Historic Sites Around Windhoek

National Heroes' Acre

The National Heroes' Acre opened in 2002, and was built to memorialize all of the men and women who lost their lives in the struggle for Namibian independence. It was built by a North Korean construction company.

There are 174 tombs, some of which are symbolic, because the locations of the remains are unknown. The tombs which do contain remains are of people who have been declared national heroes since independence. The statue of the unknown soldier stands at the top, and contains earth from various sites around Namibia where battles took place during the Namibian Civil War. 

Fire is traditionally used by the Herero tribe in Namibia to communicate with ancestors. At the base of the monument, there is an eternal flame.

Behind the statue of the unknown solider is a frieze depicting the story of Namibia's struggle for independence:

1959 Heroes' and Heroines' Cemetery

Our next stop was at the 1959 Heroes' and Heroines' Cemetery in the Old Location in Windhoek. In the days of Apartheid, black Africans were forced to live in settlements called "locations." Officially segregated communities are a thing of the past in Namibia, but people still refer to the past boundaries as "the location" or "the old location."

The 1959 Heroes' and Heroines' Cemetery opened after independence to commemorate the site of a massacre. The Apartheid government designated a neighborhood near Windhoek as a location, then called the Main Location. Many black people who worked in Windhoek lived there. One day, the government decided to reclaim the land for white settlement. When the black population refused to move to Katutura (which means, "The place where people do not want to live" in the Herero language) an area far, far away from the Location, the government murdered an untold number of the roughly 7,000+ residents. This event took place on December 10, 1959, a day which is now marked as Human Rights Day.  

The Cemetery is considered hallowed ground, and one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a Namibian is to be buried there. 

First Impressions of Namibia

Our plane landed in Windhoek in mid-afternoon, after a 15-hour flight. Most of the places I have been in South America and Europe, the first sight of the country from the plane is nothing special...Everywhere pretty much looks like everywhere else from a landing airplane. But not Namibia. The view from the window showed a dry landscape, with undulating, sandy hills spotted with browning trees and shrubs (July is winter/dry season in Namibia) and green oases of vegetation.

Deboarding the plane, I looked at my new home for the next two years. Rocky mountains surrounded the airport and the sky was clean-lake blue with not even a hint of a cloud in the sky. The temperature was cool enough to wear a jacket, but the sun was strong enough to make me sweat under the burden of my carry-on bags.

The airport is strikingly small for a capital city. There were two lines, one for Namibians and members of countries with which Namibia has special border agreements, and the other for foreigners. Processing took quite a while and was done by three friendly agents. Peace Corps' country director and administrator met us after customs to welcome us and collect our International Vaccination Cards.

We boarded a bus that would take us to Okahandja, a smaller town outside of Windhoek where Peace Corps conducts its pre-service training. We would be staying with host families, but only after a week at the training center. Our trainers and the hotel staff greeted us with singing and insisted on helping us with our luggage as we went to our rooms.

The first thing I plugged into the wall with an adapter (my electric shaver) blew a fuse due to my inexperience with using electricity in Namibia. There are kill switches by every outlet, which must be switched off when you plug in your electronics. Procedure is: make sure the kill switch is on, plug in your adapter, plug in your electronic device, then flip the switch on to make the outlet live. 

Staging

Peace Corps flew me into Philadelphia on a USAirways flight. I met Mark at the airport and we split a taxi to the hotel and were surprised to find that we were roommates (not planned). We got a bite to eat and went swimming and called our loved ones, then called it an early night.

Staging was a straight-forward, uncomplicated process. We registered. I was nervous because my student loan servicers told me I would not be able to arrange a deferment until November, when I would be in Namibia. It wasn't a problem, though - apparently, pretty normal. We did some getting-to-know-you activities, then went through cross-cultural scenarios, reflected on our reasons for doing Peace Corps, then got a debit card with pre-loaded cash to withdraw for incidental expenses like food and "walk-around" money while in Philadelphia. Session lasted from 10am until around 4:30pm.

I went out for my last meal and had salmon with lentils. I figured salmon would be a food I wouldn't find easily during my stay in Namibia. We came back to the hotel and I began the laborous process of getting my checked luggage bag down to 50 pounds. The downside to not being charged excess baggage fees would be having to carry around lots of extra weight in my carry-on.

We convened in the lobby of the hotel at 2am, and boarded the bus that would take us to JFK in New York City, where our flight to Johannesburg would be leaving. We arrived at the airport around 4am, and ate donuts and drank water until the plane left at 11am. Leaving the United States was a surreal moment, and an unexpectedly emotional one. I cried a little bit during take-off. I thought of the family members and friends I wouldn't see for another two years, my ailing grandmother - sad things - but also cried tears of joy over my excitement about having a job that engaged all of my talents, two years in an entirely new and different culture, and because my heart was filled with love for the people I had yet to meet and the mission I was now a part of.