A few last thoughts

I'm not going to say that it's impossible to capture this whole experience/feeling in writing, but it sure as hell isn't easy.

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between places people live and the people themselves. The past year has been a brand new place for me. I hadn't even heard the name Namibia until a few months before arriving. I've heard a lot of stereotypes about Americans while abroad, but only one really rang true for me. It was said by this young German tourist. “You guys are on your own planet,” she said in a conversation over pizza. Well Eva, if you're reading this, I know I argued with you at the time, but you were right.

Namibia. The land itself is so unique. The biggest sand dunes in the world border one of the most dangerous coasts in the world for ships passing by. Savannahs stretch hundreds of miles where there are still wild elephants. There are petrified forests, and mountains that loom over the capital skyline. And sand. So much sand.

So this place is the setting, ancient and almost unbelievable that somewhere like this still exists. What's the story? The people, who are just as diverse as the land that they inhabit. The Owambo, Herrero, Himba, Afrikaaners, Basters, Coloureds, Xhoisa, Damara, Kavango, Caprivi, Tswana just to name a few.

This is where things get tricky. When I went to Haiti, I was only there for seven days. Most days, I went out of the city to the village with a mobile medical clinic. I remember people being friendlier than I could imagine. Even the ones who couldn't communicate with me in English just seemed to be grateful of my presence. I felt like I was saving the third world all by myself.

Being here in Namibia, for nearly a year, I've been able to see the other side of the coin. Yes, people can be altruistic and welcoming. They can help you if you're lost, if you've never ridden on a kombi before, teach you words in their language and they constantly do these things. But they're people, and there's a lot of them, almost 2 million here in Namibia. Which means some of them lie, cheat, steal, rape and kill. They can be petty, more racist than you could believe, and put faith in things that are so wildly untrue it seems ridiculous (see Illuminati Conspiracy). In all of this mess, it can really screw with your head, especially if you're here doing humanitarian work in a volunteer capacity. You wonder how you're going to come out of it with any sort of positive outlook.

Some people say you have to weigh the good with the bad. How the hell do you do that? Take the number of positive experiences and subtract it by the negative ones? 1/2x times the square root of y, x being positive experiences and y being negative ones...just took the GRE.

I've had so many of both kinds, positive and negative encounters here. I've had people open my eyes and made me want to close them. But here at the end of my year, I have this overall feeling of deep satisfaction. And I can only hope that it's a sign that this was worth it. I'm sure I won't know for a very long time if that's the case. I think this satisfaction comes from the level of integration I've come to have with my school, community, and Namibia in general. I've become comfortable with this complicated relationship between the land and the people who live here.

I'm going to miss it very much.