This week, we travelled to the Northern part of the country. We did homestays with families in rural areas and visited Etosha National Park where we saw lots of animals.
My homestay was with a mother and father, their baby, and a cousin. Their homestead is about a 1km drive into the bush from the main road. They have a small house with bedrooms and a living room. There is no running water in the house (but they do have a tap outside) and the house is not connected to the electric grid. However, they do have a gas ("petrol") powered generator which they use in the evenings to power two lights in the house and the TV. Unlike many people in urban areas of Namibia, they don't have satellite TV, so they only get the one channel that is broadcast nationally ("NBC," the Namibian Broadcasting Company...no relation to NBC in the US, as far as I know). Also, for the record, my cell phone had 5 bars all the way out there....
The kitchen is a fenced area outside. Cooking is done over open fires. While I was there, we ate rice and beans and chicken and porridge (and Fanta) for lunch and dinner and toast for breakfast. They also have a "bathing room" outside. When I first heard this, I thought this referred to what I would call a bathroom. However, it turns out it is literally a "bathing" room, used for washing (using a bucket of water and some soap). There is an outhouse 100m out into the bush.
They also have a traditional round hut on the homestead. This essentially acts as a spare bedroom for them....when people come to visit they stay there. The parents in my family were in their 30's, but apparently people of previous generations often prefer staying in the traditional hut instead of the house when they visit. So, basically, the hut acts as the in-law's suite.....
They have a bunch of chickens and goats, but these are used just for the family (they aren't sold to make money). Both parents are teachers so they have a relatively stable income.
Northern Namibia is a malaria zone. The family has bednets that hang from the ceiling and go over the beds to keep mosquitos from biting at night. The other advantage of the bednet is that it provides some amount of peace-of-mind that the big spiders won't attack during the night.... : )
After the homestay, we traveled to Etosha national park and game reserve. Etosha is about 22,000 square kilometers (for comparison, Ohio is about 116,000 square kilometers), so it is quite a large area. People can drive through the park, but are not allowed to get out of the vehicle they are traveling in (except at particular fenced-off camps and resorts which are located throughout the park).
It is the dry season, so it hasn't rained since March or April. Thus, all of the animals have to come to the watering holes to drink, which is nice because you can park near the watering holes and see lots of animals. Also, the camp we were staying at was located right next to a watering hole, so we could sit there and watch lots of animals.
We saw lots of springbok, kudu, oryx, zebras, jackals, giraffes, elephants, and rhinos. We didn't see any predators, unfortunately. 
Tomorrow (Sunday), I'll be flying back to the US. I'll be leaving Windhoek at 11:35 am (local time), flying to Johannesburg, then getting on a plane to Dulles (which will stop to refuel in Dakar, Senegal for an hour), then I'll fly to Cincinnati. If all goes well, I'll be back by 10:00 am (Cincinnati time) on Monday. It's amazing that it is possible to be here, and then be back in Cincinnati ~30 hours later!
