Okahandja

Hello family and friends! How is everything? I have been away from home for about three weeks now and I have a lot to share. Forgive me for not calling you back, writing back or calling you. I have been busy since I left home and also have not had much money to spend. So, I’m sorry.

I will start from the beginning. It might seem like I’m skipping over details, but honestly, while it has been a positive experience so far, it hasn’t been an amazing experience yet. If you want to know any particulars, email me or leave a comment.

On Sunday, Oct. 29 I arrived in DC, where we stayed in Georgetown. It’s a pretty nice neighborhood, kinda like La Jolla in that it’s upscale, historical and charming…cute boutiques and cafes and stuff like that. That night a few of us went out for a couple beers and got to know each other. The next morning another volunteer and I went to the Holocaust Memorial. If you ever get a chance to go, I highly recommend it. Despite my bad memory it is one of the experiences I know I will never forget. Anyway, when we came back to the hotel it was time for registration, where we filled out paperwork and all that good stuff…yawn…and then we got to know each other. There is a group of 70 of us so there were a lot of people to meet (and I still don’t feel like I’ve really met some of them). The next couple days consisted of lectures, interactive activities and group work related to topics like culture shock, aspirations, and so on. During my free time I went out with other volunteers for lunch and dinner. What else do you want to know? It wasn’t so exciting, I’m sorry to say. I think we all just wanted to get to Africa.
On the morning of Wednesday, October 31 (Halloween, of course) at 5:00 am we packed up all of our stuff and boarded buses to the federal health center in DC for immunizations, and since I only needed one shot and got it done quickly, a couple other girls and I went to see the Korean War memorial and the Vietnam War memorial. They were both great and I don’t know how to describe them but both are highly recommended if you ever go to DC. On a sidenote, I really liked DC! It was never on my list of places to see and do, but (and this will sound stupid) I had no idea that there are so many museums there, and they are all FREE! Gotta love it. Someday I will go back and see everything.

After departing from the clinic we went to the airport…we got there around noon or one and our flight was going to be at 5. I thought we’d have a ton of time to kill but with all of the international security checkpoints and all that hoo-hah, we didn’t have a ton of time to kick back. However, I did get my final meal of sushi and seaweed salad, which was thoroughly enjoyed and will be missed for the next 27 months. Oh, and for dessert I had a double scoop Ben and Jerry’s cone – Cherry Garcia and Coconut Almond. I enjoyed every bite.

When our plane was boarding and I finally go to the front of the line, the ticket agent said that part of my ticket was missing! The missing portion had been torn off by a different agent during security checkin. So I had to back to the counter and get a new ticket printed, and of course I was panicking the whole time that I’d miss my flight and would never get to be a Peace Corps Volunteer after all!!

But everything was fine and I boarded the plane with time to spare. :o)

The flight was 15.5 hours on South African Airlines. It was decently comfortable. Each seat had a tv screen in front, where you could watch a number of movies, documentaries and tv shows, play games or listen to music. I watched Guru (a Hindi movie) and a bad sitcom called Rules of Engagement. Guru was good, Rules was not. It was so dumb. Not even Full House dumb in that it was funny, but just plain not funny whatsoever. Guru was enjoyable but I wish it had more song and dance scenes. As for the plane food, it was not so good. I had “beef stroganoff” which sucked, and a cheese sandwich (cheese in a bread roll). Toward the beginning of the flight, I asked the attendant for a sparkling water and was handed a little bottle of whiskey. Huh? I decided to keep my mouth shut about it, and stuck it in my carryon where eventually it was confiscated during the security checkpoint in the Johannesburg airport.

Is this even interesting? I don’t know what you want to know but I feel like this just isn’t fun to read.

Overall the flight was not as awful as I thought it would be. I slept on and off and generally it was okay. The seats were fine but not so good for sleeping more than an hour and a half or so at a time. When we arrived in Johannesburg (“Jo-burg” as they call it) we sat around and waited for our transportation to the hotel, which despite Jo-burg’s bad reputation for a crime-filled city, was super nice! It had a huge lobby, free wine and cheese, a wine bar, gift shop, fancy Italian restaurant and nice soap and shampoo in the bathroom. I did not get a chance to explore the city, since we weren’t allowed to leave the hotel (again, it’s a dangerous city), but I did have “peppadum feta spinach cannelloni” for dinner. Peppadum is a bread-like filling, maybe like stuffing. It was good. I dunno.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I think it was the combination of the time change plus the anticipation and anxiety. I slept for about three hours and then woke up for the morning around 3 am, then got out of bed around 5. I went downstairs and ran into a fellow PCV. Chatting and drinking tea ensued. It was fun to get to know other volunteers as they woke up and came downstairs to find something to do. Most of us only slept about three or four or five hours that night. Most people had only slept a teeny bit in DC too, which meant there were a lot of exhausted, anxious people milling around the hotel lobby.

Then we went back to the Jo-burg airport, and after more waiting and standing in lines we got on the plane to Windhoek, Namibia!! It was only a two hour flight but they actually served us breakfast. It was an omelet that was actually pretty decent. As we flew over Namibia all you could see was brown, brown, brown with the occasional road or dry stream running through it. There was really NOTHING there. No joke.

When we got off the plane at the Windhoek airport (it was a field with a couple buildings) we stood in line some more and waited some more. Thankfully, all my baggage arrived. I was one of the lucky ones. A couple of us still don’t have our bags and they probably won’t come. So after more waiting and waiting, we got on a bus to Okahandja, a town about 45 minutes north of Windhoek. During the drive we saw a boar, an antelope, a monkey and a giraffe!! So exciting! Hello, Africa!

We are at a conference center until the end of next week, where we are living and having training. I will tell you about a typical day. We get up around 6:30 and have breakfast at 7. Breakfast usually consists of porridge, oatmeal, bread, hard boiled eggs and sausage. The only kind of coffee you can get in Namibia (apparently) is instant. The first morning I thought the instant coffee was cinnamon and sprinkled it liberally all over my oatmeal.Gross. I forced myself to eat most of it. Anyway, after breakfast we finish getting ready and are in the training room by 8. The trainers (who are all Namibian) sing Namibian songs and we PCVs do our best to sing along. I think we’re doing well so far with the singing. Our training group even has our own anthem! That is rather awesome if you ask me. However, all the songs are in a different language so we have yet to find out what the lyrics really mean. After the singing, we have language training for two hours, then “tea” which consists usually of cookies or bread with some cheese or mayo (or something) on it. Then we have some other miscellaneous training session about safety, diversity, culture or otherwise.

Lunch is at 1. There have been a variety of foods so far but there is always meat, and some starch like pasta or potatoes or rice, and veggies sometimes. I haven’t eaten anything crazy yet but the meat isn’t always so appealing to me so sometimes I skip it. There are veggies maybe 50% of the time and usually they are in some kind of creamy sauce or cooked somehow. Consequently, my diet has mainly consisted of carbs in the past week. I don’t see weight loss happening anytime soon. Anyway, last week after lunches we had medical training. We talked about specific diseases, HIV/AIDS, sexual assault, general hygiene, etc. This week (our second week at training) we have technical training which means we get trained according to the job we’re going to do. Then, depending on the day, we get shots. I have had many shots in the past week while I’ve been here (not counting the shot in DC), and there are certainly more to come. In addition to the shots, we also take a weekly malaria medication called mefloquine, so we’re all definitely pumped up with a zillion disease crime fighters in our bodies. I guess it is good to be armed against diseases but it also feels very artificial to be injected with all of these medications.
Now I will tell you about sleeping arrangements. I share a room with seven other females, but the room is actually split in two with a door in the middle, so there are actually only 4 or us in my room. There are two regular beds and one bunk bed where I sleep on the top. It is such a pain to get up and down that dang ladder every morning and night. We have plenty of space for now but it will be really nice when we move to our permanent sites and can spread out and truly unpack. Right now all our stuff is really in our bags and we just take it out as needed, then mostly put it back when it’s not. The bed is actually comfortable and I sleep pretty well. The mefloquine is known for giving you vivid dreams at night. Last night I didn’t have any exceptional dreams but I knew the medication was running its course because I felt in my dreams as if I was really, actually there…more so than usual. It was pretty weird. Luckily they were not bad dreams because that would have been horrible.

The town we’re staying in is called Okahandja, which is about 45 minutes north of Windhoek, the capital. (Btw, Windhoek is pronounced “Vend-ook” by the Namibians but if you don’t want to be that hardcore about the pronunciation you can say “wind-hook.”) Okahandja is a sleepy little town but apparently by Namibian standards it is quite urban. There are a couple of clothing shops, a few grocery stores, a hardware store, a stationery store, two gas stations, two banks….not a lot there but as we don’t have cars or any form of transportation besides our legs, we end up “going into town” as often as possible to escape the confines of the training center. Don’t get me wrong, the center is pretty nice. It just sucks to be stuck in the same place for so long.

I have no idea when I’ll be able to write again. Internet access is super limited so I’m actually writing this in advance so that when I get to the internet café I can just cut and paste into my blog. I feel like I’m so far away from everything and at the same time I haven’t really experienced Namibia yet. Somebody said that right now we’re in purgatory. We’ve left the US and have begun our training but have yet to actually experience culture first-hand. It’s just a lot of waiting. Waiting in line for registration, at the airport, at the hotel, for meals, for shots…it’s just waiting.

I do have great news though. There are about five or six languages that trainees are learning, and I was hoping to get Afrikaans because unlike the localized tribal languages, it is used throughout most of the country. When I travel, that will be great. Also, even though I know it’s not common, it’s more likely that I’ll be able to use Afrikaans when I come home. It’s definitely not widespread as Russian or Chinese but I’m pretty sure I’ll get better mileage out of it than a clicking language (which several of us are actually learning). So far I have learned to introduce myself, say where I’m from, exchange greetings and pleasantries like “good morning” and “sleep well” and classroom phrases like “sit down” and “please speak louder;” I have also learned how to say things like “I am hungry” and “I have had enough meat.” Haha! Isn’t that funny! Apparently it’s not uncommon for PCVs to become fluent in Afrikaans by the end of their service, so that is something I am aiming for. I think it could happen. There are a lot of similarities between Afrikaans and English, for example “melk” is milk, and “middag” is afternoon (or midday).

I found out today that I’ll be teaching grades 5-7.

My feet are perpetually dirty here. No amount of soap will get all the dirt out, nor will any number of hours scrubbing them with my pumice stone. The first thing I’m doing when I get to the states is to get a super deluxe pedicure!!

The weather here is HOT. Hot and dry, like when I visited Scottsdale w/ Erin. You don’t sweat, it’s so dry. Today was even hotter than it has been…on our walk to town, I felt like I just couldn’t go any further. The sun is so draining. Plus today it wasn’t just my feet that were dirty – my legs were gross too, with nasty black splotches everywhere. I really have no idea how that happened. So, if you visit me, you can look forward to dirty feet and hot weather. Wahoo!
After this week, we leave the training center and go to our permanent sites for a visit. (Nobody knows what or where their permanent site is yet, so that’s driving us all nuts.) After a week at our permanent site, we go to a different place to shadow a current teacher for a week. Then, for one month, we stay with our host families. It is one volunteer per host family, but you stay in the same town as your language group for Community Based Training, or CBT. During CBT you learn about local culture, keep learning the language, and generally interact with the community. I’m nervous about that, actually. It is hard for me to introduce myself to people on my own without the other person trying first. I just get so scared and full of self-doubt. That’s part of why I joined PC though, so I’m sure CBT will be beneficial.

What else do you want to know? Write to me. I promise to try to get back to you as soon as I can, which probably isn’t very soon but I’ll do my best. After I officially swear in as a PCV and go to my permanent site, I hopefully will have internet on a semi-regular basis.

As for a mailing address, I am not too keen on posting it in a public place. Email me if you want it. If you don’t have my email, leave me a comment and show some ID, and I’ll be happy to give it to you.

From what I understand, letters and postcards take three weeks but as the postal workers go on holiday in December, it could take three months right now. AARGH!! If you decide you want to send me some items (thank you!!!) it is best to use a padded envelope (not a box) and address it to Sister Jennifer ___ , and in the return address put that you’re Reverend Somebody from Holy Cross Church or whatever. Then write some religious phrase on the package like “Jesus Saves.” I guess they often tamper with mail here, but are less likely to tamper with something church- or religion-related.

Write me and tell me how you’re doing. I miss everybody. Like I said, I feel so far away. If you think you have nothing to tell me, share what you had for breakfast, what movies you watched recently or what you bought when you went shopping. I want to know!
I miss you all!

I was going to post some pictures of Okahandja but the ones I have are huge, so that picture is of a store. I haven't actually been to this store but it's the most interesting looking one. The rest of the stores are set up like a strip mall that goes down the entire length of the main road. Nothing exciting really.