![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2016\/05\/facade.jpg\")
<\/a>has been reflected in many of the buildings since the German colonization. Not coincidentally, there\u2019s still a Bismarck Street (I should probably say strasse), a Kaiser hotel, and a wonderful antique store named Pete\u2019s that had everything from old helmets and books in German to various African artifacts.<\/p>\nMy main goal was to visit the Swakopmund museum, which I was told was among the best museums in sub-Saharan Africa, and I needed at least an hour there.\u00a0 It\u2019s a private museum, started in 1951 by a dentist, and augmented ever since.\u00a0 It is pretty comprehensive\u2014and here were some of the highlights for me:<\/p>\n
From the German period:\u00a0 a wonderful collection of stamps, covers, and an explanation of the postal service\u2014which included a San (\u201cBushman\u201d) postal carrier with a sack as a poster to use the mail, and various donkey and other means to get the mail from point A to point B.\u00a0 Since I collect the Qingdao German stamps, I\u2019ve seen some of this material in auctions, but From life in Southwest Africa, there were several restored rooms, including a reconstructed dining room complete with portrait of Wilhelm II and his wife. The dentist\u2019s shop was reconstructed, including extracted teeth, which I had to admit, I\u2019d never seen before in a museum.\u00a0 There were artifacts from the Cape\/SWA boundary, and a little information on the First World War here\u2014a British warship shelled Swakopmund and hit a pig pen\u2026<\/p>\n There were interesting exhibits on the tribes\u2014the Himba (whom I mentioned yesterday using mud as sunscreen and mosquito repellant), the Herero (rather sketchy on the uprising)\u2014with explanations in 3 languages\u2014Afrikaan (the Boer descendants, many of whom settled in SWA when it was mandated to South Africa), English, and German.<\/p>\n There was also a geological exhibit, including a lot of information on uranium, which came from the National Uranium institute that was the site of our business visit today.\u00a0 The report they gave us explained why the lobby group had broken away from the general mining group\u2014uranium is above ground mining, and in that sense is less risky than sending miners underground.\u00a0 Namibia is one of the top four producers of uranium (Kazakhstan is the leading uranium producer), and the institute claims nuclear power mining has changed and nuclear energy is safer and more efficient than is generally given credit for–you be the judge.\u00a0 I do know that along the road was a major pipeline delivering precious water to the mines.\u00a0 And we have potentially another mine visit.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve arrived in the capital of Namibia,\u00a0 Windhoek, a 250 mile, 6 hour ride almost directly east from Swakopmund.\u00a0 Before leaving, I took the opportunity this morning to explore the seacoast city. Walking around, I found the information center and got a list of \u201chistoric buildings\u201d still standing. One intrigued me\u2014the Hohenzollern House, circa 1905, … Continue reading “Journey from Swakopmund”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8418,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions\/8418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>it\u2019s got to be an award-winning collection.\u00a0 I also enjoyed some of the military uniforms, including the camel corps that patrolled some of the desert areas.<\/p>\n<\/a>The bus ride fit in nicely with a flora\/fauna explanation at the museum.\u00a0 For about half the distance we were in the Namib Desert, which is sandy and pretty sparsely vegetated. Then it became savannah, with old pretty gnarled trees, which use a minimum amount of water, and some animal life, including the warthog.\u00a0 By the time we got here, we\u2019d imperceptibly gone up about 4,500 feet.\u00a0 That made our Brigham Young faculty happy because Provo is about that high. They may be at home, but for a flatlander who lives where overpasses are sometimes mistaken for hills, this seems pretty high. Still, it\u2019s good to be off the bus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"