Friday, November 27, 2009

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.

Friday, November 13, 2009

snakes, spiders and kittens

Hey all. So it's been exactly 4 weeks since swearing in, and roughly 4 weeks at site except for my little trip to Windhoek and for some reason this week I just hit a wall. I didn't come to town last weekend. I ended up going to Mubiza on friday night to stay with Sarah. We made some yummy pasta on Griffin's stove and watched the Office, and it would have been an awesome night except that Griffin's hut is some sort of sack spider den. Sack spiders are huge, gross, super fast, poisonous spiders and according to Sarah's host dad if you get bit by one your arm will turn back and you'll eventually die. Great. Another creature in the bush that wants to kill us. Luckily Griffin's cat, Romanus, was pretty good at killing and eating the spiders but there were a few that managed to escape Romanus which resulted in Sarah and me jumping from Griffin's bed to the cot in his sitting room shrieking. And I'm not afraid of spiders. I have about 30 wall spiders chilling in my hut right now. But man, I'm telling you, those things are scary.

Oh, and to back it up a bit, last week I came home from school for tea break,which is when I eat breakfast with my family. I was sitting in my host mom's hut, finishing my bread and peanut butter (my favorite meal of the day, because it does not involve any variation of porridge), when my host mom called me outside. She put her arm around me and pointed to the thatch in my hut and said in the kind of voice you use when you have to tell someone something and you don't want them to freak out and vomit on you because what you have to say is terrifying, "Look over there." I looked up and sure enough sticking its head out of the thatch was a snake. Now, in America, I'm not afraid of snakes. They really don't bother me. I used to enjoy catching garter snakes and keeping them as pets when I was little. But in Caprivi snakes are a whole different story. Essentially villagers will tell you that every kind of snake is poisonous and going to kill you in 3 seconds flat. And that's what I've been hearing since I got to Namibia. So this has instilled a pretty intense fear of snakes, and particularly of snakes getting into my hut. Which the other volunteers told me is very rare and probably not going to happen. But there was a snake, just hanging out in the roof of my hut. My host mom ran and got two women who live in the huts next to mine and they came with long sticks and knocked it out of the roof, then one of the women beat it with the stick until it was dead. I have no idea what kind of snake it was. it was thin and green, and possibly a green mamba although those are actually pretty rare (black mambas, the way more dangerous kind, are more common). The day before a cobra tried to get into the grade 3 classroom and they killed it. So there we have it. Two snake sitings and a bombardment of sack spiders, all in the same week.

But fortunately the reason I was going to Mubiza in the first place, in addition to see Sarah, was to get my kitten! Griffin's spider killing cat had kittens a few weeks ago, so Griffin gave me one to keep snakes and spiders out of my house. And also just because kittens are darn cute. So now I have a little kitty to guard my house. She's black and white and her name is Yebo.

So aside from poisonous animals trying to kill me and cute little kittens I've just been going to school every day and trying to get to know the teachers and learners. I don't know, I think this week I just a hit a slump. It's been 3 months of living with host families and I'm definitely ready for some independence. I'm also way tired of the food and so ready to be able to cook for myself. But only 6 weeks until reconnect and then I get to move into my own hut! My mansion as my counterpart jokingly refers to it. But after living in a windowless 8 by 8 foot cave it will definitely feel like a mansion.

Anyway, I'll continue to keep you updated on snakes and spiders and what not!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Kabbe Shmabbe

More pictures! Enjoy!

On the way to site we made a detour to Botswana. Huh?



My host family in Kabbe



This is what Kabbe looks like pretty much. Just imagine more huts and lots of sand.



Group 30 Silozi group plus Kaitlin




Group 30 at swearing in!



Well, it’s been 2 weeks since swearing in and this should be my second week at site, but I had to come down to Windhoek this week to get a medical issue looked at. It turns out to most likely be nothing more serious than a strange reaction to my malaria pills, so I should be good to go in no time! In the mean time I’m hanging out in Windhoek, enjoying some yummy food, going to Super Spar (aka mecca) daily, and just wandering around the city. Hopefully I’ll be back at site soon, but Clara, the Peace Corps Medical Officer, likes to keep volunteers who come down here for medical stuff for a while, just to make sure there won’t be any problems when we get to site. I really didn’t want to have to come down here in the first place, because I’m still getting used to my site and I’m missing seeing all the Caprivi volunteers in Katima this weekend for Halloween, but I do have to admit that it’s nice having a toilet and shower.
Which brings me to my first week and a half at site. It’s been interesting. Let’s start with swearing in. It was happy and sad to become an official PCV. It was great to finally be done with training and be able to get to our sites to start doing what we came here to do, but it was so hard to say goodbye to everyone! I made some really great friends during training and now I won’t see them until January, when we all get together for reconnect. At least we still have smsing and the random phone call to get us through the months. Other than that swearing in went well. Sarah and I read the farewell speech for Silozi, and we were both really nervous but I think we did well! After the ceremony people started leaving with their supervisors for their sites immediately. Those of us whose sites are too far to get to in an afternoon hung around the center, saying goodbye to everyone, then went out for one last ice cream at spar.
The next morning I had all my stuff packed up and ready to go at 5:30 in the morning when the Peace Corps combi came to pick us up to drop us off at the center, where we would load our stuff into a ministry bakkie (pickup truck), then we would get into a sedan and Steven, Andrew’s principal, would drive us and a teacher from my school who came down to get us, up to Katima. So that morning I said goodbye to my host family in Okahandja with the promise that we would meet up in Katima in December when they come for holiday, and set off. However, when we got to the center Steven announced that the ministry bakkie wasn’t coming that day, and could only get our stuff the next day, so we had to leave almost everything except for a few essential items and valuables in OKahandja. Ugh, that was not okay. I was super nervous about leaving my stuff, figuring I would never see it again, but luckily it arrived the next Monday. So all worked out in the end.
We spent the night in Katima and the next day Steven drove us to our sites, with a detour to Ngoma, the border town to Botswana, about 15 K from Kabbe (yup! I’m that close to Botswana). Actually, we even made a little jaunt into Botswana, just by crossing the bridge separating Botswana and Namibia! So I have now officially been to 4 Southern African countries. Hopefully next time I’ll get a little farther in though…
Then Steven dropped Andrew in Lusese and me in Kabbe. The first thing I noticed as we pulled up in front of my host families hut was the remarkably absence of a pit latrine. I was promised multiple times during site visit and the last 4 weeks of training by my principal and the Peace Corps that my pit latrine would definitely definitely definitely be done by the time I got there for site. But, this is Caprivi. As of yet it still isn’t done, which has made life rather awkward and uncomfortable for the last 2 weeks, as you can probably imagine.
So I spent the first day catching up with my host family, walking around the outer edges of Kabbe in my shitenge greeting people with my host mom. The next day, Monday, I went to school expecting to observe classes and just become reacquainted with my surroundings. However, when I showed up I was informed that the 8th and 9th grade math teacher was in Windhoek grading exams, and that I should take over his classes for the week. Ummm, last I checked I’m an English teacher, and I barely remember how to do 8th grade math. And his class happened to be 1st period. So it was pretty awkward since I clearly was flustered and had no idea what I was doing, but afterwards I spoke to my principal about how I’m not a math teacher and I don’t appreciate being thrust into classes without warning. So after that I spent the week working with the English teacher for grades 5 to 7, which suited my abilities much better. By the end of the week I felt comfortable teaching a few classes, and I’m starting to really love my learners. They are absolutely adorable. I’ll be sure to post pictures of my school when I get back to site.
My only big surprise that week came the first day of school when I got back to my room and opened my door only to find that someone’s rooster had gotten inside my hut. My door, which was also supposed to be replaced before I got there, has huge gaps in it, and a rooster had just waltzed its way into the place. Because of my slightly irrational fear of birds and hatred of chickens I freaked out a little, and ran screaming into my host mom’s house to ask for help. She managed to get it out for me, but not before it had a chance to poop everywhere, including some of the only clothes I had managed to bring from Okahandja. Since that incident I’ve become very suspicious of the chickens that hang around my host family’s lapa, and don’t feel as guilty about eating them anymore.
After that the week was less exciting. I thought village life would be boring and I would have nothing to do most of the time but I’ve found that I’ve managed to fill up my days pretty completely, between school, after school lesson planning and activities, spending time with my host family and teaching all the kids in the village how to play uno (they love it, even though they pretty much made up their own rules and now I don’t really know how to play their version).
So, even though village life is definitely going to take getting used to it’s not that bad. The only things I really miss are being able to cook for myself (and eat cheese! Oh I miss cheese) and showers and indoor toilets, and having any privacy. In the village everyone knows what I’m doing every minute of the day. When I have my own house with a courtyard I think I’ll have a little more privacy.
Well, that’s pretty much it so far. I miss home and 2 years is starting to seem like a really long time, but hopefully by January I’ll be adjusted to my site and it will feel a little more like home away from home. And for those who want to experience life in a real African village visitors are always welcome!