“The Twenty Third of March oh-nine”
is what I would say if I were still normal

“Twenty THREE March two thousand and nine”
is what I say after a year and a half in Nam


I’m a little richer today. It’s nice being a little richer because yesterday I was a bit poorer.

I’m rich today because I got a package from mom. I’m ashamed to admit that I ate 3.5 servings of beef jerky for dinner tonight… but then again, America should be ashamed it sells things with 3.5 servings instead of 3 or 4.

And why was I a little poorer yesterday… well that’s a story we’ll have to start a week and a half ago. If you’ll permit a flashback, please:


“Eleven March”
The water went out about noon. I did everything I could not to think about it. Things have a tendency to work themselves out when you don’t think about them. I preoccupied myself with watching the entire second season of Heroes on my laptop instead. Then, afterwards, I spent some time trying to justify spending an entire afternoon watching a TV show. Then, I spent even more time being thankful that I have a job that lets me spend half a day watching TV trying not to think of something else. And even then, after all the thinking, justifying and TV watching, the water was still off.

To make things worse, we had a brownout at the same time. Luckily, my computer still charges in a brownout. But the downside was that poor little Ando, Hiro and Claire were stuck trying to distract me from two problems.

… I don’t think Peace Corps is what it used to be.

I went to bed trying not to think about water but also hoping that it would be on the next day.

“Twelve March”
The water came back on very late in the day. None of my Namibian coworkers were worried about the water at all though. I spent part of the afternoon study going from colleague to colleague at school to ask what had happened to the water. They all told me, “The water went out.” …I suppose I should’ve been more specific in my question asking.

I was impressed with myself though. In March last year, when the water was out for 6 hours I thought I was going to die. This year, it took about 25 hours before I started to get irritated. That’s a form of growth, right? I think my colleagues are up to about two days before they start to worry… Then again, maybe loosing the sense of water as “life-giving” and “necessary” is a bad thing.

Today I also sent my laundry to be cleaned by another woman. She ironed everything! I think even my underwear was ironed (ironing is a very big deal in Namibia). When she brought the laundry back, she asked for twice the normal price. It’s so frustrating to get treated like a white person after being here for so long. But, on the other hand, she did iron my underwear… and I didn’t have any water to do a better job… so, I ended up giving her one and a half the normal price. Plus, ironed clothes make me feel fancy.

“Fourteen March”
Yesterday morning, both my principal and supervisor announced in our morning staff meeting that they were leaving Khorixas to go out of town for various reasons. After the meeting I went to the library and started to work on some grading. As I was working, some water kept falling on my hands… I realized I was crying… why was I crying? It was because I wanted to leave too. I hadn’t left Khorixas for two months. I had to get out.

So I dried my eyes and went to my supervisor to see if she was still there. She was. She said she would wait for me to pack a bag and would take me with her. She and her husband bought me a cooldrink at the petrol station and drove me to Otjiwarongo. It was the happiest morning I’ve had in a while. From Otjiwarongo, I decided to visit the volunteers in Okakarara. I bought the things to make a pizza at Superspar and was lucky enough to find a taxi going to Okakarara with three passengers already (you always need 4 – any less and your driver won’t leave. Any more and you should probably protest and get out of the car. I’ve tried 8 in a car before. Unsafe? Yes. Uncomfortable? Hell yes.). We left right away.

I didn’t do much in Okakarara. We all just sat around, talking and eating. I came back to Khorixas today and felt a million times better just for having left. Strange how that works, huh?

“Seventeen March”
The water has been on and off since I got back from Okakarara on Saturday. Mostly off. Tonight it’s been out for 24 hours straight. Just a few drops before that. I went out in the hostel yard to ask around to see if anyone had water. No one did. Or, those who did didn’t want to share. The young Herero teachers who rent rooms next door were wandering around with buckets testing taps. They invited me to join. We found a small tap that was dripping water. They let me try to fill my bottle first. They didn’t get much after that. It went dry.

While I was out searching for water, Jill SMSed her friends in the location and in town. They’re all out of water too… it sounds like the hospital is the only place in all of Khorixas that has water. They have their own storage tower though. What is going on here?!

“Eighteen March”
The staff meeting at school this morning was comical. Women were wearing scarves over their dirty hair. One of the young men was begging around for some coffee or tea – “I can’t make it to even third period without coffee!” He’s my kind of addict.
Jill and I had a small bit of water left in our bucket. But most of our bottles for drinking were out of water. Dishes were everywhere and the toilet smelled and I’m out of clothes from the laundry woman last week. Gross.

My supervisor said that a friend drove from Outjo last night and explained that the main pipe to Khorixas was broken and all the water was flooding outside of town. It’s all hearsay. Jill heard different stories as she was walking around running errands in the morning. Maybe they were cleaning the holding tanks. Maybe the borehole went dry. The radio’s not broadcasting either, so no one knows the real reason for the drought.

Midday, Jill SMSed me and suggested we travel to Outjo and to visit Amanda. I was already home packing my bag when I got the SMS. Earlier in the month I had made plans to visit Opuwo on March 19-22 (the 20th is a school holiday to celebrate the 19th year of Namibian Independence). I decided that leaving a day earlier was acceptable - If only for the shower.

Jill and I asked all of our friend in Khorixas to SMS us with updates about the water. Then we headed to the petrol station where we used good old-fashioned positive thinking to find a ride. First person. Nice car. Air conditioning. Zero Dollars. Things were beginning to look up.

In Outjo, we did indeed get a shower and some food at the bakery. Just after lunchtime, we got an SMS from Khorixas saying the water at the hospital went dry. I’m beginning to worry about my little town. What will happen to all those people? It’s too hot to be without water.

Oprah-type list of things I’m thankful for today:
- Water!
- A shower.
- Water.
- Saltines at the Outjo grocery store.
- Water.
- A free ride out of Khorixas.
- H2O.
- That I don’t have to go back to Khorixas tomorrow.

“Nineteen March”
This morning I proceeded with my plans to go up to Opuwo for the long weekend. I spent about two hours sitting by the side of the road outside of Outjo. The only cars that stopped were going the wrong way or were the police. For some reason, the police took a keen interest in me this morning. Every ten minutes or so, they would stop and make sure everything was all right. Then, assured that I was OK, they would drive away, around the block and, ten minute later, back to me again. I told them my mother appreciated their concern. They laughed. But I was serious.

Someone finally picked me up at about 8:30am. He bought me breakfast and took me to Kamanjab. I knew we would be good friends when one of his first questions was:
“Do you want breakfast?”
I always want breakfast.
Then the second question:
“Do you use The Secret or positive thinking to get a lift?”
Um, those are the only ways to get a lift.

Anyway, along the way to Kamanjab he told me about his job. He works with rhino conservationists in Etosha. They are working on a project now to relocate some black rhinos to the south of Namibia. It was really great to hear about the camp where he works and I had tons of questions. Most of the time in hikes you have to feign interest. Example: “Oh, you sell cattle feed? Interesting. What’s the going price these days? Really. Who knew? Yeah, I love cattle feed too. Nothing better.” But in this hike I was totally interested in his work.

When he dropped me off at the Kamanjab petrol station he gave me his number and told me to call if I was in any trouble. He said the camp was only 60km away and he could come back and get me if there was a problem. For a second, I hmmed and I hawed and I kicked the dust and I did the math in my head. Finally I decided that finding a ride 60km outside of Kamanjab going to Opuwo wouldn’t be too hard at that hour in the day. So I asked the man if he would be willing to show me the camp. He said yes and we were on our way.

The rhinos were on the west side of Etosha. Only private tour operators and researchers are allowed on the west side of Etosha. The general public is only allowed to visit the east side. I felt very privileged as we passed the gates into the park. On the dirt road into the camp there were zebra, kudu, dikdik, orcs and giraffes. It was like a free safari!

When we reached the camp, the rhino experts gave me some tea and introduced me to 8 black rhinos that they had captured. My favorite rhino was princess Fiona. She was beautiful. Well, as beautiful as rhinos can be. I also appreciated that the rhinos spent part of their day listening to The Killers blaring from an ipod nearby. It’s strange where familiar things will pop up.

When I was finished meeting all the rhinos I was in total shock and in love with life. My hike drove me out to the main road going to Opuwo, filled my water bottle and dropped me on the side of the road. Only then did my head start to come back down to earth. I was thinking, “Oh, wow, that was totally awesome! Who gets to be that close to a wild rhino! Wow. Now I just have to find a ride from… from… where am I? Shoot. I’m in the middle of nowhere. Oh, gosh, nowhere, Africa. Shoot.” I felt safe though because I knew my rhino researches were nearby if I needed help. But, then, half an hour later my thoughts turned into, “Damn flies! Get off me. What?! The cell phone reception just went out again. Ugh” Then two hours later the skin on the top of my feet was radish-red and my thoughts were solely focused on getting a ride: “I hear a semi. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. For heaven sakes stop and pick me up. What? There’s a white person in the cab? What’s one more white person?! Pick me up! Aw, come on!” The semi had sped past me. But as I was cursing it and watching it go, it slowed to a stop and used a dirt driveway to pull a u-turn. When they rolled back to where I was standing, another Nam27 PCV was sitting the passenger’s seat. What were the chances? I guess we were just reinforcing the stereotype that all white people know all other white people.

The semi was only going another 60km toward Opuwo. It dropped the two of us at a tiny school in the middle of nowhere again. The work crew on the semi kept checking on us to make sure we were OK and I found myself feeling safe while standing in the middle of nowhere again. I love this country.

Almost immediately after getting out of the semi, a bakkie with a small family and four goats in the back stopped to pick us up. After agreeing to “hug the goats”, we hopped in. At first the situation was just comical. There was a cute, cuddly goat and a goofy goat and a dopey goat and a not-so-cute-cuddly goat. Then the cute, cuddly one peed on my foot. Then the not-so-cute-cuddly one started to eat my trousers. 120km later, I smelled like goat pee, was burnt to a crisp and not completely sure I could stand up.

When we pulled into Opuwo one of our Nam 27 friends met us at the petrol station to show us the way to his house. There are two PCVs in Opuwo. Four volunteers were visiting this weekend, including me. The volunteer house in Opuwo is a typical volunteer house – tin roof, burglar bars on the door and windows, buckets everywhere, a tiny Christmas tree, and 900 books. But it also has water and a beautiful view, so there is nowhere else I’d rather be tonight.

“Twenty March”
I can’t say we did anything too terribly exciting today. The two volunteers who stay in Opuwo still had to go to work. But the four of us who are visiting spent some time exploring Opuwo and shopping in the town. Opuwo is the regional head of Kunene. It’s an interesting town that’s full of Himba people and contradictions.

In the afternoon, we all gathered our swimming gear and trekked up to the Opuwo Country Lodge… or The Opuwo Country Hotel… or something to that effect. It sits on a hill just behind the volunteer house. When you reach the top of the hill, the lodge faces the opposite direction of Opuwo. It has a nice large patio for eating that overlooks an infinity pool and a beautiful valley below. We spent the afternoon there swimming and relaxing. We watched the sun go down and took a million pictures on all our cameras. It was a good day.

“Twenty Two March”
It was Namibia’s birthday yesterday. The country turned 19. To celebrate the holiday, the six of us decided to have a braii (BBQ). We went to the grocery store in town and bought all sorts of great things to cook – Chicken, sausage, onions, peppers, and potatoes. We got some firewood from the Himba outside and headed home.

We braiied for a few hours that afternoon. And when I say “we” I really mean that I watched and heartily participated in eating the product of all that hard work. It was a great afternoon. The weather was nice and some kids were playing soccer nearby. When we finished polishing off the food (except for one stubborn piece of uncooked chicken) everyone went inside to take a nap. I decided to stay on the porch and study for the GRE with some note cards I carried with me. I found myself people watching more than studying though. There were a lot of people walking by. Everyone was friendly. It was a nice afternoon.

That night, we decided that we would go out to a new-ish club in the area because one of the volunteers said it was a good place for dancing. We walked down to town and spent an hour or so just hanging out and meeting people. That was when one of the volunteers decided to go back to the house because he was tired. The rest of us went to another club nearby. This one had a disco ball. In my opinion, disco balls always mean trouble.

We were only at the second place for about ten minutes before one of us got an SMS that the volunteer house had been broken into. From the club, some local friends drove us to the house. When we pulled up, we could see that the burglar bar door on the front of the house was bent at the bottom just enough to allow for a small person, a child maybe. There was stuff on the porch – peanut butter, some clothes, rusks, an empty purse. When we walked into the front room, all of our bags had been overturned and completely rummaged through. We immediately went to our respective piles and started hoping that our things were still there. My passport! It was there. Under the socks. My money was gone! Only two hundred nam dollars, I could live with that. My debit cards were there! They were hidden by a small black pouch. Thank goodness. Ipod? Phone? They were still hidden in my sleeping bag. Sweet. I was almost off scot-free. But as much as I dug, I couldn’t find my camera.

It wasn’t until then that I started hearing what was going on around me. Cameras, wallets, two laptops (minus the power cords), debit cards, credit cards, keys, cash, a hard drive, that one stubborn piece of uncooked chicken from the braii and a tin can full of coins were all missing from the house. There was a large pile of things by the door. We could only assume that the small child who could fit through the bent burglar bar door was in charge of bringing an object to the door. If the adult at the door approved the item, it was taken. If the adult at the door refused the item, it was left in the pile. Maybe the bored adult was snacking on some peanut butter and rusks while they were waiting.

In my mind:
Child: How about this camera?
Adult: Yes, it has a lot of pictures of white people swimming at Opuwo lodge. Good.
Child: I found this computer
Adult: Of course! Those are worth money!
Child: How about this cord attached to it?
Adult: worthless
Child: But I think it’s for the electricity…
Adult: I said worthless! Now go get me some of that chicken from the stove.
Child: It’s not cooked
Adult: Even better.

Your mind goes strange places when you’re in stressful situations.

Who knows what really happened.

The next few hours we were on the phone with PC and talking to the Opuwo police. Just to entertain myself I went out to the front yard with the police when they were looking for a footprint. The police started ignoring my helpful suggestions after I had asked too many questions like, “What if the footprint is under the SUV you parked in the yard?” and “Doesn’t everyone buy their shoes at the same PEP store?” and “Don’t you need some kind of light to find a footprint?” One of them grunted at me to go back to the house. And I listened to them, went in the house and giggled the whole way. But Heaven knows that footprint would’ve saved us all.

After that, we stayed up for a few more hours making theories about how the whole thing went down. Was it someone we knew? They had to be waiting for us to leave the house because the whole thing was done in less than an hour. How did they know we were leaving? Was it one of the people passing by earlier in the day? Had we spent too much time altogether in town? That’s a lot of white people… It was a lot of thinking and speculating but in the end, we’ll never know.

To go to bed that night, we had to push the dining room table up against the door. It still locked, but it was bent and one set of keys was missing from the house. We all slept in the back of the house that night. No one wanted to be close to the door. Just after we turned off the lights, I heard a lot of movement… metal rattling maybe… lots of bumping… I kept telling myself, “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. If it’s something, someone else will hear it. It’s nothing.” But even though I told myself to be calm, my eyesight narrowed (a stupid side effect of fight or flight I decided in that moment) and my heart started pumping blood really hard. I was just about to say something to wake the others up when one of the volunteers busted out from his room to tell us that all the rest of his things were right where they were supposed to be. He had been moving things in his room. That was what I had heard. I really had to calm down before I got any sleep.

Early Sunday morning, I got an SMS that Jill had sent the day before. She said that the water was on in our flat (she had spent the weekend in Okakarara and had returned to Khorixas on Saturday). Even though I was only running on about three hours of sleep, I decided it was time to say goodbye to Opuwo and to my camera. I fuelled myself up with some of the rusks from the front porch and made my way down to the hike point for Khorixas. I got a ride almost immediately in a small bakkie crammed with people. There was a family of three in the bakkie that was also trying to find their way to Khorixas. They adopted me for the day. It was so nice to be adopted on that day. I needed someone to look out for me.

When the small bakkie made it to Kamanjab it let everyone out. When I went to pay the driver, he would not give me back all of my change. I was so angry but at the same time I thought, why not? Why not just take some extra?

I calmed down really quickly, though, when my adopted family for the day also got angry. Altogether, we couldn’t get the money back. So, instead they bought me a cooldrink and some lunch. One of the family members is a teacher at the primary school in Khorixas on the town side. We talked about teaching BIS while we flagged down cars outside of Kamanjab. The car we finally got drove with all the windows down on the dirt road so that when we reached Khorixas an hour later I was completely white. My orange backpack was completely white. My eyelashes had little drops of mud between them from the dust and tears that had mixed.

It was nice to be home. Jill gave a piece of chocolate cake. I took a bath. I saw my notice from the Post office for a package. I went to bed.

“Twenty Three March two thousand and nine”
I’m a little richer today. It’s nice being a little richer because yesterday I was a bit poorer.

I’m rich today because I got a package from mom. I’m ashamed to admit that I ate 3.5 servings of beef jerky for dinner tonight… but then again, America should be ashamed it sells things with 3.5 servings instead of 3 or 4.