Top 10 interesting/useful things I have learned from hut life

1. Termites. They were everywhere in my kitchen and after countless of store bought products that only work temporarily (if they even work at all) I went with what the others around me do--rub gasoline all along the sticks. Eight months later and I have never once heard their humming while they eat my home.

2. What is the fastest way to de-feather a "running chicken", stick him in boiling, hot water for 15 minutes, but of course. Running chicken is what they call them here because you have to run to catch and eat 'em.

This was my annoying chicken-Pele

3. After months of practice I can successfully and thouroughly bathe myself using only 4.5 liters of water. The average person in an average 5-6 minute shower uses roughly 75 liters.

(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_water_is_used_in_a_shower)

4. There is a very large and scary looking black centipede found in Namibia, if you are ever stuck in a situation with an unclean, parasite infested water source you can carry one of those lil buggers with you. When poked, they coil up and excrete a liquid that is almost 100% iodine and can be used to purify water.

5. There are termite mounds found all over Namibia. German scientists have studied them to find that they have a natural air conditioning system that is able to keep the insides of the mound the same temperature 365 days a year, this is amazing considering the extreme desert climates in Namibia. The people here realized the remarkable characteristics of this natural phenomenon and combine the mounds with sand and water to build the hut that I am writing this from. Keeps me significantly cooler in the worst Namibian heat.

in front of the termite mounds (where black mambas like to hang out by the way, chris watch out!!)

6. Lime juice helps mask the extreme, nose pinching smell of ammonia that is an unavoidable when one has to use a pee bucket for 2 years...

7. Never pass up the cheek of a goat. Not only is it delicious but it is an honor to be offered part of the head.

8. When you are carrying water or laundry on your head, whether it be 10 L (me) or 25 L (them), it is less about keeping balance and much more about keeping your hips centered and in control.

         

9. After layers of filth and limited water usage, feet can only be completely cleaned by using a nice rough but flat edged rock...ignore the unattractive heal cracks that come as a result.

10. Lastly, if it is one of those nights where you are watching precious TV on your computer (downloaded from volunteers and passed around), sweating more than you ever thought possible and you watch a woman drink water with ICE CUBES and your mouth is watering for anything besides beans that take 4 hours to cook....the diarrhea pills Peace Corps provide taste like candy.

Hey Soul Sista

The time is finally here. The time when I can properly share my Namibian experience with a loved one back home, and that loved one just so happens to be one of my favorite human beings--Christine Gannon! She is arriving this Sunday, May 13th, and then the adventure begins. We will be hitch hiking all through Namibia, traveling to Botswana and Zambia,  and of course spending a decent chunk of time in my village with some of my new favorite human beings. Accommodation will range from ridiculously cool backpackers, dirt huts, a tent for two, and finish with a fancy hotel to end our trip in the bizzare German-like town of Swakopmund. We will of course be safe (MOM & DAD) and bring back lots of stories (HELEN) and will surely miss the 3rd Gannon sibling (SEAN).

our last trip to Africa---in swaziland

Hearth

Porridge. Every meal. 365 days a year.

Can you imagine an eating schedule like this? For the last 12 days my appointed "village mother" and I introduced a nutrition program with 6 new and delicious recipes to add some excitement to the taste buds of 7 Kayanga women and their babies. More important than the nice change of pace, food wise, was the protein that it supplied to the children.

Each day of the 2 week program began by finding women in the village who wanted to participate and whose babies fell into the moderately malnourished category, tested by a MUAC band. The MUAC band measures a child's Mid-Upper Arm Circumference and is a simple proxy to measure malnutrition. 

Each day of the program we started the day by fetching water, making the fire and washing our hands. Did you know that ash can be used as an alternative to soap? After a 30 minute session about healthcare, nutrition, contraceptives, or HIV, we would begin the cooking. I have seen the women cook porridge practically every single day; at my center, at my friend's homes, and with my host family, but it still never fails to impress me. Years of practice results in hands of steal, the ability to pick up the boiling hot pots, eyes that can handle the smoke, and such strong biceps for stirring the thick porridge. Whenever my eyes water from the intense smoke, when I squeal from touching the hot handle and when I get tired from stirring after 5 rotations they laugh and shoo me away, constantly thinking of me as fragile. Their jacked arms make it look easy while at the same time looking graceful in their beautifully patterned wrap around skirts.

It's funny that I was in charge of essentially a cooking course with these women, because I consider myself seriously challenged in the kitchen. I give my mom credit, she tried to teach me how to cook so many times, but I never cared. Namibia was the first time I flipped an omelet, boiled macaroni or even mashed my own potatoes (I lived off english muffins and cereal in college). So it felt nice that at the end of every new recipe when the women would gush over the new taste, accomplished by adding a single, simple ingredient such as; banana, peanut butter, cow's milk, eggs, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, mangos or beans.

So for 2 weeks we cooked, taught and fed. The children, ages 7 months to 5 years, were all in the moderately malnourished category except for one severely malnourished. This severely malnourished baby, Kanjenge, is 2 years and 4 months old, weighing in at only 5.5 kg (12 lbs) with hands and feet the same size as a 7 month old in the program. She quickly became one of my favorites because she was so delicate and adorable. By the end of the two week diet she gained 1.5 kg, moving her up to the moderately malnourished category and just 2.0 kg shy of her goal weight! The results for the whole group showed that 4/7 babies gained weight, 2 stayed the same and 1 lost 0.2 kg (we found out he had malaria half way through the program, which I am sure affected his progress).

I do not expect all of the women to immediately go home and cook these recipes day after day. That is a high expectation considering how they have not changed the taste of their porridge like...ever? I do hope they take the egg porridge one back with them, that one is the easiest and most accessible..everyone has chickens. I will check up on the same seven women and their children to see how they are progressing in one and three months. We are coming into a nice time of year when all the pumpkins are ready for picking and other vegetables will be available if people prepared well during the rainy season,which is now behind us. So, fingers crossed they keep gaining weight!

Hearth: Tackling Malnutrition

I just recently found out that Kayanga, the name of my village, means "little onion". This is oddly appropriate due to a recently developed bad habit of eating raw onions like apples. Food variety is limited and hard to come by; the majority of crops grown in the fields are maize meal and some green leafy vegetables. After five nights of rice and beans or porridge I turn to onions, the only store bought vegetable that lasts for weeks. The point is that people here, including yours truly, do not have access to nutritious foods or are not aware of their importance. One of my newest projects, the one I am most excited about, is a new nutrition initiative. My primary focus thus far has been geared towards HIV since my official job title is a Community Health and AIDS Prevention Volunteer and because it is such an obvious problem in Namibia. However, there is no denying the presence of malnutrition in Kayanga in even more abundance than HIV. It is an unnerving realization, but in a village with no clinic, no jobs or even a secondary school I am technically the most qualified health person living here (I may have to battle out with the traditional healers for that title though). And trust me, I only know the basics. But I do know what foods have protein, what protein is, and what a lack of it can do to a child, so I can pass on that knowledge. The best part is the nutrition program revolves 100% around the staple food here; porridge.

The nutrition program, Hearth, first tried out in West Africa, is designed to show women first hand how to better nourish their young by cooking and teaching with locally grown ingredients rich in protein. Eggs, for example, are readily available but never used to eat, only to produce more chickens to then kill. The reasoning behind it: a whole chicken will feed more people than an egg, makes complete sense. The challenge lies in proving to these woman that protein from an egg can better nourish the young child to avoid easily preventable illnesses and cut down on clinic fees, never mind the added stress of a sick child. This program is a two week challenge. An initial weighing of each child is done, followed by a 2 week feeding program completely designed around ingredients that are grown locally and not store bought, then an end weighing to see if the child gained weight. It is essentially the complete opposite of American weight loss reality shows.

combining the eggs and porridge

My favorite part of this program has been shocking people. I have spend a full year being the one being shocked and skeptical of things. When I informed the women we were going to put eggs in their porridge they were just humoring me by going along with the idea. But then we did it...and it tasted exactly the same, but with way more nutritional value! After that they started giving into my crazy ideas. Next, we tried yogurt next, from scratch! Even though I could have just hitch hiked the 170 km to town to buy milk, we did it the only plausible way women in Kayanga could...we milked the cow, added the active bacteria cultures, let it sit in the sun for a day and then boom-the most nutritious food for a baby with diarrhea. This feels a little late to have started this project because of two reasons; duh of course I should have been focusing my efforts on the malnutrition problem, but two...my mom wisely asked me months ago- “Don't they have milking cows? Why don’t they use the eggs?” So mom, giving you a some credit on this one.

Currently I am experimenting all the recipes with my fabulous women's group, with exciting ingredients such as; pumpkin, mangoes, beans, bananas, papayas and sweet potatoes. In April, I hope to bring the whole program out to a group of about 7-10 woman (working small scale) to begin combining the recipes with daily health sessions on; family planning, first aid, breastfeeding, hygiene, etc in combination with of course, the weight gain challenge. With this project I have had so much fun and fulfillment from seeing the other women gain confidence in themselves and their parenting. They read and follow the recipes all on their own, and after months of facilitating various health sessions, I get to sit in the background and watch them as they pass on that same knowledge to the young school girls; adding humor, dramas, local myths and real life scenarios that only they know best.

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!