Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Sooohooooooo

So, I promised a blog entry a week, and I shall deliver. I have chosen Wednesday because a) I'm feeling awake today and have accomplished almost everything on my list of things to do today and b) b/c today is the day I take my mefloquine aka malaria prophylaxis, which often leads to interesting dreams and mood swings, so I thought it might make this entry more exciting. If any of you are still reading this. This week is starting to pick up, although as predicted my June 1st OVC meeting is postponed. No problem, as now i've learned to go with the postponements, but its also goign to be bigger than i expected b/c the RACE office from Ondangwa is planning to attend the meeting. Will we really accomplish anything? What do they want to talk about? Will anyone understand me while I am speaking. The suspense is unbearable, but I will have bear it until next wednesday.

There are some other things I am working on though. In the Namibian (or maybe world tradition) of having holidays for diseases (or maybe more PC, infections), AIDS Awareness week is the third week of June, so we're having an event and a local store has already agreed to donate some prizes for our contest. The contest will be basically a cultural show, where people can read poems, do dances, peform dramas, or read stories about or related to HIV/AIDS for both the school and community members. It should be exciting, and I think PEP may also be donating some things. The Area manager is calling me tommorow, and he seems to have had a great relationship with the previous volunteers so things are looking up. I've also started my OVC database as two schools in the cluster and the local OVC coordinator have given me lists of local OVCs.

The current project which does not seem to be working out is the school newspaper I am trying to start. Everyone seems to want a newspaper to instantly appear, but no one wants to do anything. I am going to have a meeting today with my kastaff (meaning, in namlish, small staff) and in addition to playing musical chairs with them, i plan to have them write something, anything really, down on a piece of paper and then have their neighbors rate what they have written. Just to get them started. Its going to work! And, everyone is going to want to be on the paper when it is finally done. In my ideal world, this will all happen (and I will also figure out a way to take hot showers every morning instead of boiling a really big pot of water and bucket bathing... winter has finally arrived, although that just means its freezing at night and warm during the day. on the bright side, i dont feel like i need to take a shower during lunch and can spend it attempting to work, or at least sitting in the tuck shop with the teachers).

Speaking of sitting in tuck shops with teachers, I don't know if I have mentioned about the Namibian (and from what i studied in college, west african) tendancy to speak in proverbs and use metaphors constantly in conversation. I'm not sure if its used so frequently in english simply because of tradition or also because people don't know the words for things in english, but unless someone is directly addressing me, I often have no idea what people are talking about. (this happens to me frequently in the tuck shop... kind of a canteen i guess). For example, a conversation will go "He is going to the bank with the officer." "oohhhhhhh, soooooohoooooo. they ahve gone as two and will come back with one loan." everyone bursts into laughter. Ok so maybe this one wasn't that hard to catch (on to, but if i added these two words, my namlish would not be complete), but it took me a while. One that I've heard used frequently in reference to the namibian man's tendancy towards multiple girlfriends is, "he is not serious, he just wants dessert after dinner." eeeeeeek, I guess I got that one the first time. The problem is, I can't relay to you the conversations that I dont understand b/c I can never remember what they are saying. I think today some teachers had an argument about a paper in a book and taking it out, but i'm really not sure. hmmm. but, I've decided to retaliate by referring to everything as " that thing." Its frustrating because no one ever knows what "that thing" is even though I am usually refering to something we just talked about, although they seem to always know what each other are referring to. Assimilation is definitely not as easy as it looks on the surface. So, If I come home refering to everyplace as that side of Washington DC and everything as that thing, please forgive me and congratulate me b/c I may have finally achieved integration into Omuthiya.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Mweeeeeh

As we were sitting at a campsite in northern Kunene, we heard a voice of disdain... maybe it wasn't as strong an emotion as disdain, but rather just laziness. Mweeeeeeeh, mweeeeeeeh. It was like someone was summing up my emotional state of the moment (and ok, possibly of every moment since I graduated a year ago)... I had to meet this person who so clearly understood me. Unfortunately, my attempts to find my soulmate were thwarted by the fact that it was a bird and afraid of all of us. It flew away from the tree right above me when we attempted to move closer. I have no idea what kind of bird, but i've started hearing it everywhere in Namibia (and not just from my own mouth, since I can't make the sound nearly as well as some of my fellow volunteers can).

From following the mweh bird all over north western namibia to playing german monopoly (where I lost spectacularly. As if the fact that I'm broke wasn't enough to indicate to me that I am terrible with money), I have to say I've had an exciting month without any time for updates... including two sort of vacations. Well the first one was a full blown vacation, largely due to the fact that it was entirely planned by group 25ers (aka the people who came here last year). They rented a car and two of us from 26 came along for the ride. It was all in Kunene, but Kunene is ginormous (is that a word?), so we did a lot of traveling and saw a lot of different landscapes. We spent the first four days on the kunene river.

At the first place we went, the staff was really nice to us b/c they're not used to getting younger people coming to see them (its usually older europeans), and we went on this river boat cruise thing, which was nice but we didn't see any crocodiles. This may have been fortunate since most of us (including our tour guide, who lives there, so I trust his judgment) ended up swimming in the river, but I was still disapointed. And don't worry, it moves too fast for schisto... or so they told us.

At Epupa Falls, which was even harder to get to but definitely worth the bumpy travels... we were just driving and driving and suddenly, you look down the hill and see palm trees and water falls in the middle of the desert. I thought i was seeing a mirage. (Once you climb up a bit higher than we were you can see that the falls are actually huge and the angolan side of the border is much greener, but that moment was pretty shocking, especially after miles of desert). Our campsite was right infront of one of the smaller falls, and right next to it was a small delta with little water falls that was safe from both schisto and crocodiles so we could swim there also... it was amazing. There was a huge baobab tree right in the middle and tons of little himba (you're gonna have to look this up) kids playing in the water. A bunch of them braided my hair, but my favorite was a little girl named wendy... i didn't keep it in for long b/c it really hurt, but apparently it looked allright and someone has a picture of me and wendy after I got my hair braided. I tried to give her a bunch of cookies, but a bunch of kids swarmed me, so I settled for just giving her two instead of one. (One of the 25ers found a bag of them at a store on our way there. I think he said they said “South West Africa” on them. Well, he might have been joking? Either way, delicious. Oh how my standards for food have gone down.) Ok so maybe my favorite was also happy boy, this fat fat little baby who was sitting in the water giggling while we splashed (or uh... rolled) water on him. How did they name him so appropriately?

Anyways, after epupa, we went on to some desert campsites where we were supposed to spot elephants and rhinos. We didn't see any rhinos (unfortunately, since someone just told me i look like one...mweeeh), but we saw an elephant and tons and tons of zebra, giraffes (we got a momma and baby crossing the road), oryx, kudu, and even a few warthogs. And off course the standard cows, goats and donkeys that you get everywhere in namibia (today i saw a goat wandering around by it self bleating... it was so depressing... i never realized that goats can't be alone, but i had no idea how to make it feel better. somehow petting it didn't seem like the right thing to do.) PLus, the campsites we went to were all nicer than my homestead. Some how most of them had electricity and ALL of them have hot water. I am so gonna figure out how to set up a woodburning waterheater at my site.

Second vacation was to Grootfontien, Rundu, and Divundu (the latter two being in the kavango). We mostly hung out with other volunteers, but it was cool to see what life is like in the kavango. We saw rundu beach on the kavango river, although we stayed out of this river since it was pretty still and obviously could have shisto, although apparently no crocs b/c little kids were swimming in it. On the other hand, volunteers east of Rundu in kavango have mentioned that they lose 5-6 learners a year to crocodiles when small boys/girls are sent to fetch water. Maybe corporal punishment is the kinder alternative in some places, eeek. Anyways, we hiked out to divundu which is right on the edge of caprivi strip, and stayed with the volunteer there who lives in this amazing amazing youth center. we're apparently supposed to get one like that out here, but uhh.. who knows when that will happen. we spent most of our time cooking and watching sex in the city, but we did make it out on a river cruise, which was really cool, we saw a lot of hippos!!!!!, water monitors (huge lizards), baby crocs and cool birds. The guide must have had like 20/0 vision b/c he could see everything and kept on pointing out stuff to us that we would have never noticed. Everything was great in dividu until we had to hike back... we waited for FIVE hours to get a ride to Rundu and had to split up. Its a nice place, but i dont know if i could handle the difficulty in traveling.

So I am back at my site after many travels! I plan on spending time at my site, but imma rolling stone (ahaha, i jsut wanted to stay that), and I can't say that I am ever just happy sitting still in one place. But now that I'm back, I've decided to get to work at getting work now that I am here, but its still slow coming. We were supposed to have a meeting on June 1 for this new job description that Mr. Matengu helped me to create for myself, where I will be working with OVCs (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) within our six cluster schools. I'd say maybe 60% of our kids are OVC, so I'm not gonna be working with all of them, but just what the OVC coordinators at each school decide are the cases in need of attention. I'll be monitoring their weekly progress and school, applying for food and blankets from the government and local businesses, and hopefully doing some activities with them, which I am still trying to work out, b/c I want them to be fun and some how also confidence building. Any ideas anyone?

Unfortunately though, the ministry recently decided that school should be postponed another week, so I have a feeling this meeting will not go as planned. It makes sense that it is postponed, b/c it was supposed to start this week, but we get friday off for africa day, but its weird that they decided that this should happen last week. well it will be figured out next week.

So that is whats goign on... I am also continuing to work on my peer counseling thing/ school newspaper/income generating projects/legal assistance and looking forward to GAURI visiting meeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!! For now, it is weird b/c I feel like I am doing a lot and its tough to keep it organised, but at the same time, I feel like I am doing nothing.


Mweeeeeeeh.