Different Names for the Same Things

It has been brought to my attention that I may have created some confusion with some of the Namibian phrases (or "Namblish" as it is affectionately known) I have been using in my posts. So, here's a quick break down of daily happenings and phrases:

In Namibia…
-Floppy disks are called "stiffys"
-Grilled sandwiches are called "toasties"
-"Now" means in a little while, and "now-now" means right now. For example, "I'm eating lunch now-now, but I'm going to the store now." This can get a bit confusing, because you can say, "I'm coming just now," which would mean you are leaving now-now, but coming back in a little while… now-now is one of my favorite Namibian phrases:)
-Candy or sweets are called "lekkers." The word "lekker" means nice or good in Afrikaans.
-It is better to be fat than skinny because it means you have enough money to eat well
-Napkins are called "serviettes" (napkins are feminine hygiene products, something my friend Chris and I found out the hard way when we went to the store and told the clerk we needed, "about 500 napkins for our party." She was a bit shocked.)
-Trucks are called "baakies"
-Older women, usually mothers or aunts, are called "memes" (pronounced may-may)
-Babies are "babas"
-If someone says, "He lives in the bush," it means very far away, or very remote. The equivalent of us saying the "boonies."
-Skin color matters. While I really only see "black" and "white," people here see shades. Different shades associate you with different ethnic and tribal groups
-Tea time is twice daily from 10-10:30 and 3-3:30
-liquor stores are called "bottle stores."
-Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are referred to as a "cool drink."
In fact, the Afrikaans word for a cold beverage is "koeldrink"
-French fries are called "chips"
-"The Location" is an actual neighborhood or section of town. During apartheid, towns were segregated into white and black neighborhoods, and all of the black people lived in an area called "the location." Though things have gotten a bit more inclusive here, there are still locations in most decent sized communities and, unless there's a white PCV living there, they are still made up of only black people.
-Porridge is called "pap"
-If you say you are vegetarian, people will cook you fish and chicken
-A grill is called a "braai"
-"Must" means "can" (ex. "You must begin cooking now.")
-A large bus or van is called a "combi"
-Rolls are called "brotchens"
-Hitchhiking is called "hiking" and is the primary mode of transportation for many people, especially volunteers
-"Is it?" is quite possibly the most "Namibian" phrase utilized by volunteers. "Is it?" stands in for phrases such as "really?" or "is that so?" but doesn't necessarily have to make sense in context. For example, if I say "All of my grade 12 learners failed their English exam," or "I'm going to Windhoek for the weekend," the proper response
would be, "Is it?"

High School High

This past weekend was one of the more eventful weekends I’ve had in Namibia. And though I feel worlds away from home most of the time, this weekend was a bit reminiscent of my own days in high school. The conference track meet was Saturday, so my roommate, our friend Rachel and I stayed up late Friday night baking a few hundred cookies (while drinking a few cocktails) for the event. Saturday morning, the school/our house was up very early and filled with excited athletes. I made my way to the field around 9am, and began keeping time with the other teachers. Though this brought back many fond memories of my track and field days, this was no KC Relay track meet. First of all, it’s pretty generous to even call what they run on a “track.” It’s nothing more than a huge, uneven dirt circle someone carved into the middle of an open field. Unless they’re wearing shower-type flip flops, all of the kids run barefoot. Since none of the competing schools had uniforms, the runners wear anything from jeans to tiny boy-shorts to the khaki pants they wear to school. Besides our homemade, slightly burnt cookies (baking here is still sort of a chemistry experiment for us), there was a small “concession” stand selling the one staple of all big gatherings here in Namibia-- frozen bags of Oros. Oros is a concentrated, kool-aid-type beverage that yields about 6 gallons of juice for every ½ cup of concentrate. At most large events, and any makeshift knick knacky shop run from a person’s home (of which you will find many if you take a walk through the location), you will find sandwich baggies filled with frozen Oros, with which you bite off the end of the baggie and enjoy like a popsicle…. ingenious! Though not the most healthy snacks, the cookies and Oros were sufficient enough to keep everyone happy, and most of the runners from fainting in the heat. There was lots of dancing and chanting (“Everywhere we go, people wanna know!”), and overall it was a very successful event.

Saturday night was the “Miss Valentines Beauty Pageant” at the school. Rachel and my roommate and I were asked to be judges which, if you know any of the three of us, is totally hilarious. Beauty pageants pretty much represent everything I’m opposed to in life, but it was a fundraiser for the senior’s end of the year class trip, and since I’m totally incapable of saying no to any of these kids, I was there with bells on. Before the show started, we were instructed by the event organizers (aka, The Senior girls…yep, you know em) that we were to judge mostly on self-confidence and not on outfits, because very few of the girls could afford nice outfits. Okay… what? So during the swimsuit competition, obviously the girl who actually has a swimsuit to wear is more confident than the girl who is wearing her underwear because she can't afford a swimsuit. Same goes for the girl who has an evening gown that fits her as opposed to the one whose gown is safety pinned together and whose high heels are 3 sizes too big for her. And I’m supposed to judge this? I just gave them all eights across the board and called it a day. My friend Manly was the MC and my friend Michael was the DJ, so afterwards I stayed up until way past my bedtime and the kids tried to teach me their crazy, hip-hop Namibian dances.

After the dance, two boys from the soccer team came over to borrow my duct tape (thanks mom) to tape up their shoes, and invited me to come watch their soccer tournament the following morning. And of course, since I never say no, I promised I would. The tournament was at the nice private field in the location, usually reserved for government sponsored events, so there was actual grass for them to play on. There were five teams competing, including two private schools. And regardless of which team you were cheering for, our side was definitely the side everyone wanted to be on. People were playing music out of the backs of their cars, and we were all dancing and sucking on our bags of Oros. Though our players looked a bit like hooligans from the wrong side of the tracks next to the preppy private school kids in their clean white uniforms, I think the ripped shorts and duct-taped shoes my boys were sporting really added an intimidation factor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough and we lost 3-2, but fun was most definitely had by all.

Although similar to many of my high school weekends, there was one incredibly big difference: every single aspect of these events, from the planning to the finding of arenas to the security and to the clean-up, was carried out by the learners themselves. There is pretty much zero parental involvement in most young people’s lives. Granted, most of these kids are hostel borders, meaning they live at the school and their families probably live in other towns not close by, but the fact that these kids can pull off well-organized and more-or-less successful events without any adult direction or support is what really sets them apart from kids in the states. Referring to them as “kids” is really a misnomer; often times, they seem much older than I.

Cait's Powerpoint Presentation

Hi guys, this is Nolan again. Cait sent back a powerpoint full of photos, far more than I could post to this blog. If anyone wants the powerpoint, just contact me at nggokey AT wisc DOT edu, and put the dots and @'s in there. I have it hosted on my FTP site, so you can just download it to your computer from anywhere, though it usually takes about 15 minutes. Also, it might be helpful to read this post by Cait before you check out the powerpoint She uses some terms in the slideshow that need translations.

Just email me, and I'll hook you up with the link to download it :)
N.

"At last the rain came. It was sudden and tremendous. For two or three moons the sun had been gathering strength till it seemed to breathe of fire on the earth. All the grass had long been scorched brown, and the sand felt like live coals to the feet. The world lay panting under the live, vibrating heat. And then came the clap of thunder. It was an angry, metallic and thirsty clap, unlike the deep and liquid rumbling of the rainy season. A mighty wind rose and filled the air with dust. Palm trees swayed as the wind combed their leaves into flying crests like strange and fantastic coiffure. When the rain finally came, it was in large, solid drops of frozen water. The earth quickly came to life. A vague scent of life and green vegetation was diffused in the air… all were happy, refreshed and thankful."

--from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe


For some reason, I thought we may skip the rainy season this year. Before leaving the states, PC warned us that the weather between the months of October-March is unpredictable. But after two solid months without a drop of rain and only dry, unbelievable temperatures, I was pretty convinced that this whole "rainy season" thing was an exaggeration. Oh, no. The rain here the past few weeks has been torrential. It pours down in buckets and hammers the dirt roads and sidewalks, washing them together to the point where you can't tell one from the other. It pounds holes into the ground and rips the tin and thatched roofs off of houses. If you're brave enough to stand around and watch the storms, you can literally see lightening touch the ground. The lightening is so strong, it will short out anything that is plugged into a wall socket, including computers (actually, I've been told that in the past, lightening has been strong enough to go through the sockets and crash computers even when they weren't plugged in). Last year, a teacher in my town was struck by lightening and killed, so, needless to say, everyone here is terrified of the lightening and goes running like lunatics when it strikes.

The rain brings with it a collection of completely new insects, as well. The bugs in Africa are different to begin with. We don't have your average fly or spider. The flies here are fluorescent green and have wings that are an opaque blackish color, and the spiders have blue and orange streaks on them and are the size of my two palms facing up side-by-side. Somewhere between here and there I sort of got over my fear of most bugs. The only bugs I don't really like now are those with personality; those whose eyes are big enough that they can stare into mine, those that wouldn't really surprise me if they just randomly started talking to me. Those are the ones that are most threatening, but that you almost feel bad killing. For one, stepping on them and killing them would be like stepping on a small animal to kill it. And also, they're sort of like the fish in the movie Big Fish. If they've survived long enough to turn into an insect the size of a large rodent, who am I to end their life? So, as long as they keep their distance, I keep mine.

For one reason or another, the bugs that I'm used to go into hiding during the rain, and out come their nasty friends and cousins. Termites and tiny flying fire ants and black millipedes as long as my forearm… stuff nightmares are made of. One of the first nights it rained was during training. When I got to my room to go to bed, I had to run through a cloud of the tiny flying fire ants that were swarming outside my door. I had slept somewhere else the night before, and had taken my mosquito net along, and since I needed to borrow a ladder, or a very tall person, to rig it back up, I hadn't gotten around to it yet. I shook out my sheets and figured, "Hey, it's one night. You're in Africa. Suck it up." I lied down, put my headphones on, and tried to think good thoughts. After only a few minutes, I felt something hot on my chest. As I reached around to feel for what it could be, my chest started burning. I jumped out of bed and brushed myself off, but my skin still felt like it was on fire. I grabbed my flashlight and ran to the bathroom, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw a handful of tiny fire ants running across my chest and arms. My skin was red and splotchy and covered with tiny little bites. I tried washing the ants off by hand, but the burning continued, so I stripped off my clothes (which I later found were filled with ants), and jumped in the freezing cold shower. Afterwards, I walked back to my room and found my entire bed filled with ants, and the outside of all my roommates' mosquito nets covered with ants. Remembering the "suck it up" philosophy, I quietly (so as to not wake my roommates and incite the hysteria I'm sure would have followed) stripped my bed of my sheets, wrapped myself up in my net like a mummy, and tried to look on the bright side: at least it wasn't the millipedes.

Photos

Hi everyone, this is Nolan, Cait's older brother. She sent me some photos in the mail a few weeks ago, and I finally got them. She had chosen some she wanted on the blog, written some captions, so here they are. I hope you like them, I do.



A group picture of Nam25


Some good friends, Luke, Mark and Pam, at the Sand Dragon, a coffee shop in Omaruru


The ballroom where our swearing-in ceremony was held- on the left is the Country Director Jeff Millington, and on the right is our Training Manager Tuuanda Keeja (TK)


As part of Damara funeral tradition, my host family and I ate goat head the night before my uncle's funeral


My friends Mariel and Pam posing with our potato salad after our American-themed picnic we threw for our host families


New Year's Eve with friends, Karen, Rute, and Angie


After swearing-in with my good friends Luke, Mark, Chester, and Spanish Dan. This was also probably the last time most of these guys showered.


Some children at the orphanage in Omaruru


My office, the Omaruru TRC


On Christmas Eve, we visited the children and took them presents......and they sang us Christmas carols :)


Some babas in my neighborhood


My friend Chris taking a walk with Petrus, one of the orphans


The daily sunsets here are really amazing


ditto :)

Cheers!

Everyone in Omaruru knows my name. That is to say, everyone knows at least one of a few names used to refer to me. In my office, I'm either Caitlin or Cait. Throughout the Ministry of Education, I am Caithlin, Caitlin, or Miss Gokey. With the townspeople and children, I am any number of names, from Miss Lin (many people think "lin" is my surname), to mae frou (my lady/miss), to Tracey. Don't ask me how they came up with that one. (And, sorry Boulder, but nobody would believe me if I introduced myself as "Kat.")

And even though I am far from fluent in Afrikaans, or Otjiherero or KKG or any other language that is spoken in my town, I understand enough to know that most of the time, people are talking about me. I'm usually able to pick out key words or phrases, such as: "white girl," "volunteer," "teacher," "no husband," but even if I couldn't, it's not hard to tell that I'm constantly being assessed by my town. I've been in Omaruru for over three months, but people still stare at me as if I'm someone's exotic pet who's about to do a great trick that no one wants to miss. I've been combating this problem by greeting every single person I pass on the street, no matter how strangely they are looking at me, and I've found that this alleviates some of the awkwardness felt between the stare-er and the stare-ee. Though it's not much, I can at least greet in all three of the local languages, which most people here seem to appreciate, and which seems to fool some people into thinking I can speak that language, causing them to shush one another and whisper as I pass by. I'm sure it's untrue, but to keep smiling, I tell myself that they're only saying good things about me :)

Every morning on my walk to work, I am greeted by the same people. There are the old memes who come to clean the school, the baakie full of people coming in from the Location (the Location is part of Omaruru where the blacks lived during apartheid), the men who work at the service station, and the municipality workers who cross through the riverbed as I walk over the bridge (I am far too afraid of our unpredictable river to walk through it). But my favorite has to be the man I meet crossing the bridge everyday. He is always with a friend, and they always greet me in Afrikaans ("Goeie more , Ms. Lin! Hoe gaan dit?"). And after I respond and ask them in return how they are doing, the man yells out, "I love you!" I have no idea if he knows what the phrase means, but it makes me laugh every time he says it, which I think is why he continues to do so. Either way, it usually brightens my morning.