Trip south...to dry out

I spent the latter part of this week taking a quick tour (1500 km) of the southwest portion of Namibia. You can see archived photos from the trip, and a map of our voyage here, or click the photo link to on the top left of the blog. It has been raining constantly (each day) for the past 3 weeks in Windhoek, so it was a nice break to head to a drier part of the country. Even there, however, the rains are producing more grass than farmers have seen in years, and many of them have reached their average annual rainfall, and it's only March.

By the way, that average is 70mm, or about 2.5 inches. Average rainfall in Lincoln, NE is about 700mm, or about 25 inches. Even in far western Nebraska, the average is about 250 mm, or about 9-10 inches. So, this is dry country--on the edge of the Namib desert.

The purpose of the trip was to visit two Polytechnic students doing a 6-month internship at two farms. Their 'mentor' for the in-service training course is Dr. Jankowitz ("Doc": a nickname that makes sense given the low number of PhD's in universities in Namibia), the Head of Department in Nature Conservation--my department. He has been extremely helpful and kind since we arrived. Tristan was in school, so I will have to take Kelly and Tristan back sometime very soon.

It was interesting (two faculty took two full days just to visit two students) to think about implementing the same practice at UNL--we don't visit our internship students. Polytechnic uses the visits to keep students focused on their objectives, and to make contact with 'the industry'--the people in parks and on guest farms and at NGO's that they are producing students for. I think that would be good for UNL, but golly, we could never do that with our current teaching and research load.

Probably the best part of the trip was driving past the farm on which Doc grew up. It was valuable to hear stories of droughts, struggles with the land, family history, and connections of his family to people still scratching out a living on this dry area of Namibia. The stabilized dunes we saw during the trip were reminiscent of the Nebraska Sandhills, although the sand here is red.

The trip had everything a good road trip should have: good company, good conversation, good food, good scenery, and a near-death experience. The story is best-told in photos. View on.