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
No comments:
Post a Comment