Funny light effects + Fairy tale clouds = Eye Candy

There’s this funny thing going on with the physics of light now that spring is fully underway here. The haze has finally left and days are incredibly clear. Once things got clearer and spring was here in force, we began noticing something unusual when looking at the landscape and clouds through polarized sunglasses. Everything is so much brighter, the colors so intense, and the edges so much sharper (weird as that sounds) with polarized lenses.

Remember the big scene in Contact where Jodie Foster’s character is transported to an island that is bathed in Technicolor? With polarized lenses, that’s what it’s like here (but sans beach!). We use polarized sunglasses at home but the difference between ‘with’ and ‘without’ is slight. The altitudes of Albuquerque and Windhoek are almost identical and when it’s clear here, to the naked eye, it seems just like a clear Albuquerque day. But with polarized sunglasses on, there is a profound difference from Albuquerque.

Yesterday was a clear day with just these fairy tale clouds floating around to the north and some larger ones to the south.

Fairy tale clouds to the north

When I put my sunglasses on, the clouds and the city came into sharp, beautiful focus. The clouds had definition I never see through sunglasses at home. The mountains around Windhoek – even at high noon—have sharp definition. You can see the depressions and textures so clearly.

I photographed the clouds and city using a polarizing filter to see if the effect shows in photos. It’s not anywhere nearly as pronounced in a photo as it is in person but here’s what the experiment yielded:

Without polarizing filter

 

With polarizing filter

Without polarizing filter

With polarizing filter

Even the professor who is wise about the physics of light, cannot figure out what’s going on.

When we arrived in July, it was winter in Namibia. There was one blindingly bright clear day after another. But the phenomenon didn’t happen in July.  The best we can figure is that light does funny things when you are this close to the Tropic of Capricorn in southern hemisphere spring. It’s a dazzling effect and you can hardly believe it’s real. We keep flipping our sunglasses up and down just to be sure we’re really seeing what we think we’re seeing. It’s that hard to believe.
 
Eye candy, the professor called it.

That’s about as scientific as we’re going to get on this one.

Boo!

One of the Polytechnic feral cats, modified somewhat for Halloween!  :>)

Finally.....a weather pattern I recognize

Weather is funny stuff here. We still don’t know what makes the haze in the air. When we ask, responses range from, “what haze?” to “it’s just a lot of mica in the air” (now that’s a totally new one!). If the photos didn’t show it clearly, the process of photography certainly lends testament to the fact that it exists. The professor says he has lost 2 full f-stops of light when compared to a sunny day in Albuquerque. Windhoek is at the same elevation as Albuquerque, so all else being equal, you might expect the same clear skies as those we have at home. However, since spring arrived in Windhoek, there are darn few days like this with the bright blue skies we saw when we came in July:

There is a coal-fired power plant in Windhoek and individual fires that take place nearly every day. With such a giant disparity between have and have-nots here, poor people use fires for both warmth and cooking. That all can lead to days like this:

 On most recent days however, it’s just plain hazy. Windhoek appears to sit in an ancient caldera and is surrounded on all sides by mountains. Perhaps there is an inversion process going on here, and spring is windy here just like in Albuquerque. The best we can figure is the haze must be very, very fine sand particles and/or a dust phenomenon we just don’t understand. But whatever it is, lately our days have looked like this. The mountains are nearly indistinguishable at times.

There are a couple of pleasant by-products of the haze. Since it’s nearly always present, the colors of sunrises

Sunrise in haze

and sunsets can be amazing.

Sunset in haze

But given that the rainy season doesn’t arrive until December (more likely, January), the haze just amplifies the feeling that it is exceptionally dry here. Apparently it’s not just a feeling. Over a couple of days and nights, there were wind-driven veld fires in the hills above Windhoek, some close to a few of the  in-city neighborhoods. It all looked really scary here over a couple of days but there were no news break-ins on television and no fire sirens above the usual. Apparently, they just let the things burn out.

Amazingly, on the morning after the first fire, the air was clear above Windhoek

 

with the exception of a fire still burning behind a hill closest to town.

The only explanation I have for this invokes some of my ancient chemistry knowledge that like dissolves like!

But two days later, the skies were back to their hazed norm.

Then on September 30, finally, a weather pattern I recognized started to form to the south.

Once it really got underway,

there was no denying that this was one significant rain. It poured for about 30 minutes solid. The professor, who has rural Oklahoma roots in his lineage, refers to rains like these as frog stranglers. Perhaps if it wasn’t so desiccated here, making the likelihood of a frog completely out of the question, this particular rain had what it took to strangle frogs beyond number.

The professor’s students were really excited the next morning, telling him how happy they were to see the rain. Not a drop had fallen since February 1, 2010 – a full 8 months without rain!

But then, the morning after, this was the sky above Windhoek.

Apparently rain doesn’t dissolve this haze.

How it survived that rain is beyond me.

Laundry: Moving from the 20th to the 21st century

As you may recall, our flat came with what here in Namibia is called a twin tub washer. Basically, it’s exactly that – an electric washing machine with one tub for washing and rinsing and another tub for spinning water out of clothes. This is early to mid 20th century technology.

The only real problem with the twin tub washer is that it takes an attendant to wash the clothes. It’s a step up from a wringer washer, but you can’t do much else but attend the washer while it works:

1. To begin, you plug in the washer, hook the water inlet hose to your kitchen water faucet and hook the drain hose over the edge of your kitchen sink. You add soap and turn on the water but you can’t stray far because you need to be careful to turn it off when the tub is full.

2. After the tub fills, you dial up the amount of time you want the clothes to wash. That starts the washing process.

3. Once the washing is complete, you turn the machine to drain and wait until it drains through a drain hose into the kitchen sink. Sometimes you need to turn it off midway so it doesn’t overflow the sink, turning it back on after you have let some of the water go down the sink.

4. Once the machine has drained, you transfer clothes from the washing tub to the spinning tub to spin out the sudsy water.

5. Once the spinning completes, you move them back to the washing tub to rinse them. Again the water enters via hose from the faucet and again, you have to remember to turn it off when the tub is full.

6. You dial up the rinsing time to begin the rinse.

7. Once the rinsing is complete, you turn the machine to drain and wait again until it does (see caution at #3 above).

8. After the clothes have drained, you move them to the spinning tub to spin the water out of them.

9. After that spin is finished, you can finally move the clothes to the dryer.


After making several kind requests for a newer washer, we were delighted with the delivery of a brand new LG automatic washer at the beginning of September.

It’s not quite what you’d expect in the states but the important key word here is automatic. You still need to attach water hoses to the hot and cold water inlets each time you use it and the washer still drains through a hose to the kitchen sink, BUT it does all the rest on its own – washing, spinning, rinsing, draining. You need only show up at the start to add detergent, and at the end to move the clothes to the dryer. This one is firmly in the 21st century – fuzzy logic and all.

There is a fuzzy wash cycle setting that supposedly invokes fuzzy logic to ascertain the soil level of the clothes and adjust water level and soap requirements to match. However, since you need to define the water level and soap requirements before the machine starts, it’s all a bit fuzzy. As are the clothes when they leave the washer as the lint filter is a bit primitive.

But all in all, it’s a big improvement. I’m exceedingly partial to this machine not just because it saves tons of work but because it came beautifully monogrammed just for me.

Now if we could just get a 21st century clothes dryer.

Disturbances.....

Of Air

There's a funny phenomenon associated with the haze over Windhoek. There is so much dust in the air these days, lights throughout the city literally twinkle every night, their light reflecting off dust particles – it’s like living in a Disney storybook animation. I keep expecting the most twinkly lights to develop faces and burst into little songs echoing out over the city. As spring has begun in earnest, the winds coming from the desert must fuel this ever present haze of suspended dust.

The haze wasn’t here when we arrived in July. The air was clear most every night and the city lights, a steady yellow. Last night, a windy (and rainless) front came through with high winds from late afternoon all the way through the night. It didn’t blow out the dust, just exchanged it for new dust. However, while it was barreling through, the dust was moving so fast, the lights couldn’t reflect off of it. You can’t tell from this photo, but the lights were still again just for a while.

City lights in Windhoek, September 9, 2010

The haze does suit photographers however as sunrises and sunsets can be stunning.

Sunrise over Windhoek, August 22, 2010

Sunrise over Windhoek, September 8, 2010

Sunset over Polytech, September 5, 2010

Of Earth

We were working on our laptops in late afternoon a couple of days ago. The only sounds in the flat were key clicks and jazz from the iPod. In the midst of our work, there was a short, very muted rumble and the building seemed to shudder a bit. We both looked up and said, “What was that?” The professor speculated that someone dropped a wheel barrow load of ceramic tile on a floor above us where tile is being installed. We didn’t think much of it until the next day when one of the professor’s students remarked that another professor told her there had been an earthquake about 45 miles north of Windhoek.


Of College Professors

Now that daylight saving time is in effect in Namibia, the professor is once again getting up in the 5AM darkness and into the shower before light. The other morning, just as he turned on the light to get into the shower, bees were buzzing around the light fixture adjacent to the shower. He tried to shoo them out of the same window they came in (no screens on any windows here) but there was no diverting them. As there is no second shower in this flat, he had no alternative but to go ahead and shower, bees and all. They ultimately deemed him uninteresting as compared to the light fixture so he was thankfully able to complete a stingless, but apprehension-filled shower. These are African bees after all.

Good ideas and other interesting stuff…..

I have finally found a place to recycle plastic. At least now I can do my bit for the Namibian environment. Though on closer analysis, this is truly an exercise in delusional thinking since my rather meager plastic bottle and pop can accumulations don’t have a chance of offsetting the CO2 from the unleaded fuel powering the round trip taxi ride I have to take to drop them off.

I have been seeing some good ideas lately, however.

The Pick N Pay grocery store we walk to daily (yes, daily) is busy all the time. We’re pretty much in the center of the city so it’s one of the main sources of groceries for those of us who live here and for folks heading home from the city. Lots of things are packaged to be light to carry. If you have to carry all your purchases any distance (as in our half mile trek uphill to our flat) let me tell you, you appreciate things being as light as they can be. Our dishwashing liquid was running low, so instead of buying yet another difficult to recycle bottle, I was able to purchase just what I needed – a refill!

I’ve also seen refills for fabric softener, clothes washing detergent, household cleaners, dishwasher detergent, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil. All of them are sized to be easy to carry and cost less than the original packaged product. There is a giant economic chasm here between the folks who have money and jobs and the 50% of the working age population that do not have a job and only limited money. It seems some grocery items are purposely packaged in small sizes so that they are easy to carry long distances and because of their size, are perhaps, somewhat more affordable.

We haven’t experienced that much difference in the price of grocery items between home and Windhoek. The prices seem much the same after you convert to dollars and once you get used to the price tags – the N$ 10.99 quart of milk to go atop your N$27.99 package of cereal, for instance. Those are approximately $1.49 and $3.78 respectively in USD. The N$1000 grocery totals at check-out can still make our heads swim though. We have to mentally convert to USD all the time. The $149,000 price tags on used Toyotas really made us gasp until we realized that’s about $20,400 USD.

Here’s another good idea that we could use at home.

This degradable egg packaging protects the eggs much better than the non-degradable Styrofoam cartons at home. You cannot open the package at the store to check for broken eggs, but I haven’t found a broken one yet – ones covered with small feathers – yes, but not broken ones.

Another interesting item of note – there is darn little high fructose corn syrup in evidence here. Soft drinks, cereals, fruit drinks, candies, and marshmallows (all part of our taste tests thus far) are all sweetened with sugar. In general, portion sizes are smaller and not much is very sweet. These cookies are not as sweet as American vanilla wafers.

These gum drops taste more of fruit flavors than of sugar.

Marshmallows – those are a bit of a toss up with US brands – but overall, still not as sweet.

We are seeing far fewer overweight individuals here as compared to home. Most are a very healthy slim body size. Most remarkably, I never see a single overweight college student at Polytechnic. The professor has seen only a very small number of overweight students. It certainly gives one pause for thought in comparison to students at home.
 
When I do take taxis, I usually hail one just outside the main gate to Polytech. Last week though, I needed to be at an event some distance from the university and then needed to be picked up again afterwards. I called a taxi driver who had seemed very kind to us on a previous trip and who had given me his phone number. He had my cell phone number from the call I placed to him and here is the message he sent when he arrived to pick me up:

And when he came back to get me later:

Can’t beat that. This is just an example of the tremendous kindness we have experienced from everyone we have met thus far.

Here’s another good thing that happens every day. Most days are cloudless and the sunsets look like this.

But on the rare occasion there have been clouds, they look like this:

Can’t beat that either.

The Electrics

As you would expect, voltage is different here. All outlets are 240 volts. Given how careful I am at home with my one 220V outlet for the stove, having 240V outlets everywhere is downright scary. The professor warned I should be incredibly careful – a misstep with a 240V outlet could take off a finger or two. Actually, his statement was, “be sure you don’t get a finger under there or you could lose it just like that – kerplat! and it will be gone!” Given that my heart might stop in the midst of such a misstep, fingers evaporated off my lifeless corpse might be the least of my worries.

We’re living at what is called Poly Heights on the Polytechnic campus. It’s a 12-story apartment building right inside the main gate. Each flat (apartment) has its own breaker box. I became acquainted with ours when all the electricity to the flat went out shortly after we moved in. Building maintenance sent a gentleman over to turn it back on. I watched in case I had to know this stuff.

First, you turn the switches off for the lights, the plugs, the stove, and the geyser. Then you turn the heavy duty main switch back on.

If nothing sparks at that point, you turn the lights, plugs, stove, and geyser back on.


Good thing I memorized that procedure. More blackouts followed.

Not until the toaster actually sparked did we deduce it was the culprit causing the blackouts. During the blackouts we became comfortable with managing the breaker box. Somehow the straightforward switches in the breaker box seem less threatening than the actual outlets in the flat.

These little babies actually have switches on them to turn on and off the flow of electricity. These are worrisome outlets since those holes are exactly the size of a toddler’s fingers. I’ve yet to see a fingerless toddler so there must be some mega-sturdy baby-proofing systems out there. Even the husky constitution of the plugs gives you pause for thought.

They wouldn’t make them that substantial if they didn’t have to carry so much voltage. According to the professor, the correct finger-sparing procedure should be: turn off the switch, plug everything in, then turn on the flow of electricity with the switch. This also doubles as the cell phone and laptop-sparing procedure, so you can bet I follow it.

There is only one outlet per room so it seems to be commonplace to use multi-outlet extension cords. This is the one that came with the kitchen.

It has the microwave, stove hood, and new toaster plugged into it. I finger-sparingly unplug the toaster to plug in the washer.

It worries me a bit to have so many things plugged into the multi-plug extension cords. However, once we replaced the toaster, it does seem our system easily handles all the stuff that’s plugged in throughout the flat. We’re counting on that now that we’ve added a new iPod player to the electric mix. Just working on our laptops at the flat can make it pretty quiet in here. It’s good to have some musical company.

Oh, yes….you wanted to know what the geyser is.
Simple–it’s the electric hot water heater that is mounted against the wall just above the refrigerator.

If the geyser ever leaks onto the 240 volt refrigerator outlet, caution against finger loss becomes a superfluous consideration.