. Alicia fell asleep at 5:45 am.
       By the way, I pretty much slept through all of this.