2006 Africa: Namibia - Windhoek, The Capital City

Windhoek (pronounced "Vint-hook"), the capital city of Namibia.

The city is located in the center of the country and has a population of some 300,000. Not too terribly large! Then again, the entire population of Namibia is just 1.8 million, so cities and towns in the country can only be so big. Windhoek is well connected to the rest of the country by paved highways which makes getting to and from the city quite easy. Windhoek neighborhoods are more or less racially segregated between blacks and whites, but local residents seem to mix rather well downtown at shopping centers, restaurants, museums and other public areas. As far as I could tell, local residents seem to have a live and let live mentality and people just go about their business. In fact, that seems to be the general way of life in Southern Africa overall which makes visiting and traveling around the region quite pleasant.

Some 87% of Namibians are indigenous black Africans whereas approximately 7% are white/European-Africans with the remaining 6% being of mixed background. White Namibians are largely of British, Dutch and German background which means that signs are written in Roman script (i.e. Western European writing) and you see signs primarily in English but also in Afrikaans (the local version of Dutch spoken by descendants of Holland and now spoken by many black Africans) as well as German. Surprisingly, I actually got to speak a lot of German while in Namibia and I found it to be a very helpful language to know in the region.

Downtown Windhoek, with cars driving on the left side of the street. In fact, driving was all left-side in each of the five countries I visited on my trip (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa).

Downtown Windhoek. As you can tell, the city is extremely modern.

Downtown Windhoek shopping center with local meteorite remnants on display. Note the highly German/Dutch-influenced modern commercial architecture in the background.

Statue of a kudu in Downtown Windhoek

Regional democrat/dictator Robert Mugabe, who is currently in the process of destroying the economy of Zimbabwe to the east, gets his own street in Windhoek that runs up to the Christus Church along the Parliament Gardens area just to the left.

Christus Church

Yet another view of the quaint Christus Church

Even Fidel Castro gets his own street in Windhoek! To Cuba's credit, while the United States and Western nations were busy supporting racist apartheid governments and corporations in Southern Africa during much of the 20th Century, communist nations were actually supporting regional African movements seeking to throw off the yolk of racial injustice. Not that communist dictatorship is a particularly liberating form of governance, there is certainly something to be said against Western nations that preach individualism, liberty, democracy and human rights and then turn around and support governments that offer the exact opposite. It would have been so easy for an American president's name to be up on this sign instead of Castro's. But when pushed for support, the Namibians had to get it from somewhere and UNFORTUNATELY it was only the communists who offered direct support against apartheid.

Let a lesson be learned.

Walking around downtown Windhoek

Three cool guys hanging out on the grounds of the Christus Church who spend their days carving personalized souvenirs out of makalani nuts. For a mere US$2.25, you can tell the guys what type of imagery you'd like carved into the nut, as well as your name, and within just a few short minutes they etch these phenomenal little works of art, all from memory! (See below)

The guys were very friendly and actually engaged us in a discussion of the Iraq War once they found out that we were American. The conversation was very amicable and, while they weren't war supporters (nor my fellow travelers!), they were curious to learn what the American perspective on the conflict is (as diverse as that may be). The gentleman on the left didn't speak too much but the guys on the right of the picture were very interactive and quite funny. The guy in the yellow shirt talked about women and women's liberation and tried convincing my friend Johanna of the inferiority of women and that women should really just accept more domestic positions within society, whereas his companion (standing behind him) was very engaging and pro-women. He was so pro-women in fact that he asked us if a poor Namibian makalani nut carver like him could find a nice American girlfriend if he moved to the United States. We informed him with a smile that everything is possible in America!

After all, millions of people have certainly come to America with less and achieved more! :-}

Above and below: makalani nut souvenirs. First the exterior is cracked off, the shell then boiled/softened off and then once cooled, the nut is carved. Hmm, I wonder if it can be eaten?

Isn't that a great little souvenir from Africa! And all made from their own memory right in front of my eyes!

The German-descent side of Namibia and Windhoek was really quite interesting. Namibia is, in part, a product of the failed German attempt at colonization in the late 1800s and early 1900s so you see turn-of-the-century German influences all around even if they are fading bit by bit into the past as black Africans assert themselves and their own culture in their newly democratized country. The interesting aspect of this German experience in Namibia is that, if you visit both Namibia and Germany, you can tell that the Germans in both Namibia and modern Germany have common ancestral cultural roots but that both societies developed very differently over the course of the 20th Century. German-Namibian culture broke off on its own sometime in the 1920s and developed along a continuum that avoided the NAZI nightmare but which kept its roots firmly planted in "traditional" German culture, whereas modern Germany went through the horror of the NAZIs, World War II, communist invasion of the eastern provinces and British/French/American occupation of the western provinces - all of which has led most modern Germans to reject much of their "traditional" culture as quaint at best, to shameful and disgraceful at worst and best forgotten.

In this way, it can be said that the contemporary German side of Namibia represents on some level what modern-Germany might be like culturally if the NAZIs had never swept to power and led to the total destruction and reconstruction of German society, for better and for worse. Being in Namibia gave me a sense of what Germany might have been like in the early 1900s and I found most of it to be rather quaint. Simple and charming to a large degree.

Lastly, around Namibia and Windhoek you see a lot of fortresses, memorials and cultural attributes that harken back to that late 19th Century and early 20th Century German experience. Placards paying tribute to WWI soldiers or 19th Century Germans killed during colonial battles with local black Africans, i.e. the sort of thing that you'd NEVER see in modern day Germany where most of their past has been shamed out of existence and eliminated.

One unexpected memorial was the stone above that reads: "East German Provinces Unforgotten," most likely a reference to the now-defunct formerly communist East German provinces that were absorbed into the capitalist-democratic West Germany after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989/1990. How interesting that a tribute to this aspect of German history is to be found thousands and thousands of miles away from Germany but not within Germany itself. One German culture split in two, developed separately in Europe and Africa, viewing the same 20th Century history yet interpreting and respecting very different parts of it. Fascinating.

Downtown Windhoek. It always fascinates me how northwestern European-descent cultures try to plant grass in parts of the world where it really shouldn't be planted. You can take the European out of Europe, but you can't take Europe out of the European.

National Museum of Namibia with a sign for the Parliament Building pointing to the left

The Namibian Parliament

LEFT: Captain Hendrik Samuel Witbooi (1906-1978) - played a part in the resistance movement against German colonial rule

RIGHT: Reverend Theofelus Hamutumbangela (1917-1990)

Ah. . . German influence abounds. . .

Interesting plaque honoring the Germans of yore.

"In the honorable memory of the brave German warriors, who gave their lives for Emperor and Empire in the rescue and preservation of this nation during the Herero and Hottentotten Rebellion of 1903 to 1907 and during the Kalahari Expedition of 1908.

In the honorable memory of the German citizens who fell victim to the indigenous forces during the rebellion.

Fallen, missing, casualties, succumbed to their wounds and died due to their illnesses. Of the security troops: officers - 100, sergeants - 254, troopers - 1,180. Of the marines: officers - 7, sergeants 13, crewmembers - 72. Slain in the rebellion: men - 119, women 4, children 1"

National Museum of Namibia

Interior courtyard of the National Museum of Namibia

The museum as well as African pottery

Wing of the museum chronicling Namibian Independence of 1989 - the last African nation to gain independence.

Above and below: Chameleon City Backpackers youth hostel, about US$10 a night

Above and below: electric fences surround virtually EVERYTHING in Southern Africa. Houses, business, motels, hotels, markets, gardens, fields and all the rest. Apparently the crime rate in Namibia and South Africa is significant, but I often had to wonder if there was a little bit of paranoia involved in all this electric fencing. Of course, instead of installing gazillions of $$$ in electric fences, society might do better by using these resources to educate its masses and provide economic opportunities to them, but - just like everyone else in the world - it seems Southern Africans prefer band aid patches to fundamental and structural social solutions. We people of the world are far more similar than we care to recognize. Sigh. . .

Above and below: souvenir market on a street corner in Windhoek. If I had no suitcase weight and size limitations, I probably would have bought out half of Africa!

I ended up not buying any souvenirs on this particular day, but I did pay the woman overseeing this particular market US$1 for letting me snap these pictures. Now that I'm back in America, a part of me looks at this picture and thinks, "I really should have bought one of those masks!" Oh well, maybe next time.

Construction project "Heroes' Acre" honoring the leaders of the independence movement as well as the nation's first president Sam Nujoma located on the outskirts of Windhoek. Yet again, due to the communist world's support of the black Namibian anti-apartheid liberation movement, it is communist nations which now engineer and construct its memorials. Although communism is now totally defunct, I must confess that their socialist architecture remains as powerful and imposing as ever. While wandering around Heroes' Acre, I was humored by the whole situation: a group of 30-something Americans wandering around this uncompleted structure with cameras in hand while North Korean workers labored away on it. There we were, Americans and North Koreans, allegedly enemies on the political stage - or at least political rivals, and throwing all national disagreements into the wind, we simply smiled at one another and greeted each other with a friendly "Hello!"

Yes, the world's problems really CAN be solved by respecting people and being nice to one another.

Memorial to Sam Nujoma - the first president in the newly liberated Namibia (1990 to 2005)

Now, if this memorial isn't really just a giant phallus, then I don't know what a phallus is. It's kind of obscene actually! ;-}

Sam Nujoma and his obelisk

Me 'n' Sam

Stitched image showing the mural depicting the struggle and liberation of the African Namibians against colonial rule. A larger version of this image can be found BELOW. The march from tribalism to the apparent communist-inspired worker's paradise is depicted quite nicely. . . despite the fact that Namibia is neither a communist country nor a socialist workers' paradise. I guess Namibia has to give engineering kickbacks to those nations that helped out during the independence movement, so the result is a communist reinterpretation of historical events.

Perfect communist design motif!

The one great thing that communists did do better than almost anyone else was to honor women who fought for the cause. In a world where religious fundamentalism and corporate domination seek to replace the vacuum left by the collapse of communist ideology, it's unfortunate that the feminist side of the communist movement is rapidly being swept away into the dustbin of history. Hopefully women will be able to assert their independence and power in whatever future unfolds.

Josh and Johanna walking up Heroes' Acre with Windhoek in the background.

Me atop Heroes' Acre.