-----Teaching in Namibia-----: Safari Day

On Wednesday we traveled about a half an hour north to go on a safari. Typically when we travel in Windhoek, we use a taxi service called Paradise and our drivers are Shane and Grant. When we travel with them however, we must split up into two vehicles when our professors are with us. Because of this, we used a different taxi service to drive north with which we had a van large enough to fit all of us. This was a nice thing and our driver was amazing. His name is Uanee and he was full of knowledge about Namibia. As we passed things on the road he would explain them and their history to us. He also was super hilarious which made for a very pleasant drive. We learned that men who don't have work will hang out on the side of road at major intersections and wait. When people need workers then, they drive by and say the number of men they need and then that many men jump in the car or truck and go work. They usually work for 1-3 hours time and get paid about 100-200 Namibian dollars ($15-$30 American) an hour. Once they are done working, they return to the intersection to wait for more work. We learned also about the hospital health care in this area. We passed 2 hospitals which Uanee explained that prior to 1990 one was for whites and one was for blacks. Now though, both serve all patients regardless of color. He said too that by law medical is free, but not all people know that right that they have, so they end up paying the cost of 10-15 Namibian ($1.50-$2 American) for a consultation and medication. After driving for about a half hour we arrived at Okapuka Ranch. Once there, we boarded our Zebra striped safari truck and headed out into the wild. We drove around for a good two hours in search of wild African animals in their natural habitat. Our driver Isaac was amazing and found us all the animals we wanted to see. We got super close to many of them. Some of the animals we saw were: giraffes, springbuck, wildebeests, impalas, a mongoose, jackals, oryx, red hartebeests, warthogs, vultures, crocodiles and rhinos. How close we were able to get to each type of animal depended on the skittishness of the animal. The first animal we got really close to was the giraffe. We found about 12 giraffes just hanging out and eating. We drove up to them slowly and spent a long time photographing them. One of the girls here with us, Jill, is in love with giraffes and she got teary eyed at the sight of them so close to her. The other animal that was awesome to be so close to was the rhino. We literally could have jumped on their backs and rode them around, they were that close to our truck. Though I was sad and slightly disappointed that there were no elephants on our safari, it was still an incredible and a seemingly once in a lifetime experience. (For us it will be twice in a lifetime as we are going on another safari next week when we go up north to Etosha :)

Our Sweet Truck