Sitting, Waiting, Watching

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.