Ricky took me around Katutura last weekend, the township on the outskirts of Windhoek. Katutura was originally where all of the black people were put during apartheid, and the name means "the place where we will not live." It was odd seeing in real life what I've seen so many pictures of. It was just hills and hills of tin shacks, half falling over, with barb wire everywhere. There was one street that was entirely made up of shebeens (bars) and car washes (so that the people who go there who actually have cars can get them washed while they drink). Ricky said that it is mostly rich politicians who own the shebeens. When I got to work the first day and saw that I have not only my own office, but a really nice and spacious office, I felt kind of odd thinking how this office is 2 or 3 times the size of people's shacks in Katutura. I work in the rich, fancy part of town, and it's such a huge, bizarre contrast from where the poorest of the poor live. Namibia has the highest disparity between rich and poor of any country in the world in fact.

So far at work I am helping to come up with how my director wants the new website to look, and am editing stories for the new anthology. I have also just been reading the past anthologies and Sister Namibia, a feminist magazine. Eventually I will go to schools in Katutura and have a discussion group with girls there using the anthologies, and will also help with workshops up in the Caprivi region in the northeast. While we are there we are also going to get to go to Victoria Falls which I'm super stoked on.

I took the longest taxi ride EVER today going to work because the taxi driver had no idea where my street was, and I had no idea how to help because A. I just got here and don't know my way around well, B. I am just terrible with directions in general so I didn't have the faintest clue even the direction to go in, and C. most of the streets are in German, which is so difficult to pronounce! Eventually, however, after driving around forever we somehow ended up exactly where my office was so it all worked out.

Hope everyone is doing well!