The last two weeks have been amazingly busy, and I am happy to be in Windhoek for even just a little bit so I can catch my breath. We started out our traveling with the rural homestay, which going into it I was nervous about. It turned out to be an amazing experience and so much more managable than I had envisioned. I loved my host family, they were really welcoming, and my host dad spoke English well so there was at least someone who I could communicate with. I spent a lot of time with my host mum, and she seems to like having me around even though our English communication was a little less. But she did like improving my Damara skills and forced me to use what I had learnt. Our days on the farm I did things like milk the goats, feed the chickens, help cook, collect firewood etc. The middle of the day was so hot that there was really not much opportunity to do anything. At night we would sit around the fire and eat, the stars were amazing every single night and you could actually see the Milky Way really clearly. I am really glad that I could end all my homestays on a good note and that I got so much out of it - there were a lot of times that I looked around and it felt surreal that I was on a farm somewhere in Northern Namibia.
After the homestay we went to Etosha for our game drives!! We were such stereotypical foreigners loving every minute of our safari. We saw so many animals; a rhino, elephants, lions, giraffes, ostriches, warthogs, springbok, kudo, oryx, and zebra. They were all a lot larger in real life than I had imagined, also ostriches are terrifying because they are about 12ft tall. My favorite were the giraffes, I liked the elephants but I had been told too many horror stories on my homestay about how elephants will wander into farms and destroy everything/trample people so I was a little more wary.
From Etosha we went further North, where I proceeded to get sick (again) and spend two/three days in bed, so not much to report from those days except for watching a lot of football. I watched more World Cup qualifying matches in one sitting than I ever thought possible. While we were in the North I was able to go to the Angolan border, so that was very cool. I really liked seeing more of Namibia, because the North is so different than Windhoek and you can see how issues of government and development differ by location. On our way back to Windhoek we stopped at the Osire refugee camp, which was a mindblowing experience. The camp has been there for the last 10 years, and 91% of those living in the camp are from Angola. We stopped to speak to the teachers, who gave us an idea of the political and social limbo that they are trapped in, and that they are more or less reliant on the UNCHR because they are not given any opportunities to support themselves. I really need to learn more about the camp and the Angolan civil war, which was the reason why most of the refugees ended up in Osire.
So now, I'm starting the third week of my crazy traveling. Tomorrow a few of us leave for the South, we are driving down to the Orange River to canoe until Fri/Sat. And then I will be glad to be back in Windhoek West for a while!
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