You say goodbye, and I say hello

It is goodbye to Khorixas.

Peace Corps broke the news to us that they would be placing us in a new site in Namibia, due to safety/ security precautions. (We knew this was in the cards, which helped us cope a bit.) This meant we needed to break the news to our principals and schools (who knew nothing, which PC intended for the purpose of protecting our safety). And almost immediately, we would depart Khorixas for good. Kevin and I shared our stories of "how it went" at our respective schools and the theme was the same: sad, disappointed, and broken hearts- often accompanied by tears- on the giving and receiving end of the news-bearing.

Just to give you an idea, site changes are quite uncommon in Peace Corps Namibia, especially after the volunteer has confirmed that the site is suitable medically and programically (i.e. there is work for the volunteer) and he/she gets settled in. In our group so far (of 45 to start), 2 site changes took place before the end of Pre-Service Training (PST) due to medical reasons (these volunteers were supposed to be placed at sites with hospitals in case their severe allergies were triggered), and 1 took place during Reconnect in late Nov/early Dec for programming reasons. And then most recently, there's us, after spending 5 months at site (and 7 in Namibia).

For me, the school principal and others publicly gave words of thanks and farewell. When a grade 8 female learner volunteered to also speak, she barely blurted out a sentence before bursting into tears in front of the whole school. All I could do was hug her, with tears also running down my face. I also spoke, giving the kids encouraging words to hang on, after expressed my thanks and my sadness that I needed to leave.

Just before all this, we had spent some time in Windhoek to take care of "Peace Corps business" before leaving Khorixas so when we returned, one of my classes sang impromptu songs to welcome me back. They were unaware I was not back to stay and I couldn't tell them, so I held it in and silently interpreted the song as one of good-byes. The learners would discover this soon enough.

And there we were, in Peace Corps transport (unfortunately it was not a helicopter or something cool, just a Land Cruiser :-P ) with our ever-growing number of belongings (remember we have bikes now!). Destination: Windhoek (the capital). But only for the weekend, and then we will be moved to our new site next week.

Thankfully, having each other as support (yay marriage!) helps tremendously. And we couldn't dream of forgetting Patches, who slept like the angel that he is (sometimes!) at my feet during the 4.5-hour drive from Khorixas to Windhoek as I was finishing Grogan's Marley & Me.

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This was just after he took the initiative to army-crawl his way into a tiny caveat of space under a folded-down seat in the Land Cruiser, making sure we weren't leaving him behind. (He still makes a habit of sleeping on our bags and belongings that he can see will be accompanying us when trekking somewhere. But since all those things were already packed to the brim in our transport, I guess he had no other choice!)

Barefoot

A couple Fridays ago, classes did not take place in Khorixas so an Athletics (Track & Field) meet could be held. All schools in the Khorixas circuit competed so that it could send its top athletes to the regional meet in Outjo (a town 130km east of Khorixas). All learners were expected to attend and teachers expected to play a role in timing, recording, and related tasks. Kevin and I were the sole timers, so we spent the 7am to 3pm day at the finish line. (Thought you Metz's who have gotten into track meets from supporting your sons and some who still time at track meets would be interested to know!)

Many of the leareners sang in the stands. Not exactly sure about what, other than the school songs that they sang to support the athletes coming from their respective schools.

What was most noteworthy for us about watching the athletes compete was that nearly all of them- sprinters, distance runners, field event athletes- performed barefoot. A few ran in non-athletic shoes or socks. Kids here have tough feet! Probably because from the time they were young, they were running around and playing around the house or community with no shoes. Meanwhile, Kevin and I often vocalize our pain from stepping on single thorn that managed to get inside our house when we are not wearing shoes, or when the thorns go straight through your shoes anyway.

For Kevin, it was noteworthy how few of the kids were in-shape for the competition. But the fact of matter is they don't practice very much. They don't really have coaches to help train, motivate, or model for the kids. Until Kevin's school had Kevin to attend the few practices that were held this year before the meet. He even ran with the learners training, which is something they're not exactly used to!

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like...

The inspiring words of Queen. 

Kevin has recently been slightly infatuated with this song and Queen... even before we got these babies!

Patches is in for quite the workout now!  The high-energy guy NEEDS it!

We just got the bikes this weekend and went out for our first ride with the pup... he just loved that we could finally go fast enough for him now!  He likes to run so that he is sort of in-between both of us.  It's pretty cute.  He's sort of always doing that... trying to be with both of us.  Doesn't like his parents being separated.  Guess it affects kids AND pets!

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike...

Ack, singing is so contagious!  Kevin infected me, so now I am infecting YOU!  I bet you are all singing this song too, in preparation for being outdoors for spring!  (Finally, right?!)

Homeful! (Addendum: "Safety")

Mom wants to know about safety, of course.  (Thanks Mom!)

I think our new place of residence is more safe than not.  Safe because we live in a row of brand new houses, constructed within a year.  (We are the first ones to dwell in the house we are in now.)  New means money, which means less crime.  New also means secure locks on all the doors and windows.

However, we do live behind "location," which means less money.  Hopefully this is not offensive to anyone, but less money often correlates with more petty crime and excessive drinking.

Unfortunately, I think we have already fallen victim to some petty theft.  I must have forgotten to bring my shoes in one night, and we think it was at that time that they went missing.  At first I wasn't sure if I just misplaced them from the moving.  But the last place where I remember them being is on our stoop, so that night someone must have seized the opportunity.  I also think they seized one of Patches' toys!  Well, now we know to be on-guard.

Definitely feeling a bit down about that situation, as well as a bit victimized.  But all in all, nothing irreplaceable or of great value was lost.  Honestly, the biggest thing we are worried of having stolen is our Patches!  And as I think I mentioned in a previous post, this DOES happen!  Someone decides they want something, for instance, one's dog, so they just take it.  And many people will voice that way of thinking as you pass them also.  "Give me your dog."  "I will steal your dog."  Usually this is just someone expressing that they like something, but some will act on it!

Still trying to understand it, but from what I can tell, it almost seems like people here who are doing those things may not even see it as stealing.  Difficult for my American, capitalist -background mind to comprehend.  But I'm wondering if it's sort of like sharing.  Or just not stealing.  I don't know, but it's food for thought.  Interesting to me, so thought I would share it with you too.  :-)

Finally, I consider the culprits.  I would not be terribly surprised if it was just young children who were wandering about, noticed some things they wanted, and thought it would be OK and fun to go and take it without anyone noticing.  Maybe they go home to their family, and the adults there also see nothing wrong with this.  And so the cycle continues.  Just a theory.  Really I don't know anything!

Homeful!

Living the Namibian dream.

It's small.  It's cute.  It's orange...
 

Living the good life. A place to call our own... And that's all that really matters at this point.  :-)  Feels so good to no longer be living out of suitcases after 5 months.

By the way, we are coming up on our half year anniversary of being in Namibia this month... we stepped off the plane in Windhoek on the 19th of August 2010.  Can't believe how time is flying here.  Also, Kevin and I just came up on our 3 1/2 year anniversary of being married this month, and Patches just turned 5 months old!  (Which makes him a toddler of just over 2 months old if you multiply his age times 5 to come up with what we thought would be his human equivalent!)

 

 

Our fourth home since coming to Namibia (1- Okahandja host family, 2- Khorixas host family, 3- my Principal's house) and our sixth home in the last year.  Not too shabby I guess!

You'll also see in the photo above that Patches seems to greatly enjoy his new stoop and yard, which he does such a good job of protecting when the less-than-disciplined little children come and try to climb our fence (which they could simply open if they wanted to take the easy road) when we tell them not to. Go Patches.

Addendum: To address any concerns, can we help it if the kids are unresponsive to our attempts at redirecting them?  And furthermore, if they decide it’s fun and amusing to taunt Patches to react to them?  (Also remember, treatment of animals, including pets, is very different here.) It’s not our first choice in ways to approach the situation, but what can we do?!

We also have lovely neighbors.  (If you are reading this-- hello Tjituera's!) 

First Days of Namibian School (featuring: Steph's classroom)

It's tricky to explain school in Namibia in a generalized, all-encompassing kind of way because Namibia is just such a diverse place in every way, its schools included.

But to give you an idea, for almost the first month of school or more (depending on the school), it is not uncommon for things to always be in a frenzy. Unfinished or changing timetables (aka: the schedule of classes for teachers and learners) can be expected. The number of learners in your classes may go up or down, as registration takes place no earlier than the weekend before the first day of school. It is at this time that parents travel from wherever (oftentimes, towns or villages that are quite far away) to pay school fees and sign up the learner for the preferred classes. (No, this cannot be done online!) Also on the note of learners' families living far away, many schools, including both mine and Kevin's, provide hostel style accommodation, including food, for learners for a minimal fee. This is even common for the primary school kids... which blows my mind because it's so normal here for parents of even young children to very rarely see them! I can't imagine the majority of American parents accepting this!

All this being said, my focus personally has mostly been on letting everyone and everything get settled (especially myself!). I think both of us have been learning to make some serious adjustments regarding what we can expect of learners' level of academic achievement prior to us having them as well as their behavior and cooperation in class, the way school functions, and the way things get done in general.

Kevin and I are both lucky to have our own classrooms and a sufficient number of desks and chairs (a hot commodity which you must always protect! They will get borrowed, often without your permission for an undetermined length of time.). My classroom is actually the library, which is nice because my secondary project involves developing the library physically as well as its use among learners. I've already had A LOT of learners enthusiastically come to borrow books. They even interrupt my class to do it! And make me feel like a bad person for turning them away because they want to READ! Those terrible learners! (sarcasm)

Side note: Donations for books for the library would be amazing! Just to throw that out there for now. They will read just about anything... so anything would be appreciated by these kids.

My classroom from the teacher's perspective (wait... that's me?! haha):

My classroom from the learner's perspective in the back:

The other special thing about my room is that I have a small family of birds nesting on top of the encyclopedias, and last week the chicks decided it was time to attempt to learn to fly. This was, of course, disruptive to my classes, but I suppose that's not such an exceptional thing either. One of the baby birds did manage to escape my room but since he was having trouble, one learner knocked on my door with the thing in his hands so he could put it back in the nest! Oh the things that are normal in Africa that would never fly in America! (haha, pun)

Check it out, you can totally see the baby bird inside!

Here's Mama or Papa bird, who comes in and out of this window regularly with insects and other food for their babies.

Another unexceptional but disruptive thing which took place last Monday morning was that I arrived in my room to get settled for the day and my room (the library) was quite nicely flooded. It is rainy season after all! The building just needs some work, so until the Ministry of Works comes to repair the leaking roof (God only knows if/when that will be), I will just have to come to accept that my room will become flooded during these rainy days and nights. My principal joked that maybe we should just make my room a swimming pool instead and have PE there.

Kevin has not been able to take a picture of his room yet, but when he does I will certainly post it. From what he tells me, if he were to take a picture of it in his current state, you would see a classroom of incomplete rows and the missing desks piled against the walls. This is because the kids insist on drawing on his brand new desks, so his policy is that those desks will be removed until the culprits come after school or during break to clean them!

Homeless

Figured that since our internet connection hasn't been good enough to upload even one photo to the blog, then in the meantime we would find something else to write about. And for this entry, that is... why we are homeless.

It all started as our Khorixas homestay was coming to an end in mid-November. We learned that the house we were originally promised had actually been double-booked by the Ministry of Education (though we're not sure if it was the Ministry who dropped the ball or someone else in the chain). An alternative was soon suggested by the principal of Kevin's school that there was a hostel house on school grounds that would be suitable for us.

But there was a catch. A bit of a housing triangle was taking place between us, a teacher and her children living in the house in which we were supposed to move, and a lady working for the Ministry of Justice who was living in another house on school grounds but should no longer be. Her house was larger than the one we would move into and more appropriate for the teacher and her kids, who were reasonably finding their current house too small for a family of their size.

So, all we had to do was have the Ministry of Justice worker move out of House B, so the teacher and her kids could move from House A (smaller) to House B (larger), so that we could move into House A.

But where would the Ministry of Justice worker move to? Great question! We should have suspected that the squatter in House B would not so readily give up her place of residence. Interestingly, she's overstayed her welcome by two years now, the time in which her (now ex-)husband left the school in Khorixas to teach at another school. Instead of also finding a new place to stay since her husband, and therefore- she, was no longer entitled to live in House B, she has been living there and enjoyed free rent, electric, and water. That's right--free! But what's worse is no one ever made sure she moved out!

Even this time around, she is adamently refusing to move, though she said she would if someone found her another place to stay in Khorixas where her rent and utilities would be covered. Apparently there are Ministry of Justice houses in town, but of course, these too are occupied by squatters and currently unavailable for her to move into.

Numerous attempts by several high-status figures have been made so that this lady would leave, but apparently no one has the authority to see it through. Or the face. The Ministry of Justice (which she works for) would have been responsible for sending her the eviction notice, but here in Namibia, people often avoid confrontation and/or save face to avoid looking bad. Not trying to judge, it's just a cultural thing and the way things often go in Namibia, like it or not.

And now, well, the Ministry of Ed sent for the woman's (now ex-)husband to come and make her leave since they say it was with him that they had an agreement (um, 2 years ago). To boot, they are giving him a ministry vehicle in order to travel to Khorixas... and then, they are going to take it away until he succeeds! So we'll see how that goes.

But, in the meantime, we remain homeless. (And by that, I mean we are residing in my principal's house.) This Ministry of Ed house that you have been reading about has actually become Plan B, so let's hope Plan A (which we can perhaps elaborate on in a future post) comes through... soon..! Especially because school is starting in about a week now!!!

I share this anecdote not to be critical of Namibian culture or pessimistic in our expectations of the outcome of the situation, but in hopes to provide a specific, illustrative experience of how things sometimes happen around here!

Welcome to Khorixas

Welcome to Khorixas!

Here are a few photos of some places around town...

Post Office

The Lutheran Church (you may recall that Christianity is overwhelmingly Namibia's most popular religion, and Lutheranism the most commonly practiced form of Christianity).  Yes, we have attended this church.  Buttttt, we don't leave feeling spiritually filled and uplifted and like we do when going home from church in the States.  (We <3 CFF & YMM!)  Largely because the service is 4-5 hours long in Khoekhoegowab (and we'll only catch a few words here and there that we know).  We will also be honest and say we're not big fans of the singing, but refrain from going into description as to why.  Sorry, just trying to be polite while honest. :-)

The Catholic Church, where we still want to try attending.

The Vet.  Good news for us and Patches!  The one vet here loves Patches, he's really nice.  Patches has been a great ingegration tool for us!  People we pass often compliment him by saying, "You have a beautiful dog, miss" or "You must give me your dog" or "I will steal your dog."  The latter two took a while to get used to!  I'm not sure why they phrase these things like that!

Magistrate's Court.  Perhaps Khorixas's most beautiful architecture.  The building sits at the top of a hill, making it quite visible and adds to its majestic feeling.

Kunene Bakery.  Kunene is the region (like our states) where Khorixas is located.  The bakery has some nice goodies and also supplies the school hostels ALL of their bread!  That's quite a lot!  Nice that it worked out locally.

The Secondary school where Steph will be teaching come the new school year in January.  It has grades 8-12.

Where Kevin will be teaching.  This is actually a Junior Secondary school, so it has grades 8-10.  As you'll see in the photo, the "hostel" is where many of the learners live (and some teachers).  Many kids don't have schools near their homes/farms, so they either have to travel to and from school every day or live in the hostels.  I guess it should make playing hooky tougher, right!  (Keyword: should)

 

These are some houses in "location" (historically for the black community, curing the apartheid).

Some of the 44 new houses that were built in Khorixas by a guy named Peter who we happened to meet and become friendly with.  The houses are really cute and come in different pastel-type colors!  (In Okahandja where we trained, similar-looking houses were part of a neighborhood referred to as "Smarties" because the colors resembled their Smarties candies.

This purple house is HUGE and actually right around the corner from our host family's house.  It really pops against a clear blue sky and those palm trees!  (Historically, houses like this and smaller are where the white people lived during the apartheid.)

Just a view of the nicely paved road with the small mountains in the back.  Khorixas is kind of located in a valley, part of the reason why it can get so hot!  Especially on very overcast days like we've had recently.  The clouds just trap the heat, and that's when it's hot AND humid, rather than hot and dry.

Would have included a photo of our permanent housing, but oh wait, we don't know what it is yet!!!  It's been a real saga, which we will definitely write about in the future once the story has an ending (we hope a happy one!).

Other things around town we didn't get photos of are the police station, the hospital, Multi-Save (our small grocery store, can be expensive but a great convenience where I can be pretty sure I will be able to get my milk and cereal- YES!), Pep (popular chain store which carries clothes, home goods, etc... not very big though, but again definitely a nice convenience).

Reason we don't have these photos is either because it just didn't work out, because it's culturally-inappropriate (for example, you're not supposed to take photos of policemen and others in official uniform), or because we don't want to be those white people who take photos with their nice camera.  Important because we have to live here for 2 years!  Unlike the tourists!  Same reason why we didn't include photos of people around town or their homes.  Eventually when the timing is right, we can include photos of our Namibian friends here.

Hope you enjoyed!

Departing for our site visit to Khorixas!

So very shortly, we will be departing for our site visit to Khorixas with our two principals who we met yesterday. Basically, the purpose is for us to begin to meet people in the community and schools (and we all know how important first impressions are), and to orient ourselves and mentally prepare for what we can expect. We are excited, but also a bit nervous... because we hope we like Khorixas! (It could be a long 2 years if we don't!)

Yesterday: Yesterday, all of our supervisors arrived in Okahandja to meet us and attend a Peace Corps-run workshop with us. Most of our supervisors (about 70% male) are the principals of the schools where we will be teaching. My and Kevin's supervisors (and many others) seemed like very friendly and cool people, and many have a surprising amount of teaching and administrative experience, in part because they were able to begin their professions quite young. Kevin said, according to his math, that one of the principals he interacted with seemed to begin his teaching profession at 16! It's amazing though that, despite the age and experience of the teachers and administrators in the room, as well as of those who had come to run guest presentations at previous training sessions, Namibians have been so grateful and humble in requesting our assistance and expertise. (Keep in mind, most of us have little to no teaching experience.)

Along our way to Khorixas we will stop (or "make turns") in both of our main shopping towns, Otjiwarango and Outjo, for food and maybe some other goodies. All in all, without the stops, Khorixas is probably about 4 hours from Okahandja (the town where we have been living and training), but with the stops we will be traveling most of the day. It's pretty exciting to be going through shopping towns when you, like many Namibians, don't regularly have access to the ammenitites available here. So when traveling, one should always expect to make turns, probably at every shopping town you will pass through, for a lengthier period of time than expected. (To our understanding, Khorixas has some basic shopping, but it is limited as well as more expensive.)

That being said, we probably will not have email access until Wednesday/Thursday. Familia- if you really need to get a hold of us, we emailed you our cell phone number a couple weeks ago, which is possible for you to call (preferably using Skype to Go, since it is cheaper for you).

Site Assignment

Sooooooo, one thing that has made us feel like we are at home is that Kevin and I are the married couple in our group of ~44. This is the way we are a token at home as well, mostly among many of our college friends (Danny, especially), so we are used to it.

The entire PC application process is different for married couples, and only about 8% of volunteers are married. Differences persist for us as we learned that PC usually only places 1 married couple per group and attempts to place the couple at the same site but in different settings (in our case, in different schools). This is not easy to accommodate since volunteers are usually pretty spread out or are serving at the same school.

So while fellow trainees received basic descriptions (anonymously by number) of the available sites (how rural/urban, distance to the nearest village, degree of electric/running water, type of toileting, living arrangement and degree of privacy, specific needs/requests of the school) so they can rank their top 2-3, we were told all about our site! Mostly by a PC Volunteer Leader present at our training who has been serving there for her 3^rd year (which was lucky for us). I do feel like we're missing out on some of the excitement and anxieties all the individual volunteers are going through, but everyone has been excited for us and pumping us up, so that helps recoup my loss!

Also I think our Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD) on staff is really understanding of the ways volunteering is different for couples (and he is also married), so he seemed to feel it was best to prepare us with as much information as possible, while everyone else endures more waiting. On that note, we will be told what languages we will be receiving training in soon, which will help those volunteers speculate the region in which they are being placed, but the mystery still remains.

I'm a list kind-of-person, so here's a bit of a description of our future site! Remember, we have a lot of extra info most don't have at this point and got to ask all the questions we want. This is because we are being spoiled as the married couple and because we were lucky enough that one of the PCVLs is currently serving at our site (though not in the same schools).

- Khorxias (pron:Core-ee-hos), Namibia (see the hand! This is the cool way Namibians and PC volunteers show each other places around the country! The resemblance is pretty funny!)

- In the country, this is fairly northwest. Just south of the Caprivi Strip (a small strip-shaped region in the far north where most Namibians live) and maybe 2 hours southeast of Etosha National Park (which apparently rocks, as far as safaris go). East of the Atlantic Ocean (that is obvious!) Skeleton Coast, and Namib Desert...

- Which means... it will be hot! And dry. Especially in the summer. We were told to have an electric fan in our room and that I can carry an umbrella during the day. And to drink lots of water.

- Fairly “urban” (Translation: basically a town or large village of maybe 10,000... in our case, also apparently farmy, with chickens roaming about. Grocery store, 1 or 2, with just about anything we can need, including fresh vegetables and fruit, hooray!) Also the presence of spiders and snakes will be much less than in the rural village sites.

- Language: We will actually be learning a click language called, Khoekhoegowab (KKG). And of the 8 languages in the country that we could potentially learn, this is the only one with clicks. I am pretty intimidated personally, but many are jealous, hoping they also are placed somewhere that speaks the click language! We've joked that our we'll fight in click so our kids don't understand (and so they also think we're crazy).

- PCV Flat/House (Sounds like we will have lots of privacy, space, and security. Others may or may not be occupying the other units. Heard it's very nice and in a pleasant, quiet neighborhood, which was in the white part of town during apartheid times. PC put a lot of money into it, so security really is quite good they say. We should also have furniture! May also mean we can easily host others, including volunteers and maybe some of ya'll! Pictures will come after we do our site visit and/or move in, for those of you who were considering visiting, but depending on the conditions!).

- Schools are said to have internet access we can utilize (and our phones might too).

- 1-2 other volunteers will be serving in the same town. We thought they might want to put us somewhere isolated since we automatically have each other as support, while individuals don't have this benefit. But what happened was staff wanted us to teach in separate schools so any politics/drama doesn't get the other of us wrapped into the mess. Seems wise enough to me.

Kevin's assignment and school:
350 learners, 15 teachers
Math teacher for grades 8-10 (Geometry and Algebra?)
Secondary requests: computer literacy, library

Steph's assignment and school:
461 learners, 19 teachers
Science teacher for grades 8 & 9 (Chemistry and Physics?)
Secondary requests: IT, library, sports

Our schools are within walking distance (or we can bike), and we were told mine will come up first so Kevin can drop me off and pick me up on his way (which I just like, that's all! And Mom probably too.)

However, before we begin at our site, we will continue our training sessions at the quite nice, educational institute where we are currently being accommodated with beds and meals. But our first homestays (all of us in the same town, but with different families) will begin this week so that will be a pretty big change, and they last until the the end of training when we swear in (October 15^th).

But anywho, I'm not sure if our site will be quite what we were expecting and mentally preparing for. In essence, we consider ourselves sort of spoiled, not only to be placed in what we are learning is a very cool, safe, and developed country, but also at a safe, accessible post... with all the amenities mentioned. But hey, if it means some of you will come visit who otherwise wouldn't, we are ok with the sacrifice. ;-)