Thanksgiving in Namibia

Well, I had a whole post typed up on my flashdrive which currently isn't working at all, probably because it now has a million viruses after being plugged into a Namibia's laptop, so this will just be a short one. I had my first Namibian Thanksgiving yesterday. It was a little sad to be away from family on the holiday, and I definitely missed eating Thanksgiving comfort food, but the Caprivi kids had a celebration of our own with black bean burgers and sweet potato fries which were pretty delicious. Kaitlin even made an apple pie!

The village has been growing on me. I spent last weekend there so I got to spend time with my host family and neighbors and the kids. I love playing games with the kids in my village becasue they're so creative about how to entertain themselves. They don't have toys so they'll use long reeds of grass to make a jumprope, metal and soda cans to make metal cars that they push around, stones and the nuts from some sort of tree to make a game kind of like jax, where you have to throw the nut into the air and scoop the stones either into our out of a hole in the ground before you catch it. And of course they love to play cards, so I constantly have kids coming over to get me to teach them new card games, or to teach me some of their cards games.

I also learned how to do things that all women in the village have to do on a daily basis. On Saturday morning I went into the bush with my host mom and sister and our old lady neighbor who always calls me mulikani, which means friend in Silozi, to collect firewood. My stack was definitely a lot smaller than anyone else's but I did carry it on my head all the way back to the village. Which was probably only about a kilometer, but it feels far when you're carrying a heavy stack of firewood on your head!

On Sunday night I learned how to make nkoko, or buhobe, also known as pap or porridge: basically most Southern African cultures' staple food. Like most villagers my host family doesn't have a stove (well actually now they have my gas stove in their hut, but in typical fashion the ministry has yet to bring gas for it), so they do all their cooking over a fire. Let me tell you, cooking over a fire is hot and it's pretty easy to burn yourself -- most village women have burn scars on their hands and arms, from cooking I'm pretty sure -- and stirring nkoko is harder than it looks. And my old lady neighbor came over while I was making it and kept yelling at me in Silozi and grabbing my arm while I was stirring to say "Ona cwalo! Ona cwalo!" wich means, "like this! like this!" But I thought I was stirring it the way she tol me to...ehh I guess it's a learned art form. My host family said it tasted good though. It tasted the same as all nkoko to me: bland and kind of sandy.

Anyway, I'm actually kind of looking forward to being in the village after school ends. I was worried about filling up my days, but I think it will be nice to have a lot of time to wander around the village getting to know people and learning how to do things the village way. I'll also be in Kabbe for Christmas so I'll get to see what a traditional village Christmas is like. I hope there are fat cakes and not too many drunk people (Christmas is apparently a big drinking holiday here, just like most days of the year). I think I might try to bring a little Americanness to Christmas too by baking Christmas cookies. A week before Christmas is my 2 year old host niece, Monde's, birthday and since she might be my favorite person in Namibia since she's the most adorable baby I've ever seen I'm baking her a birthday cake.

So this is holiday time in Namibia. No Christmas trees, no holiday consumerisn, no winter snow, no turkey or stuffing or candy canes. It's just hot and sandy, and sometimes rainy now that rainy season is fast approaching. It's not bad though, just different, like most of the Peace Corps experience.