Oh you fancy huh

Almost one year ago I was preparing to leave for Namibia and trying, and failing, to picture how my life would be. I assumed that every single day would be a constant reminder that I was away from the entire life I had built back in Rhode Island. Oddly enough, things have become really regular now, in a good way. It's pretty great that I can wake up at 7 am by the school kids singing their morning songs and instead of me walking out my dirt hut, to a herd of chickens pecking around my yard, being like "I'M IN AFRICA?"' it's more, "I'm late, do I have time to wash my feet??"

The other day, however, I was able to step back and think of how my someone back home would react to my situation if they were sitting their right next to me (hopefully collecting just as much back sweat as me as opposed to my fellow Namibians, who do not sweat!). It was during one of our monthly meetings when someone from the closest town comes in to check our reporting. To paint the picture: we are 17 in the project, all sitting in a circle on our shetenge skirts that double as mats on the sand, under the big tree waiting for the visitors. The visitors pull up in their car and we stand to start the welcome song. The two regular men hop out of the car, but with them is a lady wearing a fancy work suit. They go around the circle to greet each person individually, it takes 10 minutes. They sit on down on the straw mat (brought out just for them) and the fancy lady looks slightly uncomfortable. We find out that she is from the city and does not understand my project member's native tongue. The meeting starts with the opening prayer and then proceeds as normal, except this time I tried to see it through her eyes. There are babies...everywhere. All of us in the circle don’t ever watch the man who is speaking we just watch the babies play and eat sand in the middle of our circle. And then when one starts to cry the mother grabs him/her, and starts breastfeeding. Full breast showing. The man is going on and on and I never ever listen because the Thimbukushu is so fast there, the 3 or 4 times my name is said I perk up and just say 'ihii ihii' (which is like the 'hmmm hmmm yes'). And then a herd of goats interrupt our meeting. They don’t intrude just with their 'baaa-ing', they actually come running right through the middle of our circle. The lady jumps up, and I don’t blame her. One year ago I would have had the same reaction while searching everyone's eyes to see if anyone else is as weirded out as I am. But this lady is the only one even flinching. Andrias (a village man perfect in snake freak-out moments) takes control of the goats and herds them to the other side of the fence.

The meeting continues for another 3 hours until the closing prayer and the town group leaves. I am guessing that the woman is grateful to be on her way back to a her regular life. That is an emotion I am familiar with. Previously, every time I just felt uncomfortable or was being gawked at I wanted to go into town to be with friends or at least have an American buddy next to me to easy the awkwardness. But now that unfamiliar feeling is just my normal. And don’t get me wrong, I still face uncomfortable situations all the time or have the feeling that I need to get out of the village (and eat carbs!) but I always always am so happy to come back to my friends, my kids, the old meme's and ya, even the village crazy.

 

Kayanga Characters

If my life in Kayanga were made into a TV show I am sure of which people would get the most air time. The best part is that these ridiculous and wonderful people who I have met here have become such a normal part of my life that the bizarre interactions and conversations don’t faze me anymore.

First we have Stephanus, he is the good village crazy (yes, there is a bad one). He is also nicknamed "nam water" because he is constantly fetching water for anyone that will give him 2 Namibian dollars  that he then can go spend on traditional beer. He will come visit me to say hi, talk about something random, not let me speak, and walk away while screaming "you are my sister, Jackie. You are my family, we are Mbukushu!" Then once he is gone I can go back to what I was doing 20 minutes before he barged in. He can also be extremely helpful; offering to weed my yard to keep the snakes away, helping me fix my reed fence because goats are always scratching themselves against it or parading through, and on a couple occasions coming over just to demand I eat the cow tongue he is offering me or try to sell me "piggy meat". He walks around the village like he is a military Sargent, yelling random orders at people so you would think he was very angry, even the way he yells my name sounds like he is furious with me, but that is just how his voice is.

Another well known Kayangian is my host grandmother, Letesia. I knew when I first met her several months ago when I first got to my site, that would get along. It's sort of impossible for me to ever converse with her because her Thimbukushu is so old school/traditional that I can't grasp it. At any point in the day you will see her sitting under her tree, which can only be known as Letesia's Tree, sometimes selling the traditional beer or the occasional cow meat, but most times just sitting with chickens all around her. She will do random activities like swat bushes or rake the same spot over and over again. If I get bored I go and sit with her and she doesn't mind that we never talk much.

Entertainment is hard to come by. I get to spend countless hours hanging around the local shop after work while I sip a cool drink and people laugh at my Thimbukushu or even I just sit there and listen to their banter that I understand only 30% of. If I get tired of that I go and play with the group of kids always lingering around the shop. We play with the soccer ball they made out of plastic bags and a mere elastic band. Things are pretty simple here.

Letisia, at her tree obviously

New Year Resolutions

Now that I am getting settled into work again in the new year I have a little bit more freedom to decide which work I want to focus on, with almost a year under my belt. I think teaching at the kindergarten brings equal amounts of frustrations and joy. The kids gave me a quick 'in' into the community and even though sometimes I feel like a babysitter, nourishing kids while they're young is so significant, especially when I don't see education stressed in their home settings. Since I was able to get to know all the toddlers in Kayanga so well, I reap the benefits of every time I walk somewhere groups of them run from their huts to give me hugs. In this new year, however, I am slowly stepping back from that, to allow someone else to step up.

The problem with limiting my work at the kindergarten every morning is that I have more down time, which means I am expected to find my own work. My center is made up of a hut with 2 huge kettle pots and a half finished brick building, there is no boss to report to at 8 am, no clocking in, no emails to check, no fiddling on the computer to even pretend like I am working. So I am out in the community, having my meetings after school with my girls group and dance group, and out under the tree with my woman's group and then...everything else is up in the air. I knew this was part of the deal when I signed up for Peace Corps, never having the satisfaction that comes from job regularity. One could think that being a year into service I would be an expert in the way of my fellow Kayangians but still, there are times I always feel a step behind. For example, I expected the rainy season to obviously bring lots of rain, but what I didn’t account for are the hours and hours that go into plowing for the few morning hours when it is dry. Then everyone seeks shelter under their thatch roofs for the rest of the day. Literally no one is outside, and I can understand why, it is just down pouring the whole day. I guess this is Africa's version of a snow storm that the trucks can't clear by rush hour. My center is completely volunteer based and I can see the effort the women put in to the center when that is not their form of income, they completely live off their livestock and fields. Knowing that the woman are taking time out of raising their family, plowing their fields and all of their daily chores makes it easier to accept my role as a volunteer, we are all on the same page and all receiving the same benefits (aka no money and only personal gratification). It also makes the day better because they sing while they work. I shouldn't expect the woman to work at my convenience when every single year from Dec to April this is what they do. So I target the work that I can, and try not to beat myself over the things I can't control.

I won't sell myself short and say that I am not doing any work here, I left 2011 being proud of what was done and I am very excited about my ideas for 2012, but it's intimidating waking up and knowing the day will only be what you make of it. No one will reprimand me if I just read out by the river all day, or even if I take a trip to my friends place 20 km away. After weeks of that behavior my center would mind, but I essentially have the liberty of working what and when ever I wish. That's a lot of power that I could really abuse. When I was speaking to my dad the other day he said something that put me at ease, essentially living where I am is working. One of the goals in Peace Corps is exchanging cultures, so by me washing my clothes with my friends, listening to their stories or practicing English with the kids while I am at the shop, that is me working. It's certainly not a 9-5, but I am trying to find the balance between setting the bar too high, to avoid a big let down, but never feeling too comfortable with my efforts. 

Namibian Loyalty

I was forewarned that the months in between crop seasons brings tougher times for families in Kayanga. Those that didn't ration their food supply simply just...don't have food. As a result, there are more people getting sick and more people dying. Even knowing all this it is still shocking the amount of funerals just in my village. I have only attended about half of them, and still that is more funerals I ever thought could be packed into a four month period. Despite having attended countless funerals (I even mentally block Saturday mornings off for the chance they will come up), I have not felt personally connected to any of them. They were people that I saw, but no one I interacted with personally or regularly. That sounds heartless, but for me, wearing the traditional shetenges and walking to the river with the funeral procession is more feeling a unity with the rest of the community.

The reality of the season that we are in right now hit me last week when I was at a memorial service at the homestead right next to mine (homestead is where a group of huts in the same compound with extended family members live). We were all sitting outside with a candle in the middle, separating the men from the women, when my closest friend, Selma, abruptly left. I didn't think much of it, thinking she was called to help serve the food. Minutes later I found out that her aunt had just passed away. The deaths are back to back, and this was the first one I felt very affected by. Selma and her older sister, Isabella, were my first friends here and now are my closest friends. Their younger sister is one of the stars on my dance team. I teach their 4 children in my kindergarten. Their now deceased aunt, Miltread, first taught me how to carry water on my head and cared for me when I was sick with food poisoning. I have grown to really love their whole family, and they refer to me as their sister.

What I really have come to admire so much is the loyalty here. I am their sister simply because those that live, eat, grieve, and share with them are their sisters. I have long stopped trying to figure out the family connections. Everybody is family, whether it be biological or not. And in an area where polygamous relationships are common, this ideal is even more amplified. I come from a small town, where at graduation it is known that the kid sitting in the aisle seat is the one who puked at the roller rink in third grade, and the one next to me, I helped him after he broke his nose at the town's sledding hot spot way back when. We had schooled together since pre-school, there is history there. In Kayanga it is similar, except that history equates to family. Any money you make is shared, any food you have is communal, babies are raised by the entire homestead, and the people here are contained in a small pocket of Namibia trying to keep hold of their culture and their precious Bantu language. 

Zanzibar is Very Far

If traveling through Africa was a contact sport, my travel group relay team would win. There were so many different modes of transportation all back to back to back to back that went into the epic adventure that led us to the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania The first leg of the travels meant hitch hiking as a group of 4 to a completely separate country, very unpredictable and requires us to be at the complete mercy to whoever passes by. This first stop was to Zambia. After getting a ride with a nice man from Uganda who brought us all the way to the Zambian border, we hopped on a 10 hour overnight bus, which was a piece of cake compared to the next part. This is not the opinion of the one person in our travel group responsible for demanding the bus to stop for a bathroom emergency. Next was the 48 hour train ride, where water ran out in the first 12 hours. The train compartment fit 6 people with 3 beds stacked on top of each other. It turned into a test of how comfortable you can be with your own odor and 5 other people's odor when crammed into a room right in the middle of African summer. It was a tough call, but I had to choose hydrating myself instead of proper teeth hygiene with the limited water I brought on-board (as again, the train was out of water!). I was approximately 5 hours off from putting a bag over my head out of pure disgust with myself, I will not even get into the questionable rashes all of us picked up from the train beds. After all this we arrived in Dar Se Lam, the capital of Tanzania, and paid our ferry fee for the last mode of transport before paradise. Even after living my entire life 10 minutes from the ocean, I still got sea sickness on this ferry. But it didn't matter at that point because after 6 straight days of travel, we had arrived in ZANZIBAR.

The travels were not actually all that bad, I would say 80% of it was pure adventure and fun times. Each day on the train we were woken up by little Zambian/Tanzanian kids (depending on which country we were in at that moment) saying "mango, mango, mango" through our train window and us just buying breakfast like it was a fast food take out window...from our beds. All the ridiculousness of getting lost, constantly switching and exchanging 4 different currencies (yes, 4!), being so deliriously tired that everything is hilarious and feeling like I really traveled and saw southern/central Africa made getting to Zanzibar a trip all in itself.

I have never been to a tropical destination where I can spend the afternoon buying fruity drinks on the beach while a nice woman decorates my hand with henna tattoo, and then when I feel hungry I go to a hut right up from the beach with a sign "Mama Africa" and order my food of choice, the traditional porridge of course. Our very first night in Zanzibar we ran into people who invited us out on their boat and we were like..."um...let me think about that...OK YES". All of a sudden we find ourselves right out in the Indian ocean, far off the shore where a small boat brought us to a bigger boat where clearly people had been partying all afternoon. I think I caught a little glimpse of how P. Diddy lives. It was fabulous and we even were on the boat with other Peace Corps Volunteers from Zambia. We were served tasty Tanzanian beer and goat testicles, which were surprisingly phenomenal...would eat again for sure. I rang in the New Year with Peace Corps friends.

Oh, and we saw Victoria Falls in Zambia on the way! One of the 7 Wonder of the World:

The rest of the trip was spent eating fantastic seafood, laying out by the beach, snorkeling, seeing all the sights and more or less living the complete opposite life of a Peace Corps Volunteer. This vast difference makes the return back to the village all the more difficult. I have said this and felt this way since being here, any amount more than 2 days spent outside the village makes it so hard to come back. Not because I don’t like Kayanga and the people here, but because I am only human and I prefer things like...drinking cold water, not peeing in a bucket, and blah blah blah. Also, I normally come back to situation that a Namibian would think of as normal but I initially perceive as an extreme dilemma; flooding, termites, snakes, new big holes, and blah blah blah. After getting both bombarded and blessed by too so many meme's (what we call older women in the village), formal greetings to all the elder men, and fun hugs to the little kids, I was informed that the roof to my new classroom came off in a storm. This is a..problem...but fixable, and not to sound selfish but I am glad it wasn’t my own hut. I know I would have started crying right then and there if my own hut was destroyed. I have become very attached to my hut. It's the first place I have been able to take full ownership of. The more relevant problem they informed me of pertained to my clean water source, which was no more. Borehole:broken. This means walking the extra 40 minutes walking to and from the river, and technically after lugging that water back I have to wait 2 days before I can drink it in order for the parasites to die. Slap in the face from going from luxurious private bungalow with fresh papaya and pineapple served to us every morning, to trying to avoid the schistosomiasis parasite. I am a creature of habit and got way too used to living it up with my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, who I will still be friends with when I'm 80, but now it's back to reality. It will take a couple weeks to adjust again but I got this, I am almost half done with my service and feel strong!

Merry Christmas from Namibia

This is my last post before the holidays, as I will be without internet and leaving SO soon for my big December holiday to Zanzibar, Tanzania. Even though the trip will probably be once in a lifetime; hitch hiking across southern Africa with great friends I have made here and a 48 hour train ride (one way) makes getting there an adventure in itself...there are still so many things I will miss at home in Rhode Island. Merry Early Christmas to everyone at home!

last year's Christmas dinner

last years Christmas, waiting 2 days before xmas to get the tree, in the pouring rain

strategically photographing dad because he didnt want his bum leg in a cast to show

inseparable VanHerwarde Girls

Little glimpse at the trip I will be taking. The train goes so slowly that you can buy fruit out of the windows!

World AIDS Day

       2011. Getting to Zero. That was this years theme, goal, message and expectation for World AIDS Day. Zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS related deaths and zero discrimination. It is a tall order and the bar for success is now set very high. World wide how do we actually implement this mentality? In Kayanga, a small village that doesn't even make it on Google maps, took a small step towards this goal. It was an entire community involvement, one that I was not able to fully see until I took a step back.

       The night before the event I watched as the woman's group practiced their drama and songs outside the church, the woman in charge of cooking were off to the far right, all in a line carrying water back in preparation for the next days cooking, and then the men and I caring to the cow. I witnessed from start to finish how they prepare beef, village style. I won't go into details in case it grosses people out or in case PETA stumbles across this blog, but I ended the night with my friend Peggy cooking our noodles in my kitchen hut while an ENTIRE cut up cow was lying next to us on an tin plate they use for some roofs just chilling right in my kitchen. It was placed on aluminium sheet and the raw meat was still pulsing from the cow having been killed an hour before. 

       The day's program went off without any big glitches. The day showcased the great skills from the dance group, pre-primary kids singing traditional songs, Catholic woman's choir busting out not only song and dance, but a theatrical performance, and then the girl's group brought to life some of the the biggest drivers of the HIV epidemic through skits. Speeches from the headman, the HIV counselor and people from New Start Clinic brought motivation and high expectations to increase HIV testing in the area and reducing deaths due to AIDS. We were able to bring testing directly to the people, something that is not normally done without proper refrigeration/electricity. The testing crew brought enough supplies for close to 50 tests but had to go get more when almost 200 people were lined to get tested. That is an insane number for one day, in one village, in a semi-public setting. Even more important is not necessarily the quantity of people but that men, young, men were getting standing in line getting tested among the older men and woman, both young and old.

        The day ended with a meal of porridge and beef that fed all that attended, face painting with wonderful friends that helped out, a raffle that people went nuts over, the ceremonial hand off of the cow head to the headman, a phenomenal dance circle to some great Namibian jams, and an AIDS mural that made for a well rounded day. It may seem like the highlight of this event was the number of people that found out their status, but what also was a big deal were the youth, that were such an integral part of the program, got a chance got to express themselves through song, dance, and drama. I hope the community as a whole got a little push to raise the bar and to that the event gave kids an essential confidence boost, which is a form of HIV prevention in itself.

Kadiko Yuva (I DONT UNDERSTAND!)

        Nine months in and I just bought a second pillow! This is a really lame thing to blog about. But to me the pillow shows actual investment in living here, making my life comfortable and really doing this. If the year long application/waiting process, saying goodbye to everyone I know for 2 years, the 27 hour plane ride, the 2 month training and tackling language barriers to form friendships wasn’t enough commitment, this did it in. Also, my bed it terribly uncomfortable—ever since the one time I got food poisoning and literally spend 24 straight hours not moving in bed (only shifting to puke) it left a very distinct and irreversible dip in my cheap thin mattress. I call it my taco bed.

          At 9 months in I assumed I would be fluent in Thimbukushu, or at least close to it. This was a stupid expectation since I was pretty bad at languages in high school. I have certainly progressed from when I first arrived…all the embarrassing mix-ups I had that I am sure people laughed about behind my back…in a loving way. For example; announcing I had ‘diarrhea’ instead of a simple ‘stomach ache’ to a group of giggly teenagers is cringe worthy, or how for a whole week I yelled at the pre-primary kids to ‘SPINACH SPINACH’ instead of the more appropriate, ‘LISTEN LISTEN’. (traditional spinach is mutete/listen is muterere). I do alright now with the language, just alright. I am used to not knowing what is going on with conversations, but when I feel most left out is when I am around girls my own age. The opportunity for friendship is there, but I am only able to just brush the surface of topics. Someone who has been in a situation similar to mine put it nicely with language barriers, you miss being able to have fun and be spontaneous when speaking and conversing (shout out Mrs. McNamera!). I don’t understand jokes made, I can’t make my own jokes or discuss complex thoughts/observations. It is why when I meet up with other volunteers and I get overwhelmed by how much I want to say so it all comes out in very jumbled thoughts.

Instead of talking with the girls my age, I join them for netball. Netball is played a little like basketball, without the dribbling and you can only take three steps at a time. You may think that this would be great way to bond with people, similar to my dance group where no language needed when playing. But netball is weird and I don’t really understand the rules. When they yell instructions at me in Thimbukushu (and they yell) I would almost just rather watch. They won't let me just watch though, which is good and bad. I want to tell them that I used to be good at sports, but I don’t think they would believe me because even I know I look very awkward out there. However, I will persevere and I will continue to embarrass myself! Last week I made a basket and both teams cheered, but only because the previous 45 minutes I kept messing up.

Here are the people in Namibia I can rely on to understand me when I talk at warp speed, no translators needed...

dancin' fools

I have totally not given enough attention to the kids in my dance group. This is the group my friend, Peggy, and I started in my village. Peggy lives 15 km away and gets a ride in once a week to help teach the class. We have a big performance coming up for World AIDS Day on December 3rd and I don’t know who is more nervous, me or the kids! Even though dancing is supposed to be a free-spirited, stress reliever activity, it was still difficult getting them out of their shell. There was a period  when week after week Peggy and I would wonder "how have we been practicing this for months and they still look uncomfortable with it?!" I guess even though they can move their shoulders and hips like lil African Shakiras to the beat of the drum, it’s different when it’s choreographed group dance steps. Below is the church that the priest let's us practice in sometimes. 

A performance of my dance kids using the shetenge clothes as dancing prompts!

But as of last week I was so proud! They are ready for the big performance and I think Peggy and I are performing with them for one of the dances ...I am counting on looking like a fool. It’s really fun seeing the kids excited about something, all eyes will be on them doing something they have worked hard on. The event will include multiple groups performing: a drama; songs; and dances. I am even having the lil youngsters from the kindergarten sing both Thimbukushu songs and English songs. The only English song they know without any prompting from me is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", which of course has no relevance to AIDS but is precious none-the-less. I never want those kids to leave me and go to grade 1! There is a lot of pressure for the event because the headman in attending along with the majority of the village. The cow we are slaughtering should feed hundreds, so I hope the event will be legitimate. We will also be having HIV testing going on all day on site, the first time ever testing will be brought to the village. We hope this will increase testing numbers since it is a very far walk to get tested at the hospital. I am nervous and forgot what this type of pressure felt like...its been a while. Will post pics after the event!

Gobble Gobble

It's hard to pinpoint what I want to write about this time because there are always so many different directions to go. Let's start with Thanksgiving, First major holiday I have had to spend alone (sorry 4th of July, I totally forgot about you). The weekend before the actual day I had some pretty stellar replacements to keep me company, but certainly missed the usual crowd back home. We bought an expensive turkey (apparently shipped from Brazil?) that made it's way into our shopping town's grocery store, stuffing from America, and other goodies in between. But, just to remind us that it was definitely not a American thanksgiving, below is a picture from the a herd of hippos out in the river.

The view of hippos from the window

The actual night of Thanksgiving was much different. I went to bed without dinner because of more pressing matters. I have already done a snake entry so I won't be too long on this but this time it was way scarier! The mamba (it was a mamba this time!!) in my room and it came out from under my bed WHILE I was sitting on my floor making friendship bracelets. I was a straight damsel in distress, screaming and I even flailed my arms a little. A group of men came and took over the situation while I texted all my volunteer friends describing my very un-American Thanksgiving night.

The long anticipated rainy season is what is bringing out all the snakes. They seek shelter in my hut to escape the rain, while I seek shelter under my mosquito net. The net has been my savior, along with my rain-turned-snake-boots my mom bought me from Marshalls right before I left. Mom, they have been useful in a way we didn't quite predict. Every night from 7:30 pm onward, I literally cocoon myself under the net to prevent getting attacked by 8 different species of scary insects. The one positive thing the change in season has brought is the urgent need for the men to finish my classroom. As of this post, it's done! No more teaching under a tree with school attendance dependent on the weather. Only 5 months late, but considering the construction man was only working for a bowl of soft porridge a day I say its OK and pretty amazing the work it took.