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.