Back in Holland

It’s been a while since my last blog post about our project from Namibia. In the previous one I was still in Gobabis. Meanwhile I’ve been back since the 4th of september and I’ve recently graduated with the documentary we shot in the town of Gobabis in Namibia.

In the video link below you can check out the teaser I made of our film.

The symposium

The film was shot to be shown at a symposium by the municipality of Smallingerland about Development Aid and about the ‘twinning’ between Smallingerland and Gobabis. The purpose was to start up discussion by showing the film, about both the twinning and Development Aid.

Bert Middel, mayor of Smallingerland

The symposium was a succes! Allthough personally I was very dissapointed that the mayor Bert Middel did not like the film simply because he had been told or thought so himself that the film would show all the great things that Smallingerland had done for the twinning and Development Aid. This however, was not our assignment. Making a promtion film was not the goal. If that is what they actually wanted they should have said so and they should have sent two first year students who they can grab by the arm and tell them what to do and exactly how to do it, but not two grad students that are willing to take the assignment seriously and actually talk with the people in town and in the slums to create an honest point of view. The assignment in fact was to give an overall view – from a new perspective – (Jelmer and I are fairly new to the whole Development Aid scene) on things and to tell a clear and honest story of what went wrong and what went well between the twinning and Development Aid in general, and tell something about future perspective et cetera.. The mayor was very dissapointed about the story we had told with our film.. Apparently a dishonest film is more appriciated than an honest one.. That’s life. In bureaucratic ‘lies’ become a policy.

Graduation presentation

On wednesday the first of december there will be a presentation at the NHL University of Applied Sciences at 19:30 and afterwords we will show the film. There will be snacks, coffee and thea and everyone who would like to come is more than welcome!

Hope you enjoyed the teaser, have a look at Jelmer’s one below (we both made teasers seperately).

Back from Eiseb & Gam

For a small week we have been living in the bush amongst wild animals such as jackals, black mumbas, scorpions, spiders, cheetas and leopards. Luckely it’s not summer yet in Namibia so most animals are still pretty far away from most settlements and villages and vast asleep.

However, our trip with Henk Olwage was amazing. We have been living in a Herero settlement just outside of the small village of Gam, in the middle of nowhere where people are still pretty much self relient from hunting for survival and for example herding goats and sheeps. Using the Herero settlement as our basecamp (Henk Olwage had work to do here) we explored Gam & Eiseb sometimes on our own, sometimes with Henk and the others. The reason we came here was to create an image for ourselves and possibly for the film to realise what makes people move away from areas like this in the region of Omaheke and their decision to move to Gobabis for a new life. The main reason, we came to learn, is that people want a better future by going to the city. This is obviously something that happens everywhere around the world. However, most people end up in the slums of Epako. And this ‘better future’ thing is not so much meant for the parents themselves, but mostly for their children so that they can go to pre-schools, primary schools and one day to university.

The San

Especially the San people are still considered the lowest people on the list, and not many chances are being given to them. In fact, just one San child in the whole region (the region is twice the size of Holland) has ever made it past class 7 before dropping out because of various reasons such as obvious financial problems in the family, are being unable to get along with the education because of cultural differences and simply because they are considered the lowest people on the planet and therefore don’t get enough attention. I would like to add a quick note that one day I hope I can enter or start a project myself in or out of Gobabis to give San children a better future with education. The important thing (I think) is to realise where they come from originally, and how their culture works and start to build things up from there. They have been forced out of their hunting grounds and have been enslaved for many years by the Herero and others. And now they have to find different ways of living, but they simply don’t know how. Henk Olwage told us when we met arrived at a San settlement not far away from eiseb, that in the old days the San people had so much respect for nature, that they would actually talk to the wild animals before killing them for their survival. They were connected to everything in nature and understood it better than anyone (they still do). They would tell the creature “Sorry my friend, but I have to kill you because I have to survive too.” and more things like that. They would calm the creature down. It would would not run away from their presence anymore but the talking of the San soothed them somehow (almost hypnotic?) and would just sit down before they would kill it. Now that’s nature!

But now that they have lost all of their hunting grounds and their ways of life, they are suffering and considered more primitive than basically anyone or anything else on the planet, which off course is ridiculous because each and everyone of us is unique as a person and no better or worse than anyone else. Just different.

Starlight

The nights were great! I loved it. you sit there at the campfire, eating your dinner that had been caught and prepared that very same day and you share stories with the people. Even though some of them don’t understand English at all, some things are so universal that it just makes sense to everyone. Nothing else matters…

I also spend a lot of time with Henk while sitting around the fire and during the day. He told interesting mythical stories about Namibia ranging from voodoo and miracles up to tracking wildlife and learning to guide your way around using the stars for example, while doing so. We shared some direction finding techniques with each other and for me this is always an interesting subject. And when you look up at night here at the southern hemisphere side of the world and you see all those billions and billions of stars – including the milkyway – brighter then you can ever imagine it because there are no city lights while in the background listening to Jackals and other wild animals, just ask your self: what can be better in life than this?

A quick reminder of the wild

About a week earlier a black mamba (deadliest snake in the world) with a length of over 3 meters came in one of the settlement houses and was killed by one of the elderly kids of the camp. He took us out to the place at night where he had put the snake after he had killed it. It was just a quick reminder to always close your tent in these areas. A bite by a huntsman spider, black widow or a black mumba, or cobra, or a black scorpion for example is not something to look forward too! Also consider that the neirest hospital is over 500 km away and you’ll be driving over various gravel roads.

The long road home

Furthermore it might be interesting to know that this will be our last week in Namibia. Therefore most likely this will also be my final blog post while I’m still here. We will be flying from Windhoek airport on friday the third of september at 19:00 (local time) and we will land at 05:45 (local time) in Frankfurt, before taking the train back home where – hopefully at the latest time we will arrive around 14:00 (waiting time included) but probably a little bit earlier.

So, enjoy the last pictures below that I have taken in and around Eiseb & Gam.  I put the full collection on Facebook and a smaller collection here below. Next blogpost will most likely be from Holland!

I love Africa!

On Earth

Gabriella Zoricic and Donata Weinbach , two vollenteers  who work at Save The Children Pre-School, organized a puppet show for the children. The children made the puppets out of anything they could find and they wrote a story that they performed in front of an audience with the puppets. Many people were invited including Jelmer and me.

We shot some footage for our film and I also took some photo’s which can be viewed below.

Eiseb & Gam

Tomorrow (24th of august 2010) we are leaving on a four day trip to Eiseb & Gam with a vicar Henk Olwage. The reason for our trip is that we can see and learn about the environment where people lived in before they moved to Gobabis. It’s part of better understanding why they would come here. We’ll be shooting there for our film, but nothing is certain yet if it will be included or not, because we aren’t sure yet what we will find here and if it ivaluable enought to put in our film. Our contracter Albert Scheffer told us ‘in Eiseb & Gam the world ends..’

We are looking forward to our trip.

The only downside for me personally in Namibia is safety. You can’t go out at night on foot for too far or too long. For example: Whenever I want to use the internet at the Goba lodge, it’s a little over 1km walk from Horizons (the place we are staying at) If we take a taxi it costs quite an ammount of money! And, let’s face it.. it’s just a little over 1 km, right!?

So every now and then I walk. But here comes the inside scoop. Every time I’d go on foot (especially after sunset) the owner of our hotel gives me a baseball batt to bring along. ‘Just in case,’ he says. A nice enough guy, really, but you kind of feel like you are back in the middle ages. On your way from one place to another, always alert for someone (or something) jumping out of the bushes and trying to rob you or worse.

These restrains of freedom truly annoy me. You feel like you are in a prison. Something that is normal for us in Holland (allthough we think of it as ‘normal’ while in really I think it is not), to go out alone at night, is not considered normal in Namibia (and many other places around the world off course).

Especially in the weekend it’s not safe to go out. Especially in and around the slums it’s best to stay away. This is because everybody gets payed for their jobs or they get some money from the government et cetera on friday.. Because water for many people is too expensive, a lot of people buy alcohol (tombo, also read ‘Namibia part 3’) instead.. and no good can from that, under these surcomstances.

So here I am, typing my blog Part 6 in the Goba lodge, complaining about safety in Namibia.. something the people in the slums have to deal with each and every day (it’s not just foreigners that aren’t safe) and Jelmer and me are only here for nine weeks in total! For them it’s life, for us it’s adjusting. I actually feel strange thingking/writing about it..

It’s 18:45 now, already dark outside. Better decide to take a taxi or walk tonight, from Goba lodge. I came here on foot, so I guess I’ll just take a taxi back this time.

Getting in shape!

After spending about 2,5 weeks in Namibia without sports, I’ve started running again and working out a little. I really started missing it so I figured it was time for a run around Gobabis. An extra motivation for me is  that I was curious what I would come across while doing this. On my second run a construction worker that was on his break and sat beside the road with some of his collegues started running with me. We talked while running about what I was doing here et cetera. After five minutes of running and talking he wished me goodluck and went back to where he came from. A nice moment!

Another motivation for me here is that running is different here because of the altitude level. Gobabis is situated at an altitude of 1500 meters. Quite nice because Holland is situated below sea level. On higher grounds your fatigue drains quicker.

However, I’m not the only thing getting in shape. You see, our scenario is working out to become pretty great! For my opinion there still are too many interviews in it (too many ‘talking heads’ should be minimalized as much as possible, in my opinion..), but we’re getting further and further each day! The main story is getting clearer with every passing day. Things are starting to roll!

Some of the subjects/elements we might include in our film are:

• a brief introduction & history of Gobabis
• the twinning between the municipality of Gobabis & Smallingerland
• project Sida Sores
• a quick overview of all the projects
• HIV/AIDS project
• I&I Explorers
• the sanitation project
• the slums of Epako
• future tourist attractions of Gobabis & around

I’m not going to explain all these projects. The people that have to know, will allready know about them because these projects have been (more or less) up and running for quite some years now. For all the people that don’t know about it yet.. They’ll just have to wait a little longer (or they can just google them)!

I also added some new pictures from Gobabis & the slums of Epako below.

The Harnas Wild Life Foundation

A few days before Albert and the others went back home, we went to the Harnas Wildlife Foundation. It’s about an hour and a half drive away from Gobabis.

Harnas is a wildlife park where you can go on a safari trip by 4wd and on foot and watch lions, cheetas, crocodiles et cetera. But the Harnas Wild Life Foundation is more than just a park where you can watch wildlife. Here they help injured and orphaned animals grow up and they prepare them to go back into the wild again. If you are lucky you can even cuddle baby lions, cheetas and leopards if they’re around.

In our case we were able to get really close to two cheetas. An old cheeta fella named Goeters and a young female cheeta named Duma. Goeters has been around here since the beginning of the Harnas Wild Life Foundation project (26 years) and is basically as tame and friendly as a housecat, just a whole lot bigger! We also played with a young giraffe. Be carefull though, because he tends to kick every once in a while when he’s in a real playfull mood (there are signs warning for this in the park). The giraffe walks freely next to the bungaloo houses, so enjoy your breakfast with a giraffe breathing down your neck or stealing your food

Another nice thing to know is that Albert and Judith have been coming here for quite some years now, and they love Goeters so much that they even named their own dog in Holland after the cheeta. When Albert explained this to the owner of Harnas, she really appreciated to hear this.

Have a look at the pictures below, they’ll give you some idea of what you can see in Harnas. And for the record… I totally fell in love with this cheeta Duma  (as you will see in some of the pictures).

The last two pictures (with me, Judith and ‘our’ giraffe) are made by Emma Bloemhof. And the pictures of me and Duma were made by Judith.

Life in the slums of Epako

The first few times that we went into the slums of Gobabis, Epako was with Judith and I was not as shocked as I thought I would be. Maybe this was because in the South East of Turkey I had seen comparable living situations, or maybe it was because I didn’t fully realize or understood it yet.

By now, about 2,5 weeks later, all that has changed. I will not be able to tell you what goes through your mind when you start realizing and seeing the facts of life around here. The diversity of rich and poor and the extremity of wealth and poverty.

In the township Epako, most people here have nothing. Unborn babies are found on the streets, people live in small self made houses made of plastic and other garbage materials and quite often they live in them with over 20 people. In these situations most people get very sick. Apart from AIDS there is also a quite high level of Polio, Cholera and for example TBC. All of which there is no good treatment for in this area (and no money).

‘They burry us in plastic’

In winter – which in Namibia is right now – it gets very cold at night. Most people do not have enough blankets to keep themselves warm and there is a lack of water and food. To keep themselves warm and their stomachs full, people start drinking alcohol at a very young age. There are breweries called ‘Tombo houses’ in the slums of Epako (very dangerous to go there on your own…) where an alcohol called ‘tombo’ and ‘kaalgat’ are made.

A woman in Epako told us the people get this alcohol mostly in exchange for sex, which most of the time happens unsafely. Many people carry diseases and spread them by having unsafe sex. This Tombo drink is made from bodyparts, rust and animal parts, to make it even stronger (and for sometimes for voodoo rituals and superstition). People die from it on day to day basis.

This woman that told us about all this was pregnant herself and that their are no good toilets in Epako, so people do their business in the streets and/or in the bushes. At night, she told us, women are afraid to go out to go into the bushes because they’ll get raped or even worse. Lots of people are sick and have diarea, but they are unable to walk so they leave everything in their own houses. More diseases spread this way and when people get burried they don’t get a normal coffin but just a shallow grave, a small ditch in the grownd while they are wrapped in plastic, according to a man we spoke to.

Prison

To make things even worse, several street kids were arrested for stealing food and shoes. These kids were once involved in a project called ‘Ubuntu’ that originated in Holland. I’ll write more about this in another blog soon, ever since this might be a part of our film as well. In the end – with a lot of help from Thea and Albert – they were able to set them free. One of the kids was beaten up pretty bad in prison and all of his belongings were stolen from him. These kids were able to go back to the place where Ubuntu took place, with a guy named Ben, but a lot of other children have no place to go so they will only get arrested again for sniffing petrol to get into a halucinative state or for stealing or sometimes even rape. What shocked me the most was that arrested children get raped and beaten up in prison by other inmates, but almost all the children actually prefer that, because at least this way they have a roof over their heads and are able to get some food to stay alive. It’s sad, because the only reason they get involved in criminal activities is because they want to survive…They all live day by day.

Hope

However, not all is bad. A lot of projects are initiated by the municipality of Smallingerland when they started a twinning with the municipality of Gobabis. A fellowship, a connection was made between both municipalities to make this world a better place.

And they are working hard on this! There are also individual project running in Gobabis, such as Ubuntu, for the same purpose. Another project is ‘Early Childhood Development’ which one are better education on pre-schools. During our first two weeks we visited a lot of pre-schools where Judith asked the teachers questions for Smallingerland and hadned out flyers. She asked questions about how their school system works, where they get money from (if there is some) et cetera and with this information they will see if these schools can get help from Smallingerland, to help as many vulnerable children as possible in Gobabis, to give them a better future then for example the ones mentioned above.

Surprised

The second thing that surprised me in the slums – after realising how the people actually have to live – is the never ending positive perspective by most people I have come across so far. They have hope in their hearts and minds, in despite of everything that is going on. They are friendly and more or less even happy. They live by the day. What I really want to do with this film is give these people a voice of their own. A voice to the voiceless!

I’ll get more detailed about all of these subjects in upcoming posts, but for now this is sort of an introduction and my first impressions – they can obviously change as time passes. Have a look at the pictures that I took – mostly portraits from the slums in the township Epako and at some of the pre-schools that we visited there.

In the upcoming blog I’ll start writing about the film production fase as well.

welcome to Africa!

So here we are, Namibia! Departed from Holland with Albert Scheffer, his daughter Judith Scheffer, and Albert his collegues Thea Seinen, Date de Vries and and my fellow grad student Jelmer de Jong we drove for 6 hours to Europes largest airport which is placed in Frankfurt, Germany. From there we took a 10 hour flight to Windhoek Airport in Namibia.

But our journey didn’t end there. From the aiport we drove in two cars and drove another 2 hours to Gobabis, the place where Jelmer and me are shooting our film.

Along the way we came across a wildebeest and a gazelle running along with us next to the car and a small group of baboons crossed the road about 50 meters ahead of us. Welcome to Africa!

The way into Botswana

Instead of staying in Gobabis and relaxing a little (something a normal person would do), Date had invited us back in Holland for a trip into Botswana to the Okavango Delta. This was something I personally didn’t want to miss for the world, so we decided to go. We left our film equipment and other unnecessary luggage at hotel ‘Die Dam’ where Albert, Thea and Judith were staying, and we went for another 10 hour trip, this time by car, to the Okavango Delta, in the middle of Botswana.

At the border stop we had to fill in forms, forms and more forms. When we had crossed the border we had to fill in more forms again. On the positive side, we did get some nice stamps in our pasports. But 9 hours later or so, things went a bit bad when we arrived in Maum (pronounced as ma-oom).

We did not have enough fuel, our bank and credit cards didn’t work anywhere in town (we tried about 6 different ones) and we still had to pay for the fuel where we had so desperately looked for earlier. Before we were able to find a place where our cards actually did work, it was allready dark and we had no way of finding our way around properly, ever since road signs don’t have lights here (we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, after all), and road signs are even hard to find during the day around here! Apart from that, at night people walk on the streets, the roads have big holes in them and wild animals from dogs up to hyenas come out – especially at night. So drive carefully ‘cause you won’t see them easily.

We were tired, did not have enough food and water with us (I never went on a trip this unprepaired before, but it was quite an adventure) but in the end we made it to the Backpackers Lodge just outside of Maun at the start of the Okavango Delta. Unfortunately they didn’t have a place to sleep for us, but what they did have in stock was a great dinner in this atmospheric location in the middle nowhere surrounded by the weirdest wild animal noises  that I have ever heard in my life (truly amazing!).

After dinner and a huge healthy fruit shake later, we felt sort of reborn and thanks to a manager at the Backpackers Lodge we were able to find a place to sleep at Audi Camp for the upcoming nights, just a few minute drive away. We were also able to book a ‘Mokoro trip’ for the next day there – this was the reason we came to the Okavango Delta, after all.

The Mokoro Trip

A mokoro – or in plural a mekoro – is a shallow-draft canoe traditionally hewn out from ebony wood or a sausage-tree log. We were able to take a tour through the Okavango Delta with one of these traditional canoes. You are so close to the water level that you really start to feel one with nature. It’s relaxing but also chalenging somehow because after all, you’re in the wild and in the river where crocodiles, hippo’s and other animals rule.

To get to the actual riverbank of the Okavango Delta you have to go by 4 wheel drive, otherwise you’ll be stuck for sure. Big puddles of mud and overthrown roads by riverfloodings will block your way if you don’t have have 4 wheel drive because some are deep and have quite dangerous rapids in them. Also the roads (as for as you can call them that) itselfs are graveled roads and impossible to drive on with a normal car. After this adventurous trip we ended up at a quiet area at the river bank. We were guided by a man and woman who were polars for the canoes. They push the mokoro forward with their sticks. After about an hour in the mokoro we continued further on foot to spot some wild life. No lions, leoperds and cheetas unfortunately, but we did see giraffes, zebras and eliphants. Have a look at a small collection of the pictures at the end of this blog!

Village life

The day after our Mokoro trip we had to go back to Gobabis. Date had work to do there and obviously so did we! But on our way back we stopped at several villages along the way. We had plenty of time for that so why not make the best of it? When I say village, i basically mean 5 till about 10 ‘houses’.

These villages of wood are still pretty untouched by western life, but you can feel the change. They wear more western clothes instead of traditional ones, and they now use money like everybody else to buy their food, allthought traditional way of life (hunting et cetera) still goes on. Have a look at some of the pictures at the end of the blog.

Sandune safari

After Botswana we went back to Gobabis and got to know the place a little better, and each other. Albert is so well known in town by almost everyone (he’s been coming and going here since 1991 for his job) so obviously Albert knows the in’s and out’s of Gobabis by heart. I’ll be writing a seperate blog about that later, though.

By the end of the week Date de Vries had to go back home, his work here was done, and he wanted to finalize his stay with a last safari on the day of his departure back to Holland. And for this departure we went to Sandune, about a 30 minute drive away from Gobabis. Have a look at the pictures below. The day after Date left, two other people came. Another collegue of Albert, Anke de Vries and her daughter Emma.

Thank you!

Today all the Dutches that were with us have left. I would like to use this blog to thank each and every one of them for making us feel home away from home and for introducing us to all these amazing places such as the Okavango Delta and Harnas (Harnas will be coming in a blog post soon and it will be filled with lions and cheetas et ceterea) restaurants and for letting us meet with so many interesting new people for the last 2,5 weeks. Now Jelmer and me are on our own, but we had a great introduction that will help us greatly in making our film.

On the second of july 2010 I’ll be flying with fellow CMD student Jelmer de Jong towards the second least densely populated country in the world which also happens to be one of the driest continents on the planet. This country is positioned above South Africa and is called Namibia.

Personal Reason

We were asked by a teacher at our faculty to make a film in Nambia. Jelmer and I were both still looking for suitable graduation film subjects, and this subject (which will be explained below) touched us both. So we decided to do some research, meet some people and take the job!

Purpose

For the last 15 years the Namibian municipality of Goababis and the Dutch municipality of Smallingerland have had a fellowship that is connected by development aid. Several projects have been set out in Gobabis for the last 15 years such as HIV/AIDS prevention, housing projects and many more.

The municipality of Smallingerland wants us to make a film about the last 15 years of development aid that has been brought to Goababis. They want to know how things are going today. So in short: what’s going great and what could be better?

They want us to shoot from our perspective – from a new way to look at the whole piece – and also with an eye to the future.

Symposium

The film will be played in october on an international symposium in Drachten which obviously is about development aid. the film is set to inform and create a discussion between the people at the symposium to create steps for the future.

On the 4th of september we’ll be back in Holland. I’ll try and post as many text and video blogs as I can about the proces, but it will be hard staying online where we are. I’ll also need a USB device so that I can connect my MacBook Pro with a telephone based internet connection but so far I haven’t been able to find one yet, not even the Mac Store.

More news coming soon, about the pre-production, the production and the post-production.

]]> http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/06/25/namibia-part-1/feed/ 5 http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/02/18/back-in-holland/ http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/02/18/back-in-holland/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:57:30 +0000 Jaap Ruurd Feitsma http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/?p=896

On december the 29th I flew back to The Netherlands from Lisbon, Portugal. My internship at CheckTheGate had come to an end. After very nice goodbyes with both company CheckTheGate and other people that I’ve met over the past 4 months that I was there, I was packed and ready to go back home to work on my graduation project.

I’ve decided to make a documentary and at this point I have several options, both local and abroad. The most important thing for me right now is to find a place to put the film. What I mean with that is that I need an institution, a channel or a website that’s interested in what I would like to make and possibly, if necessary willing to finance it. In the upcoming posts I’ll write about the various subjects and options that I have at hand.

I would also like to use this blogpost to share some of the pictures on the filmset I worked on for the NGOL Commercial in Lisbon for CheckTheGate.