And...I'm off!

This is my last blog entry, I am now officially a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer as of March 20^th, 2013. It's been an incredible journey, full of the expected ups and downs, some months more downs than ups. I can’t describe the feeling of saying goodbye to people that have become like family the last two years here. The going away party thrown by my center was so fun. There were lots of traditional singing, dancing and speeches made. You know it’s an important event when there is macaroni. Namibians for some reason love putting LOTS of mayo and ketchup with their macaroni. I know I have lived here for so long when I not only think this is delicious (carbs!), but that it is fancy. The macaroni combined with lots of cold soda made me feel like a big deal. To compliment the pasta was a smorgasbord board of meat; barbecued chicken gizzard, goat head, chicken feet, goat intestines and all the normal parts of an animal as well.

I realize that I am not only saying goodbye to wonderful people that welcomed me into their community but also to the lifestyle here. It is easier to describe the feeling of leaving my hut life rather than the people, that will be something I process for months to come. I am saying goodbye for it ever to be appropriate to dig a hole behind my hut and call it my bathroom. I am saying goodbye to all the interesting insects that build nests and come in through weird holes in my wall, goodbye to the mentality that every drop of water should be used efficiently, saying goodbye to my leaky thatch roof, the sound of roosters and goats every morning and my taco bed that I hate more than anything else.

Overall I say I am leaving just in time though, as my hut is sort of falling apart with the latest storm. I saw the biggest mamba snake I have seen yet slither out from under my bed last week and found the secret hole it came through. Plus I woke up to puddles on my floor this week due to the heavy rain. Time to go!

I want to thank you for sharing this experience with me, it was extremely therapeutic for me to write my emotions on here knowing that my friends and family were reading it back in RI and wherever. Tomorrow I fly off to Thailand, where I take a crazy five week trip with three best friends. I will see you all in May though!! Looking forward to some cheerios and cold milk every.single.morning!

the morning I left Kayanga

The Beginning of Goodbyes

The goodbyes have finally begun. This Sunday was my very last full weekend in the village, meaning my very last church service. I wanted to say a few goodbye words to the community: to the ones that taught me the seemingly mind boggling dance steps and with whom I mumbled my way through two years worth of gospel Thimbukushu songs.

After the two hour service that ended with a group prayer, I went to the front of the church to say my prepared speech in Thimbukushu. At the end of the speech there was the expected cheering and clapping. What was completely unexpected is what came afterwards. The priest and his wife, my friend Getu, instructed me to stay at the front. My dear friend Pakela started singing a song that loosely translates to ‘carry on, we will never forget you’. After one verse a man in the back came in with a lively drum beat then within seconds the whole congregation stood up from the hand-made benches and perfectly started in on the second verse. I awkwardly stood there for 30 seconds until Astrid, a member of my Women’s Group, slowly came up from the back bench to give me the traditional Namibian hug. It starts with a handshake then goes into a double hug, once to the right then once to the left. This prompted others to follow her lead. Before I knew it the entire room was lined up to hug me, all while still singing and dancing.

It only took until the fourth hug before I just started crying. I normally become embarrassed when my emotions get the best of me and when I am crying while no one else is. At this time and place, however, I found my emotions 100% appropriate. While still standing at the front and after hugging close to 75 people, I was able to take in what was really happening. I brought into focus what my last two years had been. Through all the lonely and sometimes difficult times, it was a beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing I have been honored to be a part of. Once they closed the song and I wiped my tears, I wrapped it up with the traditional, ‘ALALALLA’ call of celebration. I have always been to shy to start this call. It has the most contagious effect and right away the rest of the women followed suit in perfect harmony of the painfully high pitched shriek, all powered by the tongue and impossible to not smile while performing.

I say this probably because it is still so fresh in my mind and I am still on a little high from it, but it was one of my most favorite life moments. I hope to always remember this feeling of love from the amazing people of Kayanga.

A Tall Tale

This past Thursday word spread like wild fire that a man in the next village over, 4 miles away, was killed by an elephant. Elephants are known as very peaceful animals their ginormous size granting them a proportionately sized heart. I find death confusing in the village, as it is sometimes not treated as a big deal. However, when I was just as shocked as everyone else, I knew it was a big deal.

Elephants are known to bury their victims. People say they feel remorse for their actions, even if it was in self defense. They use their feet and trunk to dig a hole, then cover the body with leaves and branches. This body was found just like that, with elephant foot prints all around it. I'm told that this violent act is viewed as unforgivable from the rest of the elephant's herd, kicking him/her out forever.

Traditional Mbukushu beliefs say that when someone is attacked by an elephant, it is because they were wrongfully accusing someone of something. Or it could mean that this person's wife is pregnant (if this seems confusing...I'm right there with ya.)

Elephants seem to be very ritualistic beings. When one of their herd members dies (by natural causes or by man), each member takes turns touching the trunk of the deceased. Last year there was a baby elephant killed by a 18-wheeler truck on the tar road about 25 miles away from Kayanga. With a twist of fate the driver lived, while the ellie laid dead in the middle of the road. People heard the commotion and came out with their axes and bags to get a chunk of the rare and delicious meat. Even with it being a baby elephant, there was plenty of meat to go around. The meat was divided so fast that the baby elephant's mother and herd did not have time to come out to touch trunks and get closure. People said that consequently, the mother went on a rampage across the road, refusing to be scared away. I normally don’t believe everything I hear here, people have nothing but time on their hands to retell tall tales, but I believe this one.

My friend, Selma, got some of that meat during that event and invited me over. While we sat around the open fire and spicing the meat she dramatically and enthusiastically re-told the story of how she strategically got some of the meat without an ax on her (I believe it was her charming convincing skills). It ended up being my 24^th birthday weekend meal. And it was the best meat I have ever had.

Back to South Africa

After Christmas spent in the village, the four of us that slept in huts made our way down to enjoy some time in a very developed city, Cape Town. It took 9 hours of hitch hiking plus a 20 hour bus ride, but finally we arrived. First stop? McDonald's! (Well ,real first stop—shower).

I didn’t think anything could top my 2012 New Years in Zanzibar, but sure enough Cape Town lived up to the hype. Eight of us all stayed in one room at the well-rated backpackers. It was almost all of my group that I entered the country with. As our time quickly dwindles down, this was a great opportunity to spend an ample amount of time together. Every other place in Southern Africa we have visited has always been a constant reminder that we are the group of foreigners and we stand out. Cape Town had so many ethnicities that there was barely any of that, it was incredibly refreshing. Also in Cape Town, for the first time in 2 years we went shopping, I felt like I was in America. On New Years Day one shop offered us complementary champagne. At another shop we became such immediate friends with the employee that we had a group hug after he rang up our items. He actually leered us into his shop by jumping up and down yelling, “Come stop in my shop! Come in my shop!” when we walked by.

Table Mountain (Cape Town, South Africa)

Arrow points to the only guy left in our group!

The whole week we were able to eat tons of different types of food-Ethiopian, Indian, some great street meat, and then of course...lots of McDonald’s. We all climbed Table Mountain as well. This was harder then expected considering none of us have climbed stairs to work our quads in the last two years (Namibia as a country just does not have stairs!). New Years Eve consisted of lots 
of dancing, dressing up like we were in America and toasting to the last 3 months of our service in Namibia. My New Years resolution last year was to empty my pee bucket more regularly (I did well on that one, until I eventually just burned the thing altogether). This year it is to be less forgetful, more responsible.

 

Christina needed her inhaler after vineyard #3

biking through the beautiful vineyards

After Cape Town we were able to take 3 extra days to visit Stellenbosch, wine country. It was great to be back in Stellenbosch, where I studied abroad 4 years ago, but I quickly learned that I was unable to recreate the memories that I had during my study abroad trip. So we made some new memories, like taking a wine tour...on bikes. Our friend, Janice, convinced us to do it. She is a triathlete and probably had not consumed as much McDonald’s as we had that week, so she led far ahead the whole way. It was so much fun. So much fun that 4 of us had to beg a taxi driver to take us and our bikes back to avoid the hills back to town.

As usual, I will recount my first impressions of returning from such a high class, crazy fun vacation back to the village life. I actually had a conversation the other day about returning back home after a long vacation with an American. In America you come home late from traveling, there are too many missed emails plus just none of the essentials in the fridge. For village life, however, it is common for my mice to start a collection of their poop...all over my sheets. There is dirt and straw everywhere due to wind blowing it through the cracks. The weeds have grown waist high in my bathing station because of all the rain. And lastly, I seem to have at least 3 more chickens in my flock then I left the vacation with. All this still doesn’t compare to the maggot infestation and termite infestation I came back to last year (two separate occasions, thank God).

Even with my complaining I will miss this life. My village and hut just have so much character! Happy 2013 Everyone!!

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

My supervisor, the unofficial mayor of Kayanga, has been working on her shebeen (local bar and shop) for over a year now. When she announced that the grand opening would be Christmas Eve, people immediately starting saving their coins and fattening up their goats. Almost the whole village, plus lots of outsiders, attended the party.

Three other Peace Corps friends, from all over the country, came to join the celebration. Christmas Eve started with the slaughtering of multiple animals, all to sell at the shebeen that night. Then there was the unexpected python that came through the courtyard, that one brave soul bashed on the head. Pythons are actually not venomous but they are dangerous constrictors, I had the guy save me some skin to make bracelets. That night seemed to go by in a flash, all of a sudden it was 2 am and we had danced our way through Christmas! The highlight of the night for me was when my host father, Febian, got his hand on the microphone. This is the man that I lived with for 4 months, see every week and still he barely speaks to me. But put a few beers in him and he becomes the life of the party. He gets on the mic and starts rapping in a low voice, “Jackie, Kayanga. Jackie, Kayanga” over and over for about 3 minutes! I felt like a celebrity, and I danced along with everyone else to my own theme song.

Christmas day was spent with apples, sandwiches and not enough sunscreen at the Kavango River, with Angola a stone's throw away. The plan was to spice up our holiday and head over to Angola in a traditional canoe. However with the recent croc sightings plus the gun shot we heard, we decided to stay on the Nam side. For dinner, we collected some fire wood, fetched our water from the borehole, opened wine brought from town and started preparing our weird Christmas dinner. The meal consisted of beans and rice and for desert, Velveta Macaroni and Cheese (that Christina received from America!). We cooked over an open fire, ate from one communal pot, drank our wine from tin cans turned into cups, sat on carved out tree stumps, all under the sky full of stars that night. We agreed it was probably one of the weirder Christmases we will ever have.


Christmas dinner


the sheben, where the dancing didn't stop until past 5 am


Susana and her completed work!!


Trying to bring some Christmas spirit to the desert country