Where can I even begin? It feels like I’m starting from scratch. We were sworn in on Friday in Okahandja and after a few hours in the capital city and a four hour drive with my supervisor, we arrived in Mariental, my permanent site. Friday marks the officially beginning of my two years of service. Training is over and now I’m standing at the base of the mountain looking up. It is both exciting and scary to be away from the safety and comfort of the training staff, my fellow volunteers and my host family. I’ve been waiting and mentally preparing for this for years, and now it’s time to perform.
My housing is not yet finished, so I am staying at the landlord’s mother’s guest flat. It’s on the predominately white/Afrikaaner side of town and I’m pretty sure it’s the nicest house in Mariental. They are very nice people, but I have to be very careful with whom I associate myself. It is still very uncommon for whites to associate with blacks and I must be committed to break the pattern. Anyway, is very complicated and something I can’t explain well at this point.
“Just go-with-the-flow” has been my mantra as of late. I truly do not know what is going on or what is about to happen most of the time. The whole week before swearing, I was asking my supervisor about my housing and I was told, “not to worry.” It wasn’t until 2 minutes before I was dropped off at someone elses’ house that I found out it was still unfinished. I was told, “hopefully it will be done tomorrow,” and have heard that everyday since Friday.
On the bright side, I have some really great co-workers, most of them young females who have welcomed me as part of the office. One of them, Beata, will be sharing the two-bedroom flat with me. It’s really the best of both worlds to have my privacy with my own room but also to have the opportunity to get to know at least one Namibian very well. Plus, I have already made her promise to teach me how to plant a vegetable garden in our backyard, to which she replied, “of course, my dear, I am a village girl!”
Going to work at the Ministry of Youth building is very counter to what I pictured my PC experience to be like. The office has just recently brand new and many new employees have been hired so things aren’t up and running yet. Right now, there are no programs and no youth. We are still waiting for “phase two” of the building which includes a gym, a library, a computer center and quite a lot of other things, but for now we just sit in the office and stare out at an empty plot of land. Building was scheduled to begin this month and no one really can explain to me why it hasn’t begun. “It is the government, my dear.” It can be quite frustrating to do this from 8am-5pm every day, but I must remind myself to be patient, it won’t be like this forever. Everyone assures me that soon enough I will be too busy and I trust in that.
I have spent some time interviewing my colleagues about Mariental. I ask what the youth are like, what are the major problems, but I learn so much even if I’m not probing them with questions. I just listen to them chat with each other and I try to figure out what is important to them. They think I am so quiet and serious, but I assure them that is only a phase. The wheels in my head are turning constantly but I haven’t come up with much yet. For now, my job is to just sit, watch, and listen. I must gather information before I can go forward with any kind of plan.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
T.I.P.C.
This morning on our way to the training center, people we’re a little more jovial than usual on a typical Monday morning. People would climb into the combie, smile and say, “Four more days you guys!!!” This Friday we swear in and finally, after years of dreaming, we finally become Peace Corps Volunteers and our two years do service officially commence. Training isn’t terrible, it’s just not what we came here for. Day in and day out we have hours of training and technical sessions and after two straight months with no holidays, it’s getting old. Plus, now we feel sufficiently prepared with our newly acquired language skills, cultural understandings, and a steel trunk full of books on everything from the PVC-compiled cookbook to the riveting, “Monitoring and Evaluation of the Civil Society contribution to tackling HIV/AIDS in Namibia, 2006 Report.” We are ready.
So this morning we sang extra loudly to our PC training anthem and thought nothing of it when Linda, our very sweet and straight-laced Training Director, quieted us down for an announcement.
“Due to the national elections taking place this year in Namibia and the heightened concern for your safety, Washington has requested that we implement additional language trainings. Language is a key factor in your safety so we have decided to extend training for an extra week for additional language training.”
There was a huge uproar from the crowd. “What? You’ve got to be kidding me?! Linda, are you joking?”
“No, no. I have never been more serious.”
“What! This can’t be happening!”
“We will be informing your host families and supervisors this afternoon. I’m sorry, this is the way Peace Corps works. Please break for your language classes.”
People were fuming! T.I.P.C. This is Peace Corps (what we say when something has no other explanation).
I could barely pay attention in language class because I was just trying to reorient myself. I was so looking forward to moving to my permanent site this week, it would be just like PC to delay us at the last minute!
Language class ended and I was texting the other PCV’s at my site letting them know that I wouldn’t be coming this week, when Linda walked by. “Did you call your supervisor yet?”
“No. Do I need to? I thought you were going to do that? ”
“I was only joking,” she laughed.
I screamed her name like Jeff screams Garfield in the comic strip!
I never saw it coming from Linda of all people! She’s like our training mom. She takes care of us and makes sure we don’t go out alone at nighttime and that our host families are feeding us vegetables. Turns out one of my friends was the mastermind behind all of this and they got us good! We were so punk’d!
Oh man, T.I.P.C. We never know what’s going to happen next!
So this morning we sang extra loudly to our PC training anthem and thought nothing of it when Linda, our very sweet and straight-laced Training Director, quieted us down for an announcement.
“Due to the national elections taking place this year in Namibia and the heightened concern for your safety, Washington has requested that we implement additional language trainings. Language is a key factor in your safety so we have decided to extend training for an extra week for additional language training.”
There was a huge uproar from the crowd. “What? You’ve got to be kidding me?! Linda, are you joking?”
“No, no. I have never been more serious.”
“What! This can’t be happening!”
“We will be informing your host families and supervisors this afternoon. I’m sorry, this is the way Peace Corps works. Please break for your language classes.”
People were fuming! T.I.P.C. This is Peace Corps (what we say when something has no other explanation).
I could barely pay attention in language class because I was just trying to reorient myself. I was so looking forward to moving to my permanent site this week, it would be just like PC to delay us at the last minute!
Language class ended and I was texting the other PCV’s at my site letting them know that I wouldn’t be coming this week, when Linda walked by. “Did you call your supervisor yet?”
“No. Do I need to? I thought you were going to do that? ”
“I was only joking,” she laughed.
I screamed her name like Jeff screams Garfield in the comic strip!
I never saw it coming from Linda of all people! She’s like our training mom. She takes care of us and makes sure we don’t go out alone at nighttime and that our host families are feeding us vegetables. Turns out one of my friends was the mastermind behind all of this and they got us good! We were so punk’d!
Oh man, T.I.P.C. We never know what’s going to happen next!
Accidental Time Capsul
I was packing for the next leg of my journey when I came across my money belt, one of two that a brought. This one is pretty intricate with lots of pockets and I don’t usually carry it because it’s too bulky. For whatever reason, I opened up one of the tiny pockets in the front and was surprised to see a $5 US bill. I knew I hadn’t put it there, at least not recently. It turned out to be a miniature time capsule from almost exactly 6 years ago on my last day in Australia. There was a hard candy wrapper inside as well as a airplane shuttle ticket and a receipt from my stay in the “Yellow Submarine” youth hostel in Brisbane (only about $11, by the way). It brought me right back to that morning when I woke up at 4am because I was so worried I would miss the shuttle and then eventually my plane. I was seriously low on cash at that point and I was praying that the transaction would go through while I watched the sleepy-eyed front desk attendant run my debit card. I knew I only had exactly enough cash to pay the shuttle driver so I was relieved when this receipt printed out. I remember being so relieved to be going home from that difficult and transformative journey. It’s crazy how certain things can bring your right back somewhere. And it’s strange that my fingers didn’t touched that $5 bill until I was way over here. I’m going to keep it right where I found it and maybe I’ll use it to buy a coke in the Windhoek airport two years from now while I wait to board my plane home.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Perspective
Hi Blogfans. Sorry it has been so long since I’ve written. It’s been a long and hard couple of weeks that have left me exhausted at the end of each day. It isn’t one thing in particular it’s just the natural progression of life for a recently arrived ex-pat. The honeymoon phase has worn off and now things are beginning to get a little more frustrating. In fact, one of the volunteers and a friend of mine went home last week. She was the second person we’ve lost since our arrival so we are down to 20 from the original group.
Training is only 2 more weeks, fortunately, because everyone is on edge. There is a lot of pressure to perform. We are expected to get high scores on our language exams and if the afternoon we work in small groups on our community project (we have less than a week to plan and implement) and then when we get home, we have to be on our best behavior because we are in someone else’s space.
There’s no sure fire way to cope. We’re all trying different things because most of our coping strategies just aren’t available to us here. For example, I cannot afford to call home on the PC salary, so I must wait to be called. But once we move to our permanent site housing, we’ll have an opportunity to settle in and create a space that is our own and that we find comfort in. I so much look forward to that time.
Today, six of us went on a hike to get a little perspective and some much needed exercise. We had our sites set on the tallest peak we could see from town. We followed a dirt path until it became barely discernible cow trails and then eventually disappeared altogether. I wasn’t thrilled about bushwhacking in black mamba territory, especially since I knew my EMT skills would mean next to nothing if we couldn’t get an injured person to the hospital quickly. We made it out alive with mere cuts and scrapes from the loose rocks and thorny bushes and tress. We did see a baboon in the distance, found the quill of what must be a GIANT porcupine and nearly walked through the webs of some very gnarly looking spiders. It’s a great feeling to stand atop a peak where very few people have ever been or will ever go. This area of Namibia has a beautiful mountainous landscape, unlike the flat desert-land I’ll be heading to at the end of the month, but all that I’ve seen of Namibia is truly beautiful.
Training is only 2 more weeks, fortunately, because everyone is on edge. There is a lot of pressure to perform. We are expected to get high scores on our language exams and if the afternoon we work in small groups on our community project (we have less than a week to plan and implement) and then when we get home, we have to be on our best behavior because we are in someone else’s space.
There’s no sure fire way to cope. We’re all trying different things because most of our coping strategies just aren’t available to us here. For example, I cannot afford to call home on the PC salary, so I must wait to be called. But once we move to our permanent site housing, we’ll have an opportunity to settle in and create a space that is our own and that we find comfort in. I so much look forward to that time.
Today, six of us went on a hike to get a little perspective and some much needed exercise. We had our sites set on the tallest peak we could see from town. We followed a dirt path until it became barely discernible cow trails and then eventually disappeared altogether. I wasn’t thrilled about bushwhacking in black mamba territory, especially since I knew my EMT skills would mean next to nothing if we couldn’t get an injured person to the hospital quickly. We made it out alive with mere cuts and scrapes from the loose rocks and thorny bushes and tress. We did see a baboon in the distance, found the quill of what must be a GIANT porcupine and nearly walked through the webs of some very gnarly looking spiders. It’s a great feeling to stand atop a peak where very few people have ever been or will ever go. This area of Namibia has a beautiful mountainous landscape, unlike the flat desert-land I’ll be heading to at the end of the month, but all that I’ve seen of Namibia is truly beautiful.
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