“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.

It stopped raining on March 7. I get to keep my Namdollar.

25 February

When we started Peace Corps, I heard a few times, “Non-readers will become readers. Readers will become writers”. This was in reference to how bored and lonely you get while sitting alone in your new empty home and the means by which you entertain yourself. At first, I thought, “whoa, I was a reader and now I’m becoming a writer.” But I was wrong. I wasn’t a reader. And I definitely wasn’t becoming a writer. In fact, I don’t know if I have any new scholastic habit. I do read more. But I think that’s because I have the time. Still, 50 pages is my limit for a day before my brain starts to itch and I have to put the book down for something more “productive”, like sweeping an already clean floor or washing a shirt that’s only been worn once.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this idea of reading. In schools here, you hear the term “reading culture” thrown around. And example sentence is: “we want to make the library a nice place to encourage a reading culture.” Maybe this is a common phrase, or maybe my school coined it… but I doubt it. So, I’ve been wondering, what is a reading culture? And why is it our big goal?

I think that we do have a reading culture in America. All of our history is written down. The number of times I remember my grandmother talking about her mother and father I can count on two hands (I imagine it’s probably one hand worth of fingers for most people my age. I just get to use two hands because that side of my family enjoys genealogies… but that’s beside the point). Most grandparents don’t sit down and recite history to their bouncing America baby. No, you send them off to school, where they learn all those good things from books.

Sometimes when I hear the phrase “reading culture”, I automatically imagine a person with trendy glasses, sitting in a coffee shop window, wearing skinny jeans and a pointless scarf, reading “Catch 22” or “The Kite Runner” or “Middlesex” or some other book that really makes them think about the meaning of life…. But more importantly, makes them able to relate, on some level, to the thousands of other people who’ve read that book.

I know that Americans don’t read entirely to look trendy. But you can’t deny that books sure don’t hurt your indie hipster image. I also know that American parents don’t send their kids off to school so they can be free from the obligations of teaching their children about the world and all the cool things in it. If that were true, I would have spent a lot fewer nights in a tent in the middle of the wood as a child.

I always think back to America first because it’s what I know but also because it’s the model for other countries. Good or bad, it’s true. I’ve been told English was perfected in America. I wanted to say, Aw, brutha, ya kno that ain’t tru. But it may very well be.

I think our school is just looking for a standard. At least I hope that’s what they’re looking for. There’s a common knowledge that exists here in Khorixas. I always feel like I’ve cracked a secret code when I learn a little tidbit of it. For example, we had some friends over at the end of last year. They told us about all of the tribes in our area. Just Damara, Right? Wrong. There are different tribes of Damara! Granted, I can’t pronounce a single one of them. But the omas and opas (grandmas and grandpas) know which tribe they’re from. Our visitors told us that the omas and opas can tell the difference between people from each of the Damara tribes (I can’t even tell the difference between the general Namibian tribes, unless I hear them speaking). But then, just a few weeks ago, I was reading through the social studies books. I didn’t see one mention of Damara tribes. Everyone knows about them, but you can’t read about them. If I asked 5 different people: “How many tribes are there? Where did they live? What are their names?” I would get a huge variety of answers.

A second example: I’ve heard 4 different stories now about how Khorixas came to be Damaraland. They’ve all been on hitchhikes when the driver feels inclined for a history lesson. But does anyone really know? Did anyone write it down? The answer is yes, but no one here reads it.

Which brings me to the reading culture. Do we really need it? I mean books can be just as jaded as an oma sitting by the fire spinning a yarn about the glory days. But then, in print, they influence more people. Is that good? Or is that bad?

I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you. I’m just thinking. And I’m just doing my job, which is reading. And by golly, do we read. I’ve got about 320 learners in all of my classes and about 200 hundred of them have books in their hands tonight. Some of them may be looking at the pictures, some of them may be reading and dreaming of another place or time, and some of them may be tearing out the title page to fuel their fire and hoping that I don’t notice it’s missing when they return it tomorrow.


March 7
I wanted to tell you the good news! I’ve got two computers on the way from America as we speak. If you gave money to make that happen, THANK YOU! Really, really, thank you. I will let you know the second they arrive. And photos! I will take lots and lots of photos!

Also, it’s sunny today!!! I missed the sun. It’s strange because it’s been raining everyday since school started. Sometimes the day will start out sunny, and then it will spend the morning becoming increasingly unbearable. Then, just when you think you can’t handle it anymore, the clouds finish forming and start to dump on you. Other times, like this past week, it’s cloudy in the morning, at lunch, in the afternoon and into the night. And we spend the day being a bit cold and damp. The weathers so strange because I thought I knew exactly what to expect this year. But instead the grass is starting to grow into all of my walking paths and I have to wade through newly formed rivers when I’m out walking.

Last week, I went out walking while it was drizzling. When I got about 20 minutes away from home, the sky started dumping buckets. I ducked under the side of a church building but unfortunately it already occupied by one very persistent drunk man. After a few minutes of being insulted, I decided being drenched wasn’t as bad as I thought. Walking in the rain was all ok, even a bit fun, until I got to a street that had been turned into a river by flooding. I just needed to cross it but the water was going fast and I didn’t know how deep it was and (think of all the parasites!) I had a cut on my toe. Luckily an old lady was sitting on her stoop nearby and came over (in the buckets of rain) to help me. She explained that there was a few stones I could hop on a little ways up the street… or at least I think that what she said. She said it all in Afrikaans with big hand gestures. I don’t know any Afrikaans, except thank you. So, to keep her from standing in the rain and explaining the whole thing over again in English, I said, “Danke” and moved down to the stones. I started hoping over the stones. The last one was a bit far and I missed it and ended up even wetter than if I had just walked across. I looked back to the woman and she was giggling at me. I would’ve giggled at me too – who is this white girl, wandering around in a downpour, pretending she’s an Afrikaner? About the same time I was standing in the middle of the street-river up to my shins in water, a bakkie drives by and slows down. The man had his window rolled down and leaned out to say, “you’re getting wet.” He leaned back in the window and accelerated away. There was no chuckle in his voice. There was no underlying, “hop in and I’ll drive you home.” No, just, “you’re getting wet.” Like I hadn’t noticed. I waded out of the river and continued up the street towards home. I was just being to feel optimistic about getting home without causing too much more attention. Just then, a tiny tiny sedan rounded the corner in front of me. There were five men inside. The man sitting behind the driver had his window low enough to yell out, “Hey baby, you’re looking hot.” This caused me to look up to see who would be that rude. As I looked up the driver hit the puddle I was walking next to. The mud arced beautifully into the air and landed artfully onto my face. I got a “hey, baby?” from the man in the back, like maybe I was too distracted to hear his compliment the first time. There was a mix of emotions in my head: First, “Holy crap, people, I’m just trying to get home.” Then, “I think there’s mud in my mouth.” And, “Eeew, that man doesn’t have any teeth.” But mostly, “Aha ha ha ha ha!” How could you not laugh in that situation? So that’s what I did. And, luckily, there was enough rain that all the mud was off my face in a second. I made it home about the same time the rain was slowing down. The kids were just coming out from their dry hiding places and made sure to tell me that I shouldn’t walk around in the rain – I’ll get sick. Which I’m sure I won’t do again… as long as I know it’s coming.

But today is sunny. And I’d bet you a namdollar, as soon as I post this, the rain goes away for a while. That’s how things seem to work here: The minute you go out to buy candles the power comes back on, just when you lock the library to go home the kids come in a gaggle to take out books, and that lesson that you thought wouldn’t work ends up being a hit. I spent a lot of time last year thinking that I was bipolar. But I’m not. That’s all I know.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Khorixas this year. In fact, all of my time. This is the most consecutive days I’ve been in the city. It’s small here and normally, by this time, I should be getting cabin fever. But I’ve been doing ok. It helps that I’ve been reading a lot of awesome books lately. I’m also studying for the GRE. I have to go down to Cape Town to take exam. It’s a bit daunting because I really haven’t done anything academically challenging since April 2007 (Time it flying!). I’ve found that studying for the GRE is really relaxing - it’s nice to be doing something that will only benefit me. Now, if I had only had that point of view while I was in University maybe I would’ve had better grades.


Today is regional athletics for all of Kunene region. It’s held in Outjo. Our district athletics were on Valentine’s Day. It was fun. We had two learners who made it past districts. I only know one of them well. She’s fantastic. Her name is Magreth. She’s one of those people who make running look easy. I watch her and I think, “I could totally do that”. Then she laps someone and I think, “oh, what a wimp” because it looks like Magreth is just gliding past them effortlessly. She was in my math class last year. She always wanted extra problems – what teacher doesn’t love that? She got chicken pox last year and spent a full day in church praying for them to go away. Sometime there are learners I just want to pull aside and say, “Please leave. Please leave Khorixas.” But I don’t. Khorixas needs good people too.

Well, that’s about it lately. I’m going to go back to studying geometry for the GRE. Isn’t geometry nice? It’s like a little puzzle. It looks like a bunch of craziness but then subtract from 180, multiply by pi, apply a fancy theorem and, shoot, everything’s explained. Nice and tidy… Do I really need the metaphor or did you get it on your own?

Back To Skool!

I made it back! To Namibia, obviously. But really, I meant my blog. It’s been a long time since Thanksgiving, and I was starting to worry that my blog had died. But it didn’t. It’s still here! Yippee!

My time at home was wonderful. Honestly, it was a bit surreal though. I cried getting off the plane at the beginning. And I cried getting back on the plane at the end. I don’t know if I can explain either emotion but they were both a mixture of fear, missing certain people and an overwhelming sense of not belonging anywhere… or maybe belonging too many places.

Before I left for home last year, I would spend a certain amount of time everyday visualizing things that I felt were shocking about America. For example, I visualized an entire row of the grocery store being dedicated completely to ice cream. I visualized getting into a clean car with seatbelts that would travel directly to where I needed to go! I visualized a clerk in a store who said, “oh yes, of course I can help you.” Instead of the regular, “I don’t want to speak English today” or “Buy me these sweets when you buy your things.” Yes, I visualized many fantastic things about America. But when I finally got there for my vacation, some things still shocked me.

I had a ten-ish hour layover in JFK airport when I first arrived in America. It was hellish (“Hellish” defined as: completely jet lagged, tired, dirty, wearing summer-weather clothes, without American money, hungry, forbidden to check in until a mere 6 hours before my flight and doomed to carry ALL my bags around outside in the cold rain waiting until Delta would accept my worn and ragged soul… and that is no exaggeration, that is, until I found a McDonalds…). Just before my connecting flight left for the west coast, I finally found some coffee. It was, of course, at Starbucks. I didn’t mind because it was coffee, the only beverage confirmed to improve my outlook on life. When I tried to get an Americano, though, I ran into some trouble. I had in my wallet a fresh $20 from an ATM I had stumbled across – a whole different challenge – and a few coins left over from 2007. I figured that I would make life easier on this Starbucks worker by counting out exact change for my coffee. But instead, she angrily stared at me as I counted the coins. And when I finally put them down she said, “This ain’t right!” I counted them again, twice. They were right, I thought. The employee just got more and more angry before she finally took the coins and counted them for me... in a loud and clear voice… like a math teacher… in first grade: “25! 35! 36! 37! 38! … You’re 25 cents short!” I looked at the coins in horror as I realized, a quarter is worth 25 cents. Not 50 cents. I just quietly put down a second quarter and grabbed my drink that had long since been prepared by the second employee and shamefully slid away to a dark corner of the terminal. Where I then examined the rest of the coins in my possession to ensure I knew all of their values before attempting to purchase something else.

The quarters were only the beginning. The little things seemed to shock me all over the place. The rolls of toilet paper in America are huge! Internet is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen. Why does everyone drive so fast on the freeway? Was TV News always so entertaining? Remote controls have so many buttons. Pop tarts cost more than I make in a day. Why is everyone so strict about the order of words in sentences – you got the idea, didn’t you?! And, you definitely don’t get to choose if you want to wear a seatbelt or not.

There were a few things that were not as great as I remembered though. For instance, customer service really confused me. It was just too much social stimulation. By the end of my visit, I would just make nods in the direction of things I needed instead of using full coherent sentences. And snow! Oh the snow! It was so… cold. And wet. And yucky.

There were some things that were just as good as I remembered though: Family, friends, curlers, pets, the cd player in my car, boots, the microwave, clean socks, the washing machine, lots and lots of blankets and fantastic tea with fantastic honey!

Overall, my trip home was really great. And I did get my hair cut.

I returned to Namibia on Thursday, the 8th of January. My first act upon arriving was to leave my cellphone in the taxi that drove me from the airport. It was a devastating loss. But the kindly Europeans who were bunked in my hostel room became concerned about my seemingly unhealthy attachment to a piece of technology and, with many phone calls and a little yelling, managed to get the taxi driver back to the hostel, resulting in my phone’s safe return… And who says Europeans don’t like Americans?

The next day, I made a quick visit to Khorixas for the weekend to make sure my flat hadn’t been broken into or otherwise damaged. I felt very lucky to see that my flat looked just as I had left it. Luck had very little to do with it though. It probably had more to do with my neighbor/friend/colleague who promised to watch it during the holiday. The inside of my flat smelled like something rotting though and it was a little more than I had bargained for. And, to make the smell worse, there wasn’t a whole drop of water in the entire hostel for the entire weekend. I survived by buying 3 liters of water and eating the leftovers from the lunch my mom had packed my for the plane ride. She’s a good lunch packer.

That Monday was the Nam27 Midservice conference in Windhoek. It was kind of like the Reconnect conference last year… the only difference was that we already had Reconnect…

About half of our group had visited home for Christmas. The others did some sightseeing in east Africa or South Africa. Only a few stayed at their sites in Namibia. It was good to see everyone though. They’re a pretty great NamFam. Slightly dysfunctional… but then, who isn’t?

Midservice was during the first official week of school - Thank goodness. The first week of every term is chaos. But the first week of the First Term is a special breed of chaos that also happens to provide a lot of time to bang your head against the wall and question your purpose in Namibia, and life in general. Luckily, my school proceeded through this period without me. When I arrived the next Monday, they already had a timetable (class schedule) and about half the registered learners for most classes.

At the staff meeting in the morning, it was good to see a lot of familiar faces. There were a lot of new teachers too. And a new principal! (We didn’t have a principal last year. The last principal passed away in 2007) When I saw my supervisor at the meeting she said, “you’re going to be a very shocked person when you look at the timetable” and then ducked behind another teacher before jumping into the prayer for the morning.

After the meeting, she cleared everything up for me. I was going to be a shocked person because I was no longer a science teacher or a math teacher. Which is really a pity, because I happen to have a huge binder full of a years’ worth of lesson plans for both subjects. Instead, I was going to be a B.I.S. teacher and a Life Skills teacher.

B.I.S. stands for Basic Information Science. Volunteers commonly call this particular course “BS class”. It’s supposed to help learners become familiar with information resources available to them, such as computers, books, videos, references, etc. The “BS” description comes in when the volunteer then discovers how many “resources” actually are available to the learner. Life Skills is a mix between health, study skills and social studies. The curriculum is basically common sense (which unfortunately is not always so common in these parts).

At first, I was in shock. I love science and math. And last year, I loved trying to force little kids to love them too. But after a while of thinking and looking over the syllabi, I decided that this could be a lucky break for me. You see, BIS and Life Skills are non-promotional subjects. That means that kids don’t have to take any government tests to pass the class. And after further investigations, I found that, basically, I can teach whatever I want!

It’s exciting that I get to choose the most important and fun things to teach. But it’s also a lot of pressure. I spent the majority of my first week getting a general idea of what I wanted teach for the first and second terms. And then taking those ideas and tailoring them to vastly different skills of learners in grade 5, 6 and 7. It’s a lot of work, but it’s going a lot more smoothly that making lessons for science and math. That’s mainly because there are so many more resources for Life Skills. There aren’t very many for BIS. But for BIS I chose to read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with the grade 6 and grade 7. We have a class set, left by the previous VSO. The small book should take up all of term 1, so lesson planning is taken care of up until June. Grade 5 is doing Phonics – which I’m quickly growing to detest.

For Life Skills, I chose Term 1 to teach about health – a healthy digestive system, a healthy diet, and a healthy mouth. If we have time we’ll finish with the nervous system and drug education. I chose health for first term because I thought it was the least important topic of the three things I wanted to teach. Granted, I only chose three topics I thought were important (one for each term). The other two are environmental education and conflict resolution (yes, and entire term can be spent on conflict resolution… probably a whole year if we’re honest). I think these two are more important because, in all likelihood, they will not be getting very much information about them in the rest of their education. They do get a lot of health education though. And by teaching it in term one, I can omit the things they probably know more about when, say, classes get cancelled for the whole week because we’re changing the timetable… which happens a lot in term one.

The other challenges starting this school year are the organizing the library and the dinosaur in the office. First of all, the library is full of books. At least that’s the way it looks when you walk in. The problem is that you, an American, can quickly see that more than half the books are written in Afrikaans. The learners can’t tell the difference between Afrikaans and English, though. And then will happily spend an afternoon applying English phonics to Afrikaans and making up who-knows-what-story in their head to go along with the pictures. So, at the end of last year, I decided to pack up all the Afrikaans books and send them along to a different school. The problem I’m encountering now is this: the library doesn’t look as beautiful without all those books. … … Yes, that is a problem. Almost a big enough problem that our school would rather keep all those useless books. So, the challenge becomes 1) making the library look beautiful and fun and useful with a tiny number of books and 2) getting teachers and kids to USE the book we do HAVE! And, by that, I mean actually reading the words and understanding the content… But to help that along, I also have a pot of beautiful red fake flowers that make reading look more enticing… Maybe.

And the second problem is that darn dinosaur in the office. And by that I mean, our computer. This computer, particularly today, is driving me INSANE! Insane. It’s so old they turn it on and hour before the secretary gets to school, so that it might actually be on by the time she gets there. Today, the mouse just broke. That means the only thing left to use is the keyboard. I wrote a previous post about the keyboard. I would bet money that the keyboard is actually older than the computer. Whenever you press Enter or Shift or the Spacebar, you then have to pry up the key with your fingernail before proceeding. But without the mouse, that keyboard is the only link to our dinosaur. I googled keystrokes in my phone and taught the secretary a few so that she could keep working. But the whole situation had almost become comedic.

As an extracurricular task this year, our new principal assigned me to computers. “You can be I.T.,” he said. I was really excited about that. My plan is to get a new computer for the school. Maybe two. Last year, I wanted to get a new computer for the school but the cost of one almost seemed unreal. While I was home for Christmas though, family and friends donated money for the school to get a new computer. It was so cool to see and it was almost overwhelming at times. Now that I’m back here, I really just want to tell my coworkers about all the cool people in America that care about them and their school.

Right now, I’m looking at a computer donation company based in Seattle for the computers. It seems like a good place. I start to worry when I think about shipping costs and customs though. There’s just so much that goes into being the computer person. Plus, the title of “I.T.” goes so completely beyond my skill level, it’s bit laughable.

Well, that’s about it for the start of the year. I hope I didn’t bore you with too many details about school. It’s about all I’ve been doing though. My down time pretty much consists of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Weeds and the Year Of Fitness… which is definitely a story for a different blog. It’s all been pretty hectic but it’s also been good. I did leave out one huge detail. Huge detail. It’s a tradition of Namibian schools everywhere. A magical moment designed to welcome learners back from summer holiday with warmth and love and… CHAOS! It’s Athletics. For those of you regular readers, you may remember the running fiasco from last year. For the rest of you, tune in next time and I’ll tell you about the craziness.

And the Word Opaque

OCTOBER 30 2008!!!!
(I get really excited about dates lately… they seem to come as a surprise to me most of the time)

Well, the good news is that October 30th is right in the middle of Nam 27’s Week O’One Year Anniversaries. The celebration mostly just includes Facebook updates and SMSes about what we were doing one year ago – who we met first, who we thought was crazy, how many times we broke down crying/freaking out/calling home, how great per diem was when it was in American dollars instead of Nam dollars, etc. The week started on October 28th, when all the west coasters were flown to DC for PC staging on the 29th. The group flew out of DC on October 31st and finally made to Namibia on November 2nd. And the rest is history. Well at least until January 9th. That’s when we became real volunteers. And that anniversary means I’ll only have 11 months left.

The bad news is that October 30th means that it’s Namibian springtime, which really means its summertime. Make sense? No? Let me try explaining another way: I’m in an oven. At first this weather wasn’t so bad. It was just searing sun. When I went inside, it was easy to cool down. Now, the heat follows me everywhere. It’s because of the humidity. Recently the clouds came back and added humidity to my life. I thought maybe I was being a wimp because it’s probably only about 1.1% more humidity than normal. And being springtime, there are still a lot of pleasant days. But on bad days, by adding that extra stuffy humidity to the regular 125-degree weather, I think I’m going to pass out in class if I talk too loud.

Today was actually a bad day weather-wise. I was sweating in the morning meeting at 7am. When it’s this hot the learners actually do pass out, sleeping. At first, I thought that this was unacceptable. I would wake them up and insist that they participate in class. Now, I just let them sleep. Honestly? It’s the best thing for everyone. Over the past two days, I’ve seen more acts of violence in the school than all of term 2. Kids are just irritable.

Actually, violence is typical at school. It’s all pretty tame violence though, if there is such a thing. Everyday, at least 5 to 35 times, I hear, “Miss, this one is beating me!” or “I’m going to beat that one!!!”- Which is usually accompanied by a unique to Namibia pointing-glaring combination to ensure that I understand which child they are about to beat. In January, I was lucky enough to come across Appropriate Touch in the Health portion of the Natural Science Curriculum. One of the solutions grade 7 thought of to deal with inappropriate touch was to move away. Even though I had only been teaching for a week or so at that time, I could already tell peer beating was a problem that I wasn’t going to be able to put a scratch in by myself. So I took the opportunity to make them put down their pens, fold their hands (how I make them show they’re listening to me) and listen to my mini lecture. Ahem:

“If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, or bad…”

(I usually say the big word first, then the easy synonym second).

“You should MOVE AWAY! Don’t keep staying by that person. If someone is beating you or not respecting you, MOVE AWAY! Even in this class, move away! Lift up your hand and tell me that you need to move. Don’t sit there. Move! …”

I’m all about taking control of your own destiny. Since that lecture, its not uncommon for me to be writing on the board and turn around to see a learner holding his desk – “Miss, I need to move away.” And he’ll shuffle his desk over to the other side of the classroom. It’s hard not to laugh because they’re so cute. But I try to stifle the laughing because they’re also usually really angry at whomever they’re moving away from. I just get so proud when they choose to take the high road. It’s rare and it takes a self-restraint that they don’t have much practice with.

Anyway, all that’s to say, there hasn’t been much moving away the past couple of days. Yesterday was the big blowout. We have a break from 10:00 to 10:30. It’s “required” for all the teachers to come to the staff room during break in case there is an accidental meeting during that half hour. I kid you not – “Some information may slip out during that time and all teachers must be present if there is something important said”. I like to gamble and skip. Some teachers don’t gamble at all, they just don’t care if something important is said and they don’t come. Others have teamed up with their friends and one of them has to go every other day and then relay the important information, if any, to the absent friend (Now seeing how there are 20 teachers all together, I don’t see how this relaying information thing would be so hard to establish school-wide… especially since small boys are sent with all note carrying/message delivering matters anyway. The teachers wouldn’t even have to stand up).

So, we’re all sitting in the staff room during break and there are movie-quality shrieks out of the window. I look through the lace curtains and only see a lot of dust and a sea of blue uniforms. I turned and looked back at the teachers. One of the teachers takes a bite of his mayonnaise and margarine sandwich. He says over the bite, “Oh, they’re fighting” and then continues chewing. No one else even blinks. Trying to make more sense of the situation, I walked out of the office block to the courtyard of the school. Sure enough, there was a fight of over a hundred kids in progress. One of the prefects (handily wearing a white uniform shirt for easy identification) was standing there to inform me calmly, “Miss they are fighting”. I said, “No, really?” before I realized that my sarcasm doesn’t fly here. She said, “It’s true, miss”. And I said, “hmm”. I think what surprised me the most was that I wasn’t that surprised.

Maybe a minute later, the teacher with the mayonnaise-margarine sandwich came out, casually wiping his hands with a dishcloth. He said something to the prefects standing around and pointed to the bustling crowd. The prefects ran off into the fight. A few seconds later the intense crowd broke into smaller fights and soon kids were just standing around looking angry – the prefects were still hanging onto the shirt tails of a few of the most guilty contenders. About that time, a few more teachers came out of the office block waving sticks and yelling in their Damara angry voices.

Damara angry voices are truly a trait worthy of awe. 60% of the women and girls I know here are capable of this tone. Never have I experienced a tone of voice that I would believe is literally poisonous. You can almost see the green cloud of toxins coming from the person using this tone of voice. Really, an inspiring tool in the area of crowd control. But definitely not one I envy. The teachers were yelling in their angry voices and waving sticks around the courtyard. Less than 30 seconds later, the kids were in perfect lines, boys and girls, outside their classrooms waiting for class to start again. Even the dust took longer to settle than the kids. Unbelievable.

Actually, a school-wide fight is pretty believable here if it weren’t for the two things that happened later.

Later in the day, I passed a crowd of teachers and a grade five learner on the sidewalk. They were using their Damara angry voices so I just kept walking, as usual. A few minutes later, one of the same teachers came into the office behind me. She was talking to me about Peace Corps and how they had called earlier that day. As she was talking, she pulled out a phone recharge card and started to scratch off the silver layer over the number. She tried her fingernail first but it wasn’t working so she pulled out a big flip knife (I don’t know anything about knives, but it was big) and started scratching with that. I said, “uuuuuuuuuuumm. Ahem.” And pointed to the knife. The teacher said, “Oh, that boy brought it to school today” and then waved the knife around in a displeased manner and went back to the phone charger. That was it. Angry poison voices, taking the knife away and sending the kid back to class! Unbelievable.

Luckily, the knife thing was towards the end of school. And also luckily, it was Wednesday so I didn’t have to go back for study. I just sat in front of my fan all afternoon. I loooooooove my fan. Love it.

This morning was pretty calm. In my third class of the day, I was doing a serious lecture about finding the area of a rectangle. I had to keep talking louder and louder because the kids next door were making so much noise. A few months ago, one of the teachers told me I needed to take more initiative in discipline and general order around the school. I do have a tendency to ignore things that don’t have anything to do with me. That’s a very American thing to do. Plus, I’m really quiet compared to most of the learners and teachers here. So, keeping the more initiative suggestion in mind, I left a practice problem for my class on the board and headed next door.

A girl was standing in the door. It was a grade 5 class. Apparently, I look like I need the obvious explained to me because the girl said, “Miss, they’re fighting”. Then? She laughed! I looked around the room and everyone was enjoying themselves! And in the very center were a boy and a girl fighting. I thought, more initiative! So I walked over and grabbed their arms and pulled them apart. It didn’t do much though because they just twisted free and kept fighting. This fight was something else. I wanted to look around the room to make sure there were no cameras – it almost seemed scripted. The boy was obviously winning. And he was obviously not going to stop. I didn’t really know what to do so I grabbed his ear and his shoulder and pulled him back. It didn’t do a single darn thing. Then, do you know what he did? He pulled free and bit into the neck of the girl he was fighting and started twisting his head back and forth trying to tear the skin.

Alright. Initiative schmitiative. I called the prefects.

Sure enough the prefects pulled them apart and carried the boy outside. I was checking the girl for blood when the class teacher came back (mayonnaise margarine man). He glazed over the class and walked to his desk and started shuffling papers… Um, excuse me? This boy just tried to exercise his canines on this girl. Both of which were hanging out in your abandoned class! Was this homework or something?

But I didn’t say that. I just walked out and went back to rectangles. I was totally traumatized. Every time I turned around to write on the board for the rest of the period I would almost start crying. I don’t understand how anyone can go to school and try to learn about rectangles when they don’t even feel safe. Obviously these kids are way tougher than I was at their age. But some degree of safety and security is needed just to be a normal person, let alone move on the other things like geometry.

I never felt in danger. I wasn’t even upset because all these things were happening in proximity to me. No one is angry at me. I give them stickers – they love me. They’re angry at each other. And the fact that no one is watching their backs is upsetting. That’s not a normal childhood – in any culture.

But, yeah, it’s been a crazy few days. In the last class of the day, half the kids fell asleep. So, I took up the papers we were working on and said, “shh, nap time. We’ll review tomorrow”. It was too long and miserable of a day for anyone to have to think about science.


November 6th 2008

Yesterday was an incredible day! With the time difference, McCain made his concession speech at about 6:00 in the morning yesterday. I got an SMS from a teacher at my school at about 6:01 that said, “Obama wins election!!!!!!” Then, not even a minute later I got an SMS from one of the Nigerian volunteers that said, “Congratulations fo d excellent manner ya country conducted her elections and d subsequent victory of B. Obama. That is why I love Americans”.

Let me tell you, I have not received that much America-love in the entire time I’ve been here. Well… that’s not entirely true. A lot of men love America. That is until I tell them I won’t marry them and buy them a plane ticket to my homeland… then they’re full of words one should never use whilst in an attempt to woo a future spouse.

Anyway, the rest of the day at school, it was easy to pick out the kids who have TVs at home. They would run up to me and say, “Miss, your country is having a new president! He’s a black man!!!!” To which, my two favorite responses were, “Oh my! I have a new president?! That’s so exciting!” and “So, what country is that exactly?” The answer to the latter was split three ways: South Africa, Germany and North America (They don’t let volunteers teach social studies… but I’m not exactly sure why because I feel that I could at least explain that just because people look alike it doesn’t mean they’re from the same country).

Kids and adults alike are equally inspired by the “son of Africa” that will be the head of the free world. I’m sure that Barak wasn’t running to please the African continent. And I’m also sure that he wasn’t elected because people in Namibia have been holding their breath since May for a black man to become the next American president. But I am sure that the soon-to-be 44th president has already restored a huge amount of faith in America from overseas.

I know that image isn’t everything. I also believe that we shouldn’t choose our leaders just because of what they look like. And I am interested with the issues and plans for the next four years. But I do want to say that, while living in an African country, I have never been so thankful that the American image has significantly improved in the course of the last three days. Earlier this year, some volunteers were on a tour of Botswana and actually got boo-ed for being American… Let’s be honest, an image boost couldn’t hurt, right?

All that’s to say, it was a good day for America across the globe… no matter who you voted for.


November 7th 2008
The new group, Nam 28 gets here today. I can’t believe it – we’re not the Peace Corps freshmen anymore. Weird.

Well, today, I had a couple of really cute conversations. The first one was with a learner named Silvanus. He is one of my favorite learners because he tries so hard.

Silvanus’s sir name ends in a B. On the other hand, his mother and sisters’ sir names end in an S. That’s the way Damara sir names work. If the family name is Gaingob, all of the sons will keep Gaingob and all of the daughters will get Gaingos. Gaeb/Gaes, Nunueb/Nunues, and Aebeb/Aebes are all family name pairs. And while Silvanus’s actual sir name ends in a B, all of the learners make fun of him by changing it to an S and calling him Miss. But Silvanus is one of my favorites because it doesn’t faze him. He usually deals with it by saying “Ai! Leave Me!” and making a waving motion – no beating or yelling as with other learners. He does have his fair share of actual friend… all of them girls though.

So, a few of the teachers were missing from work today. That usually means my library is full of learners who are bored. Silvanus was hanging out in there during an early morning period. He was looking through our new collection of Ranger Rick Magazines – donated by generous American kids. I was busy making “turn in your library books or else!” posters for every class and he was just chatting away. I don’t know if he stopped to breathe for the whole 40 minutes he was in there. My favorite part of the conversation was about his plans for secondary school (high school): He doesn’t want to take Khoekhoe in secondary school because the teacher is mean. Instead he wants to take the Afrikaans option. But he’s upset because his mother won’t let him take Afrikaans. He said, “My mother tells me that I will pick up Afrikaans in the street. But I go out in the street and no one is out there teaching it. Even yesterday, she tells me that I can learn Afrikaans in the street and I go outside and there is no one, Miss. I don’t know how I am going to learn Afrikaans in the street if no one is out on my street teaching it.” All I could picture was him going outside everyday looking for an impromptu classroom set in the middle of the dirt road. I thought about explaining the phrase “on the street” but decided against it. He’s so good at English already he’ll figure it out soon enough.

A little later, Elma came in. Elma is another favorite because she never gives up. She’s in my math class. In math class, I try to get them to work faster by giving a sticker to the first four or five who finish their problems. Elma gets so excited she’ll raise her hand to show me each step of the problem she writes, just in case she accidentally wrote the answer and she’s inadvertently won a sticker. She has a lot of problems with columns (you know, not adding in a diagonal) and multiplication (for some reason 6 times 0 equals 6 no matter how many times we practice it) so she only has four or five stickers in her book. But that doesn’t get her down. No sir-ee, she just works harder. That sticker is hers; Miss Jessica just doesn’t know it yet.

Elma is also in our girls’ club. The very first girls’ club, we had the girls decorate their journals with some markers that Jill got in a package from home. Most of the girls copied drawings from each other or had the one good artist draw for them (they’re so afraid that they might mess up, they’d rather not risk it). But not Elma. No, Elma took the full time allotted. Elma used every color in the box. And I’m not exactly sure what Elma drew but it’s really colorful and really enthusiastic and it’s a hell of a lot more exciting than the other girls’ journals.

Anyway, Elma came in and she wanted to know about the last girls’ club meeting next week. Yesterday, I made the announcement that the last girls’ club would be on Thursday next week and that we would do something fun. The words “something fun” were then run through the middle school gossip gamut and reached Elma’s ears as “a great big party with lots and lots of food”. I tried to explain to Elma that we weren’t having a party but it just wasn’t getting through. So, then I switched to explaining that the meeting would be a “tiny party”. She kept asking why we couldn’t have a big party. She even suggested we take up a donation. It took her a few moments to calculate how much money we would have for our big party if everyone brought in a dollar… she used her fingers and looked up and the ceiling… We would have… 2… 5… 9! We would have 9 dollars for our big party! …We have 13 girls in our club. I’m not sure where 9 came from. Finally, I explained that we just couldn’t do a big party. It was going to have to be a tiny tiny party – like the size of my fingernail. She looked at my fingernail really closely and then said, “oh” and looked a little sad. I said, “Its ok. It’ll be like Wooo!” and put my hands in the air like a roller coaster. Hesitantly, she mimicked me, “Woo?” and kept her hands in the air as she looked at me for approval. “Exactly,” I said. Hands straight up in the air in a Charlie-Brown-good-grief fashion, she walked out of the library she practiced her, “Woo” – it was still a little half-hearted. Then, from down the corridor I heard “Woo!!” and knew she had gotten it… I am SO looking forward to our fingernail-sized party next week. You have no idea.

Well, TGIF. Plus? One more week of teaching! Then, two weeks of exams. Then, Merry Christmas to me – I don’t have to go to school for a month and a half! Woot.


November 18th

End of the year exams started today. All of my classes take their exams today or tomorrow. It’s really nice that way because I’ll finish all my work this week. Then next week I can visit some other volunteers for Thanksgiving and focus on making my house into a fortress for the Christmas month. We don’t have a lot to steal, but we also don’t have a lot of money to replace things that are stolen. An ounce of prevention…

… I don’t really know the end of that saying.

I wasn’t allowed to invigilate today because the learners were writing my exam. So instead I cleaned my corner of the library so I would have a place to mark the exams when they were finished. In the library, I have a learner’s desk and a learner’s chair tucked behind the checkout counter for my workspace. The desktop doesn’t really attach to the metal frame below. I never really thought it was weird until today when the whole desk collapsed with my papers on it. Guess it serves me right for laughing at the learners that had similar troubles all year.

But while I was cleaning up all of my papers, I found some old papers I hadn’t returned to the learners yet. Two of them had answers that I had to share with you.

Question: What are the colours in the rainbow?
Answer: Pollo and beber and rett and vaett and baroont and blue

That’s to say, yellow and purple and red and violet and blue. I’m not sure what baroont is. When I’m grading I usually have to take on a Namibian accent and read the answers aloud. Sometimes, still, I have no idea what I’m reading.

And the second,
Question: Why does your body make a shadow in the sun? (Please use the word “opaque”)
Answer: The body mas ket the energy and the word opaque.

Ha, he used the word opaque (“Mas ket” means “must get”) but I still didn’t give him credit. I was trying to get him to use one of the properties of light – light beams travels in straight lines. And at the same time, make him remember the vocabulary – opaque and translucent. But, while wrong, I do admire the creativity that went into his answer. And the word opaque.

In some ways I’m going to miss my grade 7 classes a lot. They’re growing up and moving on to secondary school. They were with me through all of my learning experiences (like when I discovered that you can’t lean on a learner’s desk when you come over to help them – you end up falling along with the desk. Or the time I learned that a crazy man lives in the boys bathroom – he’s perfectly friendly but gets a little too curious about new teachers). They’ve been gracious in a lot of ways and, overall, they’ve been good sports about the whole cross-cultural science experiment. But in other ways, I’m excited for a new year and some new experiences.

Well, I’m ending it here. I’ve got less than a month before I get to visit America for Christmas. I’m really excited for friends and family and a hair cut (October 2007 was my last) and fresh fruit and cold cold cold weather (it’s around 130F today, so “cold” isn’t hard to achieve). Never fear, though, I’ll be back to write in January again.

And for those of you who continue to read my ramblings and opinions and random stories, I really appreciate it. You’ve been reading for over a year and you don’t think I’m crazy yet. Or you do and you’re just being polite. But either way, thanks for listening.

There's Dust In My Nose: A Memoir by Jessica Royer. Maybe?

26-09-08
It’s been a long long time since I’ve written. I’d like to take that as a sign that I’ve become more comfortable and busy here. I remember in January and February, I would have to pace my day so that I wouldn’t run out things to do. If I was walking home from school and I got an SMS, I would wait until I got home to read it. If I was cooking something on the stovetop, I would stir it while I waited instead of cleaning the preparations dishes. I couldn’t do two things at one time or I may run out of things to do that day. It’s a burden of being a fast worker, American, and completely without family and friends to distract you.

But, I got over it. And here I am begging for time to sit and stare at the walls or to read a whole book in one day. I still have a lot of free time on the weekends, which I love. But weekdays are filled with school and meetings about school and clubs and grading papers and organizing my file (an absurd collection of papers required by the Ministry of Education. I have yet to meet one single person who sings The File’s praises).

At school, we’re in the third trimester. This trimester started on September 1st with a Khorixas cluster meeting. As always, these meetings are informative and motivational and a completely blatant reminder that I am a terrible terrible mingler – you see, we have to stand outside and wait anywhere from one hour to three hours for these meetings to start. The men and the women usually separate into two groups to talk about the holiday and gossip, etc. This is usually the first thing that confuses the mingler in me. I work with the men because they are all the upper primary teachers, grades 5 -7. They are usually the most welcoming of foreigners, also. They told me it was because the women are threatened by English… But they also told me that women aren’t good at science and math. So, what do they know? And the group of women is all the lower primary teachers. They’re nice enough when I try to talk to them. But when I walk up, the conversation stops so that everyone can look at me while their eyes inquire, “what do you want?” Hanging out with the women at my school requires being in a certain mood because they treat me like a child. They call me “ti oa”, meaning my child. They’ll tell me how I’m getting fat. They’ll tell me that I got a pimple because I ate too much chocolate. Or how my hairs are looking like a horses tail. Or they’ll tell me how to iron my clothes that I can be more presentable next time… I can’t even imagine growing up here. They’re earnestly trying to help. I think. But it does require a certain kind of mood.

The first week of the trimester was a little slow. On the first teaching day of a trimester (usually a Tuesday), I’m lucky to get half of each class back. And I’m even luckier if we actually hold school with the learners who are there. This particular Tuesday we chose to clean the school instead. The learners who don’t show up to school are missing for any number of reasons: They could’ve dropped out of school. They’re still at the farm working and their family does not currently have enough money to pay for a taxi to take their child back to school. Or, my personal favorite, “they are just now remembering to find the donkeys from the field to pull the cart”.

It was ok that the first week was so slow because I used the spare time to get ready for the National Science Fair. The Kunene Region Ministry of Education (Kunene is one of the 13 regions in Namibia and it contains Khorixas) had this brilliant idea to have all the Kunene kids just bring the papers from their board and not the actual board that the papers are displayed on. At first, I thought this was a good idea because the boards I had made were fair quality for the materials I had available - there was a lot of duct tape. But they weren’t exactly my idea of award winning material. When we actually got to the fair and Kunene passed out the new boards for the kids, I wished whole-heartedly that we had my duct-taped boards. I think the “new” boards had been used for three or four science fairs before ours. And maybe a few roller derbies and monster truck rallies too… I distinctly remember footprints… and burn marks…

Anyway, I spent the first week of school with a stick of glue, a paper cutter and 6 young Namibian scientists – Olivia, Wynand, Cynthia, Katrina, Kennedy and Losia. Then, on Monday morning of the second week of school, a minibus owned by the Ministry of Education motored into our Monday morning school assembly held out in front of the school. The little lower primary school kids scattered so they wouldn’t get run over by Torro – our amazing Ministry driver (He actually is amazing but pedestrians, even tiny tot pedestrians at their morning school assembly, NEVER have the right of way in Namibia). And the upper primary kids took the opportunity to have a spontaneous dance party to the music blaring from the minibus speakers. The minibus already had all the Secondary school kids going from Khorixas. They loaded up our 6 kids. The Kunene Ministry had chosen two teachers from our region to accompany the learners to the science fair. Our learners were the youngest of the group – all the others were around grade 10. But the region didn’t choose anyone from our school to watch over the six youngins. So my principal offered to have to school pay for my trip there.

The science fair was held at Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek. It was the 6th Annual fair, I believe. When we arrived that Monday afternoon, it was a flurry of registration and set up. I helped my 6 kids set up their 3 projects. We did the best we could with foot printed, burned boards. Actually, there was a really dark hour in the whole afternoon when Olivia and Wynand did not find their name on any registration sheet. Then, once I cleaned up that error, we returned to find that their boards had been stolen. Luckily, the actual report was still there. So in the end, I would say we all got to prove our resourcefulness by producing a project board out of nothing... And I had even left my duct tape at home. It all turned out OK. But, really thought? Who steals a science poster board with footprints on it from a couple of thirteen-year-old kids?

The kids and I were staying at different youth hostels, so I met them on Tuesday morning back at the fair. Katrina and Cynthia were so excited to tell me about driving to their youth hostel the night before. They said that Windhoek look like “the stars had fallen”. It’s true; the lights in the city are beautiful, especially when you haven’t seen that sort of thing in awhile. Tuesday was actually a really boring day. Three different judges judged each project. The kids had to sit in front of their project from 9am until 4pm waiting to be judged. The day felt stressful though because the two teachers assigned to accompany the kids were scarce to be found. I spent most of the day putting out fires for the Kunene kids. I started the day by telling the learners, “Go find your teacher and tell them”. But that answer eventually turned into, “Alright, I’ll take care of it” when I realized sending them away would only mean I would have to listen to the problem twice.

Wednesday morning we all got a chance to go into to town and explore. The 6 Eddie Bowe kids decided to stick together. And they also decided to let me choose where to go. That was too much pressure for me, so I made them vote at every turn. Torro dropped us at a place called Werne Hill, said “vern hill”. It’s a small mall that is attached to an outdoor mall called Post Street Mall. Post Street Mall is a long, wide sidewalk with stores and restaurants. At the far end of Post Street is the famous Zoo Park. Zoo Park is settled on a hill. It has Palm trees, Ancient elephant remains, an amphitheater and a swing set. But Zoo Park in missing one obvious thing: A zoo! People often realize this after they’ve spent an hour or so searching the park for animals and only coming across a couple of lizards. I have yet to research the actual meaning behind the park’s name. Instead I revel in the absurdity of it all. At the top of the hill that Zoo Park sits on is a historic church. I’ve been told the story behind the church a few times but it went in one ear and out the other. There’s probably a photo of it on 45% of the webpages about Namibia though. So, feel free to research. Then, a little farther beyond that is the Namibian Parliament Building, which, along with housing the Namibian Parliament, also boasts one of my favorite views of Windhoek.

So, We get out of Torro’s Minibus – 6 grade school kids from Khorixas wearing bright yellow shirts and blue Eddie Bowe jackets and me.

Vote 1: Upstairs Werne Hill or Down stairs?
Majority says: Upstairs. So, I steer the crowd towards the escalator and hop on. I glance behind me and realize that my kids have never been on an escalator before. Katrina’s eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them before. Wynand is running up and down and up and down and annoying the man in a business suit riding behind him. Kennedy can’t quite figure out where to put his feet and Olivia has to catch him before he falls and gets escalator burn. Magically, we all make it to the top safely and with most of our pride still intact.

Vote 2: Ice Cream store or Music store?
Majority says: Ice cream! Soft serve is 5 Namibian dollars.

Vote 3: Stay in Werne Hill or go outside to Post Street?
Majority says: Post Street. We wander down Post Street mall. I’m amazed at how few people bug me. When I walk down Post Street by myself, all the street vendors constantly call for me to look at their crafts. When I walk down Post Street with my kids, the vendors barely lift a lazy eye to make sure my kids aren’t trying to abscond with their crafts. I guess we just don’t ring “tourists” as much as I do by myself.

Vote 4: Stay in Post Street or hit Zoo Park? Footnote: No, kids, there is no zoo.
Majority says: let’s go find the animals! I grab Kennedy’s backpack to keep his over enthusiastic little legs from running ahead and we all cross the street into Zoo Park. In Zoo park, we find the swings and see saw. We also find the amphitheater where Gaza performs on NBC (Namibian Broadcasting Company). Gaza is one of the Namibian singers I actually know. I see “GMP 4 life” written on kids’ assignments all the time. It means Gaza Music Production. Gaza is a popular guy and seeing the stage where he performs is a big deal.

Vote 5: Go back to shop at Werne Hill or go to the top of the hill for the view?
Majority says: As high as we can go! The kids and I start up the steep hill towards the old church and Parliament. The hill deters a few so we have to take vote 5 over again to make sure the kids want to keep going. After we pass the church, we have to enter into the gardens surrounding the Parliament building. We all pause for a moment to observe the sign leading into the garden. The kids are busy deciphering the pictures on the sign: no dogs, no sleeping, so bikes, no skates, no soccer, no hunting, no running, no jumping, no skipping, no breathing, no laughing, no fun… ok maybe not, but the sign sure kills the mood. We walk quietly through the large garden like we do not belong and someone will remember that we don’t belong at any moment. We walk until we reach the steps up to the Parliament building. My question to the kids: Who do you think can run to the top first? Everyone is off like a shot. I was surprised that I wasn’t the last one to reach the top. We all turn and face the view. It is beautiful. At least to me. But I don’t think it’s enough for the kids. Wynand turns and looks at Parliament then he looks at me. “Miss, can we go in?” I peak inside the building. It’s marble and official looking. I tell Wynand that he is a citizen of Namibia and as a citizen he had a right to see the building. Wynand takes the next vote.

Vote 6: Go inside or continue to cower outside?
Majority says: We’re young political activist! I’m looking at my watch and realizing that we only have 40 minutes to make it all the way back to Torro before he leaves us on the townside and goes in search of some meat to eat for lunch. But we all file into Parliament anyway. All we see is a tiny room, a tiny woman and a big metal detector and bag scanner. The woman looks at us blankly. It takes a beat before I can try to explain. “Um, we’re at the National Science Fair this week. We’re on a break right now while the judges are working and, well, we came here. And we just wanted to see inside. And, um, this is inside. Um…” The woman looks at me, blinks, silent for a little while longer and finally says she’s just going to call someone. Great, someone could be anyone. Who is someone? After she gets off the phone, Wynand’s curiosity continues and he insists the woman x-ray his backpack, his jacket, Kennedy’s backpack and jersey, Katrina’s bag, Losia’s bag and Cynthia’s jersey. All the things look the same in the X-ray but the awe is equally great for all the objects. I hear him say, “Oh, that could be a gun. It’s the right shape.” He says this about Losia’s bag. I’m rubbing my temples, imagining what’s coming next: newspaper headlines, “6 Future Namibian Scientists Aid Peace Corps Worker in Storming Parliament With Gun-Shaped Pencils and Straws”.

Finally our Someone arrives. He says he is going to take us on a tour of Parliament. I make all my kids file through the medal detector and into the next room. I was last through the medal detector and set it off with my cell phone. This requires me to walk through again without my cell phone and tell my kids numerous times that, no, I can’t walk through just to make the noise again. Olivia says, “What person thinks of such things? You cannot even see the phone on the person but the thing can.” Our tour guide leads us around the building and explains all the rooms. The room where parliament meets is the biggest attraction. The kids have seen the room on TV and they have seen it on a poster that is displayed in almost every school. But they have never imagined that they would be standing in the very center of the room. 6 VIP guests to Parliament. They all sort of wander around the room in a glazed-over awe. Kennedy lightly grabs the gavel on the front desks. Wynand quickly walks over and takes it from his hand makes slight adjustments to it until it looks precisely as it did when we arrived. Our Tour Guide concludes the tour by looking at me and telling me I may take a picture now. I start to explain that I didn’t know I was coming to Parliament that day but instead decided to just say that I don’t have a camera – I mean, who accidentally winds up in the Namibian Parliament building on a random Wednesday?

We all file out into the hallway as we wait for our guide to lock up the meeting room. The kids gather in front of the elevator. They are speaking in Damara but I gather that they’re asking what it is. Our tour guide walked up and presses the up arrow. The elevator opens almost immediately. It’s one of those elevators with a mirrored wall on the back. The 8 of us just stare at ourselves on the back wall. Our tour guide finally tells the kids to go in. The kids all take an internal vote and decide that they are not budging. The door closes. The guide presses the up arrow again and the door opens again. Go in, he says. Wynand says, “I don’t take risks, sir.” (We all know that’s not true). So the guide nudges Kennedy, Olivia, Losia and Katrina in. He reaches around and presses the button that says 1. The door closes. I hear some faint whimpering. We hear the “ding” and move around a corner so we can see the balcony above us. Four kids come spilling out of the elevator. Our tour guide has to walk up the stairs and steer their shaky legs down to the ground floor. Olivia tells me, “Miss, I could not figure out where you were hiding when the door opened again”. Losia tells me, “Katrina was crying for Miss Jessica the whole time: ‘Miss! Miss! Miss!’” Katrina tells me, “No, Miss! It’s not true”. Kennedy tells me, “Miss, I wanted to cry”.

I thanked our guide. We all maneuvered back through the medal detector. I looked at my watch. We had 5 minutes to make it through the fun-sucking Parliament garden, the old church, Zoo Park, Post Street Mall, Werne Hill, The Escalator of Death and back to the Minibus. We book it. I hold Kennedy’s backpack the whole time. I refuse to loose one to traffic – the pedestrian always looses in Namibia. It took us ten minutes to make it through the whole path. The escalator took a long time to get down – Did you know that you have to go up one escalator and down a completely different escalator? Hmm, who knew? Not my kids. We made it all the way out to Torro. And he had not left us. In fact, welcome to Namibia, we had to sit there for another 15 minutes before we actually left.

Wednesday night was the award ceremony. There were a limited number of chairs. So my kids, resourceful as they are, scavenge for a folding table that they place against the back wall for us to sit on. Medals were given to projects that earned a certain percentage. The Kunene region won 6 bronze medals and 2 silver medals. Kennedy and Losia were the only two from our school to earn a medal – Bronze. The ceremony continues for hours and hours and hours. I can see my kids becoming more and more restless.

Thursday morning, Torro comes to pick me up at my youth hostel. All the youth Hostel workers come into the common area asking, “who’s going to Khorixas?” It’s amazing how much more interest workers take in you when they find out you’re staying in the country. The guard takes the opportunity to ask who I know in Khorixas. In the end, he decides it doesn’t matter and I should just tell everyone in Khorixas that Randy says hi. “Oh, it’s your place?” is the correct way to ask if he’s from there. “Yes, It’s my place.” Randy says and finally lets me go to deliver his message to his place.

Back at school, the teachers were excited to have something to show for their kids’ efforts. Kennedy and Losia got to wear their medals around school for the morning. I think it was a good experience for the kids (And I think that we’ll be more prepared for next year. Wynand told me that he’s traveling back from secondary school (grade 8) next year so I can help him with his project on weekends). But overall, the experience was a little hard for me to watch. When all 13 regions come together it is so obvious to which ones are more privileged than others. For example, the two regions that won the most medals were the regions that include Windhoek and Swakop. Their projects were easy to pick out from the group because they boasted laptops, microscopes, elaborate models and wooden backboards. My kids barely noticed the difference between their boards and the fancy ones. And they learned a lot by investigating the microscopes and playing on the laptops. It’s all a learning experience – for everyone.

Since the science fair, I’ve just been biding time at site. We finished the fourth week of school today, and I’m already behind on the syllabus. I’m really enjoying the subject matter, though. We’re working on forces and energy in science. And before that we had a week of insects. I send all of grade seven out to catch an insect to draw into their notebooks. I thought each group might catch one or two – instead they all filled the jars I gave them. My kids have some of the strangest talents. And it’s always a joy to discover them.

Last weekend we hosted a sports tournament for primary schools in the area. Since our school was hosting, each teacher had a job. I was in charge of concessions. I sold NikNaks, small candies, coke, beer, and oranges from 8am until 6:30pm. The concessions worker also gets to be in charge of the stereo system. Anything with a guitar is “white people music”. Gaza and The Dogg are always acceptable. Rhianna (-ella, -ella, -ella), Shakira (I beg to differ – the hips can lie), Justin (two years later, Sexy sure is a slow traveler…), Sean Kingston (my favorite: Me Love), P Diddy, Alicia Keys (I can’t stand her) and R Kelly are all good. I could have played the song “It’s too late to Apologize” the entire day and the kids would have been happy (and I would have been entertained – imagine adolescent boys trying to hit those notes while thinking that the stereo is loud enough to cover their singing… it wasn’t… I could still hear them).

Before I go, I have two more things to tell you: 1) Khorixas got a paved road! Well, we already had one paved road that ran into town from Outjo and out of town towards Twelfontein and the Skeleton Coast. But this new one forms a horseshoe from town into the location, around the Ministry of Education and back to town. When I came back to Khorixas just before school started, they had cleared those stretches of dirt road. I got a little suspicious. Then, that week, they completed most of the road. My supervisor was late to work everyday because they started on both sides of the horseshoe at the same time. People who lived in town had to drive/walk/cart almost out of town before they could find a drivable road into the location. I love this place.

And 2) I went to South Africa in August! It was fun. It was rainy. It was artsy and western. I wore converse. I bought a scarf (Namibian cold isn’t real cold). I saw the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. I visited the penguins. I “climbed” table mountain… Well, I climbed the stairs to the tram that took me to the top. I stayed in a fancy hotel with a fancy bathroom and filter coffee every morning. I watched a movie being made outside my hotel – it was about Christmas. There was a lot of fake snow, props, huge wreaths, food service and a big statue of Santa that people cautiously ventured from our hotel to get their photo with. I tasted wine with a bunch of old tourist and had a blast. The over 60 crowd knows how to party in the wine cellar. I went to 3 movies. Count them, 3. I sat in 60% of the bookstores in Cape Town. “Where’s Fiction?” I ate Subway and McDonalds! Fantastic! I saw GAP jeans for sale. Two words: Haagen Dazs. Three scoops, please. We made a Nelson Mandela history pit stop. Throw two 18-hour bus rides on top, a side of food poisoning (short lived. I survived) and a couple of Mojitos and you’ve got yourself a genuine SA experience.

Yeah, Cape Town was epic.


October 4, 2008
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot. It’s a side effect of all Peace Corps service, I hear. But, I seem to be on memoir streak. First I read about Augusten Borough’s childhood and subsequent struggle with alcoholism in “Running with Scissors” and “Dry”. And, most recently, I started another book about a childhood gone awry called, “The Liar’s Club”. But before that I read a memoir about a PCV in Zaire called, “The Ponds of Kalambayi”.

The Ponds of Kalambayi was written about a Peace Corps service between 1985 and 1987. The Volunteers name was Mike and he was sent to Zaire to teach locals how to raise tilapia in man-made fish ponds (meaning, dug with a shovel by one person). I found myself jealous of Mike as I read. His Peace Corps service included a lot of things I hadn’t even considered for mine. First, he was teaching people how to make and stock fishponds. That job inherently has immediate results. A pond could be made in two weeks with intense manual labor. The fruit of all that work was obvious – a big gleaming water-filled pond. In stark contrast, I look at my job and feel like nothing is happening. I daily fill out endless Lesson Plan forms. I spend break times and afternoons talking and hanging out with 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old Namibians. I spend class times saying, “listen” and forcing 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-old Namibians to write endless notes about natural science and math. This is all work that could be done by anyone. And I am not anymore equipped to deal with the job than any other trained Namibian. In fact, maybe the opposite. The kids frequently teach me something – “no, miss, THIS is the test book. THAT is the exercise book.” or, on a lesson about Energy and Fossil Fuels, “Miss, we DO have a coal mine. In Tsumeb.”

Second, Mike got a ten-week training in the local language (after a ten-week training in Fish farming). And, then, The SHOW-OFF, became fluent in the tribal language and ONLY conversed in it. Ugh. I’m an utter failure.

These are the Damara phrases I know:
Matisa = How are you?
!Gai i ge a = I’m good.
!Gai Tses = Good Afternoon/day
Tita ge Donkey //gani !gaibahe tama = I don’t like donkey meat
Marie aute re = give me money
Marie uha tama ta ha = I don’t have money
/u = white person
/usa = you are white (thanks for the reminder)
Toilet sa mapa ha? = …

And, most important for encountering drunk men in the street:

/Nam sida ge a = I love you
Tita ge Khoeba uha = I already have a boyfriend (lies!)

I like to fool myself into thinking that I can follow the drift of a conversation in Damara. But to be honest I only follow conversations where people are discussing where they left there keys, whether the white person is getting fatter or where they are recounting ages, phone numbers, house numbers, amounts of money or how many fingers they have on their left hand (Goro. Usually).

Third, he was a volunteer in the 80’s in the inner part of the continent. In the 80’s, Peace Corps volunteers were allowed to drive! Unthinkable these days. And Zaire, I feel is probably worse off than Namibia. Namibia borders South Africa. They have a university in Windhoek. They have a steady government and economy. And, chances are, if Peace Corps withdrew entirely from the country, they would be all right – just in my personal opinion.

All this is to say that the book really got me thinking about my current situation. Far too often, I let my mind wander to the ever-present thought, “What am I doing here?” And far too often, I can’t think of an answer. Lately, my inability to conjure an acceptable answer has been compounded by the fear that I am actually becoming a worse person in my time here – I have never said “no” so many times in my life: No, I will not buy you bread. No, I will not let you come in and eat from my cupboard. No, I will not do your work/lesson plans/laundry for you. No, I will not leave you my cell phone when I go back. No, I do not want to “know” you. No, I will not push your broken car to town. And, no, you cannot have a dollar. Why? Because if I gave you a dollar I would have to give one to the 82 children standing behind you with their palms outstretched and, worse, would only enforce the “fact” that white people will give you money so you should ask EVERY opportunity you get.

See, complicated, right? All this has led me to believe two things. 1) That Jill’s friend back home was completely right when he said, you have to think of Peace Corps as a nice cultural exchange and that it. Thanks for sharing. And 2) I need to stop reading memoirs. Especially by RPCVs.

But, as I was reading the Ponds of Kalambayi, I came across some sections that I could totally relate to. And, even though Mike was serving 20 years before me and in a poorer region of the continent, maybe African culture has a lot of things in common all over this huge expanse of land. So, here I leave you, post-rant, with some quotes from my latest memoir:

“Like most people who go overseas to do development work, I did so expecting to find out what it’s like to be poor. But awakening to my surroundings after a few months, I discovered that’s not what happened. Instead you learn what it’s like to be rich, to be fabulously, incomprehensibly, bloated with wealth.”

“That I could go an entire week and not wear the same shirt twice was, in this African setting, the gleaming pinnacle of affluence… In a strange way, this consequence of poverty proved useful to me when I arrived in Kalambayi. It helped me remember people. If I forgot faces, I could often place names simply by using clothes as memory cues.”

“Eager to get to work and confident (naively) of Peace Corps’ judgment, I decided not to worry”

“Many times while I was in Africa the hardships I saw forced me to rework my understanding of what hell must be like”

“In Africa, children are the central, insuperable, all-important fact. They roam everywhere, five to every parent… so many children were there in every village that at the slightest spectacle – a soccer game, a heated argument, a fallen tree blocking the road – they appeared in droves this way, attaching themselves like barnacles to whatever was happening.”

“Play sessions never lasted more than thirty minutes, however, because an enormous wave of other children would quickly arrive… the children seemed to emanate from nowhere, popping out from behind cornstalks, dropping from trees, emerging from thin air. They came and came, dozens of them, until there were more than I could count. ‘Swing me! Swing me!’ they would roar simultaneously, standing together in my yard as if part of a clamorous crowd scene in some epic meeting. With tiny hands pulling me in every direction, I would start backing up towards my door”

“The local system worked. Everyone was taken care of. Everyone did stay afloat.”

“Above the horizon, the sun hung orange-pink, soft and perfect, coloring the valley with that lustrous final light that made ‘even ugly people look beautiful.’ Soon the orb sank behind a low ridge, passing with such a speed that, watching, you could almost feel the earth turning and hear the creak of it unfathomable weight. Africa was sliding beyond the gaze of the sun."