When I Grow Up, I Want To Be...

It seems to me that most people remember what they wanted to be as a kid. That's not to say their career dreams actually stay the same or are at all practical.

I mean my cousin wanted to be a piece of cheese. Which to this day I still think is a valid life goal.

But I don't remember wanting to be anything. Perhaps a veterinarian like my older sisters wanted to be. I quite liked to copy my sisters' ideas, even if I didn't know what they were going on about.

(Obviously that did not last forever as they are now in various science fields, and I am unemployed. With an art degree. In Namibia. The last two of which I am very content with.)

Perhaps deep down what I really wanted was to be a professional cookie eater or a permanent inhabitant of Disney World.

Let's not kid around, I would still like to be those things.

Then I got older and older and still could not settle on one thing I would like to pursue as a career. I think it really wasn't until my senior year of college that I was 95% committed to attempting a job in some sort of humanitarian relief. Now that still may seem like a broad area of focus.

Correct.

But it was, and is, broad for a few reasons.

One. There are more things wrong in this world than I can count. There are a lot of assholes that make life for other people (and animals, and the environment) really shit. And I would be happy trying to rectify any one of these problems in any way that I can. Because I can. And because I want to. (And not in a peace and love sort of way, in an angry way. Because I just don't understand why some people are so stupid and self-entitled. Anyway.)
Two. It's not an easy line of work to get into. It doesn't pay well. Sometimes it doesn't pay at all. And if it is a paid position, I am perpetually either over or under qualified, or don't have enough of the experience that no one is willing to give me.

And that last point is a problem for young Americans on all career paths. Which all seem to lead to The Cape of No Hope. Which is like the Cape of Good Hope, but everyone is cranky and has a shot of grain alcohol with breakfast.

Unfortunately, I am encountering the same problem here in Namibia. Sans drunken eggs and bacon. Rightfully, it is in the interest of the country to hire Namibians before out-of-towners like myself. That's great. It truly is. It also leads to me getting a lot of "We would love to hire you, but..."'s and dead ends.

And while I know this entry is quickly spiraling into a essay of self pity, I would just like to say this.

I, like everyone else in there 20s, understand that I must work my way up from the bottom. And I am willing to have that desk job, calling donors, returning emails for a few years. And I'm willing to work hard, in a stressful environment, with difficult people, and even more difficult environments...if I know that my work is important. I just can't seem to even really get on the totem pole in order to be at the bottom of it.

I'm totem pole-less.

Obviously I'm not throwing in the towel. I mean, seriously, there's so many opportunities, it's ridiculous. And also I'm broke and can't afford a new towel.

But in the meantime, I think I will open up a cafe/bakery that has some funky name like The Button Jar Bake Shop, where I can sell exciting cupcakes and brownies and my art and crafty nuggets and have big cushy chairs and lots of plants. With a painting studio in the loft, which you have to walk up a giraffe-shaped staircase to get to.

Because that, sadly (or maybe not sadly, but bizarrely) is more plausible at this point.

Happy Friday, my lovely friends!

That's NamTune-tastic

Not often does one hear the phrases "scouring the flatware" and "booty poppin'" in the same sentence, but in this precise moment that is exactly what I am doing. Simultaneously, but not well on either end.

I wasn't feeling too great about getting out of my duvet nest this morning to wash every dish that we own. Because as I have tried to explain, I have never been a fan of keeping up with the cleaning past putting all the dirty items into a haphazard pile and collapsing onto the floor in exhaustion.

Sometimes I wish I had just a touch more obsessiveness to my personality.

So I turned the TV to the channel TRACE, which plays exclusively music videos and is thus exceedingly superior to the disgrace that is now MTV.

Beyoncé is on. Hey, girl.

It is a well known fact that work always goes faster when there is music to dance to. It practically does itself. Or rather I am too busy shaking it in an impressively bad way to notice how many plates I have already cleaned.

I soon tire of being Drunk In Love and switch to music on a USB drive that is plugged into a sound playing device, which is the preferred method of music storage in Namibia, and is in this case plugged into the TV.

This particular drive has electro-trance-dance-house music on it. I have no idea what the difference between those 4 kinds of music is, but apparently strung out millennials in neon clothes can tell the difference.

I, however, just want to dance my pants off. Or pants on, rather, as I am clad only in well-worn athletic shorts from 8 years ago.

Which brings us to the topic of this blog post, which is popular music in Namibia. Not old shorts. Took me long enough to get there, but we've finally arrived at the point.

Like anywhere in the world, Namibia has different genres of music. Pop is big. In some places, you can even tune in to Ryan Seacrest counting down US chart toppers. South African music also has a big presence in Namibia, and is full of talented pop and rap musicians, like AKA, Mi Casa, and Goldfish. Of course, SA has a rich and diverse music scene that I know little about, but I'm just talking about pop artists here.

One Million Views-Goldfish

Namibian pop artists, though, are a very different breed. Whereas big time South African artists usually sound more polished, like what you would hear in the Western world, the sparsely populated country of Namibia has a more undeveloped music scene, being that there are no official record labels. Some of the more popular hip-hop groups are PDK, Sunny Boy, Gazza, and The Dogg. But a lot of what I hear in the Kunene region and beyond was music called Oviritje. All of which songs are heavy on the synthesizer, utilize the same tempo for every song, and share a similar backbeat that sounds like one of the 5 that are preloaded onto mid grade Yamaha keyboard. Music videos are usually full of dancing people in random public places and goats mulling about in the background.

For instance...

But the kind of dancing Oviritje produces is always fun to watch. It causes a normal man to turn into a bouncing African Gumby and produce quite bewildering dance moves.

You also get a lot of a capella gospel music here, this being a very Christian country and all. You know, some gospel is nice, serene, peaceful. But some sounds like the air being squeezed out of a badly broken bagpipe. I can appreciate it for what it is, but it's really not my thing. Not blasting through my walls at 6 in the morning, not any time.

And then there is Afrikaans music, which is a bit like pop country music with much less twang and much more...boer. If you don't know what I mean by that, then I do apologize, but I cannot describe it any other way. But it is widely appreciated by the white population, and after a few double brandy and cokes causes people to go utterly ape shit with the singing and the drunken swaying.

However, in the younger Afrikaans crowd, you often find an innate love of trance music. Or dance music. Or whatever the hell you want to call it. Hence why the TV in my bachelor flat is now pumping out music that should be in venue full of ginormous speakers and lots of light shows and DJs and...sweaty people. And stuff.

Can you spell MDMA?

It really gets you excited about housework, though. I, myself, am going fairly ape shit with these plates.

Obviously I don't entirely know what I'm talking about anymore, but I did manage to finish the dishes with only once slicing my finger on a cheese grater.

So, right. There's that.

I encourage you to search YouTube for Oviritje and Namibian music videos. It will be entertaining, I promise.

Cheers.