"I blessed the rains down in Africa" (Sing along with Toto if you please.)
It rained on Saturday! While that may not seem like such an amazing occurrence, this was the first significant rain in over two years. The thunderstorm lasted for a couple of hours. I think the rain followed us from North Carolina.

We had not been able to find any electric fans here so we also took a taxi out to the southern part of the town. We passed a local craft market that I am dying to check out. Hopefully in the next few days. There is a new mall out there that you could plop down anywhere in the states and it would not look out of place. We found a fan and a blender to make smoothies so my life is much more complete. We will be able to buy just about anything out there. It was interesting to see the differences in the demographics in the more upscale part of the city. Here at the University, the area is nice, but not fancy. We have yet to see another white person here. Out at the mall, the ratio was closer to 50 white: 50 black. I told Bruce we had found the place where all the whites with money hang out. There is a great economic discrepancy between whites and blacks. While there are rich blacks, there doesn't seem to be any poor whites.

Sunday we attended Church. There are three branches of our church here in the city. People were very friendly and open. The building is about a 1/2 walk from our apartment. It did not take but a few minutes to feel at home. One of the things that I love about the LDS church is that it is a global church and is the same in Namibia as it is in North Carolina and Colorado. Where ever we are, we know that we had a church family. We have already been asked to speak next Sunday.

This morning we attended a security briefing at the U.S. embassy. I had never been inside an embassy before. We were told that Namibia is a relatively safe country except for driving. They have a very high rate of vehicular deaths and accidents. Some is related to accidents with wild life, but most is simply because they drive like craziness here. We were advised not to travel outside the city during the night. The main crime here is petty thief, crimes of opportunity, and what they call "car jacking". That term simply means stealing things from your car, breaking windows, etc. not actually stealing the car. I think this goes back to the fact that so many here have so little. Anyway, we feel perfectly safe here and just need to be aware. I think that is good advice for any place you are in. We also got to meet the Ambassador, who is planning a dinner for the five of us. He seems very nice and I don't think it is going to be a fancy nancy event.

Tonight we are eating Mexican. I made tortillas, a weird version of salsa (had to use what I could find) and will saute some peppers, chicken and onions. Also making a watermelon smoothie. Life is good!