Many people have asked, and most people don't know. Where is Namibia? What is it like there? What are you doing there? How was it to grow up there? I was considering doing the "Hometown" Blog homework, but to be honest, my hometown is not half as interesting as just a blog on my Country in general - So here it goes. This might become a little lengthy but I will try to keep the history lesson to a minimal.
Namibia is a country in the South west of Africa. It borders with Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. The country has been independent for only 26 years, so is fairly young, and used to be called South West Africa. Namibia was colonised by Germany until the end of the second world war, when we where given to South Africa as a mandate, and then illegally occupied until our independence 26 years ago. There are 13 official languages, with English being the main language (10 are tribal languages).
People often ask me why a white girl is living in Africa, or how I came to live here or something along those lines and my simplest explanation is that the first Europeans to come to Namibia, where the Portuguese in 1486, which is prior to the "discovery" of America in 1492, so why wouldn't there be white people in Africa? After the initial Portuguese landed in Namibia, Dutch Settlers as well as Germans and British, made their way to Southern Africa in search of new land, riches, and as missionaries and so forth and so on. I can only trace my lineage back 13 generations, which where all in Africa, and have no idea when exactly my first ancestors came from Europe, but I know that I am probably a combination of Scottish, French, Portuguese, Dutch and German. Having said all of that, the white people in the country only make up about 7-10% of the population.
As you can see from the map, there are very few towns, spread far apart. Namibia is the second most sparsely populated country in the world (Mongolia being the most sparsely populated), which pretty much means that there is a whole lot of nothing in between very few people. The total population is about 2.7 million people, spread over 825,615 km2 (318,772 sq mi). As a comparison, England can fit into Namibia over 6 times and has a population of over 54 million people. A lot of the vast open spaces consists of farms, where game, cattle and sheep have free roam, which gives us some of the best, free range, meat in the world, and the reason I could never be a vegetarian. Besides amazing meat, it is also a mineral rich country that has some some of the worlds largest diamonds and Uranium supplies.
So enough about that. It is also a very beautiful country, that has the oldest desert in the world, called the Namib, which also happens to be one of the few places where the desert meets the ocean.
And tons of wildlife and nature reserves.
As well as some awesome tribes of people that still live in seclusion and without too much western influences. These are the Himba/Ovahimba people.
We also have an amazing view on the Victoria waterfalls, which is located where Namibia/Zambia and Zimbabwe meets.
As for where I grew up and still live - Windhoek - The capital city. Really nothing special about growing up here. I went to a catholic school, we have toilets and hotels and cars and buildings and things. No lions and giraffes in the back yard. People do all sorts of jobs - I am educated in the beauty industry and am a make-up/stained glass/skull artist, and handywoman kinda. Besides the large areas of nothing, the towns and cities are very normal looking.
I hope this gave some of you an insight on this place I call home, and I hope I did not ramble on for too long. I would be happy to answer any questions, if anyone wants to know more.
