African Spirit: A Peace Corps Blog

The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love

2008-12-06T20:31:00.006+02:00

I can still remember the day of my initial interview with my Peace Corps recruiter. It was a cold and snowy March morning in Colorado. The driver’s side window of my car had been broken by some intoxicated college kids the night before, and the plastic trash bag I had duct taped to the opening flapped in the frigid wind as I drove I-36 from Boulder to Denver. Trusting the butterflies in my stomach (which, I like to believe, are only there to reassure me that I’m doing something I really want to be doing), I made my way to Peace Corps’ regional office.

My recruiter, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer himself, was tall and had a kind smile. “Africa,” he said as he paged through my application. “Africa is a tough assignment. If you want to change your mind, now is the time to do so.” I smiled and told him I was sure. “All right, Africa” he said, “pack your bags.”

Almost four years later, I find myself here, in Africa, trying (and failing) to find some way to say goodbye to this remarkable place that has been my home for the past three years. When I left the states in 2005, a two-year contract sounded so incredibly daunting. My dear friend Samantha, trying to ease my trepidation, reminded me that when I returned George W. Bush would still be president. I’m not sure if that made the two years appear longer or shorter. But now, on the brink of 2009, I can say that it indeed has been a long time.

And it has been a “tough assignment” as well, as I think all PC assignments are. I would be lying if I said it hasn’t. Though my good days certainly outnumbered by bad days, some of those low points were so low, it was hard to remember the good. Many days, I wondered if anything I was doing was making any kind of positive impact on this country. After committing to a third year of service, I spent weeks wondering if I was completely crazy to want to stay and do this for another year. It’s very difficult to evaluate your impact when doing this kind of work, and with no one reassuring you, that innate self-doubt permeates one’s mind.

But this experience has changed my life in ways I cannot articulate. What I gained professionally during my three years with Peace Corps is definitely tangible, but what I experienced personally means far more to me. I was a wide-eyed 22-year old when I left for Africa. I’m coming home a different person (not to mention 26).

And yes, some days, the suffering and sadness were tremendous. The media has certainly taken advantage of the human tragedies and wars and famines that do, in truth, wreak havoc in many parts of Africa. But that idea of Africa being “dark” is not what I will remember about this continent, and the suffering and the sadness are not the first things I will think of when I think of Namibia. What has stood out the most for me and made the greatest impact on my life here have been the people. And that is what I will remember most about Africa. The people.

I will remember the genuine smiles on people’s faces when I spoke to them in their mother tongue. I will remember the overwhelming kindness of strangers. I will remember seeing intense gratitude for the most simple of things. I will remember the angelic voices of singing children. I will remember hospitality of a level I have never experienced before. I will remember their honesty. I will remember seeing hope in the face of true despair. I will remember real smiles, products of pure happiness. These are memories I will carry with me forever. And having these memories makes experiencing all those low points of this “tough assignment” completely worth it.

I wonder how Africa will remember me.

Long ago, I abandoned the noble ideals that I had joined the Peace Corps hoping to fulfill. Whether they were unrealistic or whether I just failed completely at meeting them, I don’t know. And I don’t really care. Somewhere during this experience, I subconsciously decided that the best I can do here is put out more positive than negative, do more good than harm, make more smiles than tears, and foster more hope than hopelessness. I think I succeeded in doing these things.

And I hope when Namibians remember me, they will remember a person who did the best she could, where she was, with what she had.

Tomorrow, I leave Namibia and embark on the long journey home. The problem that keeps nagging me is this notion of “home.” The idea suggests a comfortable, familiar place that one can easily slide into. I’ve been to the states to visit twice during my tour of service, and neither time did it feel like an especially comfortable or easy adjustment. What is ridiculous is that I’m absolutely a product of America; I’ve spent the majority of my life in the states and there’s no reason I shouldn’t feel “at home” there. But as much as I’d like to think otherwise, I know that reentry will not be easy for me. It’s hard to go back to a place that you know so well only to find yourself feeling like an outsider. Even former volunteers who hated their time in Namibia struggle to adjust to life back in the states. No matter how much you resist, it’s impossible not to undergo some deeply profound changes after living in a culture foreign from your own for an extended period of time. For those of us who embraced this culture and found true happiness in Namibia, going home and trying to somehow fit back in where you used to is even more challenging. But I know it’s time. I’m willing to give it a try.

This will be my last blog post, so don’t bother checking back for the “oh-my-god-where-am-I?!” culture shock post. I like the idea of preserving this blog as a kind of time capsule of my time in Namibia. I started this blog to keep in touch with family and friends back home and to share my experiences in Africa with those I care about. It turned out to be more therapeutic for me than I had anticipated. And though I recognize that it’s been a feeble attempt, I hope this blog helped portray Namibia as the beautiful country that I’ve experienced it to be. Namibia is now a part of who I am, and I will carry it, and its’ people, with me always.

And so I dedicate this blog to them, my Namibian friends and family….

who brought color and richness into my life…
who helped me see myself, and the world, as they truly are…
who challenged my spirit and broadened my horizons…
who taught me the values of patience, strength and genuine humanity...
and who, most importantly, showed me how to find beauty in all things.

You will all be dearly missed.

“The good experiences will enrich her mind, the people and the land will give joy to her soul, and the difficult times will teach her who she truly is.” –Barbara Jean Myers

Oonte

2008-11-24T11:23:00.015+02:00

After living and working for so long in a developing country, it’s easy to get discouraged. And after getting involved with countless projects and watching them fail time after time, one starts to wonder if there’s any point. While I could point to some small accomplishments by the end of my second year, my Peace Corps service was filled with far more trials and errors than success stories. And that is the nature of the beast. Hopefully, if we try 100 different projects in 100 different ways, something will stick, something will work and someone will benefit. However, with so many failures under my belt, the beginning of this third year left me wondering if there was any real benefit to me being here.

And just when you begin to doubt, out comes the sun.

This year, in the rural northern region of this desolate country, I stumbled upon the most inspirational and hopeful project that I have witnessed at work in Namibia. Oonte OVC Organisation is a non-profit organization based in Ondangwa that serves the neediest of this country—orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC). Oonte’s goal is to reach out to children and provide them with spiritual, physical and psycho-social support. Oonte is involved in numerous projects. They offer after school programs for children that focus on health, personal hygiene, goal setting and leadership. They have a feeding program that allows them to offer the children three meals a week, one on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. For most of the children, this is the only meal they eat on those days. Oonte provides skills training in trades such as glass making and construction for vulnerable young adults. At the site, they have a large garden where the children learn how to harvest food and take care of animals. Oonte also makes house visits to the most vulnerable households to check on the living situations of the children and to see where they can offer help. The support offered by Oonte is support that these needy children could not find anywhere else in their lives.

Some of Oonte's regulars

Small kids with big watering cans, working in Oonte's garden

The heart behind Oonte is Ms. Petrine Shiimi, or meme Petrina as she is known by nearly everyone in this community (meme is Oshiwambo for mother). A teacher and businesswoman by trade, in 2004 meme Petrina found herself troubled by the growing number of orphans in Ondangwa. With a population of just over 2 million people, Namibia has just under 200,000 registered orphans, 60% of whom live in the northern regions of the country. Now bear in mind, when I say “registered orphan” I mean that this child was able to provide his or her parents’ death certificate(s) as well as his or her own birth certificate to government authorities, in order to be entered into the official OVC database. It goes without saying that the majority of children in any circumstance would not be able to come up with these documents on their own. So, on top of the 200,000 registered orphans, we have even more unregistered children who have lost one or both parents, as well as thousands of children who, though one or both parents may still be alive, are nevertheless living in very vulnerable environments. That’s a lot of need.

Maria (an Oonte volunteer), meme Petrina, me, Albertina (another volunteer), and my colleague Jay

Meme Petrina and her husband have taken in and provided care for countless children throughout the years, but in 2004 she could see the need for something more growing in the community around her. So in December, she decided to throw a Christmas party for the children of Ondangwa. Collecting donations from local businesses, she was able to offer a small Christmas meal to more than 300 children. Saddened to know that this was the only way these children would be celebrating the holiday, meme Petrina decided to do more. She rented out an old, abandoned building, filled it with toys and educational materials, and opened it as a day centre for children. She decided to call it “Oonte,” which in Oshiwambo means the rays of the sun, as she sees it her mission in life to bring rays of sun and hope to needy children. And over the past 5 years, meme Petrina has done just that. Saying that she has saved hundreds of lives would not be an overstatement.

Cooking for the children in Oonte's "kitchen"

The children, trying to find some shade to enjoy their meal

I was introduced to meme Petrina by one of my Peace Corps supervisors. When I told her that I would be in Ondangwa all year and would love to help where I could, she gave me a long hug and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “We need your help,” she said.

I started coming to Oonte whenever I could spare time, usually on random weekday afternoons and on the weekends. Along with two young Namibian girls who were volunteering at Oonte, I helped organize boys and girls clubs as well as a young achievers club. In clubs, we talked about puberty and sexual violence and the importance of making healthy relationships with one another, and we taught the kids about planning for their futures, setting goals and how to work towards those goals. The kids were great and had so much energy. All of them came from destructive environments where they had never been given the opportunity to discuss these important things. Their questions were often times heartbreaking, but were honest, and I was encouraged by their drive to learn. After helping to get the ball rolling, after a month or so I left the clubs to the Namibian volunteers to facilitate, and today they are the most popular activities offered at Oonte.

With the Young Achievers Club at my farewell party

With a fellow PCV, I worked to organize weekend workshops on HIV/AIDS education as well as children’s rights. It was fun to see the kids in this environment. They felt so important, like they had been invited to a very professional meeting, and they participated openly and honestly. In the health trainings, we were able to separate the boys and girls and talk with them about puberty and sexual health, something very few of them had ever been given the opportunity to discuss with adults before. While sessions with the older girls focused on more serious issues such as when is it sex and when is it rape, the younger girls could not get past topics like puberty and menstruation (none of the younger girls had gotten their periods yet, and many of them were convinced I was lying to them about what was coming in their near future). While it was encouraging to know I was providing them with important information about their own bodies and lives, it was also saddening to see how neglect had sheltered them and placed many of them in dangerous situations.

Meme Petrina handing out certificates (and hugs) at a weekend workshop

Today, nearing the end of 2008, Oonte has registered over 500 OVC. Over 500 children between the ages of 0 and 24 are receiving care from Oonte. While I think it’s fair to say that all of these children come from troubled homes, not all of them are orphans. Some of them live with one parent, and others live with a grandmother or other extended family. However, there are some who live in the most vulnerable of ways you can imagine: child-headed households. In Namibia, a child-headed household is defined as one that is led by a child under the age of 18. This child takes on the responsibilities usually carried out by parents, including providing care for any other children in the house. Some of these houses are led by children in their late teens, but others are led by children as young as 10-years old. Imagine a child the age of 10 carrying out all the responsibilities of running a house, including cooking for his or her siblings, cleaning and upkeep of the homestead, as well as finding some way to provide food and other essentials for his or her siblings. One of the services provided by Oonte is house visits to these child-headed households. Oonte was lucky enough to receive a handful of unexpected monetary donations this year. With that money we bought food bundles, consisting of bread, soup mix, dry porridge, cooking oil, pasta noodles, soap, toilet paper and candles and matches, and delivered the bundles to these child-headed households. Because we were never sure when such deliveries would be possible, the children were to ration these provisions and make them last as long as possible. Sometimes during these visits we would find the kids left with a little porridge or cooking oil, but often we would find that they hadn’t eaten a real meal in days.

Thomas and his brothers, happily receiving a food bundle

Thomas' kitchen

Even when there isn’t money, meme Petrina makes a point to visit these households regularly, just to check on their health and their current living situation, and to spend some time with them. As far as I'm aware, she is the only adult who has contact with these children.

Working with these children has to be the saddest work I have ever done in my life. The conditions that they are living in are unbelievable. Many of them sleep outside or on the ground in old, weathered huts that are on the brink of crumbling down on them. None of them have shoes or proper clothes or access to running water. Some of the houses face harassment and danger by people looking to take advantage of them, especially the houses headed by young girls. None of the children have any idea where their next meal will come from, or of when it will come. They are truly in survival mode.

Elifas and his baby brother

Elifas' outdoor kitchen. You can see where he cooks on the fire.

The house where Elifas and his siblings used to sleep. It crumbled during the recent rainy season. Oonte was able to build them a new structure which they now use as a bedroom.

Yet when they see us coming up to their homestead, their faces light up. They run to meme Petrina and hold on to her for extra long hugs, and as I watch this encounter I think it’s probably unlikely that these children have been hugged by anyone since meme’s last visit to see them. As we walk with the kids around the homesteads, meme asks them about their school or how things are going for them, and she checks them over for any visible signs of sickness or abuse. We check their sleeping areas and their cooking areas, both of which give a good indication of how they are coping without adults around to look after them. And after a short chat, we leave them and watch them wave and call out goodbye as we drive away.

These house visits are my hardest days. I don’t think there is anything sadder in the world than this.

Giovanni and his small brother-- the youngest child-headed household

Small kids, grateful for small things

How these children still have hope is beyond me; few could have survived in those circumstances. Yet they are surviving, and I know for a fact that it is in no small part due to meme Petrina and Oonte’s care. The food bundles do help them, but I think it’s more than that. The kids know that it’s not always possible for us to come with gifts of food. I think more than anything, these visits remind them that the world hasn’t completely forgotten them, and they are able to find some comfort in that.

Though meme Petrina does get some funding from UNICEF, there is simply not enough to cater for the many needs of such a large number of young people. So much of what meme Petrina does for these children comes out of her own pocket, and while that has worked thus far, the growing number of children coming to Oonte or seeking Oonte’s services means that it won’t be long before her personal funds will run out. And I’m not really sure what more we can do. Oonte has worked very hard this year to fundraise and find grants that fit their projects, but fundraising is never easy, especially in Africa where everyone is wary of trusting these small, community-based projects led by local people. It’s frustrating to watch because in my opinion, there is simply no project in Namibia more worthy of funding than Oonte. I have never seen such a successful grassroots project at work like this before. Everything that Oonte gets goes directly to the children. Their work is truly felt by the neediest of this community, which is more than I can say for any other NGO I’ve seen working or been involved with in Namibia. I know that Oonte will succeed with their vision because I know that as long as children are suffering, meme Petrina will never give up. I just wish things would come a bit easier for her.

Some happy kids at Oonte

I’ve wanted to write about Oonte for a long time, but I struggled to find the correct words to describe what this organization is doing for needy children in Ondangwa. Even re-reading what I wrote now, it sounds hokey and exaggerated and too good to be true. At least that’s what the cynic in me would probably think if I were reading this at my home or office desk in America. I know Oonte will survive on its own, and we have some very exciting projects coming in the future that I think will really benefit the organization as a whole, so my only real goal in writing this is to expose more people to this amazing project. Working with these people has added so much happiness to my life this year, I figure a blog entry is the least I can do.

If extending for third year meant giving me the opportunity to meet people like meme Petrina, then that alone made this year absolutely worth it. Knowing that this project exists gives me hope for Namibia’s future. And if it took me three years to find a project as promising as Oonte, that means that it is possible that more projects of this nature are at work in the rural, forgotten corners of this vast country. It’s something I try to remind myself when I begin to doubt.

I’m sad to be saying goodbye to meme Petrina and the beautiful children of Oonte, but I know it’s not forever—I couldn’t forget these people if I tried. As my contract is coming to an end, I’m thankful that I’m leaving Namibia with the memory of this noble organization so fresh in my mind. Sometimes the sadness of life here gets so overwhelming that it stomps out any optimism you may be clinging to, which is why finding a project like Oonte is so valuable. The benefit of me staying for a third year was not so much what I could give this country before leaving, but rather what this country would send me home with. Becoming part of Oonte’s world renewed my faith in the strength and compassion of the Namibian people. And that is what I will go home remembering.

And that is why I'm luckier than most.

Yes We Did!

2008-11-05T12:55:00.006+02:00

I have been awake for more than 30 hours now, but I couldn’t feel better. I will never forget last night or the early hours of this morning. The election coverage was translated into 5 languages on Namibian radio alone, and people throughout the country spent the night listening and waiting. We received the official results at about 6am in Namibia, and Namibians began rejoicing alongside those of you in America, as well as so many others around the world. My phone has been flooded with congratulatory calls and text messages from Namibians and other friends all over the world. And as I walked through the village today, everyone stopped me, huge smiles on their faces, so excited to talk to me about this historic day. Today I felt proud to be an American, something I haven't felt in a long time.

Well done, America. You've made the world proud. After spending the past four years in a political depression, today I am feeling so happy and hopeful :)

Family Life

2008-11-03T11:51:00.004+02:00

Mealtime in Owamboland is a unique experience. I was aware of culturally appropriate etiquette before this year, but living with a family has forced me to once again familiarize myself with all those random cultural norms that I know someone told me about during my training, but that I had long since pushed to the back of my mind. Cooking and eating in my own house is one thing, but cooking and eating with my family requires me to bone up on what things, words, actions, etc. are (and definitely aren’t) culturally appropriate during meals.

I eat dinner with my family, not every night but once in awhile. Yes, we do have the occasional frog or mopane worm with our meals (and yes, I gulp them down like the rest of them) but our evening provisions generally do not stray from the norm: oshifima (traditional porridge that gets pounded into meal from mahangu plants), omboga (traditional fresh spinach) or ekaka (traditional dry spinach), either ondjuhwa (chicken) or ohi (fish), and some kind of sauce. Depending on the season, there also may be some type of vegetable like pumpkin or beans. But oshifima is the staple. Ever night, regardless of the season, it’s there. My 17-year old host sister never lets a meal pass without exclaiming, “Oshifima again?!” Complaining of her dinner options is, it seems, every 17-year old girl’s right of passage.

I’ll be honest: oshifima is not my favorite food. Aside from the fact that it’s pounded fresh from the field and is riddled with dirt and sand, it sinks to the bottom of my stomach like a rock and fills me up after only a few bites. However, probably the first rule of eating etiquette in Namibia is that when offered, you never refuse food. If someone offers you food, it means that that food is being taken from the mouth of someone who is probably more in need of it than you are, and it is therefore, understandably, quite rude to turn away this offering. My dislike of oshifima gets compounded by the fact that when served, I’m not given a measly helping; my plate comes complete with a heaping serving of the stiff porridge. But since I know what it takes for my family to offer this, I accept it graciously and eat until my stomach swells.

Unless it’s exceedingly cold (which is rare in Owamboland) we eat our evening meals outside around the fire. Meals always begin with a washing of the hands, and a bowl of water along with a cup are passed around to do so. Sometimes someone pours water over my hands to wash them, and sometimes I do it myself. Then we sit, sometimes we pray (last week we prayed for an Obama victory), and the eating begins.

We eat with our hands on the homestead, no forks or spoons or any of that nonsense. Surprisingly, there is actually some technique required when eating traditional food sans utensils. It can be perfected, but it requires close observation of host family or friends (read: constant scolding and correction by the same people). Oshifima is to be eaten with the right hand only. The left hand is used in the bathroom, the right is used at the table. Eeno. A piece of oshifima is broken off and rolled into a small ball. Using one’s thumb to make a small indentation in the ball, it is then used to scoop up some meat or fish or spinach or whatever, then dipped into the sauce and plopped into one’s mouth. This process is performed rapidly and requires some agility as a slip up anywhere will result in the ball plopping, instead, on the ground, your leg, your shirt, or some other unintended destination, making the dogs happy and everyone else laugh at your blunder. Silly oshilumbu.

There are a number of other arbitrary cultural rules that are to be observed during mealtime in Nam: no singing, no smelling of food, no passing of food or drink behind another person’s back. Additionally, when offering homemade food or drink to a visitor, the chef, in the presence of the visitor, is supposed to taste whatever is being offered before handing it to the guest, as a sign that the offering is of good quality. However, on my homestead there are no senior males. The girls who do the cooking are between 15 and 21-years old (and as a rule, like to disobey their cultural norms as much as possible) and the boys are all under the age of 17. My meme and her sister-in-law are the only adults who live on the homestead full time, so the flow and attitude of the house is largely dictated by the young women. Hence… we don’t really follow most of those traditional rules. Most nights, Akon is playing from my ipod in the kitchen and my younger sister has turned the logs surrounding the fire into a catwalk and is outside practicing her model strut. When my tate is home or the eldest son is visiting things are a bit more rigid around the house, but with the girls it’s pretty lax.

I try to either make something for my family every week or bring something home to contribute to the meals, though I will admit that some weeks my schedule does get away from me. But I attempt to make up for that with quality. My aim is to bring home things that offer some variety to our standard meals: fruits like mangos or paw paw or watermelon cause excitement at the homestead and are served as the dessert course of our meals. If I make something, I try to get creative: homemade banana bread or pizza or sugar cookies with powdered sugar icing that I dye with blue or green food coloring. Portions are usually based on seniority, with the oldest getting the best picks, followed by those in their higher levels at school, followed by the small kids. But whether it’s one cookie or five, everyone appreciates the change up these gifts offer their standard fare.

My American family ate dinner together every night at 6pm. In fact, missing dinner was one of about three completely random things that guaranteed a grounding from my mother (not folding the family’s laundry was another sure-fire way to get locked in, though I think I was the only one of the three of us who ever got that punishment). Though my American family and my Owambo family differ in nearly every way you could imagine, the evening dinner ritual seems one commonality that links the two families. And even though it does seem a bit hokey (do families really do this anymore?), this evening tradition is one that I really appreciate. Every night when I walk home through the bush, thousands of fires are lighted on homesteads all around me as families gather to cook together. For some reason, I find that comforting. That soft glow that lights the path on my walk home will be, oddly enough, one of the things I think I will remember years after I leave this continent.

Food means more here than it does in the states. Here, it’s offered as a sign of welcome. In Owambo culture, guests visiting a homestead for the first time are at least supposed to be offered drink, if not food or an entire meal. When my mother and my friend Cindy visited my homestead, my meme and sisters spent an entire day preparing a full traditional meal for them. Preparing a meal this size requires a lot of work and is therefore only done on special occasions. It is such a treat that that evening both of my sisters set places for themselves and enjoyed the meal with us, taking advantage of this rare opportunity.

As my time in Namibia begins to end, I’m thinking often about how thankful I am for the many unique and lovely experiences I’ve had here. Living in a traditional manner with a local family is certainly near the top of that list.

At the end of my first two years here, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on the different cultures in Namibia. But it wasn’t until this year, as I was completely immersed in this culture, that I truly appreciated and learned from the differences between myself and Namibians.

And though I would hardly call my American-ness a “culture,” I do hope my family learned something from me as well. If nothing more, they have certainly recognized the value of things such as homemade pizza with goat meat and feta cheese, 80’s-themed dance parties while working in the fields, and fingernail painting sleepovers. Now if that isn’t positive cultural exchange, I don’t know what is.

Kids being kids

2008-09-29T16:34:00.009+02:00

Something I've been working on... sorry if you can't read all of them.

The Lure of Namibia

2008-08-25T15:22:00.004+02:00

AS the first rays of the sun pierce the thick darkness of the Namibian desert, sinuous ridges of quartz sand ignite in a firestorm of seared orange. Then the sky lightens to the new day, revealing the sea of sand mountains, their crisp edges and perfect curves wrought and polished by the expert chisel of the Kalahari and Atlantic winds.

With the tracks of yesterday’s visitors to the Sossusvlei dunes burnished by the breeze, you can’t resist trudging — perhaps plodding or crawling — up at least one of the pristine hills, some towering to 1,000 feet, instinctively looking for shimmers of water. But from the top, there’s no sign of the sea; it retreated millions of years ago, back when continents were drifting wildly.

What’s left is a dazzling geological display of possibly the world’s highest sand dunes, extending for 400 miles along the coast and more than 80 miles inland. Those naïve enough to believe that a dune is a dune is a dune are faced with a dizzying array of sand configurations: parabolic dunes with dynamic slip faces, long and narrow transverse dunes, dunes petrified by ancient climate change, and star dunes formed by winds that buffet them from all sides.

It’s the sort of environment that evokes foreboding, although the greatest danger is probably a broken fan belt or a serious case of hysteria induced by the appearance of an enormous dancing spider. But for miles around — 13,000 square miles, roughly the size of Maryland — there is no radio signal to relieve the silence, no town to break up an empty plain with a horizon so horizontal that it fades into a mirage. Only the skittering of the occasional hardy gecko suggests that you’re not the last vestige of life on a seared and waterless planet.

Such a forbidding panorama hardly seems the stuff of a compelling journey. But Namibia, a country of stark beauty and riveting contradictions, should be at the top of any serious traveler’s want-to-visit list.

The landscape is otherworldly, from the ocean of blood red crests along Dune Alley at Sossusvlei (pronounced SOSS-oo-vlay) to the gravity-defying rock formations and petrified forest of Damaraland, in the country’s center. Even beside the main highway, there are enough elephants, giraffes and springbok to satisfy those who can’t imagine a southern African trip without big game.

And the mind-boggling juxtaposition of women draped in skins that covered animals a week earlier against shopping malls offering a full selection of Ray-Bans, or of face powder ground in a mortar and pestle cheek by jowl with shiny Hummers, leads you into the heart of a modern Africa tangled by time, defined by the collision of centuries and traditions.

Namibia isn’t easy, especially for travelers whose notion of a vacation is dashing from one sight to another, or for urbanites who need regular fixes of bright lights and noisy streets. Except for those with pockets deep enough to arrange chartered flights between the dunes and the Damara homesteads, it demands patience with corrugated gravel roads and mile after mile of what poets are fond of calling terrible beauty.

“LOOK, a different kind of nothingness!” exclaimed my husband, Dennis, his New York candor more prosaic than poetic, as we drove around Namibia last January. The austere landscape had shifted from barren scrubland to enormous jumbles of rocks that looked as if God had forgotten to straighten them up.

Yet there is something beguiling about the bleakness of this place that you miss if you bop across the country by air, from warthog to lion, from sand spout to watering hole. Namibia is as much about the environmental and human interstices between sites as about the sites themselves.

By far the most mesmerizing of those sites is in the northwest corner of the country, in Kunene. This is not tourist Africa, which is fast becoming one gigantic game park, or the show Africa of tribesmen and women who dress up like their grandparents for visitors but go home and don jeans before heading out to the local disco. This is dusty, chaotic Africa, where donkey carts are more common conveyances than buses, where animals are killed for clothing as well as for food, and where words like globalization and the Internet have not yet entered the popular vocabulary.

All the paradoxes of modern Africa seem to be concentrated in that remote corner of Namibia, and they are at their most glaring inside the OK Grocer, on the edge of the dusty town of Opuwo, just 100 miles south of the Angolan border. There on a morning in late January, two Himba women, their breasts bared, their waists draped with multilayered goatskin miniskirts, ogled the rich German-style cream cakes on display. The glass of the showcase was already streaked with red from the mixture of fat, ash and ochre-colored mud with which Himba woman coat their bodies and hair, their homemade version of Clarins Hydra-Wear.

In the adjacent aisle, a stout Herero matron examined the meager selection of vegetables. Decked out in her traditional garb — a long-sleeved and long-skirted dress that could have been a costume for a Victorian period drama if not for the hat, an oversized, cloth-covered pan with what appeared to be a baguette sitting on top — she culled disapprovingly through a bin of potatoes and harrumphed before she hiked up her prodigious skirts and walked out.

At the checkout counter, a Timba teenager waiting for the clerk to ring up a pile of cooking oil, salt and beans sported the beads and brassiere that distinguish her from her Himba cousins, although one of her breasts was hanging out, whether as a fashion statement or because she’d gotten up late, it was unclear. Behind her, a young white woman flicked her ponytail impatiently; all she was buying was a single jar of cocktail olives.

Outside, two bull-necked Afrikaners sipped tea in the garden of the adjacent coffee shop, and a Himba man in a Cal State T-shirt and a two-panel skirt — short and gathered in the front, long and straight in back — distractedly herded goats down the main street while chatting on his cellphone.

I seemed to be the only person in town who found the scene noteworthy.

On a continent where centuries of European encroachments have inexorably eroded tradition, Africans who cling to outward manifestations of their culture are the rarest of sights. And there’s perhaps nowhere in the region where outsiders can mingle with them more easily, more casually, than in Opuwo.

But Namibia is nothing if not unpredictable, and just a day’s drive from the OK Grocer, you can find yourself among meticulously coiffed Germans shopping for springbok-skin photo albums, handcrafted silver jewelry encrusted with malachite or mandarin garnet, and elephant-hide belts in the elegant boutiques of Swakopmund, a surreal seaside town that feels like a cross between Brighton-by-the-Sea and Bavaria.

For decades until 1914, Namibia was a German colony, South West Africa, and even 94 years after Germany lost it as the spoils of defeat in World War I, the Teutonic imprint on Swakop, as locals call the city, remains unmistakable. The standard plats du jour are schnitzel and bratwurst; the architecture of the old prison, the train station, the jail and dozens of other structures is late 19th-century Munich; and the streets are so tidy that Kaiser Wilhelm, for whom the main avenue was named until the government changed it six years ago, would be proud.

The only clear sign that the town is actually in Africa is the throng of black workers who pick up the trash before it can hit the ground. Blond children scoot around on bicycles, elderly German couples take their evening constitutionals along the waterfront and teenagers who look surprisingly like California surfer dudes guide tourists through an utterly un-African extreme sports scene: sand boarding, sand sledding, sand skiing and sand sailing — none of which includes a dune lift, so all of which demand repeated uphill slogs through the sand and the inhalation of lungfuls of Namibian dust.

With its traffic lights, pubs and trendy restaurants, Swakop provides a delightful respite from the grinding isolation that is most of the country. But the illusion of Europe embedded deep in the heart of Africa vanishes barely a mile from the center of town.

Minutes beyond the city limits, it’s hard to recall that chimera at all. The scene becomes a panorama of desolation, of rocks and scrubby trees, lava fields and herds of goats. The occasional Damara and Herero homesteads bear no trace of the Germanic penchant for order; they are tiny mean huts cobbled together from sheet metal, elephant dung, car doors, truck canopies, straw and whatever else is at hand.

This is a wild land of enormous skies, nomadic herders and vast farms with the thinnest possible veneer of modernity. For decades, the Skeleton Coast, north of Swakopmund, buffeted by impenetrable fog, perilous cross currents and treacherous reefs, has been a graveyard for ships, and Kaokoland, the ruggedly inaccessible northern mountains shrouded by the mists of the Atlantic, wasn’t fully explored until the second half of the 20th century.

Where Namibia meets both Angola and the sea, hunters and gatherers still wander remote mountains. In a country twice the size of California but with just two million inhabitants, the major cities, Swakopmund and Windhoek, the capital, feel like prefabricated alien entities plopped down without any local roots.

EXPLORING the back roads on our own in a rented 4 x 4 truck, we found ourselves drag racing with ostriches — and discovering that despite their awkward gait, they usually win. And we wound up eating lunch at the old German fort at Sesfontein that looks so much like part of a movie set for a film like “Beau Geste” that I couldn’t help but wonder whether Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and their pals from the French Foreign Legion were about to ride up on their camels.

In Damaraland, we wended our way around the Brandberg, Namibia’s highest mountain (8,440 feet), and lingered at the gallery of 6,000-year-old San petroglyphs at Twyfelfontein. If you’re as lucky as we were, a desert-adapted elephant will saunter by before you check in at a luxurious lodge where the wine is always at a perfect temperature, and a much-needed massage may be available.

Namibia might have a lot of nothingness, but that nothingness can be viewed with sundowners from the verandas of any of dozens of high-end lodges and tented camps or at one of the plethora of guest farms that provide a glimpse into what feels like the last redoubt of white colonial Africa.

While the game-viewing at Etosha National Park and along the Botswanan border is among the best in southern Africa, Namibia is one of the few countries where visitors are likely to see serious game outside of a park. So you don’t merely check off animals or the sights marked in guidebooks as “highlights.”

You can be waylaid by the unexpected baboon sitting atop a fence post by the side of the road, by the odd shovel-mouthed lizard, or by the huge haystacklike homes of sociable weaver birds. After a week, it felt ordinary to spot an elephant tusk as we drove down the road or to glimpse a giraffe chomping on a tree when we pulled over for a sandwich or ran into town for milk.

But when I dream of Namibia, it is not of the Big Five, or the little antelopes and warthogs, but of the OK Grocer. As I wandered out of it on my first day in Opuwo, my mouth still agape from the richness of clanging cultures, a Himba woman approached me, covetously eyeing the sleeveless short dress I’d bought at Banana Republic and offering to sell me bits and pieces of her own outfit — a necklace or two, a beaded ankle bracelet, a woven container of the ochre mixture she smothers on her hair.

I was more covetous than she was. I would get an original; she would wind up with off the rack. But even as I purchased a fabulous ankle bracelet made of metal beads wrought from melted wire, I flashed back to the women inside the supermarket and their obvious hunger for the most untraditional of cream cakes, at least in Himba terms, and couldn’t help but wonder how soon the woman in front of me would trade in her goatskins for clothes like mine.

Go soon to Namibia. The rhinos will always be there, but Banana Republic might be as well.

As seen in the New York Times
August 24, 2008

It Takes a School, Not Missiles

2008-07-21T16:40:00.003+02:00

A good article, in case you missed it. Also a good book to read-- if you're unsure of whether or not one person can make a difference in the world, read it.

It Takes a School, Not Missiles
Nicholas D. Kristof

Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.

Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.

Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.

The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools.

Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot.

Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains.

Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school.

Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls.

To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact.

Mr. Mortenson has had setbacks, including being kidnapped for eight days in Pakistan’s wild Waziristan region. It would be naïve to think that a few dozen schools will turn the tide in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Still, he notes that the Taliban recruits the poor and illiterate, and he also argues that when women are educated they are more likely to restrain their sons. Five of his teachers are former Taliban, and he says it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban; that is one reason he is passionate about educating girls.

So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism.

“Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran.

Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.

The Pentagon, which has a much better appreciation for the limits of military power than the Bush administration as a whole, placed large orders for “Three Cups of Tea” and invited Mr. Mortenson to speak.

“I am convinced that the long-term solution to terrorism in general, and Afghanistan specifically, is education,” Lt. Col. Christopher Kolenda, who works on the Afghan front lines, said in an e-mail in which he raved about Mr. Mortenson’s work. “The conflict here will not be won with bombs but with books. ... The thirst for education here is palpable.”

Military force is essential in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban. But over time, in Pakistan and Afghanistan alike, the best tonic against militant fundamentalism will be education and economic opportunity.

So a lone Montanan staying at the cheapest guest houses has done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration.

As seen in the New York Times
July 13, 2008

My day (in photos)

2008-07-07T23:08:00.017+02:00

Sunrise over my homestead-- there is no better sight at 6am.

It's colder here than it looks in this picture, and using the outdoor latrine at 6am leaves one with shivers.

I greet my meme.

and my sisters

and my dog.

Some days, I visit child-headed households.

Some houses with four or five kids

...some houses with more than 15 kids

...and some houses with attitude

Many days I do work at Oonte, a centre for orphans and other vulnerable children

...these pictures represent the best part of my days

We look up new words in the dictionary

And talk about things like peer pressure

And make collages of the things we love

Some days we even have meals

And then everyone is happy.

And as I walk home, I watch as the sun sets...

...and the moon rises.

...and I agree, "it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world."

-American Beauty

Water Wars

2008-06-11T14:58:00.009+02:00

“Children of a culture born in a rich water environment, we have never really learned how important water really is. We understand it, but we don't respect it.”

-William Ashworth

We have been without water on my homestead for nine days now. That’s a long time. That means nine days of rationing water between bathing, cooking, cleaning and washing anything.

The canal that brings water from Angola to the northern part of Namibia was damaged in the recent floods. Due to fears that using this slightly broken canal would only cause further damage, potentially cutting off all water supplied to the north, the powers that be decided to start rationing the water. Originally, I heard that water would be switched off during the day, but would be turned on from 6am to 9am and again from 5pm to 9pm daily. That wouldn’t be so bad. Sure, it is winter and it is very cold during those non-daylight hours, but it would at least give us all an opportunity to stock up on water during the night so we wouldn’t have to go without during the day. So for a few weeks, we all waited in anticipation as the sun set, and then crowded around our outdoor tap, filling and re-filling every container we had.

Unfortunately, it seems that the pipe that brings water from the nearby well to my homestead was also damaged in the floods, and now our well has been shut off completely. We have our tap turned on all the way and have placed a huge metal bucket underneath so that if the water should happen to go on in the night, it would make a loud noise as it hit the bucket and would wake us all so we could run outside and take advantage. This hasn’t happened yet.

It would be generous to say that we usually have a reliable supply of water. Water crises are occurring all over the world and Namibia is no exception. It is said that by the year 2025, two thirds of the world population will be without safe drinking water. All over Africa people are forced to walk great distances to get to water sources, many of which are heavily polluted and very unsafe to drink. Some 5 million people die each year due to polluted drinking water. Furthermore, many diseases and ailments common in the developing world (i.e. cholera, yellow fever, diarrhea, malnutrition) put a person on the fast track to dehydration. In fact, diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death for children and infants around the world. In many cases, this kind of death could have easily been prevented had the child had access to clean water.

Namibia is a very dry country and water is always scarce, and it isn’t uncommon for the well at my homestead to be dry for a day or two straight. But nine days is a long time. I have two 20 litre military-style jerry cans that I fill up whenever I get a chance. And though 40 litres may sound like a lot of water (and in reality it is), you’d be surprised at how much water is “needed” in an average day. Think of everything you use water for in your daily life: shower, brushing teeth, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes. Not to mention drinking water.

I did a little google-ing, and was amazed to find that the average American uses about 123 gallons—or 466 liters-- of water daily.

I found this chart at: http://www.enotes.com/science-fact-finder/energy/
how-much-water-does-an-average-person-use-each-day

Activity	Water used
Shower	15-30 gallons (57-114 liters)
Brushing teeth (water running)	1-2 gallons (3.75-7.51 liters)
Shaving (water running)	10-15 gallons (38-57 liters)
Washing dishes by hand	20 gallons (75 liters)
Washing dishes in dishwasher	9-12 gallons (4-45 liters)
Flushing toilet	5-7 gallons (19-26 liters)

These numbers vary a bit depending on where you do your research, but the general consensus is that the average person in the developed world uses between 80 and 150 gallons of water per day. PER DAY. That’s a lot of water. My 10.5 gallon jerry cans would be finished before breakfast.

When dealing with a limited supply of water, it becomes necessary for one to prioritize. Some things, like staying hydrated, are essential, while others can be downgraded.

Take, for example, bathing. To me, bathing seems like the most overused water-consuming indulgence we all partake in. Incidentally, it was also the most sensible thing to cut out of my life. I’m not saying that I’ve completely given up washing my body, but for the time being it’s on the back burner. It has to be. It’s really amazing how much water is used to shower, even to bucket bathe. I definitely don’t use between 57 or 114 litres of water when I bucket bathe, but I do use a good-sized basin full of water that could be used for countless other more pressing things. Since moving to the north, I’ve become accustomed to going a week at a time without bathing but that was by choice before. Now, after 7+ days without any water access, I couldn’t even bathe if I wanted to. And some days I really do want to.

Keeping the house clean also requires quite a bit of water. To wash dishes at my house we use a large basin filled with water. It only takes about one “load” of dishes for that water to get pretty dirt and non-usable if your primary goal is to actually clean your pots and pans. I definitely cook more now than I used to (which isn’t saying much) but lately, to avoid adding to the growing stack of unwashed dishes, I’ve been limiting my food consumption to raw food and hardboiled eggs. The only time I really stray from that diet is when I eat traditional food with my family, which is cooked over the fire in huge cast iron pots that are used daily and do not get washed.

About 90% of what I eat is grown in my family’s garden or raised somewhere on our homestead. I can find cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, spinach, beans, mushrooms, chicken and eggs all in my backyard, not to mention mahangu which is pounded and turned into traditional porridge, oshifima. When the water is running, we run a hose from our tap out into our fields so the plants can drink up. And while I splurge occasionally on things like cheese and peanut butter, my family subsists entirely on what we raise here. Now, I’m no horticulturist but I’m pretty sure that these plants (and, in turn, our diets) will not survive much longer without water.

One thing that seems unaffected by the lack of water here is any toilet issue. My homestead obviously doesn’t have plumbing, and when the water goes out for nine days I’m reminded why having a pit latrine is a good thing. Nine days of backed up toilets would be no good and while I dislike running from my house to the latrine in the middle of the night to pee, it seems a fair trade off when the alternative is a porcelain pot, shared by 10+ people, that has no flushing capabilities.

It’s only once you live without water that you realize how much of your life is dependent on it. People have often asked me which is harder to live without: electricity or water, and it’s definitely the latter. Not having electricity is a pain and does limit some everyday luxuries (and does inevitably change one’s nightly bedtime to about 7pm), but the limits that come with no electricity are far more bearable than those that come with lack of water flow.

So now, nine days of waiting for a fresh drop to clang into that bucket, I end up having to choose between bathing (and other non-necessities) or having water to drink. And in the “Would You Rather Drink or Bathe” competition, drinking water always wins.

So what’s the big deal, right? You have 40 litres saved up, so make it work. It seems doable, and really it is, but making it last takes some practice. In the end I don’t choose between bathing and drinking; instead, I’ve merged most of my water behavior. Depending upon the day, I can use one basin of water to get most of my household chores done. I start in the morning by opening the old jerry can and filling up one pitcher as well as my nalgene, both of which are solely for drinking. I then fill up a large basin with water, setting some aside for brushing teeth as well as for cooking. I use a small bit of the water in the basin for a quick cowboy bath, and the rest is reserved for cleaning. With 40 litres of water, this routine can continue successfully for a good week. After about 7 days, however, the water starts to get pretty scarce, which means the pitcher only gets half filled, the large basin becomes a small one, and the cowboy bath gets nixed completely. The same water that is used in the morning for brushing teeth is used for any laundry afterwards and finally for washing dishes in the evening. It sounds gross, I know, but only if you really think about it, which I try not to. It is what it is, and since I have no control over it I’ve made my peace with it. It helps that everyone on my homestead is going through this together. In my experience, these types of inconveniences are much more bearable—and even humorous—when experienced in a group. I mean, 8 people all living in one house without bathing for a week… I know there’s humor somewhere in that.

I’d like to say that after living in Namibia, after realizing what a truly valuable commodity water is, I will never again waste a drop of it, but I doubt that’s true. I still love the idea of a long, hot shower, and I when asked I always note washing machines as my “most missed” American amenity. So what’s the point of learning how to live this way? I suppose it’s to be humbled. To be fully aware that even though I will one day return to a life of not having to count the drops of water I use, of not having to decide between bathing or cooking—to understand that there are many more people throughout the world who will never know that luxury does humble me. If nothing more, I’ve certainly learned to appreciate water and will probably think twice before going for that second shower of the day or letting the water run until it’s cold. Then again, this could be nothing more than my dehydration-induced delirium talking:)

“"The trouble with water—and there is trouble with water—is that they're not making any more of it. They're not making any less, mind, but no more either. There is the same amount of water in the planet now as there was in prehistoric times. People, however, they're making more of—many more, far more than is ecologically sensible—and all those people are utterly dependent on water for their lives (humans consist mostly of water), for their livelihoods, their food, and increasingly, their industry. Humans can live for a month without food but will die in less than a week without water. Humans consume water, discard it, poison it, waste it, and restlessly change the hydrological cycles, indifferent to the consequences: too many people, too little water, water in the wrong places and in the wrong amounts.”

-Marq de Villiers

Mothers' Days

2008-05-15T09:23:00.007+02:00

I celebrated Mother’s Day last Sunday with my host mother and my three host sisters. A house full of women, we cooked traditional bread on the fire and talked about motherhood. My sisters (all under 21-years old) and I all agreed that we were nowhere near ready to be mothers. They squirmed and scrunched their faces when we talked about childbirth, all of them terrified at the thought of it. My meme laughed at them. “Soon you will be ready,” she said in Oshindonga.

They asked me about my mother and I told them that she, like my meme here in Ondangwa and my other host mother in Omaruru and so many mothers around the world, had raised my brothers and me more or less on her own. My meme clicked her tongue at hearing this and shook her head. “Shame,” she said.

It’s that innate strength within Namibian women that continually impresses me. How, despite their own suffering, they recognize the significance of the struggles of others. My Namibian host mothers have faced unimaginable tragedies. War, illness, violence, death—these are all realities in the lives of these women. Yet, whenever I’ve talked about the challenges I’ve faced in my life, I have never once felt like my struggles were viewed as lesser than or more bearable than the challenges they themselves have faced. Suffering to any degree is what unites humanity; in itself, it breeds empathy. It’s what allows people from different cultures, from different worlds, to find some commonality. I don’t talk much about my father here, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a learner or a friend grieve the loss of a parent and thought: I remember that feeling. Though my losses may be slight compared to the losses of my Namibian friends and family, they are nevertheless recognized and appreciated by Namibians who know me. And it's within that acknowledgment that a silent understanding exists between us all whenever tragedy occurs. Recognizing without judgment the suffering of people worldwide can only make for a better world community. I think that must be one of the most important things I’ve learned from Namibian women.

It’s what my meme did, when I told her about my father’s death. She didn’t say, “Yeah, you think that’s bad? I grew up on the front lines of a war, parent-less in a refugee camp. My absent husband is working in a diamond mine more than 2000km away and I’m left here with a house full of children, half of whom (including you, oshilumbu) aren’t mine, and all of whom require complete parental support from me alone. You think you’ve got problems?” She didn’t even give me a suggestive look to insinuate she was thinking such a thing. Instead she broke a piece of bread in half, gave half to me and half to my sisters, shook her head sadly and simply said, “I know your mother is a strong woman.” And she couldn’t be more right.

On Mother’s Day, I felt thankful for all the wonderful mothers I’ve known in my life, but most importantly for my own mother, who led by example and taught me about true strength during truly hopeless times. Who I know gave up a lot to give my brothers and me whatever we needed. And who, despite her own personal reservations, agreed to let her daughter move to the other side of the world and go on a crazy soul-searching mission for three years. Her sacrifices and allowances and unwavering support have made me a better person.

And I’m thankful for the mothers in Namibia who have set an extra place at their tables for me and have treated me as one of their own. Those women who have taught me about true empathy, true compassion, true humility—things I may not have been able to learn anywhere else in the world at any other time in history.

Ultimately, I’m thankful (and unbelievably lucky) to have been surrounded by strong women— grandmothers and aunts and cousins and friends and mothers of friends— throughout my life. Their examples have made a lasting impression on me. I hope I can grow up to be as strong as them:)

This feature ran in The Namibian Newspaper this past Friday. I read it and thought a lot about it for a few days afterwards, so I thought I would post it here. Though it’s nice to have a day set aside especially for mothers, it’s even nicer to remember and acknowledge all of their sacrifices year round.

So thanks, mom.

Excerpt from The Namibian, Friday, May 9 2008

…Against this background and on the eve of Mother’s Day, celebrated in Namibia on the second Sunday of May, the question has to be asked: what does being a mother in modern Namibia mean? Answering this question requires taking a look at the average Namibian mother.

The average Namibian mother is a young woman somewhere between 18 and 30 years of age with two or three children. She is caught in the vicious cycle of poverty and deprivation with a deficient education and little hope of clawing her way out from under her circumstances. She probably lives in a shack or some similar dilapidated structure.

Compounding this misery is the possibility that if she isn’t yet, chances are great that she will be infected with HIV by a partner. Add to this that the father or fathers of her children probably do not pay maintenance, diminishing her chances of creating or maintaining a decent quality of life for her children even more.

And then there’s the rampant alcoholism and domestic violence. A disproportionate number of Namibian women suffer intimate partner violence, with many losing their lives at the hands of husbands and lovers. Consider also the growing tendency of sexually exploitative relationships out of which many children are born and the burgeoning numbers of children given to streetism.

On the whole, not a very healthy picture of the state of motherhood 18 years into our fledgling society.

It has now been acknowledged as a fact that relationships between men and women in Namibia are decidedly bad, fueled by raging unfaithfulness and distrust between partners, and that the country is fast approaching an orphan explosion. Furthermore, a dwindling number of grandmothers have now become mothers and primary care-givers.

And yet, every society, Namibia included, is carried on the calloused hands and backs of mothers. Even with her limited resources, the young marginalized mother tries to give each of her children the best she can. Even though at some point she is probably overtaken by despondency and bitterness, now she still has hope.

At times like these, celebratory days like Mother’s Day serve to not only celebrate, but also highlight the burdens of motherhood. Mothers all over are carrying disproportionately heavy loads. And for many, this day underscores the fact that being a mother, the right of every women, is still a beautiful thing.

And for many children, who easily forget the hands and backs that hardened with the carrying of them, Mother’s Day should serve to remind.

And this reminder serves to stir societal conscience that the young mother in the lopsided shack at the dusty edge of the informal settlement also needs to feel appreciation. In all this it should not be forgotten that motherhood comes everyday and everywhere and there is a celebration there.

Political Musings from Abroad

2008-04-02T13:05:00.005+02:00

I’ve always been impressed with how much Africans, especially the young people, know about America. There are the typical, pop-culture inquisitions: Do you know 50cent? Is Tupac really dead? Do all celebrities live in Hollywood? But a good number of people here in Namibia are well aware of current events surrounding the US. Ask the average person you meet on the street, and it’s almost certain that they will know that the American president is George Bush II, that we are at war with Iraq, and that this war was somehow sparked by people who flew planes into buildings in New York City on September 11 (I said “somehow”). This may seem like common knowledge to most, but in a country where very few people have access to television news or newspapers, it’s quite impressive. And for me, coming from a country with supposedly the best education system in the world, and knowing that the average American would not be able to name even one head of state of an African nation, let alone Namibia’s president—yeah, I’d say Namibians’ knowledge of current events impresses me.

This is why I’m not totally surprised (yet still quite impressed) that as of late, I am frequently probed by Namibians for my thoughts on the presidential bid between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It seems the whole world is talking about this primary, and Namibia is no exception. Most people remember Hillary from the Bill Clinton era, and most people are drawn to Barack because of his ties to Kenya. The fact that the two candidates are not cookie-cutter presidential contenders (a first for America, esthetically speaking) makes this election even more appealing to the world at large.

The first time someone really talked to me about this presidential race was early in 2007, before any candidate had fully affirmed that he or she would be running. Hillary Clinton was on the cover of a Newsweek magazine I had in my office, and a co-worker had picked it up and was glancing through. “I like this woman,” she told me. “I think she is strong.”

“Yes,” I replied. “She is a very strong woman—a good role model for women everywhere.”

“I really admire her,” she continued. “When the story came out that her husband was cheating, she stood by her man. We believe in ‘for better or for worse.’ Too often, women give up and leave when their husbands cheat. That isn’t what women are supposed to do. She is a real woman.”

It was not the argument I had expected to hear. Yet, as the year passed and this election became more and more heated, this was an opinion I heard repeatedly from many Namibians, women and men. It’s a common argument I hear whenever someone explains to me why I, as a woman, should support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And I think it’s interesting that that is how much of the world views Senator Clinton. I’m not trying to insinuate that this is Hillary’s defining characteristic, because obviously it isn’t. It would be ignorant of me, or of any of us, to reduce Senator Clinton to such a trivial incident as was Monica Lewinski. I do think Clinton is a strong woman in many respects, and I’m confident that she is much more capable to lead the nation than our current president. However, that scandal and her reaction to it spoke volumes to much of the world in ways I doubt anyone would have imagined. Of course, senate votes and campaign promises are never as publicized as things like the infidelity of a high-ranking politician, and are thus not as easy to quickly reference when voicing one’s support or opposition for a public figure. Obviously, voting based on something as frivolous as marital issues would be irresponsible. Yet I find it interesting that when many Namibians try to differentiate between Clinton and Obama, she wins simply because of the strength she has shown the world, standing by her man for so many years.

And of course, there’s the issue of race.

In a country fresh out of the apartheid regime, still rife with racism, it is not surprising that while Namibians seem to really like Obama, they have absolutely no faith that the American public would ever elect a black man as president. “Maybe he could be elected in Africa,” a fellow teacher told me, “but in America? I don’t think so.”

With prominent female leaders like Indira Ghandi in India and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, the idea of a female president is not nearly as hard to swallow. And with Clinton’s history in the White House, people seem to believe that a more familiar face (and a white one, at that) is more electable than this new guy.

“Which tribe is Mr. Obama, miss?” One of my learners asked me last week.

“Umm… he’s not really from one particular tribe. His father is from Kenya and his mother is an American.”

“So which tribe will support him?” he went on to ask.

“Well, he will probably have support from many different tribes, since he isn’t from one tribe only.” I said. “It would be like if someone ran for president here and his father was an Owambo and his mother was a Boer (a white Afrikaner). That person would have support from many different people, no?”

“Miss,” he said, looking at me seriously, “No one has an Owambo father and a Boer mother.”

Touché.

Race is a serious issue throughout Africa, especially in countries where white colonialism is still a vivid memory. Today, many Zimbabweans are fighting to reelect Robert Mugabe, their controversial president who only a few years ago proposed a referendum that would have allowed forcible seizure of land owned by white farmers and the redistribution of that land to previously disadvantaged blacks. Though the referendum failed, Mugabe’s supporters took action into their own hands and began to raid farms. Whites who resisted this move were often jailed. These seizures, coupled with a number of other blunders on Mugabe’s part, have sent Zimbabwe into an economic tailspin. Namibia is facing a similar quandary. Discussions of land redistribution with the aim of “black economic empowerment” are commonplace in Namibia’s political arena these days.

I’m not trying to say that these discussions are not important, because they absolutely are. But more often than not they work to further divide the races and tribes in countries already laden with racial and tribal tensions. Government interventions like these prevent blacks and whites from working together, forcing us to continue to view one another as intrinsically different beings. Such moves are devastating to the progress that many are working for in these young and vulnerable developing countries.

For some reason (I don’t know why) I thought, or at least hoped, Americans were a bit more progressive, but the debates surrounding the campaigns of Obama and Clinton as of late have me wondering. Race is obviously a serious issue in America as well, as much as we’d like to deny it or hide it. In Africa, racism is just here. It’s just everywhere. It’s such a common occurrence that people rarely talk about it. It may also be common and everywhere in the states, but it’s much more hush-hush. It’s not politically correct to talk about race especially, it seems, in a political election. And what’s ironic is that race surrounds all political campaigns and we all know it, whether it’s outspoken or not. All politicians strategize about how to get the Hispanic vote, how to appeal to Asian voters, how to increase (or decrease, in some cases) black voter turnout. Yet in the public arena, we shy away from such blunt conversations.

I admire Senator Obama for the speech he recently gave about race in America. He could have let the campaign go on without addressing it. Indeed, it would have been much more politically correct to have done so, and maybe he would have been better positioned to win the nomination had he kept quiet. However, the fact that he had the courage to address such a sensitive subject, and one that so obviously affects his own presidential bid shows remarkable character on his part. He may win the nomination, and he may not. But either way, he opened up a discussion that spent far too long hidden behind closed doors. I doubt that is something he will ever regret.

Africans are aware of what Americans seem to be (or at least pretend to be) oblivious to: that skin color does affect the way we think, and perhaps the way we vote. This is something that we must embrace and own if we hope to work towards a more democratic country. As much as Namibians favor Barack Obama and would be so impressed to see the American voters elect him into office, they doubt our ability to rise above such irrelevant things and do so.

So why is Namibia (and the world) so captivated by this election? Easy. The outcome of this election will affect people around the world, as the outcome of every American presidential election does. The actions of America’s leaders have a ripple affect throughout thousands of countries and communities and cultures, something that is important for us, as voters, to remember. This election will affect people in Africa, people in Namibia, people in my small village of Olukolo. And this is why they know.

Watching this election from abroad has given me an interesting perspective. For the past 2.5 years, I have (thankfully) been removed from most of this political chess match and the inevitable “spin” that accompanies American politics. Thus, my political musings are based on little more than the daily headlines I catch at nytimes.com and cnn.com, as well as the occasional transatlantic phone call that, regardless of the caller, always turns into a discussion of political events. And besides growing up in a liberal household and being raised by strong Democratic parents, I’d say that I’m more or less open-minded to all candidates and untainted by political pundrit-ry. That being said…

Obviously, I will support whoever the Democratic nominee is, but I don’t favor Senator Clinton. All of my adult life, I have dreamed of a woman president: someone with innovative and progressive ideas, someone who would bridge the gender gap in politics, someone who would represent the best our country has to offer. I don’t think Hillary Clinton is this individual. The fact that she’s a woman is not enough of a reason for me, or any woman, to support her. Basing my vote on gender is just as negligent as basing my vote on race, and frankly I’m insulted that people assume that simply because I’m a woman, I will support any woman who runs for presidential office. I would hope that responsible voters wouldn’t let something as insignificant as race or gender decide their vote in such an important election.

I support Barack Obama, and it doesn’t have anything to do with race or gender or marital infidelity, or with making a statement about any of these things. The reason I support Obama is not only because I believe that he will change the way that America engages in global affairs (something that is important to me), but also because I believe that he will change the way American politics in general are conducted in the states. Like many people with a political heart, I am exhausted with the current state of affairs in American politics. I’m ready to head in a new direction. Obviously, I want out of the war and universal health care and all those other wonderful things the democrats use to entice us. But for me, improving the image of Americans abroad and taking American politics to a new, more respectful level are things I have faith Obama will do. At the very least, these things would be a very good start.

An Obama nomination would send such a positive message to the world. It would signal our desire for change; for a new start. America’s image abroad needs some serious improvement. While the world is aware that Senator Clinton would not be the same kind of leader that George Bush has been, the fundamental differences between the two are not as apparent as the differences between Obama and Bush. Clinton would be more of the same. Obama would be a new beginning.

No matter what side most Americans are on, I think the majority of us agree that more of the same is not the way we want to go. As Americans, we should feel privileged to vote in such an important election, a “groundbreaking” one, people say. And as cliché as you may believe it to be, the world is indeed watching. Everyone, from elite heads of state to disadvantaged school children, is watching and wondering and waiting. I can only hope that we don’t disappoint this time around.

Water, water everywhere...

2008-02-24T22:56:00.000+02:00

After two years of a severe drought, the prayers of the Namibian people have been heeded in an overwhelming fashion. People are saying that God finally answered, but he forgot to turn off the tap. It has rained every single day for the past two weeks, and when I say rain I mean RAIN-- sheets of rain that crash down onto our tin roofs and tear branches from trees and uproot bushes. Rain so strong it knocks over goats and cattle, killing many with it's shear force. And as the rain continues to fall, the water situation continues to worsen. Almost everyday I walk to town, I find myself wandering through people’s homesteads and mahangu fields, trying to find new ways in as the usual paths are under knee-deep oshanas by now. The oshanas completely surround the school where I’m teaching, so twice a day all 400 learners and 13 teachers remove their shoes, hike up their trousers and skirts and wade through the water. The oshanas are home to millions of tiny, newly hatched frogs (as well as water snakes) that set off in a hopping fury when pedestrians approach them, resulting in thousands of squishy frog pancakes that cover the ground (as one volunteer duly noted, the only thing worse than feeling a frog squish beneath your sandal is trapping a frog in between your sandal and your foot... and then feeling it squish). Never ones to miss an opportunity to find humor in a seemingly humorless situation, the learners have taken to pelting one another with frogs as the masses pass through the water. This inevitably leads to someone falling into the muddy water while trying to dodge a frog attack, and almost everyday I have at least one child come to class dripping wet. “No more frog throwing!” I say. They just laugh.

Every elder I speak with tells me that this is the worst flooding they have seen in their lifetime (i.e. at least the last 90 years). "Omeya!" they say. Too much water. The floods are a result of both heavy rain, as well as the opening of flooded dams in Angola just 40km away, which is what caused the water to rise so quickly here in the north. The Global Disaster Alert System has reported that at least 23 people have died thus far. More than 50 schools have halted teaching due to an overwhelming drop in learner attendance. Thousands of cattle and livestock have been killed by the heavy downpour. Unwilling to leave their cattle—their livelihood—behind, many cattle herders have found themselves trapped by high waters deep in their villages, essentially cut off from the rest of the country. Government helicopters made special trips yesterday, delivering food and other basic supplies to the herders in these isolated areas. Hundreds of thousands of people in the rural villages have been displaced, forced from their homes and work places due to rising water levels. There are three major towns in my area – Ondangwa, Oshakati and Ongwediva. These three towns, about 10 - 20km from one another, represent the urban centre of the north. Like the villages that surround this area, all three of these towns have been hit hard by flooding. Businesses that are depended on by thousands of people have been forced to close, and many roads leading into and out of the towns have been washed away. Ondangwa, Oshakati and Ongwediva have all set up evacuation centres for flood victims who have been displaced, but the demand for accommodation has become overwhelming. With more and more people being evacuated, these centres are becoming less and less inhabitable. The Namibian is reporting that two children died at the evacuation centres last week due to suspected intestinal illnesses. These three towns are connected by a series of small bridges, which are swelling under the pressure of the rising waters passing beneath them. Many fear that these bridges will collapse, essentially cutting off the towns and evacuation centres from the outside world. The situation is dire, and unfortunately I’ve heard the worst of the rain is still to come…

Jay (my co-PCVL in the north) and I spent the whole of last week visiting the volunteers whose villages have been hardest hit by the floods. While our own sites have been affected, we were shocked at the high water levels we found deep in the villages. As devastating as it all is, these rural communities have united together. The one or two bakkies that attempt to pass through the water squeeze as many passengers in the back as possible. The brave souls who go into town always make their journey known before hand, so those left behind can place orders or make requests. People hold one another’s hands as they walk together through the high, treacherous waters, and small children ride the shoulders of their escorts. As the usual roads and paths are flooded, we had to stop often to ask local people which ways were easiest to pass through. Every where we went, local people would volunteer to ride along and accompany us through the floods, sometimes staying with us for more than 6hrs of driving, giving us directions and readying themselves to push when we found ourselves sinking.

So, for the time being we're all just waiting; waiting for the rain to stop falling, the oshanas to dry up. There isn't much more we can do, other than wait. And be careful what we pray for.

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks...

That is not a usual body of water-- it is a flooded oshana. Oshana means an open pan of dry land, but due to the heavy rains, most oshanas have filled up like this one. People have to cross through these daily. This one in particular was up to my knees at its deepest.

School kids, who are coping

More than 50 schools throughout the north have closed, due to flooding in the school yards and classrooms. Even at schools that have remained opened, such as the ones pictured here, attendance has dropped as the children, especially the small ones, are unable to safely cross the oshanas to get to their schools.

A flooded village

Many shops have been forced to close due to rising water levels

The "Peace Beast"; our durable transport for the week

It was inevitable

The dirt roads become like quicksand with all this water.
After tempting fate one too many times,
the oshana gods had their way with us.

Our rescue: a bakkie filled with memes who didn't hesitate to hike up their skirts, jump in the water and help us push our bakkie out. And then their bakkie stuck, so we pushed them out. And then another bakkie came and it got stuck also, so we helped push them out. It was a long day.

There is a fairly large oshana directy in front of my school, and the only way to get in or out of school is to pass through. These brave little souls always do it with a smile.

My sisters, crossing a very deep oshana near our house

From The Namibian. Poor guy

A week... and some months

2008-02-08T19:45:00.000+02:00

After a two-month hiatus from PC life, I’m back in Namibia, at a new site and taking on a new job. A lot has happened over the past two months, and while I don’t intend on detailing everything, I thought a smattering of thoughts and photos would be a good way to start off the blogging of 2008. So, here are the past few months, in a nutshell…:

November – December:
• I had a few farewell parties before I left Omaruru. My TRC farewell came complete with a drama that starred one of my colleagues acting as me, running around the office barefoot drinking a juice box and speaking fast Namlish. I never knew I was so easily impersonated. I also had a farewell with my grade 3 English class, which entailed lots of singing and dancing and cookies. A truly perfect day.

Grade 3's, Omaruru

My final farewell party was with some friends and colleagues at my house. And what is a Namibian farewell without a goat slaughter, right? The hostel kids try to act so tough, like “city” kids, but lay an animal carcass in front of them and they go crazy: arms elbow-deep in the body cavity, sifting through organs and intestines like pros.

Dinner, Omaruru

• I participated in the Pre-Service Training for Group 27, who arrived in November 2007. It was really interesting to see my two years come around full circle. As I listened to the trainees voice their questions and anxieties and hopes for the next two years, I was surprised at how clearly I remembered feeling the same way just two years ago. Whether fun or not, time really does fly.

• From mid-November til mid-December, I backpacked overland with two good PC friends. To briefly recap... We began by hitchhiking north through Namibia’s Caprivi Region to Victoria Falls in Livingston, Zambia. After a few fun-filled days (and lots of cheap Chinese takeout; comfort food found throughout Africa) at the falls, we took a bus to Lusaka, the capital city, followed the next day by another, more… tumultuous bus ride to Chipata, the border town. We stopped in Chipata for a few days before heading to the lovely Cape Maclear, Malawi. We spent almost a week at Cape Maclear, hanging out on the great Lake Malawi and resting up on the beach before boarding the Ihlala Ferry, which took us on a very unique three day journey up Lake Malawi, to Nkhata Bay. After a few days with the Rastafarians at Nkhata Bay, we headed further north, crossing the border into Tanzania where we spent only one day at Mbeya, eating more Chinese takeout and waiting for the train to arrive. From there, we took the train (either 2 or 3 days… I can’t remember) over to Dar es Salaam, the capital city of Tanzania.

Victoria Falls, Zambia side

Throwing kids, Lake Malawi

Ilala Ferry, Nhkata Bay

Having done a bit of research in Mbeya, we decided it was best to hurry over to the airport immediately upon arriving in Dar, so as to a) avoid the chaos of the capital city, and b) hop on a quick and inexpensive flight over to the island of Zanzibar. (Point of note: if anyone is considering this trip, do check the prices. When we went, a flight from Dar to Zanzibar was just about the same price as the ferry ride over, not to mention 3hrs shorter). On Zanzibar we stayed just outside of Stone Town in an area the locals call “BuBuBu.” We spent a few days on the white beaches of Zanzibar, eating cheap street food and practicing Swahili, before the three of us boarded our transatlantic flights back to America, just in time for the holidays. It was an unforgettable trip, but not for the faint at heart. This way of traveling is definitely a great way to see the countries and move around with the locals and mingle with the diverse crowd of individuals who travel through Africa, but it is exhausting and can be risky, and while I had a great time, I would never travel this way through Africa again. If any of you and interested in trying, heed this advice: rent your own car.

Volleyball, Cape Maclear

Women collecting shellfish, Zanzibar

The weary travelers, somewhere

• To get to America from Zanzibar, I had to take FIVE flights (a total of 37 flying hours mixed in with a few layovers here and there), and found myself being hassled by airport officials throughout my travels. Upon landing in the states, the customs officials seemed unnerved at the sight of my over-stamped passport, my WHO card filled with immunizations, and my raggedy appearance. So they confiscated my carry-on peanut butter. “Better safe than sorry,” they told me. Seriously?

• When I was home, while in the midst of a classic Midwestern winter, many people commented on how tan I looked.

• I saw Van Morrison perform live in Minneapolis. Hard to top that.

• One of our presents from Santa this year was Green Bay Packer tickets, so my family and I made the trek up to lovely Lambeau Field for the Packers vs. Lions game on December 28. It was cold, but not cold enough (for Wisconsin-ites anyway) to pass on the chance to see Brett Favre in action. And also to cheer for our "friend" Mason.

Frozen Tundra, Green Bay

January 2008:
• I discovered YouTube. And wasted many hours trying to catch up.

• Campaign fever seemed to be affecting everyone in the states, and on a spur of the moment decision, two friends and my mother and my mother’s friend and I all decided to road trip down to Lansing, Iowa for the caucus. It was like a Civics lesson come alive, and let me tell you, if you weren’t an Obama supporter before that night—after sitting in this room in small-town America, listening to first time voters and union people and old, old farmers talk about their fathers who worked in steel mills and their own lives through the depression and the world wars, and to hear them all talk about how this is the time for change—by the end of the night, everyone was displaying their ‘Obama 08’ stickers proudly.

Joe Biden's brother caucusing, Iowa

• I went ice fishing with my brother. It was a first for me, and much more enjoyable than I had anticipated. Though quite cold.

• I bought 14 new books while I was home. So far I’ve read 4.

• Upon returning to Namibia, I took on a new job as a Gender and Development (GAD) Assistant/Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL), and I moved to a new city. I am now living on a traditional homestead with an Owambo family in Ondangwa, the far north of Namibia, and I work out of the regional Peace Corps office. My homestead is about a 20-30 minute walk—on winding, sandy paths, through pokey bushes and random streams and cattle and oshanas and mahangu fields—from town into the bush. There are about 172 paths one can take from my homestead to the town, and every time I walk to town, I attempt to take a different way so as to better acquaint myself with my new “neighborhood.” I get lost a lot.

My homestead, Ondangwa

• When I returned to Namibia, and it’s scorching-desert summer, my friends and colleagues were shocked at how white I was.

• My current living situation is the embodiment of the dichotomy that is life in Namibia. While Ondangwa is at least three times the population of Omaruru, complete with 3 grocery stores, a few clothing stores and even a KFC, my homestead has no plumbing (only an outdoor tap and pit latrine), and infrequent, unpredictable electricity.

• S.I. !Gobs only passed 8 out of 97 grade 12 learners in 2007.

• Since the name ‘Caitlin’ sort of sounds like ‘Catherine,’ and the Oshiwambo translation of the name ‘Catherine’ is ‘Catrina,’ most of my Owambo friends and colleagues have always referred to me as Catrina. The only difference in Owamboland is that, as you may guess, since pretty much everyone is Owambo, everyone calls me Catrina. This is further aided by the fact that my family hosted a Peace Corps Volunteer a few years ago whose name was also Catrina (or some variation). So not only do they call me Catrina, but so do numerous people in town who see me and figure that the old Catrina has returned (people constantly tell me that we look alike, but that could mean nothing more than that we’re both white and both female). And since I respond when anyone hollers out: “Catrina! Wu uhala po, meme!” we’re all just rolling with it.

• While I do like my new site and my family, I miss Omaruru more than I expected to.

• The northern regions of Namibia have been experiencing horrible flooding due to excessive rain fall over the past few weeks. The flooding covers over 450 square miles, and has taken out bridges and roads throughout Owamboland. People drown daily, and the rain continues to fall. According to The Namibian, 44 primary schools have stopped classes with an additional 37 schools affected because children cannot wade through the high waters, and 4000 heads of cattle and 1800 goats have been killed. Some homes and business are entirely under water, and thousands of people have been flooded into their villages, unable to leave to buy food and necessary supplies. After two years without a drop of rain, this devastating downpour as of late seems almost biblical.

• My 60-year old meme doesn’t speak any English. As I’m still fumbling to become conversational in Oshindonga, exchanges between the two of us usually don’t go much further than: “Hello. How are you? I am fine. How was your day? Mine was fine, I was at the school. It is very hot/rainy. Let’s go watch television.” Every night, my two sisters and my meme and I (and usually some random cousins and nieces and aunties and friends and dogs I’ve never seen before) sit down to watch Second Chance—El Cuerpo del Deseo—our twice-dubbed Spanish soap-opera. It’s quite intense, complete with overly-dramatic facial expressions and thunderous, consequential music; features which do not require a 1st language knowledge of English to understand. Every night after Second Chance we watch WWE-Smackdown-Raw-Wrestle Mania, or whatever it’s called. While my meme enjoys El Cuerpo del Deseo like the rest of us, American WWE is her absolute favorite show. So our evening bonding consists of Spanish melodramas followed by quality time with the Undertaker, Rick Flair and Batista.

• I ate a frog last week. Intentionally.

• Living in the north of Namibia is like living in a different country, and while I do miss Omaruru, I am happy to move away from the strong legacy of apartheid that permeates the south of this country.

• I had a snake in my house the first week I was living there. I’d been keeping my doors open during the days so that my host family felt comfortable entering. Then one day, I saw something slithering out of the corner of my eye, and sure enough, it was a long, thing, green and yellow monster. Now, while I do pride myself on overcoming my fears of any sort of bug or lizard or rodent, snakes are something I just haven’t warmed to. As soon as I saw it slithering along my floor, I began screaming, “Snake! Snake!” My 13-year old host sister ran in, rock in hand, and proceeded to smash the snake to pieces. “I don’t like snakes,” I told her afterwards, trying to explain my cowardice. “Me neither!” she exclaimed. “I don’t like them at all. Not even a little. I’m also very afraid. Very afraid.” Funny… our “very afraids” look very different. And when I told my meme about the snake, she too expressed her deep fear of snakes. In fact, once word of the snake had spread, everyone in my family came by my house to talk about it and to share their own snake-anxieties. “It’s my greatest fear, Catrina,” said my auntie. However, since the snake, I’ve been vigilant about quickly closing my door behind me, yet I’ve noticed that my family continues to leave their doors open, even after nightfall, which tells me that either their lying about their snake-phobias, or my host family is much tougher than I am. I’m going to guess it’s the latter.

So I guess that’s about all. I’m still working on getting into a routine at my new site, but I’m hopeful that this will be another rewarding year. I hope everyone is well, including my friends from Nam25 who are in the process of settling back into life stateside. Namibia misses you! Take care, stay in touch. Kala po nawa!

Sunset behind my school, Ondangwa

The beginning of the end...

2007-11-01T08:32:00.000+02:00

On November 11, 2005, I set foot on Namibian soil for the first time. And on November 17, 2007, I will complete my two year contract and embark on a new journey. As most of you have already heard, I’ve decided to extend for a third year with Peace Corps in Namibia. I will take on a new job at a new site, both of which I’m looking forward to. The work will be based on a program called Men as Partners. Men as Partners is an initiative created by EngenderHealth, a non-profit organization based out of New York that works on global health issues such as HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, women’s rights, etc. Men as Partners works off the idea that improving the health and well-being of women includes engaging men, a critical component that has been missing in most discussions on HIV prevention throughout Africa. This new initiative will be introduced into Namibia next year, and I will be working on the national campaign at the grassroots level. Working so closely with young boys and men over the past two years, I have come to truly value this type of work and see its need here in Namibia, and I’m excited and flattered that I’ve been given the opportunity to take part in the early stages of this important project.

However, as excited as I am for what’s in store for me next year, things are wrapping up at my current site and it’s hard to not feel somewhat ambivalent and disheartened at the thought of leaving. Omaruru, the TRC, S.I. !Gobs—these places have been my home for the past two years, and as challenging as my time here has been, leaving this place and all these people will not be easy for me.

Of all the learners, I’m closest to the grade 12s, who have just finished writing their final exams. Saying goodbye to them has been very difficult; this group of kids arrived at the school the same time that I did. Also coming from places outside Omaruru, we spent the past two years together getting to know the place and the people of Omaruru and making it our home. My learners have been a huge part of my life and have enriched my experience here more than any other person or thing has. Now we are leaving, not together, and it’s hard to imagine my daily life without them.

Last week I was walking in town with a few of the kids when it started to pour rain. It was the first time I had seen rain in nearly a year, and the four of us just stood in the road and let the drops wash over us. Rain here has a poignant connotation. It means hope and happiness and fruitfulness, and living without it for an extended period of time makes you appreciate it more than you can probably imagine. The sun was shining through the clouds in certain spots and it created rainbow pieces that fell all around us. It was the most beautiful sight I had seen in a very long time, and as I felt the warm rain on my skin and thought about these kids and my life here, I started to cry. If the kids noticed, they didn’t mention it. It’s been an emotional time for all of us and tears have been more common as of late. My rule with the kids was that we couldn’t talk about me leaving until it was 6 months before the time. That 6 month mark has long passed, but talking about it has not become any easier. The thought of leaving makes me feel sick. I’ve had a perpetual lump in my throat for the past week and my eyes well up just thinking about how quickly my time here is finishing. Some of these kids literally have nothing else in the world and it’s hard to not feel as if I’m abandoning them. When I was preparing to leave the states for Africa, the thought of leaving was difficult, but I was able to envision what it would be like. I’ve said goodbye to family and friends before and though this goodbye was more long-term, I had an idea of what it would entail and I was right for the most part. The goodbyes here in Africa will not be the same. These goodbyes are to the people who have been my family for the past two years, yet it’s very likely that I will never see them or even speak to them again. I thought as the time approached I would have a better idea of what to say, of how to make my exit, but even now after I have actually said goodbye to some of my people, it doesn’t feel real.

I’m leaving Namibia in mid-November and will travel with two friends throughout Southern Africa—Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zanzibar—before I return to the states on home leave. I will be back in Namibia by mid-January and will resume some of my relationships here, but some will be gone. Over the past two years, there have been kids or friends who have left on long weekends or holidays and have never returned. It’s inevitable that some of my people won’t be around next year January, and that’s the thought that fills my heart with sadness. I’m not equipped with whatever quality it takes to say goodbye and knowingly part ways forever with a person whom you love; is anyone?

My last official day of work is tomorrow. My office colleagues and I have spent the past few weeks interviewing people for my replacement, which has been a bit strange and also a bit humorous. I’m having a farewell party and dinner tomorrow (complete with goat slaughter, my favorite) to say goodbye to my Omaruru friends. I will spend the weekend packing up my few belongings and on Monday I will go to meet with the new PC trainees who arrived in country in the beginning of November. For any parents or friends of Nam27 who may be reading this, I met with the group last weekend and everyone is doing fine. Wide-eyed, excited, inquisitive, terrified—no different than how I was just two years ago.

My time in Namibia has been truly rewarding, and I’m grateful for my experiences here. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gotten more from this country than I’ve given them. The truth is that leaving would never be easy; I would never feel as if I had done enough or that it was the right time to leave. Reconciling the guilt we feel for leaving, especially for leaving the kids, with the desire we feel to go home is something that all of us volunteers are struggling with.

So yes, it’s been a bittersweet time as of late. I know next year will be a wonderful learning and growing time for me, but closing this chapter of my life will not be easy. All my PC friends are COSing (meaning they’re going through their close-of-service procedures), which is also a bit strange. Though I’m excited about my work for next year, it will be difficult to be here without my closest volunteer friends. Although I think I have convinced a few of them to visit me in La Crosse for New Year’s so that we can officially part ways with a bang:)

This will be my last blog post from Omaruru. I doubt I’ll be able to post during my travels, but I’ll do what I can to keep in touch. I’m sure the writing will resume when I return in January, so if you’re interested please continue to check in.

Thank you all for the support you’ve given me throughout the past two years. Your thoughts and words have never gone unappreciated. Not everyone is lucky enough to have such supportive people in their life. Additionally, thank you for your continued interest in Namibia. I hope that this blog has given you a glimpse of the beauty of this country and its people. I’m not sure what the point of this was if it hasn’t…perhaps just to help maintain some level of sanity:)

Hopefully I will meet up with as many of you as possible during my home leave. Keep in touch and I will do the same. Go well.

The hostel boys.

Hunger Pangs

2007-10-23T11:04:00.000+02:00

“Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.”

-Pearl Bailey

My learners kill birds with slingshots they make out of sticks and old car tires. Sure, it’s true that at some point during childhood, most young boys shoot things with slingshots (my brother once killed a dove), but my boys here don’t shoot the birds just to kill them. Some of them maybe do, but most of them kill the birds to eat.

Now before I get going, let me just clarify: I’ve wanted to write about this for awhile because it’s been on my mind, but I don’t want people to feel bad or sad after reading it. I’m not writing this to make you feel guilty about the poor, starving African children. While these particular kids may be as close to starving as any children I have ever known, they are by no means starving-- at least by African standards. They are hungry, but hungry is not the same as starving. They are fed three times a day, and it’s usually enough to fill their stomachs. So don’t feel bad. I’m really not trying to make a political statement about global poverty or food shortages or anything. These are just my random and collected thoughts. Take them for what they’re worth, nothing more.

Now back to the story of the birds.

There’s an open space of concrete directly behind my house where the kids often congregate, playing soccer with tennis balls, socializing in between classes or after school, or ambushing those of us who take the back path through the bush and over the fence. This is also where I catch them doing their bird business. The kids like to fillet their birds and then lay them out in the sun to make bird biltong (Namibia’s beef jerky). Aside from this being unnecessary (remember, hungry is not the same as starving), there are the obvious sanitary concerns as well. I’ve tried to explain this to them on several occasions, but it has been to no avail-- there are still plenty of days when I make my way up to the top of the path only to find 2 or 3 naughty little kinders sautéing a bird in the sun. They know this particular pastime really irritates me (something they love doing) and as soon as they see me coming, before I even realize what it is they are doing, the giggling begins. Once I see the mangled bird carcass stretched out on the pavement under a few large rocks, they get the inevitable response they so love to hear from me: “You’ll get the bird flu!” Which, without fail, induces fits of laughter amongst them all. The bird flu is one of many things they’re convinced I have made up in order to frighten them, and the name alone puts them into instant hysterics. I realized long ago that in order to preserve whatever mental sanity I have left, it’s necessary for me to choose my battles wisely, so lately I’ve been invoking the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy as far as the birds are concerned.

Unfortunately, sometimes this bird situation is literally thrown in my face. Killing a bird in their free time is one thing, but if the learners kill a bird during school hours and don’t have time to set up their biltong station, they sometimes try to bring the bird with them to class. If they were discreet about it and kept the bird in their bag or something, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s always a production. A kid will run into the classroom waving his latest kill, often only half dead and still flapping around, in the faces of the other learners. Those learners will then begin running around screaming and jumping on their chairs and desks to try and escape the squawks and scratches of the traumatized bird. Knowing how all of my kids grew up and how familiar they are with animals and hunting, I know this to be an incredibly unnecessary overreaction that they know they will get away with because I, unlike their other teachers, will not confiscate a half-dead guinea fowl. So there we all remain, crouching under our desks and covering our heads until the bird either a) escapes his captor, or b) expires on the floor of my classroom. Then we go back to talking about present simple tense in a room filled with bird blood and feathers.

Dealing with hungry kids is not easy for anyone, including teachers. Teaching kids who haven’t eaten a solid meal in days (weeks? Ever?) just adds another obstacle to what is already a complicated situation. It’s a very common excuse I get from the kids: “Miss, I’m too hungry to think. I’m too hungry to focus.” And it’s a difficult situation to combat. For people young and old to try and think clearly, to interact constructively, to offer anything productive with tummies that are perpetually growling is not an easy task. Many of the kids who live outside the hostel go home to overcrowded houses with no adults or only grandparents who depend on pension checks to support their families. For a lot of kids here, life in the hostel is actually preferable to life at home. And trust me, life in the hostel is not good.

Hostel borders are fed three times a day: 6am, 1pm and 6pm. Coming across the kids during these hours, you would think they were the happiest people in the world. “Miss, we are eating!” they exclaim with huge smiles and mouths full of bread. Government schools are given provisions to prepare for the learners which include tea, porridge, brown bread, rice, beans, beets and meat for Sundays. I don’t really know what happens in between the food delivery truck and the kids, but a lot of food is intercepted along the way. Lunch usually consists of rice with some sauce and maybe a small piece of meat or chicken, but the vast majority of breakfasts and dinners are made up of nothing more than between 10 and 15 slices of dry bread, sometimes with jam or butter, and/or porridge, both of which are coveted like gold.

I’d say that more than half of the fights that occur at my hostel are somehow triggered by food issues. This guy stole bread from this guy, or this guy took more than his portion during dinner. In fact, the only two fights one of my favorite learners, Levi, has been in since I’ve been here were both over food. Last year, he was stabbed with a broken bottle by a boy in town while he was on his way home with a loaf of bread, and this year punches were exchanged between him and another learner who grabbed rice off his plate at dinner one evening. The kids are more than prepared to fight for their rations.

And if fights aren’t over food, I think it’s fair to say that the majority of them are a result of the ever-present hunger so many people are faced with. People can’t think straight if they haven’t eaten for an extended period of time. Last year, we had a food shortage at the school and the portions the kids received for a few weeks were extremely small. During this time, I literally felt the tension at the school increase. Kids were irritable and unhappy and tired, and small things would set them off. Their empty stomachs caused their minds and better judgments to become convoluted, resulting in an increase in fights throughout the school. Looking at many war-torn areas around the world, especially in Africa, one may be able to argue that similar situations are occurring on a larger scale.

For mealtime at the hostel, the kids are herded into the dining hall where they stand at their tables, pray, get their food and are then released. This usually takes about 30 minutes and most of it is to be done in silence (when the silence is abruptly broken, it means a fight has begun). When the learners are released from the hall I hear screams and the shuffling of bare feet on the dirt as many of them take off running, trying to find a safe haven where they can eat their food without fear of having it confiscated by an older or bigger or more desperately hungry child. Some of them go to their blocks and eat in their rooms, but a lot of them seek protection either in or around my house or by the other volunteer’s house. Sometimes small kids will be chased by bigger kids looking for food, and they’ll scamper onto my stoop where they know the bully will not enter. And sometimes the bigger kids will win and I will hear the smaller ones click with anger and discuss at length how, someday, they themselves will seek revenge on these heartless bullies and will go to sleep satisfied. Mealtime at the hostel is never dull.

Sometimes I play food games with my small learners. I choose a food, and they have to tell me how it looks and feels and tastes, and how they feel as they are eating it, by using the most descriptive words they can think of. “Oh miss, the liquid coming from inside this mango is so lekker! This mince is so chili it’s burning my mouth off! (My favorite description: This goat heart is melting in my mouth!). I’ve often thought about how differently this activity would work if I had been able to give them a sample of the food they were describing, but then they would know the actual tastes and their imaginations would be limited, and the game would probably be less fun.

Food is tricky here, indeed. None of the hotel borders have enough money or access to food to keep them satisfied throughout the day: they are always hungry. Because of this, trying to do anything with food when they are around is not that simple. And because they are always around, any situation involving food is pretty much always a difficult situation for me. I rarely eat in front of the kids. When I do eat, I try to do it either in my office when they aren’t there or in my room when they are in study. I’ve pretty much stopped cooking all together since cooking drags out the whole food process and I then run the risk of having a kid stop by while I’m preparing food. During my first year, I found it very difficult to circumvent this problem. However, lately I've just resorted to limiting my food intake to things similar to what the kids eat: brown bread, rice, sauce, tea, etc. It seems that when the things I eat are similar to the things they are eating, the kids are a bit easier to handle.

The way I see it, hunger is the root of many, many problems in Namibia. Health problems (HIV-related or not) are intensified by undernourishment in so many people. That one is obvious. But hunger contributes to Namibia’s troubles in many more, not-so-obvious ways. When a child is hungry, he or she will do just about anything to get food, or to get money for food. I don’t think I need to elaborate here—just use your imagination. It is as bad as what you’re thinking.

Food is like a golden ticket. If you ever have a function or meeting that you need people to attend, providing food will ensure a complete turnout. Since both weddings and funerals usually provide some kind of meat or food to those who attend, security is pretty tight at such occasions. In fact, last year at a funeral for a learner from our school, many of his fellow classmates were chased away by adults who claimed that the kids, his friends, were only attending to eat. And maybe they were… who knows?

What’s really crazy is to think that of other African nations, Namibia is doing okay when it comes to food. We don’t have McDonald’s (thank god) or fully stocked grocery stores that are in any way affordable, but our shops look a little less bare than, say, Zimbabwe’s. Here, there are some crops and goats and cattle, and enough silliness exported from South Africa to tide most cravings. The World Food Programme is in Namibia and does provide food for many schools, but it’s not because of an emergency. These days, the aid is more because of drought and lack of crops, not because of war.

Living in Africa, even traveling to Africa probably, gives you a new appreciation for food. I wouldn’t say that I was ever really a picky eater before, but I was definitely more selective in the states. Africa changed that. I used to think it was funny when the kids ate the entire apple, core and all, or gnawed on the bones of their goat or chicken meat. Now, I join in the fun. I still have preferences, sure, but these days when food comes my way, I take it and eat it and I’m grateful.

In a scatter-brained moment last week while hiking back to Omaruru, I left both my wallet and cell phone in my hike. I had been dropped about 60km outside of Omaruru and only realized my mistake as the driver was speeding away down the road. Along with water, I’d say a cell phone the most important thing to have with you when hiking (money does help, too). Getting stuck deep in the bush without any way to call for help is a hiker’s greatest fear realized and I try at all costs to avoid such a situation. As the midday sun blazed down, I had a brief moment of worry, but somehow I knew things would work out. Before long, a man in a bakkie pulled up and asked where I was going. The next town down the road was Omaruru so I knew he was going my way, but he was hoping to make a profit off of transporting me. I explained my situation and after a small amount of eye-rolling, he agreed to take me free of charge. He didn’t want to, and he didn’t have to, but he did it anyway.

I arrived home to an empty house I’d been away from for nearly two weeks. As a result, my food supply amounted to nothing more than a few bottles of water and some drink concentrate, a lemon, a tomato and some dried beans (I eat funny stuff). When I told the kids what had happened, they sprung into action. One let me borrow her cell phone to try and track down my belongings, and 4 or 5 others began scavenging for rations for the whole lot of us.

I managed to get a hold of my driver and deduced (despite a significant language barrier) that he did have my things and would hold them until further notice. Unfortunately, he was at his home in Walvis Bay, out on the coast about 250km from Omaruru. So the kids and I ate our dinner of bread and tomatoes and discussed how we would remedy this predicament.

I figured that the more time I let pass, the more likely it was that my things would go missing. So the next morning I decided to hike to the coast to try and recover my things. I had nothing but the clothes on my back, a bottle of water and N$70 I borrowed from one of the kids. I got picked up by a man who agreed to take me all the way for N$70. I told him about my problem and he sympathized and bought me dried meat along the way and made sure to drop me exactly where I needed to go once we arrived to the coast. I met up with my driver who was extremely apologetic about what had happened. He insisted upon buying me a seafood lunch, and afterwards when I told him that it had been my first hot meal in over a week, he was appalled. Then he drove me back to Swakopmund, helped me find a hike and gave me N$50 for the road (the money in my wallet was taken—really a small price, considering how much more I could have lost).

The reason this story was so interesting to me was because not once throughout the entire ordeal was I truly worried. I thought it was very probable that my things would be stolen or damaged by the time they were returned to me, but I never worried about how I would make due for two days with no money and no food and no cell phone—I knew that there would be people who would help me. Some people may call this white privilege, and sure in some cases it is, but similar things happen with my kids. For many kids who live outside the hostel, they truly do not know where their next meal will come from. They eat whenever food is offered to them, and if they are hungry they go in search of something to fill their stomachs. One would think that such a situation, of not knowing if or when you will eat next, would put any child in a great state of anxiety. However, they never really panic about it. Someone always helps them out—a teacher or a neighbor or a friend. People share whatever they have, even if it is small. Similarly, when I was without food and money to buy food, I didn’t worry about it. My kids and some colleagues shared what they had and my fellow hikers shared oranges and meat and cool drink with me. And even if the man hadn’t treated me to lunch, I met enough generous people along the way that I would have been fine.

Namibia is a difficult country, this is true. People aren’t always outwardly accepting of you, and your differences often times seem to overpower any similarities you may share with members of your community. However, I still believe that what I said so many months ago, about Namibians being some of the kindest people I’ve ever met, holds true. While I have encountered plenty of difficult and lonely situations here, at the end of the day I’ve always found someone who will help me out or take care of me if I’m in need. People take care of others here, even when they don’t want to. It seems that in Namibia, human morality always wins out over convenience or personal feelings.

Living in Africa has made me realize that hunger and poverty truly are the root causes of things such as terrorism and war, much more so than any of the other problems we are spending billions of dollars trying (unsuccessfully for the most part) to combat. Even if eradicating hunger wouldn’t in itself solve global crises, it would at the very least be a catalyst for change. As long as people are hungry, they will be desperate, and as long as people are desperate, there will be trouble and danger. I wonder how long it will take for the powers-that-be to realize this simple truth: in the long run, protecting ourselves and our interests’ means taking care of those who are suffering. The two are intertwined, there’s just no way to get around this. And the way I see it, there will continue to be heartache for all of us until this is realized.

“The day hunger is eradicated from the earth, there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world on the day of that great revolution.”

-Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet

Why do we stay?

2007-10-04T10:18:00.000+02:00

I know... I've been bad at updating lately, and if anyone is still checking this blog, I apologize. I do have a lot to say but I haven't had time to organize my thoughts in awhile, which is why I haven't attempted to write anything. I also have a lot of pictures I want to post, but I'll be in Windhoek next week so I'm waiting to take advantage of the less frustrating internet access in the capital city. I promise something original in the next few weeks-- don't give up on me just yet.

Instead of writing something myself, I thought I would share something written by a fellow PCV in my group. Angela submitted this to our volunteer publication called IZIT? that we send out every few months. Among other things, IZIT? contains funny or ridiculous stories about learners or colleagues or daily happenings, humorous SMSes received or sent, as well as insightful essays about life in Nam. The question of “why am I here?” is something that I know must resonate with every long-term volunteer at one point or another during his or her service. Though we often discuss such things and share possible reasons with one another, I think identifying the “why?” is a very personal and necessary moment for every volunteer. I thought Angela’s story was touching, so with her permission I decided to share it here.

Why do any of us stay here?:

Recently, following a physical attack by an angry taxi driver and an infuriating lack of response by passers-by and Nam-Police, a fellow PCV sent me an sms asking “Why do any of us stay here?” In the wake of a situation like that, it is difficult to call to mind why. The sms left me pensive for a week.

WHY?

A World Teach volunteer visited the next weekend, and she was asking similar questions: when the grades don’t improve in the classes you teach, why do you say the kids are enough to make you stay here for two years? Whenever I ask about your classes, the answers don’t sound like what you are doing is working, so why are you (why are any of us) here? My defense to the World Teach volunteer came quickly – I am here because I believe with all my heart in the power of education. I am here because these kids also have the right – just like you and I had – to a QUALITY education. Regardless of if they pass or fail, they should be given as much of a chance as possible with a teacher who cares. I do believe that – but I knew even as I was saying it that while that might be the reason I came here in the first place, that belief is not really what makes me stay. I just didn’t know what it is that keeps me – that keeps any of us – here. I couldn’t quantify it or verbalize it, but I knew there is a reason, or a quality within us, that keeps us here – that carries us back to work again the next day after only 3 kids passed the math test, a staff meeting was three hours longer than necessary because of a discussion about track suits, the teachers stole the kudu meat that was donated for the kids, a colleague “forgot” to inform you that you were on study duty so that you could be ridiculed and called out in the staff room, a child drank copper sulfate solution when you tried to do a practical in science class… something takes us back!

The very next day, the reason manifested in front of me. My school was hosting a choir festival. Thirteen schools from different regions were here to compete in the festival. We did not have any classes Friday, since the kids needed to put all of the desks and chairs into storage and clean the classrooms to prepare a place for about 400 visitors to sleep. The kids were ecstatic, not only by knowing that there were no classes that day, but also because the type of chaos that ensues with 400 visitors meant they could get away with anything they wanted for an entire weekend. The choir festival was, of course, not very well organized. I went to school that Friday expecting to have classes as normal, thinking there might be fifty or sixty extra people coming to stay at the hostel. Apparently that is what the rest of the staff thought also, if they thought anything at all about it. When we were informed how many people were actually coming, a huge argument began, mostly around the fact that there is no hall in town that can hold all the people. The argument ended with most of the staff refusing to help with this disaster since they did not want to be associated with whatever went wrong.

When the time came for the main event Saturday night, I estimate about 1500 people showed up to watch in a hall that has a capacity of maybe 500. The schools paid to participate in this competition, and there were not even enough chairs for the choirs to sit down. The organizer of the event, my school’s secretary, had forgotten about many details, and being white and walking fast (the kids always tell me that miss is walking very fast!) gave most of the visitors the impression that I was supposed to be in charge. Choir directors from other schools were scolding me, “You Americans are the ones to be well organized, and what now! What is this?” What could I say? I just tried to help however I could. The hall filled up quickly, with the choirs sitting two per chair and only about 20 audience members getting a seat. Of those twenty were three white people – two new faces who I had never seen before and a Dutch volunteer. The two new faces turned out to be a couple of Germans visiting the area. I felt self-conscious of my skin color when I saw the scowls on their faces. They were not pleased to be crammed into the hall like sardines; they were not pleased with how loudly everyone was talking around them; they were not pleased with the fact that it was more than two hours since the advertised starting time and the event was not yet ready to begin. No sir, they were not pleased at all with the situation to which they had come to play spectator, and damn if they were going to let go of their chairs to let an old meme sit down!

Finally the event started, but after two choirs performed, the judges made an announcement that unless the crowd quieted down the rest of the event would be cancelled. The noise from the audience was too loud for the judges to hear the choirs. A third choir performed, and the judges made another announcement that we would wait five minutes, give security a chance to identify the chief noisemakers and make them leave, and if the noise was still too much then we would all have to go home. Five minutes, ten minutes, a group of drunk people were escorted out by “security” (a few male teachers and my principal), but it was still too loud to go on. At that point, the three white guests lost their patience. The room was much too crowded to move around without causing a scene, but causing a scene was exactly what they wanted to do. The two Germans marched right up to the stage, told the MC (with scowling faces, shaking heads and pointed fingers flying angrily) exactly what they thought about how poorly run this competition was. They forced a crowd of people to make way so that they could leave through a side door that was intentionally locked. Immediately following, the Dutch volunteer did the same thing, stopping at the stage to say her piece and again forcing the crowd to make way for her to leave through the same locked door.

I looked out from my spot at the judges table, scanning the crowd for the only other white person I knew was there – the World Teach volunteer. I found her in the crowd, and I was telepathically sending her a plea to please, please, please not leave. She wasn’t about to leave. She, like me, was there to stay. She was busy helping to keep order over her school’s choir. She wasn’t frowning or rolling her eyes. She was making the most of it.

Despite repeated threats, the event was not cancelled. Eventually all thirteen choirs performed. After the trophies were awarded, the entire room sang and danced together. A learner from my school sidled up next to me during the dancing, and grinning from ear to ear he declared – “Miss, I am so proud of our school!” Throughout the hectic evening, one-by-one, the nay-saying staff members of my school showed up. Almost the whole staff was there to see our choir’s amazing performance and to dance and sing together at the end of the night. We danced and sang and laughed and enjoyed the time with the visitors until almost midnight. The World Teach volunteer told me that her choir (who won third place) sang the whole bus ride home, and was still singing at study the next morning.

I am sorry for those three people who choose to leave. I am sorry they do not know that nobody listened or cared about what they had to say when they marched up to the stage. In fact, the judges shared a glance, rolling their eyes as if to say “typical.” I am sorry they will never know the joy that filled the room at the end of the night. Their comfort and time, they seemed to think, were more important than anything else going on around them. And that, as I see it, is why we stay. It is something in our hearts that tells us we are not more important, more valuable or better. Something that allows us to go along with whatever is happening and experience it - to get in the middle and be a part of it – not as an onlooker or as a guest, but to really be a part of it! Watching the scene those people made, I felt my face heat up with embarrassment, and I hoped that the rest of the room was not looking at me thinking I am just like them. We stay, because we are not like them. And thank-goodness we are not because we get to dance and laugh with the people who infuriated us the day before, and we get to feel our hearts pound and our eyes fill up with tears when a disadvantaged young school child comes to tell us that he has something to be proud of. And maybe, because we stayed, just maybe someone will want to listen to us when we have something to say.

-Angela Judkins

It was never between us and them anyway...

2007-08-17T17:09:00.000+02:00

Last week my mother told me that my thank you letter for the blanket project was published in the Tribune. So on Monday I went to the bank, checked my balance (damn, only N$445-- US$63-- left for the next three weeks. Bread for dinner again tonight!) and withdrew N$20 so I could go use the internet for 30 minutes. I went online, waited about 20 minutes for the website to load, and clicked on the headline “Local Efforts Help People in Africa.” Above the headline it said: 17 comments. Hmm, comments. Interesting feature, I thought to myself. I quickly skimmed my article for overlooked grammatical errors or Namlish (habits of an English major trapped in a non-English speaking country) and moved on to the comments.

Wow.

I was surprised. Clearly, many readers had not understood the point of the article. The thank you article was not asking for approval. I didn’t write it to encourage people to give to Africa or to my community in Namibia, and I didn’t write it to claim that poor Africans are more deserving than the poor of America. In fact, to most people who responded, I didn’t write the article for you at all. I wrote the article to thank the young people of Onalaska and La Crosse who initiated this wonderful act of kindness. That was the point, and it’s unfortunate that people missed it.

I thought about writing a long, angry response (actually, I did write one. It was therapeutic) in defense of the innocent young students who worked so hard on the blankets. This project had value that stretched so far beyond what anyone back home can realize, and demeaning that value is shameful. However, judging by the comments, I doubt anything I say will ever get through to such people (people who know nothing of African history, or of America’s involvement in African history; people who truly believe that Africans don’t need blankets because Africa’s a hot place or that nights of 25 degrees FAHRENHEIT do not warrant blanket use). Yes, I thought about responding, but most of the comments were too ignorant to justify a response (take, for example, the suggestion to donate an ice cream-making machine instead of blankets. Yeah… send it this way… along with, um, electricity. And money to pay for the electricity. And milk and sugar. And did you know that, because of malnourishment, an estimated 70% of Namibians are lactose intolerant? So be sure to send with it medication for the many children with thin stomachs who will not be able to resist making themselves sick off the treasures produced by this new white-man’s machine. Yes… ice cream. Good idea. Forget the blankets.). Responding was tempting, but in the end it was too easy, so I decided to leave it alone.

I’ve received a fair amount of criticism since I joined Peace Corps. Initially, not everyone-- including family and friends-- understood or agreed with my intentions to volunteer overseas for two years. It was a very difficult decision for me to make and I considered all sides, but in the end I felt accepting my invitation to serve was something I had to do for me. Joining the Peace Corps and moving to Namibia has been the hardest yet most wonderful experience of my life. I’m more comfortable and confident and at peace with myself than I have ever been, and a bit of criticism could never damage that. In fact, keep it coming. What angered me about the bloggers, and what made me consider responding, was that they were judging not me, but the generous work done by those who participated in the blanket project. By belittling this project, they belittled everyone involved with it. From the school children to the Franciscan Sisters to the battered women’s shelters to the elderly and the terminally ill-- they judged these people and overshadowed their efforts with blind criticism. I am a critical person and these are people I wouldn’t dare touch. At the same time, I personally know many of those who participated in the blanket project; I know their spirits are strong and while I do feel some sort of responsibility to stand up for them, I know they are far wiser than the people who made light of their efforts. They don’t need me to defend them.

There is suffering everywhere, including the US: this is true and I’m the first person to admit this. Suffering is universal, as is poverty. Nevertheless, as anyone who has spent time in Africa (or any developing country) can tell you, poverty and suffering here cannot be compared with poverty and suffering there. Do I actually have to say that? There is no comparison… there just isn’t. Don’t pursue that argument. However, as my mother noted, while poverty and death and disease are horrible ways to suffer, it is apparent that Americans (La Crosse-ites) may be suffering from something much worse: a moral suffering of the soul.

In the end, what was most disappointing for me was that such remarks came from my hometown newspaper. I love La Crosse and will always consider it home. Part of the reason I was so impressed with the blanket project is because I know La Crosse is a small, conservative mid-western town that perhaps a few years ago didn’t know much about Namibia or Africa. Coming up with such a generous donation for disadvantaged children so far away from them is a wonderful sign that La Crosse area residents, especially the youth, are becoming more aware and considerate of the world at large. The Namibians who were involved with the blankets (teachers, children, even Peace Corps staff) are so impressed with the good deeds of the citizens of La Crosse. They admire you all and are genuinely grateful for all that you have given them. And then of course, there are my kids. My kids think La Crosse must be the greatest city in America. They are bound and determined to find someway to visit me and my “village” some day, and there isn’t a doubt in their minds that they will be welcomed with open arms by all the citizens of La Crosse. What was most disappointing for me was to realize that today, at this moment, this would not be the case.

Though I do not judge people who choose to hide in the anonymity of cyberspace, I do wonder about you-- who you are and what purpose you feel you are serving by posting anonymous and negative comments about newspaper articles that are in no way harmful or hurtful to you. If you would like to share this information with me, please do so. Additionally, as from your criticisms I assume YOU yourself are actively working within the La Crosse area to assist those who are suffering, please share with me the stories of how you are fighting the good fight; positive stories from home go a long way for me here. And if you have any further criticisms of the blanket project (or of myself), please send them my way. Defending great, humanitarian work like what these young people have done is something I will never get tired of and is definitely the easiest fight I will fight this week. Send letters to Private Bag 2017, Omaruru, Namibia, Africa. My email address is cgokey@gmail.com. If you have a calling card you can try to get through to my phone by dialing 011264812040485. Leave the others alone.

I have the following poem taped to the wall of my bedroom. At a time when I was doubting myself it was given to me by someone I have a great deal of respect for, and I think it’s a good message to pass on to the people involved with the blanket project who may feel a bit sad by the insensitivity of some silly bloggers. Sometimes standing alone is okay when you know for sure what it is you are standing for. Because when all is said and done, it was never between you and them anyway...

People are often unreasonable,
illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of
selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
people may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you’ve got,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis,
It never was between you and them anyway.

-Mother Theresa

The Blanket Project

2007-06-29T20:48:00.000+02:00

It started as a way to help children in need; what it blossomed into was remarkable. After learning about the poor living conditions of learners in Namibia, an impoverished Sub-Saharan African nation, students in the Onalaska School District decided they could do something to help. Last October, they began gathering materials to make fleece tie-blankets. They started small, encouraging their families, friends and classmates to participate, but it quickly ballooned into a project that took roots throughout the Onalaska and La Crosse areas.

This past March after 31 days of travel, a journey which wasn’t without its fair share of obstacles, 15 boxes weighing 60 pounds each and carrying 235 blankets, along with additional fabric, arrived in the small Namibian town of Omaruru. While you are too many to name individually, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those who supported the Onalaska blanket project to benefit the learners of S.I. !Gobs Senior Secondary School and Omaruru Primary School, both in Omaruru. These blankets represent the generosity, hard work and selflessness of countless learners, teachers, schools, families and individuals throughout the coulee region.

It is hard for me to adequately express how thankful I am to those of you who participated in this project. I am fairly confident that the majority of you have no idea how greatly you have helped the people of this small community. These blankets are not only the first for many of my learners, but they are also the first for many of the families of my learners.

With the extra fabric that was sent, I made 30 additional blankets with four of my Grade 12 learners. The women in my community came by the school daily to collect the excess fabric that we cut off. They will use this fabric to sew clothes and blankets for themselves and their families. Nothing will go to waste.

Now that we are in our winter months our evening temperatures have begun to drop, some nights to as low as 25 degrees. Because of your help, 265 learners, young people between the ages of 6 and 20, now have blankets to keep them warm while they sleep. And when the heat of our desert summer returns, these blankets will serve as mattresses for the many learners who sleep only on the metal springs of their bed frames. Knowing that you have directly impacted the lives of hundreds of young people should, I hope, bring you more fulfillment than any words I could ever write to thank you.

The blanket project was the brainchild of four young citizens of the world from Onalaska. Siblings Kelly, Patrick, Danny and Molly Garrity took it upon themselves to come up with a way to help children less fortunate than them. With the support of their parents, Timmy and Ann Garrity, these four children mobilized their schools, friends and family to take part in their project. Above everyone else, I have to thank them. It seems to me that there are few things more beautiful than young people helping other young people. Your compassion has inspired many, and your kind-hearted gesture will be remembered for years by the people of my community.

Along with the schools and community members who worked on this project, I’d like to express my gratitude to Mr. Don Weber and Mr. Brian Hafner, both of Logistics Health Inc. in La Crosse, who provided the shipping of all 15 boxes of blankets. I must also thank the United States Peace Corps for their in-country support of the blanket project. It is only because of your assistance that the children of Omaruru received their blankets in time for the winter season.

And finally, to the many people who worked behind the scenes-- including my mother Sheila Garrity, who has always been committed to serving those less fortunate-- your dedication to this project has been admirable and I am grateful to you all.

This type of project clearly illustrates how a small group of motivated people can make a great difference in the lives of others. Your work has touched my heart. I thank you.

The FedEx delivery arrives in Omaruru. I think the driver was a bit overwhelmed by our excitement.

Levi and Mario, hard at work on the first day of blanket making on our side

Trouble 1 and trouble 2, working as a team

The learners at Omaruru Primary School on the chilly morning of the blanket handover.

OPS is a former white school, which is why the courtyard and corridors are so nice. If you compare these pictures with pictures from S.I. !Gobs (not a former white school), you will clearly see the difference.

The happy recipients at OPS.

The Day of the African Child

2007-06-16T11:39:00.000+02:00

Today in Namibia and South Africa we are recognizing the Day of the African Child, an important day of remembrance. I know that I often joke about the massive number of public holidays and long weekends we celebrate here in Nam. Some holidays, such as “workers day” and “family day,” although appreciated, seem a bit random to me. However, today’s holiday has an incredible amount of significance that I’m guessing many people do not know about. Don’t feel bad if you’re one of those people; I presented a short lesson to my Grade 7 learners yesterday and was surprised to find that many of them were not completely certain of the history behind today. Because I know there may be many of you who are not certain, as well, I thought I would recap my Grade 7 lesson for you. Now, as you read this lesson, picture me trying to teach it (in a mixture of broken English and Afrikaans) to a class of 42 12 to 15-year old maniacs, while I'm running around the classroom pulling one learner back into the room as he is trying to escape through the window, and taking bird meat away from another learner while at the same time trying to comfort the crying learner who killed the bird and then had his meat stolen from him. Teaching is fun :)

I will admit, I hadn’t heard of the Day of the African Child until I came to Namibia, but I had heard about Soweto, as I assume many of you have. Soweto is a township, a location, outside of Johannesburg. Locations are informal settlements or shanty towns on the outskirts of towns and villages where black people were relocated during apartheid. Until recently, most townships were not maintained by town councils or municipalities. As a result, most of these areas are incredibly underdeveloped and impoverished. I’ve talked a lot about the locations here in Namibia and posted some pictures of Ozondje in Omaruru. While locations in South Africa look similar to locations in here, South African locations have hundreds of thousands of people, along with hundreds of schools, shops, and even paved roads, while in rural Namibia most locations (excluding Windhoek) don’t exceed a few thousand residents, maybe one school, and a bottle store here and there.

The single's quarters in Ozondje here in Omaruru.

In 1974, the Regional Director of Education for the Soweto region declared that, as from January 1975, the medium of instruction in Sowetan schools must be Afrikaans. While English would be used for some of the subjects, indigenous languages were to be virtually left out. A poll taken around this time showed that something like 98% of young people in Soweto did not want to be taught in Afrikaans. Afrikaans was considered by many to be the language of the apartheid regime, the language of the oppressor. Nowadays, Afrikaans has become the lingua franca in Namibia and much of South Africa, but during the days of apartheid, Afrikaans carried with it a distinct connotation. The dark association that people made between Afrikaans and apartheid is what caused most school children to prefer to learn and be taught through an English medium. But the Afrikaner-dominated government had made their decision and the concerns of the students were ignored.

Resentment continued to grow amongst the students until April 1976 when children from one Sowetan school went on strike and refused to attend until their voices and concerns were taken into account. Their strike spread to many other schools in Soweto, and school children from throughout the township decided to plan a formal demonstration for June 16.

On the morning of the demonstration, thousands of black students marched from the schools through Soweto in protest against Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in their schools. Community members and teachers also joined in their protest, including some teachers who had been previously dismissed by schools for their refusal to teach in Afrikaans. As they marched, they found police had barricaded their intended route. Instead of provoking the police, the students remained calm and continued on with their march, taking an alternative route and breaking into song as they marched. By the time the protesters had reached the stadium where they had planned their rally, the group had grown to between 3000 and 10,000 individuals. Police officers were astounded and called for reinforcement. Without having had any formal training on how to deal with a protest of this sort, the police force began to panic. Armed with tear gas and guns, police officers began to fire shots indiscriminately at the children and their fellow protesters, who were unarmed. Some people say that the children threw stones in retaliation while others say the protesters were peaceful and retaliated in no way. As the riots continued, children were admitted in streams to nearby clinics; almost all of them were said to have sustained bullet wounds. At the end of the day, 23 people, including three whites, were killed.

This is probably the most famous picture taken during the Soweto riots, and is what sparked public outrage around the world. 12-year old Hector Pieterson was one of the first children to die, after having been shot in the head. He was carried out of the riot by Mbuyisa Makhubo, an older school boy, as well as Hector's older sister, and was rushed to the nearby clinic but was pronounced dead upon arrival. After the riots, both Makhubo as well as the man who took this picture, Sam Nzima, were continuously harrassed by police officers, forcing them both to eventually flee South Africa and go into hiding.

Hostility, already very high between police and young people continued to grow throughout the Soweto area as the demonstrations spilled over into the following days. As more protestors, both blacks and whites, joined the demonstrators, police continued to shoot and kill people at random. The day after the riots began in Soweto, 1500 police officers, armed with automatic rifles and stun guns, patrolled the township in police vehicles and helicopters. The South African Army was on standby, ready if military force became necessary. Soweto had become a war zone.

No accurate accounts of how many people died during the Soweto riots can be found. While the South African government originally claimed only 23 were killed, Reuters estimates that there were more than 500 fatalities. The number wounded is estimated at over 1000.

I was talking with my secretary yesterday morning about the Day of the African Child. A coloured (the term we use here for a person of mixed race) South African woman who was just 8-years old during the Soweto riots, she remembers this time clearly. We were talking about racism in South Africa and Namibia, and I asked her if things began to improve in South Africa immediately after independence. “They improved then, yes,” she said. “But after Soweto… after Soweto is when things really started to change.”

Many people consider the Soweto riots to be the beginning of the end of the apartheid era in South Africa. Black people who may have been passive about the separation of the races now saw clearly just how bad things were. Similarly, many white people were outraged with what their government had done, and they joined in the fight against apartheid, as well. Prior to Soweto, many South Africans, especially whites, considered “liberation struggles” to be outside their borders in places like Namibia and Zimbabwe. Soweto opened many people’s eyes to the realities of life and freedoms in South Africa.

Racism is something I haven’t written much about since I’ve been in Namibia, though I feel it and experience it every single day here. Writing about it seems so overwhelming to me because it’s such a big part of my life. For many Namibians, white people symbolize the colonial past. While getting to know me does (I hope) quickly dissolve those thoughts, initial perceptions of me, based simply on my skin color, are often not positive. I experienced racism a bit when I was in South Africa as well, but on a different level. “Racism is still around in South Africa, but it’s not so bad,” my secretary told me. “Not like in Namibia. Racism is alive and kicking in Namibia.”

PCVs and PC staff in Namibia occasionally speak in hushed tones about the story that more Peace Corps Volunteers in Namibia ET (early terminate, meaning they do not fulfill their 2-year service agreement) than in any other country in which Peace Corps serves. I don't know how accurate that claim is, but it is what many people say is true. Considering some of the countries that volunteers work in, that story may seem a bit surprising. On the surface Namibia seems like a very friendly, livable country. Many volunteers have running water, electricity, actual houses to live in—things we all expected to sacrifice when we signed up for Peace Corps-Africa. One would think that life as a volunteer would be easy here. Once you crack that surface, though, you find things to be very different than what you originally perceived.

The truth is that it isn’t the physical hardships that volunteers have to endure that cause many to ET. Anyone can live without running water or learn to pee in a pit latrine. The human spirit is very strong and can adapt to simple challenges like that. While the physical may be hard, I’ve come to realize that it’s the mental, emotional challenges that cause so many volunteers to break down.

I cannot speak for all the volunteers in Namibia, but for me I can say that of all the mental and emotional challenges I encounter, racism is easily the most difficult part of my life in Namibia and it’s something I struggle with almost everyday.

I don’t want to write about race right now—it will be a very long story that I may write about someday, but not now. I think today it’s better to acknowledge those young people who stood up so many years ago to fight against something they believed was wrong. These children, some of them only primary school-aged, gave their lives to make change happen, a sacrifice unparalleled by any other. They changed the world, and they deserve so much more than one day of recognition for that.

On CNN.com today, I read that a former KKK member in the US was convicted of racially motivated murders he committed more than 40 years ago. I thought it was a great coincidence to read about such justice on a day when we in Africa are remembering a day that is considered “the beginning of the end” of the legal separation of races. So there are some reasons to remain hopeful, no?

Namibia definitely has a long way to go, but I am encouraged that I see a similar fighting spirit in some of my learners. Young people truly are amazing; if anyone is going to save the world, it’s going to be them. Today they should be honored.

And that’s my lesson :) Now, get off of your desk Johannes, please give Kuhande’s shoe back to her Abel, and take that bird outside, Ndimulunde! The bell is about to ring.

And remember Soweto today.

Some Grade 1 cuties at our African Child Day celebration yesterday.

Girls and Guys Leading Our World

2007-05-25T14:56:00.000+02:00

Let me preface this entry by saying that sometimes, being away from site-- from work and school-- for an extended period of time causes my English to take a beating. I'm not having the good English at this moment (only the good Namlish, as you can see :) ) so this may not be my most eloquent submission, but bare with me.. I believe it to be temporary.

I’m just now coming to the end of my month-long holiday. This past trimester was probably the toughest one we have seen at the school, and for a number of reasons, so I was glad to see it come to an end with no deaths or serious injuries (this was/is an actual concern). Over holiday I spent time on the coast, as well as in Rundu and Keetmanshoop (if you check a map you will see that these three points are quite a distance from one another—lots of great hiking stories, as always :) ). It was nice to get away for awhile and catch up with some friends.

Hiking on the long road to somewhere.

Though I was technically on break, I did spend part of my holiday working. The first week of my break was spent at a primary school in Windhoek where 80 learners, 15 Namibian facilitators and 20 PCVs met to participate in Camp GLOW 2007.

For those of you who don’t know, Camp GLOW is a United States Peace Corp leadership camp that is offered to young people in countries where Peace Corps Volunteers serve. GLOW stands for: Girls and Guys Leading Our World. In Namibia, GLOW is organized by PCVs who also serve as members of the Peace Corps GAIN (Gender Awareness in Namibia) Committee. Sponsored by organizations such as UNICEF and USAID, as well as individual donors, Camp GLOW provides young people with an opportunity to come together for one week and discuss topics such as gender awareness, the promotion of self-confidence, future career choices, the development of leadership skills, and fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Peace Corps volunteers worked in advance to train young, out of work adult Namibians who in turn helped facilitate these sessions during the camp week. From a large pool of applicants, 80 learners from around Namibia were selected and given the opportunity to come together and learn from one another, to ask questions and to open their minds to new ideas. This was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for each learner who attended. Extra-curricular camps such as GLOW are non-existent in Namibia-- nowhere else is such a forum provided to young people. Children are spoken to, not spoken with; they are rarely given the opportunity to discuss issues affecting their lives. Camp GLOW gave them these opportunities for the first time.

Though the camp lasted only one week, it took many months of preparation to make that one week possible. As the transportation coordinator for my region (Erongo), I was responsible for getting the 13 learners, 2 facilitators and myself from our homes to Windhoek. Sounds easy enough, no? No. Transportation is never easy here, and this was no exception. After putting in multiple requests for transportation with the Ministry of Youth, and being denied multiple times, I spent the better part of the week leading up to camp on the phone screaming at the Minister of Youth and throwing out every possible threat I could think of in a desperate attempt to have him reconsider my request. As my region is quite rural and all of my learners are very poor, without free government transportation, none of these kids would have been able to attend camp. While I know the Minister understood this, he was more than a little irritated with me, and he used his power to hold out on me until the absolute last minute-- at 11am on Friday morning, the day before camp, my approval came through. Though I know I made no friends in the Ministry of Youth and I doubt I will be able to work very successfully with them again, it was well worth it to ensure that all my kids made it to camp safely.

The campers arrived on a Saturday and camp officially started Sunday morning. We began by breaking the kids up into their teams, trying to split up kids coming from the same areas in order to encourage them to meet new people and make new friends. We gave them some time to come up with a team name and a team cheer, which they presented to the group before we began with the day’s activities. Day one was Character Development Day. In their teams, campers discussed what is “great” about them—what characteristics made them a good and unique person. On small pieces of paper, they coloured and labeled an outline of a person’s body but used words and descriptions that they as individuals possessed. In the afternoon, each camper was given a very large piece of butcher paper. They each were to lie down on the piece of paper and have a partner trace their body. Campers then spent the next few hours decorating their body in an attempt to describe themselves artistically. Using materials such as old magazines, markers, stickers, glitter, yarn and buttons, the kids worked hard on their life-sized portraits. The end results were wonderful and the learners’ creativity really came through. This type of activity is something I feel I did numerous times throughout my childhood, but none of these kids had ever worked on a similar project, a fact that was apparent as we watched them work so hard for hours. It's actually quite rare that they ever get to use art to express themselves, so this activity was a nice change for them. The final products were displayed on the walls of the dining hall we were using, and we encouraged campers to use free time throughout the week to write nice notes to one another on the drawings. (Side note: The volunteers also participated in this activity. Maybe I will post a picture of the affirmations that the kids wrote for me because they are, as you may assume, absolutely hilarious.)

Campers working hard on their life-sized portraits

The final products

For the evening session, we surprised the kids with a visit from one of the biggest recording artists in Namibia, Gazza. Gazza would be the equivalent of someone like 50-Cent coming to a summer camp in the states—he’s a pretty big deal, and the kids about had a panic attack when he walked through the door. He is the UN Ambassador for Youth in Namibia and was very willing to come and speak to the campers, which was really awesome. He opened his speech by asking the kids how many of them live in homes without water or electricity. While most were too ashamed to raise their hands (even though this is a reality for the majority of them), he continued on, and spoke about his childhood, and how he grew up in an overcrowded house filled with poverty; how he grew up just like they are growing up now. Even though he was faced with adversity as a young person, he overcame these obstacles and was able to achieve his dream of becoming a famous musician. It was a gamble having him come because none of us were too sure of what he may say, but his speech couldn’t have been more appropriate.

Gazza, under attack.

Day two was Future Day. The details of this day unnerved us PCVs because for the first time, we were going to take the kids outside of the school compound. The neighborhood that the school was in was not the safest neighborhood, so there was no way we were allowing any of the kids to wander outside the school grounds during camp. However, on this particular day not only were we opening up the gates of the school, we were bussing the kids into the city of Windhoek (the school was in the location outside of the city limits). Organizing field trips with young people is difficult at schools in America. Schools take over-the-top safety measures when they take kids on field trips, even if the kids are only traveling within their own town. For quite a number of our 80 campers, this was the first time they had visited the capital city. Not only that, for many of them, this was the first time they had ever left their village. Coming from a village of maybe 100 or 200 people where you know and trust everyone, and then trying to navigate safely around a city of nearly 230,000 people, where even I don’t always feel safe, was going to be a learning experience for all of the kids. The day started with a tour of Parliament, where the campers got to sit in the huge leather chairs of the ministers and hear about country-wide politics and how decisions and laws that affect them are made. In the afternoon, the learners were given the opportunity to tour UNAM (Namibia’s only university), visiting classrooms and meeting with current university students to hear about their experiences. The 80 learners selected for Camp GLOW are some of the brightest learners in Namibia, and while university is definitely an option for many of them, often times mitigating factors get in the way. I think the fact that these kids were actually able to walk down the hallways and in the classrooms of the university—the fact that now they have an actual picture in their minds of some place they’d like to go in the future—will help them tremendously as they try to stay focused on what they want out of life. And we didn’t lose any of the kids during these expeditions! A relief.

Namibian Parliament

During the evening session of Future Day, we invited Selma, one of our APCDs, to come and speak to the kids. She spoke about how she grew up very poor and disadvantaged, just like many of them; how she had to pound mahangu and work in the fields as a child, just like many of them; and how she worked hard and never gave up, and has now become a very successful Namibian woman. The kids were really able to relate to her, and were able to see that when people stay focused and work hard, it is possible to achieve a better life.

Day three was Teambuilding Day and Camp GLOW Olympics. We started the day in a very dramatic fashion, describing to the kids what the Olympics games are and even staging a mock-Olympic opening ceremondy, complete with cheesy music and a running of the torch. The kids then spent the better part of the day competing against one another’s teams in activities such as the 4 x 4 relay, a wall climb and a water balloon relay (hilarious). After having a few days to get to know one another, the teams worked really well together, not only as teammates but as competitors as well. When one team was successful, the others were congratulatory; and when one team would struggle, the other teams came in to offer words of encouragement. One of the big rules of camp was that all discussions at all times must be in English, so as to avoid excluding people who are coming from different tribes. While this is generally a rule in all classrooms and schools that we teach at as well, we really worked to enforce it at camp, and the kids responded wonderfully. It was the first time I saw a number of kids I know communicate in English with members of their own tribe. During these competitions, it was even more apparent, and it was great to see kids of all tribes and with varying mother tongues become involved in cheering one another on and working together as a team.

Team Fantastic 10. They had to pass all members of their team over the rope without speaking to one another. This is the strategy they came up with.

In the evening, we had another surprise for the campers when the Brave Warriors, Namibia’s national soccer team, came to help close the Camp GLOW Olympics and hand out certificates to the campers. The Brave Warriors joined us for dinner, as well, giving the kids an opportunity to meet and speak with professional athletes from their own country.

The Brave Warriors

Each day of camp was planned and organized by between two and four PCVs. Day four was HIV/AIDS Day, and was the day that I was responsible for, along with two other PCVs. As we knew this day would have the heaviest and most emotional content, we wanted to save it until near the end of camp so that the kids felt comfortable not only with us, but with their peers within their teams so they could have open discussions and ask questions they may have never felt comfortable asking before. We opened the day with a detailed overview of HIV and AIDS—the origins, causes, prevention, treatment, etc. After this session, we broke the campers up into boys and girls and had a boys talk/girls talk that was facilitated by us PCVs. This talk was the type of talk that probably occurs in any sex education class in America, but such classes do not exist here so these discussions were uncharted territory for many of the kids. With the girls, we began by giving them a detailed description of the female body, including the reproductive organs. We spent a lot of time talking about things like menstruation and puberty, as well as discussing cultural myths and taboos, and answering some really great and honest questions from the girls. For our last activity, we all made beaded bracelets that correlated with the average 28-day menstruation cycle (5 beads representing the days of menstruation, 6 beads representing the days the egg grows in the ovary, 3 beads representing the days that the egg is released, etc.), so the girls could track their own cycle and feel more in control of their bodies. While the separate discussions were to be kept completely confidential, we encouraged the male PCVs to discuss the male reproductive organs with the male campers, as well as things like peer pressure and dispelling cultural myths.

The girls, showing off their new menstrual beads.

The afternoon sessions were a bit more intense for the campers. We began with a presentation by two staff members from a nearby New Start Centre. New Start Centres are health centres that can be found in larger cities around Namibia, and offer free HIV testing and counseling, as well as a wealth of information regarding sexual health and prevention. One of our facilitators volunteered to have a simulated HIV test performed on him, which was great for the kids to see because it showed them how simple it is and how it’s not as scary as people may say.

Seboka simulating an HIV test for the campers.

After the simulations, we called the kids together for what we knew would be the heaviest speech they would hear that week. One of our facilitators, a 26-year old woman who had been a great team coach and facilitator the whole week, revealed to the campers that she is HIV-positive. She told her story of how she became infected, and explained to the kids how she is now living positively and educating others about how to stay safe. It was an eye-opening moment for the kids. Here was a woman who they had grown to love over the past week, who outwardly seemed very healthy but who was infected with this horrible disease. They were able to see that it really can infect anyone. They were also able to see that not everyone who is positive exhibits outward signs of the disease—most people nowadays look just as healthy as any of us. Some tears were shed, but I think it was an incredibly important speech for these kids to hear. To end the day on a more relaxed note, we took the campers to Sam Nujoma Stadium (a very big deal), and played some soccer games with them until after dark.

Fun times at Sam Nujoma Stadium

The final day of camp was Leadership Day. The point of this day was sort of to wrap up the week, and discuss with the campers how they can take the things they learned during the week and bring them back to their schools and communities. The kids spent the day practicing things like public speaking and different ways to lead a group. In the afternoon, we allowed campers to get back together with others from the same school or region and brainstorm different ideas for clubs they would be interested in forming once they returned to school. The campers discussed how they would go back and advocate for things like textbooks for all subjects, well-maintained classrooms and hostels, clean-up campaigns for towns or villages, and the appointment of learners on school boards and town and village councils. In the evening, we had a Camp GLOW talent show(also hilarious), and the kids stayed up way past their bedtimes singing, dancing, and exchanging contact information with all the new friends they made that week.

Friday morning, we herded the campers up, put them back on their busses and combis and sent them on their way. My 65-seat bus that we had arrived in had transformed itself into a 10-person combi (knowing ministry transport, this was not at all surprising). Trying to squeeze 17 campers and facilitators, and all of their belongings, onto the combi wasn’t the most ideal travel situation, but as always, we made the best of the situation, and everyone returned to their homes safe and sound.

The back two rows of my combi. There are 6 more people off to the right that you can't see, as well as 3 more up front where this picture is being taken from. It was a long journey home.

All in all, it was a really wonderful week. Sometimes I forget how strongly environment affects children. You get to know the kids and the situations, but you sort of overlook (or don’t let yourself think about) the uncontrollable settings some of the kids have no choice but to live in. The only environments I’ve ever seen my kids interact in are their school and home environments, neither of which are very healthy. At school they are influenced by an overwhelming number of disruptions and bad influences, including their fellow learners and their teachers; at home, they are expected to take care of things and act as adults, not as children. Neither of these venues provides much opportunity for a young person to enjoy him or herself and be happy. Spending time with 80 of the brightest, best behaved and most promising young people at this camp for one week opened my eyes. Their positive energy was contagious, and they fed off of one another throughout the week. It had been a very long time since I’d seen most of my kids that happy. It’s hard to even put into words how great it feels to see a learner who you have watched struggle for months actually smile, be happy and truly enjoy himself for an entire week. Everything else could have fallen apart, camp could have been a total flop logistically, but if the kids are happy and enjoying themselves-- we really can't hope for much more.

Looking at these pictures since camp has helped me feel some sort of inner calm about life here. We talk a lot about creating sustainable projects that will live on after we have gone, and often times it’s hard not to feel like a failure when it seems nothing that I am doing would ever be able to sustain itself if I wasn’t here. I'm not at all trying to say that I have superior abilities or am irreplaceable, it's just that education has a long ways to go here, and often times I can see that the way I do things, the way I have been trained to work, is more than a few years ahead of how things operate here. Sustainability is an inner battle that all volunteers fight throughout our service, and it's hard to know if anything we ever do will really be beneficial in the long run. But lately, I’ve sort of changed my thinking on all of that. I absolutely think sustainability is important, and it will always remain my primary focus (regardless of grade results and pass rates, I still believe education is the most sustainable thing any of us can pass on to another human being); however, creating something truly sustainable in a country as undeveloped and young as Namibia is quite difficult. So, as of late I’ve decided that it’s more important, and more realistic, for me to focus on doing what I can to help people, especially young people, enjoy their lives and be happy while I am here with them. That could mean giving them the opportunity to attend something like Camp GLOW, but it also means doing very simple things like showing movies to the kids at school or spending weekends meeting with my crazy girls club to work on art projects or take walks together. Making a child feel important and that they do have value—while it’s not truly a sustainable project, the happiness that that child will experience, even if it is only for a short period of time, I know is something they will remember for the rest of their lives.

The truth is that often times, there is so much that needs to be done in these developing countries, it’s truly impossible to know where to start, or to evaluate whether or not we are making any kind of difference. As a volunteer, some things will work, and some things won’t. We try and sometimes we succeed, but often things fall apart and we are left feeling unsure of ourselves and our work. However, the influence that we have on kids is evident and is really the only concrete bi-product of my Peace Corps service that I can say, without a doubt, will stay behind after I have gone.

Camp GLOW was absolutely one of the highlights of my service thus far, and I’d like to thank all of you who offered financial support to make this camp happen. Your contributions sponsored the 80 campers, and helped us provided them with accommodation, travel and food for the week of camp, as well as things like art supplies, camp t-shirts, field-trip expenses, invited speakers and more. Without your contributions, Camp GLOW would not have been possible. Thank you all for your continued support of my work in Namibia; your kindness is appreciated.

Camp GLOW 2007

The Art of Questioning

2007-04-17T14:48:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday, Levi and I went to my office so I could work on some projects and he could escape the monotony of hostel life for a few hours. I finished my preparations for an upcoming teacher’s workshop while he read encyclopedias and played typing games on the computer. Around 16H00, we started to close up the centre. Levi has closed with me many times and knows what it entails, so he went to work locking all the windows and switching off the lights while I packed up my things for the evening. I had only turned my back for a second (something I should know better than at this point, even with the usual suspects) when I heard a loud pop and a yelp from Levi. I turned to find him and the better part of my office floor and walls covered with white fire extinguisher powder. Ever the curious one, and not knowing what the fire extinguisher was, Levi had pulled the pin on the extinguisher in my office. After a fair amount of scolding and a detailed explanation of what exactly a fire extinguisher is and what it is used for, we got to work sweeping and mopping the office. “You see, miss,” Levi said as he mopped, “This is why I like staying with you. I’m always learning things.”

This sort of thing happens a lot. While I often feel that I have failed them as a teacher in the classroom, it seems I teach my kids many more basic and fundamental things just going about my everyday business. The fact that they are with me nearly ever minute that they aren’t in school exposes them to things they perhaps would not be exposed to otherwise. They’ve certainly learned more about the habits of American women then they will probably ever need to know, including the fact that we (well I, anyway) shave our underarms and our legs, don’t often wear wigs, and don’t necessarily know how to cook. A wealth of information, indeed.

Bringing out questions and debates with and among our learners is a universal problem for PCVs. In Namibian culture, young people are taught to respect their elders and any authority figures, including teachers. While in America asking questions would not necessarily be considered disrespectful, here it is a very fine line and most kids choose to keep their mouths shut and play it safe. This situation becomes difficult not only for those of us who are used to teaching in the states, but for all of us who were schooled in a free and democratic society. If my learners aren’t engaged, aren’t challenging me and digging deeper and refuting this claim or that one-- not only do I not know how to teach, I don’t even really know how to converse with people in such an environment.

From very early on, I have pleaded with my kids to speak up and ask questions when they are confused or to argue with me when they don’t agree with something, whether it be inside or out of the classroom. Though it took nearly a year, they’ve gotten a lot better and I’m at the point now where most days I can’t get them to stop with the inquisitions. I have two question boxes, one that I keep in my office for my daily visitors and one that I keep in my grade 7 classroom. I’m not sure if it’s that they’ve never felt comfortable asking questions before, or if they’ve simply never had an adult in their lives who they could ask, but for one reason or another I’ve gotten some pretty fabulous questions over the past year and a half, ranging from honest and profound to hilarious and totally absurd. So, without further ado, I’d like to present...

The Best of Miss Caitlin’s Question Box!
(Gr. 7, 8, 11&12 learners, unedited):

Miss do you cut the hair under your arms or do you just not have any and if you dont have any y dont u?

miss when you say that we can be anythig we want to be does that also includ my brother becaus i realy don’t think he can be anythig

Why is the sun coming in the day and only the moon in night? When will that chang?

Why do boys say they luv u when they realy dont mean that?

Can miss pleas tell my mother about the thing when the peoples die and you burn them up insted of puttin them in the ground becas i told my mother and she said thats not true

Does miss having same orgins on the insid as me?

I just want to ask why dont miss drink beers?

Why do American men not hold hands?

Miss is too soft with the nauty boys. U must beat them. They wil respet u then.

Somtims when I lie to sleep in the nite and my brain wont stop running does this also hapen to you also? or no?

Has miss ever been in love? Can we talk about that?

miss I do NOT undarstand this

why is miss no having hair on your face?

Why did they select your language to be the language of the entire earth? Don’t you feel you got lucky with that?

MISS MARRY MY BROTHER HE IS 1982 ALSO

I just want to tell u that i did’t know what mensies (--menstruation--) was before and i’m still a small bit confusd but i did’t rais my hand when you wer asking

Did miss bring for me food?

I just want to kno who invented english becas it seems you people are changing the rules alot so are you all the inventers? Or what?

miss are we frends?

Why does love hurt?

Even the peopl who are havin the good english here are not speaking the same english as you so who is the most correct is it you or him?

Miss do I stop brething when i sleep?

miss are you having favrites and i think you are having favrites

Did miss wach alien versis predter?

so my grendfather told me people with tatus and holes in your ears wil go to hell but i dont think you wil

Why did’nt America have the apartheid?

miss when I try to study I can only pay attenshion with the ones I am undrstending but when I’m not Undrstending then i forget to pay attenshion and i just want to sleep. this is why I fail. do you know that?

Is america having black peoples or only brown peoples?

Is miss ever feeling lonely?

Does miss dream in english?

I’m going to come visit you in America but i wont go on one of thos aeroplans i wil only go in the boat. And i probly wont swim in that river off yours. Ok?

Do miss know Jenifer Lopes? She is my sister

Can you tell the difrence from black peoples blood and white people?

Remember that day when i told you i was a small bit mad at you well really i was a very big bit mad at you but i did’t tell you but i am forgiving you now

Do people in America suffer?

Hi Miss. Levi told me you were covering your eyes in final destination, but dont you know those kind of movies are not for real? Or maybe do you believes in those things?

When people fight and i mean fight with their hands does this mean they are in love?

Why do the fish always swiming in the same derecshun?

I know it is your real hair but is miss also having a wig?

Do u kno that the grade 12 boys can see in your window from there block? I’m not saying they do but did you know

Why dont America have AIDS?

If I am hanging upside down will my sweats run up or still down? And my nose?

Do you think donkeys and goats think in english. i do’nt think so

Do you think Jesus is speaking in english and damara? Or is he speaking all the languages? Also is Jesus black or a white?

Miss what is phone sex? Is it like what it sounds like it is?

Why does english hav no reesuns for it? It would be more easier to learn if you just give me sum reesuns.

If I stare at the sun for long enough will it actualy burn my eyes out?

Is America really having enouf for every one and I mean every one?

Some time it feels like my brain has switched off. Is this physicaly possibl?

Why dont’ miss want to take a learner? Or at least take a man? It is better than for you to stay alone do you think?

Miss if all i eats is porige ever day will it somehow consume my stomak?

Why does miss no like donkey vleis?

You say that we must never lie but then also you said is not nice to say that Jaclyn is fat but that is the truth so what are you trying to say that I must lie to her then?

miss i have an idea for you to stay in Namibia. so let’s talk about that.

A Family Affair

2007-03-19T09:42:00.000+02:00

First of all, I’d like you all to know that I am posting this entry from the Omaruru TRC’s new internet connection (you all remember dial-up? Yeah, we got that:)). This connection represents not only an entire year of phone calls, letter writing, donation seeking and begging and pleading by the TRC, but more importantly, this is the first ever public internet connection in the Omaruru area. I doubt it will work consistently, and it will of course be affected by our in-and-out electricity as well as our lack of sufficient funds to pay the internet bill, but it’s still a step forward. It may seem small, but it’s actually quite exciting for those of us here who know what internet is.

Anyway.

I had a surprise visit from my APCD Waldo a few weeks ago. Though his timing always seems a bit suspicious (last time he came during a cultural festival when the town was abuzz with food, crafts and festivities; this time, he arrived just in time to share my latest care package from home, consisting of Swedish fish and peanut butter cups… interesting…), he wasn’t here just to visit, but rather to review my first year of service as well as my secondary projects. “Secondary projects” are a mandatory part of PC service, though to me the requirement seems a bit random. Nearly everything I do outside my office could be considered a secondary project. PC service isn’t really a job; it’s a lifestyle. It’s 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. Everything I do somehow contributes to my work as a volunteer. Apart from my role in my primary projects, I fill numerous secondary roles in Namibia. Let me explain.

Most days I feel like a teacher. Even on weekends or on days when I’m not working or in the school, the fact that I’m greeted as “miss” or “may frou” (a title of respect, required to be shown to all teachers) by the vast majority of young people I meet continually reminds me. Many days I feel like a counselor or therapist of sorts. Young people, especially young girls, very often make their way to my office to ask questions ranging from sexual health and boyfriend troubles to the latest school gossip or fashion trends in America. On days when I’m given preferential treatment by complete strangers, I feel the color of my skin. On days when I’m teaching, or hitchhiking on the side of the road, or braaiing with my Namibian friends, or at the farm, or walking through town, I forget the color of my skin. When I really think about the way I eat meat (and how much meat I eat), I feel Namibian; when I’m laughed at for eating apples with peanut butter, I feel not Namibian.

However, not a single day goes by when I don’t feel like a mother. If I had no other secondary project during my service, being a parent to so many kids has to count for something. There are about 250 kids who live in my hostel, all of whom I would do most anything for. However, there is one band of kids, the “usual suspects” as we call them, who have become more like family than anything else. These are the kids who tap on my window on Saturday mornings with their standard greeting: “Miss, I’m awake!” And who proceed to lounge around my house for the rest of the day, cleaning, doing their wash, playing computer games, playing game boy, drawing on my bedroom walls, listening to “Dear Mama” on repeat on my ipod, napping in my bed, cooking porridge, watching movies, terrorizing our cat—finding anything to pass their time.

Levi and Mario doing their wash at my house.

...but no matter how much work there is to be done, they always make time to pose for a picture. This is one of my favorite pictures I've taken in Namibia.

This situation is typical of hostel life. As I’ve mentioned many a time, our house is constantly buzzing with young people. However, the usual suspects make up a special group of daily visitors. They are part of every single day of my life here. If they aren’t at my house at 6H00 to iron their school uniforms or get cold water to drink, they show up at my office at precisely 14H00 in the afternoon to talk about their day or watch me work or read encyclopedias (it keeps them busy for hours). They entertain themselves for the better part of the afternoon, and then at 17H00 we all make our way home together for dinner. Their movements are like clockwork to the point where if a certain time comes and goes without a word from them, I know for certain that something is wrong.

Bongos, Geraldo and Eslon, working hard to look tough for the picture. They made me promise to show this picture to people in America to prove how cool young Namibians are :)

Typical scene at my house by 6AM weekday mornings, the kids coming over to iron their school uniforms. They are religious about ironing their clothes and they take care of their uniforms as if they were gold.

The usual suspects, made up of all boys (as we live in the boys hostel) between the ages of 15 and 22, and I have been through a lot together. From trouble in school and physical violence, to sickness and death of family members and friends, I have bonded with these boys more than most people I know in

Namibia

. As I am one of few actively present adults in the lives of most of them, I am one of the first people they come to with good or bad news. I have held their hands in hospital rooms after fights or accidents have left them bruised and scared or illness has left them struggling to hold on. I have listened to them cry about things as common as being teased by classmates, to things as difficult as having a mother who has been dying their entire life. I have shared in their joys—both in school and out of school—and have hurt for them during their hard times.

Ames, Mario, Levi and Michael- they're pretty good about sharing the Game Boy, as you can see.

Gabriel and Joseph, former Grade 12 learners from last year, posing during one of our hikes up the Omaruru mountain.

Similarly, they have shared in my highs and lows. When my cell phone shows an incoming call from a private number, they scream with excitement, “Miss, it’s your family!” And when I talk of my family or my life in America, they smile from ear to ear and vow to somehow, someday, find a way to make it to my country to see these things. While they are infatuated with the idea of America, they are bound and determined to marry me off to a Namibian man and turn me into a permanent Namibian citizen and resident. One day when I was teaching, I was showing the learners where Wisconsin is on a map and when I referred to it as my “home” one of the kids interrupted me and yelled, “Miss… THIS is your home now!” We don’t talk often of when I will leave Namibia; it seems to be a subject both them and I would prefer to avoid. When I’m sick they visit me, bringing their hostel food to share with me (an incredible gesture of generosity considering the tiny portions of food they’re given), and when I’ve had a bad day or am going through a low point and I retire to my room without much interaction, they draw me pictures that say “Miss, we love you,” and they bring me flowers they pick from the sand.

Levi and Michael, looking oh-so-innocent. This was one of my first days in Omaruru, when their angelic faces made me believe they could do no wrong. This seems like years ago... :)

Michael, Geraldo and Levi striking that cool-Namibian pose again. Don't you love that this is the image of "cool" that our pop culture exports?

Comparing the way in which I grew up to how differently my kids here are growing up rattles my brain. Sometimes I can’t help but think about who these kids could have become had they been given even half the opportunities I have. Had they had the opportunity to school in America, or even to school at a decent school in Namibia, their lives would be so drastically different (…it angers me to think of education as an “opportunity,” but that’s another story completely). Why I grew up on one side of the world, in one kind of environment, and why so many people grew up experiencing something so completely different is a question that has troubled me for most of my adult life. It’s a question I hoped to find some sort of answer to by volunteering in a developing country, though I’m afraid that rather than answers, all I’ve done for myself is highlight my privilege even more than it was highlighted before, and realize that no matter how much I do, I’ll never be able to level the playing field.

I grew up in an environment filled with love. As a child and a young adult, I don’t think a single day passed without someone telling me that I was loved. That kind of care and support is what has helped me succeed in life. Of course there were times when I struggled in school or in life, and there are still plenty of days when I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I truly believe that if I want to and if I work hard enough, I can do anything I set my mind to. That confidence is a direct result of being surrounded by loving parents and a loving family.

That is so far from the case for every young person I know here.

J.J., Bongos and Erwin: Three young adult Namibian men ironing, sewing and sweeping the floor of a house belonging to two single women.
This photo gives me hope for the future of Namibia.

Levi's 17th birthday last year. We took this picture so he could show his mother. It was the first time in his life he'd had a birthday cake.

If you’ve ever known someone in an abusive relationship, you have seen how quickly their self worth deteriorates. When you are treated as if you are worthless, it doesn’t take long before you start to believe it to be true. And when you are daily beaten down, emotionally and physically, and for years neglected by the people who are supposed to care for you the most, it becomes very difficult for anyone to convince you that your life is worth living. For most of my kids, they have exclusively been in these types of relationships their entire lives. Brought up in the world of apartheid, my kids were taught since childhood that there was always someone better or more deserving of good things than them. Many of them are so unsure of themselves that they struggle to raise their voice to conversation level. Whereas I find it quite startling when someone I don’t know is rude to me, my kids are equally surprised when a stranger, especially a white person, shows them kindness. Even today, 16 years after independence, my kids know their place in society. They are so conditioned as to how to behave around white people that it took them a long time to behave as normal children around me. And even now, after over a year of daily interaction, there are times when I will move my hand too quickly when I’m near them and they will flinch or shudder, bracing themselves. They know I would never, ever hit them, but that defensive response, perfected over the past 15 to 20 years, is difficult for them to shake. It makes me sick every time this happens.

Smiley Joseph, hiking up the mountain.

Michael and Levi watching a movie in my room.

It’s not just bad treatment by white people or people in positions of power that has scarred these kids, though. The majority of adults in their lives have failed them. Most of my kids have been abandoned, either figuratively or literally, by either one or both of their parents. For as long as they have known they’ve been on their own. If they wanted to go to school, it was them alone who worked out how to apply or where to find money for school fees and school uniforms. None of those who have the interest or the grades to go on to tertiary education have a mother standing over their shoulder reminding them to fill out applications or contact this institution or this program director. No one ever showed them how to apply for a job, or taught them what qualities to look for in a friend or a significant other, or made sure they knew where to go or who to go to if they were ever in trouble or in need of help. All major life decisions and experiences, from childhood until now, have been made and lived through on their own.

I don’t mean to give the impression that all Namibians are bad parents, because that is most certainly not the case. Many kids I know have parents who have been actively involved in their lives since childhood. However, this is not the case for the specific group of kids I’m speaking of. This is a very poor school, with many kids who just end up here because they have nowhere else to go. Some of my kids haven’t seen or heard from their parents in years; some have parents who sent them off to hostel schools as soon as they were old enough to attend primary school, and they haven’t supported them since. But some of my kids have parents who, though trying to do the best they can, simply cannot support their children. It’s not necessarily that their parents don’t love them or don’t want them. For some of their parents, they began having children when they were still children themselves. They have never had the means to care for even one child, let alone many. Many adults were not schooled properly during the apartheid era, leaving them with only a basic education and few skills necessary to attain gainful employment. And with nearly 50% unemployment in Namibia, a completed grade 12 education has become a requirement in most fields of work, thus leaving many parents with no job and with too many mouths to feed. I believe that these parents do have hope for their children’s future, which is why many of them just send them off to school with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They don’t necessarily expect someone else to take responsibility for their child (though I think this may be the case for some parents); they just know that, no matter how much their child will struggle on their own, as long as they are in school somewhere, they will be better off.

I take a fair amount of criticism from fellow teachers and colleagues who think I’m too easy, too “soft,” on the kids. Even the kids tell me, “Miss, your heart is too soft.” I very rarely yell at them, rarely say no to them, even if it means spending an entire weekend with them, 48 hours with no breaks, as they entertain themselves at my house. Though this soft heart of mine has, I’m confident, been taken advantage of from time to time, the great majority of these kids are good, and they deserve a little softness. Sometimes they do drive me nuts and I threaten to chase them from the house, but I never follow through with the threats. The times they are playing game boy or listening to music or watching movies or just laying around at my house talking and laughing are some of the only times I see them genuinely happy; these are the times when they seem like real children to me. I don’t like myself when I disrupt such things.

Eslon, Michael and Geraldo- after asking them over and over to be quiet so I could do my work, their chattering and clicking continued so I taped their mouths shut which, of course, only incited more hysteria.

The small boys: Levi, Michael, Brandon, Tobias and Fesly, spending their Saturday afternoon playing Game Boy, Connect Four and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" on my computer.

It took me a long time to understand why, after telling my kids hundreds of times how much I care for them and how I would do anything for them, they continued to behave as if they had never heard a word I said. I worry about them because I know that race as well as tribal conflicts often play a role (usually an unfair one) in dictating how a certain issue or conflict may be interpreted and resolved. I'm also aware that my role in this community carries significant influence with it and that my presence as a young person’s guardian is often enough to get them out of potentially troubling situations. I must have told them 50 times: “If you do something you know is wrong, if you make a mistake or if you find yourself in some kind of trouble, just come to me and be honest with me. If I hear about it from someone else I will be upset. But if you are always honest and come to me first, I will never be mad at you.” Yet still, the conflicts and the bad reports continued. I could not understand why, after giving them such an easy out and trying so hard to convince them that I was on their side, they still struggled to tell me the truth and trust me. And then one day I realized: why in the world would they think I would be any different than any other adult in their lives? Everything from their past tells them to not trust me, to take care of themselves and to not be too surprised if I turn on them and disappear tomorrow and they never see me again. For them to take my word for it, to believe that I was genuine, would take an incredible leap of faith on their part; it would go against every defensive mechanism they had ever built.

I travel a lot for my job and the kids always keep me company while I wait for a hike at the hike point. Often times they even campaign for me by standing in the road and flagging down passing motorists.

Sometimes, however, I'm pretty sure their antics (i.e. dancing their crazy Namibian dances and chasing like maniacs after cars that speed by them), though amusing, do more harm than good.

My relationships with these kids took awhile to get to the point we are at now; it is only recently that I’ve felt things shift with them. For many of the kids I work with, we volunteers are the first people in their lives who have ever told them that they have value; we are the first people who have ever truly believed in their potential. I try my hardest to shower them with nothing but kindness, but I’m not certain that it’s possible for the kindness of one or two people to ever undo years of neglect and abuse by so many others. Kids are well aware of their surroundings and of how things work, and when someone or something goes against what they are used to, whether in a good way or a bad way, their first reaction is to shut down and go into defense mode to protect themselves. Trying to break in to this kind of a world is a daily struggle; trying to teach in it is another story completely.

Helping Eslon with some English homework.

Your average Saturday night at my house. Their alternatives are limited (and usually not age appropriate), so even though a house full of kids does work on my nerves, it is what it is.

One day last year, Levi, my favorite of the usual suspects (yes, I, like any parent, have my favorites) came to visit me in my office, as he does most afternoons. He read the “L’s” about logging and Luxembourg while I finished writing up some school reports. At 17H00 we walked home together, and as we walked we discussed one of the words he came across: loyalty. I asked him what he thought loyalty meant and he thought for a few seconds and then responded, “to be true.” I asked him who he thought he was loyal to. “I’m loyal to you miss,” he responded. Then I asked him, “Levi, who is loyal to you.” He thought silently for a few more seconds and then said, “Only you.” I think it was sort of an “aha” moment for both of us.

(Note: I finished writing this entry last week. A few nights afterwards, Levi was in a fight in the dining hall with another leaner who tried to steal his dinner. Though Levi is generally a pretty mild-tempered kid, stealing food in the hostel is one of the worst offenses a person can commit, and like all other children, Levi thought with his stomach first. Afterwards, he ran to my house, a mixture of blood and bread crumbs covering his face, to tell me what had happened. True to my word, I didn’t yell at him. I was sure to tell him that physical violence is never the right choice, and that he should have reported the learner instead of hit him, but in the end I thanked him for his honesty. It seems a bit wrong to say that I felt proud of him for telling me about the fight, but I did feel something...)

My daily interaction with my kids has truly opened my eyes. I can’t expect them to behave the way I’m used to kids in the states behaving because their past experiences and the effects of those experiences will always be a part of their lives. Similarly, they cannot expect that because of the color of my skin, my relationship with them is limiting or comes with conditions. I’m realistic enough to know that I alone cannot undo what so many years has cemented within my kids, but hopefully my presence here and the presence of other volunteers and good-intentioned people around this country will perhaps help young people in Namibia look at the world from a different angle. For these young people to see that we can laugh together and cry together and experience life together—showing them that deep down, beneath the skin, we may not be the same, but we are all really quite similar—may not change their world, but I hope at the very least it will help them consider things and people in a new way, and maybe help lessen the bad memories of years gone by.

Levi

The usual suspects-- Levi, Erwin, Mario and Michael-- modeling some oversized shirts that were sent from America.

There’s work-- there’s teaching and projects and workshops and skill transfers -- and then there’s all this other stuff. Being a positive and stable role model for young people-- I’m not sure there could be a greater responsibility for a volunteer.

PS... so, this is a very selective account of my very complex relationship with these kids. Maybe one day I’ll write a more complete version of life with them. For now though, this is what you get:)

PPS... happy independence day to Namibia on Wednesday. 17 years and counting:)

Pictures by Cindy

2007-03-08T07:49:00.000+02:00

After visiting Kat in Namibia and traveling together to South Africa with her Peace Corps friends and Zimbabwe with her family, I thought I would post a few pictures.

Amazing African sunset view from Kat's hostel

Mark, Cindy and Kat at the bars in Cape Town

Shark diving could have been a big mistake!

...and for some it was. Dan learned the hard way that, after a year of relative sobriety in an African village, staying up until 5am sampling all the flavours of tequila that Cape Town has to offer and then getting on a shark diving boat at 6am is not the best idea.

King of Africa

African elephants

Sean on the Zambezi sunset cruise

Hippos really do open their mouths to almost 180 degrees

Sean and Cin getting rained on by the Victoria Falls mist in Zimbabwe

What a cute family at the falls

Victoria Falls is over 110 meters at some points

We flew over the falls before we landed in Zimbabwe. The river is the Zambezi and many say it can be the most intense white water rafting in the world. We conquered the rafting, but the hike out the the gorge was another story.

Bless the rains down in Africa

Consta getting some air sandboarding

We had sand everywhere for days after

Jana attempted a 180 of the jump

Cindy trading snow for sand

We had to take two planes for the 6 of us to get from Windhoek to Zimbabwe, so we flew right next to each other - look hard, you may be able to see Sean waving:)

The sand dunes in Swakopmund

Cindy and the dunes

We drove a lot. Learning to drive stick shift on the opposite side of the road made for a few long days:)

Sunset from Etosha park

A watering hole in Etosha with an elephant, giraffes, zibra, ostriges, elands and more

More of the watering hole

The sky was so amazing

A zebra in Etosha National Park

Some down time at another watering hole

He is looking right at us!

Wildebeests roaming

We saw a ton of elands

Namibia's Finest - Tafel Lager

A long road and a lion - very African:)

This Life Is Lekker, by Cindy

2007-02-28T20:44:00.000+02:00

After an amazing trip visiting Kat in December, I wanted to share a little about our experiences. I have been back in the US for a while now and debated about how to write about our many typically African experiences. Cage diving with Great White Sharks in South Africa, sand boarding in the most amazing sand dunes in the world, seeing the African Big 5, walking with lions, white water rafting in the Zambezi and seeing a baby crocodile 50 feet from the boat after we had just all been in the water, were all amazing experiences. However, I figured you could read about all those stories in travel magazines. So here are a few stories that might not make it into to National Geographic.

The first week of my trip I accompanied Kat and her Peace Corps friends on a long road trip to Cape Town. It was great to meet all the people that Kat has become so close with over the past year. My jet lag gave me an excuse to sit and listen to their conversations without having to participate much. I heard many stories of the day to day Namibian life and culture that they speak so matter-of-factly about. I overheard conversations about funny things the learners say and do, sad commentary of the realities of life in poverty, and the latest dramas of the twice dubbed over Spanish soap opera (that those who had electricity and access to a tv were able to see). I was surprised how well they knew each other and how comfortable they were around each other. In many ways, it was as if they became a tight nit family in such a short time because of the unfamiliar situations they went through together.

One night in Swakopmund, we met up with a couple of Kat’s Namibian friends and went to a Sheeben (tiny bar that is actually more like someone’s house that sells beer). On our way over there, we found out that the power was out in the whole city and by the time we got there, we found out that the power was out in all of Namibia! Surprisingly, everyone just lit a few candles and kept on like normal. When the power came back on, we headed over to a concert that started in true “African time” at 2:30am. We had many interesting conversations, but when they started calling me the blind one because of my glasses, I realized how poverty affects every aspect of life. I have never thought of my glasses as a luxury, but it iss now clear that in Namibia unless you are in fact blind, glasses are a luxury.

It was so interesting to do things with Namibians that they might do ordinarily in the everyday life. I quickly learned that there was not personal space like we are used to. Anything that anyone had was shared with everyone around. People that we didn’t know were sharing their beers with us and ours with them. Three or four Namibians were all sharing the same cigarette and we were all sharing the endless supply of raisins/nuts that someone brought with them. It was in the Sheeben that I first saw a Namibian open a bottle of beer with his teeth. It was amazing – he opened it with his teeth with more ease than I can open one with a bottle opener!

It is hard to explain the poverty we saw there. We saw many houses made out of nothing but a couple of tin planks. I kept thinking that the only places that I have seen anything like this were in Ghost towns, but in Namibia, this is where people eat, sleep, and live everyday – no electricity, no running water, just dirt floors and tin roofs. The most amazing thing was to see the pride people take in their homes, even though they live in the some of the worst conditions in the world. People were actually sweeping their floors. Yes, their dirt floors. I can’t imagine that they ever thought they were finished or how they felt like they accomplished anything, but it just goes to show the spirit in the people.

I don’t think about race much in the US, but in Namibia, I couldn’t help it. The most surprising thing that I learned on the trip was that there is still so much racism in Namibia. The affects of ending apartheid just over a decade ago are apparent everywhere. In addition to “We reserve the right to refuse service” signs at almost all of the restaurants, stores, and places of business, I couldn’t help but notice that all the workers were black and all the customers and owners were white. It was such a strange dynamic between the haves and have nots. After only two weeks in Namibia, I could feel a difference when we went to Zimbabwe. I found myself relieved that there were black people with us as customers. I know Kat has said this many times, but for the first time, I really did feel the color of my skin.

What I learned most on this trip was how much I still don’t know about Namibian life and culture. I have only begun to scratch the surface of understanding the unique, kind, and struggling people that we can all learn from and benefit from. In a country of up to 60% unemployment, the people’s spirit has to be their biggest asset and I truly felt their kindness and positive spirit. I now understand that when Kat says that you have to be there to understand it, I know that the realities are beyond my wildest dreams.

In the heat of the moment...

2007-02-09T11:47:00.000+02:00

Waking up in Namibia is like waking up on the edge of the earth. In the veld, the deep bush, for as far as you can see… you can see. Aside from the raggedy shrubs, the merciless acacia trees and a whole lot of sand (a desert, in fact), there is very little in between you and the horizon. No towns, no houses, no people—you could walk for days and never see another living human being (if you think I’m exaggerating, ask my family). Often, if I stare long enough at the horizon I really do feel that if I began walking, it wouldn’t be long before I was standing at the end of the world. Or, perhaps that I could walk for eternity and never reach the end of anything… I get the two confused.

The awe inspired by this infinite abyss has been magnified in recent weeks. The rains have come late in Namibia. I remember the rains of last year and how powerful and destructive they were, but that seems like a distant dream these days. In Omaruru, we have been without rain since before Thanksgiving. Because I can stand on my patio and see to the end of the world, I can see that it is raining in the villages surrounding Omaruru, but my small town has not received one drop of rain in nearly two months. That’s a long time in the desert. During these summer months, it’s even more brutal. Everyone says this is the hottest they can ever remember it being in Namibia, though people here often say silly things so who knows if that’s true. But I can tell you that personally, this is the hottest climate I have ever experienced in my life. There has not been a single day in the past few weeks where the midday high has been less than 40°C (about 105°F)-- most days, it gets even hotter than that. Thanks to Ruru’s beautiful blue and cloudless skies, by 11H00 the sun is already blazing down and nearing it’s peak heat, and by 15H00 the streets and school grounds are quiet because everyone is shut indoors, lying on their beds with wet towels draped across their foreheads and backs. I have a fan which, when the electricity is running, I turn on full blast and lie in front of, trying my best to keep still, but none of the hostel kids have one. It would be quite evil of me to forbid the kids from sharing in my cool breeze, but unfortunately that just leaves me with a room full of sweaty teenagers. Not pleasant for anyone, but this way we can suffer together.

People have referred to Namibia as “the land God created in anger.” While I have nothing but love for this country, I’d be lying if I said that such a description wasn’t fitting. I think that the stark beauty of Namibia is really what is so alluring about this country, as it seems no other place in the world resembles this place. But the terrain here is harsh, and the uninterrupted heat as of late has made it even harsher. The lack of rain has caused the earth to fry. The sand and dirt are so hot that the kids run across in their bare feet screaming like maniacs, or try to hitch rides on the backs of bigger kids. Thorns from the thirsty acacias have sprinkled themselves all over the ground and poke their way through my sandals and feet (the kids’ feet are like leather and are undisturbed by such pokey things). Plants and bushes have shriveled up and died even here in notoriously-green Omaruru, where the underground water source buried beneath our riverbed helps keep the plant life looking fresh and alive much longer than most places in Nam. In past years, this kind of heat has brought with it rain and, in turn, the famed Omaruru River which provided a cool escape from the high temperatures. Unfortunately, no rain means no river means no escape for us.

Athletics (Namibia’s term for track and field) were postponed for a few weeks because the ground was too hot and too hard to run on. The school finally decided that if we waited for the rains, we may miss out on the athletic season all together so the kids have begun to train and compete. Though they love to run and do so willingly, evenings after practice leave us with many dehydrated kids, convulsing because of the lack of water and nutritious food they get during the day. We have had a few spaghetti dinners at my house for the big runners, and we are pretty diligent about collecting old bottles and freezing what water we can to provide the kids with something to drink at practice, but our efforts could never compensate for the overwhelming effects of this heat. Yesterday, I had to take one of my learners to the hospital because he was bleeding from his nose and mouth. I was pretty sure it was some combination of dehydration and heat stroke, which indeed it turned out to be, but with a hospital full of such cases (and many more extreme cases than ours), he was just given a shot of penicillin and we were sent on our way. My cure-all for dehydration is Fanta Orange, so I took him home and loaded him up with the delicious, syrupy soda along with some saltine crackers. Within an hour, he was up running around and laughing with the others. Kids are resilient.

Just as the rain brings with it a colorful array of creepy crawlies, so to does the lack of rain. Fire ants have taken over the paths of Omaruru. Unafraid of being washed away by the rains, the ants have built their huge ant mounds and disrupted the way of life for those of us who commute into town daily. If you were to stand still for a few seconds (which no one does as that would be offering up the flesh of your feet and legs to the ants) and watch the ground, it would appear to be shifting and moving ever so slightly. Look a little closer and you will discover that it’s not the ground that is moving, but rather a blanket of fire ants creating the optical illusion. It is impossible these days to walk slowly, calmly down the streets. Now, it’s more of a jumping, skipping, half-running and high knees-ing lunatic-type dance that we all perform, trying (always unsuccessfully) to keep the ants from attacking our feet and running up our legs. Letting your guard down for even a second finds your feet literally covered with the evil creatures. Now, you may be thinking, “C’mon now, ants? She must be weak… ants can’t be that bad.” And I don’t blame you for having such thoughts. However, if it helps prove my case at all, out of all the nightmare-inducing bugs and beasts I’ve encountered during my time in Namibia, the fire ants are the ones I loathe the most. I’d prefer to walk through a river of mambas than a river of fire ants. Ok, maybe not a river of mambas but a river of non-deadly snakes for sure. I have actual scars on my feet from where the ants have bitten me. It’s been so bad lately that I’ve resorted to walking the loooong way home—to the end of town, across the bridge and around the school fence—as opposed to cutting through the dry riverbed and the bush and then jumping the back fence of the school. Though this route adds a good 20 scorching minutes onto my usual walk, it’s preferable considering the alternative. 30 minutes in the sun allows me to avoid the fleet of ants that inhabit the riverbed and bushes surrounding the hostel. Once I arrive on the hostel grounds, I can usually hop-skip-and jump my way home with only a few non-fatal stings.

During the winter season, I wrote a lot about how unbelievably cold it was here. Spending the extra 15 minutes in the morning boiling water so it was warm enough to bathe in was a pain, but I’ve decided I definitely prefer that to what I have now. You would think we would look forward to the summer, and that our cold-water-only option would be refreshing after a long day in the heat. Unfortunately, there is no such option. For one, we lose water a lot more in the summer than in the winter. Because so many more people are running the town’s water (including the white people with luscious lawns that require 24/7 sprinkler systems), the water finishes much faster than during the winter. However, when we do have water, it’s almost too hot to do anything with. The pipes that run from our geyser to the house sit baking in the sun all day long (as does the geyser itself). Because of this, the first 5 or so minutes that the water is running, waiting for the cooler to kick in and do its job, the faucet spews out nothing but scalding hot liquid. Because I don’t like wasting, I rarely run the water for so long. This, however, leaves me in a predicament. While I’ve come to expect the extra few steps required to do my daily business here (i.e. bathing, laundry, travel…), the summer’s effect on my bathing routine has been much harder to cope with than the winter’s. In the winter, I had the option of boiling water to reach my desired temperature. Though it was a hassle, it was nevertheless an option. I don’t have such an option anymore. I could run the water for 10 minutes before filling the tub, but that would leave me guilt-ridden for days while having to watch my parched kids run in the sun. I could fill the tub with hot water and let it sit for a few hours and hope it would cool, but that sort of puts a disruption on my day. So lately, I’ve gone back to good old fashioned bucket bathing. It’s far too hot to actually lie down in the bath water, so in the evenings (when the pipes have escaped the sun’s blaze for a few hours), I hop in and do my business using a sponge and one of our laundry buckets. Never completely clean, but I gave up caring about such things long, long ago. :)

I’ve been hearing about the extremely cold weather many of you stateside have been experiencing lately. As my brother and I swap text messages discussing the weather here and there, I’m left wondering what is better: -25°, where your nose hairs and eyelashes freeze the minute you step out of your house, or 110° desert-heat, day after day, where it’s actually possible to fry an egg on the sand. So for those of you who are cursing the cold in the Midwest right now, just remember that on the other side of the globe, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are some young African kids who would trade places with you in a heartbeat. Then again, they’ve never had to walk to school through two feet of the snow, feel their fingers and nose go numb due to the cold, or dig their car out of a snow mound and then spend hours chipping away at the ice on their windshield.

Like I said, it’s a toss up. :)

...then again, when you live in a place where the sun sets just like this every evening, I never struggle to find at least one thing that I'm grateful for at the end of the day. Though it may seem hard to find now, I know that the same is true for all of you in "God's country." :)

Lekker naweek!
(Enjoy the weekend!)

A Post By Sheila

2007-01-18T17:46:00.000+02:00

Hi blog readers:

Visiting Caitlin in Namibia was an amazing adventure...What a place! We traveled to Zimbabwe to stay in Victoria Falls for three nights, returned to Namibia and I drove for the rest of the trip visiting Caitlin's little town of Omaruru, visited with the Mayor and saw the site where they hope to build the youth center, toured the "location" where people who live in real poverty live, visited with a doctor (eligible for sainthood) as he drove us around the medical compound that serves the most needy ill and their little ones, our family then drove through and stayed a couple of nights in Etosha, toured a cheetah preserve, visited a Himba village, drove to the Skelton Coast (unbelievable driving experience), stayed a few nights in Swakopmund (Brad & Angelina-land) returned to Windhoek, enjoyed a Chicago pizza with the Jeff Jenks' family and flew home Tuesday. Exhausted.

We remain exceeding grateful for our easy way of life with food and shelter, great schools and school lunch programs. The Namibian people are amazing and cheerful and they have beautiful positive children. Whatever kindness comes their way through projects like the Onalaska Garrity kids' blanket project, financial support for Caitlin's work, the GLOW project and so much other support is more appreciated than donors can ever know. Your help and Caitlin's work are making a difference in the lives of the world's most needy.

The learners who live in youth hostel eat porridge three times a day. Seldom do they enjoy meat or dairy, this makes projects that assist with food, shelter and schools, that can lift learners out of poverty, all the more critical.

Thank you for your support of this work and blessings and all good things for your and your families in 2007.
Sheila

The Year in Review

2007-01-06T12:39:00.000+02:00

Yes, it’s been awhile, I know. This past month has been a bit nuts in Namibia as I’ve been blessed with many visitors. Not only did my dear friend Cindy join me for a bi-country road trip around Namibia and South Africa, but my mother, my two brothers and my new sister-in-law all made their way to Namibia to spend the Christmas holiday with me. It’s been really wonderful.

With all the commotion, it was almost easy to forget that I’ve spent an entire year here in Namibia. My one-year anniversary and my 24th birthday coincided, so we did have a few reasons to celebrate and to reflect on all that has happened this year. It has been a rollercoaster to say the least.

So what did happen this year…?

• I traveled throughout Namibia, including the most northern and most southern parts of the country, and spent time with people representing all walks of life
• A small boy learned how to read and speak English
• I found my Namibian family
• I learned a few new languages
• I felt the color of my skin for the first time in my life
• I played soccer barefoot
• I lived without water and electricity
• I sat with a leaner as he fought to live
• Some teachers touched a computer for the first time in their lives
• I climbed a mountain
• I taught in 6 different schools
• The democrats won control of the house and the senate
• I attended a funeral for one of my learners
• I attended too many funerals in general
• I went sandboarding down some of the world’s largest sand dunes
• Some orphans received their first pair of shoes ever
• My brother got married
• I perfected the art of hitchhiking
• I drove a stick shift and almost ran someone over
• I saw the greatest disparity of wealth in the world
• I danced with a Namibian transvestite
• I slept on a beach in Cape Town
• I spent too much time in hospitals with kids too young to be facing things they were facing
• I ate goat head, mopane worms and lots of donkey meat
• Some Namibians experienced the joy of chocolate chip cookies, fajitas, quesadillas, mashed potatoes and American chili
• I went cage diving with sharks (aka bird watching)
• Some Namibian kids learned a bit of Spanish
• I helped slaughter a goat and a chicken, and I offered moral support to both a cow slaughtering and a kudu slaughtering
• The Packers beat the bears
• My family made their way to Africa
• One Namibian may have looked beyond skin color
• Brad and Angelina had their baby and pretended to care about Africa, Wesley Snipes evaded his taxes, Prince Harry went canoeing and an Israeli-born US billionaire wanted for stock market fraud hid from US authorities… all in Namibia!

Oh so much. Lots of firsts, indeed. Some things I’m so happy I had a chance to experience; some I hope I will never have to experience again. And as 2006 came to an end, I did feel some sense of accomplishment. Year one offered me the opportunity to try many new things, to make mistakes and make changes in my work and in my life, and to learn so much about things I may have never learned about anywhere else in the world. If for no other reason, I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to serve two years so I can try to smooth out everything that didn’t work this year. It may be overly optimistic, but I truly feel that things can only get better from here.

And I definitely don't feel 24.

Happy Holidays! Be well.

Text Messages

2006-11-22T08:49:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone, this is Nolan. Cait hasn’t been able to talk to any of us for a while now; the network over there has been really spotty. We’ve begun to depend upon text messages, which seem to work really well. I refuse to delete them from my phone, mostly because they’re from Cait, but also because I think they are all so neat. I was going through them, reading them off, and realizing I should share some of them. The messages go back several months, so some of the things in the text messages may also have appeared in Cait's posts (like the witching thing). So, here they are. Enjoy.

A girl is walking down the street right next to me wearing a Colorado t-shirt that was hanging from my clothesline only a few months ago. Ridiculous.

Last night I helped put out a huge brush fire that almost caught the houses. I’m back in Africa.

Urine from a male cape water buffalo is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fluid.

A lady just walked into my office with a machete. Machetes here are like handbags there. Everyone just carries them around.

I’ve just been walking along the B1 Highway for over an hour trying to get a hike. I’ve only seen two cars going my way. Not very promising. I may just walk the 150 km home.

I’m listening to The Daily Show episode with Clinton on podcast while watching the African sunset, eating a piece of braaied meat. This is my life, I bet you can’t wait :)

I’m playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” with my kids. It’s a lot harder than I remember. The kids are screaming at each other in KKG, clicking like crazy. It’s great!

My friend was witched on the weekend. Two witches came into his house while he was sleeping and took blood from him. Someone saw them leaving. Apparently they were naked J Crazy place J (Nolan-My response was something like “was this a peace corps friend?” She sent this response) No, one of the himba wrestlers. They take blood either to sell to another witch doctor or to use for spells. They don’t like white people’s blood, but I’ve been told to watch my hair. It’s very desirable to witches. And the person who coma witched my friend is the librarian at my center. We all work together! Things are colorful here. By the way, “coma” means “apparently” in Afrikaans, in case you were wondering.

A friend’s dad sent TIVO Grey’s Anatomy. It’s pretty sappy but I’m sucked in. Even watching the commercials, like being home. It’s so damn hot here. Milk was a bad choice.

I ate a hard-boiled egg that I bought from a kid at the service station this morning. Now I’m beginning to feel like that wasn’t such a good idea.

Got a notice today that all electricity in Omaruru will be cut on my birthday. Must mean we are moving on up if we now get NOTICES of power outages.

I forgot to tell mom, but I’ll be in Windhoek for the weekend if anyone is wondering. I’m hiking in the back of an open bakkie with a bunch of chickens and an Angolan man who only speaks Portuguese. I’m trying my best with Spanish. I hope I don’t get bird flu. (20 minutes later) And now it’s starting to rain, the chickens are unhappy.

I’m on the coast for the weekend. In a store playing Christmas music. It’s making me a bit teary eyed for home – 11/3/06

We have tortilla chips in our store now! I’m happy :)

Two men lying in the yard of the police station just gave me $20 and asked me to buy them a phone card. When I asked why THEY didn’t go buy it, they replied, “because we’re in custody.” Duh! Life changes very little for inmates. We all just lounge around comfortably together. Ahhh, the good life.

There’s a scorpion in my bathtub. Boo. Hiss.

We had kudu for dinner. Even more delicious than goat. Today we have no electricity. Life is a bit silly.

Against my better judgment I ate some mystery meat “salad” given to me yesterday. Now I’m having a runny tummy :(

It’s about 110 degrees and I just hiked the mountain with some learners, one of whom started seeing spots half way up. I thought heat poisoning; the others were convinced he was being witched. And now that we are back all I want is a Fanta Orange. Thoughts? Talk amongst yourselves.

My coworker Jeremiah just called me a “cherie bok”, which means cherrie goat. My office has now erupted into a heated debate about whether or not calling someone a goat is a compliment. Jeremiah insists it is the same as calling me beautiful. I’m now trying to explain that where I come from, it is never nice to refer to someone as a farm animal.

Can you bring me Q’doba when you come?

My supervisor is lying on the floor of her office blaring herero gospel music. Strange thing is: I’m not at all alarmed by this.

The combined income of the 500 wealthiest people now exceeds that of the poorest 416 million. That’s horrible.

My kids came over last night with their clothes and hands COVERED in blood. My first thought: who did you kill?!? Response: don’t worry Miss, we found a springbok stuck in your fence, so we slaughtered it for dinner. Haha! Hunting Namibian style.

A man in a nearby town lit himself on fire and died today. A picture of his dead burned body was in the paper. It’s amazing how censored US news is, or how uncensored African news is.

Witch One?

2006-10-31T09:38:00.000+02:00

My friend was recently involved in a witching. As the story was first explained to me in a mixture of Afrikaans and English, it seemed that he was the one who was witched. However, upon further discussion, I discovered that he merely took part in a witching, but was not witched himself. No need to worry :)

Witchcraft is no joke here. It’s a traditional belief, assumed by most everyone to be true, that has been around forever it seems. Whether I’ve heard stories or witnessed it myself, strange and unexplainable things do occur here and often times, the only answer people can give you is “witching.” Even people who say they don’t believe in witchcraft use it to fall back on or as a last resort. To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe in it myself but I don’t mess around with it either.

A traditional healer, or witchdoctor, is an actual profession here. People make a living listening to other people’s problems, and doing what they can to solve them. It’s African therapy. In the classified section of the country-wide newspaper, The Namibian, there are countless listings for witchdoctors seeking to heal this or that problem. In most towns and villages, you can easily locate a witchdoctor or two. Some healers have other jobs and practice their witchcraft secretly, but many are totally open about their work; if you take a walk through the location, you can easily find yourself a healer, as many of them post signs in their yard advertising their services. Some witchdoctors specialize in certain areas (health, money, etc.) but most you can consult regarding anything that is troubling you. If someone experiences a period of bad luck, they will visit a witchdoctor to counteract what they assume is a bad spell that has been put upon them. People also visit witchdoctors to “witch” someone else who they dislike for one reason or another, which seems to me to be when things can get dangerous. No one can prove how witchdoctors go about fulfilling their requests, but, as I said, strange things do happen here; people are involved in accidents or go missing, and it simply becomes common belief that they were witched. We even hear about witching at my school. After a stream of thefts from my house, my learners as well as some colleagues agreed that my house must be witched and I should visit a witchdoctor for advice. I am much quicker to blame the sticky hands of my small learners than a bad spell being cast upon me, but it was hard to ignore these claims. These are educated individuals, many of whom do not live traditional lives anymore, but after all other options were explored, witchcraft, they told me, was the only alternative explanation.

During training, 3 friends and I visited a traditional healer in the location just to learn more about this element of Namibian culture. We had to communicate using Afrikaans and English through an interpreter who then translated it to Khoe Khoe for him. Because the translating took a bit of time, the doctor didn’t realize until some time had passed that we were just there to ask questions and that we had no money and no interest in witching anyone. Once he did realize this, however, he became quite angry with us. He started screaming things at us in KKG and flailing his hands about. The shack that he lived in was made of tin. In the summer time, with the hot Omaruru sun heating the tin throughout the day, the insides of these shacks get unbelievably hot. As our visit with this man wore on and he got more and more upset, that heat seemed to skyrocket. All of us began to sweat profusely and continually reach for our Nalgene bottles, the liquid contents of which were near boiling at this point. The atmosphere finally got so unbearable that one of my colleagues had to get up and leave because she couldn’t breathe. The rest of us tried our best to apologize to the angry man as we followed her out. I’m not sure what happened in that shack that day. It may have just been the African heat and our imaginations running wild with dehydration, or it may have been something a bit less explicable… whatever happened, it was definitely strange. Whether witchcraft is real or not I’m not sure, but I don’t care to explore it any further than I already have.

Witchdoctors are responsible for many traditional beliefs in Namibia and around Africa. We’ve all heard the belief that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS, but there are many more beliefs just as strange and just as dangerous but that are being perpetuated by traditional healers. People just want answers to their problems; answers to why something is happening to them or to someone they care about. I’m not positive, but I don’t think witchdoctors ever say, “Sorry, I can’t help you with that.” They seem to have solutions for everything, even things we outside the witching world would consider unsolvable or incurable.

Last week my friend (and Himba wrestler) *Johannes came into my office to visit with me and we started talking about witchcraft. Apparently a few days earlier, his youngest brother (also the reigning champion of Himba wrestling) fell victim to witching. As the story goes, that Friday late at night, their oldest brother had been woken by dogs barking outside his house. When he got out of bed, he saw two naked ladies running away from his house. Strange, he thought, but coma not strange enough to lose any more sleep over it. He went back to bed and the next morning, he and Johannes left to do business in a neighboring town, leaving their youngest brother home alone (don’t be too concerned; he’s a 21-year old Himba man who’s built like a house). That night, as the youngest brother slept, the two witches appeared again. Casting some sort of spell over him to keep him asleep, they made two small incisions on his chest and stole some of his blood. Because things like human blood are used in different spells, witches have to attain many of their necessary resources by stealing. They do not intend to witch that person, just to borrow some of their bodily fluids. He awoke the next morning to find the small cuts on his chest (which I have seen… they are real), and realized what had happened. Thankful I suppose that he hadn’t been witched himself, he and his brothers said nothing to their witchy neighbor, and life has continued on normally since then.

Needless to say, I just try my best to not upset anyone, especially those people I know practice witchcraft. Johannes works to reassure me, saying that he has never known of anyone who has tried to witch a white person, but he has warned me that my long, white-person hair could be something witchdoctors may covet for their spells… I’ve been wearing more ponytails lately.

Happy Halloween! :)

Cait's Photos

2006-10-16T08:09:00.000+02:00

Cait's photos, posted by Nolan: So, I got an email from Cait the other day, with two photos attached and this message, "just upgraded my comp and its running faster than ever-- a very exciting time at my office:) i will try to send some pics just now." Apparently the speed was an illusion; it took her about 15 minutes to send me each photo, each in it's own email...so this little set represents a lot of work. Hopefully she'll keep sending them :) Anyway, here are Cait's photos with captions she included.
Nolan
----------------------------------------------------

One of the random games the kids here have made up. The object is to fill, dump and refill the tin with sand as many times possible while dodging a wadded-up ball of plastic bags being thrown at you from either side. If you are hit, you are out and your total tins filled are tallied and added to overall score.

Though innocent looking, the kids here are incredibly competitive. This is the beginning of a rumble between the two girls' teams which I had to break up

Oh, how the boredom sparks such creativity. Here are some small kids in town who made their own high jump practice equipment using bamboo stalks

More high jump practice

The backdrop of our lovely little town. You can see the mountain, referred to in Afrikaans by locals as the "koppie," from many many miles away. It's how you know you are approaching Ruru.

Hiking the koppie and trying to decide the best possible route to use

My dear friend Rachel looking a little weary as we hike. She has yet to attempt the hike with us again :)

Little Wendy, a learner, scaling the mountain. She screamed the entire way.

And a view of the town of Omaruru from atop the mountain.

We are only in the beginning of our dry months here now and it's amazing to look back at how green it was when this was taken, mid-February, compared to how it looks now. This is the view of Omaruru's surrounding areas.

Two learners, Wendy and Gabriel, posing for a picture at the top of the mountain

The mopane worm, traditional food of the Owambo tribe. These are lovely little worms that have shades of pink and purple and even a bit of glitter and are found all over the trees in Omaruru during the rainy season. During the hike we gathered some and took them home to eat. Yum.

This is hostel where I live, taken from outside the school grounds. And that looks like donkey poo on the ground. The donkeys come into the school quite frequently and the learners ride them around the school grounds. It's a strange thing.

One of the holes I jump through when I leave the hostel. (sorry guys, I don't know why this won't load correctly, but if you click on it you can see the whole image-N.)

A typical Saturday afternoon at my house includes riveting (and often hilarious) games of Scrabble...

...and always laundry. Here, Marcus demonstrates typical washing technique.

This pic was taken from my patio. On the weekends, our yard fills with learners doing their wash.

One of our grade 12 learners, Mattie, retrieving his shoes from the roof of our house. The learners are religious about washing their shoes, trying desperately to keep them white in the African dust. After washing, they put them on our roof to dry so that no one will steal them. Many mornings, my wake up call comes at 5:30am when the boys are running across our tin roof collecting their shoes.

Some kids posing for a picture in town.

Spectators at a soccer game in the location. This day, in a game versus a private school in our circuit, we were fortunate enough to use the private, and well-maintained, soccer field...

...but most days, it's pick-up soccer games on the dirt field in the location.

More soccer

Himba wrestling! Here's Nelson getting tossed by the traffic cop.

And Mark struggling against my co-worker and friend Jeremia; part-time Himba wrestler, full-time District Literacy Officer.

The Long Road Home

2006-10-13T20:29:00.000+02:00

I'm not sure what was more of a challenge: traveling back to America for the wedding, or returning to Namibia. Part of the reason I haven't written anything in so long is because it's been sort of difficult for me to wrap my brain around the drastic difference between my life in America-- the lives of Americans in general-- and my life and the lives of everyone here. Throughout my service, I've learned to take things in stride, to gaan met die stroom (go with the flow) and try not to let emotions overwhelm me. However, moving between these two worlds, it seems nearly impossible to not feel some guilt. I am well aware of the differences between myself and Namibians, but after living here for a year in more or less the same conditions as most of my colleagues and friends, the similarities between "them" and "me" seemed more tangible than the differences, which, to be honest, became more and more hard to see as time went on.

Going home changed all that.

My life in America is incredibly blessed. Granted, many people were much nicer and much more accommodating of me than they probably would have been had I just been visiting from college (you know who you are:) ), but aside from a painless dress fitting and a couple of minor errands, I had few worries when I was home. I am comfortable with my life here, but if I said that I wasn't missing or wanting certain things I would be lying. My "wants" could never compare to the needs of many people I know, but they are still present. One can survive without electricity or running water, but to "want" such essential amenities is both humbling and eye-opening. Eating porridge day after day, though filling and satisfying, does leave something to be desired as far as food consumption goes. And though adventurous, walking along the road for hours in the blazing sun waiting for a hike does, after a few months, lose its appeal.

Going home fulfilled my most basic wants. For example:
• I wanted to watch an American football game. I watched the Packers lose preseason to the Bengals.
• I wanted to drink margaritas and eat Mexican food. My family and I ate at two great Mexican restaurants while I was home, not including an emergency run to Qdoba on State St.
• I wanted to spend time on the river. I went kayaking with my mother in her new tandem kayak and drank root beer floats with my brother in Riverside Park.
• I wanted to spend good, quality family time with my mom, my brothers and my new sister. Not only did we go bar hopping on State St. after the wedding, still dressed to the nines in our wedding attire (oh so classy), but the wedding gave me the opportunity to be surrounded by nearly everyone I care most about in the world.
• I wanted to find fun gifts for my friends and my learners here. I came back with an entire suitcase filled with presents, including three Game Boys which my kids have not gone a single day without playing. I have yet to decide if introducing things like Game Boys was a good idea.
• I wanted to do my laundry with a washing machine. I have never seen washing machine water get so cloudy.
• I wanted to get people talking about Namibia. I think that happened.

Being home allowed me to eat lots of good food and never feel hungry or guilty. Here, meal time gets a bit tricky. For example, I never leave food on my plate, especially if I eat in front of my kids (which I try to refrain from). If possible, I will eat in my office or in my room when the kids are away because trying to deal with them when food is around is difficult. The idea of "leftovers" is really a foreign concept to many people here, particularly the kids. How could there ever be more than enough food? There has to be someone who is still hungry. Though when cooking at my house we usually cook enough for a few extras (visitors, sick kids, kids who miss or are banished from meal time, kids who plant their feet until we feed them, etc.), our excess—something that has been toned down drastically since arriving in Africa—never goes unnoticed. My kids reprimand me for throwing away orange peels and apple cores (which they eat, seeds and all), and they collect the throw-away bones from any type of meat we cook and proceed to crack them open and suck the marrow from them. Yes, it's as gross as it sounds, but it's food to them. Nothing goes to waste here.

While I was home, I took long, hot, unrushed showers until I felt truly clean AND I brushed my hair for the first time in months. No matter what they say, absolutely everyone I know would choose hot running water over lukewarm bath water. Even those who consider themselves completely happy and acclimated here (me being one of those people), jump at the opportunity for a shower. My standards for what can be considered "clean" have lowered considerably. Bathing is, indeed, nothing more than sitting in your own filth. Walking around all day in the sand and the dirt and the sun, that layer of filth grows and that bath water darkens. Bucket bathing (which just means standing up and pouring water over your body, as opposed to laying in the water), helps rinse most the dirt away, but thoroughly cleaning one's hair, especially hair like mine, is next to impossible. Lately, because of circumstances beyond our control, we have been turning our water off with the hopes of postponing the inevitable demise of our bathroom. Our Namibian-water torture dripping ceiling, which I mentioned previously, has stopped messing around and has actually caused the ceiling panel to pull away from the wooden boards holding it up. As we wait for it to be repaired (which probably won't happen until it collapses), the ceiling is slanting down towards the bathtub, and the water that was once dripping through the ceiling is now running down the ceiling panel and directly onto the bather. I'm pretty sure there's a family of something living in the ceiling and I'm just waiting for the day when the ceiling collapses and I find myself sharing my bath with a gaggle of lizards or something. Because of this, my bathing routine lately has been get in, get out, get on with it. Total cleanliness is no longer an attainable goal.

I guess I've been tripping over the extreme differences between my life here and my life there since I've been back. Some of the differences, like showers to baths, are comical. But many are difficult; most too difficult to even write about or talk about. Knowing the homes that many of my kids had to go to over holiday, and hearing many of their stories coming back; and then comparing that with my own life over holiday…. it's challenging for me to get a handle on how I can move so easily between these two worlds that are so fundamentally different from one another. That, and how most people I know here will never truly know the ease with which many in this world live.

So, it's been a transition to say the least, but I'm feeling better. I presented a Reading Comprehension workshop along with another TRC PCV to primary school teachers last week and it was a hit. A lot of my work this year was leading up to the workshop, so I feel a small sense of accomplishment. Hopefully some of the strategies I introduced will find their way into classrooms here. Exams are about to start which means the kids (and the teachers and the schools overall) are totally nuts and out of their minds. It's been a bit of a circus around the office and at home, but it's all part of the experience.

Now that I got this first post back out of the way and out of my head, I will work on some more amusing entries. Nolan has about 1000 pictures that he's working on posting. I will work harder at keeping pictures more up to date.

Thanks to everyone who was so great to me while I was visiting and to everyone who continues to be supportive of me here. I hope this entry finds you all happy and healthy.

Cait in Wisconsin

2006-08-20T17:19:00.000+02:00

Cait is back in the states for my wedding, and the first Sunday she is back, she got her article published in the La Crosse Tribune, check it out.

Cait's Article

nolan.

--here's the much longer, uncut version--

Contrasting and Beautiful:
The Namibia Brad and Angelina Didn’t Show You

I awake each morning to the laughter and commotion of the school children in Omaruru, Namibia. Each night, I fall asleep to the same sounds. I walk the 3 kilometers from the hostel where I live to my office every morning, and I’m bombarded with greetings: “Goeie môre, Ms. Lin! Hoe gaan dit?” Of at least 25 distinct languages or major dialects spoken here, I can speak one, Afrikaans, and the children laugh at me as I try to do so. Children here sing constantly, in perfect harmony and for no reason at all. The school choir practices in the yard outside my bedroom window until late into the night, their voices often singing me to sleep.

I’ve been in Namibia over ten months, though it feels like much longer. I can already tell that this country, these people, have affected my life in profound ways that I cannot quite explain. I am one of 58 United States Peace Corps Volunteers in the 25th group to serve in Namibia. My daily life here is humbling. I live in a modest two bedroom flat with one roommate. Some days we have running water and electricity, some days we don’t. We share a refrigerator, a stove and a kitchen table. We have a bathtub in which we take bucket baths. I have my own bed and I sleep under a mosquito net. I live very comfortably in Namibian standards.

They call Namibia “The Land of the Brave.” The majority of this country rest between two of the world’s largest deserts, much of which is home to species of plants and wildlife that exist nowhere else in the world. As a society, Namibia is on the brink of taking off which makes volunteering here at this moment all the more exciting. Towns are beginning to form and turn into cities. Communication is slowly getting easier. A stable government is taking shape and the economy is gradually moving forward. From the outside looking in, it’s hard to believe that Namibia has been an independent nation for just sixteen short years. Once you are on the inside, however, things do feel different. Sixteen years ago Namibians were living under the rule of apartheid, the aftermath of which is palpable. The undercurrent of racism is still present and still affects the daily lives of all people here, including my own. As a result of apartheid, the disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor is greater in Namibia than in any other country in the world. Very few are living without want.

Many people here are wary of outsiders, and understandably so. This country suffered a great deal at the hands of outsiders and one could never expect them to forget that. However, once you’ve won their hearts they are some of the most loyal neighbors a person could hope to have in life. With only 1.8 million people and a landmass the size of California two times over, I often feel like everybody in Namibia knows everybody else. I certainly didn’t go unnoticed when I moved in. I have had more people tell me or others that they are going to look out for me over the next two years than I could name. Once people realized I was a volunteer, I was offered everything under the sun--free transportation and places to stay, emergency cell phone numbers, tips on where to buy the cheapest toilet paper or best cup of tea--anything to make my stay more comfortable. When people discovered that I had come from America, my popularity skyrocketed. People here, especially young people, are infatuated with the idea of “America.” The school children are constantly asking me, “What do Americans think of Namibia?” I don’t know how to tell them that most don’t.

UNAIDS suggests that an estimated 60% of the 40 million HIV-positive people in the world live in Sub-Saharan Africa with Southern Africa remaining the epicenter of the global AIDS epidemic. It is often said that if you are not infected you are absolutely affected. Like so many of its Sub-Saharan neighbors, Namibia is a country plagued by AIDS. An estimated 25% of the population is HIV-positive. With the first cases of AIDS reported in Namibia as recently as 1986, the past 20 years have seen a phenomenal rate of growth of those infected with the virus. In 2000, one out of every four deaths was a result of AIDS. The majority of people infected are those between the ages of 25 and 45, typically the most active members of society. Biological as well as cultural, sociological and economic factors make women twice as likely to contract HIV as men. Because of this, the number of children orphaned as a result of AIDS is staggering and continues to grow each year. By 2005, more than 100,000 Namibian children had lost at least their mother to AIDS. While this number seems large, it is small in comparison to the number of orphans Namibia will have in years to come: it is estimated that by 2010, nearly 150,000 children will be motherless. Even more troubling is the growing number of children themselves infected with HIV, with 15,000 infected by 2004. In a country of less than 2 million people, one can easily see how AIDS touches every person’s life in Namibia.

Actions have been taken to address the many problems that come along with a society heavily affected by HIV and AIDS. Namibia was the first African country to endorse the Convention on the Rights of a Child and to complete a national Plan of Action for Children, both of which aim to attend to the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children in Namibia. The government of Namibia has developed a National Strategic Plan on HIV with the overall goal being to lower the incidence of HIV infection to below the epidemic threshold by 2009. Community based health centers have been established to provide community members with accurate information regarding HIV and AIDS. More recently, HIV/AIDS topics have been integrated into select school subjects, such as the sciences, with the hope of promoting awareness among the youth. And a national policy on HIV and AIDS for the education sector has been developed and is being instituted in most educational facilities, including primary schools, the purpose being to reach children before they become sexually active. Though these initiatives create hope for the future, progress is slow and a tremendous amount of damage has already been done. While the Ministry of Health and Social Services along with the Ministry of Defense, the US Embassy, USAID, the Center for Disease Control, numerous non-governmental and faith-based organizations, as well as organizations like Peace Corps are all diligently working to combat the AIDS epidemic in Namibia and throughout Africa, the numbers continue to climb and the necessary resources and funds needed to make any serious changes are nowhere to be found. It is unfortunate, but I do not believe that what is happening in Africa could happen on any other continent in the world and be tolerated by the rest of society to the extent to which it is tolerated here.

Of the 58 volunteers in Nam25, 44 of us are working in the many areas of education. As a Primary Teacher Trainer, I work at a local Teacher’s Resource Centre assessing the needs of teachers in my region and doing what I can to help meet those needs. Though my job varies day to day, my primary goal over the next two years is to improve the English skills of the teachers in my area by offering literacy, phonics and English workshops, team teaching in the classroom, and serving as a point of contact between the schools and the Ministry of Education. My TRC services nearly 30 schools in five different towns. Besides educational support, my TRC offers teachers access to concrete resources to help improve their classrooms, including teaching aids, copy and fax machines, sample exam papers and syllabi, a library and much more. With the recent donation of three computers by two Namibian companies, our computer lab is beginning to come together. One of my tasks over the next two years is to create a fully functional computer lab, complete with an Internet connection, and offer computer classes to local educators and community members, most of whom have never touched a computer. In order to do this however, we must acquire at least 4 more computers or the funds to do so, a daunting goal that we will only attain through the help of outside sources.

Since independence, Namibians have taken great strides in the field of education. However, much work and much help is still needed before one could say that the system of education is stable here. As I walk through classrooms and sit down with Namibian teachers, I see and hear the same frustrations that many teachers in the US express; only here, those frustrations are overwhelming. Learner’s struggle to focus, not because it’s a nice day outside or because they stayed up too late watching television, but because their desk or chair is falling apart or because they haven’t eaten a solid meal in days. Being one of the few tangible avenues available to distribute accurate information regarding the AIDS epidemic, education here is invaluable. However, the impact of HIV and AIDS on education overall in Namibia is immense. Many young people are without parents. The lack of parental involvement is yet another burden for teachers who are faced daily with the task of trying to convince their learners that their life has value, and that it is worth their time to invest in an education. Because of the high number of HIV-positive adults, many adolescents live in homes with significant emotional and financial stress, factors that greatly affect one’s ability and desire to learn. The Government of Namibia estimates that roughly 1 in 7 teachers in Namibia are infected with HIV. Their work as educators is often seriously compromised by extended periods of illness, and their eventual surrender to the disease will leave many schools without qualified teachers. Along with AIDS, poverty also weighs heavily on education in Namibia. Most public schools lack the money needed to outfit their building and classrooms with some of the most basic amenities, such as books and desks. Even in the more well off school districts there is an extreme shortage of human and economic resources, making it nearly impossible for teachers to meet the varying needs of their learners. A good number of learners who do succeed in their schooling often times go on to study in South Africa or Europe, leaving many holes in the workforce in Namibia. And the cycle continues.

My purpose in writing this is not to give the idea that life in Namibia is bleak, because that is most certainly not the case. This is a proud country with a great deal of potential. Young people dominate Namibia, with over 50% of the entire population being under the age of 20. When I sit and talk with the young people in my town, I can hear the idealism in their voices. Though many of them have suffered unbelievable hardships in their young lives, their spirits are strong and resilient. Seeing them smile and hearing them laugh, and realizing that they have genuine hope that their futures will be brighter than their pasts has truly changed my life and the way I look at the world. These are motivated and confident individuals who are dedicated to working towards solutions. They recognize that AIDS, poverty and gender equality are all serious problems in Namibia, but they are committed to making positive change happen. It comforts me to know that the future of this country rests in their hands.

The problems that face Namibia are no doubt similar to problems most young nations faced in their early stages of development. However, it seems to me that all of Africa is crying out for attention but that few are listening, a problem I am not sure all nations have encountered equally throughout their stages of development. Peace Corps has been active in Namibia since the earliest days, first sending volunteers over just six months after independence. Since then, Peace Corps has worked side by side with Namibians to promote education in its many forms. Through direct teaching as well as fieldwork like my own, volunteers have assisted in the effort to improve education, but have often relied on contributions from outside sources. The impact that donors from Namibia and around the world have had on the people of this country is immeasurable; I doubt those individual donors realize the great role they have played in the development of this society.

You cannot come to Namibia and not be changed. These people have a way of crawling inside your heart and exploding. Each night, I am witness to an amazing African sunset preceding a night sky unlike skies I feel could exist anywhere else in the world. And every single time it rains there’s a rainbow. The people of Namibia have opened their lives and their hearts to me; a strange girl who is unmarried and without children, who runs even though she’s not being chased, who still cannot watch as her dinner is slaughtered, who clumsily stumbles over their language. These people have, without question, taken me in like family. It troubles me to know that I will probably never be able to repay any of this.

I realize that for one reason or another, most people reading this will probably never set foot inside these borders to see any of these things. I also realize that many people will simply skim over this article and continue on with their lives, never giving a second thought to the parallel lives lived on this side of the globe. However, I hope that those who do read this will feel compelled to contribute in some fashion to the people of Namibia. Every little bit helps, and please believe me no contribution goes unnoticed or unappreciated. But if nothing more, I hope this at least gets people talking about Namibia and really examining the role that we all play as citizens of the world. If it is true that “all eyes are on Africa,” then I hope the rest of the world knows that all the eyes of Africa are on them. It is easy to be an observer in life, but the truth is we are all capable of doing and giving more than we let ourselves believe. So ask yourself: Are you doing your part?

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

2006-08-08T13:42:00.000+02:00

One of the more interesting aspects of my life here is hitchhiking, or “hiking.” As I’ve mentioned previously, hiking is the primary mode of transportation for volunteers as well as the good majority of Namibians. Not many of us have cars so traveling requires us to rely on strangers headed in the same direction.

Though seemingly random and a bit crazy, hiking is in fact a somewhat organized activity. Most towns and villages have a designated “hike point” or two where people looking for a ride will sit and wait. Drivers looking to make some money will stop at the hike point, usually located on the edge of the town or village, and will yell out the town or the direction they are heading towards. Then it’s sort of a scramble as those heading that way will negotiate prices with the driver until an agreement is reached and all parties are happy. Most distances have fixed prices that are more or less non-negotiable, but if a hiker is stuck with little cash he or she may be shown mercy by a generous driver.

There are three types of cars that dominate the Namibian roadways: combis, bakkies, and the Volkswagen Chico Golf. Combis are like VW vans and aside from the train, are the closest thing to public transportation we have here. Usually based in a large city and sometimes requiring an appointment, combis are commercial vehicles that can be seen traveling throughout Namibia, usually packed full of people and often towing a trailer filled with luggage behind them. As I’ve mentioned before, bakkies are the equivalent of our pick-up trucks. Because we have many dirt roads here, bakkies are the vehicle of choice for people who are on the road frequently for work or pleasure. Typically used to transport animals, open bakkies usually have an iron fence around the edges, and hikers usually ride standing up holding on to the fence. Closed bakkies are perfect for picking up hikers because the driver can cram up to 20 people (people often wearing large, consuming traditional dress, mind you) in the back and make quite a profit. The most popular car in Namibia, however, has to be the Chico: a tiny four-door car that sort of looks like a miniature wind-up car (also the kind of car I slept in my first night in Cape Town). While there are some fancy cars in Nam-- walking around Windhoek you’re bound to see plenty of Audis and BMWs-- most vehicles interested in picking up hikers are rather run down. It is not uncommon to take a hike in a Chico whose door is falling off or whose floor is missing. And because the cars are usually filled far beyond capacity, hiking often exposes a person to some rather pungent smells. “It stings the nostrils…”

Hiking from a hike point usually means you will pay for your hike, especially if you are a white person carrying the trademark volunteer backpack, though there are ways around this. Hike points are often located at service stations, and those looking for rides will just sit and wait for different cars to pull up to them. The more ambitious hiker, however, may actually walk up to cars while they’re refueling, and with lots of smiles and bad Afrikaans will flat out ask for a ride. Because license plates in Namibia are labeled with the town in which the car is registered, it’s pretty simple to find a car going in the direction you want to go. Usually if the driver can tell that you don’t have horns and are probably not going to rob him, he will oblige. And because he wasn’t planning on picking up a hiker, the ride is sometimes free. Another way to catch a cheap and often free hike is to walk along the highway and flag down passing cars, similar to what hitchhikers in the states do. I’m not partial to doing this by myself, but I hear a lot of the guys in my group do it and it seems to work quite well for them.

I got my first real taste of Africa time when I began hiking. Drivers leave when they are ready. If you’re lucky enough to catch someone going your way who either already has a full car or isn’t looking to make very much money, you will get a straight hike from point a to point b. This, however, rarely happens. For one, I’m not really sure there’s such a thing as a “full car.” The more full the driver can get his car, the more money he will make. Drivers will do whatever they can to fill their cars. They will make turns at hike points far out of their way just to check for hikers. It is not uncommon to ride with a child or young learner on your lap as young people are charged different rates and therefore do not warrant an entire seat to themselves. Most hikers have bags, and cars may or may not have trunks, so usually we are wedged in between one another and our belongings, trying to make as much space available as possible. And if the driver is unable to fill his car… well, you just might not be traveling that day. I once waited four hours for a combi to leave just to find out that the driver decided not to travel that day because he couldn’t fill the van, leaving me and my fellow travelers stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hikes in sight. Hiking requires an inordinate amount of patience and an internal reminder to breathe deeply and go with the flow.

Traveling a good distance from your home site usually requires multiple hikes, which is where things can get tricky. If you are only able to find a hike halfway to your destination point, and if that hike is slow to leave (a very common occurrence), hikers run the risk of ending up in the middle of nowhere, in between their starting and ending point, late in the afternoon or early evening, which is often a difficult time to find reliable and safe hikes. Thankfully we have volunteers in most towns on the main roads, so it’s usually not a problem to find somewhere to crash for a night. However, this is not the case for all hikers; it isn’t uncommon to pass a hike point late at night and see multiple people camped out and sleeping (no fun in the winter months).

Hiking also occurs in town. Since most of Omaruru knows where I live and where I work, if a car passes me going in the same direction that I’m walking I will often be offered a hike. There seems to be an unspoken etiquette here in Africa that if you’re headed in the same direction as someone walking, you should stop and at least offer them a ride. It is quite rare for me to make it all the way from the hostel to my office and back without meeting an opportunity for a hike. Even taxis, who are always looking to make a profit, seem to have a hard time passing me on my walk. I like walking and usually turn down these offers, but on days when I have a lot to carry or when the sun is blazing down on me or the rain is falling in sheets, I’m thankful for the kindness of these people.

Finding reliable transportation is a universal problem for volunteers. Because my job involves work at many rural schools throughout my region, and since my office has no vehicle, I’m often required to hike. Though I would choose a safe, reliable form of transport any day over a random hike, hiking does help put us foreigners at the level of the communities we serve. Instead of being chauffeured around in a nice vehicle, PCVs wait their turn, in the sun and in the rain, alongside everyone else looking to get a ride. Aside from when I’ve hiked with another volunteer, I have never been at a hike point or taken a hike with another white person. White people have cars; black people hike. Similarly, white people rarely stop for hikers; black people do. People are often confused to see me waiting at a hike point, which sparks conversation immediately. When people hear who I am and where I want to go, they are overly helpful, flagging down cars and negotiating prices for me. I once had a man give a driver the 3rd degree about his driving record and the importance of getting me to my destination safely. Afterwards, he insisted on getting my cell phone number and promised to call and check in every hour, saying, “Don’t worry, I got the driver’s license and registration numbers in case anything goes wrong. If I don’t hear from you tonight, I will call the police.” Needless to say, the driver was scared out of his mind; he dropped me at the door of the house I was staying at, carried my bags for me and charged me far less than he could have. A little Namibian intimidation goes a long way.

Some of the craziest and most entertaining stories I’ve heard from fellow PCVs since being at site have involved hikes. Indeed, some of the best stories I have involve hikes I’ve taken at one time or another. It seems almost anything can happen while hiking. I’ve had conversations about everything from American and global politics to the extent of my dowry. I’ve met people who could be characters in movies and heard stories that often leave me wondering, “Where in the hell am I?” I’ve seen fist fights break out and once shared the back of a bakkie with an old ouma who yelled and screamed the entire two hour ride while she continually beat her husband with a stick. I’ve been in more near accidents that I’d care to remember and have helped patch a flat tire and change a car’s oil on two separate occasions (both firsts for me). I have ridden many hours in the back of different bakkies (both open and closed), and have shared hikes with many different kinds of livestock and poultry. Some volunteers have ridden in the cabs and backs of loreys (semi-trucks); some have ridden long distances on farm equipment. The frequent hiker will inevitably end up in a car he or she will wish they hadn’t gotten into but will only realize so after the hike is well on its way. Tears are often shed and threats exchanged, but I’ve seen similar occurrences on many bus and taxi rides in the states. And when things get really bad and I feel as if I’m about to loose it, I take a deep breath and remind myself, “If I survive this, it will be a great story that nobody back home will believe.” That usually helps a bit.

10 days… :)

Africa Time

2006-07-26T18:02:00.000+02:00

If traveling has given me anything, it's given me this: the ability to float gently down the river of events-- to relinquish control. In Africa, the boat leaves when it's full. You might wait an hour; you might wait two weeks. If you spend that time tipping forward into the future, you sink. The best thing to do is just to sit on the boat and look around at the other humans who are sitting there with you. You might discover that you like the view. --from Somebody's Heart is Burning by Tanya Schaffer

I received a package last week that left the US January 19th and apparently arrived in Windhoek January 30th. That's right. My Christmas package of underwear and books and magazines and nail polish had been sitting in the Windhoek post office for over 6 months. Sounds impossible, right? Not quite. This, my friends, is what is known as "Africa time."

I've often wondered why Namibians even bother with timestamps. Everyone, aside from the newly arrived volunteer or tourist, is well aware of Africa time and therefore adjusts their plans accordingly. Africa time affects most things that have a timestamp on them. Work, meetings, appointments, school, school functions; all are prone to Africa time. Even things you would expect to happen on time rarely do. Building projects will run 3 to 6 months behind schedule, if not more. Meetings or parties will often be running so late that they will be cancelled at the absolute last minute, even if the more punctual attendees have been waiting for hours. Hikes that were supposed to leave at a certain time will be delayed by hours, sometimes even days. Even school, which starts every morning at 7am, is often held up by tardy teachers and learners. Everything is tentative. Things may happen now, but they seldom happen now now.

A few weeks ago, we had the "Mr. and Miss S.I. !Gobs" beauty pageant at the school, which I of course agreed to judge. I was told that the show would start at 19H00 sharp and that I should report for duty a little before then. At 19H30, I was just putting a piece of chicken on the braai for dinner. Some friends had arrived and we spent some time chatting and trading off braai duty. At about 20H00 I began to hear music and microphone feedback coming from the school hall—must be the sound check. A bit ahead of schedule, I thought! As it always does, the sound check began to lure the learners from their blocks and their homes in the location. By 20H30, we had finished our dinner and were doing the dishes when the senior girls stopped by. "Miss, we are waiting for you!" I'm sure, I thought. And just as I had suspected the audience was barely filing into the hall when I arrived. I took my seat at the judges' table and began making small talk with the fellow judges. At about 20H45, I went backstage to see what was keeping things. "Miss, we can't find contestant number 8 and contestant number 7 is refusing to go on stage!" one of my learners yelled. By this time the crowd was getting quite restless. After a bit of coercing, I was able to get contestant 7 out of the bathroom where she was hiding as well as convince the pageant organizers to scratch contestant 8. We rushed the willing participants on stage and by about a quarter after 9, over 2 hours after the show was supposed to start, all contestants were on stage and all judges and spectators were in their seats. The show wore on late into the night and just before 1AM, with half the audience gone and the other half, including some judges, sleeping in their chairs, S.I. !Gobs had their very own Mr. and Miss.

Sure, this event was organized by the kids and may have had a few understandable holes, but things organized by adults often times aren't any better. I was invited to a traditional Damara wedding a few months ago and I took Rachel as my date. We knew that there would be some pre-wedding festivities at the house, but that we were supposed to be at the church at noon for the ceremony. Neither Rachel nor I are all too familiar with Damara tradition, but we knew this wedding was as susceptible to Africa time as any other wedding in Namibia. At 11:45 we were still in town doing some last minute shopping. On any other planet, this may seem to be cutting it close; not on planet Namibia. I knew I had enough time to get home, get cleaned up, and make it to the church in the location within an hour, only a bit late. And indeed, by 12:30 Rachel and I were making our way to the church. Weddings in Namibia, as well as funerals, are huge gatherings. Most of the time since there is food served, you do need an invitation to attend the after party but since there's usually nothing much else going on in town, often times the whole community will turn out for a wedding or funeral church service. As we approached the church we noticed there were no cars and no people milling about, an unusual occurrence at a typical wedding ceremony. Perhaps we had the wrong time, I thought. I checked the invitation and found that we were nearly an hour late. "My dear," said Rachel, "this is Africa time." We sat alone in an empty church for another hour and finally, a mere two hours after the ceremony was scheduled to start, the wedding party arrived. Rachel and I had front row seats.

Africa time may be a bad habit to get in to. In the beginning I showed up on time for everything but just ended up waiting around worrying that I had gotten the wrong time or venue. But after nine months, I've adopted the laid back African attitude in most things I do. As a friend once advised me, "If someone tells you to be somewhere at a certain time, that's the time you begin to get ready. You know: bathe, select your outfit." Having lived the American way of life for 22 years, I haven't lost all track of time (for example, I still go to work everyday, I still complete all tasks I'm asked to do, I never miss a meeting or class I'm supposed to teach without giving notice of cancellation, etc.), but I'm definitely less focused on time limits than I was prior to Africa. Things get done when they get done. People move at their own pace, regardless of how quickly you are moving, and panicking about getting something done on time will only stress you out; generally if you are worried about time, you are the only one. It's better to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the world around you.

And no matter how late, it's always nice to receive packages. I'm enjoying the New Yorkers, Newsweeks, People Magazines and US Weekleys from December 2005 and January 2006 as if they were new. They made The Da Vinci Code into a movie? Who knew? Thanks, Cin:)

Thoughts...

2006-07-14T14:31:00.000+02:00

*I had a dream last night that my family arrived to visit me but that they failed the mandatory language test they were given at the airport and so they were forced back on the plane and back to America. I think the anxiety of going home in less than a month after close to a year in Africa is beginning to set in...

*Slaughtering a cow is really different than slaughtering a goat. I could talk about this fact for awhile.

*We currently have water, but with the water came a leaky pipe in our ceiling directly above the bathtub. Now bathing requires one to withstand Namibian water torture.

*Thanks to everyone who donated shoes. So far I’ve received four boxes, about 100 shoes. It’s been great, really great.

*If you are at all interested in helping out the schools, teachers, learners as well as the TRC in Omaruru, please check out the new link and post: Omaruru’s Wish List

*Happy birthday month, Katie and Kelli :)

Omaruru's Wish List

2006-07-13T16:55:00.000+02:00

TRC:
-4 computers
-Internet connection
-Printer/fax machine
-Copy machine
-Die-cut machine
-Laminating machine
-Books (textbooks, novels, etc.)
-School supplies (i.e. pens, pencils, paper, colored pencils, markers, binders, scissors, glue, erasers, etc. That list that all primary schools send home with your children… we need all those things.)
-Monetary donations to help organize workshops, pay for internet installation and usage, etc.

School:
-Textbooks
-Books and novels appropriate for grades 6-12 ESL learners
-Chairs
-Desks
-Copy/fax machines
-Teaching supplies

Youth Centre:
-Coming soon. Please check back.

* If you have something you would like to donate that is not listed here, please feel free to contact my mother or me, but generally speaking we will take anything we can get. Remember, Namibia is a very young country; in many areas, we are basically starting from scratch. Every single donation, large or small, can be put to use here.
*All donations must be shipped to me in Omaruru. Small packages (less than 5lbs) generally cost about US$15 to ship airmail; large/heavy packages can get quite expensive. Shipping packages by boat or by M-bag (for book donations only) takes anywhere from 6-12 weeks but is much cheaper and may be preferable.
*Many necessities can be purchased in country or ordered from South Africa, so monetary donations to help purchase these and other resources are always accepted:)
*If interested in donating money, please specify how you would like your donation to be used. Otherwise, all monetary donations will go into the Omaruru TRC fund which helps fund the maintenance and upkeep of the TRC (such as: computer usage and maintenance fees, workshop fees, printer paper and toner, stationary, etc.).To give you an idea of what we're working with, currently our centre funds consist of loose change that fits into a small coffee tin... :)

Ruru-palooza

2006-07-12T19:11:00.000+02:00

The Himba tribe is a nomadic tribe in northern Namibia. Himbas are known for their traditional lifestyles. Because of the harsh and desolate environment in which they live, Himbas have been fairly secluded from life outside their own people and have therefore been relatively uninfluenced by advancements in society and societal trends.

Many of my good friends here are Himba or part Himba. Though they don't live traditional lifestyles anymore, the way in which they were raised from childbirth has equipped them with some unique skills. For example, Himbas can kill livestock with their bare hands. My learners shared this bit of knowledge with me when they were trying to explain to me just how serious these people are. My learners are known for their incredible imaginations and exaggeration skills (a.k.a. lying capabilities), so I of course did not believe this. I recently shared my disbelief with my Himba friends and in turn quickly learned why my learners also told me to never challenge a Himba. This morning they insisted on taking me to our office farm where, I kid you not, they tied a rope around a cow's neck and proceeded to strangle it with their bare hands.

I first heard about Himba wrestling a few months ago. Some friends were over for dinner and we were sharing stories from our childhood, all of us silently trying to figure out how we possibly could have lived such unbelievably different lives yet have ended up at the same place all together eating boerwurst and mashed potatoes. One friend began talking about the traditional Himba games he and his family partake in when everyone is together. Among the more interesting games was this Himba wrestling. Himba wrestling usually takes place between two Himbas who haven't seen one another in awhile-- it's almost a form of greeting that all Himbas are aware of and prepared for when they reunite. It's a bit like our American style of wrestling, though besides the "no kicking or punching" rule, there really aren't any restrictions on what you can and cannot do to your opponent. The whole objective of the wrestling is to toss your opponent onto his back in any way, shape or form. The more serious and skilled wrestlers are able to toss their opponent up and over their shoulder and onto his back, while those just wrestling for fun do more of a hip check and flip their opponent onto his back. All of my friends who were explaining this had at one point or another been seriously injured during a wrestling match, either breaking an arm or hurting their back or neck. In fact, usually wrestling continues until one party is too hurt to wrestle any longer.

They told us that such wrestling usually takes place deep in the bush where only tribes are present, but that occasionally some fool in town or at a shebeen will challenge a Himba and get tossed in front of a large crowd of people. When we asked if they'd ever wrestled a white person they laughed and said no, that Himbas are too skilled at wrestling to be seriously challenged by a non-Himba. PC always talks about the importance of crossing cultures-- of how in order to have a fulfilling service, it is essential that all PCVs try their best to immerse themselves in the culture and experience as many traditional aspects as possible. Most of us have done the funerals and the weddings and the traditional dinners, but this wrestling was a new possibility for us. My PCV friends were planning to come back to Omaruru in about a month anyway so we decided it would be fun to organize a Himba vs. PCV wrestling tournament. The Himbas were amused to say the least.

My friends and I were quite interested in this wrestling business but were having a hard time visualizing how it was possible. For one, most my Himba friends (along with many of my Namibian friends) are quite small. Most of them are less than 5'10'' and can't possibly weigh more than 60 or 70 kilos. Though Africa has taken its toll on my PCV friends, most of those planning to take part in the wrestling had a good 20 to 30 pounds on each Himba. How in the world they would be able to toss these healthy Americans was beyond me.

The weeks leading up to the event sparked much commotion throughout Omaruru. Random people would stop into my office to talk about it, one saying, "Your friends are not actually serious about this wrestling, are they? They will break their necks!" My learners were overly concerned about our safety as well, coming to me with these crazy and seemingly impossible stories about Himbas and their strength (the cow strangling being one of the stories). Over confident townspeople began randomly approaching the Himbas on the street to challenge them (a move that resulted in one non-Himba having to go to the hospital). So many people became interested and wanted to participate that at the last moment we allowed two late registrants from the Himba side: Omaruru's traffic cop as well as the Chief of Police.

The PCV wrestlers trained for about a month leading up to the main event. One PCV found small Himba children to train him (one of my Himba friends had told us that a Himba child would probably be the best competition for us PCVs); another began running with learners on his back and installed a pull-up bar in his house; while yet another, perhaps the most serious, resigned himself to a month-long diet of cheese alone, hoping to bulk up.

Alas, their efforts were to no avail. This past weekend marked the first ever "Ruru-palooza." Open to all interested parties and offering events such as beer pong, soccer, night clubbing, volleyball and all-day bootlegged DVD marathons and cake eating contests, Ruru-palooza's main event, Himba wrestling, drew competitors and spectators from far and wide to the Omaruru riverbed. We had hoped that holding the event late enough in the afternoon would allow the Himbas a sufficient amount of time to spend at the shebeen, ideally weakening their Himba strength, but our strategies proved fruitless and in the end the Peace Corps name was shamed. Some volunteers performed decently, tossing a few Himbas, but there is no question that had the Himbas been really fighting back, as opposed to trying to teach their opponents the correct moves in order to provide at least a bit of a challenge, all volunteers would have ended up with broken bones by the end of the day. The few moments when the Himbas were really trying their hardest left the volunteers flying through the air like rag dolls.

All in all, the weekend proved to be an enjoyable experience. Though all the volunteers departed feeling quite bruised and battered, fun was indeed had by all and I can see this becoming a semi-annual thing.

And if it makes anyone feel better, I did see the Himbas on Monday-- it could have been my imagination but few of them appeared to be limping… :)

Rachel

2006-07-04T17:42:00.000+02:00

My closest Namibian friend is Rachel. I've wanted to write an entry about her for a while but I've found it hard to do her justice through writing. She's one of those people who, when trying to find words to describe, you find yourself saying, "You just have to meet her." One of a kind… I think that's it.

Rachel was born into exile in Angola in 1978. In 1978, a bloody war was being fought between the freedom fighters of Namibia and the occupying forces. Both of Rachel's parents were fighting for independence so Rachel, along with her brothers and cousins (who are more like siblings to her now), spent the first part of their lives in different refugee camps in Angola and Zambia. She was reunited with her parents shortly before independence and in 1990, she and her family came out of exile and settled in the border city of Rundu. Her mother took a job as a nurse and her father continued his work in the defense force up until his death in 1998.

Rachel has been a constant fixture at our house since day one. She is so different than most Namibians I have met that initially I was a bit unsure about her. However, I quickly learned that her crazy and off-the-wall personality was indeed genuine, and her loyalty towards us since the beginning has been unwavering. Rachel refers to me as her sister and to my roommates as "her people." When we walk through town together and people stare or yell things at me, she will yell back, "What?! Have you never seen a white person before?!" She brings traditional Oshiwambo foods to our house-- including spinach, porridge and mopane worms-- and as she cooks for us, she points to me and says, "But I know this one won't like any of this!" and then laughs at me as I politely take tiny bites of each. Her definition of privacy is worlds away from our American definition. Every evening, she bursts into our house and makes her rounds, hugging and kissing and punching each of us. Often I will be bathing and she will walk in, sit down on the toilet and begin some rant about her day or what so-and-so said to her (thankfully, my long friendship with Katie Murphy has desensitized me to such an invasion:) ). She understands my curiosity and agrees to accompany me to random functions or parties I'm invited to, even though I know she would never go if it weren't for me. She is loud and sassy and completely unafraid of challenging the norms, characteristics I find refreshing.

Recently, I was invited to spend a weekend with Rachel's family. As is true with most African families, Rachel's "family" consists of cousins and nieces and nephews, all of whom she calls her brothers and sisters. With no less than six people at any one time living in this three-bedroom house, Rachel's house is filled with activity. Kids and friends and dogs are running in and out so steadily that the doors literally remain open all through the day and night. Raising this clan of young people alone, Rachel's mother is this matriarchal figure so strong, she doesn't have to show any harshness to be respected by everyone in her house. The relationship between Rachel and her mother is anything but a traditional mother-daughter relationship. Her mother's absence from much of Rachel's childhood has created this unique, distant best friendship between the two women; almost as if they were sisters separated at birth. Rachel understands that her childhood, though extremely difficult, was the way it was for a definite reason. And though she could, she doesn't resent her mother whatsoever for the choices she made regarding her children; rather, Rachel seems to respect her mother for having to make such a difficult choice in order to fight for something she felt so strongly about. I know very few people who would be as understanding.

Though we have come from two completely different worlds, I'm often surprised to discover how many things Rachel and I have in common. Being born and raised in exile has set her apart from many people in Namibia, especially people living as far inland as Omaruru. Here, very few people can relate to her or understand where she has come from and why she is so different from them, and though I would never think to compare my past with hers, our solitariness here is similar. Like Rachel, very few people understand me and where I come from, or why I do certain things in a certain way. She and I are both outsiders of sorts, which seems to have led us to one another.

Last weekend, after spending the day with us a mutual friend of ours said to me, "She is so protective of you!" and for the first time, I realized how true that is. She observes everything I do, every person I speak to or new friend I make, and is honest and non-judgmental when she explains the often-confusing elements of Namibian culture that I would be completely oblivious to without her. When I first arrived here my words and actions were often misinterpreted to mean something completely different from what I had intended. Rachel would sit with me and say, "My dear, we Africans…," and go on to explain how different life is here, especially for women. Most nights I have a friend or two (not including the 10 or 15 hostel borders) stop by to visit me. When Rachel is there, she skeptically eyes them up and down and asks them streams of questions. She recognizes my frequent naïveté and without ever naming names or referring to specific events, she will say, "My dear, you love too much. Not all people are good people," and I know exactly what she is talking about. It's hard being a foreigner on your own in someone else's country. I think all too often we volunteers are so desperate for friendship and companionship that we open our lives to anyone who shows us any bit of kindness. Though there are indeed many good and genuine people in my life, some people are much more interested in the novelty of me than of actually getting to know me and establishing a true friendship with me, something I probably would have realized a little too late had it not been for Rachel. During training, PC told us over and over that service is often a very lonely and isolated time for many volunteers. Trying to integrate fully into a culture so incredibly different from your own is not an easy task, and trying to do so alone is perhaps what sends many volunteers home before their service is complete. I think that at the end of our two-year commitment, those PCVs who can say they have found just one true friend should consider themselves lucky. To be honest, I know that my overall experiences here would have been much more difficult without Rachel and I am not confident that I would have survived as well had she not been a part of my life. I feel quite fortunate to be able to call her my friend.

*This blog entry was written and published with Rachel's permission*

Namibia is for lovers?

2006-06-27T13:47:00.000+02:00

...you have got to be kidding me.
http://goldenfiddle.com/node/3607