Around Windhoek

We got off to a great start on our second day in Windhoek with a tour of the city. Polytechnic asked one of their alums, John, to give us the tour. John is a government auditor, but is thinking about moving into tourism--so we were one of his first tours. If today was an indication, John has a good career in tourism ahead.

John picked us up in his vehicle from the hotel, and Larkin promptly went to the front/right side of the vehicle, thinking this was the passenger side. Of course, that was the driver's side here in Britain-influenced Windhoek. So, we may not be completely ready to do this driving thing. Tomorrow, we will work on going to the proper side of the car.

We started our tour up on a high hill overlooking the city. Windhoek is in a basin surrounded by mountains. They are not significantly high mountains, but make some good scenery in all directions. We didn't take the camera on the tour (doh!), but the photo at right is a photo from the top of our hotel, showing the mountains to the south.

John took us to the central government area--showing us the Parliament building. Namibia has a parliament with 72 members, composed of members of parties in the percent of votes they get in the last election. So, if 60% vote for SWAPO in the election, they get 60% of the parliament membership. There is another legislative body made up of representatives from each area of the country. So, we just pulled up to the Parliament building, and John asked if we could tour it. The guard said yes, and we were off on a tour of the hallways to view artwork put in place before and after Independence. Beautiful collages chosen to show unique things about Namibia and important people. As one might expect, the people who led them to Independence are highly revered. The fact that we could just walk into the Parliament building on a Sunday and have the guard turn on the lights for us was interesting. Surely couldn't do that in Washington, DC, or even in Nebraska's statehouse.

We drove past the new palace for the President--being built by Chinese contractors. According to John, this is because the government doesn't trust local contractors--word might leak out about the secrets built into the building. So, there is an enclave of Chinese and Korean contractors who build various projects for the government. Later, we got to see the warehouses where these workers live--kind of an odd China Town in an industrial district.

John took us to a fort built by the Germans in 1890. Inside the fort is a Namibian history museum, including a section about rock art in the country. FACTOID: Namibia has the oldest known African art--25,000 years old. Our little rock hound, Tristan, was entranced by this exhibit, and he was gathering rock samples everywhere we went all day. He reports lots of mica, but I will let him expound on that on his blog.

Much of the rest of the tour was through various neighborhoods in Windhoek. John explained how the neighborhoods were originally set up as white-only, black-only, or colored-only. The latter was most interesting, as the 'coloreds' were allowed to be closer to the white neighborhoods; they are the result of mixed marriages many generations ago. John explained this was his family's history. Now, if you have money, you can live anywhere you want. So, the racial borders are down in neighborhoods and cemetaries. But the economic barriers continue to keep the neighborhoods somewhat similar to their historical composition.

Learning the history of racial tensions is frustrating and saddening, but seems to be critically important to comprehend the current state of our host country. One such story concerned one of the black-only neighborhoods that was physically moved in 1956, because it was too close to white neighborhoods. There was some violence of this, as the residents protested. But, in the end, residents were moved to Katutura, the black neighborhood. It's name, translated to English, means "a place they don't want to be." There were some interesting 'informal markets' as John called them (they looked like farmer's markets but pretty crude) where local residents buy cooked meat, produce, and other things. John thought we'd probably want to avoid these areas in our future shopping ventures.

One area of Katutura has small brick houses--about big enough to have 2-3 small rooms at the most. The doors had letters on them for the family's heritage--which tribe or region they are from. The last area John took us through in Katutura had shacks made of shiny tin. It literally covered a couple sides of a hill--a very large area. The residents are natives from the northern part of Namibia and come to town hoping for work. These look like they would be extremely hot (like solar ovens?) in the Namibian sun. So, as John told us--this is the part of Windhoek that looks like Africa. Back we went to our luxury hotel.

Before getting back, John showed us a lake (they call the tanks sitting on top of hills, "reservoirs" and the dammed lakes are referred to as 'dams', as in "I went over to the dam" would mean you went to the lake.). He explained the water was not good to drink and the fish could not be eaten. Evidently, Malaysian textile folks set up a shop near the lake in the past few years and their toxic dyes got into the lake. The Malaysians have since left. In addition, the lake is near Katutura, which has very few working sewage systems. So, several reasons to not fish in that lake. Luckily, this is not the source of Windhoek's water supply.

There were birds everywhere, and at some point, Larkin is going to have to get his bird books and binocs and spend some quality time getting familiar with the local fauna. Stuff flying around with vibrant colors, long tails, wacko color combinations, etc.--will be fun when we get a chance to do it.

Last note--John showed us lots of construction projects. Everything was tagged as either 'before Indendence' (1990) or 'since Independence'. The implication being that the South African government was responsible for things built before Independence, which are still being used. But, there certainly was a tone of pride when John showed us a police station or a soccer stadium or anything else built after Independence--meaning that Namibians had done it themselves. It's a tone of pride in country that was refreshing to see--certainly a foreshadowing of more to learn and appreciate as we explore this fledgling nation.

A great day. More to follow.