Sundown on another week

The picture you see is that of the sun
going down with the Kavango River
in the foreground (or is that forewater?).

The photo sets the mood ... the end of another
week out in the middle of the bush 70 km
from anywhere.

For every good week there is a bad one. This
one would go under the category of ... not too
great. It isn't like everything was rotten, it just
stunk.

It was a lot of barriers and hurdles to overcome
with little to show. But that is the roller coaster
ride we go through. 'This too shall pass' is the mantra
for this week.

I almost forgot to wish everyone a belated
Happy Thanksgiving Day. I am from New England
and I would have to argue, one of the best places
to be on that day. It is a little difficult to feel that
Thanksgiving vibe, even in the realm of nostalgia
when the temperature is about 95 to 100 degrees.
But I guess that that vibe really should come from
the heart. I guess if the week went better I'd be
feeling it.

The support garden is in kind of a floundering mode,
after electing a new management board, maybe it
will get moving. This one has been challenging lately.

The choir is going along and soon will have their little
DVD together. Yesterday was a little bit of a bad day
as they filmed about 5 songs. Take a guess as to how
many came out good. None of them, due to a couple
of crying babies that basically wailed throughout the
whole thing. Just one of those great volunteer days.
But you know, I am kind of immune to it all now.
Oh well, we'll just do it again tomorrow or never,
who knows in this gig.

One pretty positive thing was that the San Cultural Group
is on their way sometime next week to the national
dance competition. They are not competing but going
as sort of a demonstration entity. There is really no
category for the San styles of dancing, yet. So I guess
that this group is on the pioneer side of it at the moment.
It should give them some great exposure and also allow
them to be court side for the national dance competition.
A great experience for them.

The San are really trying to find a new way since they've
had to abandon their hunter/gatherer ways and to
best describe the situation, they are trying to find their
place in the Namibian society. Participating in the
national events should help get them better accepted.

There were a lot of other little irritations that I kind
of brushed aside.

Well, next week is a new week and maybe a new
energy. To repeat, this gig is all about this ebb and
flow jazz.

Elephant art

That's what you are looking at in the picture above.
It was given to me by one of the other two white people
here, one of the Romanians, in fact. I just need to sand it
a little to make it smooth.
He works with art, carving and drawing/painting.and this
he received from some artisans that live in a town called
Kongola. The Romanian guy lived in that town for a while
and was able to make contact and learn how to do that
type of carving.
It is a possible project here in the village but at the moment
no one either has the skill or the desire to work with
those types of carvings.
This is where we come in as volunteers to try and give an
option to some of the younger people in the village. Over
the years as the San people have left their hunter/gatherer
ways behind, it has been mentioned many times by the
young, that they do not know the skills of their fathers.
All this happening within a matter of a generation or so.
With collaboration between the Romanian guy and me,
we hope to be able to grab the attention of a few younger
people. More of an awakening or bridge to their past.

In general the past week was a fair one. We have a new
organization sponsoring the HIV/AIDS support group
and it appears that it has energized the group. So that
is a step forward and more activity for me in the process,
that's what I'm here for.
The school finally received the computers promised to them
about 6 months ago. They aren't new ones but they run
fine. It is also a little bit of a challenge to get them up and
running in a network system. They have two different
operating systems so the work to integrate them is a
little bit of a challenge. I have been able to get about
half of them going in the right direction. It is a challenge
for me and I am really liking it. I have at least 7 weeks
to get it up to the highest standard, with luck ...

The choir group has made a series of songs that we are
going to put on a DVD. The group was just started up
a few months ago and I think that they are still in the
process of finding their way. There are members
coming and going, but I can see the core forming.
The reason for making the music video is so that they
can see themselves and critique their performances.
In a perfect entertainment world (I think, never been in
one) they would have a wall of mirrors to be able to
see themselves. So the video will be their wall of
mirrors for now. Some songs, they have sung well and
a few others they may want to re-do. But all in all, it
a fun thing to do and it keeps a group of young people
out of the bars for a few extra hours a week.

Actually somewhat of a miracle happened. I believe I
mentioned in a prior article that we had a solar system
radio receiver transmitter for the village. It hadn't worked
as it was designed to do for over almost 6 years. One
reason being is that the people in the village didn't quite
have the experience they needed to request the system
to be repaired.
Again, these are the San people and all the elders have
no experience to fall back on. They were living out in
the bush where there was no need of writing request
for repairs of anything. This is something that is going to
have to fall on the shoulders of the younger generation.
Within the San community there is still the respect for
the elders and village headmen. So, it is difficult for the
younger go take action because they feel that they may
usurp the authority of the elders.
What happened was that I discussed this with a young
man who has some responsibility to work with such
issues. Together we wrote a solicitation for repair and
he submitted it to the headmen. They approved and
then the young man submitted it to the company
supplying the service.
Personally, and also a few of my colleagues told me,
well, we all thought that I would be long gone
(in another year and a half) before anything was even
looked at. I was shocked to hear that the company
came down and fixed it within two weeks of receiving the
solicitation. Wonders never cease and I was actually a
little giddy upon hearing the news.
Sometimes things just go right and it makes ya feel pretty
OK for that day.

I may be leaning towards the glass being half full instead
of half empty, but, I am feeling that things are kind of
wakening up in the village. I can't put my finger on it and
maybe I am delusional about this, but I just have a sense
that things are getting a little more energetic. Hopefully
I am not too 'crazy' as far as this goes.

So that's it for another week, as far as giving a mark I
would say that it was a 7 out of 10.
I'm OK with that.

66 Impala and the real thing

In something like1976 or so, I had a great looking
1966 Chevrolet Impala. It was a beautiful mint
green color. It needed a little work but with a
few hundred dollars, at the time, it was like brand
new.
This weekend I went to the Buffalo Game Park.
I've been there before a few times and it was probably
for the last time as my colleague who has been there for
the last year, is winding down her service.
Today, we went on a game drive at a park across
the river from her location.
It was a pretty decent day and we saw a lot of
animals. But didn't see elephants or giraffes
or lions.
There were warthogs, kudu, tsessebe, buffalo, sable,
roan, hippos, baboons, vervet monkeys, zebra,
wilderbest. reed buck, water monitor, african fish eagle,
wartled crane and of course impala.
In the picture above you can see a female impala,
really a beautiful animal. Two of them ran by the
front of the vehicle and it was a tremendous sight
to see them jump. It was so graceful an action.
The best part was that the animals were in herds,
so, it wasn't isolated instances here or there.
It was a herd of buffalo here and 100 yards later,
a group of baboons and so on.
It was a great way to spend the time with a good
friend before their departure.
It is funny that even when I had that '66' Impala
it was just a name that identified a car. After seeing
the real thing, I can see the similarities and just like
the animal itself that '66' was just a sleek old
girl.
It was kind of crazy that when I saw the herd of
impalas and the first thing I said to my friend was ...
I had a '66' Impala.
Over 30 years later I got to come face to face
with ... the real thing.

One library forward and one house back ...

I took a picture while I was in the library the other day.
It is a difficult place to take a photo of and it
is impossible to get a true representation of
the interior.
The picture may give you a decent idea as to
the transformation that has gone on so far. There
is a before picture in a prior blog article ...
Long term something to do
In the photo you can see that the walls received
a little freshening up. Also, that is the extent of the
book shelves and books at the moment. In the
foreground you can see a few boxes of books
that we've received from a colleague who is in the
process of completing his tour here in Namibia.
The books are of good quality and are a mixture of
stories and educational material. They are a very
welcome and appreciated addition to the school's
library. The books are more geared for younger
students and now there is a big imbalance of material.
A rough estimate is that the books are about 85%
that of for younger than older students. But that is
ok as it brings the challenge to get books for the older
(teenage) students. We will do our best and never
give up and hopefully we will continue to grow the
library and as an end result, the minds of these kids.

It also is the end of another week and it was a good
one, all in all.
We showed a short film on teenage pregnancy at the
school last evening and it was the first time in over
7 months of struggling that they allowed us to do it.
You know this development thing isn't always about
the physical resources. It is more (a lot more) about
the mind. In El Salvador and Senegal it was about the
physical resources. In Romania and here, Namibia, it
is more the lack of mind resource that is the barrier.
Here, there are a lot of things to work with. We have
limited (about 9 hours) of electricity to use.
We have a few computers and there is a person or
two whom are capable of teaching. But ... the problem
is that, for example. The school's principal is not computer
literate and therefore, he has no interest in them. Worse,
he doesn't support a program so as to teach computer
literacy in the school. So, unlike El Salvador and Senegal,
where we could see why we couldn't teach such
things, which was due to not having electricity or computers, it
was understandable as to why not. Well, here, where we just
about have it all ... man ... it can be frustrating. Especially
when the people want their children to learn how to
use a computer but will not take the principal to task on it.
This is just one of about another 10 similar situations with
the same theme.

As I have mentioned in the past, this village/town's biggest
problem is alcoholism. It is really taking out the society as
the youth (especially young men from about 15 to 35) are
virtually totally controlled by it. The only activity they do
all day is to get a dollar or two to go to drinking.
It even got to the point for this one young man of about
23, in which he took the roof off his house and sold it so
that he could get a few dollars for alcohol, really.
This village/town is an old military base and the majority
of it's houses are what could be considered small barracks.
They are of some sort of wood for the walls, cement floors
and the roof is made of corrugated zinc.
The zincs (as they are called here) are a pretty hot item
to sell.
So the other day as I was walking by this young man
who was in the process of knocking down his walls ...
I was thinking, why.
The house was actually one of the better little ones and
it just didn't make sense.
So upon asking and receiving a reply, the word was that
he sold the zincs and that no body knew where he was
going to sleep
Just an example and the most extreme I've seen since
arriving here at the end of April.

Another instance of the damaging effects of alcohol
has to do with what happened to the San Cultural Dance
Troupe. They had gotten invited to the regional dance
competition in a town called Rundu. They actually went
in more of an entertainment capacity. The competition
was more for the Mbukushu people and their traditional
dances.
The San haven't a dance category specifically for their
cultural style. In fact the troupe from here is just about
the only one of the San culture in this region that is
somewhat active outside their village.
So, upon doing their dance demonstration in Rundu the
troupe received N$ 300 or about 35 dollars US.
The group decided to take the money, put it on the side
and later, buy some beads that they would use to enhance
their traditional attire.
Well, what happened was the Youth Officer was given
the money by the event organizers and said that he was
going to hold on to it. He did hold on to it ... for about
the time it took them to return to the village. Then he just
plain took the troupe's money and used it on alcohol. This
was after he went through his own not too shabby pay check.
So now the troupe received another invitation to go to the
National Dance Competition in the Capital, Windhoek.
This is really quite a chance for the troupe itself and also
for the San people in general. I am not sure if they will be
the only San Cultural Troupe performing there but I know
that they will be the only one from the northern part of
this country.
When the troupe heard what the Youth Officer did with
their money they said that they didn't want to go to the
Nationals. I don't blame them for thinking so. But the
person whom should be working with the dance troupe
spoke with them and convinced them to not lose their
big chance to be in front of a full stadium and also the
chance to get some notoriety. Finally they agreed to go
but will not go if the alcoholic Youth Officer goes.
So, again, alcohol comes in to the equation of ruining
something.
So that was the week, despite the setbacks as a result of
the drunken bumbs, there were some progress. But the
progress never comes easy.
That seems to be the end of the week same old song.