Post from the coast

 

I’m just wrapping up my shadowing experience in Luderitz before I head back to Okahandja tomorrow morning. It’s been quite a trip. It began with a 5:30 am drive from Okahandja to Windhoek. After arriving at Windhoek at 6:30am, we had to wait at a combi station for 2.5 hours because the combi wasn’t going to leave until it was full and that took a while. We were then taken to Keetmanshoop, which took roughly 5 hours. The ride was a tight squeeze and smelled like armpit but it could’ve been worse. We then had another hour wait before getting a lift to Luderitz from Keetmanshoop. Although the entire journey from start to finish took 13 hours, I did enjoy it quite a bit because I was able to see how beautiful and diverse the scenery in Namibia can be. It ranged from mountains to open fields to canyons to the deserts to a coastal view. Additionally, I saw baboons, oryxes, warthogs, springboks, wild horses and ostriches! It was pretty cool. (Side note: Luderitz recently put up a Hollywood style sign -shown above- which cost thousands of dollars, but more recently, the Namibian government has renamed the town and constituency into ǃNamiǂNûs and this has upset a lot of the locals here and the whole situation is a bit of a mess at the moment)

As for Luderitz, it is a nice little German style town on the coast of Namibia and it definitely has a distinctive atmosphere. From the picture below (it's not a great photo, but its the best I could do), you can see that one half of the town (right side) is filled with colonial town houses, and on the other hand, you have a bunch of shanties where poverty is widespread (left side).

There is also a place called Shark Island in Luderitz, and in the early 1900’s, it was a concentration camp for members of the Herero and Damara tribes. Thousands of people were killed at this site during the Herero and Namaqua genocide and now, it is a campsite where tourists come to enjoy their holidays. I find it somewhat eerie that the location where one of the biggest tragedies in Namibia's history took place has been turned into a camping site for tourists. 

On a different note, the purpose of my trip to Luderitz is to shadow another volunteer and his partner organization. The organization that I came to shadow is COSDEC, which I briefly described in my last post. It is a small training facility that provides practical skills training to members from the local community, primarily out of school youth. This includes skills such as bricklaying, welding, food services, plumbing and more, and the aim is to prepare the trainees to become active members in the local economy. This shadowing experience has given me the chance to witness how an NGO Namibia operates before I’ll have to learn the ropes at my new site in a couple weeks. It’s been beneficial learning about what COSDEC hopes to achieve over the next year or so and seeing the different of tasks they face on a daily basis. I expect to face some similar challenges with my upcoming job throughout the next two years.

I've also met a few PCV's who are currently working and living in Ludertiz and it’s been nice hanging out with volunteers from other groups, even though I like my group a lot. They have been very welcoming and I've enjoyed getting to know them. Tonight, we are having a braai (a BBQ in Afrikaans) and then possibly going out one last time before I leave tomorrow morning. So far, Luderitz has been very relaxing :)

Overall, it’s been a great experience coming down to Luderitz for a few days because the odds that I’ll get another opportunity to travel this far south of Namibia seem rather slim, so I’m glad I got the chance to see it before heading way up north to Oshakati/Ongwediva in a couple weeks.