Smilee...
Greetings friends. First let me explain my title Smilee means cooked goat head. Yup the whole thing. We went for a traditional dinner last night and it was carnivorism gone wild. The tongue, brain, jaw muscles, intestines, heart, liver....people don't like to waste here! Apparently the head, long intestines and liver is the most special meal which is reserved for elders in a household and for guests. This was at a "restaurant" but a more traditional ones. The Pakistanis among us would uderstadn this better when I'll say taht it was like a dhaba on the highways. So we eat outside. No menus. The cooking is out in the open and there is this tin room with a big window. thing which serves as the reception/cashier etc. There are concrete benches around a concrete table and some other plastic tables and chair. Very comfy.
Now moving off the dinner table. Windheok prides itself in being very clean. We've been told that if you throw something out of your car window then you'll get yelled at.
I might have already said that but Namibia got independence only 15 years ago. However, the signs of aparhied are still pretty visible. The white people still live near the town center and townships are still where the poor black communities live. As you can imagine the living conditions are VERY different. The place where we went to eat last night is called Katatura which means "a place where nobody wants to go." This is where the black community uses to live. A huge majority of the people are black and then we have whites, colored adn Bastars. Bastars are people who look very much like he colored people (like mullatos) but pride themselves from being of German descent. Germany was the first colonizer in Namibia.
The country has a pretty good literacy rate...around 85% But not many people go on for tertiary education. The country sepnds about 25% pf its budget adn 10% of its GDP on education. This is a contrast from Pakistan which has a low literacy rate but a lot of universities. There are only a handful of universities in Namibia. People who can afford it tend ot go to South africa for further education.
However, half of the population lives in poverty. And 3 or four out of every adult is unemployed. The biggest hurdle for development (apart from the economic aparthied) is AIDS. Namibia is the 5th in the world for the percentage of people effected by HIV. the country is huge but the population is 1.8 million. most of the people live in the north of the country. And are Oshivambo people. The entire country is broken into 13 gepgraphical regions.
22% of the people are affected by HIV with 20% of the women already affected.In Oshikanto which is a northern region 34% of pregannt women are affected by HIV.
All these numbers and the living conditions of people in the townships is preety enough to make you humble and thoughful and frustrated for a number of days.
Won't be back till Thursday.
Now moving off the dinner table. Windheok prides itself in being very clean. We've been told that if you throw something out of your car window then you'll get yelled at.
I might have already said that but Namibia got independence only 15 years ago. However, the signs of aparhied are still pretty visible. The white people still live near the town center and townships are still where the poor black communities live. As you can imagine the living conditions are VERY different. The place where we went to eat last night is called Katatura which means "a place where nobody wants to go." This is where the black community uses to live. A huge majority of the people are black and then we have whites, colored adn Bastars. Bastars are people who look very much like he colored people (like mullatos) but pride themselves from being of German descent. Germany was the first colonizer in Namibia.
The country has a pretty good literacy rate...around 85% But not many people go on for tertiary education. The country sepnds about 25% pf its budget adn 10% of its GDP on education. This is a contrast from Pakistan which has a low literacy rate but a lot of universities. There are only a handful of universities in Namibia. People who can afford it tend ot go to South africa for further education.
However, half of the population lives in poverty. And 3 or four out of every adult is unemployed. The biggest hurdle for development (apart from the economic aparthied) is AIDS. Namibia is the 5th in the world for the percentage of people effected by HIV. the country is huge but the population is 1.8 million. most of the people live in the north of the country. And are Oshivambo people. The entire country is broken into 13 gepgraphical regions.
22% of the people are affected by HIV with 20% of the women already affected.In Oshikanto which is a northern region 34% of pregannt women are affected by HIV.
All these numbers and the living conditions of people in the townships is preety enough to make you humble and thoughful and frustrated for a number of days.
Won't be back till Thursday.
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