The OKB

I’ve now spent a month in Namibia and things have stopped surprising me. The past three weeks, I’ve been in Okhambahe (OKB) at what Peace Corps calls “Cultural Based Training”. This is a fancy phrase for living in a town with a bunch (five: Carl, Cynthia, Irene, Mike, and myself) of other volunteers and learning how to teach. It’s summer vacation now for the students of Namibia, which means they are free for a two and a half week long “Model School” set up by PC. In five towns in central Namibia, PC recruits volunteer students to take part in Model School. This means we get to screw up real kids during training! Wahoo! The motive for the kids is that they get two snacks during the day and they get exposure to the more difficult subjects they will encounter the next school year. School ran from 7:30 until 11:50 every morning. The five of us had to be there at 7:00 for a meeting and we usually stayed until 12:30 going through evaluations of how the day went. We then went home to change out of our teaching clothes, eat some lunch and maybe get some work done. After that, it’s language class for us from four to six. Home for dinner, plan some lessons for the next day and hopefully be in bed by 10. Up at 5:30 the next day and repeat.

Now some stories about why things don’t surprise me anymore. We had a few days from when we arrived in the OKB till when Model School classes started. When we first arrived in the OKB, our language instructor wasn’t there. Before going to my host house, my host mom wanted to stop by “the fridge”. My house didn’t have a refridgerator because they run off of solar power, and the inverter isn’t powerful enough to run a full size fridge all day and night. So, the family fridge is at work about 2.5km from my house. We drive to the fridge and, having been raised right, I offer to help her carry the plastic bags to the fridge. She has three or four bags and has to unlock all the doors so I carry two bags. One of them I can tell is the leg of something. Something furry. I’m pretty sure it’s goat. How am I pretty sure it’s goat? Because I’m holding the head in the other bag.

The next day, our language instructor still wasn’t there. So, we walked around town and introduced ourselves to the local people. Now, I should mention that the OKB is very small. No paved roads for about 100km and more illegal bars (called shabins) than stores. And the stores don’t sell much more than flour, sugar, porage, Fanta, and beer. Oh, and there’s no gas stations. There are a few small shacks in town that sell gas by the liter for a cool N$7 per liter. That’s about $4.50 per gallon american. So, there we are in a tiny town in the middle of Namibia with no PC staff member to fend off the locals if we get into trouble. And trouble we got. We started by visiting the local utilities office where they guy working there made some pretty odd comments to the two girls in our group. I forget the exact words, but it involved him knowing where they live and wanting to come by at night. Creepy, but not dangerous. Next it was back to Cynthia’s house to do some language studying. Now, later I learned something from my host mother, Mandi. She says, “there is no town drunk in Okambahe, the town is drunk”. That explains why this man in a fedex uniform walks right through Cynthia’s front door at about 10:30 in the morning, hammered, and starts speaking to us in a mixture of english, afrikaans, and kkg. This is amusing for the first ten minutes. Then I figure this guy should go outside so I asked him to show me where he lived. Carl and I walked while he stumbled a few hundred feet and then we tried to leave him behind. He wasn’t about to let us go, and during our conversation about why we had to leave, another drunk guy stumbles out of a nearby house to try and get some money out of us. Plan foiled, we were getting desperate. Luckily, a PC vehicle pulls up and a staff member gets us into the car, leaving our newly found friends in the the dust. That afternoon, the PC staff left to go back to Omaruru and we had a meeting with the acting principal of the model school. No excitement there. We were told we would be teaching a number of subjects to a number of grades, none of which were grades or subjects we would be teaching at our permanent sites, and most of them we had zero experience in. To give you an idea, I was assigned to teach life science, math and english to seventh graders and agriculture to eighth graders. I’m supposed to be teaching physical science to nineth through eleventh grade. This was eventually fixed on the second day of classes the next week. On to the evening.

One girl in our group, Irene was celebrating her 23rd birthday that day, so we were going to have a party at her host family’s house. Our language instructor finally got back into town as the party was starting, and filled us in on his absence. He had gone to the north for the funeral and his car had broken down. He spent the night in his car, and had to hitch hike back the next day. One of the locals grabs the assistance of Mike and I to gather firewood for the barbeque where we will cook the meat. Later I will find out that this guy is also fairly tipsy. Sweet, put the drunk guy in charge of the fire. Oh well, he’ll be incharge of the knife later. After the fire dies down to cooking coals, we are waiting for the meat to cook and people are coming and going fairly frequently. I’m sitting and talking to our language instructor when a new addition arrives at the party. It’s a guy dragging something behind him. It’s getting dark and I can’t quite make out what he has from the distance. At first I think it is a very reluctant child. Then I realize the kid has four legs, white fur and horns. Ah, a sheep. Why did he bring a sheep to the party? The guy walks the sheep through the backyard and stops infront of me. He calls over Mike and Carl for more assistance. At this point, I know what is going to happen so it’s no surprise when he holds the sheep on the ground and assigns each of us a set of legs. Mike and Carl are on the front, and I’m on the back with another guy. The lack of light probably made it easier on me when he stabbed the sheep in the neck. The amazing thing was how strong the spazms were after the sheep had already died. Especially when the tipsy guy running the fire came over and castrated the sheep. Sheep now dead, it’s time for dinner. We had some songs, speeches and gifts were given. All the while, tipsy fire man was skinning the sheep by himself. By the time everything was done and people were starting to go home, the guy wanted a little help with the sheep. It was Carl, Matt, and Mike back to the rescue. The forelegs were removed along with the head. The head took a long time since dull knives can’t cut through vertibrae all that well. Who would have guessed? Next we had to move the carcass to a hanging place for gutting. We carried it over to a hook that was designed for such a purpose and hung the sheep by it’s back leg. Then things got sort of wierd again. Out of nowhere, our Training Director comes walking into the back yard and says, “whao! You’ve got a sheep! I call the liver, where’s the knife?” He then takes the knife and guts the sheep with the three of us holding the legs apart. The whole time he is removing organs, he’s telling us what each one is, and how best to cook it. I won’t say I’m going full on vegitarian when I come back, but the past month has given me a strong case for a mostly fish diet. The night ended with me getting a ride back to my house from Mike’s host dad. Michael (my host dad) and Mandi live about one kilometer down the river from town. Don’t be fooled by “river”. This is just a dried up river bed with a road in the middle of it. That was just the first day.

Just a bit about my host family. They are members of the SWAPO party which is the ruling party in Namibia at the moment. Michael ran for president of Namibia a few years ago, and has some pretty poor opinions about the politics of his country. Now, he farms goats about three kilometers outside of town. When he is not at the farm, he operates a small pit mine about nine kilometers away. He used to run a farmers co-op, but the lack of rain the past three years has made the vegitable farming nonexistant in the area. Mandi is a house wife now, but used to run the family shop out of building attached to their house. The house is very large with a sort of compound feel since it is several semi-attached buildings with a concrete wall around the outside. The house itself is mostly selfsustaining with solar panels and water being pumped in from a well. They have three kids, all grown up and gone. I met one son and his wife and kid while they stayed over for a few nights. Wonderful people. With no kids in the house, my home became a nice getaway for the other four in our group since they all lived in the center of town. Walking to my home, however, was no pic-nic. There are two ways to get to my house: the first is by walking over a few small hills and through a riverbed. This takes a little longer than the other way, but it’s much safer. The second way is a direct shot from town, but you have to walk past three illegal bars and most of the unsavory people in town. They aren’t all that dangerous, they just want your attention and handouts. Walking the second way turns a 12 minute walk into a 20 to 25 minute walk due to people stopping you and trying to have a conversation.

I can’t really get into all the strange events that happened to us during our stay, but I’ll try and go through the greatest hits here. We eventually got better class assignments after Peace Corps set our acting principal straight. I taught eighth through eleventh grade geography which is a mixture of geology and social studies, and nineth grade physical science. We had some problems with some students, but nothing abnormal. Well, nothing abnormal until the last two days when a group of students stole Mike’s camera out of his bag. We didn’t know who stole it, so we searched the students before they left but that turned up nothing. We searched the school for a while, but there are a lot of places to hide a small camera in a big campus. Peace Corps got involved and put up a 100 dollar reward for information which also did no good. This was really disheartening for us as volunteers, because we knew someone had information, but was too nervous to come forward. Eventually, the mother of the boys who stole the camera found out and forced them to confess. Mike didn’t press charges so mom got to press them in her own way. Beating your child is totally legal in this country, and mom went to town on her kids, with Mike (and the police) watching.

Some other events:

-We climbed a little mountain outside of town. We left at 5:30 am to beat the heat and were on top at about 9:30. We had taken the ridge line up and took the direct line down the front to save time. Once we hit the bottom, we still had a few km walk back to town and we were out of water. We eventually got back totally dehydrated at about two in the afternoon. Pretty much the hotest time of the day. A good experience now that it’s over.

-Every morning, I walked to school over the hills and river so as to avoid the drunkards from the previous night, and since it was a more straight line to the school. A few mornings I had, shall we say, traffic problems. I had to stop and wait for a herd of goats to cross the road in front of me. No owner, just a bunch of goats.

-One evening, I’m walking home during dusk and a fully grown horse goes trotting past me. Again, no owner or rider. Just a horse running past me.

-I was on my way to language class and one of my students pulled up next to me in a donkey cart. A donkey cart is the back half of a compact pickup dragged by two to four donkeys. A bumpy ride, but easier than walking.

-I was about to start my lesson one day and I get about one minute into the review from yesterday when a little girl comes and pokes her head around the doorway to my room. I turn and ask her what she needs. She motions for me to come over to the door. I do, and outside she shows me something in her hand. She has a bird clenched in her tiny little hand. The bird is alive and looking at me with about as confused a look as I’m giving the girl. She looks at me, points to the bird and I say, “Wow, that’s nice. Why don’t you go put that somewhere else.” I go back inside and continue my lesson.

-On another walk home I passed by a little baby sitting in the middle of the street rubbing a rock on a big beer bottle.

That’s it for now. I have others, but these are the most mind numbing. Also during my stay in the OKB I found out what the greatest thing in the world is. Mail. I got a letter from my parents and packages from both my parents and my gradparents while I was there. It was easily the highlight of my stay. Letters, and especially pictures are like gold to us here. They can steal all my money, bust the camera and burn my clothes. But the moment anyone lays a finger on any of my photos or trinkets from home, I am ready to go for blood.

All in all, the model school experience was very informative. I learned about what an acceptable pace is for me to speak in the different grades, and no one here knows math. Take the standard for any grade in the states and knock it back four grades. That’s where the smartest kids in the class are comfortable here. Science is the same way. They don’t do any critical thinking education over here. It’s all done by: if given this problem, give this answer. Not even plug-and-chug. The equation for work is three equations because the students are not comfortable dividing variables. They call Peace Corps the hardest job you’ll ever love. I’m beginning to understand that.

We get to spend christmas here in Omaruru which kinda sucks since the town is pretty boring and there are so many things in the country for us to see. Still, it is nice to be back with the big group again, trading stories about animal heads and donkey cart rides. I’m in town until January 4th, so I’ll post again in a few days.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Khorixas Site Visit

Khorixas Site Visit

When we last left our intrepid hero, he was about to depart on a journey to his permanent site in the thriving town of Khorixas. And that’s enough narration in the third-person. My site in Khorixas is right in town, about a five-minute walk from the town center. Of course the town center is a small market next to a gas station, with the amenities nearby: police station, post office, hardware store, secondary school, and clothing/house wares stores are all on the same strip of road in town. These are also on the only paved road in town. It’s a small community, but very condensed so walking everywhere is no problem. Stroll for twenty minutes in any direction, and you’re out of town. My house is a three-bedroom house set up by the Ministry of Education for volunteers in Namibia. My roommates are, Diane, a woman in her late 40s from England with the VSO (European version of Peace Corps), and Anne, a 22 year old Norwegian girl with the SCORE program. SCORE is a world wide volunteer program that brings sports to developing countries.

About thirty kilometers from me is a tiny school at the end of a long dirt road called Braunsfeld. This is where Carl, another PCV from my group, will be stationed. Khorixas is his only town, so he’ll be spending a lot of time on the spare bed in my place.

So, on Monday Carl, Max (a teacher from his school), my principal Mr. /Gowoseb, Brian (the PCV I’ll be replacing), and I climbed into a tiny little ’85 Corolla and drove the three and a half hours to Khorixas. We first dropped Carl and Max at Braunsfeld. To get to Braunsfeld you drive off of the highway on this little dirt road for about ten minutes. This is not a town, but an agricultural school with boarding facilities for the students and teachers. It is nestled at the foot of a few hills and is surrounded by a farming community. Erase that image of barns and grain silos from your mind. These farms are composed of one or two mud/dung huts that are eight feet square and five feet tall with a herd of goats running around outside. The school and boarding houses are all fairly normal government built buildings: concrete block walls with metal roofs. There’s power and water to the school and surrounding buildings, so the site is remote but not as primitive as the local area.

After dropping off Carl and Max, Brian, Mr. /Gowoseb, and I drove into Khorixas. We did the grand tour of the town, turning past the market and petrol station, down the street past the post office and police station, and past the school. Everything was pretty normal for a small town. It could even pass for small town America except for the garbage everywhere and the donkeys pulling the make shift cart, which is really just the back half of a compact pick-up. Then we crossed to the other side of the highway. Up on the hill is the ministry building, which is a large three story building that houses most of the government offices for this region. Driving up the dirt road to pass this building, you begin to get into what is called The Location. During the apartheid era in Namibia, the various ethnic groups were segregated into separate housing by the ruling white class. These housing groups were all next to each other and together made up what was known as The Location. Tribal groups that once lived far apart and even warred with eachother were forced to live next door to one another. Most towns big enough to show up on a map of Namibia have one of these Locations. The name stuck, and most families still live in these small houses. They are similar to most buildings in Namibia, in that they are the same style of concrete block walls with metal roofs, but they are very small. Most have some sort of addition built on to them made out of scrap metal that has been stitched together with wire to form shacks. I had seen similar housing setups at the location in Omaruru during training, so this was not a huge culture shock. The next part was.

We continued the driving tour of the Location by going into an area called Dongaru. Don’t bother looking that up, I’m guessing on the spelling, and I may not have even heard the name correctly. To get to Dongaru, we went out the back of the Location and went over a small rise. I have a really hard time attempting to put the sight of Dongaru into words. It is small shacks and garbage everywhere. The shacks are all made of rusted scrap metal and only big enough to accommodate about five people laying down like sardines. Yet, families of five, six, eight or more live in these things with no electricity and the nearest water is out of a community spout which can be a 20+ minute walk for some. After leaving, I didn’t know what to say or even how I was feeling. I was completely dumbfounded. It was as if someone had kicked me in the chest. Next it was time to see my house.

We left Dongaru, drove past the location, back across the highway and up the hill from the market to Brian’s place which will become mine in January. It has all the requirements of a PC house: Running water (at some times of the day), a gas stove, locks on all the doors, and bars on all the windows. The water is on from 6 to 7:30 or so in the morning, and then for a few hours at mid day and then it comes on again at about 6:30 at night and may last anywhere from an hour up to four hours. No hot water, but when the temperatures are up in the 110 range, you really don’t care. Brian says showers can get pretty cold in the winter, but that’s what boiling water is for I guess. Take the typical three bedroom college house and put bars on all the windows, that’s what this place is. There is a porch in the back yard with a fig tree and a barbecue platform. Barbecue here is building a fire out of this local hardwood, let it die to hot coals, and place a metal screen on top.

After settling in on Monday night, I went to my first day of school on Tuesday morning. The school days begin with a teacher meeting at 7:00 followed by classes until about 1pm. At that time, everyone goes home until 3:30 when the afternoon activities start. These can be anything from sports to the school’s chess club to simply after school help on homework. Get home in the early evening and wait for the water to turn on so you can cook dinner. When I was there, things were a bit different since these are the last weeks of class before summer break. The students have a free period until 10:00 when they take their final exams which take about two hours. I proctored three of these exams and graded some papers during my school time. All in all, it’s very similar to high school in the states. There’s the popular crowd, the problem kids, the class clown, the suck up, and so on. All the things we can look back on and hate from our high school experiences. It’s just that now there are no supplies, the desks are falling apart, and the walls have graffiti all over them. Same crowd, different setting. The exams went smoothly and my classroom experiences were good. I got to see some of the lab equipment they have. I know I’ll be doing a lot of work to organize and clean the lab stuff, but they are fairly well supplied compared to some of the stories I’ve heard.

The night life of Khorixas is a story all it’s own. Fair warning: some may want to skip this paragraph. In this town, there is one gas station, one small market, and at least eight bars. Three of these bars have pool tables, though only one of them is functioning. One of the others is so busted up that people just use it as a bench since there is little to no furniture. The third one we didn’t go to because it has a huge stain in the middle where some guy was stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle. So, Thursday night we go to the only bar with a functioning pool table, Barey’s. Barey’s also has more furniture than most bars in Khorixas. That is to say, they have four plastic tables each with four plastic lawn chairs. On this particular night, Barey’s is completely out of beer. Four empty refridgerators greet us along with a plethora of warm hard alcahol. It’s still 80 degrees or warmer outside, so we choose to go down the street to this bottle shop/resturant and pick up a few cold beers there and bring them back. This is totally normal, by the way. The resturant portion of this bottle shop is only in the name. There is no food sold here. Anyway, we get our brews and walk back to Barey’s where I learn the Namibian rules of pool. In Namibian pool, slop always counts, you never have to call a shot, there is no chalk for the cue, and scratches result in ball-in-hand plus two shots. This pool table, which is the best in town, has two big rips which I believe are there to offset the noticeable slant to the table. And the pockets are offset from the bumpers by an inch rendering many missed shots made, and many decent shots complete flops. This occupied us for Thursday night. Friday night it was time to see some of the other people of Khorixas. After trying to shoot a few games at Barey’s, we went to different bar, this is the one with the busted up pool table that is used as a bench. This is where I was introduced to two of the more disturbing parts of this town. First, a student at my school tried to convince me to buy her a beer. She had already been handed one by the bartender, but insisted that it wasn’t hers and she needed another. I kept telling her that she just got one, so she moved on to Carl who had come with us. Eventually we just walked away, but it was a pretty odd experience. The second event was after we had walked away from her, we joined up with Anne who was talking with one of her coworkers. Loud music on the stereo, and four white people standing around eventually degenerated into “teach the funny white guys how to dance”. This was comical on its own, but got kinda weird when the local gay cross-dresser tried to show me how to dance. This guy was wearing some frilly tight fitting shirt, earings, and pants that were about three sizes too small. He’d do some basic steps with his feet and then I’d try to do the same. Half way into one step he’d yell “NO! TOO FAST!” and slap me on the arm. This repeated itself a few times and then the hilarity of the situation had worn off so we left our new gender confused friend and went home.

Saturday, we went to the lodge that’s across the highway from the petrol station, but not up the hill into the Location. This is a really nice lodge catering mostly to German tourists. It’s run by a French family who have a crazy son-in-law who is the mechanic for the other lodges in the area. You can get in free and just use their pool, assuming of course you’re white. There is another rest camp over the ridge behind our house that does the same thing, but the walk is about an hour through snake/scorpion country. We basically swim for a few minutes, then get out and lay in the sun until it gets to hot. Then it’s back in the pool and repeat. I can tell this is going to be tuff living.

Now for the ride back. To get anywhere in Namibia, you hitch-hike (simply called hiking here). In most towns, the gas stations serve as hitch points for the different directions out of town. If you want to go north, you stand at the northern most gas station, and so on. We went to the one and only gas station in Khorixas and approached the minivan driver. The common volkswagon bus referred to as a “combi” and tows a trailer for luggage. We approached the combi driver and he asks, “Where you going?” We told him, agreed on a price and loaded our stuff into the trailer. It’s 8:20am and we are supposed to be back in Omaruru by sundown. We think we’re ahead of schedule. We are wrong. From 8:20 to about 9 we sit at the gas station waiting for people. From 9 to 10:30 we drive around in circles in the Location going from house to house trying to find a bunch of people. Eventually we get the combi full with six guys, a family of three, an old woman who has brought an entire slaughtered and cooked goat with her, and Carl and I. For those keeping score, that’s 13 people in a 9 person car. We go back to the petrol station we started at and pick up another three people. Carl and I are sitting next to the back hatch above the rear most seat smelling this nasty boiled goat this old woman is passing around the car. What does boiled goat smell like? A lot like live goat mixed with BO.

After a flat tire, and stopping at several random points to drop off or pick up people, we finally get to Otjiwarongo, the halfway point on our journey. It’s 1:20 in the afternoon. Unload, and get into a tiny compact car for the ride down to Omaruru. This ride was pretty uneventful, just a cramped ride for an hour.

Now for the future information. I’ll be living in a town called Okambahe for my Cultural Based Training where I will be living with a host family for the next three weeks. The family is part of SWAPO and farms outside of town. So, for the next three weeks I’ll only be reachable by cell.

Ok, thanks for reading all of this. I’m getting pretty sick of typing so I’m going to go post this. Hope all the rain is nice and the nights are cold!

Africa Is Trying To Kill Me

Hey all,

Been a while since the last post, but that’s cause the events have been, well, uneventful. The day usually goes like this:

- 7 am – Breakfast of meat and toast. Prior to this, there may be showering, but we have a 150L hot water tank with 20 guys sharing it. Showers are cold.
- 8 am – Language class. This is done outside in the shade.
- 1030 am – Break for tea.
- 11 am – List making in the conference hall (we’ll get to what list making is in a bit). The conference hall is a concrete building with a sheet metal roof. Temps inside are usually in the mid to high nineties.
- 115 pm – Break for lunch.
- 2 pm – Teacher meeting outside in small groups.
- 330 pm – Break for tea.
- 4 pm – List making in the conference hall.
- 6 pm – Dinner.
- 715 pm – Current PCV panel. This is where we sit around and ask questions to current PCVs. The answers are usually, “well, it depends on your site.” Stories are told, laughs are had, and the whole experience is enjoyable. But, it’s just a little useless.
- 9ish pm – We’re set free.

So, what is “list making”? Most of the time that we are in the conference room, we sit around with one person in the front of the room and a vague question such as: What is culture? What difficulties will you have to adapt to? What changes have you made? What coping strategies can you use? It’s things we’ve all had to think of at some point, and we’ve been doing at least one of these stupid lists per day. It’s followed by a presentation or discussion on the topic that has some useful information, but it’s 90% sweating through your last pair of pants.

Keep in mind, I’m feeling a bit cynical right now, and we do cover a surprising amount in a small amount of time. One of the better talks was by the Peace Corps Medical Officer regarding volunteer health safety. The opening line (you must say this in a native African accent):

“You are all African babies. Africa is trying to kill you. The weather is trying to kill you, the insects are trying to kill you, the animals are trying to kill you, and even some of the people are trying to kill you!”

I think the last one was a bit of an exaggeration. The people are mostly trying not to die themselves. A few of them are looking for money or a free trip to the states, but I have yet to meet someone actually trying to kill me.

On to more recent things. This whole week has been culminating to last night when we found out our site assignments. These are the villages we will be living in for the next two years. We visit these this coming Tuesday and stay for a week. My village is called Khorixas (core – ee – haass, make a slight hacking sound when you do the ‘haa’). It’s about a hundred kilometers south of Etosha National Park. I’ll be in a 3br house shared with a VSO volunteer. The VSO is a European volunteer organization. I’ll be teaching 11th and 12th grade physical science in the local school. Thankfully, the current volunteer who is at the site is here now in Omaruru. He’s told me some great things about the area. It’s one of the few regions that actually has some “mountains” near by. I’m pretty sure we’d call these hills, but I’ll see it in a few days. It’s also one of the few sites that has a decent chance of large game walking by. He says he’s frequently seen elephants, giraffes, and other big things walking outside of town. I’ll have more details on my site next week when I get back.

Prior to getting our site assignment, we got our language assignments. We are assigned one of the following four languages: Oshiherero, Oshiwambo, Afrikaans, or Khoekhoegowab (KKG). KKG is the click language of this region, and the one I was assigned. I butcher it, but the language is absolutely beautiful when a fluent speaker uses it. I’d encourage anyone interested to at least try and find some recordings of it online. Please post the links in the comments section of this post if you find any good ones. I’m really excited about this language since this is probably the only place I can learn it. So, all you people who were giving me crap about how I’m going to be living with big African animals and clicking all day, I will be and I do.

A little bit about being able to contact me. The phones here are all prepaid, including most landlines. Most of the country relies mostly on cell phone coverage since the landlines cost so much to put up. Some of you can see where this is going. I talked to Brian, the PCV I’m replacing, and he said that there is cell coverage in my village. So, today there was a local cell phone salesman who gave us a deal on phones and I got one. It’s true, the guy who never had a phone in the states now has a phone in Namibia. The airtime rates over here are stupidly expensive, but all incoming calls are free. I know international calling cards aren’t that cheap in the states either, so I’m not expecting any frequent calls. One more thing: like all the other services here (power, water, etc.) the cell coverage comes and goes. Don’t expect to reach me on the first try, if at all, and be prepared for the signal to cut off. I’ll try to have my phone on me and active at all times, and I should be able to talk most any night after 9 pm (that’s 11am for you guys). Keep in mind I’m probably asleep between 1pm and 9 pm your time. So, to call me, make sure you’re not going to get beat up over the rate on the phone card, and make sure it can actually call Africa. To get out of the states you dial 011, then 264 for Africa and then 81 for Namibia. My number after that is 2038769. Here’s the whole thing:

011264812038769

A couple other things that happened recently. It rained today, and everything really is bigger here. The drops feel like they’re about the size of garbanzo beans. The sand gets all these little pock marks in it from the impact. We even stopped a meeting so that we could all go outside and stand in the rain. We also went down the road last night so that we could look at the stars. The stars were bright, and we could see what we guessed were Venus, Mars, Orion, and a Red Giant, but what struck me was how big the sky was. It sounds cheesy, and I had read about it before, but it is really something to see in person. We were still within sight of our city, so I’d like to go look another night when I’m in Khorixas.

That’s it for now. I’ll post again after I get back from my site visit to give some details.

JoBurg to Omaruru

Hello to everyone. I am posting this from the Omaruru rest camp about 240 km north of Windhoek. We left the JoBurg airport at 230 on Friday and landed in the Windhoek International Airport about two hours later. The Windhoek airport is one terminal and one airstrip. For those who have seen the Oly airport, it’s like that, but with only one runway. The terrain around here is similar to that of any arid desert in the US: Central Washington w/o the gorge, central Oregon w/o the farms, southern California w/o the houses, etc.

We stayed at a game preserve/resort for our first night here in Namibia. Don’t think of “resort” in US terms. This was a series of Motel6 rooms joined in sets of two. Ok, so that doesn’t do it quite enough justice, but these aren’t as nice as the Philly or JoBurg rooms. Anyway, we are at this condo/ranch/hotel thing with a small muddy lake on one side and desert as far as the eye can see. On the way in, we had been spotting herds of wildebeests and spring bok. The spring bok look like a cross between a gazelle and a deer. We are allowed to wander around the ranch area, and take full advantage of that. Picture looking down past the muddy lade at long sweeping fields of desert planes. Then, there are these groups of 3 to 5 semi-casually dressed Americans walking towards whatever wildlife they can aim a camera at. We blend.

As the sun set, we wandered back to the dining room to find that dinner was rice with vegetables, chicken curry, and (I’m not kidding) spring bok curry. Those things we had desparately been trying to get close to were now in large boney chunks on my dinner plate. For those wondering, spring bok tastes like beef pot roast. As a side note, when made into a breakfast sausage, spring bok still tastes like beef pot roast. Oh, and the malaria prevention meds kicked in that night along with the jet lag. This made what little sleep I had very… odd.

Saturday morning, on the busses for the Omaruru Rest Camp where I will be staying for the next few weeks. Along the way, we stopped for gas next to a chain of street vendors. As with all large groups, when the bus doors opened, we began to fan out attempting to amuse ourselves. “Hey, wood trinket things! I’ll go look at things!” Before we can get two feet from the gas station, four guys are walking towards us and one is already trying to sell us some shells on twinee. Just as the shell guy is about to finish his selling point, the other four have split us oup and are saying in the most desparately enthusiastic voices, “Hello my friend!” “Come in my shop! More in the back there, go look!” “Yes, beautiful piece I give to you for good price.” The good price for everything seems to be two dollars. I think they mean two American dollars since two Namibian dollars is about 38 cents. When you try and walk past, they think you don’t get it and begin to draw the number two into their forearms using little thorns. Again, not kidding. I had two guys do this in front of me. They weren’t drawing blood or anything, but it seems a little harsh to be driving the point home like that. They all had the same stuff, and weren’t all that offensive, just really pushy. When the ignoring tactic began to cause physical harm, I started the “I don’t have any money” approach. Undeterred, the sales people started to offer me great deals on my watch. At this point, three PC Trainees (what we all are right now) have been sent on a rounding up mission and it’s time to go back to the bus. Side adventure over, we are off to the camp.

When we arrive at the Omaruru Camp, we get out of the busses on the road and walk down the driveway greeting all the training staff. The choir from one of the local schools is out singing a Namibian welcoming song, which has a nice chorus that can be restarted due to the size of the group that must walk through being welcomed by everyone. More songs follow, along with more introductions, papers being handed out, and more shots. Today, it’s Rabies 1 of 3. Mmmmm, delicious…

That brings us up to tonight. We’re in our little summer camp style bunk house, the mosquito nets are over the beds and we start the process for determining our work sites (permanent villages) tomorrow. I’ve taken about 30 pictures so far, and about ¾ of us have digital cameras. We’re trying to get everyone’s images on one page so that we can all refer to one place. That will take some serious broad band organization, so it will be a couple months before that happens. In the mean time, I may try to get a couple little snap shots up here.

If anyone wants to mail me, here it is:

Matthew C. Peterson
c/o U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 6862
Windhoek, Namibia

Mail goes at a blinding speed over here. Expect 3 weeks for delivery. I'll still be able to get mail after I leave here since the PC forwards everything to our sites.

Hurray! Post done!

I'm in Africa!!!!

Since I last posted I’ve been shot up with two more immunizations, and I think we have a few more when we get to Windhoek on Friday. After a 5am start to get us to the federal clinic by 8am for shots, we had a bus ride to catch our 5pm plane. The two tour busses we used couldn’t fit under the normal parking area at JFK so we parked at the Executive Business Check in and then walked all the way down the terminal to get to our flight. The traveling has been a lot of the “hurry up and wait” tactic. Run down the terminal so that you can stand in a customs line for 45min. So, checked in, and then the day on a plane. Want to know what could make a 17 hour plane ride more difficult? Sitting next to a group of 8 tourists going to Africa from Long Island. Take the couple from My Cousin Vinny and put yourself in a closet with them. That’s what my plane ride was. Other than that, the food was good, and the drinks and movies were free. I’m in the hotel near the airport in JoBurg now. We’re here tonight and then a quick plane to Windhoek tomorrow. So far, the PC has put us up in some pretty posh sites on the tax payer's dollar. So... thanks for all the food and drinks you have been getting me!

I can receive mail at the following address for the next couple months:

Matthew C. Peterson
US Peace Corps/Namibia
20 Nachtigal Street
Windhoek, Namibia

There is a phone number but I’m not about to put that on the internet since it is a public telephone booth. I should be able to pick up an international calling card in the next few days.

Hope midterms are going well for those involved!

The group

Some information about our group that I learned yesterday at our first staging meeting:

• There are 58 of us in this group traveling and training together.
• Most of us are straight outta college or grad school
• Most of us are 20-somethings
• We have about half-a-dozen volunteers over 40 and one in her 50s
• There are a dozen or so health work volunteers (HIV education, prevention, counseling)
• The rest are all teachers in math, science and a couple doing computing development

During the first class session it was a lot of little "get-to-know-you" games and intro sessions. We've been outlining what the rest of training will be like, but not going into many details. We were given our living expenses allowance yesterday as well (180) from here to Windhoek. We will not actually be training in Windhoek, but instead about a hundred miles outside of it. Don't know where, but that's the story and they're sticking to it.

After our session last night, my roomate and I wandered around looking for a pub/resturant for dinner. Found a place with a decent menu and looked alright, so we went inside. The name was something having to do with a rooster, but I forget. Inside, the bouncer is there but does not card us, the bar has 7 or 8 guys sitting at one end together and madonna is playing on the jukebox. It's the Monday night football hour and the TVs are playing "Wife Swap" and some drama on NBC. You can figure it out from here (there was no women's bathroom). The food was really good and I'm pretty sure we were both hit on at least once. The hilarity of the night was just... uh... fabulous? Oh well, at least we have a nation where we can accidently go to a gay bar and not fear for our lives. This will be a near impossibility in a few days.

Phirst Philly Phun

Greetings from the land of Billy Franklin. The PC has us set up in The Warwick Hotel in downtown Philly. The down time in philly has been pretty uneventful. A group of PCVs went to look at the bell. My hotel mate and I had no desire to walk around in a big group looking like tourists, so we walked around as a pair looking like tourists. Saw some of the historic district and this little section of town called jewelries alley. It was one straight block of fine jewelry one bar/grill. Impressions of Philly: really small streets and standing liquids usually smell kinda... well... phunny. I'm sure I'll have more to say after our first real meeting here.

The plane trip was uneventful. Delayed 45min. at departure, and then a 45min. detour to avoid a storm. The in-flight movie was Must Love Dogs. After the first 15min. I began hoping our plane would be struck by lightning. There was another PCV sitting one row in front of me, and she had friends picking her up from the airport. I caught a ride with her to the hotel which was really convenient. Time for the first PCV meeting, so I'll be off now.

The travel itinerary

In case anyone is interested, the following is my itinerary from Philly to Windhoek, Namibia:

• Leave Seattle, sobbing madly, at 11:10 am Sunday.
  
• Arrive Philly Int'l Airport at 7:07 pm Sunday.
  
• Down time until 1pm Monday. Thankfully, I'll be in downtown Philly (map) so I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to get mugged before the training starts.
• After training and immunizations until Wednesday, it's time to get on the bus for JFK in New York. Leave the hotel at 11am.
  
• This is a 2.5 hour car ride according to mapquest.
  
• Flight leaves JFK at 5:55pm (Wednesday). This is where things get confusing due to time zones.
• Flight arrives in Johannesburg at 5:50pm, Johannesburg time, on Thursday. For those who don't want to look up the time zone change, that's a 14 hour flight.
• Down time of 21 hours. That's right kids, it's time to kick it in Johannesburg for a day! (<-- not sarcasm, I really am excited to have a whole day to try not to get lost/killed/mugged wandering around Johannesburg.)
• Leave Johannesburg at 2:30 pm
• Arrive Windhoek at 4:30 pm (same time zone, so a 2 hour flight).
• So, from Philly to Windhoek, total time traveling is 16 hours on a plane, 2.5 hours on a bus, and 37 hours of waiting.
  

That's it. I'm sure this will have it's hilarity once the whole trip is actually attempted. Not to mention what happens during each day of downtime I get in Philly and Jburg.

Going Away Party

The party at Buca on Saturday night was great. Thanks to all who attended and those who sent post-it notes (Paul, I'm lookin at you). Here are some of the pictures. E-mail me if you want the originals and all the rest.