Life around Katima...

So I have just been working and living here in Katima recently, but life here is always interesting.

Where am I? I know there are still some of you out there, wondering, where in the heck is Namibia? Well here it is. Katima Mulilo is in the guitar-top looking part that juts into the middle of Africa - the Caprivi Strip. It’s surrounded by national parks and it has the highest concentration of elephants in the world. The last of the great herds. Sweet.

What am I doing? (besides writing blogs and almost killing myself): It’s not just about solar, but a big part of it is access to energy. Most people in the villages surrounding this area don’t have access to electricity, so they rely mostly on candles for lighting in their mud huts and fires for cooking, heating and boiling water. We are also here to strengthen the conservancy system in the Caprivi. The conservancies were created after independence (from South Africa) to embrace community based conservation and democratize discriminatory aspects of conservation legislation. How it works in practice is the conservancies get money from lodges, which pays for the salaries of the conservancy leader and the rest of the money can go to a community project, or, as is more often the case, to a small cash distribution. The communities feel that – like most African governance – the benefits are going to a lucky few, and not to the communities.

Below - Sobbe conservancy office, and Sobbe focus group...

We did a focus group in the community where there was already a conservancy sale last week. The overwhelming message was: We love the torches! We want more torches! Now we don’t have to use candles in the home, which is bad for our lungs, we can see snakes, and we can scare away elephants. When are you coming back for more? When are you bringing us more products? Pretty cool.

We are doing another sale in another conservancy when the torches come in at the end of the month.

Here is some EE propaganda for your viewing pleasure. It's pretty sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_PehXS1KJk

What is it like there? Katima isn’t the prettiest town you have ever seen, but it’s got most things you need. We have two fantastic grocery stores, which is a lot like a western grocery store, with a much more limited selection (esp meat, fresh produce, etc). We have three whole restaurants in town – one serves chicken, one serves steak, and one is only open for breakfast and lunch. Otherwise, shops in town are a few gas stations and “Chinese shops,” which might have any random assortment of items. Oh, there is also a market with (great smelling) fish and some locally grown items, mostly tomatoes and onions and a few peanuts. The nice part is being surrounded by the rivers and the bush: we are surrounded by the Namibian national parks, and we’re only a few hours from Livingstone, Zambia (Vic Falls!) and a few hours from Chobe National Park in Botswana.

There are tons of great characters in town, including Henk, who swore to be the local croc hunter, and Lise, who has been living in the bush for two months tagging hyenas…for her own pleasure!

What can you do for fun? My weekends have been filled with pleasant quiet days at the Fish Farm, wandering among the horses, goats, chickens, dogs…down to the river and canopy birds, in the bush under many birds, and various excursions nearby and in the bush.

One weekend, we went kayaking on the Zambezi River. We stopped for a bit at a sand bank that made the funniest squeaking noise when you jump on it. Kayaking here is a bit sketchy…because of the hippos more than the crocs. They are quite territorial and have no problem turning over a kayak and chomping someone in half. There aren’t many hippos on the Zambezi where we kayaked… so I am told. (My friend Erica, who is working for WWF in Zambia, on the Zambezi.)

Last weekend, I was invited to go on a fishing trip with Wouter and his friends, Johan and Johan. When in Rome…The trip started with no less than two breaks in the 100K journey to the Kwandu River…for beer. The resort in Mudumu National Park was beautiful – small cabins over the water. They taught me how to braii (bbq), fish, and that I can't keep up beer for beer with Afrikaans. We did see some ellies right next to the river and a strange bat hanging from the ceiling!! There were dudes, sausages, and more dudes...total Afrikaans sausage fest :)

Kwandu River, ellie, Wouter with his big catch of the day

We had a little going away party for my friend Dan, who moved from the Fish Farm to work at a resort on the river. There is a nice little dock, called “the deck,” right over the Zambezi River, where it’s nice to have sundowners. There was probably a few too many of us on the old structure, and at one point, the whole thing started to tip pretty seriously towards the water. We all screamed and ran to the other side...it made for an exciting night out on the river.

I have started to meet people in town, which is nice. I attended a "kitten party" - dress up party for GIRLS ONLY! at a bar, which was a fantastic idea. I also spent a Sunday drinking beer and eating poike, Afrikaans style delicious stew. Lakka!! (Good!)

Unfortunately, I have been met with an uncommon amount of racism, almost all white on black. I thought about sharing some of the shocking things I have heard, but I decided that these things don't need to be repeated. It goes both ways though - the founding father of Namibia recently encouraged people to find Englishmen, and beat them up...with hammers. http://allafrica.com/stories/200909211118.html

Favorite frog story of the week: I noticed a frog hanging out on the toilet. Cool, whatever. Next thing I hear is a PLOP! …Mr. Froggie decided to go for a swim in the toilet bowl! A bit later Ryan went into the bathroom and started laughing pretty hard when he saw the little guy in his personal pool. He warned me to think before I flush.

Torches are set to arrive Nov 5...then it's conservancy sale time!! It's going to be crazy until then.

Victoria Falls, the mighty Zambezi, village dancing

Whew what a fantastic week! I think the pictures can mostly speak for themselves.

It started with a bit of worry: I had to go to Zambia for a few days for meetings and, apparently, benadryll is illegal in Zambia. Yeah, that's right. Totally illegal. Why? Who knows. For me, this is a big problem. If you have ever spent time with me, you probably know about my many fun food allergies. Although I don't usually don’t consider them a big deal, I don't feel comfortable travelling without my trusty benadryll. Unfortunately, a few unwitting American tourists entered Zambia with benadryll, and are currently being held in prison. When I contacted the US Embassy in Zambia, I was strongly advised NOT to bring any benadryll into Zambia… “If you do enter the country with Benadryl there is a very real risk that you will be detained and imprisoned on drugs charges.” the ambassador wrote me.

Deciding that Zambian jail might be better than ending up dead from an allergic reaction, I decided to put the benadryll in my bra for the border crossing. Tomorrow, I’ll either be at Vic Falls or in Zambian jail, I thought. Luckily, the informal border crossing between Namibia and Zambia was no big deal. YES! My first drug smuggling was a major success!

Arrived in Livingstone at 9:45, and at 10, I jumped on a bus to Victoria Falls and immediately met two lovely American women working for an international nonprofit called Population Services International and a German and Austrian med student, both volunteering in Zambia for the summer. Vic Falls was pretty but really dry. It’s the dry season here and so the water flow is not nearly as spectacular as other times of year. I watched them bungee (yup, still would not enjoy it one bit) and then we hiked down to the waterfront to see the canyon in the late afternoon sun. It was hot and the Euros jumped in the water to cool off…we soon followed, dress and all. So fun. Past baboon and zebras fro a sundowner at the Royal Livingstone – martinis and the red African sun setting on the Zambezi. Fantastic day.

Because my meeting wasn’t until late in the afternoon the next day, I decided to do a half day whitewater rafting trip with Max and Marcus, the Austrian and German medical students. On our raft, we met more friends to add to the crew: James, another medical student from the UK, and Ben, an Australian working in a mine in Zambia. We hopped on the river past the falls, and quickly realized that most of the ten rapids on that stretch of the river were Class 5. Is this a beginner course? Because we all were. Off we went. Three big rapids – horray!

Rapid 4 was a different story. Our guide warned us that rafts often flip on this one –and sure enough, we turned right over. I found myself under the raft. This is okay, I thought – and I remembered that they told us to find the water pocket under the raft and make our way out. I found the air, but then couldn’t get out from underneath. Great. The raft started flapping and my air pocket disappeared. Between my desperate gasps and the waves splashing, water started to enter my lungs. The current suddenly pulled me under deep and - luckily for me -

popped me back up immediately. It felt like a long time but it was probably about ten seconds or less. Because the water in my lungs, my first breath was more like a half gasp. Wheez, cough cough. Wheeze, cough cough. Marcus and I looked at each other with big eyes – WHAT THE F#%K WAS THAT! But no time to recover. On to rapid number 5….and the next 5 class 5 rapids. The mighty Zambezi definitely brought me the closest to death I have ever been.

But I wasn’t the only one – most of the people on my raft had a similar experience, though I don’t know if anyone had the same trouble breathing after the experience like I did. Soon we were able to enjoy ourselves a bit and laugh at ourselves. Like James, who lost his pants while he was flailing around in the white water. He said that he felt his pants come off, and (read in a Brittish accent) decided that if he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be without his trousers. He grabbed them and before he came out of the water, he handed them to our guide. Good one!

We flipped again on rapid 7, but this time, it was no big deal. We all held on to the side – experts. All in all, flipping was a very sobering experience, but I was able to enjoy it again by the end.

The meeting went really well – I met a nonprofit from…Denver, CO! which is very experienced in rural supply chain and marketing, but their work is with water products for rural farmers, not energy. Very interesting. How do you create markets in rural areas where no markets exist?

Naturally, that night, we had to celebrate making it out of the river alive with a night out and dancing.

Another strange experience in Zambia was meeting two different people that were in Livingstone related to two different deaths from car crashes. Apparently the roads are particularly treacherous there, between drunk drivers and truckers who drive all night without sleep. One was there for a funeral, the other, for a court date.

When I finally made it back to Katima Mulilo, I jumped into dinner with Erica and the WWF people. One Afrikaans man, from Zimbabwe, but working in Namibia, started telling me about his experience with Apartheid. It only ended 15-20 years ago, and racism and bigotry are still quite rampant here. “First they told us apartheid was right, now they tell us apartheid is wrong,” he said. “Twenty years ago, it would have been illegal for him (he pointed at the black African man sitting with us at the table) to sit here with us. Twenty years ago, it would have been illegal for her (he pointed at a woman sitting at our table) to be married to her husband, a black African man. It’s an interesting time – things are changing so quickly.”

BAD NEWS! My beloved pet, Roscoe the frog on my light switch, has gone missing. He left us one night and left only a poop to remember him by. Luckily, there are plenty of other frogs in the house. But I miss him every time I look at my light switch!

Sunday, we attended a cultural festival in Chinchimane. Chief Mamili of the Mafwe tribe showed up in his full leopard print – apparently that doesn’t happen every day!

There was a bit too much groveling and too little dancing for my tastes, but it was a feast of colors, textures, movement, and beautiful African harmonies. I’ll leave this one to the pictures.

Another week, another elephant

So I had the chance to go on another safari with my friend Jessica, so I took off on a Friday. We took an early cab into Botswana and tried to hitch a ride at the border. Ryan swore that as two blond girls we would have no trouble hitching, and sure enough, before we walked out of the Botswana immigration office, an Africaans trucker offered us a ride into Botswana. We got in early and got a spot at a nice resort right outside of Chobe National Park. It's a good deal - you can enjoy the amazing pool and facilities for $10 a night to camp. We decided that we should do an evening game drive, an early morning game drive, and a boat cruise to maximize wildlife-viewing.

Friday we hung out at the pool for a bit and then went on the evening game drive with a couple of Americans and a couple of South Africans. We did get to see tons of elephants (again) - playing with each other in the mud (cute!), a mother milking a child (aww), one rubbing his big ole butt on a tree (hahah), wartogs kneeling to eat their food (pumba is the swahili name for warthog!

they are so funny - becoming one of my favorites), tons of birds, including an endangered kori bustard, zebras, a bunch of giraffes (which I hadn't seen yet!), including one which got stuck on the wrong side of a pack of elephants and had to find his way to the other side, tons of baboons on the road including some babies, and at the end....a cheetah running through the bushes (although it was too dark for a photo).

The craziest part of that game drive, though, was an American dude on our safari jeep. First of all, he had a big old saloon style musache - wax and all. He wasn't very friendly, and then he kept being totally obnoxious - he would randomly start singing, or blabbing on inappropiately about how he wanted to shoot the animals while they were around (I have no problem with hunters but you have to be quiet as to not distirb the wildlife!)...he also bragged about his connections to Rush Limbaugh and his "piss on the Koran party"...more than once. Ugly ugly American.

I decided that this guy was someone I should get to know. "So, what do you do?" I asked. He looked at me for a second. "I'm a gun man. I like to shoot things. I like to shoot animals. I like to shoot people." I tried not to look suprised. Did he want to shoot me? "Yeah I'm wierd. I was in Nam. I loved shooting those gooks out of the plane." Wow.

(Did I mention the buffet? SO MANY KINDS OF CHEESE YUM!)

We were warned not to camp too close to the river because the crocs and the hippos have come up there - apparently one tourist was eaten by a croc while washing his dishes in the river a few years ago at our campsite! Since then they have put up little fences. And luckily for me - I was in a tent with an expert on the matter: my friend Jessica is studying human-wildlife confict in the region.

We woke up at 5 am the next morning for our 6 am game drive...and there was a LOT of noise coming from the bushes next to our campsite, which bordered the National Park. It sounded like a very noisy hippo in the bushes next to a tent of two other Americans, which was next to us. I was a little freaked out by all the noise and how close they were...and then Jessica said, "That's not a hippo - look at those tusks!" In the light, we could see two big white tusks in the bushes, right above the other American's tent!! The elephant moved into the light, in a clearing right next to the bush - just a thin metal fence between our tents and the massive animal. I was ready to get out of there as soon as possible. We were kind of worried about our friends but we didn't want to make too much noise and alarm the elephant. (We tracked them down later and they were ok :)

The morning game drive was also a sucess: buffalos scratching themselves on trees, tons of

baboons, and then the cats: a few lionesses, and three cubs in tow. They marked a tree and walked through all of the safari jeeps, unaffected. Another lioness in the grass, refusing to acklnowledge the jeeps surrounding her. Three hyenas, one knawing on something. Tons of impala, young males locking horns.

Another afternoon at the pool, with a view of the river and elephants in the distance.

Then it was off to our river cruise - lots of hippos, a croc face off, a baby croc, tons of birds, a baby hippo flapping his gums - on a boat with a Norweigan man working on the oil industry in Somolia..crazy!

This week of work was good. We found out that the 800 torches which never showed up in Namibia will arrive on the coast in mid October. But we aren't relying on those and we'll do a sale of the torches in October sometime. Hopefully. I am looking into the other products and microfinance issues as well.

I did have a pretty bad night on Friday. After a huge ordeal to get out of the Fish Farm Compound, we finally got a key and got out. I was trying to open the (electrified) gate for Jessica to drive in, although I had never had to lock or unlock the gate before. I blacked out. I found myself backing away from the fence feeling very stunned and freaked out. I turned around slowly and looked at Jessica. "I think I was electrocuted." She told me to get in the car and told me, "I thought you were joking because I saw your body convulsing and twitching like in a movie." Great. There are no doctors who work on the weekends here (unless its a pretty serious emergency) and the owner of the Fish Farm promised me that they've all been shocked before and it's not a big deal. I guess we'll see...

Big news for next week: I have a meeting in Livingstone, Zambia, which means...I get to see Victoria Falls on Tuesday! Awesome. I am also pretty excited about this meeting. A international development nonprofit based out of Denver has this amazing rural marketing strategy which could be a big help for our solar product distribution. How do you create a market in rural areas?

Fish Farm major photoshoot. Kitchen, my bedrom, front door.

I love this place.

...........Fish Farm PETS! Roscoe, the frog who lived on my lightswitch. HE WENT MISSING THIS MORNING!!! :( In his place is a poop!! Zulu, communal dog. Crazy horses. Lizards in the bathroom.

1 week, 3 countries, 500 elephants. Welcome to Caprivi

So I have only been in Africa for about a week now but it has been a wild ride.

I love my accommodations - I am staying with Ryan on the Zambezi Fish Farm, a little open air bungalow on an old fish farm with about 5 other similar homes and a mess of local guides, researchers and aid workers. It's thatched roof and pretty open and simple, but it has everything we need - refrigerator, kitchen, stove, small oven, bathroom, (some) hot water for showers. There are plenty of pets around - besides the 2 dogs that frequent the house, there are tons of wasps flying about (dont worry, they dont sting!), probably tons of rodents, a frog who finds hilarious places to perch in the bathroom, and a tiny frog asleep on my light switch. I love him!!

The atmosphere at the Fish Farm is really nice - we are on the Zambezi river, so we can walk a few minutes and watch a sunset on the big river on a little boat. The mess of young people staying there are coming in and out means that there are impromptu gatherings and barbecues (braiis) - because in Africa, you dont go out much after dark.

Katima Mulilo is not the prettiest town there is, but it does the job. There are a few "nice" grocery stores where you can get most things, although some of the produce is rotten. There are a few restaurants for lunch and one for dinner (which apparently usually has only one choice for dinner - steak). Not bad!

Work is going to be interesting - I am still very excited to jump in. But after being here just a few days, I am realizing that in rural Africa, even the most simple of ideas can become very complicated to carry out. Ryan has been on the trail of the solar torches for a bit, and has run into considerable difficulty in selling them through the conservancies, for reasons which are too long and complicated to explain here. I am hoping that we can find a way to sell the small solar

panels and cell phone adapters while I am here and scope out what might be possible for EE in the future. Apparently a shipment of 800 flashlights was supposed to arrive this week but is still in a warehouse in Texas somewhere...oops. We'll see how this goes.

A pretty big problem that we have is transportation. We thought we would have a car. We don't. So we are stuck relying on the grace of others in the office (Ryan tells me that others have not been so graceful), public transportation (practically nonexistent), and hitchhiking. Don't be too shocked - it is very common here and I would never do it by myself. But it means you are at the whim of the next nice person who will pick you up. It's difficult for business when you are going to remote villages in the bush.

This weekend was a trip. Ryan and I hitched out to Mazambala resort with an Africaans trucker, where we hitched on a river cruise, and saw tons of beeater birds, small frogs in the river weeds, impalas jumping, hippos ominously peering out from our river (they are dangerous!), elephants in the sun, and about 50 baboons running, screeching, fighting, and swinging through the trees above us. A very calm and relaxing night on the river, followed by a candlelit nice dinner at the lodge, before we headed back to our campsite.

Only to be followed by Dan's request that we go to the Cheap Shop - a bar/club/convenience store just outside the park. I was a bit uncomfortable at first, as Ryan, Dan and I were the only whites and non-village people around, but I found some children at the bar (I know, weird the kids were at the bar...) and started to ask them questions, and soon got them in a dancing circle with me. Suddenly I found myself laughing and spinning around, as they all chanted "MA-KU-Ah! MA-KU-Ah!" (white person) to the beat. I was having a grand old time, but apparently I attracted too much attention. Ryan approached me nervously and told me that one of the guys from the village asked him if I was his girlfriend (he said yes), and then told him that they could use a girl like me in the village, so could they trade girlfriends (luckily he said no).

The next day, our friend Dan, an aspiring bush guide, decided to take us on a custom game drive in a borrowed truck (bakkie). Dan woke us up early to go on what turned out to be 10 hours of game drive. Zebras, hippos, tons of birds, several types of antelopes, vultures, a hyena...and

elephants. SO MANY ELEPHANTS. At the end of the day, we started driving in a remote area of the park, near Angola. As we drove, we came upon a large herd of elephants, crossing in front of us - it must be more than 50! We exclaimed. We continued to drive....and they kept crossing the dirt road...in front, behind....wow! A few hundred! they kept on coming and coming! Probably around 400-500

elephants on both sides of our little truck!!! On the road in front, behind, and on both sides! A few in the water, drinking, playing. Awesome (in the real sense of the word) and terrifying at times.

Dan got out of the car to take pictures and apparently spooked one of the large beasts....it swung its feet and flapped its ears and started to approach Dan...(my heart rate was through the roof at this point...) and he finally clapped to scare it away. And scare he did! The elephant seemed to jump off the ground and dashed off in the other direction...it was hilarious. Like a cartoon elephant who has just been spooked by a mouse! He took most of the other elephants with him.

(disclaimer: I can't take credit for these amazing photos - Dan took all of these. My cheap camera batteries gave out immediately!)

Tune in next week for an expose on Ryan's underwear.