Traditional Himba woman at Epupa Falls

Photos of some of my learners, grades 5-10 :)

Sweet little Grade 5 learners on the computers for the first time

More Grade 5 learners playing a game to teach them mouse skills

Tuck shop window at break

Beata, who is supposed to be counting the income from the Tuck Shop

Tuck Shop insanity at 1st break 

Some of my brightest Grade 9 learners, Natulele, Anna, and Vistorina

Learners in Entrepreneurship Club selling items at the Tuck Shop

The mass chaos that is Namibian transportation...

After some prompting from others, I have finally decided to write a blogpost solely dedicated to transportation. You’re probably thinking this will be a very boring post, and it may well be, but I’ve found that transportation is one of the funniest things I’ve had to deal with in my time here. When I was filling out my site preference form before coming to Namibia, I first replied that my preference was anything from a large village to very remote-no urban areas or towns for me. I figured if I was going to have this experience, I wanted to really have an experience unique to Namibia and be a part of a small, tight-knit community. After a few days, I became worried that even a large village would be too urban for what I was looking for, so I decided to write the director again and say that I strongly preferred a remote location. I got my wish, and have learned to treasure my little village in the bush. Along with my beautiful, real African experience (as one native put it) also came many transportation issues.

Most villages are fairly easy to get in and out of on most days if you know the correct place to wait for a hike…my village has maybe three of four drivers that EVER go into town, and only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday…and only at certain times on those days if at all. Taxis that will drive most anywhere, even to locations 30 km away, will not venture into the crazy sand path into the bush that is my sole means of entering and exiting the village. Thus, my life requires a bit more planning than is usual in the typically very laid back Namibian lifestyle. If I need to get groceries, I have to leave school two hours early to ride with Tate Mashimba at EXACTLY 1:50. One minute past, and he’s gone without you, even if you’ve already spoken to him about getting a ride. Rides with Tate often involve piling into the back of his pickup truck with twenty other people. It’s funny because I actually now prefer bouncing in the back of the truck in the fresh air to riding in an actual car (air conditioning and tvs now freak me out a bit after living so long without them). After about 45 mins, we’re typically pulling into Oshakati where you can then shop and do whatever you want as long as you’re back at the Supa Dupa grocery store back alley to wait for a hike back by 4:30. If you arrive much later than that, might as well forget getting a ride and find somewhere to stay for a while since the next ride won’t be until two days later.

Thus, when I was told last week that we would be traveling to Etosha National Park in Ministry of Education transport for our Mid-service that would actually pick us up from our schools, I was beyond thrilled that I didn’t have to worry about making arrangements. More wishful thinking. The Ministry then decided that it could only pick up a few of the closest volunteers from the schools and the rest of us would have to hike to a specified meeting point for them to pick us up. I became a bit worried. We were expected to be in Ondangwa by 9:30 and hardly anyone ever leaves my village on Friday mornings. After speaking to my director, she decided to describe the situation to the Ministry in hopes that they would make an exception to come get me. After a very long discussion, they relayed that they would if they could but they simply didn’t have any transport that could make it safely down the “road” to my village. Accustomed to this type of situation by that point, I just hoped for the best. Friday morning, I left my house at six hoping to maybe catch someone going into town for work…by 7:30 I was stilling waiting in front of the aluminum shed that is our cuca shop and hadn’t seen a soul.

Finally, Tate Paulus, owner of the cuca shop, came to open up shop,and of course took it upon himself to help me find a ride (even though he kept telling me it would be impossible until two in the afternoon). Not much later, a truck came bounding out of the bush with a ton of passengers. I was beyond excited! They told me there wouldn’t be room for me, but I didn’t care and needed to get to town so I clung to the back of the bakki with all of the women in the truck sweetly fretting over me every time I almost fell out after flying over bumps. After making stops in three other villages, I finally arrived at my beloved Supa Dupa in Oshakati. I then had to take a taxi to the next town over to Ongwediva to go to the petrol station with a hikepoint for Ondangwa, a town 30 km away. One hike and two taxis later, I finally arrived in Ondangwa, but the driver didn’t know where the Ohangwena Regional Office at the UNam Education Campus was that I was supposed to go to for my meeting point. So, I got out of that taxi and tried to find a driver that actually knew where it was. After lots of language barrier ridden discussions with many people, I was told that where I wanted to go was Ohangwena, not Ondangwa, for the correct office. Not knowing what else to do and totally out of phone credit, I got in a taxi to Ohangwena. I didn’t know anything about this town, but soon found out that it was 50 km away and in a totally different region than the one I was currently in. After finally arriving there, while still in the taxi, my director called and informed me I was in the wrong place and needed to take another taxi all the way back to Ondangwa. I did this, and it all worked out ok, as everything somehow always does here!

The morning of our return trip back home, my director once again tried asking the Ministry if they could take me back to my village to avoid the same chaos that happened before. They replied that they could not, so she tried calling both my principal and other colleague that both own cars to see if they could come get me after arriving in town. They both couldn’t either, and it was a Sunday, so my chances of getting a hike were slim to none. I was determined to just walk the 28 km to my village…somehow finding the correct sand paths…and everything would be fine!

Things weren’t looking promising when the Ministry driver failed to drop off the first girl that should have been dropped off, then made the second volunteer get out and hike at the wrong location. With three volunteers still waiting to be dropped off, he decided to stop at the ATM first, get some gas, and make us wait forever while he did his own grocery shopping (even though we were not even five minutess from where he should have dropped us off)…as Alida and I were planning to just get out of his car and try to get a taxi to her village where I could stay the night, the biggest Namibian miracle happened! I spotted one of my sweet colleagues from school walking through the grocery store parking lot. Setting myself up to be disappointed, I assumed she would never be driving back to the village on a Sunday…but to my extreme excitement, she was! Like I said, everything here finds some way of working out, even hopeless transportation issues, and it is certainly a beautiful thing :)

Roadside stand selling curdled milk on the way home from Etosha

Eenkuwa

Enkuwa Girls Cultural Group practicing for their regional competition, which they ended up winning last weekend :) They perform traditional dances and songs of the Owambo tribe of Northern Namibia, and are more specifically of the sub-tribe, Kwambi, which you can hear mentioned in some of the pieces. 

Makes my heart smile

Grade 8 and 9 girls singing in the informal choir I established last week. This song is a traditional Oshiwambo song, and is my absolute favorite.

Biogas Digester

As promised, here is some more information and pictures of the biogas digester being installed at our school thanks to Anna, a Fulbright engineer, and Grant, the local peace corps volunteer. In short, this biogas digester will be filled with a mixture of water and cow dung that has been brought in by community members and learners. This mixture will then produce methane gas that will be used to fuel a stove to cook maize meal for the learners to eat during school hours. The Ministry of Education supplies the school with the meal for the soft porridge for learners, but being in the middle of the desert, there is never enough fire wood to actually be able to cook any of the food provided. Hopefully, this project will be successful and the learners will be able to eat soft porridge for lunch within the next month or so. It is also my understanding that community members will also gain compost from the digester to use in their fields, so it is truly a beneficial project that I hope will continue on after we leave. Here is the link to Anna's blog for more detailed information! Anna Lenhart's Biogas blog

Lots of community members came out to help with construction

Love this guy's hat

Thumbs up from a happy principal!

After the dome is covered with cement, sand will be dug out from under it so that the dung and water can be placed inside

HIV/AIDS Awareness Week

By last Thursday, I was not only out of groceries but also completely out of electricity. The lack of groceries wasn't so bad as I've discovered that certain women in the village will come to the schools around 2 to sell fat cakes. Fat cakes are fantastic oily, doughy balls of goodness that will actually fill you up for a while AND only cost about .12 in US. Brilliant. The electricity part was a bit more complicated. I figured I must just need to pay the bill and all would be resolved! I thought wrong. Apparently the electricity meter in my house has a serial number that I have to take to a gas station to purchase more electricity from them, and they give you a ticket with the code to type into your meter when you get home. Who would've thought you'd buy electricity from a gas station? Totally bizarre, and super complicated for me since there aren't any around here. Thankfully, I was already planning to meet up with some fellow volunteers, Michael, Lisa, and Richard, in town on Friday anyways. But what should have been a simple hike into town turned into an ordeal as my friend Anna and I waited to get a ride into town. Normally, I'd be able to hitch a ride with one of the teachers around 2, giving plenty of time for travel before dark. However, this time we ended up waiting till after 5 and hitched a ride with some Germans that happened to show up randomly in our village to do a water presentation at the school. We finally got into town and had an amazing (relatively speaking) dinner at a very nice hotel in town. We then met up with my friends at a crazy place down the road called Bennie's. It's pretty much the strangest place you can find around here. It's basically a jungle resort in the middle of the desert with a huge pool, peacocks, and meerkats roaming around the hotel grounds. We all hung out there for a bit then Anna and I went back to her apartment for the night at the University of Namibia Engineering Campus. The next day we walked to a fellow volunteer's school and caught up with him for a bit then met up with Steve for a while as well. We then all parted ways and I took a taxi to meet with the teacher that was supposed to give me a ride back to Enguwantale. After waiting with him in several different bars and three hours later (for what should have been a 40 min trip), I was finally back home. Apparently drinking excessively before driving home is typical around here. Yes, I was scared, and yes I offered to drive us home myself!


In other news, this week was HIV/AIDS awareness week at my school. I was really excited to get involved and do as much as I could with the learners since I'm now also teaching them about HIV/AIDS in my life skills courses. I worked with the principal and arranged to make the red awareness ribbons for everyone in the school to wear this week. I thought it should be easy enough, but of course that was wishful thinking. He did buy some really nice red ribbon, but no safety pins. So, I was then given a bottle of wood glue to glue the ribbons together...how they were supposed to then put them on their clothes still baffles me. Wood glue was also a failure, so I just started stapling them together. Finally, I convinced him to send someone to a china shop to buy safety pins. Success. Ms. Iita and I worked for two days making ribbons, and I'm proud to say that everyone had a ribbon by Thursday! I also worked with the grade 10 learners doing research online for information on HIV/AIDS then had them make posters to hang up around the school for the official ceremony. We had anonymous boxes set up in each classroom in which students could place their questions to be read aloud and answered at the ceremony held on Thursday. The questions were priceless. Obviously, a lot of the students didn't take it seriously and asked silly questions, but even some of the ones that I think were supposed to be serious were too funny. They had all of the teachers laughing hysterically in the staff room. But overall, I think it was a huge success. The question and answer session was really informative for the learners, and the posters got the normally rebellious grade 10 learners really excited and involved. Heading to Epupa Falls this weekend with some other volunteers, new post to follow!

Meme Iita giving out awareness ribbons

Learners waiting for the ceremony to begin

Sunsets and dancing

Beautiful sunset in my backyard

Rebekka

Terrifying, almost always out of control donkey carts

Beata