The Forgotten Places

On the 8th of March 2009, after only being in the country a little over two weeks, we trainees were going on a week long visit to our site placements. This visit, in the middle of training was to familiarize ourselves with what would be our homes for the next 2 years, to put into practice some of our new language and cross-cultural skills that we gained from training, and to make sure the site (and Peace Corps in general) was a good match on both sides.

The day before, almost everyone’s supervisors had arrived to meet their new volunteer, and to escort them up to their site the following day. My organization was one of the few that did not send anyone to our training. I was a little disappointed at first, but was told that it was due to transportation problems and that other travel arrangements were already made to get me to my site. So I went home for the night, packed what I had deemed to be a good travel amount of luggage (with a curbside travel service maybe), and went to bed early.

The following day I woke up early, my host father drove me down to the training centre to meet my ride, gave me a hug goodbye and then I was off. We drove through a lot of beautiful countryside, with some mountains, rock formations, lots of green vegetation, warthogs, and GIGANTIC ant hills, many that were even taller than me. We drove through a few very similar towns named Otjiwarongo, Otavi, and Grootfontein, all of which were sites for volunteers from our group. As we continued our journey however, I was not prepared for what lie ahead.

Entering the Kavango region was probably one of, if not the most, shocking events of the Peace Corps experience thus far. Us volunteers had only seen such a limited portion of Namibia staying in the small developed town of Okahandja, a town I previously considered to be 3rd world. My only experience with developing countries thus far in life has been with Mexico and Venezuela. But I had not seen 3rd world until I entered the Kavango. Our transport had just stopped in Grootfontein not too long before. That town was clean, developed, and looked like a really nice place to live.

About an hour outside of Grootfontein is where things changed drastically, at a place known as the red line. It is at this red line where land boundaries melt away and the land becomes communal, where the government steps aside and takes backseat to the tribal chiefs and councils, and… it’s where the majority of the poverty is. There are even gates, that are very much like border crossing stations (they are actually veterinary checkpoints), that you have to pass through to enter the regions above the red line.

As we entered the Kavango region through the Mururani Gate, the change was instantly noticeable. The concrete houses I had previously associated with 3rd world were replaced with mud huts with thatched grass roofs. Herds of cattle and goats roamed freely into the roads and around the villages. The number of cars I saw along the way, either moving or parked, decreased dramatically, and I saw donkey carts for the first time. There were no more gas stations or shops (at least for a while). All signs of a developing country were gone, and at that moment, for me, that part of Namibia changed from being 3rd world, to being a piece, a place, forgotten and left behind in the country’s, the whole world's race to develop.

Just two days before, I had been in the capital city buying my cell phone. There I saw women carrying bulging shopping bags loaded with expensive purchases, But in Kavango, I was seeing women carrying extremely heavy 20 Litre water cans on top of their head for long distances, as they fetched water for their families from the river or a nearby bore hole. In Windhoek, I saw people sitting down at nice restaurants, ordering off of menus with huge selections, eating delicious food prepared on kitchen equipment by kitchen staff, and served to them by paid workers. Above the red line, I have seen women cooking a very limited variety of inexpensive and usually self-produced foods over an open fire to feed their hungry families. In the south I saw many stores with shoes. In the north I saw many people without shoes. In Maerua Mall, I saw many young children running around playfully, buying sweets, food, and ice cream, I saw them going to the movies, buying new clothes, toys, or games. In the forgotten part of Namibia, I saw young children herding their family’s cattle during the heat of the day, peddling tango (phone credit), food, and other items in the streets to support their families, playing with toys made from trash, and I have even seen them begging for bread. And where I saw the rich gathered, I saw mostly white people. Where I have seen poverty in this country, I have only seen black people.

I have seen both sides of the extremes, in Namibia, and in other parts of the world. What I always have a difficult time understanding is not the degree of poverty or the conditions in which people live, but rather gap, the disparity between the two extremes. I personally believe that the gap doesn’t have to exist, that all human beings can live happy and comfortable lives, and furthermore that we ALL DESERVE to live such lives. But as long as we as a society continue to want disparity, poverty, imbalance, and inequality, we will continue to have it. We will continue to have our excessively wealthy, our desolately impoverished, and all of the spaces in between… And we will continue to have the 3rd world with all of its forgotten places and people.