16 April 2009

A little time to think, please


Over the Easter holiday break, our family had the good fortune to travel to northwest Namibia with a student from Polytechnic. His name is Uapii (pronounced, "Wahpee"), and he's a third-year student in agriculture. He invited us to get to know his homeland a bit better.

Larkin will be doing oral surveys on the communal conservancies in the region, which are areas set aside for native people to live and work. Most of them farm with livestock. So, the goal of the 5-day trip was to learn a bit more about the people and see how the surveys might work, logistically.

It turned out to be a weekend that changed the way our family thinks about the world. In fact, we're finding it a little hard to process and quickly blog about the experience. Readers of NTN should expect to see smaller blogs about parts of the trip over the next week or so.

For the time being, we will let our photos and captions (archived here) tell the basic story of the trip. Small children warning: there are photos in the set that include Namibians in native clothing. Come back to see our reflections and hear more stories.

As Kelly said, as we arrived home, exhausted and full of new adventures, "I think we can say we just met the goal of the Fulbright experience with this trip."

Just give us a little time to think.

4 comments:

Kelly said...

Thank you so much for allowing us to live vicariously through you. The time you are taking to document your experiences is fantastic to give all of us back in NE a chance to share. What a wonderful time you are all having! All of the comments with the pictures is phenomenal.

Be well, Kelly Guinan

Indy-Anja Jones said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Indy-Anja Jones said...

Oh my goodness, I'm not even through 25 pictures and I want to come with you on that trip!!! Thanks for posting so much. It looks like something you'll never forget (like you were going to forget the rest of your year).
Anjeanette

Matt G said...

Larkin, your photos are great, and your trip with Uapii must have been amazing to say the least. you guys are so fortunate! keep up the blogging!