My first months at site

Well I’ve been at my site for almost two months and I am amazed by how quickly this place has come to feel like home. The first three months at site for Peace Corps Volunteers is called phase 2, where we integrate into our community and learn how it works before diving into our projects. My primary project will be teaching at Muyako Combined School, but I will soon be adding on additional projects to help the school fulfill some of their wants and needs such as expanding their library, adding activities and student programs, building a school fence and hopefully bringing computers to the school. 

My teachers' kids love to join hammock time

Muyako village has about 2,000 people spread throughout many kilometers. The school sits in the middle of the village and supports about 350 children from grades 0-10. Most children start school around the minimum age of 6 but there is no maximum so a few of my learners in grade 10 are actually my age or older. My school day starts around 6:30 am and ends for lunch at 12:30 pm, with a 30 minute tea break in the middle. The school year goes from January to December and is spread out over 3 terms. In the late afternoon the learners come back to the school for afternoon study, since most homes do not have access to electricity for doing homework in the evening. I have 17 staff at my school including 14 teachers which I work very closely with. I spend the majority of my time at the school, which is pretty convenient since I live on school grounds.

During the past 2 months I have been observing classes, helping teachers with preparations for exams, marking exams, fixing the printer (that breaks 3 times a week), helping with computers, helping run the library, reading with kids and just hanging out with the people around me. I have been learning so many things from my colleagues, and have been able to share some of my perspectives with them along the way. Although every day presents a new challenge, the school days are starting to feel more and more normal which I hope means I am adjusting well into the school culture. I found out that I will be teaching math, physical science and ICT (Information, communication and technology) next year so I am starting to prepare myself physically and emotionally for then.

Mbili Mbili update: her ears have perked recently

One of the biggest challenges thus far has been the language barrier. The language I learned during training, Silozi is the lingua franca of my region; meaning it is taught in schools as a first language, but is not the mother tongue which is spoken in the village. Subia, the mother tongue is language spoken by all those outside of school and is the only language known by the very old and young who didn’t go to school. Subia shares a few words with Silozi, but it is very difficult to start from scratch learning a whole other language. Despite the language barriers, I am learning to navigate Namlish (Namibian-English), and getting better at picking up the Subia terms used and translating Silozi. I’ve mastered introductions, farewells, and saying phrases like: “its hot”, “I’m going to sleep now”, “this is my small dog, please play nicely”, “I like to eat fish and porridge”, “I come from America and I am a teacher”, “I hate snakes” and “I want to drink water”. Just like American small talk, discussing the weather and food is really all you need to get by here. 

My village has given me the name Voma Mbili Mbili (which literally means mother of pepper; my dog's name). This name has luckily replaced Makua which means white person or foreigner in the local language. Instead of hearing the echos of Makua as I walk through my village from small children in trees, passing cars or behind fences (I still don't understand how people seem to know I am coming, even when I cant see them), I now hear Mbili Mbili! Voma Mbili Mbili! and innocent chuckles everywhere I go. 2 months into site, everyone still loves that my dog has such a silly sounding name. 

My colleagues at the school have been one of the best parts of my time in Muyako so far. During my second week here I was doing an Insanity workout in my hut with the door open because it was so hot outside. Soon enough I had attracted the attention of some of the nearby kids, and then some of my colleagues. At first they just stood outside and laughed at me and the kids making fools of ourselves, but then it started to catch on and so now we have a group of 5 teachers doing insanity workouts every day after school (some definitely take it way more seriously than others, but it’s a start).

My birthday month twin!

At the end of each month, we have a birthday party for staff members who had their birthday, but since we are on holiday in December, they also celebrated mine. Namibians LOVE KFC. It is one of the biggest fast food chains here. Since it is only available in town, I made homemade fried chicken for my colleagues for the party. We played music, danced, ate food, cake and had a great time. It was so strange to me that the party from October was my second day at site. It all felt so strange at the time, but this month’s party felt so comfortable and we truly had a blast.

The school officially closed for the holidays last week, which means all of my colleagues have left the teacher housing to return to their villages until school starts again. Because the school grounds are empty during this time, I will be spending time with my host family in the village, visiting town and exploring Zambezi with my fellow volunteers. It’s difficult to be away from family during this time of the year, but I am surrounded by so many new friends that I am not at all alone! 

My first week at site and the first of adventures with Mbili Mbili

Welcome to Muyako Combined School!

On Sunday I finally arrived at the site which I will be serving the next 2 years! I felt an overwhelming feeling of excitement and nerves as we hauled through the deep sand into Muyako village and pulled up to Muyako Combined School. As we reached my hut, I was greeted by a pack of grade 10 learners ready to assist me with my accommodations and moving in.

Our teacher housing on school property

My home for the next 2 years

My kitchen area

My hut is much bigger than I expected it to be and includes my bed, wardrobe, a desk and chair, a gas stove, refrigerator and even some extra space for when I decide to start doing yoga. My electricity comes through an outlet extended from the school and although I don’t have plumbing, I am able to get water from a tap that is about 70 meters away. I’ve learned very quickly that 70 meters is actually quite a distance when carrying a 25 liter jerry can full of water, but I’m hoping it gets easier as I start building those muscles!

The school tap that's currently leaking during a drought...

My bathing area

I have a pit latrine in a building behind my house. I was lucky enough to have a fancy one that looks like a toilet, rather than just a giant hole in the ground. It’s basically a not as smelly version of a port-a-potty. My bathing area consist of a circular area of reeds where I am able to bucket bathe. The cold baths are very refreshing in this insane heat (average of 104 degrees everyday), but I may need to begin heating water for bathing come winter around April.  I’ve been able to adjust pretty well to my new environment thus far, and I’m learning new things about myself such as exactly how much water I use in a day and that I can peacefully coexist with giant spiders living on my walls. It takes me much longer to do even the most minute tasks, but I am enjoying learning to live more simply. Other than missing air conditioning, the hut life isn’t bad at all. 

 Now onto the more exciting thing:

Meet Mbili Mibili

As you may remember my homestay family had puppies, and I decided to adopt the runt of the litter to take with me to site. I named my little girl Mbili Mbili, one of my favorite words in Silozi, which means pepper (pronounced Mbeelee Mbeelee). She is an interesting character to say the least and at 9 weeks old, is a feisty little ball of energy. Like a typical puppy, she loves attention and always wants to be by my side. Because she is still very small, the big dogs will attack her if she is left alone outside so I tried to keep her inside my hut during my first day at school. She immediately started crying, and after an hour I had to go retrieve her to get her to stop. She then proceeded to follow me around the school the entire day as my little shadow.

 

Wherever I go she follows me; whether I’m going to a class, the library (my new small office), the latrine, or my bathing area, and waits outside for me. The learners absolutely love Mbili Mbili and she has quickly become the school celebrity. I can’t tell if they are more excited to have a new volunteer or that the volunteer has a puppy. Mbili Mbili is especially helpful in getting to know the younger pre-primary and grade 1s who haven’t learned English yet. They speak Silozi with me as they come by to visit with the puppy. My only problem now is that the learners keep coming by my house after school to ask to play with the puppy, so I’ve had to put in place some restrictions.

Having a companion has definitely helped make my transition easier, although I’m pretty sure dog training has been the biggest challenge I’ve faced so far at site.

Hanging out in her new bed

Greeting the learners in the library

Following me around the school grounds

I’m very excited to continue learning more and more about my community over the next few months before I officially begin teaching in January. The Muyako school and the surrounding village has been very welcoming far and I am very excited to begin building relationships and share my experience with you all. Ni ya kulata Muyako (I am going to love Muyako).

 

 The previous volunteer left this behind on my wall (I love Muyako)

CBT

Its amazing to me that I’ve been in Namibia for almost 2 months now. It honestly feels like the time has passed so quickly and I can’t believe my time in training is almost finished. My 3 weeks at community based training (CBT) in Rundu definitely prepared me to be a Namibian teacher and helped me to better understand the culture of the North. The purpose of CBT is to give us experience working in Namibian schools so that we have the technical training and practice we need before going to our final site. We were placed in towns with our language groups so that we would have an opportunity to learn a little more about the culture in our regions and practice speaking our language. Unfortunately for us, Rundu isn’t exactly in our language region because Zambezi is too far away, so we had to settle for the nearest town outside in the Kavango region. During the first week we observed classes, the second week we co-taught with Namibian teachers, and the last week we taught classes by ourselves. If my site is anything like the time we spent in Rundu, I know it’s going to be an amazing two years.

The front of Sarasungu CS

The school: We spent CBT working at Sarasungu Combined school, which has about 2000 learners (they don't say "students" here) from grades 1-10. I observed classes in Math, English, Science, Geography and Agriculture and taught mostly Natural Science. Each school has a specific uniform that learners are required to wear and the average class size is about 50 learners for my school. The staff and children were extremely welcoming, and of course had many strange questions about myself and about America.

Here are some of my favorites:

•  How many kids do you have? (Most guessed that I had 3)
• Are you 35/ 42/ 84 years old? (At least they don’t think I’m a teenager)
• Are you married to Chris Brown? (Everyone is obsessed with Chris Brown)
• How many elephants do you have in America? (Trying to explain zoos was a rough time…)
• Is Justin Bieber your cousin?
• Do you speak Afrikaans? (Apparently they think it is also spoken in America)
• Do kids go to school in America?
• Do Americans watch DSTV? (Satellite tv is big here)
• Do we have goats at home?
• Why don’t people eat meat? (Vegetarians are a very foreign concept)
• What does the entire country look like? (This was a difficult one too)
• Why did I want to leave New York to come to Namibia? (Florida, New York= same thing)

My grade 4B class

Despite the lack of resources in the classroom (missing or broken tables, no textbooks, and really only a chalkboard and some chalk) and the language barrier, working at Sarasungu was an incredible experience. I was given an amazing opportunity to be creative and think outside the box to teach lessons in an engaging way, rather than just lecturing and giving notes to the kids. The biggest challenge by far is getting the learners to critically think and answer questions beyond just memorization which is a common way of teaching in Namibia. The staff treated us like family and were incredibly helpful in orienting us to teaching. On our last day of classes, the teachers ended school after tea break and threw us a party with a barbecue, drinks and music. Obviously the concept of ending school early, and having a party on school grounds with alcohol is a very strange concept in the U.S. but here it’s pretty normal. We definitely ended things on a great note.

Learning about the Skeletal System with grade 4

As for Rundu itself:

Our sunset view

One of the greatest things about Rundu is that the Kavango River runs along separating Namibia and Angola (we were very far North of Okahandja). Which means one very important thing: there’s a beach! One of my favorite things was getting to walk down to the river after classes and swim. It definitely felt like a taste of home to be near water again which I was very grateful for. I am very lucky to be moving to the small part of Namibia that has access to fresh water.

Family and friends at the Wedding

The homestay family I stayed with while at CBT had a wedding the second weekend we were there. Although the wedding itself was very similar to American style weddings, the biggest difference was that we had 40 guests staying at our home the entire week before. My cousins and siblings taught me all their favorite dances and how to dance Zambezi style. Namibians love to dance and I realized that whether you are 3 years old or 90 you can still shake your booty to any song (the old ladies: called kukus definitely have better dance moves than me).

There is so much more that I wish I could explain about my experience, but I figured pictures would be easier than writing 5 more blog posts. Enjoy!

Spending time with the learners at HIV awareness day

The wedding was very crowded but fun

The kukus were always matching and only spoke to me in Silozi

After school river hangouts

Some of my grade 8 learners at HIV awareness day

Language, Homestay and most importantly, puppies!

Languages in Namibia can be very complicated. Although English is the official language, the majority of the population speaks their own local language. The main languages include: Afrikaans, Oshindonga, Oshikwanyama, KKG (this one’s a click language!), Oshiherero, and Silozi. These languages each belong to a specific tribe, although the location of these tribe can be variable. During the first week, each of us were placed into a language group which helped some of us to narrow down the mystery of our site placement. My language is Silozi, the best language (but I’m a little biased) which lucky for me is only spoken within a small region of Namibia called Zambezi. If you are looking at a picture of Namibia, it’s the little arm extending out of the top of the country. The Zambezi region is known for being lush and tropical so it looks like I will be returning to a climate I’m familiar with, and the good ole malaria territory once again. (Don’t worry, I’m stocked up on my bed net and prophylaxis!)

The Malozi (Silozi speaking people) culture is awesome for multiple reasons:

1. Hakuna Matatah is also a Silozi phrase and actually means no worries
2. Our language instructor is a rapper who calls himself Top Dog
3. As stated above ^ we learn a lot of slang and pick up lines in class
4. Many of the words such as cheesee, booka, applye, maango are derived from English and just add a vowel in somewhere.
5. However, the slightest change in some words can have an entirely different meaning. For example mulalelo means dinner, but mulaleka means waking up with a spirit in your bed  
6. ^ Witchcraft is a thing here too
7. Zambezi is one of the only places with a natural sources of water in Namibia
8. During the rainy season, people often travel by canoe, which I am very excited for

Making pop at cultural day

We have been slowly learning more and more about the culture of the Zambezi region and had a cultural day to introduce us to traditional cooking. In Zambezi the main foods are tapi (fish) and buhove (pronounced Vuhove or also called pop; it’s basically cornstarch and water that you cook into balls and use to eat other food with your hands). Our group helped clean and fry the fish and learned to prepare pop over a fire.

They told us we are allowed to play around with our food here

The language learning has been a bit of a struggle, especially because we have to pass a language interview with a certain level of proficiency before we begin as volunteers. Luckily for me, two of my homestay family members speak Silozi so I am able to practice a bit with them.

Now for my homestay:

The front of my house

My mom and little sis

Unlike most families in the States, extended families in Namibia are just as important as immediate family. Normally my mom, dad and 2 sisters are the only ones who live at home but when I arrived at my homestay, there were about 15 people staying with my family in a house that is about the size of my house back in the States. After the initial shock of being constantly surrounded by people, I’ve grown to love how social my family is. My dad, Bainga is from Zambezi so his entire side of the family speaks Silozi. My mom Monica, has a beautiful voice and is absolutely hilarious. I have two teenage brothers, Danny and Masule who are normally away at boarding school, but when they are home we play Frisbee and are obsessed with Drake. I have a 15 year old sister Namasiku who loves to practice her French with me (apparently I’m actually good at the language by her standards). My youngest sister Julia is 4 years old. I call her my little monkey because she’s always climbing me and following me around. She has definitely filled in the role of the annoying but adorable little sibling.

Cooking dinner before my eyes started watering

As a woman in the house I am expected to help with cooking in the family. During my first week, while I was helping make dinner my mom asked me to cut up some onions. I think onions may be more potent here, because within a minute tears were streaming down my face. My mom noticed I was crying and immediately started laughing at what she thought was her overly emotional new daughter. My eyes started watering again the next night when we cooked fish over a fire. For the first few days my family thought that I cried every time we cooked because I hated Namibian food, which definitely is not the case. Now they just have me cut the tomatoes and cook on the stove inside to spare me the tears.

How could you not love this?

I almost left out the most important members of my family: PUPPIES. My family calls me their good luck charm because the day I arrived our dog Bubbles gave birth to 6 puppies. They are about 2 weeks old now and are just starting to open their eyes and squirm around. My favorite part of every evening is coming home to hold the puppies with my siblings. I have fallen in love with them and I may or may not be adopting one of the puppies to take with me to site when I leave in 2 months…

On Friday we are leaving for our Community Based Training (CBT) in Northern Namibia so I will be leaving my computer behind for the next few weeks, but I will send updates when I return!

Bubbles and her 6 babies

The monkey and I playing with puppies

Welcome to Namibia!

Hi Everybody!
My hope is that I will be able to share a little bit of my Peace Corps experience with you during the next 27 months through these blog posts and periodic updates on life. I’ve been here for almost 2 weeks now and don’t even know where to begin my story. My first post will be more general to give you a little info about Namibia (pronounced Nah-mi-bee-uh in case you were having trouble), my job and what I’m doing for the next few months, then I’ll get into the fun stuff!

My Namily on our first hike up to what we call "Pride Rock"

The Peace Corps is a US government organization that sends volunteers to developing countries to help communities meet their needs with “skilled manpower” (that’s me!!) and to promote cross cultural understanding between nations. Until October 20^th, I will be in pre-service training with the 54 other volunteers in my training group. We are Group 44, which means we are the 44^th group of volunteers placed in Namibia. After October 20^th, I will be an official volunteer and begin working at my site for the next 2 years. One of the most fun things about the Peace Corps is that they love to test your flexibility by keeping things a mystery. During my second day here, each of us had an interview with some of the program staff to help guide them in placing us in a site, where we were allowed to indicate our preferences for type of school, housing, rural or urban environment and the type of projects we were interested in doing. From there, we are placed into language groups based on the region we will be placed in and then the rest is unknown until the end of training in October… So basically other than my language and basic Namibian culture I have no idea what I’m getting into for the next 2 years, but regardless I’m pumped!

Now for Namibia:

In case you were wondering where I am

Upon my arrival to Namibia I immediately realized that this country is very different from my experience in Uganda. First of all, Namibia is a desert. It is currently winter here and the climate is so dry that it can change 50 degrees over the course of a day. I honestly think I’ve but on more lotion in the last week than in my entire life. That being said, 90 degrees doesn’t feel nearly as hot as it does in Florida. There is sand everywhere: just like home except its orange and all of my stuff looks dusty because of it.

Because Namibia was once part of apartheid South Africa the population is very diverse, yet segmented. Other than the fact that I can’t speak a lick of Afrikaans, I could blend in completely in certain parts of country. Most of the traditional tribes live in the North as they were forced to move during apartheid. The central and coastal regions contain the majority of the white Namibians who are mainly of German and Dutch descent (these are also the main tourist areas). The south is very sparsely populated as most of the land is uninhabitable desert (like the pictures of sand dunes you see when you google Namibia) or reserved parks for diamonds and mineral resources. Although a lot has changed in the past 26 years since Namibia gained its independence in 1990, the individual cultures of each tribe remain very distinct.

During the training period we are staying in Okahandja, a town about an hour and a half away from Windhoek, which is the biggest city in Namibia. You can easily walk across town in about 15 minutes, but there is a lot packed into this area despite its small size. The town serves as a commuter town and is very diverse being so close to Windhoek. There is electricity almost everywhere in town and normal looking toilets, which is a definite change from my experience in Uganda. I have access to running water that is safe to drink (although it tastes a little bit funny and can be cloudy from the chemicals). Wifi is also a thing here sometimes… One of the things I’m quickly learning about Namibia is that internet is everywhere, but not at all reliable.

Overall, everything is going great so far and I am looking forward to the experience I have ahead of me. Over the next months I will be experiencing the rollercoaster feelings that go along with culture shock, but for every low moment I have there will be another great moment to even it out as I adjust to the lifestyle here. Stay tuned for more updates about my homestay, languages, food and more!

The view from my neighborhood at sunset