Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is defined as “the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through experience”.

We typ­i­cally sum­ma­rize a lot of brain research by encour­ag­ing Sharp­Brains read­ers is to seek for nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge, as guide­lines for “brain exer­cise” that will help build new con­nec­tions in the brain, force one to be mind­ful and pay atten­tion, improve abil­i­ties such as pattern-recognition, and in gen­eral con­tribute to life­long brain health.

A friend just sent an update on her amaz­ing expe­ri­ence in Namibia (the pic on the right shows the entrance to the Uni­ver­sity of Namibia) that shows how Travel and Engage­ment with mean­ing­ful projects can pro­vide superb men­tal stim­u­la­tion, or “brain exer­cise”. This is rel­e­vant at all ages, and we are encour­aged to see orga­ni­za­tions such as Civic Ven­tures and Elder­hos­tel that offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for baby boomers and older adults who want to main­tain active minds.

Try pic­tur­ing in your mind, as you read this, all her dif­fer­ent brain areas that are get­ting needed stim­u­la­tion through her Namibia experience.

UPDATE: my friend just wrote to expand on the “be mind­ful” angle by say­ing that “it def­i­nitely requires pur­pose­ful pro­cess­ing of the infor­ma­tion that you are con­sum­ing in order to make it a use­ful brain exer­cise. For exam­ple, I always try to jour­nal or write thought­ful emails about my expe­ri­ence in order to try to best under­stand it.” Great point.

With her per­mis­sion, here you have:

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Dear Friends,

I am just return­ing from Namibia and am buzzing with excite­ment about all of the oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to make an impact there when we return with our stu­dents next Spring.

Namibia is very dif­fer­ent than I expected. It was the last coun­try in Africa to gain inde­pen­dence from colo­nial­ism, gain­ing inde­pen­dence just 20 years ago. Thus, it is much more devel­oped than any African coun­try that I have vis­ited, with rel­a­tively good infra­struc­ture and no exist­ing debt. That said, the lega­cies of apartheid can still be felt in today’s soci­ety, and the peo­ple are very clearly deal­ing con­stantly with issues of race and iden­tity. One of the most inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences that I had was attend­ing a “braai” (the Namib­ian ver­sion of a bar­be­cue which basi­cally con­sists of a first course of a slab of meat, a sec­ond course of a big­ger slab of meat, and a dessert of meat with sugar on top…needless to say, Bar­bara, our res­i­dent veg­e­tar­ian, went hun­gry that night). At the braai were a group of young white peo­ple (social cir­cles are still heav­ily seg­re­gated), none of whom were more than 30 years old, and all of whom had seen the fall of apartheid within their life­time. While they had been born under a regime where all high-level jobs were reserved for whites, where blacks were told where to live and how to act, they were now strug­gling very much with what it means to be “African.” These were peo­ple who, at a very young age, had to reject their par­ents’ teach­ing that “black peo­ple are dif­fer­ent” in order to con­form with the norms of post-Apartheid soci­ety. And yet at the same time, they are still faced with sit­u­a­tions where they are not con­sid­ered “African” because of the color of their skin, in spite of the fact that all of their fam­i­lies have been in Africa for sev­eral generations.

The next day, we had an amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity to see the com­plete oppo­site side of the spec­trum at the New Covenant Pen­te­costal Church of Namibia. This rock­ing and rolling church ser­vice takes gospel to a whole new level. And talk about dressed to the nines…when we arrived we were intro­duced to the pastor’s wife who very eas­ily could have been going to a New Year’s Eve party given her sparkly attire. The African women were so glam­orous, dressed head to toe in col­ors so bright you could see them com­ing from miles away. The ma ss lasted no less than four hours (my par­ents said I must have been mak­ing up for lost time!), and every­one in that church (our­selves included) were singing and danc­ing the entire time. To give you an idea, I could have yelled at the per­son sit­ting next to me at the top of my lungs and it would have gone unno­ticed, I kid you not. As the rock­ing and rolling cooled down mid-way through, and the pas­tor stood up to give his ser­mon, it became very clear that these parish­ioners (who were all black) were also deal­ing with their own issues of iden­tity and empow­er­ment in the post-apartheid world. The pas­tor used the Bible pas­sage where David returns to Israel to claim his land as a metaphor to preach that every­one in that church should take own­er­ship over their own lives, and take ini­tia­tive to claim their own land, be it fig­u­ra­tively or lit­er­ally. The con­gre­ga­tion was on the edge of their seats and, gaug­ing by the level of engage­ment, the words could have bee n com­ing from God him­self. The inter­mit­tent “hal­lelu­jahs” and “praise the lords” were con­stant. It was truly amaz­ing to see this group of peo­ple who, just like the white twenty-somethings we had dined with the night before, had seen the fall of apartheid within their own lives and were so empow­ered and full of hope for the future. I later learned that, in fact, this com­mu­nity of par­ti­tion­ers who appeared so glam­orous and together had once been quite poor. But through com­ing together as a com­mu­nity and through the pos­i­tive spirit of their church lead­ers, they had over­come poverty, with the major­ity of them liv­ing com­fort­ably in the emerg­ing mid­dle class of Namibia. To see the hope in these people’s eyes was one of the most inspir­ing expe­ri­ences of my life, and makes me very excited about the work that we are going to be doing in Namibia.

While well-developed for African stan­dards, the extreme poverty th at we asso­ciate with the devel­op­ing world was not absent. One day we took a tour of Katatura, which was orig­i­nally where the blacks were forced to live in sep­a­rate quar­ters dur­ing apartheid. Beyond the evi­dent poverty that existed in these neigh­bor­hoods were miles and miles of shanty towns that had sprung up with the onslaught of peo­ple who had come from rural areas for work in Wind­hoek. More than half the pop­u­la­tion of Wind­hoek lives in these make-shift homes, made of cor­ru­gated metal if they were lucky, or old car parts, tree branches, used bill­boards or any­thing else they could get their hands on if they were not. You can imag­ine the stench in the air from no run­ning water or toi­lets. And the meals were sparse — most lived off of a litre of liq­uid a day, which was a com­bi­na­tion of yeast, flour and water and made to be fill­ing in spite of the fact that it might be their only meal for the day (we had a taste of it — it was some really hor­ri­ble stuff). It was not my first time see­ing such deep poverty, but every time I do, my Catholic guilt begins to set in, fol­lowed by a rag­ing desire to do some­thing about it. In my search to fig­ure out how I could do my part to help, I found many non­prof­its on the ground in Namibia doing incred­i­ble work to com­bat HIV/AIDS and poverty. I will not go into detail about their incred­i­ble work here, but would be happy to share if any­one is interested.

And of course, there is the rea­son that we were there in the first place: to develop the projects for the Stan­ford law stu­dents that we would be bring­ing in the Spring. Given Barbara’s past work in Namibia, we were lucky to have access to many of the key play­ers who are build­ing the democ­racy in this coun­try. Meet­ing these inspired indi­vid­u­als made me think of what it would have been like to go back in time to meet our own found­ing fathers. Like the founders of our own democ­racy, these are peo­ple who have a vision for mak­ing Namibia a model for democ­racy around the world. They have the advan­tage of being able to see how other democ­ra­cies have emerged and to learn from their fail­ures. Namibia wants more for their coun­try. On a con­ti­nent that has seen some of the worst human rights abuses in recent decades, Namibia wants to set the stan­dard. Some of the projects that we will be work­ing on in order to help them get there are research­ing and draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to imple­ment the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture, bring­ing a claim for land on behalf of the San peo­ple in the north­ern part of the coun­try, assist­ing in the imple­men­ta­tion of cus­tom­ary tribal law into the judi­cial sys­tem, and devel­op­ing a project that builds the capac­ity of the judi­ciary to com­mu­ni­cate amongst them­selves, thereby improv­ing con­sis­tency of prece­dent in their com­mon law sys­tem. I am really ener­gized about all of the work that we will be doing over the com­ing months and have no doubt that it will be an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence for all those involved (myself included).

I hope that you all share with me in remem­ber­ing how very lucky we are dur­ing this hol­i­day season.

Happy hol­i­days and a joy­ous new year!

Lots of love,

K

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