July 20, aka Workshop day 1

Yesterday was a catch up and clean up day. After doing our morning work of interviewing the Rector and the head of the international department we had lunch at the hotel school (YUM) and then began our afternoon regiment of cleaning and packing to prepare for the UNESCO workshop. I must say for as much crap as my dad gives the U.N. for their "communist" ideas I have to say that some of their ideas may be flawed and broken, their initiative on preserving history, cultural heritage, and libraries is genius. Their directive which was written in Austria is about 40 pages long.

I'm still finding it interesting to live of Namibia. We are working closely every day with people that were strongly involved with the fight for their freedom and we are helping them preserve their heritage. It is however quite interesting to see the damage that donating large sums of money and clothes to a country can do. Many people in the informal settlements are quite happy with their situation because many of them have no need to work. They seem almost complacent to receive free aid and do nothing. To give you an idea of the informal settlement it is i guess what you could call a shanty town. Hundreds of thousands of Namibian people live here, their last estimate was roughly 350-500,000 people that live in the Informal settlements. This would be wrong to put as a blanket statement, I don't believe it's everyone in those settlements, many of them are super hard working people. And just like with Americans, yes Americans. Others are not so hard-working. We had a discussion the other night(like the first week we were here) about what could be one in those settlements if you had unlimited resources. And the only answer that could be given was, education. Give them an education. The interesting thing to notice is that the settlements are very very clean and orderly. They have running water and a great amount of pride in where they live.

As we work with the students here I see a growing concern of their dedication to what we are doing here. Johanna and Salome are very dedicated to their project with the Himba and show a large amount of effort towards bettering their community. Of the other 7 students we have had working with us only 3 remain by our sides and even then their allegiance feels shaky, I'm not sure if they're here for the free lunch or the future progress of archiving their heritage. Still they are here and we must stay positive with them, if anything this is a perfect opportunity for us to instill some form of passion in them. As we meet with others from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, University of Namibia and others I hope to learn much more about the archiving of heritage and find out what skills I need to learn to continue this work back home.

It has been very exciting here and working under these people has made me realize that although the music industry is something I love greatly, history is something that I find irrevocably exciting. I may utilize my digital media skills to help preserve history in any country (preferably the U.S.) may be something I would love to do in the future.

That said I would like to make a brief mention about how curious the turns ones life can take are. Werner Hillebrecht was a nurse in Germany who had a hobby of cataloguing Namibian historical books. As it turns out his hobby was so extensive that he had the largest bibliography on Namibian Culture that was known. He took a temporary job to help prepare educational documents for a relief group in Namibia, and soon after was given the position of Head of Archives for the Namibian Republic. A man who was working in hospitals and helping further his love of the medical industry soon became in charge of preserving heritage and culture for an entire country. The lesson I suppose to be learned is that working towards your goals is the only way to succeed, a college degree gives you the entitlement of nothing, and those who are willing to put their best effort forward will usually gain the position that you may desire, but may not deserve.

Anywho I should pay more attention to the workshop lectures as I'm sure I'm missing important life changing information. More from the other side of the world soon, and forgive my spelling.

Tom

The archival week.

Well... I got yelled at by a national hero today. The man pictured above is Toivo Ya Toivo who lead the resistance against apartheid during South African rule over Namibia. Mr. Toivo happened to be wandering the archives today. We just so happen to know who he is because we've been restoring recordings and news articles of him. So I thought I'd be friendly and say hi. I approached him and said very calmly, "excuse me are you Mr. Toivo?" He replied by yelling, "I might be! The hell kind of pants are you wearing son?! PULL THEM UP?!" Seeing as my pants were pulled up as high as they go, I calmly replied, "Well sir they are as high as the stitching permits." He then yelled, "THEN WHY WOULD YOU BUY SUCH GARBAGE?! WHATS YOUR NAME?!" after introducing myself and telling him I was from Utah working on the recordings of his imprisonment with Nelson Mandela, he said, "psssh! THERE ARE NO TAPES!! PULL UP YOUR PANTS?! UTAH!!??!?! YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE TWELVE WIVES PEOPLE!!!!" he then held my hand and made me walk down the hall with him continuing to rant about youth and their pants.... So.. I met an international icon today. He was just like everybody else that has no clue about where I live. I have horns, twelve wives, and my pants are the wrong style. I guess I should feel honored to have been in his presence. But it was a tad off putting to be yelled at by the man you are helping to preserve in history about something as unimportant as polygamy and pants.

On another note the school decided we deserve access to blogger today so I thought I'd get a note out. It's been a pretty busy week, restoring and transferring tapes. Digitising (they don't use z's for anything) as they say in the archives here. Working out the shots for our documentary, finding a good direction to take the story, and wondering if we can really fit everything into just 22 minutes.

Sunday Dr. Tjivekua, the rector here at Polytechnic took us to the Okapuka game reserve for lunch, and an animal exhibition. Dr. Tjivekua is from the Oshiherrero tribe, and he told us about his family, and the different adventures he had been on. The best part of Okapuka is that all the food is hunted there, so it's the freshest possible meat you can get in Africa, if Oryx is any more delicious than this, I could die. The rest of the week involved business as usual, transcribing, restoring, backing up, filming.

Wednesday we began working with the students from the Poly to help them get hands on experience with the equipment they've been studying. Jordan and I attempted to cram 2 semesters of audio classes into a 1 hour lecture to explain why we use certain file types, etc. It felt good to realize that the training had sunk in, and soon we were able to show them editing in Vegas. During a break I was able to talk to Petrus who is very into videography, and he gave me a digital copy of one of his favorite movies, "My Cousin Vinny." They love that movie here, of all the movies to have an odd cultural phenomenon Joe Pesci and crew seem to reign supreme in Windhoek.

After the long work day on Wednesday we decided to blow off some steam at Joe's Beer House. Joe's is known for it's exotic meats and wierd dishes, we figured there would be no better way to enhance our experience. I ordered a skillet that contained crocodile (kinda yummy), oryx(very yummy), zebra(yummy), and Ostrich(life changing). After eating these tasty treats I decided that I will import Ostrich and Oryx yearly for a barbecue, you haven't lived til you've eaten Ostrich. That's why they can run so fast, if they were slow, they'd be extinct because everyone would eat them.

Anyway i'm to the point of rambling now, life in Namibia is pleasant, and the work load helps keep the time moving. Next week we begin our workshop with the heads of various international museums... Wish me luck.

Tom

Dinner with Jochen

So as it turns out Africa is populated with the tastiest animals on the planet.. It also happens to be that the people here have had a long time to figure out the best way to cook them. The Germans here are no different. This animal to the right is an Oryx, thus far this is the tastiest creature that I have encountered in Namibia. Imagine this creature wrapped in bacon.. that's right fellow American's... bacon, and drenched in a delicious German sauce, then poured over rice, and some form of delicious German noodle. You now have the description of the most mind blowing dish I have eaten to date. Follow that with German chocolate pudding, and green tea, and I'm officially in a food coma.

Now that I've raved about the meal prepared by Christa, Jochen's lovely wife, I will rave about Jochen's collection. His home is a museum, I believe he had somewhere in the area of 16 cars, 12 of them are classic VWs. The car he picked us up in was a 1968 VW van, fully running, with 90% original parts. I'm not a gear-head, and won't pretend to know any of the other ones, but he had many more beautiful VW cars parked at his house. He also had over 300 cameras, VW miniatures, thousands of records, knives, guns. Any piece of history I could imagine a robust German man such as Jochen possessing, he had. The man is a living archive. Now that my evening has been raved about let's talk about the work day. It dawned on me how to describe Jochen... he's a pipe smoking, German version of my dad... Which is why I like him so much.

We began our first day in the archives and were able to transcribe about 9 tapes, seeing as we had a shorter day ahead of us, and more set up time was needed we all felt pretty accomplished. The only tape in English that I got to do was an interview of a woman who fought for Namibia's liberation from about 1960 on. Her story was quite motivating, she was imprisoned in 1980 for rallying against the government, at her time of imprisonment she was 7 months pregnant. She continues the story describing giving birth to her child in prison with no medical assistance, no assistance at all really. Cutting the umbilical chord with a sharp object she found in her cell, cleaning up the mess, and being rushed to the hospital the next day, only to continue fighting for her countries freedom, and the end of Apartheid. THIS WOMAN GAVE BIRTH BY HER SELF IN JAIL! Crazy stuff, crazy crazy crazy. Any who this country is once again overstimulating, as one of our team members said, "no matter where we go there is way too much to look at." I have a headache, and am exhausted. More to come

Tom

The first view of the archives

Today we finally got access to the archives, and began real serious work on our documentary. We finished the first interview with Jochen, getting the importance of the DNA and what they need to succeed. We then moved on by interviewing Renata, who is the meta data expert for the project. For those of you who don't know meta data is basically the piece of information attached to the audio file, image, video, or any file really that lets the user know what it is, who is in it, and makes it searchable by keyword. Listening to her explain the real challenge behind the DNA and the metadata was something we did not expect. The people that are available to identify most of the subjects in the older photographs, are dead or dying, and the youth here are oblivious to the existence of any items in the photographs. So even after they get the items archived, there is a great change that nobody will know what it is, or what the significance may be!

After this we headed to meet Werner in the archives and begin learning what we are up against.. we are facing literally rows of cassette tapes from the NBC archives as well as classical records, from church groups and other organizations. Important historical recordings from the past on Reel to Reel, and we have currently 3 tape decks. Each tape is roughly 120 minutes recorded, and transcribing or digitizing audio happens in real time.... therefore we have roughly 7 working days to get the audio digitized, and as much metadata as possible added to it, and get it added to the DNA server. My guess from looking is probably 500 if not more, and that isn't including the oral history they had recorded.. 3 decks running 8 hours a day gives us a possibility of 60 maybe 70 cassettes. This is not a task 4 audio students can handle. Instead we are going to set up documentation on the exact processes and use of equipment, what equipment will be needed, and train the staff of the National Archive on the equipment. Then working with them we will digitize and enter data on as many tapes as possible. If all goes well we will leave behind the skill to finish this daunting task, and get their cassettes digitized. Once those are completed, they can begin doing the reels and records, which should preserve better than the cassettes have.

After lunch we decided to hunt for equipment in a local antique shop. We found a Telefunken TD11 microphone which hopefully will be given a price to us soon. Other than that we found Kovambo tribe wood carvings at an extraordinarily cheap price, basically $9 american a piece, (the fabricated ones in town are sold for $40-50 U.S.) I also found some gorgeous cork coasters from old british pubs (they seem to be from the '50s).

After a long day of work we decided to unwind at Prima, a sports bar across town where they were showing Uruguay vs. Netherlands, I never fancied myself a soccer fan, but I have to admit the games here pull me in. It must be the atmosphere and excitement of the people. The Netherlands played a solid game and beat Uruguay and we ended the day eating Kudu jerky and trying to relax. All in all another great day in Namibia, hopefully the next few weeks will prove to stay so incredible.

What Jochen taught us

Today was an experience I did not expect. We began shooting our documentary footage mainly b-roll, and small clips to utilize, and were invited into the office of Jochen Roth. Jochen is the Media Technologist for the Polytechnic. He is also a key member in the DNA group helping them push the project forward, and making connections to keep their archival focus working.

This man has the deepest love for history as a whole that I have ever seen in a human being. He doesn't care whether its negative history, positive history, he just wants accurate history. His office also known as the "Holy of holies" is literally a museum unto itself. He has model VW cars, video cameras from every generation, type writers from years past, one of the ORIGINAL sun microsystem computers (the kind that look like a fridge). He is the only person on campus successfully cataloguing and storing the history of the Polytech, he has all of their founding documents, and their historical growth since 1995. If any man shows the spirit of the DNA which we are documenting, Jochen is most definitely the passion behind the project.

As he pointedly told us, "these children have no clue of their ancestry, The ovambo don't even know that they were wood carvers!" Seeing the passion this man has for the restoration and preservation of his countries history made me realize how important it is to continue studying the past that we grew up in. His father was one of the first and only men to discover a huge gallery of rock paintings, and rock carvings in the Brandenberg mountain range. He plans to take his fathers ashes to this site on Easter next year to leave his remains there. This is a man who is dedicated to family and history, and keeping the honest past available for future generations.

We are headed to dinner tonight with Neavera at her home. I'm not sure what to expect but judging on the past events i'm sure even if I had expectations they would be stomped instantly. This country and its people continue to amaze me. As our documentary begins to take shape I am extremely excited to see what we can create from this.

Where to even begin.

The traveling life is something i'm definitely not used to, and being thrown into this was something I wasn't prepared for. We left 1015 am Monday morning, and arrived in London the following morning around 6 am. The culture shock for me was instantaneous,and I don't want to say that I find London to be gay, or lame. It's an incredible country with a massively interesting history.. It is however....well to be plain prissy. Everything feels so polite, and when the train tells you in a polite female voice that you are headed to "cockfosters" no American can resist laughing.

Our hotel wasn't bad, a little out of the way from the main town but it provided sleep after a fifteen hour day filled with pub food from Earl Haig in Hounslow West, and the British Museum... which is impossible to see in a day, my facebook has a photo album dedicated to it, and if you couldn't tell I spent a good majority of the time in the clock rooms viewing hundreds of clocks. The British Museum is nothing short of incredible, the are rooms are packed with exhibits to fully see everything available you would need three days, and that would still require the ability to withstand 0 air conditioning. Dear British museum buy an Air Conditioner.

Tuesday we went to Abbey Road studios and spent the rest of the day traveling through the Windhoek, Namibia. After arrival we waited about 2 hours for our ride into town, and were shown to our flats. The flats are pretty modern looking 1 bedroom apartments, and we have all the amenities you could ask for, hot water, internet, and showers. That night we were treated to dinner by Neavara (the schools Vice Rector) and her two daughters, as well as her assistant Griselda and her husband Tiro (Tiro may be the single greatest man in Namibia.) Tiro is an internet banking salesman who has as big of a technology addiction as I do.. And just like my lovely fiance' reminds me that I don't need every new piece of technology I drool over Greselda reminded him that he also did not need anything.

Dinner was a Kalamari steak.... also known to me as the rubbery fish flavored thingy made to look like but never will taste as good as a brutally murdered cow. It was good, but the testure really wasn't something I was excited to deal with, however the Pine Nut Soda could be pumped straight into my veins.

Friday was a work today for us, lots of equipment, and audio editing. We had lunch at the Namibia Crafts Center, where I experienced the spiciest salsa on bowtie noodles ever. After lunch we simply worked, rested, and watched soccer. For dinner we ate a mall restaurant called the Ocean Basket where and this is a direct quote, "You Eata Da Feesh, we Cleana Da Face." I spent 6 dollars on the greatest fish and chips ever. Once again Pine Nut Soda FTW.

Saturday(today) was by far the biggest eye opening day for me. After a good nights sleep we loaded into the van with our driver Norton (who is a badass just FYI) and headed out to visit the city. After visiting the graveyard from the "old location" where they buried any number of people headstones in languages such as German, Afrikans or many of the other languages spoken here. Moving on from that area we headed into Katatura which translates directly to "The Land We Don't Want" The children there ran around excitedly smiling and waving as we walked into the market. They posed for pictures, and high fived us. In the market there are rows of barbeques and for 1 dollar namibian ($.08) you can stand by the grills and pick off chunks of grilled meat, dip it in Cayenne Pepper and Salt and eat it.. This is called Capana and its super delicious, and everyone should fly to Namibia and eat Capana and then go home.

After market we headed to the "Informal Settlements" which are also very different. They gave me a perspective on my life style and what i'm struggling to obtain. These people live here as a means to help get money together to better their lifestyle, and many of them end up living in these towns for the rest of their lives. Their homes are made of tin, tires, and any other scrap they can find. Even in these conditions the settlements are totally clean, cleaner than many neighborhoods in Salt Lake.

The biggest impact this had was all of these people were smiling, and laughing, and waving, and they were living in tin huts in the middle of a desert. They are the most humble group of people I have never seen.. Anywho I have hit a a rambling point and don't have much else. Most of our photos are being uploaded right now, so at some point I will try to insert some into the post for the five of you that will read this.

Currently Namibia is winning the war.

-Tom-