Seals on a Boat!

Along the Atlantic coastline of Namibia, two vastly different ecosystems live side by side. In the ocean, frigid currents from Antarctica create fog and nutrient-rich waters that give life to numerous fish, seals, whales and dolphins. Journey inland, by less than a mile, and you land in the midst of the vast Namib desert, which runs the length of the coastline and can stretch up to 100 miles inland. In other words, the Namib desert is a giant beach, 30-100 miles deep.

My girlfriend Carolyn and I arrived at Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, the largest towns on the coast and just 30 kilometres (about 20 miles) apart from each other. We stayed in Swakopmund, a touristy town, noted for its Germanic architecture. Walvis Bay, by contrast, is an important industrial town and houses a deep-water commercial port. The first morning, we left our shabby backpackers lodge headed to Walvis for a harbor cruise.

We cruised out of the Walvis Bay Yacht Club in a motorized catamaran that could accommodate 30-40 people. Our captain was Archie, a grizzled Namibian sailor. His first mate Jackson, who was from a town not far from where I had done my teaching. Jackson was surprised to chat with me in Oshiwambo as we tooled around the harbour!
Just a few minutes out of the dock, Jackson opened a box of fish to entice the seals. Several swam in the wake of the boat as you can see in the video below. Although these Cape Fur Seals weigh between 250-500 lbs, they can swim amazingly fast through the water. Next, one of the seals decided that he wanted a closer look at his fellow mammals on the boat. He launched himself from the water onto a small platform on the rear deck of the boat. From there, he hoisted himself up on his giant front flippers, put the flippers on the edge of the boat deck, and then clambered into the main cabin!



Three different seals came on deck during the tour, and while they were indeed looking for fish, they were also curious about the humans on the boat. They allowed us to touch and pet them, and seemed almost as interested in us as we were in them.

I felt a much greater connection to these seals than to any other type of aquatic life that I’ve seen before. Nor was I the only one. There was a young boy on our tour, who was at least 25 years younger than everyone else on board. He seemed bored, but when the seals arrived he petted them constantly and rested his head on theirs, sort of like an Eskimo kiss. This young boy might have just had his first inkling to become a marine biologist! The seals also enjoyed the attention, having evolved the intelligence and sensitivity of mammals rather than mindless instinct of mere fish.

We saw several other critters during the tour. As the boat motored through the harbor towards a small seal colony, we were flocked by small seagulls and giant pelicans who flew alongside the boat, looking for handouts. The pelicans would make great wide receivers in the NFL, able to fly alongside the boat at 20-30 knots and catch every fish thrown their way, as you can see in the video below.



Moving away from the shoreline, we passed dozens of container ships which had dropped anchor in the harbor. These ships were huge! Look at the picture that I’ve included here. You might need to click it to see the full-sized image. Do you see the small yellow thing on top of the containers on the left-hand side? That’s a full-sized school bus, though it looks no bigger than a toy! Walvis Bay is the main port, not only for Namibia but for much of southwestern Africa. When I was living here in 2007, I met a trucker who made a living on the Walvis Bay—Congo route, carrying frozen chickens to the Congo. Goods from Walvis travel on the two-lane paved roads to Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We motored across the Walvis’ large natural harbor towards Pelican Point, a sandy spit of land which houses a small seal colony. On the way, Benguela dolphins swam in front of the boat, darting back and forth in front of the twin bows of the catamaran. The dolphins were playing and rolled onto their backs as they swam, giving us a good view of their bellies. We also briefly saw two humpbacked whales breach the water, though the pictures just didn’t come out.

When we arrived at Pelican Point, we saw several large groups of seals on the beach, each with hundreds of adults and pups. According to Captain Archie, seal mums know their pups by their cry, which means that the beach was a cacophony of wailing animals. Our captain told us that because seals breed so quickly, they often outstrip the environment’s ability to feed them all. As a result, he claimed that Namibia’s annual seal culls were justified. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the seals make a bloody racket.



By then it was time to turn back towards the dock. On the way, we passed several commercial oyster farms, which from the top of the water are just 55-gallon drums floating in formation. Tied to the drums, and floating underwater, small metal cages house the oysters which feed in the nutrient-rich waters. As we watched a small boat harvest some oysters, Jackson sneakily shucked a couple of dozen fresh oysters and put out some champagne – a great way to end a great harbor tour. Driving back to Swakopmund, we looked forward to the next tour when we would see the animals that were able to thrive in the sands of the Namib desert.

How Rose Coloured are My Glasses?

On my computer at work, in the budget office of Chicago Public Schools, my screensaver has a dozen of my favorite pictures from Namibia on it. A stunning Namibian sun sets over the semi-arid savanna. One of my favorite students, who taught my Oshivambo, looks up smiling from a test that he made me take. My portly principal watches a volleyball game, shading himself under a parasol while wearing a Chicago Cubs t-shirt.

I've been looking longingly at these pictures for the past two years, particularly after a snowy year in Chicago crunching out a budget with a $370m deficit. But it makes me wonder -- was my experience there as great as I remembered?

Earlier this week, I was chatting with my neighbor Katie Green, a returned Peace Corps volunteer from Cameroon. She told me that her group of volunteers recently had a reunion, and they looked at old slideshows of their years in Africa. "If Cameroon was really like the pictures we had," Katie observed, "then it was awesome. But you know, while you remember the market fondly, you forget how it was full of mud, and crappy food, and poor, desperate kids." As the years go by, it's only too easy to remember the good experiences and minimize the bad ones

Later that week while walking down the street in the midst of a hot spell, the pungent odor of summer garbage wafted by. Usually, this would remind me of why I don't like big cities. This time, however, it reminded me of a low patch of ground in Outapi where the rains collected, garbage stewed, and insects swarmed. And that whiff then reminded me of lonely hours alone in my room, a deep longing for friends and family, and stultifying heat in the summer. Were my glasses not a faint rose, but a ruby red?

I suppose I'll find out tomorrow, when I fly from Johannesburg to Windhoek. My girlfriend Carolyn and I will land mid-afternoon, after having spent two good days in Jo'burg with my friend Steve. We'll first spend a couple of days in the capital, catching up with old friends and former students. Then we'll have a week as tourists. We'll visit the coast, followed by a long hard drive to see some ancient cave paintings, and a visit to the Himba, Namibia's most remote people. Finally we'll end up back at Canisianum, where I'll visit with old students and colleagues and set up the Canisianum Scholarship fund.

I'm excited, but also nervous: Was Namibia as wonderful as I remember? Have I changed to a point where I may not fit in anymore? Nothing will remain exactly as it was several years ago, so will these changes be for the better or for the worse?

I'll find out tomorrow.

Help Kids in Namibia Escape Poverty – But not Poor Fashion Choices – Through Education

In 2007 in northern Namibia, I coached Canisianum (Kuh-knee-see-ann-um) High School’s first-ever debate squad. The team was full of crazy personalities, such as Inamutila Kahipi, whose name meant “I am not afraid.” Inamutila lived up to his name but never took himself too seriously. For example, when I first met him at the Valentine’s Day dance, he arrived wearing a full-length leather coat over a white t-shirt and sported a single glove, like a hip-hop Namibian Michael Jackson.

His opposite was Miriam, the team co-captain. She prepared for debates with a ferocity and thoroughness that could only mean she was headed for a career in law. The team did well, winning both local and regional competitions. Miriam and Inamutila were selected to represent our region in the national competitions, which was a big feather in Canisianum’s cap.


Through the debates, I met students from all around northern Namibia. Our competitors made me realize what a special school Canisianum was. Whereas our students used English to inform, persuade and inspire, students from competing schools still struggled to piece together coherent sentences. While my students researched debate topics in the student-run library, students at other schools lacked basic reference materials like encyclopedias and textbooks.

That split is still evident today on the national exams. Canisianum’s pass rate in 2009 was over 95%; neighboring schools were well below 50%. These exams are required to advance to college. As a result, poor grades usually mean the end of a student’s academic career and the beginning of a life of subsistence farming. In contrast, attending Canisianum markedly improves a young child’s chances of success due to its rigorous teaching, high standards and unique management structure.

Unfortunately, many of the eager students in the region cannot afford to pay Canisianum’s fees of about US$100 per year. Just think about that: in America, you’re lucky if $100 pays for books and school supplies for a semester. In Namibia, it gets a student a top-notch education for a year, and a very good chance at qualifying for one of Namibia’s three universities. With your help, more Namibian children can have this chance.

Think about donating now to help give kids like those in the picture a quality education. A $100 donation pays for an entire year of school for a poor child, but even $25 makes a difference. All donations are tax-deductible!

The goal is to raise $5,000 to establish a permanent scholarship endowment at the school, and we’re already 1/3 of the way there! When I return to Namibia this September I’ll be setting up the scholarship in coordination with the school and the US-based nonprofit, WorldTeach. Donations can be made online via WorldTeach/PayPal or via mail by sending a check to:

WorldTeach
c/o Center for International Development
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy St., Box 122
Cambridge, MA 02138.

Your donation should be made out to "WorldTeach." Please make sure to write “Namibia-Canisianum Scholarship,” in the memo field, and thanks.

If you have any questions about this scholarship endowment or Canisianum RCHS, please write me at joshua.kaufmann.72@gmail.com. If you would like to learn more about Canisianum, many stories on this blog, Outapi Odyssey focus on school life.

The Last Word

All good things come to an end, and so too with my time in Namibia. It ended, for those of you who don’t know, with more of a whimper than a bang. For several months in the beginning of 2008, I worked at the library in Outapi doing a job that wasn’t particularly necessary. Every day I saw my former students walking to Canisianum, and I missed them. I wanted to find a way to stay for another full year, perhaps teaching again. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education couldn’t find a spot for me. So, with many regrets, I decided on April 10 to come home. Just a few days later, I accepted a scholarship at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, for a one-year degree in Public Administration. Just a couple of days later, my mother fell ill and went to the hospital with a serious lung infection. I was in the capital city when this happened, and luckily had my passport with me, so I boarded a plane and headed straight home. Fortunately my mother has recovered, as much a testament to medical science as to stubbornness and strength of will.

Because of the process I described above, I didn’t really have a chance in Namibia to say my goodbyes, both to the people that I worked and lived with for 16 months but also to the experience itself. What did those 16 months in Namibia mean to me? What lessons did I learn? That’s what I’ll be trying to answer in this final culminating blog entry. This entry will be unlike previous entries, which hopefully were tasty morsels of life in Namibia liberally seasoned with policy and history and anthropology. This one will be navel-gazing, the sort of self-obsessive speculations that I tend to find dreadfully boring to read! So, please continue at your own risk!

Why did I go? For one, it was a life-long dream. In high school I learned about the Peace Corps from my friend Carrie, whose parents had met in Ethiopia in the 1960s. That summer, stoked to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, I refused to use my air conditioner because I was “in training.” However, during college I encountered a few roadblocks and some dreams faded to be replaced with new ones. With my theatre major in hand, I went first to England and then to New York, in search of greater perspectives and a life as an actor.

The dream began to resurface after I had become a teacher. Inchoately dissatisfied with teaching in New York, the pull of the developing world began to reassert itself. I looked at Peace Corps again and also at graduate programs in public policy, where graduates tended to work with exciting institutions like the World Bank, the U.N. Development Program, and the International Red Cross. Several grad school advisers recommended that I get the international experience before enrolling in a program; it made sense to see if I liked working abroad before committing to such a course of study. With no small trepidation about leaving behind family and friends, off I went to Namibia to see what the developing world was all about, and what my place in it might be.

The short answer, about what my place in it might be, is that I love working in the developing world. I love being immersed in a different culture, in trying to figure out what’s going on, in challenging myself to learn a new language. For all the frustrations and hassles or working in a developing country, it is immensely rewarding. The volunteer community became a place where I felt at home, reveling in the shared sense of purpose and an appreciation of other cultures and simpler ways of living. But I also felt very detached from my friends and my family back home.

So what lessons did I learn in going abroad? Some might be transitory lessons, and others may stay with me. Yet other lessons may remain vague for now, only to be realized at a later time. Nonetheless, this is what I think I’ve learned so far.

First, I learned to love a simpler way of life. In Namibia, there wasn’t much going on. There weren’t a lot of people. A good Friday night consisted of making dinner with a friend and then hanging out at his or her house. A good Sunday started on Saturday night, when I would put my clothes in my wash bucket to soak overnight. Then on a slow, luxurious Sunday morning, when the students were in church and I had the hostel to myself, I would hang my laundry in peace and quiet, write or read, go for a run, and then do a little work for school. By not trying to do too many things, the few things that I did became much, much more enjoyable.

This lesson might be transitory. Life moves much more quickly in America. Last night I met up with some new friends from my program – including two returned Peace Corps volunteers. We had dinner, dessert, and then a movie in just a few hours. That would have been a full weekend’s worth of excitement last year. When we did an activity on resource scarcity this week in class, one group of students pointed out that our scarcest resource right now is time. Last year in Namibia, there were many scarce resources, like telephone credit or cheese, but time was in abundance. I’d like to keep this sense of simplicity, but am not sure how to do so in America. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Along these lines, I came to appreciate living outside a city. This lesson is, I fear, the most transitory. Right now I would love to live away from a big city, on a farm somewhere near enough to a job that I don’t have to commute for ages. It’s possible, especially if I stay in education, to get a decent job in a rural area. But my friends and family are all concentrated in the U.S.’s first and second cities, New York and Chicago. My good friends sent me a birthday card last year which said that anyone who moves far from their friends is, well, just plain stupid! In many ways they were right, and yet I can’t see living in a big city anymore. What’s the advantage? I think acting on this lesson will be one of the hardest for me to do.

Another thing I learned was that I can indeed enjoy teaching. In Namibia, I taught at a good school with smart, motivated students and a dedicated and ethical administrator. It made all the difference from my time teaching in New York City. It made the work fun, and yet, I’m still reluctant to commit fully to a life working at educating our nation’s youth. The big advantage of it, as I can see, is flexibility. I could work in big communities or small ones. I could work all over the country, and could easily go abroad again. But do I want to educate 16 year-olds for the rest of my life? When I decided to return from Namibia, I certainly had the option to go back into the classroom, and even though I had a very positive classroom experience last year, I didn’t do it. If I’m not a teacher at a high school, what else will I do?

Finally, and probably most up in the air for me now, is trying to figure out what role international work will have in my life. On the one hand, I really love being abroad. It’s hard, sweaty, difficult, and nowhere else do I feel as alive. On the other hand, I don’t want to be that far from my family for that long right now. Once I’ve started a family, if I can convince them to come with me, it would be a different story. So what can I do that builds on my interests in policy and education, international work and development, but allow me to live near my family in Chicago? That’s the question for this year.

Certainly, living abroad I learnt many lessons: simplicity, appreciation of a rural life, knowledge that I need to balance my need for exploring other cultures and worlds with my need for family and friends, and some further appreciation of teaching as a career. The question becomes now how I’ll apply these lessons. Can I find a place to live in the country that’s still close enough to my family? Can I find a way to balance the thrill of living in other countries with staying connected to my family? As so often happens, these questions come down to the concept of balance – how does one organize his or her life to keep things in balance?

So, after 16 months and 45,000+ words, it’s time for me to wrap up this blog, this journey we took together. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and to give me your comments, your emails, your critiques and praises. I hope that I’ve been able to crack open a window onto another world for you, a world that I loved inhabiting. Many people have asked me if I’ll continue to blog now that I’m back in the United States. I wasn’t planning on it, especially because I’ll be in grad school this year. Most entries would go something like this, “Woke up. Studied budgeting and/or statistics and/or economics. Went to class. Did group work. Studied more. Ate. Slept.” That probably wouldn’t be a very interesting blog. But thanks for your attention over the past year and a half, and I hope to have the chance to explore another world for you sometime in the future.

Peace out.