First week in Namibia

Holy Cow!! Our first week has flown by already. It has gone by so fast! I still can't believe I am in such a beautiful country with such AMAZING people. This is more wonderful than I could have ever imagined! Everybody has been so kind and have treated us so well. We have made many friends already.

We are working with a group of about 8 Namibian students. All of them are eager to learn and are picking up things very quickly. They are all Journalism students here at the Polytechnic school of Namibia. We have had 3 days of workshops teaching Photoshop and have worked in the little studio we have here to scan photo negatives from the National Archives of Namibia. Yesterday was amazing!! The scanning process is quite time consuming. We only have one scanner and we are scanning these images at a high resolution and making them into 4 X 6 prints. We have had to make sure we get high quality scans because the originals are deteriorating fast. While waiting for the scans to finish we were able to chat with these students and really get to know them. They know quite a bit about their country and some of their history, even though they have no real record of it.

When we finished scanning the first batch of pictures they all gathered around amazed at these photos that were taken in 1947. The pictures were of a fabric manufacturing shop and it showed white people working among black people. The significance of this picture is that in 1948 there was Apartheid in place and it separated the blacks from the whites. This was something that we, as UVU students easily overlooked, but was not lost on the Namibian students. They recognized this immediately. They were even able to recognize a lot of the buildings and details in each photo that made each of these pictures come to life. It made me aware of how important this work is and how critical it is that this work goes forward. These people do not have access to their history and their records. Their culture is slowly, but surely dying as these records and photographs fade and disintegrate. Having access to my own history and records at my fingertips is something I have taken for granted. It gave me chills to watch these students get excited to see these pictures. These photos have only ever been seen by a few people, but will now be available to everybody.

Andrea is one of the students from our group that came with us. She is Navajo. She brought a bag with her that her aunts made. It has one of the symbols that the Navajo use for the sun. One of the Namibian students, Em'C saw it and recognized the symbol. Apparently the Namibian's have similar symbols as the Navajo indians and also similar structures. They got to talking and realized that Navajo Hogans are similar to Namibian bushman dwellings. It was amazing to see the similarities.

We had a party at our house Wednesday night. We attempted to make nachos with what was available at the grocery store. It turned out as Dorito type chips and yellow cheese (which we hoped was similar to chedder cheese) sprinkled over the top. No one seemed to mind them though. We also made potato wedges which were a huge hit. We also had some Namibian cookies and sweets. We made introductions and soon had split up into different groups playing different games. One group played Speed Scrabble and the other played Uno. Both were a lot of fun and helped us get to know each other a lot better. We all came away as friends.

I will post more pictures soon. Here are a few of the images that we scanned last night, just to give you an idea of what we are looking at. It probably won't mean much to most of you, but to these students it was like Christmas. :)