The two day long first of June

I woke this morning, June 1st, and went hiking up a steep mountain to look out over the fijian beach below and the ocean beyond. Tonight I will arrive in Kansas City in the last hours of June 1st. It is the best June 1st ever.

Fiji is pretty great. You may have heard stories about how unpretty and unamazing and unfun it is. These are all lies. It is pretty amazing and fun. I went swimming with manta rays that were at least 2meters from wingtip to wingtip. It was pretty much the most amazing experience of my life. or one of. Manta rays are the most graceful things I have ever seen. So much more graceful than anything that has joints. These were seen while snorkeling while be dragged by a rope behind a boat. Manta rays need a strong current and we couldn't keep up with our own jointed and inferior limbs. (Don't worry Sissy I kept my heart far away from their tails. I did not try to put one in a boat which I think was what really saved me.)

I also snorkeled out side my resort which was a pretty fine view too. I really love snorkeling. I love it because it is meditative, and experientially beautiful, and because it makes me feel like a mermaid. Sometimes I even flip my flippers in unison to maximize this feeling. But then, what usually happens, is I run into a real mermaid, giggling in a twirl of fish kisses or some other magical mermaid thing they do. I make the universal underwater hand signals for "Let's be friends!!" and then she says, in her clickty dolphin language: "You aren't a real mermaid! You are just a snorkler!" I then try to respond: "If I am not a real mermaid than how come I can understand you! and how come I can talk underwater!?" but only manage to dislodge my snorkel in the effort. The mermaid flits away and I am left choking on salt water. It's the same every time.

But really. I went to this art exhibit in Sydney by Kusuma or something that I don't have time to verify right now. She is an artist that kind of came of artistic age in the 60's with art happenings and drugs. She did these rooms - like a black living room in black light with all these fluorescent dots on everything. And another room that was all mirrors and hanging Christmas lights - so it looked like there were just Christmas lights forever. Awesome. But this is kind of like how I think of snorkeling. Only snorkeling is better because you are floating. Floating and being moved by the waves and surrounded by a strange, beautiful, other worldly world. And it is real. MORE awesome.

The place I stayed is called Octopus Resort. It was ideal. Affordable, good fun, nice. AND they SEEM to have a really good respectful relationship with the neighboring village. The resort has a school fund for all the kids, scholarships, books, etc. and uses their boat to take the kids to boarding school on Sundays and brings them back on Fridays. They have a lot of activities that directly benefit the guides, supports the local rugby team or whatever.

It appears to be a win win win situation. Which is exactly what I like to see. The village benefits from employment and influx of money, the tourist get a good and affordable experience and real interaction with the people whose island they are visiting, and I assume the owners are making enough money to be happy without cutting anyone's throat. Nice.

Himba - Herero

It is raining in Sydney so I can't go running. Boo.

So -The Himba were one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Namibia. I had a friend visit about a year ago and he was telling me about two of the tribes in northern Namibia who live as neighbors but one maintains traditional dress of not much more than a loin cloth, bare chested, and the other wears full length dresses covering everything from their neck to the wrists to their ankles. I remember him saying something along the lines of "So in the same supermarket you could see a woman with no shirt on and a woman with a missionary style dress." That is what I wanted to see.

And indeed it is all true. The Himba, as pictured on my flickr site, dress in leather skirts, ankle cuffs, necklaces, and not much else. The women cover their bodies in a butter/ground ochre mix making them reddish in color. The other distinguishing and I think amazingly beautiful characteristic of their dress is their hair- packed with clay making long red chords. The children also have a particular hairstyle before they mature - the young girls' hair is braided in one big braid curling over their forehead. The women also never bathe in water. Instead they steam bath every morning with perfume herbs and different lotions. Apparently their main chores involve cooking, looking after the children, and making themselves look beautiful. They are traditionally nomadic people and many of the family groups do still move around frequently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himba

The Herero on the other hand, who technically are the same people as the Himba - Ovahimba is a subgroup of Herero, fell under the instructive control of german missionaries - hence the long dresses. And funny head dresses. Which are now kind of a mix between colonial style dress and african flare. I met some Namibian Peace Corps volunteers who said that- for whatever reason the style started - the Herero now consider it their traditional costume - explainging the massive petticoats and the horn like hat as a proud nod to their cattle. It is so interesting to me that a tribe would shift their norms in response to missionaries (maybe it was by force...), and now, a hundred years later, still work to preserve that tradition in the face of western culture all around them. Namibia is a not a densely populate place but it is far more developed than Zambia.

The Herero are not a homogeneous people. This is because the main group in central Namibia (called Herero proper) has been heavily influenced by Western culture during the colonial period, creating, thus, a mixture of the European and Herero cultures, that is a whole new identity. Even though the different groups share the same language, culture, and origin, their traditions differ sharply. The North-Western groups (such as Himba, Kuvale, and Tjimba) are more conservative, preserving cultural aspects that have been lost by the southern groups (Herero proper and Mbanderu). For example, the Southern Herero have traded in their leather garments for the type worn by Europeans in colonial times. The Southern Herero are involved in the economies of Namibia and Botswana, mostly as cattle breeders. The Kaokoland Herero and those in Angola have remained isolated and are still pastoral nomads, practicing limited horticulture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero
(You can also read here about the masacres that took place during German colonialism... Ruben and I feel like Namibia is still a very racially tense place - unlike Zambia).

And as far as I could tell, a traditionally dressed Himba or a traditionally dressed Herero could be sitting amongst Namibians in t-shirts and jeans at a gas station and no one really thought much about the variety. Except me. But I was a tourist.

I am of course not the only person who finds these tribes interesting. They receive a lot of attention and many of the Himba women have left the north for the bigger tourist attractions to make money by having their picture taken. The effects of interaction between western culture and people who have maintained consistant traditions is a long standing query of mine. On some level I want traditions to be protected. I want the world to house as many diverse histories and cultures as people have created. On the other hand, it isn't ethical to deny people in far flung places conviencies that would lighten their burden, or keep them from dying of things that are preventable. As far as the Himba go - their uniquness and beauty attract alot of outside attention - but is that attention giving them another reason to maintain their way of life or just drawing them away from their villages and throwing them into another world. If the rest of the country is become more and more modern, if jobs are in the big cities, than is it only a matter of time until everyone leaves the village in search of work, or education, or modernity. I don't know.
The Himba village I visited was a cultural village set up to receive tourist. It was a community project, all the money goes to the village and the people who participate for food, medicine, travel etc. Tours to the village are part of a scheme to care for orphans. That doesn't really seem like a bad idea- no one has to stay, they know what they are in for and they are use to dealing with tourist groups - who come on their terms. Fair enough. This village also said that most of the kids do not go to school because they do not want them to loose their traditions...

I hate being a tourist and all of this is just me trying to figure out how to be responsible tourist. I love traveling places. I love seeing things that are so different from anything I have ever seen before. I love being in beautiful places. I think the more people interact the more they care about and understand each other. And tourism is undeniably an economic opportunity and CAN be an economic opportunity for people who don't have many other opportunities. (That was another thing I thought was cool in Namibia. I THINK that some of the attractions we went to - the rock carving and cave paintings - were community projects - goverenment run but benefiting the people who lived there.) BUT I also know that tourism can be destructive. It can bring unwelcome things into different parts of the world, it can take advantage of desperate people, and it can cause environmental harm.

Where is my money really going? What am I contributing to? These are overwhelming questions for me. But significant.

Anyway. Namibia is really great. I want to go back. I want to go back in my own vehicle so I can get to hard to reach places. Like the very very north. Like the sand dunes that run into the ocean. Like Soussevlei which is probably one of the most spectacular sites in the world and I didn't go because of money. That seems stupid now. Another time. I will go back.

The more I travel the more I want to see - and the more places to which I want to some day return to.

ooh la la

I've just returned from my northern Namibian tour. It was a small group, with the guide and camp assistant we made a cozy group of five. There was an adorable British guy who would say adorable British accented things like "I've got sompthin in me eye."
There was an adorable french girl who would say adorable french accented things like "When is zi love season for zi an-i-mals?" and I swear exclaimed "ooh la la" at least once. Then there was adorable me who said adorable American accented things like "Golly that sure is purrtty." It was totally relaxed and fun. Our guide was a very likable young Namibian. our camp sites were great. It was a really great way to leave Africa I think - eating around a campfire, taking outdoor showers which you know I love- all very similar to the village only posher - with running water, flush toilets, and even electricity sometimes, plus someone else did most of the cooking and washing up. We saw all the exciting African animals. We saw 7 black rhinos at the watering hole one night. We visited a Himba village where I got kind of filthy playing with the kids. We went hiking to see ancient rock carvings and cave paintings - through a shaded valley of white stoned streams and ethereal fluff of bush grass. The most famous painting is called the 'white lady' because the figure is painted in white - the first anthropologist to study it hypothesized that it was an early white visitor from the Mediterranean. This has long since been disproved - and it is now widely accepted as a male shaman figure with "an obvious male groin adornment" ...still it keeps the name white lady. oh white people.
More on the Himba tomorrow.

The person who was suppose to replace me just left Zambia early... I am not pleased. I am less than pleased. I am crying in fact. There is more to say about Namibia but I am crying.