photo shoot! discussing domestic violence and gender-based violence

One of the coolest projects I've worked on as a public interest lawyer (besides helping to write a comic book) was helping to run a photo shoot to develop a series of photographs as part of the Legal Assistance Centre's public awareness campaign about domestic violence.

Sylvia Kincses is a photographer from New York who was visiting Namibia at the time, and offered to provide her services for this cause. The photo shoot was pretty fun, despite the serious subject matter, and a nice break from report writing and legal research.

Our organization then turned these photographs into informative posters.



The organization has now finally released a major report on domestic violence in Namibia, evaluating how the domestic violence legislation is working in the country. It's a comprehensive report that I have had the privilege of helping out with. You can read about the findings here: http://www.lac.org.na/projects/grap/grapviolence.html.

I've discussed the topic of domestic violence and gender-based violence before, both in the context of Namibia and for Canada as well, and the topic remains important to me. I think it's important that we continue to fight these battles and educate the public about these important issues. Recently, in my hometown of Ottawa, a Para Transpo driver (a public service transporting people living with disabilities) pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in a wheelchair who had both intellectual and physical disabilities. The part that stuck out the most for me was this quote from the accused:

Fuentes said he didn’t know the woman lived in a group home and he didn’t remember her saying no or resisting him.

This statement shows a problem with what people understand about consent. In the landmark case R v. Ewanchuk, the Supreme Court of Canada found that there was no such thing as implied consent when it came to sex. In other words, you can't go around assuming that everybody wants to have sex with you. You have to make sure that the other person is consenting. Not hearing a "no" is not enough to assume consent; you have to actually get a green light to go. This rape case should never have happened. It should be common knowledge that you need a person's consent, but it seems like this is not something that everybody understands, or else you wouldn't hear of so many cases of people engaging in such behaviour when the other person is too intoxicated or incapacitated to give their consent. This is why I think it's important to engage in public awareness campaigns, educating people so that it is common knowledge that consent must be given, just like it should be common knowledge that you can't beat your spouse.

I recently finished reading a crime novel called The Hour of the Jackal by Bernhard Jaumann. As far as murder mystery crime thriller goes, it's pretty standard in many aspects of the plot, but what was particularly interesting for me was its setting, as the novel takes place in Windhoek, Namibia. It is the only crime novel I've found so far that takes place in Windhoek. Of course I loved the chance to revisit a city that I fell in love with, but what I found particularly inspiring was the author's subtle message about society's complacency after Independence. The novel's plot is closely connected to the assassination of anti-apartheid fighter Anton Lubowsky, the first white man to openly fight for SWAPO (he also helped found our organization, the Legal Assistance Centre). His murder has still been left unsolved, possibly for political reasons.

A character in the novel asks if Lubowski fought and died for freedom for no reason. I find these words to be inspirational about continuing to push for better conditions in society, not just in Namibia but in our own neighbourhoods as well:

"Is that what Lubowski died for?

"Twenty years have gone by, and still no one wants to know what really happened. The reasons for this have undergone a stealthy change, that's all. People have settled into drab routine, into a rut unworthy of all the struggles that raged in thepast. They have no wish to be reminded that quite different aspirations once prevailed, and that people were murdered for them. Lubowski isn't buried under one-and-a-half metres of earth, but under the guilty conscience of those who have outlived him. Because we don't want to admit to ourselves that we've made nothing out of them, the dramas of the past must remain unspoken. And so, Lubowski has ben sacrificed twice over. Not, this time, for a better future, but so that people can continue to wallow in the dismal and rather dirty but otherwise not uncomfortable morass in which they have somehow ended up. Insufferable, isn't it?

"So what? some will say now. Lubowski doens't care anymore, dead is dead. I take a different view. The dead can be murdered a second time, but you can also try to prevent that."

My article on the Namibian music community

My article on the Namibian music community has finally been published in This, a Canadian magazine on politics and the arts. I wrote specifically about Song Night, an arts showcase run by the fabulous Lize Ehlers, featuring Namibian musicians like Sean Kamati. It features photography by Namibian photographer Joash Perera. If you pass by a Canadian news stand, pick up a copy of the magazine and check out the article!

Annoying things that foreigners do in Namibia that annoy me

Happy Africa Day! Today I've been missing Namibia and the amazing times that I had there, so I am putting up this post.

When I was in Namibia, I was a foreigner. I’m sure I committed all sorts of faux-pas and offended all sorts of people unconsciously. But so did a lot of other people. I’ve compiled a list of things that foreigners do that annoy me, as a foreigner, so undoubtedly they probably annoy Namibians even more.

Being vegetarian and moving to a meat-based desert country with very little agriculture and then complaining that Namibian food is no good.. Don’t read me wrong here. You can be a vegetarian. You can move to Namibia. You can wish that there were more vegetarian options in Namibia. But if you didn’t do your research on the country beforehand and are shocked that there aren’t veggie burgers being sold at every take-away stand...well, you should have done the research before moving there. And if you constantly complain to Namibians that their food is inferior, well, you’re an ass.

Spending all your time at home and then complaining that there is nothing to do in Windhoek. Actually, there’s plenty of cool and interesting things happening in Windhoek. You just have to look for it and be willing to try new things. If you find it boring, chances are it’s because you are a boring person.

Treating shebeens like a tourist attraction. This is someone’s hang-out spot. This are where guys like to get together after work and chill out. This is where girls want to grab a drink and catch up with their friends. They do not want to be confronted by a bunch of foreigners treating them like exotic zoo animals. I’m not saying don’t go to shebeens. Shebeens can be fun. But be sensitive, and treat other people the way you would want to be treated in a regular North American bar. Don’t covertly take photos of random people without their permission. Don’t stare. Don’t ask stupid racist questions. Also, don’t be shocked by the feeling that you stand out. As a foreigner in an all-black bar, you totally do stand out. What did you expect?
This is actually a really good guide on how to properly behave when you're in a bar where you stand out.

Treating churches like a tourist attraction. This is someone’s holy place. This is where Namibians go to be closer to God. Maybe you don’t believe in God, and you’re only there because you want to hear the choir sing because you hear the “Africans all sing really well.” Fine. Be respectful and remember that you’re in a place of worship. Don’t take photos while everyone is praying. Don’t take photos of the paster while he or she is preaching. Don’t record the church choir. In fact, why are you taking photos of the church service anyway?

Insisting that Afrikaners who have lived here for decades are not real Africans because they are white. I know there is a lot of political tension between black Namibians and white Namibians, but it is not in your place as a foreigner to consider white Namibians to be “not real Africans”. Some white Africans have been living in Africa for centuries, longer than Americans have been living in America. Most of the ethnic groups in Namibia, actually, have moved to Namibia from other parts of Africa over the centuries. To insist that white Namibians are not true Namibians because they are white and haven’t lived in Namibia forever would mean that I as an Asian Canadian am not a real Canadian – and let’s not go there.

Taking pictures of children without asking their permission (or their parents’ permission.) Think about it. You’re in Central Park in Manhattan. You notice some small kids playing on a playground. You inch up really near to them and start taking intrusive close up photos of them. Somebody is going to think that you’re really creepy. Why would you act differently in Namibia? It doesn’t hurt to ask permission to take someone’s photo first. Chances are they’ll be flattered anyway.

Calling things that are unusual and different from back home “uncivilized”. This especially applies, in my view, if you come from a former colonial power like England or Germany. The way things are run in Namibia may be different from what you’re used to, and you might see it as less efficient than the way you’d personally like to run it, but using a word like “uncivilized” betrays a lack of understanding of the former colonial history of Africa, and a terrible attitude on your part.

Refusing to hang out with anyone but other foreigners, and then complaining that Namibians are unfriendly. Actually, Namibians are people, just like anyone else. Some of them are friendly. Some of them are not. Chances are though, if your only interaction with them are at the checkout line at the grocery store or in taxis, you probably won’t develop a meaningful relationship with any Namibians. Also, if you constantly repeat the faux-pas in this list, they probably won’t find you very friendly either.

Remember, kids: it’s all about building bridges to their cultural iceberg. Although there aren’t a lot of icebergs in Namibia.

Namibia's Independence Day

"Now, in the post-apartheid era, what is their excuse? Well, this is the great epoch of freedom. And freedom comes with conspicuous consumption and instant gratification: people of his clan don't only wear brands but see themselves as brands. They purchase and market themselves as such."
-Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, "Black Diamond"

I catch a cab at the end of my street in Khomasdal, the coloured township of Windhoek. There are already two passengers in it, wishing everyone a happy Independence Day. The cab driver has been listening to some of the celebrations in Mariental being aired on the radio. It is a bunch of speeches from various government officials thanking other government officials. It all sounds kind of dry and I'm glad that I didn't make the trek to Mariental for the festivities and had stayed in Windhoek instead.

The cab driver changes the radio to a music station where the Afrikaner deejay is blathering on about the freedoms we should be thankful for now, like the freedom to go to the mall and shop and the like.

"Freedom," the cab driver snorts. "We are not free here."

"Nee?" I ask. He seems to want to talk.

"We do not have freedom when anyone can walk into our homes, rob our house and attack our women," he says. "This is not freedom. When you are not safe, we are not free."

"Yes, there is a lot of crime," I agree. "There still is a long way to go." I was going to add some dramatic comment about how it is a long walk to freedom, and then realize that someone else had already said it before.

Instead, at that point the cab runs out of petrol and stops at the side of Sam Nujoma Drive. I get out of the cab and walk the rest of the way. I feel bad leaving the cab stranded there on the road, but I am late.

I meet briefly with my old landlord, an old German man who tells me how his family used to go to Angola on vacation to get away from the apartheid regime. "It felt so free there," he says, "for those of us who were a little more liberal-minded and didn't agree with the system." He tells me how the black Angolans used to come up to his small blonde children, fascinated, and ask permission to touch their hair.

Afterwards, I meet up with A, who has been out of town working on a study of the behaviour of men who have sex with men, some still closeted, to assess their risk in terms of HIV exposure. We head over to Singles Quarters the Katutura township to have kapana for lunch.

Singles Quarters is where the apartheid regime had kept their male labourers, separate from their wives and families, while they worked. Now it is a giant meat market where you can also get delicious kapana. We pass a cow's skull on the ground and approach one of the stands where a man was cooking his meat. He invites us to sample a piece of beef. It agrees with A., who then orders sixty namibian dollars worth of meat, which the man finishes cooking on his grill and then wraps up in newspaper before handing it to us. L runs to another stand in the market to purchase some diced tomatoes to go on the side, and we sit ourselves at a nearby table to enjoy kapana with some Fanta. As a Korean-Canadian, I'll always be biased toward Korean barbecue, but kapana is still quite good. I eat a piece that is pure fat (it looks like a baked potato) and am struck in wonder how how full of flavour it is. I am suddenly afraid I might become Jack Sprat's wife who eats no lean.

By that point, AN and S. have joined us, and we decide to spend the afternoon at Goreangab Dam. On the way, we spot F partying on a balcony, so we pick her up and bring her along.

Goreangab is jumping; all of Katutura's residents are out celebrating Independence Day. We give up trying to find a spot at a picnic table and instead park our cars under the shade of a tree. We open the trunk and sit on the bumper, blasting kwaito rap and drinking beers. AN remarks that it feels like an awful lot like American tailgating. To me, it feel like high school for some reason and I find it comforting.

The two Oshiwambo girls F and L are wishing everyone a Happy Independence Day. F has been celebrating all night, dancing in the shebeens until 5:30AM and then starting up again at 7AM. She looks totally punk rock. I resolve to do the same for Canada Day.

Everyone is having a good time, drinking, partying, dancing to great Namibian tunes like Gazza. At one point, a pickup truck full of guys backs up straight at us and hits the tree dead on, barely missing AN and leaving a huge dent in the back of the truck. Nobody seems to care, and the drivers drives off as nonchalantly as he can. I envision him telling drunk stories later that night about how a tree had come out of nowhere and rear-ended him.

"Happy Independence Day," F says again, cracking open another beer. I look at the lot of us and feel thankful about our freedom to do this, in our independence after apartheid, to hang out with our friends, a mix of whites, blacks, asians.

Soon the weather takes a turn for the worse - not just rain, but thunder and lightning. F squeals and dives into the trunk of A.'s car, insisting that it's time to move, anywhere, anywhere indoors. We pile into A.'s fake sports car and An. and S.'s station wagon and go to one of the dozens of shebeens on Eveline Street. Eveline Street is like Newfoundland's George Street, heavily concentrated in rowdy bars, but Katutura-style. Seems like every shebeen is also a car wash or a barbershop. Three fun things to do in Katutura: drink beer, wash your car, and get your hair done. You'd think we were deep in Texas.

The rain is coming down hard and everyone's looking for shelter. I order a cheap Windhoek Lager that costs barely over a dollar and look at the tin walls and the tin roof and the bodies all pressed against each other, girls dancing on the floor, guys chatting with each other while sitting on the pool table. I feel a bit claustrophobic but at least we are out of the rain.

Once the rain lets up, F. convinces us to squeeze into the station wagon and drive around Katutura to find some cute boys that she had met the night before. Instead, we end up finding T at Druzo's. By that point I feel like I've done enough drinking for the day so I decide to head home to "my" neighbourhood, Khomasdal, the township where coloured people lived during apartheid. L and F give me one more hug and one more happy independence day, and then we depart. This is the last time I'm going to see them before I leave Namibia.

At home, N is waiting for me, ready to cook a risotto as my last dinner in Namibia. We pick up some drinks at the neighbourhood shebeen Benny's so we have some beers for the night, and then M and W come over just in time to drink it. N serves the risotto which is delicious. ZK refuses to eat it because the dish is vegetarian and he is Herero and Hereros apparently only consider meat to be food. M is also a self-identified Herero, but he doesn't pass up a good free meal.

I try to make a toast. "Happy Independence Day," I say without thinking, and then my voice falters. "...do you guys do Independence Day?"

And then ensues a heated debate between Hereros M and ZK, and W with her mixed background. I should have known better than to bring up patriotic rhetoric in front of queer Herero folks, but then I've been partying with Oshiwambo girls all day.

"Independence Day is the one day I tell my white boyfriend to leave me alone," W replies.

"No," M says at the same time. "Independence Day is what Ovambos celebrate."

"Oh, Hereros have to come off that," W says. "You guys have got to stop whining."

"We were the first ones to fight," M replies. "Back when everyone was still trying to figure out what to do, we were already here on the ground fighting. And now what? The Ovambos are in power and wasting our money, paying fifty thousand namibian dollars to exile kids like you."

M is referring to the fact that W had been sent out of the country as a child for safety reasons until after Independence. "You're talking about wasting money?" W retorts. "Who spent millions of dollars sending a bunch of representatives to Germany to retrieve like ten skulls? How many Hereros does it take to carry some skulls anyway?"

All throughout this, ZK is emphatically punctuating all these comments with his own exclamations of approval or disapproval. He's eighteen years old and was born after Independence, which is hard to think about. I can barely follow along the debate. Meanwhile, in all the excitement, N has accidentally sliced his hand open on a broken bottle neck of a beer and is bleeding all over the kitchen floor.

"Are you okay with blood?" he asks me, holding his hand with his other hand.

"Yes," I lie, closing my eyes. He instructs me to tear off a cloth strip from an old shirt so he can wrap it around his hand, which just won't stop bleeding. That's when I find out he is a doctor, having just completed a fellowship at Harvard.

The political debate in the kitchen ends when W checks her phone and discovers that one of her (many) admirers have sent her a, shall we say, adult photo. We then discuss how she should reply. Eventually we decdie to send her a series of close-up phtoos of other body parts: M's beard, ZK's nostril, my shoulder, and N's bloody finger. Two black guys, a white guy, and an Asian woman. Happy Independence Day. W's suitor replies that he wishes the photos were clearer.

At that point of the night, all of the day's drinking has left me sleepy and I find myself curling up on my mattress on the floor, turning in early on my own good-bye dinner. N thoughtfully closes the door and I sleep while the others keep drinking.

I wake up at one point in the night to hear my friends still talking in the kitchen. W and N are discussing what their notions of freedoms are, and whether they think they are free. They conclude that they are. I want to get out of bed to join in this discussion, but realize I have nothing to add. Instead I snuggle into my covers and think about where I am. I think about W and N, one an exile kid smuggled out of the country while being shot at during the war against apartheid only to return a decade later to a home she no longer recognize; and the other one having spent his childhood caught in the Bosnian war and then his adolescence with his town under fire and not being able to go to school. And then I think about me, having never lived through war and free to come to Africa and leave as I please. I think about how if they are free, then obviously I am, and I am grateful for it.

driving across the desert of the luderitz peninsula

"All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it yet, but when I wold wake in the night, I would lie listening, homesick for it already."
-Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

I was enjoying watching the Europeans slowly turn a delicious shade of lobster pink-red as they baked under the sun. Me, I was of a different breed and had spent enough months trekking the Namib desert that slapping on sunscreen had become a daily ritual and I was now becoming a lovely healthy gold-brown that made me look like I was born on the islands of Phuket.

We were heading for Agate Bay, the beach spot that the little girl Shannon had told me about where you could see more seals. My initial plan the day before had been to try to hike it there, but now I had a ride in the Europeans' truck, and I was glad, because it turned out to be a longer journey that I had been expecting. The route to Agate Bay takes you out of the city, past the townships, past the forbidden zone of the Sperrgebiet (with signs sternly warning DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TURN RIGHT), and then finally this huge wilderness beach facing the ocean and Seal Island, looking so uninhabited that you'd think that we were the first humans to discover the place - except for the brick braai structures every couple hundred metres.



"This would be an awesome party spot," the boys agreed.

The rhythm of the waves seem to pull us into a sleepy serene trance. Claudio and Alina played tic tac toe in the sands until the waves washed each game away. Lars, ever silent, sat on the shore with his t-shirt over his head in what looked like deep contemplation. Till wandered away. I waded as deep in the cool water as I dared, and feeling the current pull at my ankles, pretended I was in a Mariah Carey music video. There were birds on the island nearby, possibly penguins, watching us with amusement as we played in the water, probably wondering what it is about humans that make them go all daydreamy in the ocean.


Gloria Carey


Alina and Claudio




Eventually we had to leave the wild isolation of this beach, so we piled back in to the truck, the Europeans looking slightly more red then before. Our next stop was Diaz point, on the other side of the peninsula. This was the first part of the area where European explorers had landed on in 1488, a historic moment much better remembered than Shark Island. Also, we had heard there was a cafe there, and we were starving.

It was not easy finding our way to Diaz point, as the signs were not marked clearly, and even our guidebook's maps were ambiguous. The rocky roads seem to blend into the weird moonscape that surrounds Luderitz, so sometimes it was hard to just follow the road. It was almost a test of character, to see who could make it there. To add as an extra challenge, the lands around the road were all surrounded by the diamond-rich Sperrgebiet and more signs warning diamond smugglers against trespassing. And yet it was so easy to accidentally drift into the Sperrgebiet; it just takes one wrong turn off an unclear signpost - and then frantic reversing of the truck.

Eventually, we made it to Diaz Point, where we discovered that the cafe was closed.

As with the rest of Luderitz, there weren't much diversions at Diaz Point to entertain visitors - a rusty playground, a mini-golf course entirely in sand and rocks, and a grave marking the spot where a soldier had died of hunger. Alina drily remarked that we might have been saved from such a fate if the darn cafe had only been open.


what a closed cafe looks like.


there wasn't exactly a food court here.

Instead, like Agate Bay, Diaz Point was more of a quiet contemplation sort of place. We crossed the wood bridge and climbed up to the point where stood a replica of the cross set up by the Portuguese explorer Diaz, who had discovered this place over five hundred years ago. The ocean waves crashed furiously against the rocks and I found myself mesmerized again, like I had been at Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia. We sat on the steps and watched. There was a small island nearby full of seals, resting on the rocks watching us. I thought about how if one kept going across the body of water I was looking at, we'd hit South America.






seals on the island, watching us.


Till, pretending to be a Portuguese explorer.

Soon enough our hunger became unbearable, so we drove back to Luderitz, across the moonscape, wondering if we had sent home photos of us standing here, could we convince anyone that we had been to the moon? We ordered burgers on toast with milkshakes at the Waterfront's Sea Breeze Cafe, and then at that point I departed from my European travel companions. They were on the hunt for Internet. I knew from experience that it was going to be a hopeless cause.

For dinner I ate a plate of mussels drowned in garlic butter and camembert cheese with two glasses of South African dry white, and turned in at the hostel early. It was still empty. I dozed off on the couch watching too many episodes of CSI and woke up in the morning to the loud honking of my ride, a combie van driver named Auntie Anna. She had a tendency to curse up a storm in Afrikaans but she was absolutely sweet to me. The combie van made about six stops after me, going back and forth between the township and the city, picking up fish at various points. I thought about asking why they didn't make all the stops in the townships at once, and all the stops in town after, but gave up on trying to be a North American ass obsessed with efficiency. The other locals in the van were curious about the presence of an Asian foreigner in the van but were too hot and tired to talk to me, which was what I preferred. It was a long hot ride back to Windhoek. I opened the window a little to let a little air circulate, but it was all hot desert air coming in. We mostly slept in the van and ate little. I tried to ration my water.

It was unpleasantly hot and crowded, but I soon came to realize that I enjoyed these combie van rides. The desert landscape was, as always, breathtaking and the mountains made such strange sharp formations. I've grown accustomed now to sweating through my jeans. As crowded as these rides get, and as hot as the desert gets, I knew I was going to miss these road trips once I got back to Canada.



"Now, looking out the tunnel of trees over the ravine at the sky with white clouds moving across in the wind, I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long, sudden-ended always; making time stand still..."
-Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

the ghost town of Kolmonskop

My new European companions' decision to check out Kolmanskop made me happy, partly because I now had some company, but also because it saved me from having to try to hitch a ride out to the ghost town for a second day.



Kolmanskop looks like a mirage from afar. For miles you drive, and there is nothing but sand dunes in a desert that looks completely uninhabitable. And then from the sand rises this little town that once was the thriving centre of the diamond industry for decades, until the diamond business moved elsewhere and the entire town shut down, leaving it to the sands to slowly devour. Now the town is a still snapshot of the 1920s, with sand as its main inhabitants. Kolmanskop was the main reason why I had taken the long road trip down to Luderitz. I had seen photos of the place before, and I wanted to see a dead town for myself.


in the middle of nowhere: wow, that's a lot of nothing.

We arrived late and joined in the tour that was already in progress. Unfortunately, that particular tour was entirely in German. Luckily I had German friends to translate for me. What they translated for me was:

1. There are hyenas in the buildings. Watch out for the hyenas.
2. There was snakes in the buildings. Watch out for the snakes. They are poisonous.
3. Don't steal any diamonds.
4. Don't cross any fences. The bored guards will shoot you.

Eventually the tour ended and we were free to explore the ghost town on our own. I am a writer and I like to write, but I feel like these pictures can say so much more than I could ever describe.
















photo from the old days when people lived here and gathered for parties. Nice flag.


"Dahling, this house looks divine. I think we should buy it," I said.
"I think we should buy that one," Claudio replied.



"I get this this room, with the balcony," said Till.
"Which one is my room?" asked Claudio.
"You can get the closet."

All I can say is that Kolmanskop was one of the most surreal things I had ever seen in my life. We trekked through the desert from building to building, as sand built up inside our sneakers. In each old building you could imagine how people had once lived - the tour guide had described some of the houses the way that a real estate agent would sell a house - but now all you could see was the piles of sand leaking in through the walls, the windows, and the broken floorboards. No diamonds though, and no ghosts - this time, anyway.


the boys take a rest after exploring the ghost town in the hot desert. They are slightly sunburnt.

Shark Island in Luderitz

When I ask my friends what the Afrikaans word for "soon" is, they have no answer. The closest they can come up with the concept of "soon" is the Afrikaans word for "now", or sometimes "now now". Namibia has a different concept of time. "Now" does not mean what North Americans perceive as now.

This truth came out when I set off for a weekend trip alone to Luderitz. My plan was to take the cheapest way there, which was by combie van. Unfortuantely, these vans do not leave until there are enough people going to the same destination, so sometimes you end up waiting and waiting. I waited six hours, to be exact. It was a real test of patience and ability to lie on a metal bench and do nothing for six hours. I watched two stray cats hunt a grasshopper. I watched people wander in and out of the Rhino Park Beauty spot. I watched a man beat on a young boy trying to hawk some wares. I watched a security guard dance to pass the time.

My patience was finally rewarded by the universe with a slightly less-decrepit-than-usual combie van which actually had headrests, for which I was grateful because it meant I could sleep without leaning on my neighbours. This was good because I was wedged between the tall gruff driver and a large coloured man from Walvis Bay.

"So, you are from China?" he asked me.

"No," I answered. Sometimes I think I should get a shirt.

The roads to the south of Namibia are flat fields of tall green and yellow grass, reminding me a bit of driving past cornfields back home in Ontario. There are less mountains here. It was a long drive, about ten hours, and we didn't pull into Luderitz until midnight, even though I had arrived at the combi vans at 8AM. It was too dark to see much of Luderitz at all. All I could see were the trees by the side of the road, looking like ghosts.

When I woke up, it was a beautiful morning with clear skies and church bells were ringing like in a French song. The streets of Luderitz were completely empty and quiet except for church sermons. There seem to be a lot of churches in Luderitz.

Luderitz is an old German harbour town on the coast. It's an odd location for a town, sandwiched between the cold Atlantic ocean and the massive desert. You basically drive past the dunes for what feels like forever until the road suddenly spits you out into this quaint little town of bright coloured houses and the ocean. It's a lot farther away from Windhoek, so unlike Swakopmund, it doesn't have a huge tourism industry. In fact, with its main industries being fisheries and diamonds, you could almost swear they don't want tourists, especially since the town is surrounded by the intriguingly frightening Sperrgebiet National Park, which despite being a national park, is extremely forbidden to everyone, lest anyone try to sneak in and smuggle out diamonds. Those DO NOT ENTER OR ELSE OUR BORED GUARDS WILL SHOOT YOU just aren't that tourist friendly.



Luderitz is a better reflection of the kind of tourists that Namibia tends to attract: richer, older folks, often German, with their own cars. The destinations in Namibia tend to be far apart, there isn't much of a public transportation, and the terrain is rough and sometimes dangerous. It's not like Cape Town: you don't see a lot of teenagers, and you don't see a lot of backpackers. I discovered this when I realized I was the only person in a 8-bed dorm in the town's only backpackers hostel. Also, you need a car to get to any of the "tourist" destinations in Luderitz.

I don't mind this at all, because it also tends to mean that every where you go, it tends to be quiet and uncrowded, making you feel as though you are experiencing something that was meant just for you. I like trying the off-the-beaten-track stuff, so I set out on foot, breathing in the refreshing smell of sea salt in the air. My goal was to try to hitch a ride to Kolmanskop, the ghost town that lay about eleven kilometres inland from Luderitz. I hung around the safari shop, hoping to find other ghost town thrill seekers. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to be heading there that day, and I was not feeling up to an eleven kilometre hike in the height of the heat in the desert, so I had to abandon that plan for the day.

I asked the lady at the safari shop where there was a beach near here, and she told me there was a small one at Shark Island.

I took the long way there and took some pictures of the town along the way.




the famous brightly coloured painted houses of luderitz. I liked this practice of using vibrant colours. It reminded me a little of Jelly Bean Row in St. Johns, Newfoundland.


this gambling hall was pink.


the famous goerke haus, rising from the rocks


the jetty


luderitz: land of barren desert, palm trees, mountains, and the ocean


a church on the rocks, pretty much in the middle of nowhere


Shark Island was accessible by foot, although apparently people don't do that very often, because the guard at the gate was surprised to see me show up on my own. He asked me for my lunch. I offered him some crackers. He let me in.

What most people don't know about Shark Island is that it used to be a concentration camp. One of the world's first concentration camps, in fact, where the Germans exterminated thousands of Nama and Herero people in horrific conditions during the Namibian war, 1904 to 1908. Many historians believe that the techniques practiced here developed into the massive concentration camps during the Holocaust. Now Shark Island is a resort.

I've been to Auschwitz. I did the tours and saw the bunkers. There is nothing of the sort at Shark Island. There is no sign explaining the significance of the site, nothing to hint of its gory past. There actually isn't much at all at Shark Island, actually, and it would be a bit of a stretch to call it a resort. It's mostly barren land, all rock, with a sort of desolate feeling, surrounded by crashing ocean waves. I was struck by how small the area is, and wondered how they could kill thousands of people here. It was one of the reasons why I had decided not to camp here.



I found the beach and sat down to eat my lunch, a carton of Oshikandela and a meat pie from the OK Grocers (which was OK). Back when this place was a concentration camp, the Germans would take the bodies of the victims that had died, and decapitate them, sending the skulls to Germany for scientific research to "prove" the physical superiority of the Aryan race. Then they would dump the bodies on the beach for the sharks to feed on when the tide came in. Shark Island. And now I was having a picnic on the beach.



I was approached by a young barefoot Namibian schoolgirl whose family was having a braai nearby (yes, on Shark Island, former concentration camp, now Sunday afternoon family barbecue spot). She introduced herself as Shannon.


shannon and her brother, playing on the beach

"Why are you sitting on the rock and not in the sand?" she asked me.

"Because I'm afraid of finding bodies on the beach," I replied.

"What?"

I realized that she hadn't eaten her lunch yet, so I decided not to explain. "I'm afraid of ghosts," I replied, which seemed to make a lot more sense to Shannon for some reason.

"Why aren't you swimming?" she asked.

"Because I'm afraid of sharks," I answered. Which I thought was a perfectly sensible answer.

She and her little brother kept me company as we watched the tide lap around the rocks, enjoying the view of the ocean and the beach, which seemed to be covered in more oyster shells than sand. Her brother told me the story of how once it snowed in the nearby town of Aus, and everybody went out in hordes to Aus to see the snow. Shannon pointed out the seals swimming in the water. They told us that they planned to study hard so they could one day visit Canada.

The waves were so rhythmic and soothing that I found myself falling asleep. When I woke up, Shannon and her brother had returned to their family to eat and they were replaced by a young German man sitting next to me, trying to talk to me with his limited English. I eventually figured out that he wasn't a hallucination or a ghost coming back to haunt the concentration camp, mainly beacuse I feel like ghosts wouldn't be hanging around in their underwear. I followed him back to his campsite on the other side of Shark Island, where his friends were all also in their underwear, because it was laundry day.

They were four young Europeans travelling through Namibia the way that tourists travel through Namibia, with a giant truck and an incredibly-equipped camping kit that could survive a Siberian winter. The girl, Alina, greeted me and explained that they had been travelling for days together and they were glad for a chance to talk to someone new. They invited me to stay for dinner and drinks. I thought, why not? It hadn't been my intention to have a social party on the site of a former concentration camp - with Germans - but on the other hand, I didn't have any dinner plans.



As they began cutting up vegetables and tending to the braai fire to cook the meat, they told me about themselves. One was an archeologist, another a high school teacher, and the other a guitarist in a Swiss garage rock band. The fourth guy, Lars, never said a word the entire time, so I didn't know what he did, but he did a splendid job of cooking.

While the boys cooked, Alina and I climbed up the rocks and watched as dolphins played in the water near the island. The sun was beginning to set. It was a pretty surreal moment, with the dolphins, the sunset, the delicious smell of braai cooking, the newfound friends, all on a spot that had seen some of the worst suffering man has inflicted on others. But maybe that's a different way of Namibia healing itself, transofrming a place of horror into a place of peace and having a nice time with friends.

sundowner at rivers crossing, sunrising in khomasdal

I'd always heard that Rivers Crossing was a beautiful spot for a sundowner, but hadn't had a chance to check it out because the lodge is about five kilometres out of Windhoek and you need a car to get there - a nice sturdy one too, to make it over the rocky gravel roads.

Luckily, on one of my last nights in Windhoek, AN and S invited me to go for a sundowner with them. They have a nice study car. A station wagon, inf act, which fascinates Namibians everywhere, as they keep offering to buy it off S. They don't really have stations wagons here. I like AN and S because they let me intrude on their cool dates.

I love sundowners. It's a tradition I'd like to bring back to Ottawa. Basically you get to a high spot, and then you have a drink as you watch the sun go down. This may be a bit difficult in Otttawa, which is very flat and has no tall mountains.


We were seated at a table outside next to a swimming pool. I'm pretty sure this pool has the best view that any swimming pool in the world has. It was eerily silent on the top of the mountain at Rivers Crossing, with everything calm and still except for the wind blowing in our faces. It was chilly. AN and I had forgotten our sweaters, so the waiter gave us towels to wrap ourselves up from the cold. I couldn't tell whether we looked extremely cool, like the babes on Baywatch, or extremely dorky, wearing towels at a posh place.

The sunset was absolutely breathtaking. What is it about sunrise and sunsets that fascinate humans so much? Is it part of our fixation on changes in nature, like equinoxes and solstices, watching day turn into night and then back to day? Or does the sunset signify a socially acceptable time to start drinking without being judged as a boozer?


Whatever it is, the sunset at Rivers Crossing was pretty great. It's the rainy season in Windhoek so there were enough clouds in the sky, reflecting pink streaks from the sunset. It was an incredible sight: on one side of the horizon was the setting sun. On the other side of the horizon facing the sunset was a double rainbow.

(OMG WHAT DOES IT MEAN)


You could see the sprawling city of Windhoek in the distance, streetlights on and blinking. It was a very romantic moment for S and AN. And me, the third.

After the dark settled in, I had a very different night in Khomasdal, my new neighbourhood. I went out with nenad, WK, and Wi11be to Wells', a neighbourhood bar in Khomasdal, and incidentally, the first bar I had ever been taken to when I first arrived in Windhoek. As usual, the sight of an Asian woman in a coloured bar drew some attention from the locals, which produced the following conversation

man: Nee hau.
me: What?
man: Nee hau.
me: Why are you meowing at me like a cat? Woof woof.

This is my #1 most common conversation with Namibian strangers. #2 is the following:

man: So are you from China?
me: No, I'm from Canada.
man: Oh, you must take me to Canada.
me: Why do you want to go to Canad? It's very cold in Canada
man: It can be cold in Namibia too! Sometimes it gets down to 10 degrees.
(gloria suddenly starts laughing like a hyena)

Nevertheless, I have great conversations. We stayed out for a couple of drinks, and then hitched a ride home with ZK's old friend from high school, which, as I found out, was actually only last year. It was a bit odd getting teenagers to drive me home - I feel like the natural order of life should make it the other way around. At any rate, we rode home in the back of his pickup truck, which looks like a really cool thing to do but is actually quite uncomfortable. And then everyone stayed up for more drinks and conversation until the sun rose.

the namibian children send me off with song and dance

My last days at the Bernard Noordkamp Centre, the after school program in Katutura that I've been volunteering at, has been one of the most beautiful moments during my stay in Namibia.

I arrived on one of my last days, with the intention of reading to the kids about the dangers of young people drinking (ironically, i had plans to go to the bar afterwards) when I discovered that the children had prepared a concert for volunteers like me who were leaving. They formed a choir of about fifty kids, all between grade 1 to 7 (with a few older kids helping to lead), and musical accompaniment only in the form of one girl hitting a drum.



It was absolutely adorable.

I always love listening to Namibians sing, because it seems like they all love to sing. Unlike many North Americans who needed to be pumped full of liqur and standing in front of a karaoke machine, many Namibians will sing, just because you ask them to, and they'll often break out into spontaneous harmony as well as call-and-response. I'm also impressed by their ability to dance in coordination with the music, which is something I've never really gotten the hang of myself. I just can't get enough of it. Especially with children singing. I love the sound of children's voices.



the kids sang a variety of songs in different African languages, many of them being spiritual songs, as I gathered from all the references to Jesus.



The children ended their concert with a touching song that was specially sung for us.

"good-bye our dear friends,
we shall never forget you
good-bye our dear friends
we shall never forget you
although you are very far
we shall never forget you..."

At the end of the song, they all filed off stage in a single line and gave me a hug. Every single kid in the program. All one hundred and fifty or so of them. That was a lot of hugs. Some of the kids were crying because they were upset about us leaving. I thought my heart was going to break. I may or may not have also had a tear in my eye.


the drummer


dancing


the biggest smile I've ever seen on Marybeth's face.


I decided to give back to the kids by giving my own little performance, in form of a singalong. I taught the kids a few North American classics such as "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly", "There's a Hole in my Bucket", the theme song from the Elephant Show, and of course, "A Pizza Hut" (the consumerist junk food addict in me can't help but come out sometimes). The kids had never heard of these songs before, but they learned quickly and were singing the songs well after the concert - especially the Pizza Hut song.

My favourite moment was when, in a moment of pure selfishness, I taught them the harmony parts for my band's song "See Me". The kids loved that tune too.



The music of Scary Bear Soundtrack has never sounded so good, being sung by sixty cute Namibian schoolchildren.

It was an absolutely lovely way to send me off. Thanks for all the good times and the good music, Namibia.

my morning commute

on my last day of work, I think it is fitting to describe the morning commutes to work in Windhoek.

In Klein Windhoek, which was where the white people historically had lived and therefore is located quite close to downtown, I only have a few kilometres to go to work, so usually I walk to work. I may or may not have become notorious all over town because of this, because no white person walks to work, and generally you only see black labourers walking on the side of the road. There are no sidewalks generally, so I usually make my way down the dirt shoulders, grass as high as my thighs, past snarling dogs locked behind high gates. I pass the same black labourers every day, and by now we greet each other with a friendly smile and "Goeie môre!" as if we are old friends. I think I also pass the same cars every day, because once in while, maybe at a bar or a restaurant, I'll have the following conversation with a random stranger:

Stranger: "Every morning I pass by this Chinese girl who is walking on the side of the road."

Me: "Oh, that's me."

Stranger: "Really? I'll honk next time I pass you."

Me: "Why don't you just give me a ride??"

I've since moved out of my flat in Klein Windhoek and am now living with my friend Nenad in Khomasdal, the township where they relocated all the coloured people during the apartheid regime. Incidentally, if we were still living under South African apartheid, I think Khomasdal is probably where I, as an "Asiatic", would have been forced to live. I find this to be a very interesting thought.

Commuting to work from Khomsdal is different. The townships are very far from downtown, which was a deliberate decision by the white apartheid authorities, and is a big pain in the butt for basically every worker in the township who has to get to work in the town every morning. Windhoek doesn't have public transportation, not really. I mean, I see these big buses that go around sometimes, but nobody except some of the workers seem to figure out how they work. I suppose you might consider the fifteen or so people crammed in the back of a pickup truck to cound as public transportation, or maybe at least carpooling. But for most people, the main commute to work involves taking a shared taxi.

Taking a public taxi in Namibia is an art form that takes a lot of practice. In Canada, you would hail a cab, jump in, tell him where to take you, and watch nervously as the meter goes up and up and up.

In Namibia, you hail a cab, tell him through the window where you want to go, and then if he chooses to take you, you get in and hope nervously that he won't rob you. At the same time, you try to avoid the stray dogs on the street. On the bright side, any cab ride will only cost you one or two Canadian dollars. On the downside, you have to figure out how to tell him where to take you. Cab drivers (or Namibians in general) don't do street names, directions, or anything that North Americans are used to using to get places. Instead, you have to pick a nearby landmark, a landmark that cab drivers will recognize. I have learned that if I went to direct a cab to my work, they will not recognize "the National Library" which is next door, but they do for some reason know where Kenya House is, which is this abandoned falling apart building that nobody uses anymore which is apparently under construction and has been under construction since God knows when. I have no idea why cab drivers know this.

Also, you can't just hop in the cab and say "Good morning, sir, I'd like to go to the National Library." That's too many words and for some reason they have trouble understand North American accents. Instead, you have to drop your voice very deep, almost to a growl, and bark "Kenya House, nee?" If the cab driver grunts "Unh" he'll take you. If he says "Ah", he won't. Those two grunts sound very similar so you have to train your ear to hear for it. Otherwise you might reach for the car door to get in, only to have him drive off with half your leg in the car.

White Namibians never take shared taxis, which they refer to as "black taxis". They have their own cars. To their credit, they often offer me rides when they see me walking on the side of the road or trying to hail a "black" taxi. Or they'll just honk, because they recognize me.

On another note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILL. Will is the brilliant artist who draws cartoons for me, including the logo for this blog. Everyone say happy birthday to Will.

crashing parties at Lake Oanob

AN and S. were going to a party in Lake Oanob, just outside of Rehoboth. I thought to myself, I like lakes, and I like parties. I decided to invite myself along.


Turns out that the party I was crashing was full of diplomatic folks from the American Embassy and the United Nations. Luckily they were all very nice and welcoming, probably because I told them I was from the embassy of China. Just kidding. I would never do that. I'd say something more believable, like, the embassy of Ukraine.

The hosts had rented out a waterfront chalet at the Lake Oanob Resort and were throwing a three-day long party. These folks knew how to party. First of all, the chalet had a magnificent view.


view from the chalet


some of the resort chalets
This was pretty awesome, even though it was the only chalet at Lake Oanob that didn't have a name from the Lion King (all the other chalets at the resort were Nala, Pumbaa, Mufasa, Rafiki, etc...).

More importantly, however, the first thing that greeted party guests when they arrived at the party was a lamb on a stick.

Note: vegetarian readers may choose to skip the next few photos and instead read this thought-provoking article about the problematic politics of PETA written by my vegan activist friend Ryan



Mary had a little lamb, and it was damn delicious
Pretty damn awesome. I actually made it far enough into the chalet to grab myself a beer, and then spent the rest of the time sitting by the lamb roast, watching art happen. There is nothing really more beautiful than the sound of liquified meat fat dripping off a bone and sizzling in the coals below.


art

what happened after the lamb was ready to be served was a different form of art. There are many ways to hack up the meat after it has been roasted. My friend Hector once had a boy's night where he built his own lamb roast contraption in his backyard, which he cooked for nine hours, even cradling an umbrella over it when it began to rain, and after it was ready, he just laid the whole meat out on the kitchen counter and the men attacked it with their knives, eating with their bare hands.

My fiance was trained at the top culinary school Cordon Bleu and cooks for a living. He's always going on and on about how a proper chef must have the best tools to cut meat. What you need is a top quality knife.

Or a band saw.


when men cook.

watching a man use a massive power tool to slice up cuts of meat was both fascinating and nerve-wracking at the same time. I had my first encounter with band saw machines in high school drafting class. The teacher had put little piece of tape to indicate the area we were supposed to keep our fingers out of, so that we didn't hack off any digits. This toolman/cook definitely had his fingers well past the line. I was afraid but I couldn't stop watching. Also, every once in a while, some hot burning fat oil would fly off the machine and hit the children watching nearby. Mmm, delicious burning pain. Afterwards, I was sorely tempted to lick the blade, which i knew would taste delicious and nothing like the sawdust usually found on bandsaws.

Dinner was delicious, the kind of delicious you can only get when you push a lamb through a power tool.

Out near the resort bar, I ran into Lize's husband, who was taking his kids out.

"What are you up to this weekend?" he asked me.

"I'm crashing a party full of Americans," I replied.

"Ah," he replied. "I was going to ask if you wanted to join us on our big boat, but that sounds like a noble cause."

I opened my mouth to answer, and then wondered for a minute which would be a better way to spend the day, powerboating or eating baby animals. You know how I eventually decided.

Besides, some of the folks were taking the kayaks out. Lake Oanob is an artificially constructed lake that lots of city folks like to visit when they want to get away from the city. It seems to be more or less the only place around Windhoek you can ride a big power boat. Personally, I wouldn't see a point in owning a speed boat in a city that is not built near any body of water in a country that is flanked by two deserts, but a lot of rich Namibian families bring their boats there and whip around the lake, motors roaring, children screaming, and giraffes wondering what the heck all the racket is.

I am Canadian, and kayaking is more my speed.





there was also the option of taking these aquacycles out, but I still have my dignity.

Kayaking was lovely. We braved the waves slapping against the side of the kayaks caused by the wake of the powerboats, and paddled our way around the lake, approaching a hillside of sheep grazing near the shore, looking peaceful and delicious.


and ducks! lekker!

Followed by swimming, with our choice of the lake or the swimming pool.






The whole party had the relaxed, chilled-out atmosphere of days I've spent at the cottage with my friends. Some summer tunes playing on someone's iPod, the cheers of men playing some game on the lawn nearby, the warm sun on your skin as you lounge on the deck, wondering if you should take a nap, go for another swim, or get a beer. Sometimes it's nice if that's the biggest choice you have to make for the day. It was a pretty sweet party.


attempts at self-portrait