End of holidays and first days of school

Well, it's been a little while since I've posted. Hmm let's see, I spent Christmas in Kabbe with my host family which was...interesting. Definitely not the kind of Christmas I'm used to. My host mom invited me to church for Christmas eve...then told me service starts at 1 am. Namibia has turned me into an old lady, or my dad, who goes to sleep at 8 pm every night and wakes up at 5. Seriously, I can not stay up late anymore. But I agreed to go, thinking Namibian Christmas eve mass would be some kind of cultural event I should see, and figured I could take a nap before it started. But in true nambiguous fashion, at 9 pm, when we were finishing up dinner, my host mom said she was leaving now now for church. Okay, I said, but doesn't the service start at 1? Yes. She said. But why are you leaving now? Well people are already there, singing and having baptisms. I asked when Chuma, my host sister was going to church and she said maybe at 2 am. I was starting to get a little frustrated, since I don't really like church anyway, and the services are in Silozi so usually I just sit and zone out, and I definitely didn't want to get stuck at church for 6 hours in the middle of the night. But of course I got dragged with my host mom and host sister who decided to go and leave early. 4 hours of singing and dancing ensued, and then the service finally started, at around 1:30 am, when Chuma decided to leave because her 2 year old daughter was feeling sick. So that's the story of how I almost went to Christmas eve mass in Namibia.

Christmas day was mostly uneventful, until around 3 pm when people started pouring into the village to drink and braai. Christmas in Namibia is pretty much like 4th of July or a summer barbeque. Definitely not anything like what we're used to. I did get to talk to everyone in my family and Brian's family though, which was definitely the highlight of my holiday.

I spent New Year's in Rundu with some friends after our thwarted efforts to evade Peace Corps' notice and head to Otjiwarango for New Years' with some other dirty 30ers (our moniker for Peace Corps Nam/Group 30). However, the day before New Year's eve the friend we were going to stay with had a break in, so her house was on Peace Corps radar, and being sensible folks we thought flaunting to PC that we were breaking the very strict out of site policy (not allowed to leave your region for the first 3 months after swearing in! Period.) was a little stupid. So we spent New Year's eve watching movies and playing cards (while enjoying some WIndhoek Lager of course) while trying to stay awake until midnight. We then proceeded to wake up at 5 am to hike out of Rundu to enjoy some new year's day festivities in otjiwarango. So, that's the story of how I almost celebrated New Year's eve with the dirty 30 in Otjiwarango.

I then spent a week in Windhoek for reconnect, the second part of our PC training. It was in the mountains at a beautiful "resort" as we like to call it. Actually after months of living like PCVs this place was a resort, with air conditioning, hot showers and a pool! It was also great to see the rest of my group, who truly are such wonderful people I can't stand it. We also got to drop some mad Namib dollars eating in Windhoek. Ahh Windhoek. So strange, so disconcerting and so wonderful sometimes. Mostly the food. Indian, Italian, KFC...we even found a place called Joe's beer house which has a hefeweizen! After months of drinking watery Windhoek lager or the cheaper brands that have an aftertaste of soap that cloudy wheat beer was like 500 ml of heaven.

Which brings me to the present. Well, after hiking back from Windhoek, and realizing again how effing far Caprivi is from the capital (it took me 48 hours to get back to Kabbe, overnighting in Rundu and Katima), I arrived just in time for the first day of school! Actually the 3rd day technically, since teachers were supposed to be there monday and tuesday. But in Namibia that means nothing happens except maybe stuff that was supposed to happen last term, like finishing your grade symbol distribution (I don't know why that was so important, but it was), and what what. So yesterday the learners arrived, and of course our subjects hadn't been allocated and we had no timetable, so the learners ended up doing manual labor and running around for most of the day.

Today I showed up and at our brief staff meeting was told that the pre-primary teacher wasn't there, so why didn't I just watch the pre-primary class today? Putting aside the fact that I'm actually teaching grades 7 and 8 English and Math, and would have liked to spend some time talking to and getting to know them, the pre-primary students DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH. Or Silozi. And after 3 months in the village my Subia is in a sadder state than I'd like to admit. So I walk into this class of about 12 terrified looking 5 year olds (don't forget, this is their first day of school. Ever.) And proceed to hand out construction paper and crayons that they just stare at. I take out a crayon and start coloring my paper, saying "bone!" "See!" Color! Finally the secretary came in and I asked her to translate for me which got some kids coloring. When they got bored with coloring I decided to attempt to teach them "Duck Duck Goose" using my extremely limited vocabulary. I achieved this by going around and miming what they were supposed to do then when I tapped goose, saying "Iwe!" (you!) "Mata!" (Run!) then "Kale!" (Sit!) To my surprise it actually worked, and I successfully got them to play for the rest of the period. Poor kids. First day of school and they show up to a crazy white lady who doesn't speak their language. Being an African kid is hard in so many ways.

Well, that's an abridged version of my activities for the last few weeks. Now I'm on my way back to Rundu for a PC meeting. But first I'm heading over to Kaitlin's to bake cupcakes to bring for our Friday wine day in Rundu. Hey, even PCVs get to have a little fun sometimes ;)