Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: The Namibian Transportation System (the bane of my vacation)2/10/2018 Oh goodness, it’s been over two months since I last posted and my life has been in that beautiful in-between place where half of the time I spend my days napping between meals, and the other half of the time I am hiking 9 hours across Namibia to attend conferences, buy a dog, and visit friends. In other words, looking back on December it feels like I did nothing but sleep, gain weight, and lose motivation, but in reality the month was pretty jam-packed with new, exciting adventures. As per the title of this blog post, I am going to go into detail about some of my transportation experiences this December holiday. It all started at the very beginning. Once upon a time, at the start of December, a young Peyton full of life, energy, and hope was told that she needed to head down to Windhoek for a Peace Corps conference. Full of excitement over the prospect of learning more policies and procedures, as well as elation over the promised free food, she made plans with her friends Toni and Graham to hike down south together. Now this wasn’t Toni, Graham, or Peyton’s first rodeo, and they knew that if they wanted to make it through the trip with their sanity, they would need to ditch the kombis and find a private hike – preferably with air conditioning and no kids. Plans were made and bags were packed, and finally the morning came for them to meet in Ondangwa and find a ride. Peyton and Toni, being respectable, considerate human beings, arrived right at the agreed upon time. Graham showed up three hours later, having taken his time cleaning his house, enjoying first and second breakfast, perfecting his one-armed pull-ups, and Googling the difference between hypertrophy and atrophy. During the three hours waiting for the weak-link of the dream team, Peyton and Toni learned that their friend Alicia already had a hike and would be coming through Ondangwa right around the time Graham might feasibly be ready. “How perfect!” Peyton and Toni rejoiced, while eating fat cakes and attempting to avoid eye contact with the drunken men that were increasing in both number and inebriation the longer they waited for Graham. Finally, Graham arrived and the plan seemed to be in motion - Alicia would arrive soon with the car and they would be on their merry way. Well, Alicia did not arrive soon with the car, and the longer they waited for her the fishier the situation seemed. After Alicia mentioned the delay was due to the driver constantly stopping to drop various people off, the situation was clear. Alicia was in a kombi. Too late to revert back to the previous plan of a private hike, Peyton, Toni, and Graham joined Alicia in the un-air conditioned, crowded kombi and made it to their destination about 5 hours later than they should have if Graham were on time. Transportation story #1. The conference we attended down in Windhoek was called Reconnect, a five days dedicated to sharing our initial experiences at site, learning technical information, and receiving resources for the coming school year. Namibia is truly such a diverse country; it was really cool to hear about how unique everyone’s schools, communities, and experiences had been thus far. At the same time it was a bittersweet reunion, as Reconnect was the last time we would be together as a full group until Mid-Service, a year into service. Following Reconnect, a group of us stayed in Windhoek for an extra weekend. We got dressed up and went out, did some shopping, drank good coffee, went to the movies, and ate some ~amazing~ food. A lot of my host family lives in Windhoek so I also had the chance to have dinner with them over at their apartment. I was able to meet many of my siblings whom I hadn’t met before, and it was fun to have the chance to get to know them a little before they all came up North for Christmas. (Side note: I’m generally a plain cheese / margarita pizza type of person, but my host sisters introduced me to vegan pizza with no cheese, onions, pineapple, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and olives… and I loved it! I’ve always believed that people who like pineapple on pizza are deranged, but I’ve totally changed my mind on that one. It’s great.) So here comes transportation story #2, some of y’all may have followed this ordeal on my Instagram story. After a heavenly weekend in WHK, it was time to return to reality. Toni ditched us for an early vacation so it was up to Graham and me to find a ride back. At the recommendation of my host siblings, we settled on the overnight bus. Now, you have to get up early to stand in line and score tickets for the bus. In case we didn’t glean this from the last transportation story, timeliness is not Graham’s strong suit. I was walking home, ticket in hand by the time Graham was waking up and (surprise!) by the time he got to the office there were no more spots on the bus. After a little bit of schmoozing, they managed to free up a seat for him and even upgraded the two of us to the VIP bus! Things were falling into place beautifully, the bus wasn’t supposed to leave until 5 that night so we got to spend one more day in the city, I was convinced this was going to be my new favorite form of transportation. When we got to the bus stop, it was chaos. Tons of people with even more luggage were lined up around the corner. TBH I don’t understand why Mom tells me that I’m clueless as if it’s a bad thing… My cluelessness led me to the front of the line to ask how the whole luggage system worked, and lo and behold they let us skip the ~hours~ long luggage line and checked us right on in! At this point I should have realized that it was all too good to be true, but my head was clouded with the sheer luck of fast service and an air-conditioned bus. The first two or three hours of the trip were great; I introduced Graham to “How I Met Your Mother,” I napped, I listened to T-Swift’s new album. I was a happy camper. For some reason beyond my realm of understanding, right around 11PM, when many people on the bus seemed to start settling in to go to bed, the bus driver decided to bump some electronic/Nigerian-beat Christian gospel hymns accompanied by a flashing music video on the TV’s. This apparently set the mood for the two young men sitting beside us to crack open some bottles of Tafel and start drinking. I cannot convey with words what fresh Hell this experience was. Between the incessant, blasting music, the light show, and the smell of cheap beer at 3:30 in the morning, I was deliriously rotating between laughing and crying. We reached Graham’s stop around 3:30… 3:30AM. Both of us were under the impression that we would be rolling in around 7AM, get a nice breakfast, do some errands, then catch taxis into the village. Nope. As they yelled the name of his town over the hypnotic beat (which incidentally remains the soundtrack to my nightmares to this day), we looked at each other with a mixture of wtf, depression, confusion, and solidarity. It had become obvious that neither of us had thought this through, neither of us had a car waiting for us in town, and both of us would have to walk to our respective villages in the middle of the night carrying half of our belongings. We started brainstorming who we knew that lived in town, could we go knock on their door and wake them up? Should we walk to the police station and ask them for help? Do we call Kevin, our country director? Was this a problem for the Embassy? How soon could they get the Marines to us? We decided that he would come to my town, since my village was only 5k out as opposed to his 15k out, and try to walk to my site together. (Both of us are idiots, looking back we could have just stayed the night in the Peace Corps office, but we couldn’t really hear our thoughts over the music so whatever.) By some miracle, about 15 minutes away from my town my host sister called me and asked if the overnight bus had almost arrived. I guess my Windhoek host siblings had called and told my family to stay awake to pick me up #bless. So we ended up not having to walk in the middle of the night, Graham was able to stay in my spare room (which is gnarly – that might’ve been worse for him than walking the 15k at 3AM), and we both learned to never take the overnight bus ever again. #OvernightYeahRight #NeverAgain This post is getting long, so I’ll try to start summarizing. I had the chance to go back to my CBT site and celebrate an early Christmas with my family there, it was great to see them all again and meet some new faces! I volunteered at the Oshana Regional Library and was able to become more familiar with their book collection (I will definitely be spending a lot of time there throughout my service) AND I got to help out with their Children’s Library Christmas Party! The next few weeks I spent around the homestead, my friend Casey (and her ADORABLE puppy) came to stay with me for about a week around Christmas. Most of the Windhoek portion of the family arrived on Christmas Eve, in time for Mass, which lasted for forever #Catholics. After hour 5 Casey and I snuck out the back and just sat against the church trying not to cry. Despite its length, the service was incredibly beautiful and singing Silent Night in Oshiwambo surrounded by my new family made me melt… it’s just really cool how Jesus brings people together. Christmas day was great, the family killed a goat, cow, and chicken and started braiing them up while the vegetarian side of the homestead, Casey and I, contributed mashed potatoes, an apple crumble, and un-risen biscuits. We all sat around in the orchard eating, drinking, and talking. It was really cool having all of the older siblings there because the more they drank, the more I felt at home. It was just like Dad, Uncle Stan, and Uncle Mal were all there making inappropriate jokes, instigating arguments, and feeding off of one another. It cracked me up; I loved it. The next day was my host cousin Junior’s baptism. During the middle of the service the pastor came up to Casey and me and started giving us a lecture on how on Judgment Day we will get what we give ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. After the baptism came the party, which we helped set up for – Wait! I have my time frame all wrong. The baptism was on the 24th, and the reason we were so over Mass was because we had spent all day at this baptism. I could go back and fix that in the previous paragraph, but I’m tired. Casey and I headed down to Swakopmund, one of the main Namibian coastal cities, a few days later. We met up with about six other friends and spent a heavenly few days there. Swakop is the best. I went skydiving (1st time in Africa, whattup! It was awesome, I highly recommend it *achookade*), ate phenomenal sushi, drank wine on the beach, cuddled outside in a blanket (it’s COLD there!), and watched the Cooking Network on a ~real~ TV in our AirBnB. On New Years Eve we met up with a few local friends who took us out to the sand dunes, and we climbed up them with a cooler in hand and rang in the New Year popping champagne, taking turns riding down the dunes on a makeshift sled, and watching the fireworks burst over the ocean. It was one of the coolest (literally, it was cold) experiences I’ve ever had. It was one of those times that made me really feel alive, and it was then that it struck me how cool it is that I get to have this experience at just 23 years old. I mean it’s pretty awesome that I get to live in Namibia, that I’ve met so many amazing American and Namibian friends here, and that I am in a position that makes it easy for me to travel with cool people to cool places and do cool things. I’m super duper lucky. Post-Swakop, we went to Windhoek and spent the day there celebrating our friend Myr’s birthday before all heading our separate ways. Graham and I hiked back up North, NOT on the overnight bus. We stopped at Will’s house to split up the trip and had a fun night there shaving Graham’s head #youcan’tmessupbald. I wanted to find a private hike the next day, but Graham was hiking with a 6-foot long, 70-pound barbell – because apparently he needed a ~special~ barbell that they only had in Windhoek – so we were forced onto a kombi. There’s more of a story there, I wasn’t exactly the easiest person to hike with on this trip either, but I can’t publicly discuss it yet until I get PC approval. If ya know, ya know #woof. Overall, it was an amazing December. Of course it was hard spending Christmas away from the family, but those few sad moments reminded me of how lucky I am to have something worth missing back home (if you haven’t seen the video that SW made for me, check it out… I BAWLED). And on top of that, how lucky I am to have great family and friends here in Namibia to pick me up when I’m down.
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I feel super lucky to live in O-land, there is a high concentration of volunteers up here so I see at least one other American every week. A big group of us got together for “Wamboween” a few weeks ago and that was my first chance to meet a lot of the older volunteers. It was a BYOB/potluck type of event, I brought no-bake cookies that ended up as a gooey glob on the plate and closely resembled a cow patty I could’ve picked up outside of my homestead. Good first impressions. We spent Saturday at Bennie’s Park, which is a waterpark-type place with a few pools and bars, and then had the dinner/party that night at a volunteer’s house in town. I dressed up as Tassenberg, which is the type of red wine here that maybe costs the equivalent of 75 American cents. People mix Tassenberg with Coke and call the drink a Classy Tassy, so my intention was to put on some ~classy~ clothes and wear a Tassenberg sign, but then I remembered that I am in the Peace Corps and do not currently own classy clothes. The closest I got was a long black skirt, so I was basically an Un-Classy Tassy… my friend Toni was Tafel, which is the beer equivalent of Tassenberg #couplescostume. It was a great night of braiing, meeting new people, cards, and beer pong. After two weeks of adjusting to a whole new place and way of life, it was refreshing to spend an evening with other Americans who knew exactly how I felt. My experience at site so far has been a really interesting contrast of the familiar and unfamiliar, one-second I am riding with my host family in a Jeep with air-con listening to America’s top 40 and the next minute I am at a Wambo wedding swinging an ox tail above my head. I’m sitting at a table having a beer and laughing with some friends, then a bowl of mopane worms and a platter with a goat’s head (a “smiley”) is brought out. It keeps you on your toes, and I’ve come to think that a lot of the beauty in the world comes from this play between the expected and the unexpected, the known and the unknown. One specific instance that comes to mind was during a Wambo wedding; the bride had just arrived at the reception and there was a large procession of singing and dancing to guide her to a tree where she would receive gifts and hear speeches. Once under the tree, the memes lined up with gifts balanced on their heads and one-by-one danced forward to deliver them to the bride and the groom and then formed a circle around the couple. Everything got quiet and we all stood in the shade of this tree, listening to the wind and the birds, until one meme started singing this soft song that everyone else joined in. When the song was finished, people began giving their wedding speeches and I remember thinking how beautiful it is to have something that is familiar at its core, but unique in its details. Of course, during the middle of one of these speeches someone’s ringtone went off and it was Bruno Mars’ “Versace on the Floor,” so in the midst of thinking about the universality of some things, I was also reminded of the prevalence of American culture around the world. I’m pretty stinking lucky to be an American because between billboards advertising the Kardashians, a KFC on every corner, and Nicki Minaj constantly on the radio, I never feel too far from home. Thanksgiving Day was an exception to this, and I got pretty emotional about everything I was missing out on after a day of invigilating at school, sitting alone while my parents attended a funeral service, and eating beets and Soya-meat for dinner. It was my first Thanksgiving away from my family and after 22 years of watching the Macy’s Day Parade, playing whatever mandatory family fun game my mom came up with, and devouring Weeza’s cranberry sauce, it felt really wrong to not celebrate in that way. That Saturday, however, a group of volunteers came together in town to have a Thanksgiving celebration similar to the one we had for Halloween; we each brought a dish to Ben’s house and ate, drank, and were thankful together. I made the chocolate pecan pie that I love so much; unfortunately, my oven is on the fritz and has one temperature… I do not know what this temperature is, only that it is my only option. This, combined with the fact that I was missing about 4 of the ingredients and had to make my own piecrust, meant that the concoction was not up to my usual standards. The pecans were burnt, the filling was underdone, and the piecrust was so thick that it was basically a biscuit. The other volunteers compensated for my shortcomings and we had an amazing feast of roast duck, homemade bread, cheesy potatoes, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, mac-and-cheese, and apple crisp. I balled out on wine with a cork (I used my American card so it only ended up costing $20 #treatyoself). Apart from the good wine and good food, I was so thankful to be reminded that I am not as alone as I felt 2 days prior, and in being reminded of that I was also able to recognize all of the other thousands of things I have to be thankful of. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to serve in the Peace Corps, to do something that I’ve dreamed and prayed about doing for years, to have come into such an amazing community in here Namibia, and to have such an incredible and loving support system back home. Around the time that I was having this little uplifting realization in my journal, Kade texted me something along the lines of “I’m rooting for you” and I just broke down. But this one was a happy break down. Life is beautiful and I am lucky. The morning after our Thanksgiving dinner I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed and headed to my first Mass. I’ve been going to the Catholic Church in my village for the last few weeks but apparently not every service is a Mass? Idk. It started at 8 and the place was packed. My meme is in the choir and my tate is the deacon so I’m on my own when it comes to finding a place to sit, I found a girl that looked to be my age and she ushered me into the aisle seat beside her. Mass started, I stood to face the front, and as I struggled to read the Oshiwambo hymnal, I was suddenly struck in the side of my face with a rattle full of water. I don’t actually know what it was that he was holding but the man (the Bishop? Preacher? Pope?) was prancing down the aisle flicking what looked like a rattle full of water on everyone. I assume that’s why my new friend was so eager to put me in the aisle seat, she wanted a splashguard… it’s not just a little drizzle of water, it was like a full wet-willy x1000 and I was not expecting it at all so naturally I burst out laughing. Turns out it was holy water and laughter was not the appropriate response… my friend admonished me. Since the service is held in Oshiwambo, I had no idea what was going on and I was still exhausted from the night before so the words I was hearing but not understanding were lulling me into a trance-like state. I for sure would have fallen asleep if it was not for the changing of positions every five minutes; I swear they should play that song that goes “up, down, up, down, up, down” because I was constantly switching between kneeling, sitting, and standing. Three hours later and the cool of the morning started to transition into standard mid-afternoon sweltering heat, my knees were killing me, my stomach was growling, and my throat was dry. “This has to end soon,” I thought to myself. Two hours later and I am officially dripping sweat and holy water. Then, pastor (?) says something that gets the congregation up and headed to the door and I feel a surge of euphoria before my friend informs me that we are going on a procession to the cemetery, hospital, and school to bless each of the places. For the next hour and a half we walked around the village spending about 40 minutes at each site praying over it. It was something that was really meaningful and wonderful and I would have really enjoyed it if it was 30 degrees cooler and I had remembered to put on sunscreen. After this little excursion we returned to the church to continue Mass, this portion of the service was mainly silent prayers and I was rotating between praying for grace and patience, praying for the service to end, and trying to mentally recite all of the passages where Paul says that we should love suffering. At 2:40, after being in church for six and a half hours, I saw one of my coworkers sneaking towards the back. Mass showed no signs of slowing down and at this point the silent prayers were being pierced with the sounds of my stomach trying to eat itself so I sent up a quick prayer for forgiveness and scurried to catch up with my coworker. I don’t know what time Mass actually wrapped up because I was sound asleep with my fan blasting on my face by the time my parents returned. That night I apologized to my tate for leaving early and he said he was trying to gesture to me that I could leave long before I did… I guess even he didn’t expect it to take so long, so hopefully that means not all of the future Masses will be over six hours. This upcoming weekend I am headed down to Windhoek for Reconnect, it is the last time everyone in group 46 will be together until Mid-Service, next October. Now that I’m starting to get into a routine at site, I feel like I’m running out of things to blog about so if anyone has any questions or things they’d like me to write about, let me know! Also, I compiled all of my videos from the first few months here in Namibia and am currently posting it on Vimeo... it should be up in in 3ish hours (11:30 eastern time 11/28) unless the hotel I'm mooching WiFi off of realizes I'm not a guest and kicks me out of the lobby before it's finished uploading. If you’re interested in viewing it you can click the Vimeo icon on the right!
Disclaimer: This is a weird blog post. I started reading a new book with a really interesting and simplistic writing style and decided I wanted to experiment with it. So I started writing about my mornings because they are always the same. They follow an exact routine, which I’ve really grown fond of, and knowing how tomorrow will start gives me a small sense of security. This writing was originally just going to be for me, a way to pass time because it is only 7:30PM and I don’t go to bed until 8. When I reread what I wrote, however, I realized that this contains my routine, my feelings, and the exact rambling, disjointed thoughts that I have every morning. It’s pretty much exactly what goes on inside my head. I decided to post it because I think it gives more insight into a small part of how I personally am living here in Namibia than my other posts. It doesn’t have the funny, random stories about odd things that happen or discuss cultural immersion or any of that. It’s just the mundane.
Fan on my face, sweaty blankets crumpled beneath me, hair stuck to my cheeks, hands splayed off the side of the bed searching for my fallen glasses. 4:50AM. I check my phone; I read messages about what my friends did while I was asleep. Laura watched a RomCom and cried, she’s turning into Deg and me. I have 30 minutes to respond before they go to bed, I have an hour and ten minutes left of unlimited data. I load snap-stories to watch while I’m bored later in the day. I roll out of bed; contort my back in an attempt to ease the discomfort of the wires that cut beneath me when I sleep. I should buy a mattress pad. Do they sell mattress pads here? Ha I make like $2 a day, I can’t afford a mattress pad. I sludge out of my room to my living space. Sand sticks to the sweaty soles of my feet and I wonder why I ever sweep, because one grain gone is replaced by ten others. I turn on my kettle and lay on my yoga mat as I wait for the water to boil. I tell myself I like yoga, but really I just like shavasana. I hear the water bubbling and my eyes pop open as the kettle clicks off. I do my abs workout for the day as I crunch to stand up. I pour the boiling water into my French press and look at my watch. Four minutes to brew. I start reaching down for my box of Weet-Bix and stop myself; I look at my watch again because I’ve already forgotten the time. I should not eat before 5:45 or else I’ll be hungry before two, and if I’m hungry before two, then I’ll eat a fat cake, if I eat a fat cake, then I’ll feel like I should go on a run, and if I go on a run, then I’ll sweat to death. If you give a mouse a cookie. I wait to start eating. Shhwuhwshhghrr. That’s the best I can replicate the sound of the coffee being plunged. I pour myself a cup, open the door to let the cool air in, and sit on my couch. Deep breath, closed eyes, mug to my nose, steam condensing on my glasses. I can almost imagine I am home, the girls are at school, and Mom is five minutes away from walking in and telling me it’s time to put the coffee down and start a productive day. Sh*t. Excuse my language but a bug landed in my coffee while I was daydreaming. I fish it out, flick it through the door, and grab my Doom spray. I hold my coffee in one hand, the spray in the other, and rest my Kindle on my lap. As I read I rotate between taking sips and spraying death to any bug foolish enough to fly near me. Mwahaha, I chuckle as I picture myself as the antagonist of my book. 5:45. I grab two Weet-Bix from the box, dollop out a spoonful of black currant jam, and add water as I crush the flaky bars into something resembling wet cardboard. Yum. I think about how people can probably grow to like anything if given enough time and it is the only option. Mom should’ve raised me on wheat bread. I read as I eat. I recently finished one of my favorite childhood series and am now reading a more contemporary, philosophical but strikingly blunt novel. It kind of reminds me of Hemingway. Who wrote Shakespeare again? Was it Hemingway? (Questions from my dad) One more hour until I leave. My seventh alarm of the morning rings and I question why I set twelve alarms every day, it is not necessary, but I will set them all again for tomorrow. What is it that they say is the mark of insanity? I turn off all of the remaining alarms except for 6:45. I tell myself that I will meditate for the next 45 minutes. I go outside and sit on my porch, cross my legs, close my eyes, and prepare to become one with nature. This buzzing in my ear is annoying. Think of nothing, think of nothing, think of nothing. If I tell myself to think of nothing, aren’t I still thinking of something? Has it been 45 minutes yet? How do people do this? Okay, nope, I feel something, something is on me, what is crawling on my legs? I open my eyes and swat at my calves only to find that there is nothing on me, it is merely my three-month unshaven leg hairs bristling in the wind. I wonder if today is the day I should shave – I was probably meditating for about 30 minutes, I have 15 minutes to shave. I look at my phone. 6:04. Well it was a nice attempt at meditation, we have 2 years to master it. I love using the Royal We for myself. Text from Mom. “Call me!!!” It must be urgent. “Peyton, I need you to come up with an animal-themed slogan for our Christmas card.” On it. “Happy Pawnukkah.” No we’re not Jewish. “Have a very Hairy Christmas.” She’ll hate that. “AnimALL is Merry and Bright.” Lol. “Happy Howlidays.” Done. I return to the couch and continue to read, this time while petting my shins. I won’t shave today, I decide. My alarm goes off at 6:45. I stop reading and turn on music; right now I am listening to The New Basement Tapes, their song “Kansas City” makes me cry. I stand in front of my closet and look at my seven clothing options. What to choose, what to choose? I pick out my favorite dress, the one that feels like pajamas, even though I’ve worn it four times over the past two weeks. If you change up the necklace, no one notices… right? I look in the mirror and remember the days that I put on makeup and did my hair. I brush my teeth. I ran out of my favorite American toothpaste last week and am surprised by how emotional I am over the loss. I pack up my backpack. I pour half of a cup of coffee and put it in the freezer for the afternoon. I grab the water bottle that I froze overnight and clip it to my bag. I go to the door, realize that I forgot to lock it the night before, shudder to think of what CD Kevin would say, oh gosh I should probably take my malaria medication, I take my malaria medication, and then I leave and lock up the house. Wa lala po, Meme. Nawa? Owa kotha nawa? Owa penduka nawa? Eewa. Onda nyanyukwa, okuna ombepo ongura. Otandi yi koskola, oshi iiwete nale. The puppies weave between my legs to trip me as I leave the homestead. I hold them back with one foot as I try to close the gate without them following me out. And I walk to school, vigilant for snakes. I have to backtrack a little bit from my last blog post. Prior to swearing in we had our supervisor’s workshop, which was two days of organized “get to know you” time. My principal was unable to come so instead I got to know the life skills teacher, Calvin, who has since proven to be a godsend. At the time, however, he just about managed to give me a heart attack. During our excitements/fears sharing time, I mentioned how excited I was to meet the family I would be living with… “Oh, no one told you?” was Calvin’s response to that excitement, which then instantaneously converted into a fear. “That housing situation fell through, you will now be living with the nuns at the mission.” My heart dropped. Firstly, I am not Catholic. Secondly, although my performance in the Old Courthouse Theatre’s rendition of The Sound of Music may have convinced people otherwise, I am not a nun. My mind instantly ran through the entirety of the plot of The Sound of Music, I could already hear the nuns singing, “How do we solve a problem like Peyton?” and I was not looking forward to being sent to be a governess for a recently widowed Namibian man and his 7 kids. Although I was convinced that I would never be able to get into the ~habit~ of things at a nunnery, I was ~nun the less~ prepared to be flexible because #PeaceCorps. After I spent 6 hours trying to list all the pros of living in a nunnery (the habit would prevent me from having any bad hair days and I’d get to come up with thousands of nun puns for the next two years), Calvin told me that he had been misinformed and that I would still be living on the homestead. So that is my main story from the supervisor’s workshop. I will never forget the feeling of being told that I would live on a nunnery. So, flash-forward to the day after swearing in, Friday the 20th, we Northern volunteers packed up and shipped out to site. It was the perfect, most classic ending to training – we were supposed to leave at 7AM but did not end up getting out of Okahandja until close to 10. I’ve never been an anxious or type-A person but Peace Corps logistics is really turning me. I woke up at 4:45 in the morning to finish packing and get my stuff outside for the bus to pick me at 6, three hours later and it was still not there. I’m going to stop talking about it now because it’s only frustrating me all over again. Ugh. Eventually the 6 Oshana region volunteers made it into the kombi with our six supervisors and (at least) 6 bags each. I was once more graced with the middle seat in the middle row of the kombi, between my supervisor and my friend Toni, and directly underneath a sunroof. Sitting squeezed between two people under a sunroof at 12 noon in sub-Saharan Africa is an experience that I can’t wait to share with my family and friends when they come visit. After the 8 hour drive, our supervisors dropped us off in Oshakati for a weekend conference. We had a nice dinner with Marcus and Ben, two volunteers in the region from earlier groups, and then had a little slumber party in Ben’s living room. Highlight: Ben’s cat peed on Mackenzie around 1AM. The supervisors returned on Sunday after our conference to pick us up and take us to our new homes. Prior to dropping me off at my house, Calvin took me all around the village to meet the nuns at the mission, the nurses at the clinic, the grade 11s and 12s who live at the hostel. He continued his mission to introduce me to everyone within a 50 mile radius the following week and we met with the police chief, the principal of the head circuit school, the Director of Education in the Oshana region, and even the governor. Calvin never missed an opportunity to take a picture of me with all of these people, and I have heard from our Peace Corps group chat that he then sent these pictures to all of the other supervisors. Enjoy the following slideshow of the images of me that are being circulated throughout the Namibian education system. I'm beauty and I'm grace. My housing situation is wonderful; I have my own building on a homestead, which means that I get my own space and privacy while also having a family. I have a large living area, a bathroom (with running water!), and two bedrooms (one is being used as storage space). I’m overwhelmingly thrilled with the setup. My tate and meme live with me on the homestead along with Nangula, a young girl from Angola who works for them. I thought my Oshiwambo was pretty good up until I met Nangula, who does not speak one word of English. I spent about 30 minutes trying to ask her for a match, my mom was on the phone while all of this was going down – you can ask her how that conversation went. My parents have 9 kids, none of them live on the homestead anymore but the youngest two are twins around my age, one of whom is at university in Greece and the other, Kapandu, is home right now from university in Windhoek. I’ve figured out how to live in my new home pretty easily. I’ve had to become accustomed to hornets; one has nested in the corner of my shower so my showers are mainly me trying to minimally touch the cold water and entirely avoid the hornet that buzzes around me. It's a fun adventure. Oh my gosh - also, yesterday I put my hair towel wrap thing on without checking inside it... about three seconds later I felt something moving around on my head and I originally thought it was just my hair falling into place. NOPE. It was a wall spider that set up camp in there. Not my finest moment. I thought nothing could make me miss the stinkbugs at the cabin, but the wall spiders, hornets, and mosquitos do. I wake up once every few hours to reapply bug spray (shh, I don't have my mosquito net up... I'm working on it). I think I am a little paranoid because I keep my fan blowing on my face when I sleep so my hair tickles my cheeks and I think its a bug and wake up. Naps have become a huge part of my life (even more so than they were back at school @Lwagg) and it's nice because they are pretty socially acceptable here. When I get home from school I normally find my meme asleep under a tree, so I go to my room, change into shorts and a t-shirt, grab my leftover coffee from that morning out of the freezer (iced coffee in the afternoon is everything), and go lay beside her and read a book until I fall asleep. It is lovely. Mom, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you are going to hate me when I get home. My village is only 4 kilometers from a major city, which means that I am only a 10 minute taxi ride to shops, restaurants, and wifi. I can get to a movie theatre in just 40 minutes #poshcorps. The first time I tried to go to town I was too scared to hitchhike so I ended up walking the entire way, which wouldn't have been bad except for the fact that it was 3 in the afternoon and by the time I made it to the stores, I was burnt to a crisp. I am now entirely confident in prancing up to the road and throwing out my hand and catching a ride. I also have a few taxi drivers' phone numbers so that I can simply text them and have them waiting for me on the tar road whenever I'm feeling really posh. I think I'm going to stop this practice, however, as one of the drivers has started trying to text me and last time I rode with him he played me a mix-tape he made me with a song called Fatal Attraction. Not today, buddy. In terms of cooking, I chop vegetables/do prep work on my floor because I don’t have counter space, which means that I think I sometimes end up eating an ant. I have been eating a ton of rice, which is weird because back home I never really liked rice unless it was fried and covered in soy sauce. I have also become a huge fan of frozen grapes and my favorite snack is mashed, frozen bananas mixed with peanut butter... it almost feels like I'm eating ice cream. Since I don’t have a kitchen sink, my dishwashing situation resembles the one from CBT… I have a little bucket that I fill with soapy water and use throughout the day then change every night. Since I only have one plate and one bowl, I have to be really good about immediately doing my dishes or I’ll be eating straight out of the pot that I cook in. Guess what I’ve most frequently been eating out of. School is going great; the Namibian school year has three terms, and we are currently in the third term so learners are taking their final exams these next three weeks. I will start teaching grade 8 and 11 English classes in January at the start of the new school year, and have also been asked to run the school library. I am SO excited about the library. Over the last few weeks I've been going through and clearing it out, getting rid of old magazines and books that are falling apart, sorting through the books that are not at our learner's reading levels (I plan to donate a bunch of them to the local primary school later this week), reorganizing based on the Dewey Decimal System, and reaching out to various organizations to donate newer books to us. The library hasn't been utilized much over the last few years so I'm hoping to change that and really encourage students to read more; this past week I told the grade 8 learners that if they all read Pocahontas, we would all watch the movie together during their free period on Friday. It ended up being really fun and a good way to get learners to think critically and discuss which they liked more, the book or the movie, and why. I am a little frustrated with how the learners have been treating the books since I've started working in the library. I totally understand how so many of our books are falling apart, because the learners do not take care of them at all- they put them in random places, upside down and backwards, they put some books inside others, leave them on the floor, etc. I sat them down and showed them how I expected them to treat the library and the books, but it's still a problem. I am thinking about starting a library prefect system to have learners help me monitor and run the library. Overall, my first few weeks at site have been wonderful! I've been to about a thousand weddings and funerals, and also went to a big Halloween party with all of the other O-land volunteers. This post is already too long so I'll talk about that at a later date. PS: How's my hair doing? It normally has a nice lil halo of frizz. Check it out. Does anybody else ever feel remarkably under qualified to live life? I literally just tried to spell “remarkably” “remarkabley,” I’m a 22-year-old English teacher. How? This isn’t a new feeling for me; I was pretty convinced that the whole “graduation” thing was a joke up until they put the diploma into my hand… how did I, the girl who had a child’s size, boy’s leprechaun costume hanging in my closet (it wasn’t for anything weird, I promise), graduate from a real-life university? I still don’t get it. Anyways, this feeling of inadequacy had been weighing on me a lot throughout training. For ten weeks I was surrounded by 45 amazing Americans who were strong, independent, smart, well traveled, outgoing, accomplished, funny, generous, and adventurous. They were thriving in language training, doing the “lililili!” sound, and seemingly walking down the street shaking hands and kissing babies. Meanwhile, I was trying to tape lickable stamps onto envelopes. “How,” I continuously asked myself, “did I get here? Who thought my Art History degree from one of the most sheltered universities in America would make me a good Peace Corps Volunteer? And how am I going to teach children to speak English when I can barely speak it myself most days?” (bleh-de-bloo-blah-bluh @Fran) Well, being an American, I recognized that even though I might not be the best man for the job, I was going to do it anyways because I wanted to #DonaldTrump. And so all of that fear, stress, and inadequacy mixed with a little bit of hope, determination, and knowledge that if I went home I would be working as Mom’s live-in nanny, led to me being sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer on October 19, 2017. The ceremony was beautiful, we had it in the training hall and went from trainees to volunteers in the same place where we shared so many laughs, songs, frustrations over being let out 30 minutes late for lunch, hugs, tears, passive-aggressive comments, straight-up aggressive comments (lots of big personalities in the room), hopes, and fears (that mainly stemmed from PCMO presentations). We were surrounded by our Okahandja host families, our new supervisors from schools scattered all over the country, Peace Corps staff, and our dutiful, wonderful language trainers. Our Country Director, Kevin, spoke for part of the ceremony and said something that I think will stick with me for the rest of my life. He said, “Every morning when you wake up, start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can.” I can’t properly verbalize the wave of reassurance that crashed over me with those words. That is all any of us can ever do, I doubt anyone really has life fully figured out. All we can do is start where we are, use what we have, and do what we can. I am by no means the best person to be teaching English to high school students in a rural village in northern Namibia, but I am the person that is here and I can sure as heck wake up, go to school, ask my colleagues for advice, and teach what I know. That pep talk was all I needed to take the oath and swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” I mean, have I mentioned that I took a self-defense P.E. class? I don’t think I’ll be able to write this post without crying so if my words ever become incoherent, it’s because I can’t see the keyboard through my tears. I just returned to Okahandja from three weeks of Community Based Training in Okaku, a small village in Owamboland. Community Based Training is meant to prepare us for service in a more specific, intensive way than the general training we receive in Okahandja– each language group was sent to a different location in their respective region to have language immersion and to observe and guest teach at a school. I’ll be honest, it was an adjustment and the first night at my new home was definitely rough. Coming from a house in the city with running water, electricity, TWO indoor bathrooms and a queen size bed, I did not know (nor was I prepared for) what I was getting into with a homestead in the village. No running water, no electricity, an outhouse, and a small pallet bed. My meme was at work so it was just my tate, brother, and two sisters there with me that first night and as we sat on the floor in the hallway on pieces of cardboard eating oshithima off of one plate (in complete silence and in the light of an oil lamp) I began to question what I got myself into. We finished dinner around 10PM and I walked out of the compound, past one of their guard dogs (who I low key think might have some minor form of rabies… idk but he walked with his head twisted at a weird angle and was constantly snarling and salivating) and to the outhouse. I peeked in, shined my headlamp around, and was greeted by the glow of a thousand spiders’ eyes. I gave it my best shot, I really did. I stood halfway in the door trying to pep-talk myself in but then I remembered a book that I read when I was younger, I think it was called Hoot, and there was an alligator that lived at the bottom of a port-a-potty and bit a boy’s butt off. If I could see danger on the walls of the outhouse, I could not imagine what dangers might lurk in the hole #blackmumba. I walked back to my room, laid on my pallet, wrapped myself in my mosquito net because I did not have a blanket, looked at pictures from Asha and Kade of Young Alumni Weekend, and cried out all of the liquid that I was unable to rid in the outhouse. Fun Fact: I texted our group chat about all of this as it was going on and was informed that we were told to touch our mosquito nets minimally as they are doused in some chemical that can “at best irritate you, at worst burn off your skin.” Apparently I was not paying attention in that medical session. All I needed was a good night’s sleep and some coffee. I woke up the next morning, squatted behind my house because I was still traumatized from my outhouse experience, and met my meme. Ugh, I LOVE Meme Ester. She fixed me a tray with coffee, bread and peanut butter, hardboiled eggs, and porridge and sat me down to eat in the hut they use to wash dishes. I sat there alone, well rested with my coffee and an empty bladder, and reflected on how melodramatic I am. I decided to turn my frown upside down and took this tooth-brushing selfie with #thumbsup because #positivity and just hung out with the family all day. I helped with laundry, listened to the radio with my tate, sat in the shade with meme as she weaved a basket, and learned key Oshindonga phrases from my siblings. Inandi hala okumona eyoka. Ondeli tila na inandi hala okusa. (I do not want to see a snake. They scare me and I do not want to die). That night we ate dinner and then they asked me to show them a movie on my laptop. This became something of a tradition over the next three weeks; we watched Mulan, Pocahontas, Nim’s Island, Spirit, Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, A Night at the Museum, etc. My favorite part about these movie nights was how expressive my tate was – he would gasp whenever there was a dragon (even just Mushu from Mulan), or yell with displeasure at the bad guys, and say “yes, yes, very nice,” whenever there was particularly pretty animation. Ugh, it makes me sad just typing this and knowing that I won’t get to watch a movie with them tonight. I walked to school on Monday morning with my siblings and started week one of observation, where we were given specific topics (gender dynamics/teacher and student relationships/class management, etc.) to observe within the Namibian classroom. I loved school and had a great experience there but am not going to go into too much detail because I’m tired and would rather gush about my family than work. The days pretty much followed the same pattern: wake up at 5:50, pee behind the hut, eat breakfast, walk to school at 7, observe/teach classes, at 10 buy a fat cake (or five), technical sessions from 2-3PM, then walk home. When I got home, I would go inside the main house and get my “cool drink” (I have fallen in love with orange Fanta, which is funny because I have always said that if my personality was a soda it would be orange Fanta) and then sit in the shade beside my tate either needlepointing or reading. The kids would normally get home about an hour later and would sit with me and help me with my Oshindonga or teach me fun new songs. Okay – let me share a little bit about my obsession with my host brother, Happy. He is very quiet and for the first few days would always hang around me but wouldn’t really talk to me too much. One day I discovered that my siblings had never built sand castles before so I utilized the skills taught to me by Sandy the Sand Castle teacher (thanks @Mom, Mary Margaret, and Cynthia for the class) and showed them how to build a sand castle. Happy was sitting to the side watching but not helping, and I assumed he was just uninterested and didn’t think too much when he suddenly stood up and ran away. He came back a few minutes later with an old lollypop stick and wrapper that he turned into a flag for the top of our castle! I melted. It genuinely feels like a rubber band is squeezing my heart right now, I’m so in love with that boy. I taught him how to shuffle cards, he taught me how to do the cool Africa snap, he would draw pictures of scenes from the movies we watched, ugh, he’s just the best. I’ve always said that I want all daughters but after meeting Happy I am now fully on board with having a son. I may have cried more leaving the homestead and reading the goodbye letter that he wrote me than I did when I left America. And I cried a lot when I left America. I am also madly in love with my host sisters; they were really the backbone of my Oshindonga education. I am in love with my host puppy, Hakim, and my host cat, Nicki Minaj. I am completely in love with my parents and their relationship – they are wonderful, amazing, kindhearted, funny, and so incredibly giving. Village life is just so much slower paced than anything I’ve ever experienced before. Those of you who know Nicki Bryant know that she is a big fan of activities and there is rarely a minute of downtime in the Bryant household. She also really likes dishes to move immediately from the table to the dishwasher. As a dutiful daughter, I would always do this and was very accustomed to immediately cleaning up after eating. In the Amwele household, however, we would put all of our dirty dishes in a large bowl and leave it until the following afternoon and take care of it then. One thing that I never fully got used to was how often the water was reused – it is a good thing I am not a germaphobe, @HunterHuss, you would hate it here. Everyone washes their hands in the same shallow bowl of soapy water, after dinner the dirty dishes are put in this bowl and then that water is used to wash the dishes the next day. I’m building up a good immune system. I’m tired of writing so I’m just going to start listing random things I wanted to mention:
There are a thousand other stories that I wish I had the patience to write down, but I don’t think I could ever put into words how incredible my CBT experience was. My family invited me to come back and spend Christmas with them and I am counting down the days until I get to see them again.
After the chickens were brought out, fires started, and tables set up, it was time for the main event of the day: the slaughtering of the goats. I made the grave (lol #deathpun) mistake of visiting/falling in love with the goats earlier in the day. I couldn’t watch them slaughter them. I was going to try, I stood there as they pulled them from the truck, but I got out of there when the poor little things started bleating. I gathered up some dirty dishes and went inside to clean both the bowls and my conscience and tried to think of anything but the goats getting their throats slit outside. As I was doing this, a man entered the kitchen and asked to use the sink. I turned around and felt like I was in an episode of Game of Thrones (minus the nudity) – he was covered head to toe in blood. Apparently, my shock was visible on my face as the man quickly tried to reassure me that it was not his blood, but the goats. Lovely. Disclaimer: the next few pictures show the goats post-slaughtering and are a little graphic so skip over it if you are squirmish! I guess I’ll continue with the death theme and discuss the demise of the aanjuhwa. (I’m writing this as I’m supposed to be practicing language so I’ll try to intersperse some Oshindonga vocabulary in this post… aanjuhwa=chickens, okauhwena=baby chicken) My meme was in charge of overseeing their execution; she was so excited about it for the entire week before and was positively giddy when time finally came. Once again, skip over the next few pictures if you don’t like blood. Okay, lets move to a brighter topic and talk about clothes!! If you looked at the chicken pictures, you may have noticed that my meme was wearing a bright pink, black, and red dress and head-wrap. You are about to see a thousand more pictures of myself and my fellow Owambo people wearing similar clothes, as that fabric is traditional for the Owambo’s. Quick overview: Owambo is an ethnic group from Owamboland that speaks Oshiwambo. There are 8 dialects within Oshiwambo but only two of them are written – Oshindonga and Oshikwanyama. I am learning to speak Donga along with five other volunteers and there are three volunteers learning Kwanyama, the nine of us will ultimately be scattered around Owamboland for our permanent sites. I may be biased, but when it was all said and done, the Owambo group totally had the best food. We had omboga (spinach/cabbage/any leafy green – in this case it was spinach), oshithima (traditional porridge), onjuhwa (chicken), omakunde (beans), omboloto (bread), mopane worms, na oshikundu (traditional beer). The only thing the other groups had us beat on was the ookakuki (fat cakes). Nom. Before eating, however, the trainees in each language group were required to perform a song and dance for all of our host families and friends. I had a solo. It was lit. Edthina lya ndje Lilly lomosomi. The food was great, the company was better, and it was a great way to get us excited to head out to our CBT (Community Based Training) sites the following weekend (I am there now… I will try to post something about it soon!)
We took a cultural field trip to Windhoek this past Saturday; it was our first time leaving Okahandja since arriving and I think a lot of us were getting cabin fever. To be honest, I was a little hesitant about visiting Windhoek after all of our safety and security sessions, which warned us of the likelihood of robbery there. Peace Corps provided us with mitigation tactics such as not bringing/displaying valuables, being aware of our surroundings (RADAR), etc. They also taught us that if we fail to mitigate the problem and get held up, we should not fight back and just give them our stuff. I was pretty bummed about that because I took an intensive self-defense class for a PE credit my freshman year and can dish out a mean hammer punch while firmly telling my attacker, “NO!” I’ve also watched Miss Congeniality quite a few times and have Sandra Bullock’s “SING” move down. Luckily, however, the trip went without incident and there was no need for me to suppress my killer self-defense instincts. We started the day at Heroes’ Acre, the memorial to the fallen heroes and heroines of the fight for Namibian Independence. It was established on August 26, 2002 and lies about 10km south of Windhoek’s city center. Kevin, our Country Director, joined us and we all walked up about a thousand steps to a beautiful lookout above the memorial where we sang Okana Kameme (the group favorite song from morning assemblies… see the video posted on my Facebook).
By the end of the tour, most of us were famished #DidntGetTeaBreak and we made our way over to the mall for lunch. Pizza. Just thinking about it as I write this post a week later makes my mouth water. Most of my meals since getting to Namibia have consisted of pap (traditional porridge), pasta, and some kind of vegetable (normally a mixture of beans, cabbage, and onions), so pizza was a welcomed bite of home.
The day ended at a local open-air market where I, as a vegetarian, was given quite the shock. Meat everywhere. We couldn’t bring our cameras so I wasn’t able to get pictures, but whole animals were everywhere just being chopped up and cooked in front of us. The meat they were grilling is called Kapana (cow? chicken? pork? I don't know) and people would just stand around the Kapana grill pulling the sliced meat off and dipping it in spices at the head of the grill. There were also Mopane worms that a few people tried, I am going to post more about them in a few days when I discuss Traditional Cooking Day. Lets just say that both in Windhoek and at TCD, I stuck with the fat cakes. Windhoek wore me out but the weekend was not done yet, Sunday was my first Namibian church experience and boy, was it a good one. As a Bryant daughter, I am accustomed to getting to church about 15 minutes after it has started, catching the sermon and last two songs, and leaving promptly at noon. That tradition will not continue here in Namibia. Church starts at 9:30 and we arrived right on the dot. Five minutes passed and I started looking around the room, fifteen minutes and I patiently began to flip through my Bible, trying to be productive, and thirty minutes later I called it and decided “Well, I guess this is Namibian church – everyone reading their Bible together.” Around 10:05 I was reminded that Africa time is a real thing and the service started… it was very much the opposite of everyone quietly reading their Bible. Let’s rewind a little bit back to what I am accustomed to as a Bryant who attended First Presbyterian. 1. We arrive late 2. We sit in the back 3. We sing hymns read out of the hymnal 4. We never sing so loud as to attract attention to our lack of talent 5. We NEVER get out of the pew and dance. My world was turned upside down in my little Namibian church. My eardrums were nearly burst out of my ears as the music blared and the pastor shouted out the lyrics for the conjugation to follow. I was frequently told to “sing louder,” and I frequently responded, “You really don’t want me to do that.” People danced in the aisle, women screamed the “ayayayay” sound that I love, it was loud, it was hectic, and it was lovely. At one point the pastor asked people who were having suicidal thoughts to come to the front of the church, this was probably the most shocking part of the service for me. About ten people went up to undergo what I can only describe as some sort of exorcism – the pastor began to command the Devil to leave their thoughts as the ushers held their heads and then pushed the evil thoughts away. The service was split between praying to God for blessings and commanding the Devil to get out of the way of those blessings. It was incredibly different than anything I had ever experienced, and I realized that my church experience in America rarely discussed Satan let alone commanded him to do anything. Despite the many differences and occasional shock throughout the service, I was brought to tears a few times by the one binding similarity – the love for/of Jesus. It was almost surreal standing 7,500 miles away from home, trying to dance to a gospel song sung in Otjiiherero, thinking that in 3 hours my family would be sneaking into First Presbyterian to worship the same God in such a different way. I don’t fully know how to put all of these emotions and thoughts into words, but there is something so beautiful and so comforting about a group of believers gathering together to worship... I have two years to find a more eloquent way to describe it. Anyways, the service ended about three and a half hours later at 1PM, the last few songs were punctuated with the sound of my grumbling stomach. Next time I go, I’m bringing a snack. This post is a compilation of events, conversations, and moments that made me remember, “Wow, I’m not from here.”
1. I went to the post office a few days ago to buy stamps, after waiting in a long line and subsequently holding up that line while slowly counting out $27 in unfamiliar Namibian coins, I successfully purchased 2 international stamps. **self high-five** I proceeded to prance outside, proud of my competence and ability to perform daily tasks in a foreign country without Mom’s help, “This,” I thought, “is what an integrated Peace Corps volunteer looks like. #SurvivingAndThriving.” As I went to put my stamps on my envelopes, I hit a bump in the road – I could not peel the back of the stamp off to reveal the sticky part beneath. Naturally, I called Mom, but she chose to ignore my struggles and my call (potentially because it was 4AM back home) so I decided to continue my stint of self-sufficiency and walked inside to ask for help. I discreetly skipped to the front of the line that I had just left and sweetly asked the man working if he by any chance had tape that I could borrow. “Tape?” He asked. “Yes sir, Tape. To put the stamp on?” I replied as I demonstrated to him my quandary of not being able to stick the stamp on the envelope. He, with a both patronizing and “are you kidding me?” look, told me, “Ah, you use salva.” I, not knowing what “salva” was, but assuming it was some brand of Namibian adhesive, proceeded to ask to borrow some “salva.” “Salva” is saliva. I ended up using my own after a little more explanation and a few laughs from the rest of the line. 2. On my first day trying to prepare eggs, I stood at the stove moving the eggs around in the pan for about 5 minutes wondering why they weren’t cooking. My meme walked in and told me that you have to flip a switch to turn the stove on. 3. I stayed for Youth Group after church this past Sunday and learned that I am not only excruciatingly white, but that I am also not “hip.” As it was the first Sunday of the month, the youth were split up into new groups and were told to come up with the “shout outs” that they would use for the rest of September. After much explanation, I deduced that a “shout out” is something along the lines of something from Bring It On… kind of a fancy, sassy chant that you use to amp up the rest of your team or respond to other teams. My group really wanted some input from me because on first glance, my glasses, frizzy hair, baggy, ankle-length dress, cardigan, and Chacos made me look pretty dang cool. So I contributed, “Hey Judah you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Judah! (stomp, stomp) Hey Judah!” We didn’t go with that and the youth advisor ended up moving me to group Reuben. After learning the Reuben shout out, we all went inside for the competition, which included a dance circle. Have I mentioned that Namibians can dance? Namibian teenagers can really dance. I cannot. I managed to awkwardly bob, shuffle, and clap along the margins of the circle while watching everyone else get down for a good portion of the song. But, because #life, my time came and I was pushed to center stage. It was my moment to shine. I pushed my glasses up and proceeded to break out some of my best moves: the shopping cart, the Madonna face frame, the Q-Tip, peel the banana, the gunslinger. All of the classics. It was an out of body experience and I was quickly jolted back into my body as I noticed that the generally rhythmic claps around the circle were growing fainter and less regular as kids began to try to hide their laughter. @lillsandfrills, you would thrive here. 4. I told my meme that I was so upset that I didn’t pack more pants because I had already gotten peanut butter on all of them. A few days later we were taught that in Namibia trousers = pants and pants = underwear. I have not spilt peanut butter on my underwear. I’ve gotten about a hundred messages from my mom about fixing the blog and updating the blog, and blog, blog, blog. Unfortunately, the only place I get WiFi is at the grocery store, and I have not been too keen to drag my laptop there after our recent Safety and Security training sessions. Additionally, I have almost entirely adjusted to "Africa time," which is a lot looser about deadlines and start times (the Bryant family would thrive here). Mom, I promise I will post when I can but don’t expect too much regularity. I’ve been here three weeks now and so much has happened, but I’ll try to summarize from the beginning. 34 hours of travel. I know I told everyone that I would probably come home to visit at some point during my service, but the 34 hours of travel really threw a wrench in that plan – America, I’ll see you in November 2019. Did you know that you could get blood clots from not moving around enough on the flight from JFK to Johannesburg? I was told that as I was boarding the flight and it’s safe to say that my seatmates hated me. I was seated in the middle row, in the very middle seat, and I did not stop fidgeting for 15 hours. We made it to Johannesburg with no blood clots and had a nice long layover before taking off for Windhoek, where Peace Corps staff greeted us with fat cakes and soda. The final installment of our 34 hour trip was a two hour drive to Okahandja, where we are based for the first four weeks of training. This drive made the previous 32 hours so worth it, in the course of two hours we saw an ostrich, tons of baboons and warthogs, and a family of giraffes. GIRAFFES just right off the highway – so cool. It was dark by the time we got to Okahandja and although we weren’t able to see anything as we got off the bus, we heard the Okahandja youth choir welcome us with some of the most beautiful songs. I’ve come to learn that singing (and the accompanying dancing) is an integral part of Namibian culture; our first day of training the next morning started off with our Training Staff singing to us. I made a theory that it was impossible for any Namibian song to sound bad… that theory was disproven the next day when our training group was asked to join in. We’re getting better (slowly). We were housed in a hostel for the first week of training – hot showers, vegan food options, and a two-minute walk to the training center… we were pampered #poshcorps. For the first few days, training mainly consisted of general orientation, including safety procedures, policies, and what to expect in the coming weeks/years (“It depends”). The next week we started “real” training and were given our language assignments, which at least shed a little light on our future. I am learning to speak Oshindonga (a language that is primarily spoken in Ovamboland) so I will likely be placed in northern Namibia for my final site placement, although we won’t find out the exact location until mid-October. We were also taught how to bucket bathe and hand-wash clothes just in time to move out of the hostel and in with our host families that Thursday. Meme gwandje edthina lye oSelly (my mom’s name is Selly), and she works as a police officer here in Okahandja. She grew up on a homestead in the North with 23 brothers and sisters and has been enjoying preparing me for my future life by telling me all about the spitting cobras that she would find in her bed or draped over her entryway. Ha. She went into exile in Angola during the years leading up to Namibian independence and joined a traditional singing and dancing crew, which enabled her to travel around Africa performing. On our first night she tried to teach me how to make this sound that women make during songs, it’s almost an “ayayayay” sound except it’s all with the tongue and sounds a lot cooler. I couldn’t/can’t do it but people walking down the street in the early evening can hear me practice. She also taught me how to make “pap,” a traditional porridge and Namibian staple that you eat with your hands, and how to turn on the geyser to get hot water. You are supposed to turn it on at least 20 minutes before you shower in order for the water to have sufficient time to heat up – I, being both impatient and not a big planner, have only taken cold showers since moving in. Apart from still struggling with little things like showering, I’m starting to get into a routine. I wake up at 5AM because I get unlimited data from 12-6AM; I never knew what a wonderful and beautiful commodity data is. I make my eggs and toast, drink my first cup of coffee, check Instagram, load Snapchats, and watch an episode of Downton Abbey before leaving the house around 6:45. I normally try to catch my neighbor’s puppy on my walk to the bus stop, I also try to get to the stop right as the kombi arrives, so as not to freeze to death. It’s winter here and the mornings are FRIGID. One of my New York friends has been contesting the use of that word, but I maintain that the mornings and nights here are no joke. I normally remember to take my malaria medication right around the time we pull up to the training site (about 45 minutes after I was supposed to have taken it) so now I keep it in my backpack. Smart. We have morning assembly on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which involves us singing the Namibian, American, and African national anthems, as well as a few other traditional songs. Tuesdays and Thursdays are magical days where we have free time during the 30 minutes normally spent in assembly – most of us spend it at Spar (the grocery store) with WiFi and cappuccinos. Language training runs for two hours and is followed by a spectacular Namibian tradition called “tea break,” which is 30 minutes of more coffee and a snack of some kind of carb like fresh bread, cookies, or biscuits with peanut butter. I normally wake up thinking, “I can’t wait for tea break.” The rest of the day is filled with more sessions with topics including medical, safety and security, technical, diversity, cross-cultural, and sexual harassment. While sexual harassment is apparently widespread across Namibia, @Mom I don’t think you’ll need to be too worried about me as my look has been described as “frumpy.” Yes, my dear reader, you read that right, while I was the pinnacle of fashion and prided myself on my “put together” look back in the States, my loose (and often slightly wrinkled) clothes are seen as “frumpy” here in Namibia. On our first full day our training coordinator showed up in a full on bodycon and I thought, “Whew! Okay, lets go… Where’s the party?” She quickly addressed this question and informed us that in Namibia, tight is considered fashionable, while skin is considered inappropriate. In other words, knee length bodycons and wedges are the look here and I only packed shin-length flowy rompers and Birkenstocks. She’s beauty and she’s grace, she’s Miss United States.
I normally arrive home in time to help my meme make dinner and watch the latest soapy on Zee World, the channel with the “best Bollywood entertainment across Africa.” Extraordinary Drama. Extraordinary Stories. Extraordinary Everyday. (That’s their tag line… We watch a lot of it. Devia just tricked Amar into marrying her. Things are going down, I’ll keep y’all posted with the results in future posts.) I’m starting to “get it” (not the narrative of the soapy, I still don’t fully follow that, but life in Okahandja), and it feels good to wake up and have a general idea of what’s going to happen that day. There’s still a ton of uncertainty, I won’t know my final site location, what type of school I’m teaching at, or my housing situation (Service? Electricity? Mud hut? Hostel? Running water?) for another month, but while I’m still questioning the big picture, I’m starting to grow more comfortable with the everyday. I’m becoming more confident at greeting people in Oshindonga, I think I’m only a few more bribes away from capturing a puppy, I’m less afraid of dancing in church, I’ve stopped looking for Black Mambas everywhere I go (FYI: the PCMO told us not to bother trying to get to a hospital if we’re bitten by one, it’s instant death), and I think I’ve just about figured out how Namibian phone plans work. Of course there have been small hiccups, I’ll post a follow up post about them soon, but I’ve lived in Africa for three weeks now and I’m figuring it out. Oshi iiwete nale, kuume! |
Note:Any views or opinions expressed in this website are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Namibian Government. Archives
February 2018
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