Semester at Sea Email: THE NIB (February 14)

The very first impression of every country we come to is the extremely sketchy port. It was a ten minute walk through broken seaport streets with giant crate towers just to get out the front gate. When we went to get off the ship we were greeted to a girl’s choir that sang and danced for over an hour in traditional Namibian outfits. It made me think of Starfire and all the choir tours we went on in high school—I suddenly missed home and Starfire. When the girls were done singing we mingled with them, the musicians on the boat pulling out their guitars to play them some songs.

Kristina and Kara looking out of their room’s window at the dancers below.

Laurin (another Chapman student who I didn’t know before coming on the boat) and I were walking out of the port and it began to hit us that it really was summer here. First purchase in Namibia: ice cream and water. We met up with Carolyn and Laura (who I had never met before) and we jumped in a taxi to go to Swakopmund. I’m not sure if the taxi we took was really a taxi, but the driver was nice and we only had to pay $2 each for the twenty minute drive to the German town. Other people had taxi drivers who would discreetly take down the taxi sign when driving past the police, but apparently everything can be bartered here, even tickets with the police. Out of the taxi window there was the beach on one side of the road and on the other side there were massive sand dunes, so while we were technically in the desert, the tropical sea breeze was everywhere.

 Laurin, Laura, and Carolyn having brunch in Swakopmund.

Swakopmund is a German influenced town with many colonial homes. The streets are all very wide (three car lengths?), and overall the town is very relaxed. Because I was in a group of girls I was dragged from store to store as they looked at clothes and trinkets. One store had a bench that “Bored Husbands” was inscribed on, where I took my place until they were done. The shops mostly had cool trinkets that just screamed “I’ve been to Namibia!” The perfect gift is one you can show off to friends where they have to believe you were there.

A homeless man came up to us as we were heading to the beach and followed us, grabbing my arm to try and get our attention. I had to raise my voice, and he quickly backed off repeating, “I don’ want to fight you…I don’ want to fight you…” He walked off and the girls all commented that they were glad they had a bearded guy in the group. I looked around for said bearded guy before realizing they were talking about me. It was a proud day for me and my beard. Side note: I now know I can grow a beard because people now make fun of me for not having one.

I’m trying to fix Carolyn’s hair, but I should fix my own instead.

We stumbled upon a restaurant on the beach and decided to get reservations, and apparently this is the best restaurant in Swakopmund as we found out later. We checked out the nearby pier before walking along the coast to find the marketplace. There are men who walk around with nutshells they have carved, and they try and find out your name so they can carve it onto the nuts so you feel obligated to buy them. We made it to a park where kids were playing in the hot sun, using shirts or cardboard squares so they didn’t have to touch the hot metal slide. Everything here, from the play structures to the benches, is painted in bright reds, yellows, blues, and greens. I had another ice cream.

The market was nearby, which was merely a bunch of blankets laid down on the ground with items laid on them. The tellers would see you coming and immediately jump to their feet and rush across the street, “Brotha, please, come over here and look…just look at my…just look, please…” I assured them I would make it over to them in due time when I was ready. While the tellers in Morocco were very aggressive and tried to intimidate you with their beards to get you into their stalls, the venders in Namibia tried to guilt you over: “Please, I have a family…I haven’t sold anything all day…please brotha…please…”

Bartering with people who may or may not have starving children back home was very guilt-inducing. You almost had to shut off that part of you in order to make a deal, and I’ve come to enjoy the bartering process. I would stand by the teller as he babbled on about why his things were special compared to all the other tellers selling the same useless junk, and I would crouch down and not say anything for ten minutes, concentrating on the items and almost ignoring him. I would then casually throw out a number, the teller shaking his head with a sad smile, “Please, come on…” It was very easy for me because I don’t buy souvenirs, so I could care less if I got the items or not, “50 Namibian dollars or nothing” (5 American dollars). I would walk away with the tellers chasing after me. Once the teller had dragged me back to his section I would fire off “100 Namibian dollars for both the (whatever) and the necklace!” He would be thrown off momentarily before countering with 160 N$, to which I would walk away again.

Nearby the girls were buying bracelets from Himba women. The Himba are natives who spread a mixture of Okra and butter all over their bodies, which makes their skin look dark red, and don’t wear clothing except for tiny loin cloths. They even mix it into their hair, creating clumps of hard clay that form dread-like strings that end in little balls of hair. When I walked up I didn’t notice who the people were at first, but suddenly I looked over and there were these naked red people selling bracelets. What was even more surprising was how natural this became after the first few minutes. Their breasts were bare for all the world to see, but for some reason they were not sexual and it was not something to be embarrassed about. Halfway through selling us bracelets one of the women began breast feeding right in front of us.

Nearby a girl who was obviously a tourist was trying to bargain with the venders. “How much is that? …That’s way too high…I don’t know how much I want to spend for it…just…not that…” I shook my head and laughed silently, for this girl had obviously never been to Marrakech. I love that I can now use these exotic places as personal references, often catching myself comparing experiences, people, and cultures to what I’ve witnessed in the Bahamas, Spain, Morocco, Namibia, and now South Africa.

We looped back through the town only to realize that everything closed down on the weekends after 1pm. The streets were empty, the shops were all dark, and seemingly nobody was around. We made our way back to the coast where we encountered the Tiger Reef Beach Bear. This bar had sand for floor and was made out of palm fauns. It was Valentine’s Day, but we kept forgetting because being in a new country is much more exciting than a holiday designed to make us single people feel like crap. That 70% girls statistic they throw around is worthless, but more on that in another email.

This picture was the first visual my parents received from me in a month.

We walked back to our restaurant and were seated down at our “reserved” table, laughing at all our teachers who came in without a reservation and were turned away. Our Global Studies professor muttered, “I hate it when the semester at sea students are smarter than us.” Victory! The conversation rate is roughly 10 Namibian dollars to 1 US dollar, so when you look and see that the fillet is 130 N$, you already feel like you’re saving money, and then you feel like you’re saving even more money when you realize that a similar steak in America would cost you 20 plus dollars! I sat at the best restaurant in Swakopmund eating a full course meal and watching the sun set.

With any great learning experience it’s imperative that some rules be broken. Now they told us that we were not able to rent motorized vehicles, but how could you resist riding ATVs around the freakin’ desert? We were led by a guide, who took us out of the compound toward the endless sand dunes. And yes, I did try and take pictures while I was driving because I am that stupid—and yes, they were awesomely blurry pictures. Imagine endless sand dunes that go on for ever and ever, and then all of a sudden we crested a hill and there in front of us was the ocean. I giggled the whole day, screaming every so often, “This is awesome!” The Chapman kids got a picture together on top of a sand dune, all of us frozen in the air, our arms raised in triumphant victory.

Afterward we walked up to a café in pretty good spirits, but I noticed a crowd gathering at the ocean front, so as my friends found a table I decided to go see what people were looking at. It turned out that someone had drowned and people were crowding around the body in morbid fascination as two beachgoers attempted to resuscitate him. The man was in his late sixties, snot-colored foam coming out of his mouth and nose, his body not moving, already taking on a waxy appearance. I left quickly knowing he hadn’t moved in too long of a time. The paramedics ended up not showing up for another fifteen minutes, by which time the man was long gone.

It’s strange to feel so full of life, that at the same time we were enjoying the sunshine and the marketplace this man had somehow been unable to get above water in time. I wondered if he had family, whether they were all on vacation together, and if they knew. It seems I’ve been learning how fragile life is recently, that it doesn’t take much to go from happily healthy to broken, dragged down, extinguished.

Many people look at their time in new countries as party time, and several people rented hotel rooms on the beach and drank themselves into a stupor, getting thrown out for noise complaints. I believe that most of the people on the ship try hard to connect with the people and learn something from their travels, but the people who party are the most visible, which is why Semester at Sea has such a bad rep. In defense to all of the good people on this ship, this has got to be the best education I have ever received. While I may not be taking as many classes, or as busy with work as I was back at Chapman, the things I have learned about myself and about the world are worth more to me than most of the education I have received. I am sailing with a group of people who are enthusiastic about learning and have a great sense of adventure. I am so grateful.

The last day in Namibia was spent on a faculty directed program: the seal and dolphin ADVENTURE! I was taking this for my Marine Biology class, and it was hard waking up for the trip. We always get into new countries wide eyed and excited, but after three days of waking up early, going to bed late, rushing around to all the exciting adventures that can be accomplished in a day, suddenly waking up becomes very difficult. The grueling summer sun doesn’t help with your energy level either, but by the third day I had a very nice tan, especially the sweet laugh-line tan that I like to think came from laughing a lot, but probably is due to squinting.

The seal and dolphin adventure turned out to be really interesting because the seals actually climbed up into the boat to be fed. It was a little shocking the first time because the seal hopped onto the back of the boat and started pushing us off of our seats so he could waddle to the front of the boat. When asked if any of us wanted to feed the seal I might have been a bit too enthusiastic with my hand waving. I got to be the first to hold a fish out to the seal. We took pictures with the seal and stood around petting him. To get the seal off the boat she tossed a fish into the water, and after the seal ate that fish he came back for more. She had to bat him off the boat with a blanket.

On the way back we stopped for lunch. I wasn’t expecting lunch on the boat, but out of nowhere our driver produced trays of food: sea clams and mini sandwiches. I tried the oysters, putting a little Tabasco sauce, some lime, and pepper on them. The first oyster was very good, by the second I only moderately liked them, and when I had the third I decided I had had enough oysters. Farming oysters is very popular in these waters, and while the water is too cold for them to reproduce in, the coldness speeds up the growth process. Of course I didn’t take any notes while I was out on this class trip, so when it came time to write the paper I forgot all the numbers, and had to pretty much improvise. (Yes, we do have work. It can’t all be fun and ATVing).

For the rest of our time in Namibia I joined the wrong group of friends, and all we did was walk around convenient stores shopping. With every country there is a strong fear that we’re only seeing the touristy spots, that the people we see in the country are all putting on a show for us tourists to confirm our expectations. There is always this struggle to find the “real” Namibia, or Morocco, or Spain. Every shop we go to I wonder if what they’re selling is genuine or whether it was mass produced in a store somewhere. A lot of times it is massed produced, which is why all the tellers seem to sell the same exact things. Yet we still try to find that perfect gift, and everybody seems to be collecting something different from each country: some collect flags, others stickers, patches, shot glasses, magnets, rocks, sand, outfits, paintings…everybody has their own way of collecting memorable memorabilia.

Our theme for the voyage is migration, and I’m really trying to embody this concept: the migration of people over vast regions of land, but also the migration of ideas and knowledge. In every country I try to make connections with people, to find out about the culture, to learn something, and then to spread this knowledge to other places I go. Like the coconuts in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, I try to be the African Swallow that helps spread giant coconuts of acceptance and understanding across the world. I strongly feel that the more people travel, the more they understand the world and the people who inhabit it. If everybody did this program I am sure racism, hatred, and oppression would diminish. Fear is the driving factor in most hatred, that when we have the courage to experience the lives of people unlike ourselves we learn to accept the differences in others as well as in ourselves.

The lone dolphin we saw. Lame.

Before coming here I found out that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had come here on vacation and all I could ask myself was, “Why?” Now I know: this is a beautiful, welcoming country. It is exotic and yet familiar, with Christianity being the largest religion and English being the main language. As my time in Namibia came to an end I was sad to realize that I had potentially made a mistake in choosing how I spent my time here. I had no way of knowing that Swakopmund and Walvis Bay weren’t true examples of the country, and I really needed to travel out of that area in order to experience the true nature of Namibia. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy my time in the Nib, but I feel that I only got one view of it. And yes, I started calling Namibia “the Nib”. It’s sort of becoming a thing.

February 23, 2009

As I stood on the deck of the ship watching silently as the coast of Africa disappeared in the distance, I realized that this could possibly be the last time I ever get to visit Africa. You never know what the future will bring, but I hope desperately that I will be able to come back and explore this vast continent more thoroughly in the future. If someone asks my opinion on a vacation spot I will shout “AFRICA! AFRICA! AFRICA!” Its vastness and diversity remind me everyday that it really is a beautiful world.

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