Impressions of Windoek.

Now it is Saturday, and I've spent my first day in Windhoek! It is bright and glary, but not too hot. We went to the shops yesterday, I bought some sunglasses for $530 and a bucket of sour worms for $47. I find it hard to think in $Namibian. I withdrew $2000 from a drive through ATM, and I could barely clip my purse shut.

This morning Margie and Maddie took me to some markets, the green market and the boer market, we bought things like German bread and sweet pickled watermelon and I ate a potato spiral on a stick with a tasty salt called chutney on it. Then we went back to a shopping mall and went to the body shop, which works out to be half price compared to Australia, so I stocked up in shampoo and conditioner! $75 Namibian is about $10 compared to $18 if I buy it at home.

Matt has not been shopping, he has been helping fix the pool pump and learning how to weld holes in metal.

Windhoek is a bit weird, the shops look similar but they have different names, they were very busy because end of month is pay day and also shopping day, and there were queues at ATMs and banks because all the eftpos things were down. The monthly shopping spree is because African tradition is that if someone asks you for money, you give it to them, so it makes sense to spend all your pay quickly.

Facts about Namibia so far:

Woolworths is a clothes shop that sells Marks and Spencer's and is like target.
Streets ice cream is called olla. They are a shop.
I saw a cafe called Wimpy, I must eat a wimpy burger while Im here cos that would never catch on in Australia.
English is the language everyone speaks, but it's not the language you hear spoken around the shops and so on. It's sort of the lowest common denominator. And it's full of words like brötchen for bread, that I'm always going "huh?" although I have already started using ya instead of yeah in only one day.
We got truffles at the supermarket!!! For something like A$10 a kg!
We drive everywhere.
50% unemployment means there is a lot of service like pumping petrol or supervising car parks. Also, no op shops because you just put stuff on the lid of your bin or give it to your domestic or I saw someone hand a bag out the window of their car. So I'm going to leave my old joggers here because in Australia they would go in the bin, here someone will get some more use out of them.

I'm going to be relaxing a lot here, it's just lovely weather and good friends and not much to do. This afternoon will be board games. This is the view from the back patio of our friends house.