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!

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.

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.