Lose of Sanity and Sanitation

When my wonderful family visited me last month they not only graced me with their presence (and much needed piece of home) but also stocked their suitcases with yummy, yummy treats. Per request, they flew with; maple syrup, mac n cheese, m&m's, tuna, cliff bars and pancake mix.

I love pancakes, more than any other food. In college my dad bought me a big skillet for my 21^st birthday, specifically for making pancakes.

Pancakes remind me of all my family coming back after church every Sunday and hanging in the kitchen while my dad made a huge batch; adding choc chips for me, apple for Christine and mom, and 6 servings of bacon for Sean. It reminds me of the nights in high school when Mom was distraught on what to cook us for dinner so every time we convinced her breakfast for dinner.

After my whole family left Namibia I grew slightly homesick. I am so far into my service (19 months, about to celebrate my second birthday!) and was just given a taste of all the love I left back home only to have it leave after a short 4,000 km trip. But at least I have the pancake mix, right?! My thoughts exactly. So this past week I, like a newbie to hut life, left it out uncovered in my kitchen hut after using it a few days before. Well...a sneaky mouse cleverly hopped in (without ever knocking it over) and left 4 'lil nuggets behind. I was in a serious dilemma. Do I throw out the whole package knowing the mouse was hopping around in the mixture? Or do I just scoop the poop and indulge in my coveted treat that symbolizes so much more than just pancakes?

After consulting my friend Tracy (and ignoring my friend Christina), I scooped the poop.

But that's not all!

I have really cute hangers for all my kitchen utensils (can opener, knife, spatula, strainer, vegetable peeler, etc) from bits of reeds that I cut short. So my spatula hangs off my reed wall and, due to lack of running water, sometimes does not get washed after every single use. Such was the case with the 'scoop the poop pancake mix'. I made my first pancake, and after I flipped my second I noticed ants scurrying all over my shirt. I look at my spatula and notice them everywhere. Food particles from the last use attracted the ants and I unknowingly fried a whole load of them into my precious pancakes. Still determined to eat them, I went ahead and picked out about 30 dead, fried ants out of them (and probably missed a good number more...)

When coated with Aunt Jemima they were as delicious as in America.

 

Whaaaa???

What is it that Americans believe to be good luck; finding a penny heads side up, discovering a 4 leafed clover among 3 leafed nobodies, and then the weird one about bird poo falling on your head. Here in Namibia, I had the pleasure of learning that a chicken laying an egg on your bed is a very, very good luck (specifically for a woman's fertility). To quote my friend Pakela, “chicken egg in your bed?! It means good luck for five years and soon a fetus in your belly!”

And it happened to me, TWICE!

The bold, lil' pecker sneaked into my hut, hopped on my bed and let nature take its course. The first time I only found the egg and was obviously extremely baffled. The second time I caught the chicken red handed and, as someone who has never birthed a baby or an egg, was understanding enough to not interrupt the process. I let her have her 15 minutes of peace while she lay her egg in the same spot I lay my head each night. It was surprisingly a very clean process.

A friend, Geri, that recently moved a village nearby along the same dirt road was visiting when we both discovered egg #1 and egg #2. Geri is also female, short and white so unfortunately having arrived a year after the first white girl means she gets called Jackie too often. I enjoy having a friend and fellow American close to me for many reasons. One of the top reasons is that this girl can cook! So we took the precious eggs that sat comfortably on my sleeping bag and whipped up an egg, tuna, cornflakes, onion mixture and fried them into patties. Pair it with some chutney sauce and it was an exact replica of McDonalds chicken nuggets with sweet n sour sauce.

(After 19 months without fast food this may not be as accurate as I am depicting but delicious nonetheless). I would say good luck traditions in Namibia are a lot more fun than in America, it was such a nice treat on a Tuesday afternoon.

Building My Resume

I can now add PC Construction worker; specialty in cementing floors, to my resume. This past week, the Thabita women and myself worked hard to complete our sewing building's floor. I say this with almost all elements in my Namibian life; travel, water, electricity, food, cleanliness, time, etc, but I will never take cement floors for granted again! That's probably not true. When I get back to the States, I will most likely never stop to admire how smooth the machines have made the floor or how nicely it meets the wall.

In all seriousness though, imagine cementing an entire building by hand. No machine mixers, no tools to lie it, and no overtime pay if it takes you from 8 am to 8 pm.

We began the preparation a while ago, by gathering the small stones, roughly half a truck bed full in total. Then we (not me, the men) dug a hole so deep that if I ever fell in I would never, ever be able to get out and consequently die of hunger. Since Namibia's landscape is sand, everywhere, we needed to dig for the nice deep sand with moisture. Once we received money for the cement bags, we combined the three. This is probably boring, about how to mix cement, but I had no idea how to do it. It took a few hours to mix it and make a looot of it. Then we had to fetch enough water to fill about 8 big, big trash bins of water.

So. Much. Fetching.

I sort of appointed myself the errand girl because I was useless with the mixing. While all the women did the prep work, three men were spreading the cement. It got real tricky towards the end when 9 people were in one room working, only able to step in the small space not cemented yet. I excused myself for a fake toilet run. I refused to be the girl to screw up days worth of work by tripping over a bucket to fall in the wet cement. At the end I tried to explain that we should put our hand prints in the corner before it all dried, just like my dad did with us when our garage was being made. The motive was lost in translation. That day the construction crew treated ourselves to a delicious meal. Nice meat, lots of porridge and the exciting splurge of cokes and fantas.

This means that our building, which was started last August, is one step closer to being done. We were also approved for the grant to install electricity, provide tin for the classroom roof, and new sewing machines to get this sewing party started. My hope is that by December we will be all done and stitching up the uniforms for the students to start the next term looking sharp.

Kalehari Ferrari

Lesson in African driving--ELEPHANTS ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY:

4,000 km from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to the Namibian sand dunes! Mom and Dad at the wheel, Helen in the back snappin' pics and me with the map giving us shotty directions. It was my first road trip and a serious, serious adventure. African road trips require driving only during daylight hours, because elephants and cattle are all too common up north. We saw so, so many animals that some of the reoccurring ones became no big deal. Mom was even quoted saying, “I'm taking a nap, don’t wake me for baboons or springboks”. What a Safari Snob, right?!



Kayanga Dinner

The trip started with a straight drive to my village, took more than a day but we made it in time to have dinner with my women's group. My parents and Aunt Helen mastered the culturally respectful Thimbukushu greetings and no-left hand rule, and we had a delicious and filling meal of porridge and chicken. Kids ran wild around the fire while my family stared in awe when Selma cooked the porridge; touching the boiling hot pot with bare hands and readjusting the firewood heat as if they were knobs on an oven. After the 4 of us sleeping in my one hut that night, we all went to my center where they helped teach, sing songs, dance and read to the 40+ kids that were there that day. Kayanga included trips to the river, the borehole and the garden to help plant more onion beds.

Helen and I in front of my kitchen hut (where dad knocked his head and bled for a day!)

After Kayanga, we headed straight to Botswana. Our only rip off of the trip came when a guy demanded 200 Namibian dollars to cross the border. We went to Chobe in Botswana, which has the largest concentration of elephants in the world and just about every other animal that appears in the Lion King. While in Botswana, we took a day trip to Zimbabwe to Victoria Falls, ya know, might as well check out one of the 7 Wonders of the World while in the area. We got soaked and ate our PB and J's overlooking the double rainbow at the falls, hard to believe but that wasn’t even our best lunch of the trip. My mom befriended a man named Tomato after he claimed to be the king of the the Zim/Zam border. Then that night we ate our dinner next to the river and listened to the pod of hippos right by our lodge.



rare sighting

After Zimbabwe and Botswana we returned to the Land of the Brave, Namibia. In Etosha, Namibia's famous game park, we got to see the highest form of Survival of the Fittest, where the animals who have managed to survive do so in such extreme desert conditions that a parade of 25 seven ton elephants becomes even more impressive. Check out this leap of leopards we spotted! That night at Etosha, the staff of our lodge surprised my dad with a birthday cake at dinner paired with a 10 minute serenade of traditional songs. The cake was so good that Mom was still talking about it a week later. We were able to share the cake with the entire dining room too and made some friends.



mom and I on the sand dunes!

This is getting long and I feel there is still so much left to say, sand dunes were one of the last big events, and quickly turned into my favorite event. Sandwhich Harbor is a remote, hard to get to spot where high sand dunes meet up with the Atlantic Ocean, it's incredible. But us Gannons, so flexible and just wingin' it, did not read the description in our travel book. So, we pack our credit cards and jackets for what we assume is a nice day out by the harbor where we can grab a nice lunch. It actually turned into one of the scariest things I have done, in life...and that includes bungee jumping off the highest bridge in the world. Bungee lasted maybe 3 minutes, but this was 5 hours in a 4x4 going straight up and straight down double black diamond sand dunes with an insane and fearless driver out in the middle of freakin NO WHERE. Our credit cards were clearly useless. Then Ernest, our crazy and old driver Earnest, suggested a walk in the dunes. Well that turned into 2 hours of walking up and down dunes so steep that you were climbing with all 4's without bending over because our hands were that close to the sand. At one point us Gannon's got separated from the other 4 people in the group. It was so, so fun though. Oh and the best part was Earnest packed a gourmet lunch, set out chairs, table, silver wear and plates with a 3 course meal plus dessert. We were the only people for miles and miles and milesssss out in the middle of the desert. THAT was the best lunch.



The only hiccup of the trip came when trying to make it to our next destination. We busted the car's oil pan. Hard to properly convey here, but someone was looking out for us on that ride because we barely made it to the only gas station in a 300 km stretch of dirt road without losing all the car's oil. Mechanic suggested we stay overnight, so we checked ourselves into the gas station/bar/lodge and came to terms with having to miss our last big adventure (which was actually just more sand dunes, but really famous ones). But that extra time gave us the opportunity to meet my first family in Namibia—the ones back from over a year ago at my training.

SOME MORE CAPTURES OF THE TRIP:



 

celebrating after we found clues of human contact in the desert

 

Village Developement and Updates

Kayanga is moving up in the world. We have had some commotion going on this past month, people from the capital and the big regional town have been camping out in Kayanga drilling a new borehole for us. The borehole that we have right now is only accessible to about 10% of Kayanga, because for most homesteads the river is the closer water option. For a lot of reasons we are so lucky to be so close to the river, specifically for planting purposes, but for drinking water the river poses some other problems. The river is known for giving lots of people worms and parasites, plus there are crocs and hippos. This new borehole will use solar power to pump water up into really large tanks, and it will be more accessible to the rest of the community. And...it just happens to be placed directly behind my hut. This is going to make life so easy, I feel spoiled. It will practically be like I have running water, no more walking a long distance with heavy buckets.

The other news is that my OVC Center (Orphan and Vulnerable Children Center) may be getting electricity. I do not talk about my center that often, even though it is my primary job. This is for two reasons, one is that I am invested in other projects that interest me much more. Two is because the center goes through lots of lulls. As mentioned before, the center is 100% volunteer based, we are not able to provide any initiatives for the volunteers. Some months the center runs great, and it's a beautiful sight to go there and see up to 5 women doing their assigned responsibilities. But then other months it's like pulling teeth to get people to show up. June was a bad month, but July is somehow booming. I have not deciphered the pattern of activity, it's completely random.

The prospect of electricity will bring more incentive, and I strongly believe that the women will feel much more motivated. In the last year, there has been quite a bit of development, including two concrete buildings. However, now we are stuck with the same activities day after day and the women are feeling stagnant. We have applied for a grant to supply us with electricity and sewing machines. This could provide daily work for the 17 project members, work that could make an income. All the money that will be made from selling clothes would go back to the center to buy blankets, soap, shoes, school supplies, etc for the children in our center. Our women will also be given a chance to benefit, since they do all this work for free. Assuming they provide their own materials, they can use the electricity and machines to make clothes and sell them on their own. This concept of economic development (on a small scale, I know) and having a business is currently not something seen in Kayanga.


Below is the building made where we will sew built in about 6 months by 2-3 men who worked for just a bowl of porridge with sugar everyday! The roof flew off this past rainy season, so the grant we applied for would also cover a new roof and windows (oh and a new door since the rain that flooded the floor ruined the door)

Some other little things—Stephanus' body was found washed up about 5 km away from Kayanga. I was surprised his body was not eaten by a crocodile because our Kavango River is FULL of them, but apparently they have picky taste and only eat fresh bodies. But because there was a body there was a funeral held. I spoke at his memorial service, in Thimbukushu, which I am really glad I did even though it was very nerve-racking to speak in front of so many others. Then to abruptly jumping topics-my Mom, Dad and Aunt Helen are crossing the Atlantic Ocean now to visit The Land of the Brave. I don’t even know how to properly formulate my emotions on this so I won't try! I just know that it is coming at a good time.

Growing Cabbage in a Desert

These past few weeks my ladies group and I have been working hard, and are well on our way to completing our garden! Was this just a quick process that was completed in the month of June? Of course not. We have been talking about a garden at every other meeting we have, I even got the rights for the land from the headman last October. The delay was due to certain things I cannot control. It is essential for us to plant next to the river, because who has the time or energy to fetch water everyday a far distance? But since we would plant close to the river, we had to wait 3 months until the rain stopped, because flooding is common. Then one of our women was pregnant and we wanted to wait until after she delivered to involve the whole group. But alas, June came and we were ready to plant! In May, my main girl, Selma, accompanied me to a really great garden workshop where we learned things that I have never heard of before. Wood ash to the soil? Yes. Soak manure in your water overnight to spray the plants each time you water? Yup, it'll make 'em grow like crazy. Add urine to your compost pile?? Nooo. But—wait, yes!!

It was a ton of work, I could barely keep up with these Mbukushu women. We first had the oxen go in to plow the soil, then we spent 3 days weeding the area. They taught me the songs they usually sing while they spend hours in the field planting the maize meal. I only mastered one, though. For the next week tasks included; collecting manure in the cow fields, smuggling wood ash and charcoal from fire pits (with permission), collecting thorns to make the traditional fences (unfortunately cows already stepped on all our hard work so we need lots of defense against them), doing our single then double digs and finally, planting!

The garden workshop taught us how to use a smaller amount of space to produce a bigger yield, by allowing the roots to grow deeper with our super, ridiculously nourished soil. For seeds we decided on; onions, swiss chard (I had no idea what this was but I think it's like spinach?), beets, cabbage (they LOVE cabbage\), carrots, and beans. We are also setting aside a large portion of our land for the traditional crops; maize meal, pumpkin leaves and mutete (a type of spinach that I will never eat again after my last food poisoning). This makes for well rounded nutrients. The plan is for the ladies to take some vegetables home to their families then sell a good portion of it too. They are very excited to sell and make at least a little income. I am excited for their children to get at least a little nutrients in their skinny bodies. We have a lot of space available and still many more weeks of work cut out for us. But here are our first 8 beds (we want to do around 15). Cross your fingers this works out...seriously, do it...I have never done this kind of thing before and I will feel bad for all the hard work the women put in if it fails.

The Ridiculous Stephanus

For some reason the month of June has been a lot different than any of my other months of service. I assumed that my second year would be easier, because older volunteers say this to younger volunteers in their first year to give them something to look forward to. I guess this optimism is true, with some things. But recently I have found that after living here so long, and becoming so invested in the people, my friends,my work, the kids...that when things so astray it just hits me harder. With some hard weeks the change in mood is hard to decipher, but this week it was clear. There were four deaths in Kayanga, two old and two young in the last 5 days. It is weird to mention cause of deaths because it is considered such a taboo topic in my life here in Kayanga, but two of these deaths, like so many others in Namibia are due to HIV/AIDS. The question of how someone died is never asked, nor is it ever suggested that it could be due to the HIV epidemic (out of respect for the family) but it is silently, silently, understood.

One of the four deaths happened to be my friend Stephanus, I have mentioned him before in a previous blog entry, he is known as Kayanga's village crazy. I was very surprised how the news of his death hit me, not until about 5 hours after I heard did I break down. Everyone in Kayanga knew him and no one realized the impact he had on the community until after his presence was so obviously absent. I don’t mean 'impact' in a good way...and not in a bad way either. He was just crazy, like bat shit crazy, in a endearing, ridiculous, funny way, but absolutely, completely loyal to anyone in Kayanga, especially me. Actually, he was almost a genius, but he got drunk on 1 dollar traditional beer daily, so that really took away from his intelligence. He was the only one here that could directly translate everything in Thimbukushu for me.

I am going to miss the weird daily interactions with him. Who is going to scream at me while just having a normal conversation because he can't control the volume of his voice? Who is going to get kicked out of every village meeting after demanding he is going to call the president of Namibia to come to Kayanga? Who is going to randomly sing "Twinkle Twinkle" in probably the worst singing voice ever, ever heard while fetching water (like I said, he is ridiculous)? Who is going to help me collect firewood? Who is going to interrupt my morning pre-primary sessions to tell me he needs washing powder? Who is going to randomly come by my home demanding I eat his cow tongue?? Even every single one of my friends (and sister) who have visited Kayanga knew him, because he was always dropping by my home to say hi. One time, my Peace Corps boss visited from the capital and she was scared for me, thinking that a man who was very angry was coming by my home screaming my name, but he was just coming to say hi (like I said, he really can't control the volume of his voice). Half the time my name was Jackie and half the time it was just "my sister!!!" I don’t mean for this to sound like a eulogy or anything, its just that for people around me death is so terribly common, so the character that is Stephanus may not be commemorated the way that he should be.

Angolan Police Station

It is so typical Stephanus the way that he died. This past week a Chinese man was shot in a large village 30 km away from me (like I said, June has been a weird month). Since Stephanus loves to carry news and alert people of things, he took it upon himself to immediately go to Angola (even though it was getting dark) to tell the police man at the border to watch for any suspicious people crossing over that could be the culprits. After that no one ever saw him, they say that he either drowned or was killed by a crocodile. Normally if there is no body, there is not a funeral held, but I have a feeling that this will not be the case with Stephanus. He was way too well known by everyone to not have some sort of gathering, and maybe we will all sing “twinkle twinkle” because we all know he loved it (I am kidding, sort of).

insisting he help Christine cut the pumpkin

helping move my kitchen hut

A Necessary Gift

There are a lot of things we take for granted in America, things that don’t even make us spoiled because they are expected and deserved. Something that people may not think is a luxury turns into something that girls here in my village don’t even think are possible. Sanitary napkins are one of those things. Women and girls in rural villages in Namibia, and in many parts of Africa, use anything they can: leaves, old clothes, dried mud, and newspaper being the most common for their menstrual periods. One of my Namibian friends told me that girls don’t even bother going to school during that time of the month, just spending the whole day in bed. A Returned Peace Corps Volunteer recognized this need and created an amazing initiative to make and donate re-usable pads to rural areas that could greatly benefit. All I had to do was send an email with the number of bags I wanted and somehow get them to Namibia (enter the hero: Christine Gannon who brought them over!)

I sort of had a preconceived idea in my head of what would happen when I gave out the pads. I was excited to finally be able to provide something tangible, especially when they really deserved this. It also come in adorable packaging J I planned on having my women’s group do a health session on puberty to all school attending girls 12 years and older; the changes to expect, how pads work, proper sanitation, and then questions afterwards. After that, in an orderly fashion, we would hand out the bags that had each girls name written on it and take a photo. This is not how it went at all.

health session by Selma

explaining how the pads work

It was complete and total chaos; I have never seen the kids behave like I saw them that day. First, all the boys felt excluded since they were banned from the meeting. They all stayed after school to hang around and see what they were missing out on. Consequently, the pre-primary kids and anyone under 12 situated themselves for the 'show' once they saw the boys peeping in. The worst part is they didn’t just stand quietly outside, boys were literally climbing through the windows (the school windows don’t have glass). Once the pads and bags were handed out, girls were shrieking and jumping up and down. I was assigned to guard the door (they don’t lock or have door knobs) while my woman's group yelled for peace in Thimbukushu. Nothing would stop the madness. It may seem like yes, all these kids were misbehaving, and that's true they were terrors, but it just goes to show how excited they were to receive something that I had completely taken for granted.

the girls with their new pretty pad bags, hand sewn

my womens group, getting pads too!

Jackie and Dongo; Crime Detectives

In one week I learned two interesting ways of how crime is handled in Kayanga. Unfortunately, one I experienced first hand, and the second I was a very confused bystander.

The first was that this past week my kitchen hut was broken into. I have been fortunate to not have any theft in Kayanga, so I felt confused and betrayed that it would happen this far into my service. I got over these feelings rather fast because Dongo, my counterpart, and I became crime investigators pretty immediately. As I was looking for clues it reminded me of my childhood dream to be exactly like Harriet the Spy. Dongo was able to inspect the footprints in the sand right outside my hut, differentiating those from 2 days ago, the day before and that day. He says that he had to learn this when he was a cattle boy when he had to undoubtedly know which cattle belonged to his family and which direction they ventured off to. With his expertise we had a definite lead of the group of kids went into my kitchen hut. The group was later confirmed when they tried to buy fat cakes* with the Zambian bills they stole from my kitchen table. I realize that no matter how hard I try to blend in with people here, trying to live without the same amenities they live without, I will always be viewed as having more. And it's true, my kitchen posses exotic things to them...like peanut butter and... potatoes.

The second crime case was a stabbing (in the arm, minimal damage) that occurred in Kayanga. It is weird because Kayanga is a very safe and very small village, but yes, these two events happened in the same week. There was a huge village meeting about it, big enough that both Kayanga's headman and the Angola headman attended. It finally helped answer the question of what exactly a headman does. He decides the proper punishments for crimes. The village meeting tree is not in my normal route on a Monday, but as I was coming back from my pit latrine I was summoned over by some friends. They recapped the situation for me.

Apparently, for cases like this, the innocent party will be given permission to slaughter the cow of the guilty party. The use of cattle is not abnormal, cattle are usually used for payment for adultery cases, theft, and most other crimes. For more severe cases like this one, however, it is customary to then they smear the blood of the cow onto every part of the man's life; on his house door, on his children's doors, on his other cows, on his car (and if no car then perhaps his oxen sled) and maybe any other creative places they think of. Blood for Blood, I suppose. I couldn’t really decide if I was in favor of the punishment, to publicly humiliate the guilty party, or if I was just grossed out at all the cow blood I would soon be seeing. I would have loved to have direct, word for word translation on that meeting though.

*fat cakes are small, fried dough balls made here that are delicious and dirt cheap

AFREAKIN' ADVENTURE

Some photo highlights of the trip Christine and I took together. We hit 5 African countries in two weeks with no car: we stayed in my village in Namibia, we walked over the border to Angola, hitch hiked to Zambia and Botswana, and walked over the border to Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls. Not a small feat...

 

In Kayanga

our elephant-BOB