To the Coast....

Greeting Everyone!

Here are some photos from my adventure at the coast.  We went to Swacopmund, Mondesa, and Walvis Bay.  The first day we visited a few places including an after school program. It was exciting to see the work they were doing there.  The area was gated off and all of the buildings were made from donated shipping crates, which are easy to come by in a shipping town. It was very exciting to see the work that they did there with the top performing students in the former township, Mondesa. Even though their funding was limited, it seemed as though they were able to offer a lot of academics and support to the kids from the community. 

For dinner, we went to the ocean front, and found a beautiful restaurant on top of the water literally.  In the photo above you can see the lights at the end of the board walk, which was where it was.  It was very nice that our group was able to go to dinner together for the first time. We spent our money to get sushi (it was half off), dirnks, dinner, dessert. It was very nice. I tried a local fish called Kingsklip. At the end of the meal we got our bill, which was 1075 Namibian dollars, which is around 130 US dollars for seven people, which is only 18 dollars per person.  When you put it in perspective for the type of service and food that we got, the price is nothing.  But when you put it in perspective, some Namibians dont even make that much in a months time, as well as people pay that much for a months rent.  When put in perspective, we really had to recognized the privileges we have to be able to experience this. 

Below, this is a picture of all the ladies in my program!

The next day, we visited a Montessori preschool and training program.  Then we visited a sewing training program. Below is a picture from the shop of a graduated student from the training program.  He showed us a hand made wedding suite he had been working on that was N$800 ($100) and was very nice. All the clothes in the shop had been made by hand.  I think that we should appreciate more of this type of useful art forms. 

Next we made our way into the desert and to the dunes.  It is amazing on the coast you go from town, to more tropical areas, to the really dry desert, where they may only get rain once per year.  Below is a picture of one of the dunes. We climbed Dune 7, which is the highest dune in Namibia, and very steep. We climbed to the top (straight up) and then walked around and saw the view. It was a very spiritual experience to see Gods creation in a new way, exactly how it was meant to be. 

Below is a picture of me, Tawakal, and Courtney running and jumping together down the dune!

This is a picture of the group before the climb. 

This is us from the top. 

We then were staying only three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean.  We went down for sun set, which was beautiful. We put our feet in the water and the foam, and it was not even that cold. 

We went out to a restaurant that had Karaoke. It was amazing to see that the whole place was Namibian Germans.  In Swacopmund the separation is even more apparent, and the racial economic disparities are even more extreme than in Windhoek from observation. 

On the last day, we went horse back riding in the morning in the desert.  We saw Springbok, which are almost like really slender deer,  there was probably a herd of 30 of them really close to us. For lunch, we went to Kapana in Mondesa to have beef and fat cakes ( fried bread).  We also got tomatoes and the picture above is of the spread in the market.  At Kapana, the people who are grilling will take a piece off, slice it, and then put it back on the grill, so you just grab a piece, and dip it in the spices and eat. 

It was very interesting to see how surprised people were to see us there. We got our picture taken by a few people even. What was even more surprising was to see how far - probably about a mile- the town ship was from the main part of town.  It was very separated but many people from Mondesa work in town. The apartheid policies is what made this happen and is still very real, even though it was twenty years ago that the policies were ended. 

Thank you for reading,  Angela