Concrete

Namibia has a distinctive building style. Nearly all the buildings are made of concrete blocks, often with a layer of cement on the outside and tile on the inside. Much of the construction we’ve witnessed makes it clear that there’s no fear of earthquakes: the blocks are not built up around rebar, but occasionally have a bit of wire mesh, sort of like a strip of fencing, placed horizontally between successive layers. When the lab building was constructed in April adjacent to the existing hatchery at the Salt Company, the new walls were attached by nailing a strip of aluminum to the old wall, then bending it to lie in the new mortar.
Even some of the streets are constructed of interlocking concrete pavers.
Picnic tables at national park campgrounds are also made of concrete. So it was that, when I rushed to finish up some formatting on the next curriculum submission, in order to join the rest of the family on a late afternoon game drive, I encountered an immovable object – a concrete seat, conveniently placed next to the concrete table, but hidden behind the laptop I was carrying and so invisible to me. I tripped, I had no hands to catch myself, as I was carrying the laptop, my face hit the acacia tree providing some shade for the picnic site, my knee was cut deeply by the concrete seat edge, and my opposite elbow took the brunt of the impact on the ground. The computer went flying.
Of course, I yelled in agony, primarily from fear that the computer – and all of the curriculum revisions, due the next day – was irreparably damaged. Fortunately, Alan was able to fix the damages to both person and computer; they turned out to be strictly cosmetic. But I got some good sympathy points initially for the blood-soaked dressings on knee and elbow, and I’ve been walking a bit stiff-legged for a week. The curriculum submission went in, not without more than a few hiccups – this is the final submission, which occurs at the university-wide level (a month ago, it was just at the school-level), and it was a 2-hour process from an internet café in Outjo. Fortunately the café part had great pastries….

Flu season

Katie has been fighting some sort of disease for the past 2 weeks. Its progression went like this: first, a little diarrhea; then a runny nose; at its worst, a night of restless fever, followed by 3 evenings when she vomited immediately after dinner. One of these nights was also restless, including teeth-grinding. For about the last week, she has continued to have a hacking cough and banana slugs up her nose. Mucus is now turning green and crusty, a sign that the immune system has kicked in. Meanwhile, during the worst of this, I was simultaneously trying to complete three curriculum submissions for the department – this meant 1-on-1 meetings and advisory committee meetings most of each day, while writing and editing at night. Only it was particularly difficult for me to do any work at night, because I would help Katie get to sleep (conservatively a 20-minute process) and 5 minutes after I got back on my computer, she would be calling for me again. Well, it’s clear I wore myself down, so by the curriculum deadline (Apr 25), my nose was a torrent of phlegm and my patience worn down to a thin veneer. Alan was also grumpy: although he was least affected by disease (just one day of self-described incredible gaseous eruptions), he was fielding calls from the coast about how much we were needed there, plus running a lot of errands and forgetting to eat.
The good news/bad news was that the Friday afternoon meeting for administrative feedback on the curriculum submissions was canceled at the last minute. Instead, we left immediately for the coast. On the 4-hour drive, my scratchy throat transformed into earaches so intense that I couldn’t hear, totally precluding my normal Katie-entertainment duties. Then Katie said her ears were hurting too. I was ready to go to the emergency room at the Swakopmund hospital, but Alan correctly diagnosed our ills: My stuffy head had dis-equilibrated from the pressure differential between 5000 ft and sea level, cured in a matter of minutes after a dose of Panado (not available in the US, but Alan had heard of it before). Katie was simply trying to be a participant in everything and still just had a runny nose (well, she had vomited earlier…). Definitely the nadir of our trip!
A longer-term health concern has been Alan’s sore foot, probably plantar fasciatis, although not quite in same spot as in years past. It’s been exacerbated by several long barefoot walks on the beach, plus his first choice for shoes to be worn in the water – so many nylon straps across the top that they caught rocks top and bottom, causing blisters and sores as well. A couple of weeks ago Alan succumbed to family peer pressure and went searching for size 13 Crocs – Katie and I both wear these almost constantly, in and out of the water, and we’ve found them extraordinarily comfortable and functional. Fortunately, Alan was able to find a manly black pair of Crocs that fit him – shoes are a big deal in Namibia, and there were plenty of stores to check, although we still feel lucky that there were actually several styles in his size – and foot complaints have eased. Of course, Alan had to eliminate all the Crocs logos by drawing over them with a black sharpie!

Into a new decade

JR turned 40 on March 20. She celebrated at Spitzkoppe by climbing rocks, hunting bugs, and swimming in a pool of water caught in a granite crack. (Meanwhile, there was a second sulfide eruption on the coast…) We also ate our first real Namibian meal prepared at the community rest camp – very tough goat, rice, creamy white/pink beans, canned peas with some sort of mayo-like topping, sliced cucumber and tomatoes, and pink gravy. I got a great gift of a hand-crafted mussel shell necklace (hmm, how many of those shells are from introduced Mytilus galloprovincialis? It’s great to be an invasion biologist wearing that mystery all the time.), and – best gift of all – had time to complete and submit a manuscript.

At 40 years and 1 day, I walked outside at night barefoot, stubbed my toe on some cement, and took my toenail clean off. Now, why is it that one says “clean off”? It was not clean, especially cutting the last skin that held the dangling nail, and watching the wound ooze for days. Ouch! Minor emergency. Alan assured me I should be grateful I didn’t step on a scorpion and require medical treatment on a holiday weekend.

Transportation addendum

In Namibia, lots of people walk. And people walk lots of places: school kids walk along the highway to get home; women walk with large sacks of grass on their head; people in blue pants and shirts – the characteristic sign of working class – make their way by foot (or packed into the back of pick-up trucks) from residence to job or return. The country has 2 million people and 70,000 cars, so lots of people go without. Given how much travel happens by foot, one might expect pedestrians to have the right of way, and drivers to be aware of foot traffic. Quite the contrary! It doesn’t matter your age, race, or how many small children you’re traveling with, if you’re on foot, you have to make sure you stay out of the way of cars and trucks, because they will not deviate from their path. Even crossing a street with a green light, the pedestrian has to yield to right or left hand turners, or risk being hit. Actually, some of our closest calls while driving have occurred when we tried to allow someone to cross the road in front of us on foot: pedestrians assume that cars will continue to move at a constant speed and direction, and they often judge their crossing to flow just behind a passing car – sort of like a deadly video game! When we slowed down or changed lanes, pedestrians became quite confused!

For people without cars, there are many options for transportation – but we haven’t experienced these directly, despite our thoughts prior to arrival of doing without a car. In Windhoek, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of taxis, with a similar proportion in smaller towns. When we’re walking around town, the taxis regularly honk (they all seem to have the same horn-tone) to inquire if we want a ride. People can get picked up and dropped off all along the way. Prices are uncertain: students at the Polytechnic who live in Katatura, a traditionally-black suburb of Windhoek, pay $N200 (US$30) for an entire term of daily transport, but other fares have to be negotiated, as there are no mileage or time counters in the taxis. Each taxi driver is his (haven’t seen any her) own company, usually simply indicated with some letters on the door stating name and address.

For longer distance transport, there are short buses that pull baggage trailers behind them. People gather at major intersections along the highway for pick-up. On dirt roads, people hitchhike – we’ve picked up several when the clutter of sleeping bags, oyster samples, and Katie’s books hasn’t been too excessive, and when traveling in pretty remote places where the next car could be some time coming. Very few people travel by rail in Namibia, in contrast to many other African nations (so we’ve heard). Our flat in Windhoek provides ample opportunity to observe trains – even more so because Katie’s ear is acutely tuned to the rumble, chug, and whistle, so she runs to the window to look at each one. An old blue engine or two, belching black smoke, generally pulls some yellow cylindrical tanker cars, maybe some open-top cars full of scrap metal, a few boxcars, and perhaps a passenger car or two. The trains often have just 5 cars total and rarely more than 20. We are on the main north-south route through Namibia, so it’s strange that most of the trains seem to be heading south (but we haven’t quantified this); there is also a rail spur to Swakopmund, but in many many hours of traveling this road back and forth to the coast, we’ve only seen one train on the tracks parallel to us. Which brings up one current reason for little train traffic – good roads for trucking from Walvis Bay, the country’s only deepwater port, to pretty much anywhere. The poor infrastructure for trains may also reflect a historical decision: Namibia’s railways are spaced at 3 and a half feet, rather than four feet and change elsewhere, a legacy of someone’s assessment that getting a narrow gauge railway through the mountains would be less work. We recently learned that the first railway in Namibia was near Cape Cross, running between the phosphate rock (old bird guano, nitrogen leached out) and the small harbor where sailing ships would anchor offshore.

Health and safety addendum

I forgot to repeat some political analysis that we heard from embassy staff relevant to explaining the high variance in income in Namibia. I have always equated colonialism and bad: exploitation, oppression, conversion. But Namibia may actually be at a further disadvantage because it was not a colony (at least recently: German occupation ended after WWI). African colonies enjoyed some intellectual and human resource exchange with European countries, producing an educated leadership that could take over when occupation ended. In contrast, black Africans under apartheid were systematically denied access to opportunities for educational and economic advancement, and this has devastating carry-over to this generation. Very few black Namibians have higher degrees, mostly via education in the States – but they include prominent people such as the first and current (second) president of the country and rector of Poly. (When will the US elect a PhD as president?!?)

Health and safety

According to the US government, Namibia’s crime rate is Critical. Indeed, security firms appear to have a thriving business: uniformed guards are at every ATM, electronics (=cell phone) store, and high-end retail (e.g. safari outfitting, glasses), not to mention the main entrance and every building on the Polytechnic campus, 24 hours a day. When you park a car, you’re often asked if you’d like it kept under surveillance – at $N1 as an average tip, this is a bargain (<0.15 US$). Many stores have locked gates at their entrance, and a salesperson “buzzes” suitable customers inside. Houses have tall cement walls with concertina wire or electric fence on top. Our door has 3 locks (US embassy requirement, checked out personally by their security officer). The problem is property crime and theft, not (thankfully) risk of bodily harm. Actually, the problem is economic inequity. Based on average income, Namibia is a developing middle-income country, but with one of the highest variances in income worldwide (even worse than the US in GINI index). In a place where many people have little to lose, they’ll use an opportunity to take from the rich. Unemployment is high (we’ve heard various “statistics”, but likely over 40%), and, as evident by the compensation for car guards, many positions are poorly paid. Visitors are urged not to be easy targets – don’t carry iPods in outer pockets of backpacks or walk with a purse late at night across dark bridges. Well – undoubtedly the same advice would apply to most US metropolitan areas!
Namibia also has an extraordinarily high per capita rate of auto accidents. A deadly combination of break-neck speed, poor vehicle maintenance, intoxication (“We drink beer in Namibia because water’s too expensive”), and large animals that can leap 2-m fences and cross the road. The Namibian newspaper regularly shows mangled remnants of vehicles that have burned, flipped, split, or otherwise reached a bitter end. Driving sober, slow, and in daylight, we hope to avoid this fate. We are also now driving a Combi – the southern African version of a VW van – which we purchased for dirt-roads, camping/ sleeping in the rear, and hauling anticipated visitors from the States. In Namibia, one drives on the left hand side of the road, with the driver’s seat on the right hand side of the car: the biggest initial problem was turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn indicator!

Minor emergency

Monday evening Jan 7: Katie suffered a radial dislocation as Alan picked her up by her arms onto his lap. My worst nightmare: a medical emergency before we’ve made any medical connections. While I tried to calm Katie down by nursing and reading, Alan consulted the internet to look for cures to “nursemaid’s elbow”. I would have been terribly panicked except that I knew it should be possible to pop it back in, but how? Cousin Emma had suffered a similar injury at the same age, and her doctor had fixed it while out on a jog. What a terrible time for the whole Polytechnic internet to be down! Alan finally had to go all the way across campus to the Conroys to use their internet connection. When he returned (seemed like forever), he rotated her hand out and then bent her elbow up – Voila! instantly no more pain, and Katie could use her arm. Score one more for the internet. (And for listening to one's sister...)