a lesson in afrikaner rock

Confession: I have been speaking Dutch to people here, and they understand me, and they just assume that my Afrikaans is really bad. Which, really, it is.

The great thing about leaving Canada and coming to Namibia in September (besides skipping Canadian winters) is that while all the summer festivals are winding down in Canada, they’re all just beginning in Namibia. And nobody loves music festivals like I do.

Today, after properly nursing our hangovers from the night before, we decided to check out Hart van Windhoek, a giant music festival held in Windhoek’s Olympia stadium, sort of like Ottawa’s Bluesfest, packed into two days. We had missed British boy band Westlife last night, and I had no idea about any of the bands that were playing tonight (it didn’t help that the entire website is in Afrikaans), but we knew it’d be a fun adventure so we set off.


can you guess who the festival sponsors are?




We soon figured out why everything here was written in Afrikaans, and not English, the official Namibian language. D remarked that it looked as though all of the white people in Namibia had gathered together and shown up at this event. It would have gone unnoticed back in Canada, but the large gathering of white people was pretty conspicuous in Africa. Clearly this was going to serve as a big juxtaposition from last night, spent in the coloured persons district of Khomasdal.
And then I realized I was going to get a chance to experience the Afrikaner rock, including:

• Nicolis Louw: I wondered, is he the Afrikaner cousin of Nick Lowe? And then he opened his set with the Gummy Bears theme song.

• Bobby van Jaarsveld: Afrikaner Christian rock bad boy. I am not making this up. I know this not because I understand Afrikaans, but because the only song he sang in English was about Yeshua the Messiah, King of Kings.

• Kurt Darren who does not at all look like a pop teenage heartthrob, but I really liked his pop-dance sound a lot. Also, I think it was him that did a cover of the Black-Eyed Peas “I Gotta A Feeling”, which the deejay had played at the club last night. I used to dance to this song at clubs in Amsterdam, surrounded by Dutch people singing along. Now I was hearing it in Africa, with Afrikaners singing along

• Freshly Ground, one of the few mixed race acts that we saw that night, who did a pretty neat job of incorporating different indigenous African styles. They also did a cover of Shakira’s Waka Waka. I used to dance to this song with my mom for our Zumba class. It was pretty surreal to hear people singing “This is Africa” IN AFRICA.

• A duo performance between Romanz (a classical vocal fourtet/boy band) and Nianell (female pop opera singer). This was by far the most unexpected performance for me tonight. At times it was like Afrikaner Josh Groban/Il Divo on crack. They were tight, talented, but…I certainly was not expecting that. It was total culture shock in a strange way.

if you want to know what I’m trying to talk about

• Theuns Jordaan: his profile describes him as bluesy, but what I was hearing was Afrikaner country rock, yep.

While I thoroughly enjoyed my immersion in to Southern African music, what I enjoyed the most was the festival food. I dug up what Dutch I remembered to figure out what exactly the food vendors were offering. Ham en kaas toasties! Pankoek! Koffie!



I had a Kalahari burger – I have no idea what the meat was made out of, but from the taste I am that certain it was not beef, and that it was probably some kind of game. Given the fact that it was called a Kalahari burger, i am guessing it is a desert animal, MAYBE A LION. maybe i ate a lion burger.


Lion burger?

Allison had magical potato spirals, which I consider to be a work of art.





frozen yogurt! and Tafel Lager. is it possible to have too much Tafel Lager?


you can never have too much Tafel Lager

Overall, it was a pretty neat experience, although the total Afrikaans immersion – and not knowing exactly what people are saying means or why they were gathering – made me a little bit uneasy. But maybe that was just from the bats flying ominously overhead, toward the rolling desert mountains.


but i have to admit i don't really understand the meaning behind this guy's shirt...other than what I think he means.

clubbing in khomasdal

The German researcher in the next unit has just had her dog neutered and the poor thing has been wandering around with a cone around his head, confused. Cute thing. We’ve been enjoying our stay at the guest house. The rooms are relatively clean, showers fantastic, and every morning I have a delicious breakfast of avocado, cheese, and random mysterious meat on toast, along with fruit and yogurt and rooibos tea. But we will be moving soon: we have apartments now! It’s located in a nice neighbourhood in Klein Windhoek, the kind of neighbourhood I could never afford to live in, back in Canada. My apartment has a beautiful terrace that is shaded by a palm tree. Clearly this means I need to throw some patio parties.

Yesterday, the folks at my office held a braai (a special barbecue) on the roof terrace of our work, which had a brilliant view of the cityline. I got to try my first braais-cooked mutton and mysterious sausage - i think it was boerewors, juicy Afrikaans spiced sausage made up of various game meats and fat. There was also a lot of Tafel Lager beer, South African wine, and this blue vodka drink called Red. We ate and drank and entertained until the sun went down. Some of the coworkers had brought their children into the office, and when someone threw on an iPod full of African tunes (plus Black Eyed Peas), the little kids were dancing up a storm. Seriously, these kids have such great dance moves, they’d put everyone I know to shame. Soon everyone was dancing on the roof, chucking their empty beers under a palm tree. My dancing, not so impressive. But I did meet an Asian volunteer who instructed me on where to find kimchi and Chinatown in this country. She may have saved my life.


cooking on the braai


braaivleis: mutton and mysterious sausage


view of the sunset from the office rooftop

After the party winded down, we were told that there was no way we could go home so early. It was a Friday night. So Yolanda and Sophi, two wonderful Namibian coworkers, took us to their neighbourhood in Khomasdal to keep the good times rolling.

During apartheid, Khomasdal was the township where “coloured” people were sent to live, apart from the white neighbourhoods. Since I’ve been spending most of my time in the affluent white parts of Windhoek, I had been secretly dying to visit the townships, but had been told to never go there without a local. Finally we had a chance!

First, we stopped at a local bar in Khomasdal because Yolanda and Sophi were convinced that we needed more alcohol. While stocking up on more Tafel Lager, I overcame my shyness (coming out of the fact that every bar patron was staring at me) and chatted with some of the folks. For the most part it was fine, although as we left, a drunk old man kept shouting “Hey Whitey!” But it occurred to me that he was probably yelling at Allison and not me, since, you know, I’m not white.

Then we hung out at Sophi’s home, where she shooed her two sons into their bedroom and then busted out some cake and her karaoke equipment. Cake and karaoke! A woman after my own heart! And there I found myself singing Celine Dion at the top of my lungs, to represent Canada (there was no Justin Bieber available). Sophi told me that we could not leave until hearing her favourite South African song…and to my surprise, she started playing Dolly Parton’s performance in South Africa of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”. So of course we all had to sing along too. Then they serenaded us with more African music, which, to my continuing surprise, also included Paul Simon’s Graceland record. The most stirring moment for me, though, was all of us coming together and singing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”. Nothing like singing a Lion King song while hanging out in Africa.

After all that singing and dancing in the living room, Yolanda decided that it was imperative that we go out to a night club in the area. I was excited at the thought, but also nervous, especially when Yolanda remarked cryptically that they should hire security to protect me (she was joking, Mom). Ever since arriving in Africa, I’ve been painfully self-conscious of how Asian I looked. I was especially going to stand out going clubbing in the Khomasdal township. Bring it on.

They took us to a club called The Purple Palms, a spacious dimly lit bar that was full of beautiful people and jumping. The deejay spinning dance tracks seemed to have only two phrases in his vocabulary (“PUT YOUR HANDS UP” “LADIES”), and intermittently interjected them between beats. Astonishingly, Sophi and Yolanda bought us another round. They are, by the way, the greatest. Yolanda told me that we were being initiated in a traditional Namibian welcome which involved them telling us to do things and us not saying no. this mostly involved Yolanda pouring me glasses of South African rose wine and her telling me to chug it in one go. So I’m suspicious as to whether this is a Namibian “tradition” or Yolanda having her kicks at watching us.

I didn’t draw as much attention as I was worried I would, although the most aggressively flirtatious attention I got was from a petite lesbian, which surprised me to no end – I haven’t seen any other openly gay folks, ever since arriving in Namibia. For the most part, people left me alone and I got to dance, while secretly hoping that nobody was judging me, my race, or my country on my terrible dance moves. After we left the club, two men ran out after us to tell us they thought I was beautiful. Sophi laughed, thanked them, and shooed them away. “Not you,” they said, “the Asian!” We all laughed and they went away. At least they were polite about it.


didn't want to seem like even more of an Asian tourist by taking a bunch of photos in the township, so this was the only (crappy) shot i got of khohmasdal.

settling into Namibia

We’ve been trying to navigate our way through the city these past few days, and there is just way too much to talk about! We also have the difficult task of trying to figure out who is being friendly (lots of Namibians are very friendly) and who is trying to scam us (our guesthouse sign reminds us that this country has a 40% unemployment rate, so some folks have to be creative about earning cash). Our experiences so far have been quite positive. We’ve also met up with some of the folks we’ll be working with at our organization, including a British guy D and a German woman E. Last night we went back to that NICE restaurant. Allison and I had gone to the adjoining bar the night before and were excited to try out the main cuisine. It’s definitely one of the fancier places in town (without getting to country club level fancy) but I really enjoyed the fact that you could try some great game dishes, even if they were served on fancy white square plates. E had the leg of springbok; I had oryx loin, which, yes, I ordered solely for its name.


oryx loin with delicious accompaniments whose names i don't know

But let’s be fair. You don’t want to hear about the fancy restaurants. You want to see pictures! Of Namibia!




there is a lot of desert here, as you might imagine.



Zoo park

There is an interesting monument here erected by the Germans, celebrating their defeat (read: massacre) of the Herero people who had tried to fight the colonialists. Interesting.



more of Zoo Park

I basically chose Namibia for its size. It’s bigger than the state of Texas, yet it has a population of only 2 million, with approximately 300 000 of them in the capital city, Windhoek. This makes Namibia the second least populated country in the world (after Mongolia). I’m fascinated with the idea of so much space. I was also interested in living in a city that had a fairly small population and yet served as the cultural, social, and political centre of the whole big country. It makes for an interesting looking downtown, one that is clearly lively and busy without being annoyingly crowded.

So far the only American chain store that I recognize here is not McDonalds, not Starbucks, but KFC. which is giant here. there are so many jokes I can make about this, but won't.


beautiful Windhoek...and KFC.

This is where I am going to be working:


more pictures will follow once i figure out how to not pay for internet!


I found this store in downtown Windhoek. It makes me miss home, a little.

Airport hell

Okay I’m awake now. I wanted to update yesterday but I hadn’t slept for 60 hours and was feeling a bit like a zombie.

As you can imagine, it was a long trip getting to Namibia. I didn’t sleep at all during the flight to London, so by the time I met up with Allison at Heathrow I was in a bit of a daze. It was an unusually sunny day in London. We grabbed a bite of macaroni and cheese at the Bridge Eating House (where sadly they were not offering any bridges as dishes), and then we tried to nap on the bench in front of the Burberry store, but was unfortunately continuously awakened by Katy Perry mall music being blasted to motive travelers to shop.


ah, Heathrow airport, you and your many benches that everyone tries to sleep on.

I didn’t get any sleep on my next overnight trip to Johannesburg either. For the record, an eleven hour flight is an extremely long flight if you don’t sleep through it. On the bright side, we got a glimpse of a full moon over Paris. Also, I was being extremely well fed – over the last few days, I’ve had so many airplane meals that I’m starting to like them, a lot.


view from the plane of the full moon over paris

Once we arrived at the Johannesburg airport, we looked for that sense of Africa, but ultimately we just got a sense of airport, which is pretty universal/international. One more flight, and we finally arrived in Windhoek, Namibia! By that point, I had not slept since Sunday night (it was now Wednesday), and I was pretty convinced I’m never going on a plane again.

These were my first impressions once arriving in Windhoek:
1. Palm trees! At the airport!
2. Wow, there is desert everywhere!
3. The airport is small.
4. This airport reminds me of Kamloops BC.

Driving on the left side of the road is really freaking me out. Also, it was really hot – at least I think it was. Our drive blasted the heater for the whole drive into the city, so maybe actually this is cold for Windhoek. Whatever. As we drove into the city, I got more and more excited. I’m in Namibia! I’m in Africa! And everything was so beautiful – the long stretches of desert, the rolling hills. And then there is downtown Windhoek itself! As we drove through, I got this weird feeling of falling in love with this place. Unfortunately, photos will have to wait because I forgot to bring the right cord to connect my camera to my computer (bangs head against wall).

We had a lovely first night here. We went to a NICE restaurant - the Namibian Institute of Culinary Education, with a scientist from Stanford doing research here, a German woman doing research on water in the north, a UN worker, and a retired businessman motorcycling his way through Africa. We got to try a yummy local beer called Camelthorn (which I keep accidentall referring to as Cameltoe). But most importantly, I got to sleep in a REAL BED, and slept for about eleven hours.



locally brewed Camelthorn (not Cameltoe) beer.

getting ready to leave for Namibia

i have this theory about this peculiar type of nostalgia that you get only if you're one of those people that moved around a lot as a kid. you were too young to consciously fondly reflect on your old hangout spots, so these old houses, yards, towns of your childhood are stockpiled way in the back of your memory and they seep out in pieces, randomly, in your night-time dreams in form of inexplicable images of places and people that you feel like you *know* but can't explain.

by the time i was 12, i had moved about 7 times. and in the last several years, i've moved another half a dozen times. that's a lot of different bedrooms and backyards to store up, so i constantly dream about neighbourhood streets and parks that i can't consciously remember but know they must be spots i'd once lived in. they get so mixed up that i seem to now dream about fictional worlds, a pastiche of places made up of a combination of new york, waterloo, hamilton, amsterdam, ottawa, vancouver, toronto, that don't actually exist anywhere except in my mind. but they seem pretty real, even when i wake up.

well, time to add to the confusion. today i leave for Windhoek, Namibia, a long journey (i don't actually arrive till later this week) that has suddenly become a lot more complicated by the fact that my body has decided to get sick now, hours before i'm scheduled to leave. ah well. while i'm not looking forward to the fun of nursing a stuffed nose during changing altitudes, i have some gravol that will hopefully knock me out for a good chunk of the flights, so i can keep on dreaming about new york-waterloo-hamilton-amsterdam-ottawa-vancouvver-torontoland.

see you guys on the other side!

Syracuse

For the last long weekend of the summer (your summer, anyway - my summer is actually just beginning, but more on that later), the family took off for our annual shopping trip to Syracuse, New York. This time, we brought along our boyfriends Kevin and Rob, who were brave enough to spend the whole weekend locked in a car with our quirky family, which has a tendency to randomly break into Korean while demanding more Starbursts.


aw, look how thrilled rob looks to be stuck with me?

Wikipedia says, "Syracuse is the largest U.S. city with the name Syracuse." Thank you, Wikipedia. As much as such a name promises metropolitan liveliness, there are actually parts of Syracuse that are not quite so party hard, and that was where my father picked our hotel. on the first night we arrived in Syracuse, we young ones wanted to go for a drink and enjoy some cheap American beer. Sadly, the only thing around our hotel (located in the airport district) were other hotels, which for some reason had no bars, despite what you might expect from Douglas Coupland novels about the sort of people who hang around airports. there appeared to be a happenin' wedding happenin' at the Ruby Tuesdays Restaurant full of the sort of people who go to weddings at Ruby Tuesdays, and we thought about wedding crashing at the last minute, but they must have foreseen our plans and the wedding party shut down as we approached. we were forced to seek consolation at the convenience store in the Marriott Courtyard, which was selling Canadian beer at mini-bar prices. we took our pricey homeland brew back to our hotel room and watched a reality TV show about prison inmates. alas. my kingdom for a drink.

No matter. we all knew the important purpose of our trip, and that was shopping at the Waterloo Premium Outlets. The next morning was hot and humid, weather i would be tempted to call "too sunny", but we set off for the shops, determined to acquire new booty at labour day weekend prices.


rob, shopping seriously


my sister and i buy matching shoes! obviously she copied me ;)

a couple hundred dollars later, we had sweated right through our clothes from our shopping efforts, so we went back to the hotel to change right into the new outfits we had bought (handy!). then we went out for dinner in downtown Syracuse. my friends had suggested various places. i had my eye set on Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, mainly because it had the words "dinosaur" and "barbecue", but also because i saw moms feeding their babies what looked like bottles of beer - turned out it was just root beer. but in the end we decided to check out a pasta place called Pastabilities, located in the heart of the historic Armoury Square. This was a lovely unpretentious restaurant with a very creative pasta menu. the men ordered the special Oktoberfest brew of Sam Adams beer, and I got myself what was essentially a meeting of mexico and italy: a lasgna made of black beans, jalapeno peppers, corn, sour cream...


mexican lasagna (my name for it)


I'll see you next time, dinosaur barbecue (best name for a place ever)

we took a stroll around downtown. Despite it being a Saturday evening, Syracuse was curiously deserted - presumably all the cool kids were out at the Fair. at Clinton Square, we only saw a handful of small children running past the "No Swimming" sign to cool off and wade in the big fountain on the hot muggy day. we were a little disappointed that downtown was not very lively yet, although we did get some entertainment when the children started throwing rocks at cars in traffic, prompting a bunch of cop cars to show up in a kindergarten version of a "COPS" show takedown. Syracuse cops have to keep busy, even if there's no one around.


Clinton Square, sans young vandals


the clinton square, look grand, if not busy


this memorial park was not looking so good after the earthquake several days earlier

still in search for some Syracuse action, we tried out the Carousel Center, which, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, turned out to be a lot busier. What is there to do at the Carousel Center, you may ask? Well, there's obviously the carousel.




waiting in line to go on the carousel


rob politely asks, "what am i doing on a carousel?"


I'm saying, "I might be wrong, but I think we are at least ten years older than everyone else on this carousel."



despite the fact that there are all sorts of magical things at the Carousel Centre, like a carousel, it seemed to have a pretty strict anti-youth policy. after 4PM, minors are not allowed to hang out at the mall unless accompanied by an adult. but if you don't want kids to hang around, why would you keep a magical merry-go-round in your mall?



the Carousel Centre was clearly was all the action was; that's where we learned that the city was on fire. sometimes literally. students hanging out at the mall were casually discussing how the Life Sciences building was burning down right now, according to the latest text messsage, and what a bummer that's gonna be when class starts in a few days.

there was also a security truck on fire outside.


burn, baby, burn: i smell burning bacon?

there was also an arcade at the mall, which seems like another terrible tactic for keeping troublemaking teens from loitering at the mall. my sister and her boyfriend immediately re-enacted a Scott Pilgrim scene, blowing everyone's minds at Dance Dance Revolution


and then they blew off the heads of a bunch of zombies.


dad and i try our hand (and feet) at Dance Dance Revolution. we're asian. it's in our blood.


mom races my sister. "Stop!" she yells. "I'm going too fast!"

and then the next day we went to the Great New York State Fair, which was basically confirmation that it's a zoo everywhere in Syracuse except downtown.


taking the bus to the fair


all of this is the fair.


and this.


yes, that would appear to be a giant lizard...or dinosaur?

the ferris wheel was absolutely terrifying. i'm not very good at heights, especially when moving slowly. i start instinctively naming all the personal injury law firms that i know.




this ride was too terrifying to even consider going on, but my sister and her boyfriend bravely enjoyed it.

there were parts of the fair that i really enjoyed. we checked out all the livestock exhibitions. in the dairy barn, they were showing a video presentation of a cow giving birth, and all the children watching were completely fascinated. Rob also had a bonding moment with a goat.


awww so cute




showing cows.

we enjoyed watching part of the cow show. Milk, beef, and veal all come from cows. Know what else comes from cows? BUTTER SCULPTURES.


BUTTER SCULPTURES

what was really the highlight for me, however, was the food vendors at the fair. it was pure American culinary culture. homefoods that you'd think would be familiar and fried enough already, but then the vendors turned it up one more level to make it all that much more fatteningly awesome. like jack daniels pulled pork. chicken finger subs. bacon wrapped deep fried mars bars. and whatever hell-spawned concoction this thing is:


hot beef sundae, eh?

this may explain why i am considered to be a size zero in Americaland. I am constantly astonished at the food portions, and even the size of the soft drink containers. needless to say, this wasn't one of those trips where i lost weight. the two dollar Pabst beers didn't help either.


CHEAP BEER. God bless Americaland