I've spent my last night under hot pink Barbie sheets in my little bedroom in Khomesdal. No more falling asleep after watching that evening's soapie (English dubbed Mexican soap operas, a national obsession), belly full of porridge and beef liver. No more mornings awakened by kids' Christian rock followed by a drive down Mahatma Ghandi Street, taking a turn down Florence Nightingale to pick up kids and
take them to Van Rhyn primary.

I will miss it. There is something to be said about coming home after a long day of classes for a good hour of jumping rope with Kelly and Tiaan, my little sisters for the past week and a half. I became less scary halfway through, and I'm not entirely sure what I did to earn a little affection. One day I was walking towards the house, and Kelly bolted towards me with a big grin only to jump into my arms for a hug.

I've loved spending the evenings with my host mom and brother, washing dishes after dinner and talking politics. My host mom appreciated the willing ear, the chance to go on her tangents about all the kids out at shebeens (local bars people run out of their houses)every night, the education system, how expensive this life is.

By the end, I was ready to go. Weekends can be long with the family, and I just couldn't handle any more church functions. Saturday night I was at an open mic youth night called Floetic Vibes from six pm until two in the morning. The next day we we were back at church at eight thirty. I've just had so many conversations about Jesus, and by conversations I mean I sit there quietly and listen to people tell me about, to use their own words, their personal relationship with the Lord Christ. I can't help, but feel that my host brother feels that there is something just a bit off with me. I am tired of pretending to be neutral, wondering what my host mom is thinking about me and my non-church going Jewish/Catholic background, when she goes on about non-believers and how her own Catholic family is ritualistic and, as the pastor said in Church, "almost pagan."

I have learned from going to their church. It is one of the most integrated settings that I've seen so far, but that integration is more superficial than it appears at Sunday services. At floetic vibes, I was the only white person, and social circles are color coded. While most people in the crowd are black, the leadership and all of the speakers are white. Services are totally in English, rare around here where most worships are three hours long to accommodate translations in multiple languages.

This last service also surprised me. The congregation is sending a mission to Germany, driven by the statistic that there are ninety witches to every one priest. I wouldn’t have expected a Namibian church to send a mission to Europe, but everyone in the crowd that I spoke to, including a German born woman seated beside me, thought it seemed like a wonderful idea.

All things being equal, everyone was much more open than I expected. I don't mean to go on my own tirade, but this was the big culture shock for me. People speaking a language that I don't understand, talking about their histories, their lives, eating new foods; that's the novelty, the picturesque part about study abroad. People that assert a totally foreign set of beliefs and values and hope that I will adopt them as well; that's a bit more culture shock inducing.

Friday night, I am pretty sure that my host dad, Tele, hoped to induce some culture shock. We drove out to the fringes of Katatura, to the informal settlements to visit his brother’s family. The Informal settlements are what people call the expanses of zinc shacks north of Windhoek. This is where the poverty of Namibia, a country that rivals Brazil and South Africa for the largest gap between rich and poor, emerges. Every other house is a shebeen, music blasts from five pm until dawn, and red dirt streets reek of urine, a testament to the luxury of indoor plumbing.

We pull into a lot. Tele’s brother is a mechanic, and we work our way single file through a maze of cars into his home, and I am introduced to the family. I greet them in Nama Damara, trying to make the most of my 5 or 6 phrase vocabulary, which surprises them. I don’t think they’re used to white people trying to speak anything besides English or Afrikaans, but I am not sure if my butchering of their words is really any better than just smiling, nodding, and shaking hands.

In his sister in law’s bedroom watching a soapie, Tele turns to me and asks, “So, what do you think of this, this life here?”

He is looking at me expectantly. I don’t know what to say. I feel like he wants to hear some revelation, some testament to his family’s hardship.

I am not saying that I understand what it means to live in a shack in Katatura, but I have seen a shack before. I know, at this superficial level, what poverty looks like. It is difficult, it is sad, it's made me cry, but this time I'm not in tears. Does he want weeping?

I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to cry out “Oh! This terrible, desperate life! I am so lucky, so privileged- you poor, poor people” while I sit beside them in their home.

But I felt like that’s what Tele wanted me to say, the reaction he wanted me to have.

“What do you mean?” is all I manage.

Tele looks frustrated, gestures around him, taps a corrugated metal wall.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I say flat out, and turn to talk to my host mom for a few minutes before I am led outside.

Back in the lot we lean against cars, feel the breeze that hints at the start of a rainy season and look at the Windhoek city lights. I talk to Tele’s niece Johanna, a fourteen year old girl who wants to talk about the US. She asks if there are any Namibians there, and I say I haven’t met any. She tells me that she would visit if she had the chance, but that she wouldn’t want to leave for good. She loves it in this part of Katatura, says she can’t imagine moving away.

On the drive home, I try to explain myself to Tele. I thank him for taking me, that I really appreciated it, and tell him outright that I just didn’t know what to say when he asked me what I thought when we were in the house. I told him that it looks really hard, but that I have no idea what it would really be like to live like that. Driving away from that evening’s half an hour visit, of course I still have no clue.