They Even Have Chachkas in Namibia!

I basically only write when I'm get inspired. Kind of like when I decide to clean my room. Both occur rarely apparently. Millions of things have happened since the last post. It's a little silly that I left this so long, because I'm sure I've forgotten some priceless moments, but I'll try and give you an idea of my life for the past 4-ish weeks. I think I'll do point form so that I can be efficient.

Aaron came up and replaced Richard as a supervisor for the interns in Oshakati. He's pretty much ballin' out of control and has been a real pleasure to live with. He's reintroduced meat into the house (previously we allowed the vegetarians to control the grocery shopping..) Taken us to Etosha National Park and rented a sweet vehicle to drive around in while there, he's also added a lot of sass to the North that has been highly appreciated.

Etosha was amazing. IN short I saw every animal I wanted to see: Lions Elephants, cheetah, leopard, giraffes etc. and had an amazing time with the entire group camping, eating and chilling at the watering hole all wrapped up in blankets to keep warm. It's amazing to see animals like that up close! I've been watching Kratz's Creatures for years now, but it's nothing compared to the real thing. I even watched two lions fight over a lioness ( and got it on video!). While we drove around we blasted some great music, rolled down the windows, and munched on chips. Unconventional, and probably totally against game park etiquette, but it was just our style.

Speaking of etiquette, we had an incident with another car full of park visitors, where we were both watching some lions chilling on the road when another car came up behind us. Trying to create good viewing for all three cars, we drove a little too close to the lions and may or may not have chased them away from the road and into the bush. While we shrugged the incident off, the second car drove past us and the passengers glared at us and one even gave us some sarcastic golf claps, which we initially mistook as genuine applause for getting such a great view of the lions. When a few of us in the car waved back at them and smiled, we soon realized, upon looking at all of their expressions, that we were not supposed to be pleased with ourselves.
Oh well.. we learned something for next time.

Back in Oshakati I just finished up a lot of work for DEEP, and, along with the other interns, I presented a summary of all of my work and observations over the past 10 weeks to all of our Namibian partners at the final forum in Oshakati.

ON my last day in Oneshila I went with Alison to drop off some stuff for DEEP and to my surprise was given a traditional Oshiwambo dress! It's gorgeous and I was really taken aback, because I didn't expect anaything from DEEP. Saying goodbye to DEEP was pretty hard and I was choking back tears (obviously) as I walked out of the neighborhood.

Also, I should mention that Napenda came back for a visit to Onehsila last monday. As I walked out of the area on my last day, I went over to Napenda to cheer myself up, because hanging out with him is pretty entertaining. He's got a lot of pzaz (Sp?)and makes some pretty exceptional facial expressions. Anyway, Alison and I played with him for a while and then began to walk out towards the main road. Unfortunately, Napenda refused to stay by his house and began to follow us out. We kept motioning for him to go back home, but he refused. BY the time we got to the main road, which is sort of like a highway, we were pretty worried to get in a taxi because we though Napenda would run onto the road or something. Fortunately, some boys noticed our predicament and decided to help us out. They began pulling Napenda from us, but he reached for Alison's legs and held on tight. He was crying as I tried to pry his hands from her. Finally of the boys ripped him from his grasp of her jeans and he began to wail. It was horrible! Both Alison and I began to tear up as we watched him kick and punch his way out of the older boy's grasp. As Alison and I hailed a taxi we just sort of looked at each other with... I can't really explain the expression, but we were both just feeling so upset and let down, that we had just made Napenda feel so horrible and that we had just tainted our last impression of the Oneshila neighborhood with a sense of sadness and frustration.

There's lots more to say but I can't write anymore cause I'm getting really antsy to walk around (I'm back in Cape Town as of 4 hours ago) I also need to do a little shopping and stuff too!