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On the two-hour flight from Johannesburg to Walvis Bay I caught my first glances of the Namib Desert. I strained my eyes, hoping to see every detail of my home for the year - the red-tinted linear sand dunes, the green oasis of the Kuiseb riverbed, and the sun-bleached grasses that covered the gravel plains after this past year's heavy rains. I had studied many pictures of the desert landscape before my arrival, but what I saw before me was 3-dimensional, non stagnant, and was not limited by a camera's viewfinder. It began to sink in that all of my senses would soon experience this environment. The anticipation consumed me.
However, I did not arrive to Gobabeb until well after sunset, and I could see nothing of the landscape. The packed combi (minibus) pulled up to "Old House" (the communal living area for staff and Interns) and I unloaded my belongings and my month's supply of groceries. Upon stepping indoors, I was greeted with South African rhythms from the stereo and warm smiles from the students, interns and staff members. In no time, out of the kitchen came a freshly baked Walvis Bay fish, complete with lit candles in celebration of a Gobabebian birthday. "Bon appetite!" Everybody dug in. I did not yet have my bearings, but I was officially introduced to the Gobabeb family.
Having forgotten to change my alarm from South Africa time, I woke up the next morning at 6, an hour earlier than I intended. It was barely dawn, but I headed out on a run along the gravel sand roads that lead head out into the gravel plains on the northern banks of the Kuiseb River. The sun rose as I ran, during which time I witnessed the sand dunes take shape on the opposite side of the river and change various shades of magnificent red. It was what I can only describe as a proper inception to one of the most striking environments that I have ever seen.
When I think about the past three months that I have spent at Gobabeb, these first impressions sum up a lot about what I love so much about being here. I am surrounded by a tight-knit community of people that has been nothing but welcoming to me, and I am in an environment that is, quite literally, breathtaking. But, the people are not just welcoming-they are interesting, fun, inspiring and willing to share their experiences with me. They are willing to help me brainstorm about how to do my job more effectively, happy to spend time trying to teach me the subtle differences between the five clicks of the local language (Damara-Nama) and eager to introduce me to new things, like mopane worms - a spiky caterpillar delicacy from Northern Namibia. And the environment is not just breathtaking-it is composed of organisms that are highly adapted to the desert's extreme conditions. Since my initial impressions of the scenery, my infatuation with it has slightly toned down such that I am able to appreciate the
intricacies and complexities of this unique environment.
So, by this point, you may be wondering what exactly do I do at Gobabeb, aside from hanging out with great people and admiring the scenic views. As one of the seven full time staff members at the Gobabeb Research and Training Centre, I do a lot of whatever must be done, but as the Research and Information Technology Assistant (RITA), I have two main responsibilities: I coordinate the Gobabeb In-Service Training program (GIST), and I maintain the computers and all Information Technology related things at the station.
GIST
The GIST program has been running at Gobabeb for just over a year old and it brings a handful of Namibian tertiary students to the Centre. While here they complete a term-long independent research project and obtain practical experience in their potential field of employment. As the coordinator of the program, I have to communicate with the funders and the faculty members at the university in order to ensure that the course is running according to their expectations. However, the most interesting and challenging aspect of this job has been my role as the supervisor to the students' independent research projects. Difficulties of the job lie in the fact that four of the five students that I am supervising during this four-month term are older than me by up to two years, and all of them clearly have a different sort of educational background than myself. As compared to my Grinnell experience, which emphasized the development of analytical skills, the students' background seems to be largely based in
information acquisition. During our trips to the study areas, I continue to be amazed by the students' ability to identify the names (both common and scientific) of the different types of grasses and succulent plants that we see in the gravel planes or the birds and animals that we find in the shelter of the riverbed. My different set of skills is exactly what puts me, the young foreigner, in a position to share something with them. Over the course of the last month, I have guided the students as they came up with a research question about how tourism development impacts the environment and as they designed a baseline study to address this question at two potential sites of development near the Centre. They are in the midst of collecting their field data, and by the end of October they will be ready to present the results of their research. In order to make this possible I have lead workshops about statistics, research design, writing and presentation skills. The same students who came in asking me
repeatedly for a "correct" research topic are beginning to take initiative and make independent decisions about how they should conduct their study in order to get the best results.
IT
The IT aspect of my job has presented me with the biggest challenge in my time here at Gobabeb. Prior to my arrival to Gobabeb I could claim the computer literacy of an average college student. I knew enough to shudder when hearing words like: network, server, interface, disable, motherboard, Linux and website management. Fortunately, for the first two weeks, I was under the wing of the ever patient and knowledgeable Mark Gardiner, who cast a less frightening light on this techie world. I can't claim to enjoy every minute of the days that I spend behind the computer, but I do take pleasure in the moments when I am able to tackle a glitch in the system in order to help things run even just a little more smoothly at the station. And, fortunately for my sanity, even when the server is down and the "boot device not found" warnings blink relentlessly, watching the sunset behind the grand Sand Dune Sea seems to make everything alright.
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