hi all,

things are pretty good. kristin needed a day or two away, so she cut out of school early on friday and we took the big bus (it runs mondays and fridays during the day, so usually isn't an option for kristin because she's working when it runs) to luderitz -- a small town on the coast that's about 150 miles west of bethanie. we spent the day sitting by the ocean, reading, and taking breaks to drink beer and eat pizza.

i bought some glaze so that i can install a new window in my apartment (i'd made plans with someone to get it from town three times) and kristin bought some paint so we could continue the process of, ummm, making her house a home.

the trip home was more eventful. kristin also bought some scale remover to remove the limestone deposits from her shower head. we walked through town -- with kristin carrying two gallons of paint and a backpack full of vegetables and i'm carrying a much lighter load. kristin alternated between saying "i like that you're the kind of boyfriend who lets me carry my own paint if i'm dumb enough to buy it and carry it home" and hinting that maybe i should help out. i was, of course, planning on carrying it after she got a little tired. some guy who was at a stop sign waiting to turn on to the main road and made a walking motion with his two fingers. we shrugged and nodded and he pulled up next to us and stopped. we loaded up with him and it turned out he was driving out to a railway construction camp about 30 miles outside of town in the desert. we pretty much thought 'yahtzee' -- not only are we going to be able to wait for a ride in a beautiful, peaceful, sun-scorched place but people who drive by are going to feel sorry for us and pick us up quickly.

the guy talked construction the whole way out there. apparently, he hires people by putting them in heavy equipment with someone who knows how to drive it and just lets them try. if they've caught on in a couple of hours, he hires them. otherwise he tells them to take a walk. apparently about half his crew are completely illiterate and he doesn't even ask about school. it doesn't sound like he takes any crap about discipline, though. they work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and their schedule is 3 months on -- 1 week off. he gives guys one warning, then fires them if they're screwing around. he'd worked projects in mozambique, angola, south africa, and namibia and had lots of good stories about things they'd done. once, they captured a wild pig and tied it up in the middle of the camp of construction workers. he told them that if they caught up to the schedule they'd barbeque it, but otherwise he was going to let it loose while they were sleeping. it sounds like it worked.

waiting in the desert worked out great. it was moderately windy, so we didn't get beat to shreds. the sun was bright, but we just tied shirts around our heads. kristin hiked about 15 minutes away from the road so that nobody would see her peeing. it took about an hour to get a ride, but we read and talked a little bit and looked around amazed at where we were and what we were doing. when we finally were picked up, it was by two damara guys in a delivery truck. one had teeth inlays of the sun and moon. they were real friendly and played us some good music, told me unbelievable urban legends (one involved the rape of 3 generations of a family that was allowed in order to avoid washing dishes). they ended up going 30 miles out of their way to drop us off at our door.

the only real down side was that my back started itching really bad during the ride. i scratched it a little, then it started burning like i'd been bitten by fire ants or something. we got home and the back of my backpack was melted. turns out the bottle of the scale remover that we'd bought had cracked and it was an acid burn. it wasn't really too bad on my back, but it messed up some of kristin's fancy running clothes and my backpack is pretty trashed. what a mess. that scale remover is strong stuff.

i met someone who's going to try to hook me up with a work visa through some of his contacts. that'll be nice and save me from coming and going to get new tourist visas. it's vague how often you're allowed to get tourist visas, as well. he's also going to try to help me work for this organization that puts computers in schools, that i've been trying (unsuccesfully) to volunteer for. so, my luck seems to be running fairly good on a lot of fronts.

hello all,

well, i’ve been back almost a week. i’d say things are going pretty well, mostly. i worked the first day at the butcher shop on friday. we made deliveries to rosh pinah (a zinc mining town near the orange river). it really reminded me of kolmanskuppe – the ghost town that you sometimes see in pictures of namibia that is famous because the buildings are being swallowed by sand dunes. they have in common that they are in inhospitable locations, that there is a lot of infrastructure (hospitals, clinics, recrational facilities, etc) that is all paid for by the mine, and that there are only a few varieties of house that are all the same. there are dorm-like houses for the mine workers, medium size houses for the technician/manager types, and then large houses for the executives. the medium size houses are nice, with green lawns and decks and barbeque facilities. and the big houses are really nice, with swimming pools, dstv dishes, and lots of bedrooms.

it wasn’t a big delivery day by the butcher’s standards, but we delivered almost a ton of meat – 19 skinned, gutted, but whole sheep carcasses, a cow, and a pile of 10 kg boxes of steaks, stew meat, and etc. we also had 5 cows worth of “offal” – heads, guts, and feet. our delivery vehicle is a one or two year old toyota diesel pick-up truck with a topper. kobus (the butcher) has a cheap trailer with high sides that he loads meat into that won’t fit into the truck bed. they haul a lot of zinc out of rosh pinah (although i believe it is refined or processed or whatever, because there are lots of facilities there and the trucks leaving have big blocks of metal on them, rather than anything that looks like ore), but most of the 180 miles of dirt road is pretty rough (i didn’t sleep much thursday night, because we started loading up at 3 am so that we’d make the trip while it was pretty cool out – i decided to take a nap, and kobus said he’d try to help by “going slow enough that the wheels stay on the ground” as we went through dips. i don’t know whether he was holding back or showing off, but it sure didn’t feel like the wheels stayed on the ground. the hammering took its toll on the (cheaply made) trailer, and the leaf spring mount on one of the wheels broke and the wheel slid back into the fender. the tire survived it and we jacked up the trailer, pulled the wheel back into place, and tied it with rope to hold it in roughly the right place. i was in love. then, we started stopping at farm houses and asking people if they had a welder so that we could tack the thing in place. ahhhhh.

we got to town, made a few normal deliveries to cafeterias and such, then, after a series of phone calls and some negotiating arrange to meet these guys in front of a convenience store. we get there and there are 4 big guys all decked out in gold chains and hip-hop wear and with bloodshot, squinty eyes are standing around a 1983 toyota corolla with two doughnut spare tires mounted. kobus asks me to watch his back. we get out and start packing a cow (!) into the hatchback. it’s cut into 4 leg sections and two middles, then the windpipe, heart, lungs, and etc. are all together, and the head and hoofs are seperate. it all fits except the hooves, which we stack in the middle of the back seat. i’m keeping an eye on kobus the whole time and he and one of the guys are around the front door of his car. we get done, and i get in the front and he’s got a wad of cash about two inches thick. apparently he’d sold these guys this cow for R2000 (about US$330) and they’d given the money to him mostly 10 and 20 rand notes. they were R100 short (apparently for the second time), but Kobus just told them to deposit the money in his bank account before next time. The guys drove off, windows down and half hanging out of this old beater car, with their own cow and obviously feeling pretty cool.

we delivered the 19 sheep to this guys garage. he apparently takes orders from his friends and then gives kobus a big order. he calls his friends when they get in, and they come buy and pick up their sheep. i hope it all works pretty fast, because neither his garage or the sheep were cold when we dropped them off.

we took the trailer somewhere to get it welded. they worked on it for an hour, adding weld all over the place, and charged about R80 (US$15), which kobus thought was outrageous.

then, we drove home on another road (hoping it would be in better shape). it wasn’t, but it was enough shorter that it was probably worthwhile. we saw lots of wildlife – a couple of zebras (hartmann’s mountain zebras, of which only 400 or so still exist), a bunch of baboons, and some ostriches with several day old chicks. the chicks look a lot like chickens’ offspring, except they are already about the size of grown chickens a few days after they’re born. we had more trouble with the trailer on the way home. the wheel bearings are held in with a nut, washer, and cotter pin, but the nut isn’t starred, so the cotter pin keeps it from falling off but doesn’t keep it from turning. it had loosened up and bent the cotter pin out to the point where there was 10-15 degrees of slop on the wheel. the dust cups were tack-welded in place too, so we had to break them off to figure out why the wheel was so wobbly. that trailer is bad news.

things continue to shape up nicely around here. i’ll get some computer classes organized this week and try to start some kind of evening tutoring at the dorms. i should also move into my own apartment this week – which will be good.

ok. y’all take care.