Dung beetles

Truly amazing. Nature's dump trucks. Thanks to Patches for providing us specimens, we captured these waste disposers in the following footage.

Digging the hole:

Rolling in the dung:

You can see how they are made perfectly to do this wonderful job too!  So cool!  (If you're a dork like me/us, anyway.)

When I told a Namibian that we don't have dung beetles where we're from, he was shocked!  His suggestion was we import and sell them.  I can see our business now: "Go green with nature's pooper scooper!"  I must say, we do find them to be quite helpful to have around!

For more on the dung beetle, visit Nat Geo kids!

Flood

There has been some pretty serious flooding in the far north of Namibia, close to the border of Angola.  Serious enough that schools are closing (the primary schools at least, since the water is more dangerous for the small children) and Peace Corps has evacuated the MANY volunteers up there.

It's hard for Kevin and me to imagine since what they are experiencing in the north is so different from what we have in the south (they say "the North" (which means the extreme north, where most of Namibia's population lives) is a different country from "the South").  But a PC friend showed me some photos and gave me this video:

News article from The Namibian: "Floods continue to threaten the lives of children and families"

News article from The Namibian: "This year's floods the worst ever"

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!)

Patches in action

Such a cute little puppy.  He is growing up fast though!  We feed him twice as much as we first were!  Find this video to be so precious because he's such a little baby.  He just melts our hearts.  Kevin and I talk about how puppies are proof that God exists!

 

This is how desperately Patches wants to be with us.  And he CAN overcome this and similar Metz-made barricades.  We haven't come up with one setup in which he has not outsmarted us!  (Keep in mind, our resources are limited!)  He hates being contained to his side of the room (of tile, ours has carpet).  He is showing improvement with accepting that he has to sleep on the floor next to our bed instead of in it with us!  (Though he puts forth solid attempts to persuade us with his cuteness!)  This is good because he will soon be big enough to jump right on if he wants to!  

This also seems to be the way Patches works out while we're gone.  Check out those puppy muscles!

We later caught him employing one of his clever strategies.. the running jump...

 

Dancing

On Saturday we partook in some cultural exchange with a group of young (school-age, more or less) Namibian dancers. They taught us their thing, and we taught them the electric slide, etc. I think it's safe to say they were more skilled than us, but to be fair, I think they perform/compete quite a bit. Good times were had by all. The video doesn't do the dancing justice, but here is a preview (in which I also am featured!).