Friday, October 30, 2009

Okahandja to Kabbe to Windhoek...


Pictures! My host sister and baby in our lapa (courtyard)





Ok so I had a post typed up about my first week and a half at site but here in the volunteer lounge in Windhoek I can't get it to open with this version of word. So I'll try to come back and download it. But for now I'll just say this: Week 1 at site was hard. My site is definitely difficult. I don't have a pit latrine, my permanent house isn't ready, for now I live in a tiny hut with no windows and lots of spiders on the walls, and when its windy thatch blows down through my mosquito net and my bed gets covered in dirt. So I've had to get used to carrying water, having chickens break into my hut, bucket bathing and doing laundry by hand. Village life isn't easy, but then again, no one goes into Peace Corps thinking it's going to be easy! Although in some ways it's been more difficult than I thought. I think I'm really going to like Kabbe, once I get adjusted and have a place in the village.

And at home I rarely if every get sick, but my first wednesday at site I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't breathe, and since then I've had chest pains every day, and experienced really bad pains in my chest every time I try to swallow food or water. Which brings me to where I am now: sittin in the PC lounge in Windhoek. Clara, the Peace Corps Medical Officer wanted me to come down to check everything out and make sure it's nothing serious. It turns out to most likely be an adverse reaction to my malaria pills. Which is a relief, and soon I'll be back in Kabbe. For now I don't mind having a toilet and shower though!

So I'll write a more detailed post next time, with more pictures of my village!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Hold the mayo

Only one day of training left! On Friday we swear in as volunteers and then off we go to our permanent sites in all corners of Namibia. The Caprivi kids are leaving on Saturday, overnighting in Rundu and then heading to our villages on Sunday. Phewww.
Reflecting back on training, I wanted to write a post about something very important to me and I believe most other members of my training group. This is an issue very near and dear to my heart. Probably a main passion my in life, a source of joy and sorrow, and one of exceeding importance in navigating the delicate contours of adapting to a foreign culture: food.
Yes, food is a cultural touchstone that can make or break your experience in a foreign country. In many cases it defines the culture: tacos, lo mein, tiramisu, all conjure different images of certain locales. I know that many of you have probably already wondered, and I’m sure I’ll be asked eventually, so what is the food in Namibia like?
So for your benefit I’ve prepared a little description of Nam cuisine, although defining the food in Namibia in a holistic sense is a little tough, since Namibia as a whole is made up of several different ethnic groups, each with its own idea of what constitutes a good meal. Hereros, for example, love meat. A traditional Herero meal could be goat with porridge with sour milk. Yum. Oshiwambos eat Mopani worms, which are apparently big worms that they fry in oil to make crispy. When undercooked they have a bitter, squishy taste. I have yet to try. Every ethnic group eats porridge, which is boiled maize meal: kind of like very bland grits or polenta. The traditional way to eat porridge is to ball it up in your right hand and dip it into whatever meat, vegetable and sauce you happen to be eating it with. Every cultural group’s porridge is a little different. Oshiwambo and Kavango porridge is sandier, and has a softer consistency, so they don’t chew it, just swallow it whole.
Caprivians are fortunate enough to live next to the Zambezi river so they eat lots of fish, and it’s a fertile enough region to grow vegetables, particularly one called the 5 year vegetable, which is a type of bitter green, like spinach. In the village, for lunch and dinner, we usually eat porridge with fresh river fish, and either a sauce of onions and tomatoes or 5 year vegetable.
What I’ve given you so far is solely a description of traditional food. In my village people mostly stick to the traditional because they still cook in pots over the fire, and supplies are much less available than in towns where there are always at least one or two supermarkets (Spar in Okahandja has turned into my favorite place in the world). But the thing about Namibia is that as a result of colonization and “development” the food culture has changed over the years. And while families in towns will still prepare a traditional meal one or two days a week, the food as a whole has evolved to a strange mix of African, German and mayonnaise.
Let me explain. Somewhere along the line, something very strange happened to food in Namibia. And what we’ve ended up with is a love for “tomato sauce” (Nam ketchup), mayonnaise, and processed powdered soup packets that knows no bounds. This is a typical dinner at my house: Rice, pasta or porridge, chicken or another type of meat (lately oryx since I walked into my kitchen one day 2 weeks ago only to find my host mother hacking away at a giant oryx leg), soup packet, on top of which they will dump mayonnaise and tomato sauce. Sometimes we have pasta with mayonnaise, like pasta salad but warm, with soup packet. And tomato sauce. Sometimes we have pasta with mayonnaise and rice (why?). And sometimes to spice it up we’ll have salad: lettuce, drenched in a dressing of mayonnaise, sugar and milk. Which is also the same dressing recipe used for spaghetti with mayonnaise, carrot salad and potato salad. I’m not sure exactly why it makes sense to make spaghetti with mayonnaise (+sugar and milk, just in case you were worried about being able to button your pants at some point after training), cut up a hard boiled egg and put some peas and carrots in it, serve it warm, and then to top it off pour soup over it, but that’s how we do in Namibia. Oh, and the other amazing thing about mayonnaise in Namibia: it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. We’re not sure how this works, since it still says clearly on the label to refrigerate after opening, but in every household the mayo is kept in the cupboard. Oh, and for some reason, the only food on which mayonnaise isn’t appropriate is sandwiches: butter goes on every type of sandwich. (side note: they also put butter on peanut butter sandwiches, due to some kind of miscommunication somewhere where peanut butter is the peanut part, and then…well, I think you get it).
So, to finish it off, here’s a random sample of food we volunteers have been given by our families:
Macaroni salad with fruit cocktail
Biltong (Nam beef jerkey) with gravy and potatoes
Cold baked beans with sliced banana (that was my mom – the next day we had it again with cooked carrots, and she informed me that she just loves this kind of “salad”)
Wart hog
Oryx
Goat brain
So there it is. I could go on and on about food but this is just a taste of local cuisine. Oh Namibia, how I love thee. But after my two years here I hope to never see a jar of mayonnaise again.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Peace Corps is Namgood

I wrote this post a few days ago but haven’t been able to wake up at 1 for internet before now. So it’s a little outdated but still good, don’t worry.
Hello again! Now that I have internet I can post blogs all the time…so exciting! Don’t get too used to it though because I’m not sure what my internet will be like at site since Kabbe doesn’t get the best cell reception. I kind of have to stand in one corner of my hut to hear anything, which is kind of creepy because I don’t like to stand in my hut in the dark just in case there might be lizards and snakes and things running around my feet. Eek.
Well I’ve been back from site visit for 2 weeks and now I have less than 2 weeks until I leave for my permanent site, which is insanity. On the one hand I’m ready for training to be over because I am starting to get really tired of the sessions. Every morning we have 4 hours of language training which is extremely draining. Then after lunch we usually have some kind of cross cultural or technical session, which are usually terrible because it’s 90 degrees, the presentations are given by Namibians who usually speak quickly and mumble, and they’re on subjects like the history of education in Namibia. It’s a struggle to stay awake. I think I’m going to be really sad when training is over though because I’m really going to miss the other PCVs in my group. I love the volunteers in Caprivi, so I’ll have awesome people to hang out with on weekends, but I’m really going to miss the folks from group 30 who are going to be all over the country and nowhere close to me. Time is really going by fast though! I’ve been in Namibia for 6 weeks already. Only 2 years to go…
For the past 2 Saturdays we haven’t had any training sessions so we decided to free hike down to Windhoek to do a little shopping and eat some great food. We found the best Indian restaurant in Windhoek last week which I am definitely hitting up every time I’m in town, and then we went to the movies and saw Up. I’m going to miss going to the movies once I get to site…it’s one of my absolute favorite things to do. Getting back to Okahandja last week was quite an adventure. We didn’t want to spend money on a taxi, being poor volunteers who just spent about 10 days worth of PC allowance on Indian food and a movie, so we decided to free hike back to Okahandja. We left the mall at around 5 and started to walk to the hike point. We weren’t really sure where we were going so we followed signs to the B1 in Okahandja. We walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and then realized that we were going the wrong way. Whoops. So we doubled back and walked and walked and walked some more, and realized we were cutting it pretty close by getting to the hike point so late. So we flagged down a car that dropped us off at the hike point and started attempting to wave cars down. The only ones that stopped weren’t going to Okahandja or were taxis that wouldn’t leave when we told them we didn’t want to pay for a ride (In weird PCV Nam talk: “But we are only volunteers, and we are not having money.”) Finally we started to get a little worried so we texted Raymond, our super dreamy safety and security officer and secret boyfriend of every female PCV in Namibia, for the number for a cab. I guess he got kind of worried that we were in Windhoek so close to nightfall because he asked where we were and said he was coming to find us. Well, the PC policy on free-hiking is “don’t do it” so we definitely didn’t want Raymond to know we were at the free hike spot so we started frantically walking to a spot that wasn’t the hike point, even though we were basically busted because there’s nothing in that part of Windhoek except the highway. As we started walking an open back bakkie (pick up truck) pulled over with 2 very nice drivers who let all 7 of us pile into the back. Well, if free hiking doesn’t exactly jibe with PC policy, riding in an open bakkie is also one of those “don’t do it” rules. We texted Raymond to tell him we “found a taxi” and just imagined what he would do if he rolled up and saw us pulling away in this open bakkie. He would break up with us for sure. PC policy or not it was a great ride and completed an awesome day.
Today the Peace Corps combi was driving down to Windhoek to drop off 2 current volunteers who are leaving in December for their COS (close of service) medical interviews, so we decided to take a ride with them and then free hike back, for no other reason than that we were bored in Okahandja and wanted some more food that’s good good and not just “Namgood.” Namgood is phrase used to describe food that would be mediocre at best in our normal lives in America, but here in Namibia we chow down with gusto. For example, today I stopped at Hungry Lion, a fast food restaurant, to get some soft serve ice cream. A small ice cream cone was N$2.40, so about 30 US cents. And even though it was supposed to be vanilla but it tasted like banana, and it had a texture that was not really akin to ice cream, it was one awesome ice cream cone: Namgood. We have all found that our standards have definitely been lowered. Food like processed cheese slices that we would never eat in the states are now beloved PCV staples, and volunteers even admit to breaking apart chicken bones to suck out the marrow like our Namibian host families. To be honest I think we would eat anything that was put in front of us. And Namgood doesn’t only apply to food. Namibian TV also falls into the Namgood category. Most volunteers have become obsessed Namibian soapies. I don’t even notice the weird dubbing of “Lorenzo’s wife,” and the acting seems really good now. Namgood.
So today we got some Italian food that was even American good. Like I said before as PCVs we eat anything that isn’t nailed down. I eat so much more here than I do in the states, which is ironic because most people feel sorry for you when you go into the Peace Corps and assume you’re going to come back to America emaciated. Not so. But, once I get to my village I’ll be eating nothing but buhobe and fish, which I’m sure I’ll grow to love in a Namgood way, but I won’t have junk food readily available. So I figure I might as well enjoy the ice cream and candy bars now… Oh and speaking of food I made chocolate chip cookies for my host family and they loved loved loved them. So if you ever find yourself baking for a Namibian definitely go for the chocolate chip cookies.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Permanent Site Visit!

Ok so It’s taken me forever to post this blog so it’s a little outdated since site visit happened 2 weeks ago, but you’ll probably still find it interesting if you think my life in Namibia is interesting…but now I’ll hopefully be much better about posting blogs because I have INTERNET on my COMPUTER!!! The way this works is that I bought a phone with internet which is how I’ve been checking my email (so write me some emails please!) and then I bought a Bluetooth USB port to connect Bluetooth on my phone to my laptop so I can use internet as much as I want! The only thing is that internet eats up my phone minutes. All of the cellphones here are pay as you go, so you buy a phone and a sim card, and then you buy minutes as you need them. SMSing (texting) is basically free, especially if you have the special MTC plan where if you send one sms a day the next 100 are free. So most PCVs just sms each other rather than calling, which is 2 dollars a minute. BUT internet is free from 1-5 am, so my strategy is to go to sleep at 10 or whatever (PC has made me lame) and wake up at 1 to upload blogs and send emails and try to download pictures. So I’ll be more sleep-deprived but better connected. I hope you appreciate and return the favor! Emails are always fun and brighten my day!
Last Saturday all of group 30 dispersed throughout the country to go for our permanent site visits. Before we left we were warned by more than one current volunteer that this week is the most challenging of our entire service. I can’t be sure that times won’t get more difficult in the coming 2 years (actually I’m positive that they will), but this week was definitely rough at times. We left Saturday morning, and Eastern Caprivi (where all of the Caprivi kids’ villages are) being as far away from Okahandja as you can get in Namibia, we left at 6 am to meet our supervisors in Rundu, who drove us the rest of the way. On the way from Rundu to Katima we had car trouble, which seems to be a running theme in all of my travels in Africa. So we had to stop at a filling station in Divundu for almost 2 hours, and then drive 60 k/hour with frequent stops to restart the car. The trip from Rundu to Katima took a good 8 or 9 hours, and the whole trip took almost 16. Eesh. Getting to Windhoek from site is not going to be easy. All of the Caprivi strip out to Kongola is national park though, so we saw plenty of animals on the side of the road, including an elephant which ran in front of our car, a herd of African buffalo and a hyena.
Since we got to Katima so late we ended up staying the night at Kaitlin, a current volunteer’s, house, and we went out for a very strange and awkward dinner at a lodge in Katima. The owner of the lodge, a very drunk, old Afrikaans man, who has what one might say a soft spot for female pcvs put aside food for us, which was nice of him, but then proceeded to sit down with us while we ate making offensive comments, and demanding that we go behind the bar to serve ourselves drinks. It was rather strange, but oh well.
On Sunday we hung out with Kaitlin and Ashley, another pcv who lives in Andrew’s village, Lusese, and waited for Andrew’s principal to drive us to our villages. I ended up getting to Kabbe at around 4 in the afternoon. Kabbe is about 50 kilometers from Katima, and it is definitely a very rural, traditional African village. There’s one brick house next to the school, where the principal lives, but everyone else lives in mud huts with thatch or corrugated iron roofs. My permanent house, or hut, I should say, which is still being constructed, will be right on school property, which is where most of the teachers stay. My homestay is a little further from the school, in another section of the village.
The first night was definitely awkward. I was exhausted, and a little shell-shocked at being dropped off in this village by myself and my host family was also a little confused as to what to do with this American. I’m the first volunteer at my site, so my community is not used to having a foreigner or a white person around. So I ate dinner with my family: buhobe (porridge) and fish, with miloho (green vegetables), which we ate sitting in our courtyard outside the house, on a mat, with our hands. Women have to eat while sitting on mats, and they also must wear shitenges while eating. Men are allowed to sit in chairs, and also must eat before the women, but there are no men in my family. After eating I took a bucket bath (the only means of showering in the village) and my host mom showed me where I was sleeping – which was in the main hut, in her room, in her bed even. Ummm, definitely not peace corps regulations. According to PC all volunteers have to have their own rooms. I didn’t really know how to handle the situation, and I was afraid of offending my host mom, who I was having some trouble communicating with, so I called my APCD and asked him if this was really what the program is. He said no, and asked to speak to my host mother, and managed to convey to her that I need to have my own room on the homestead. There’s another smaller hut in the courtyard, which was supposed to be my room, but I think the problem is that there was no bed to put in there, and no electricity, which there was in the main hut. I ended up staying the night in her room, and moving into my own hut the next morning. She even moved her bed into my hut, which made me feel pretty uncomfortable.
All right, so once that awkwardness was resolved, I started getting ready for bed, and realized I hadn’t seen a bathroom, and by bathroom I mean pit latrine, anywhere in the village. Uhh what? I smsed Kaitlin and said I had no pit latrine, and where do people go to the bathroom? She basically replied that people go, um, anywhere they feel like it, and my host mom confirmed this by telling me to just “pass water” in the bathing area. Uhh no thanks. I’ll wait for my pit latrine to be constructed…So basically I didn’t have an accessible bathroom all week (there is one at the school, which was a bit of a ways from my homestay and not convenient enough for me to use whenever I wanted. Not to mention my host mom was so worried about doing something wrong or me getting lost in my village, even though my village is super tiny and I can see the school from my courtyard, that she wouldn’t let me walk anywhere by myself). Also, to make matters worse I realized I left the water filter Kamwanga snagged from the Peace Corps office in Rundu in Steven’s car, so I had no way to filter water and I was pretty sure the water in Caprivi isn’t safe to drink. In any case I didn’t want to risk it not having a pit latrine and all. Not surprisingly not having water or a bathroom added some stress to my already stressful week. I have been assured by my APCD, the acting principal at the school and my counterparts that my pit latrine is under construction and will DEFINITELY be finished by October when I get to site permanently. Peace Corps also promised to give me a clean water filter, since the one I finally got from the back of Steven’s car was filthy and leaks. So I have high hopes for my site if they can manage to pull everything together. Apparently Caprivians are hard to motivate though, and they need lots of nagging to get stuff done.
So aside from not having a pit latrine or water, and thus teetering between peeing my pants all the time and passing out from dehydration, my site visit went smoothly enough. I managed to observe some classes, and my school is really the highlight of my site. It’s very new, with a Teacher Resource Center, brand new computer lab and some of the best teachers in the region. There is definitely room for improvement, which is where I come in, but I’m excited to start teaching and I’ve already thought of a few secondary projects to get started on (like a school library for one). And I think I’m really fortunate that the teachers and particularly women at the school have already made an effort to get to know me. Two of the young women teachers at my school even took me for a walk, and I absolutely love the school secretary. I’m glad I’ve started to bond with women, because the other female pcvs in my region said that was the most important but most difficult thing to do. Living with a host family also helps with that I think.
On Wednesday, my last full day at the village, my counterparts took me for a walk to introduce me to the community so they could see who I was and get used to a white person living in the village for 2 years, and also hopefully to prove that I exist so they finish building my permanent house and pit latrine. It was good to practice my Silozi, and most villagers were happy that I was trying, even though I definitely couldn’t understand anything beyond greetings. Also Subea is the native tongue in my village, and Silozi is taught in schools as a second language, so I’m going to have to learn some Subea. The Caprivi is still very traditional. When you greet someone who clap your hands twice, bend down to show respect, especially to older people, say the appropriate greeting for the time of day, shake hands Namibian style, then clap twice more. I also should have been wearing my traditional shitenge, which I’m going to have to wear whenever I’m in the village when I’m not at school. I’m going to get a very traditional African experience in Kabbe, which I’m really happy about. My site definitely has its challenges, hopefully some of which alleviated when my village is actually ready for me, but I know there will be many more. Even so, I think it’s going to be really great once I feel like I’m part of the community and I know a little more of the language. And I’m super excited for my permanent hut. I just hope they finish it in time…
On Thursday after school I went back to Katima to meet up with Andrew and Sarah and the other volunteers in Caprivi. As much as I think I’ll be really happy at my site it was still a relief to be away from it after this week, and to be back to accessible toilets and clean, drinkable water. A few of the volunteers took us out for amazing milkshakes in Katima, and then afterwards we went to our consolidation point, which is our meeting place in case something like political unrest or flooding happens and they have to consolidate all the Caprivi volunteers into one place. Our consolidation point happens to be a super beautiful lodge right on the Zambezi river, right across from Zambia, that has a pool! We bought beers and swam in the pool, which was amazing . Then we went back to Kaitlin’s house and made dinner that wasn’t buhobe and fish, and was super tasty.
On Friday we got a ride to Rundu, where we met up with Stewart and Alex, 2 pcvs from our group, and we also got to meet a bunch of current of volunteers staying in and near Rundu. We had a group dinner which was great. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time in Rundu: Caprivi kids go to Rundu a lot for holidays and just to get out of Caprivi once in a while, since it’s our closest Namibian neighbor.
On Saturday we had to get back to Okahandja. Okay, so a word on transport in Namibia. Basically there are two ways to get around. One is to take combis, which are basically minibuses that go from one point to another, so they’re kind of like taxis or buses except that they won’t leave unless they’re full. So if you’re the first one into one you’re likely to wait for hours waiting for it to fill up with passengers before it will leave. And by full I don’t mean every seat is filled. Oh no, full means African full, like packed in so tightly that people are hanging out the windows. Combis will get you where you need to go, but they’re often dangerous because the driver is usually tired and maybe even drinking, and you’ll wait forever for it to leave and get you where you need to be.
The second way to get from point A to point B is to free hike. Free hiking is hitch-hiking, but it’s somewhat more reliable and organized in Namibia than in America. There are designated hike points to go to if you want a ride, and the way you signal for a ride is to raise your hand in the air and kind of wave it around. The higher your hand is the farther you’re going, and there are even hand signals cars will do back if they don’t feel like stopping, to signal that they’re only driving around town etc. Since there were 5 of us we decided to try our hands at free hiking. We got to the hike point in Rundu at around 7:30, but learned that this was kind of a lull time and we should have gotten out by 6 to get a ride straight to Okahandja. Since I’m a girl and cars are more likely to stop for me (sorry Beth McCoy and Alice Rutkowski, and any other women studies professors who might be reading this) I took full advantage of my little girl in need appeal to stand out front while the guys hid on the side of the road, and managed to get quite a few to pull over. Unfortunately car after car wasn’t going where we needed to go. Finally we got a guy going to Grootfontein to stop, so we got a ride to there, about 270 ks south of Rundu. From Groot we met up with another PCV who helped us flag down a car going to Otjiwarango, and from Otjiwarango we got a ride to Okahandja. So all together it took about 11 hours to get from Rundu to Okahandja, including our time waiting at hike points for rides. But it was definitely more fun than being crammed into a smelly combi!
So that’s my awesome site visit adventure! I think I’m going to like Peace Corps 
ps. I tried posting pictures again but the connection is so slow and I'm almost out of free internet time. So I'll try again soon, I promise.