Shopping, NAMAS, and Student Life in General...

Uff-da...its been a while.
I'm sorry to say, I haven't got any new pictures, unfortunately. Though, I have had some very interesting experiences I think I'll just share a bit.

Let me start by going back to last weekend...

Sunday my Norwegian Friend Henny (Henriette), her Fiancée, Tony, and I drove just across the border to Sweden, to go shopping for more reasonable prices than one finds in Norway. It was a really great idea. Right after crossing the border, there is a large EuroCash store, that has groceries and other items for low prices and large quantities (kind of like the Swedish version of Target, in a way).

It was fantastic! The Swedish kroner is worth less than the Norwegian kroner, so the prices on many items, though many were the "same", were in fact a bit cheaper. (USD=6.4SEK, USD=5.4NOK)
I bought a lot of meat (chicken, sausages, Swedish meatballs :^) ) because it was much cheaper than buying it in Norway, and also a Kg of Spaghetti, because it was also ridiculously inexpensive. So I guess I'll be dining on Spaghetti and Swedish meatballs for the next couple of weeks.

Tony informed me that Norwegians all go to Sweden to buy meat, beer, and porno. Because beer and pornography are extremely heavily taxed in Norway, and meat is just all around expensive.
So there we were in Sweden to buy meat, beer, and...crap we forgot to get the porno.
Oh well; guess we'll have to do without.

We did however, go into the added on CANDY store. There was an entire extra store added on to this super-store with rows and rows of bins full of candy. You could walk in, grab a little plastic bag and a scooper, and wade through the ocean of candy, filling your bag with all your hearts desires--milk chocolates, dark chocolates, chocolate covered raisins, white chocolate hazelnuts, almonds, pecans, nougats, licorice of all flavors, chocolate oranges, marshmallows, you name it, it was there-- then bring the bag up to the counter and pay for it by the kilo.
It was INCREDIBLE! Like trick-or-treating, only you get to pick the good candies (and you have to pay for it.) I spent around 60 SEK. It was fun :-)

THEN we went to the "huge" mall. It was fairly good sized for a European shopping center, I must admit, but Henny and I both chuckled when Tony called it "huge." There were probably about 15-20 stores in the whole thing. Henny and I hit up H&M (a Swedish clothing company, very popular in Europe) Where I managed to Scandinavify my wardrobe a bit. The Scandinavian women are very into boots. EVERYBODY wears them. Literally. The stores were filled with them. So I decided to integrate/conform to the culture and buy a pair.
They're chic. I'm satisfied.
It was a girl's dream day...shopping and chocolate.

We headed back to Norway around 12 noon, and masses of automobiles from Norway were streaming across the border to go shopping in Sweden. (It is especially busy on Sunday, because nothing is open in Norway on Sunday). So we were lucky to beat the crowd.

Henny and Tony invited me to dinner with them, so I actually got to enjoy someone else's cooking. I think I've been living off my own for tooo long. Let's just say my cooking skills have much to be desired.
(Dad tells me I should go live with Aunt Judy to "learn how its done" ;-) )

It was a really nice weekend. We ended it by chatting over mochas in a cute little coffee shop in downtown Hamar--a tucked away little place that I didn't even know existed. I love places like that.

Monday was typical: class, boredom, reading, procrastinating, a bit more reading, wishing it wasn't Monday...

Tuesday was another interesting day at NAMAS.
We headed out extra early to go to a high school that was doing a fund-raiser for NAMAS. Apparently, there is a program in Norway, where the students get 130,000NOK to donate to an organization of their choice. They choose the organization, do some work with them, and then donate their money to them--it's a way of getting kids aware of the volunteer sector of society. In many past years, NAMAS has been the organization they choose. It's really great, too, because any money the NAMAS receives from donors, Norad (the Norwegian Aid agency) will triple. So instead of 130,000 NOK, NAMAS will get 390,000 NOK to use toward its projects.

As a sort of thank you, and promotional excursion for their program, NAMAS sponsored two particularly famous Namibian musicians to come and perform at their high school. It was really neat; their music was cool; very relaxed and fun. Svein, the director, gave a bit of information about NAMAS and their internship possibilities and such, which was all in Norwegian but I UNDERSTOOD IT ALL. I was shocked. I turned to Joe and said, "Ok, so this is what he said..." and Joe looked at me with this weird look of confusion and awe. "How did you get all that?? That's crazy."
I don't even know. It all of a sudden just clicked...
I couldn't say everything he said in Norwegian, but I definitely understood every single part of the speech. So I have been encouraged to continue using my Norwegian now that I realize I understand quite a lot..and it's been going well. I've even plowed through 2.5 chapters of Harry Potter og de Vises Stein in the last couple of days. Yeah Norsk!

Afterward, we headed back to the Namibiahuset to get back to work on our work for the Angola project.
We have been assigned to work on the Programme Plan that should be sent to Norad, so they know what NAMAS is doing and whether they want to continue giving aid. Of course they will give aid for this project, and of course OUR draft of the Programme plan won't be sent in, but it is really practical hands-on stuff that if we were part of a team at NAMAS, we would be doing; I'm learning a lot from this stuff. And some of our information or ideas might even be relevant for the team that is working on this project so that is actually pretty motivating.

I have also decided to work on the Ondao mobile school project as a case study for our Democracy and Development course, so all this work is relevant for that case as well. I met with my professor today to consult about this case study project, and she was very excited about me doing it. She encouraged me to go to Namibia...I might just have to. So watch out..this blog could be changing faces in about year or so ;-).


Anyway...we ended up spending the afternoon talking with the musicians and their friend. It was SO interesting. They were talking all about the insane poverty in Botswana and other parts of southern Africa, and about the out-of-control crime in South Africa. It was so interesting, especially to hear it from their point of view. There was one point where they were making jokes about how you could save yourself if you got car-jacked in South Africa. It was one of those experiences where it was sad that it was funny...
What really struck me was that the one musician from Botswana asked, "why us?" And no one really has an answer to that, do they? But this guy was looking at Joe and me--two young Americans--and pointing, you guys could change it, you know. You can find the answers (to questions like, how do you get corrupt governments to be transparent in their spending? How do you help people who are too hungry and poor to think rationally and help themselves?, etc.) He wasy saying, you Americans you have the money and the power you're young, you could change it!
Hm. Kind of threw a big one at us there.

But how do you walk away from that kind of conversation--with good people, real people, people just like you--and pretend like it's nothing? Just sigh and say, O well? I can't do it. It could just have well been me and my family living in horrifying conditions; but it wasn't, and now I've got an advantage, and with it a responsibility to my fellow human beings. And that's important to recognize.

So needless to say, this internship is definitely showing me a lot of really amazing things.

On Thursday evening, an anthropologist who did some work in the Kunene region (where the Ondao Mobile School project is located) came in to NAMAS and gave a lecture on the research he did on the people there.

There is apparently a really interesting history from that region--a sort of age-long conflict between different sections of the tribes--that isn't documented at all because of their oral tradition. So he is really the first outsider to be confronted with this history, and he told us about it, which was neat.
It was also very relevant, because these people who have always been in conflict with each other are the same people who NAMAS is trying to work with in the building of these schools. A lot of other development projects have failed in that region, not because of lack of financial support or effort, but because of the local people's attitudes toward each other and conflicts about who will support what. So it is really lucky in a way that this project has been successful, without them having known about this conflict to begin with.

(I don't know if that makes sense without knowing the context of the project or how NGO development projects work, but I'll just pretend like you know what I'm talking about and that it's all just as clear and interesting to you as it is to me. )

So that's what's new over here.
Sorry I haven't been very good at keeping up with the blog lately...This field study and case study business are keeping me well occupied, as well as the fact that I've realized I'm only going to be here for 6 more weeks and I want to do as much as I can in the area before then!!
This weekend I went out to a pub with some of the group on Thursday (Thursday is kind of like the Norwegian student's Friday, because there are rarely classes on Friday), and went Bowling with Tony and Henny on Saturday--which was a bit of a culture shock for me: for 2 games (about an hour) it was 118NOK per person ($22)....quite a big difference from the Spencer Bowl $2 per game...

I will try my darnedest to post the next one sooner AND have new pictures!!
So until then...ha det bra!