Namibian Cell Phones

My post about the phone numbers brings up something that amazed me this time in Africa- the popularity of cell phones! Imagine you have lived somewhere where you were unable to have a telephone and then all of a sudden in comes this miraculous thing called cellular phones. My experience is that Africans have adopted cell phones whole heartedly. I am a tried and true anti-cell phone person and seeing the invasion of this technology saddens me. Not that I don't think people should be able to be in contact with others but I hate that we all have seemed to have lost a sense of being present. I hate that people don't talk to each other anymore in line, or talk with their check out person- why bother when you can call up anyone else you know and talk to them? About anything? As a dental hygienist, I have had patients interrupt my work to take a call. One woman actually motioned for me to continue while she chatted. Not likely! What has this got to do with Namibia? Well it is the same if not worse there. People take phone calls during meetings or text while in the middle of conversations there. It made me crazy. But that said one of the things that amused me was how the church was the one place that many people had access to electricity to charge up their phones and so you would see them plugged in to all the outlets possible during worship. Then when one phone was charged they would remove it and place another in the plug. I wanted to take some shots of it at one church but we left early and I did not get a chance. Here is the one picture I got with the phones in it.

Faces of Eembaxu

It is always the people that I meet that capture my heart when I travel and eembaxu was no different. While we could not readily communicate, many people did not speak english and I spoke no Ovambo, so conversations were short to say the least. But words are not necessary. Smiles translate well and quite often women would, by gestures, show me what I needed to do or what they wanted from me. One of my favorite "interactions" was when I was trying to get the address of 2 women from the women's conference. They had an exercise in friendship and I was given one woman's name and another was given my name. We were to pray for that woman and hold her in our heart. My being from the US presented a challenge. I gestured for them to write their address in my book but they wrote their cell numbers. They wanted me to give them my cell number. I was finally able to communicate that what good would phone numbers do us? We couldn't talk very long not knowing the other's language. At least a note can be translated. When the understood what I was saying we all shared a big laugh. Below are photographs of some of the beautiful people I came to know in Eembaxu.

Faces of Eembaxu

People of Eembaxu

Eembaxu continued

Sometimes I am just so amazed at how good God is. When I left home I knew I was missing the Women of Faith Conference at the Izod center. For the past 10 years I have been going to these conferences and having my soul filled and lifted by the praise of 10,000+ women all at one time in one place. I had arranged for tickets for 26 women from my church to go and I was sad to be missing it. So imagine my surprise when the weekend that my sisters in faith in NJ were headed to the WOF conference I ended up being present for a Women's conference in Eembaxu. While different from the one in NJ this one was amazing. I loved being present to see how these women in Namibia support each other, share their faith, learn together, raise money to do important things for their community and most of all search together to find out what God's plans are for them. I left from my time in Eembaxu inspired, uplifted and even more in love with God... He is awsome.

Women from the conference (that's me on the left.)

Pastor Ruusa

Sunday Worship

Eembaxu

After traveling a couple of hours through the country we made it to our church. We stopped along the way at a store for Pastor Ruusa and Teopaulina to pick up some food. While I waited in the back of the truck I met two people. The first was a young man who was asking me something but I couldn't understand him. It wasn't just the language problem, it was hard to understand any of the sounds he was making. I saw his tongue and saw karposi's sarcoma lesions all over it. The poor young man was one more of the victims of HIV/AIDs in a lot of the African countries. My heart broke for him and he became my first real face of AIDs. He walked away when he realized I couldn't understand him. I felt so ignorant and useless. (Actually I didn't even begin to realize how ignorant I had been- I had been thinking HIV/AIDS was not such an issue here in the US anymore. I hadn't read about it in a long time. Once I returned from Namibia I started noticing it more and more in the news. Contrary to my naive belief, we are still under the grip of the disease here too. The statistics are beyond frightening. How did I ever get so complacent as to not pay attention to this?)

The second person I wet was a young woman who was a Peace Corp volunteer from Texas. She was teaching in a small school in a very rural area of Namibia. We chatted for a little bit, waiting for Ruusa and Teopaulina to return. We got on the subject about what she was looking forward to when she returned home to the US. Besides family she said she wanted pizza, good pizza. I asked if she was going to be in Windhoek any time soon and she was- she was picking her mother up from the airport in a couple of weeks. I told her to go to the Gourmet Biergarten on the main street in the city. We had the best pizza there. Better than most places here in the US. How surreal to be sitting in the back of a pick up truck somewhere in Namibia being able to recommend a pizza place to local. It was so funny.

The women came back and I said good bye to my new friend and we were back on the road. Before long we arrived at the church. Pastor Ruusa's home was a traditional homestead connected to the church and I was so excited to be able to spend time here.

The church of Eembaxu

Pastor Ruusa's homestead

The family's living space was in the building to the left. My room was in there as was the area set aside for me to prepare meals for myself. WHAT??? I have to admit I was kind of freaked at the thought that I had to make my own meals but it was really a misunderstanding. There was a women's conference going on that weekend and the pastor had a lot to do for arriving participants. There was no time that day to prepare a meal for me. After that I was well taken care of and just wish I had more time to settle in so that I could have tackled cooking in Namibia but instead I settled for a slice of bread with peanut butter.