Arriving in Namibia

Fellow Bloggers:

Sophia and I arrived in Namibia yesterday on time. We flew from Frankfurt, Germany to Johannesburg, South Africa. We then switched airlines and flew to Windhoek, Namibia - our final destination. The flights were uneventful though Sophia did not sleep much and the her internal clock is all messed up. It will take her a couple of days to acclimate.

Windhoek is the capital of the Republic of Namibia. Namibia gained full Independence in 1990 after being governed by So. Africa. It is a republic with English as the main language though there are many languages spoken here. It shares boarders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana and Zimbabwe to the east, and South Africa to the south. It is the second most sparsely populated country in the world, after Mongolia. It is 318,696 sq mi and a population of 2,088,669 - about the size of the Seattle metropolitan area!

Windhoek is similar to the high desert of Nevada and Utah with the downtown similar to Reno. It is very dry and this is their winter season. At night, though it was hard to find at first, I saw the Southern Cross - a set of stars similar to our Big Dipper, as the stars are different here than in the northern hemisphere.

The Namibian landscape consists of 5 geographical areas:

* Central Plateau (where Windhoek is)

* The Namib Desert (with the largest sand dunes in the world!),

* The Escarpment,

* The Bushveld (where the Bushmen live), and

* The Kalahari Desert (a huge area crossing into Botswana and So. Africa)

Namibia has a GDP of $13b, with a per capitia of $6,577 though 1/2 of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25/day. We see the difference in the city two as there is poverty and crime.

The currency is the Namibian dollar but we use the So. African Rand with an exchange rate of about 7.55287. It is always hard to figure the difference.

The nation has suffered heavily form the effects of HIV/AIDS with 15% of the adult population living with HIV.

Finally, we are hoping to go to a game preserve today and then prepare tonight for training tomorrow.

Thanks,

Dennis & Sophia