Village Life

On Friday I was showing my ICT kids some software that allows me to monitor their computer screens from mine, and also let's them send me messages and "raise their hand" when they need help. I was letting them message me anything they wanted just to try it out and was getting a lot of "I luv u mis long"s and "heelo"s when I saw someone said "I want you to come visit me in my village". I had been wanting to see a learner's house for a while now, so I quickly looked at who it was, hoping it was someone whose name I knew, and sure enough, it was Sarafina (whose name I only remember because a friend from college lives at Sarafina Way...) As they were leaving class, I told her I would love to visit her house one day though I couldn't that day, but she should let me know a day the following week and I would be glad to go.

Today she showed up at my door when the bell rang and asked me if we could go. I asked her about how long it was, since I had some things to do, and she said "not far, only 15 minutes". I should have known better. After dropping my bag at my house and filling up my water bottle, I offered to carry the backpack that her and her sister share, and after triple checking that I was serious, they gladly handed it off to me. I slung the backpack on my shoulders and the three of us headed off. The sun was beating down on us as we walked the sandy path toward the gravel road. Thirty minutes into the walk and I was sweating and tired. Though the girls offered to take the bag back, I insisted on carrying it the whole way. My learners do this walk twice a day without complaining a bit and I was determined to get the full experience, sore shoulders and all. An hour later, we came to their house where I met their siblings, one of whom was another one of my learners. They showed me around the homestead-- their rooms, the kitchen, where they pound mahangu, where the store it, where the chickens sleep, and curiously, the area where they sit outside and listen to the music that comes from "that room". I tried to get more information about this magical, musical room, but none was given. After the tour, it was time to head home. I told them they only needed to take me as far as the gravel road and I could make it back from there, but they wanted to come the whole way.

The third learner, Naemi, accompanied us as well, and along the way we ran into two others who were out collecting firewood. The girls also showed me what they called a "lake, or maybe a pond." To me it was very reminiscent of a query, but instead of rock, it was sand. Although the water level was extremely low due to the drought, and it was very murky, to me it looked like a great place for swimming- complete with a little beach and everything- but they told me that only the boys sometimes go in it, as most of them can't swim. (Makes sense when you've spent your entire life in the desert). The walk back was much more pleasant due the sun setting and lack of backpack. It was nice to chat more candidly with the girls, though they were still pretty quiet. They asked me to teach them a gospel song, but the only gospel song I know is "This Little Light of Mine", and I only know the chorus. I sang a few others for them too, but they couldn't really pick them up since the English was fast and my tone was off due to my slightly laborious breathing. I give these kids so much credit for doing this walk (and longer ones) twice a day all year and thinking nothing of it. If kids at home had to do this to go to school, classrooms would be empty.

We finally reached home and I said goodbye to the girls. I went inside to get more water only to discover that it was off. It had been off the night before, but on a little bit this morning. However now the taps were bone dry again. Luckily the ladies next door have water, so we're just filling up jugs over there till we can figure out what's going on. I also discovered that the water in their shower is actually pretty warm...it's probably a good thing I only discovered this now, otherwise I would have been over there quite a bit this year!

Not having water for this brief time has also given me another tiny bit of insight into how many of my learners live. The majority of them do not have running water in their house, and for those that do, it comes from a single tap in the middle of the homstead, not from sinks, showers, toilets, etc. We live near the public tap, and every day I get to see ton of people (mostly kids) rolling huge water containers or carrying them on their head to and from the tap. "Fetching water" is the most common chore for my kids, and they have to do it often as water goes quickly (as I've recently discovered), even when you're doing everything you can to conserve it.  I give my kids so much credit for how hard they work just to do basic things that we all take for granted, like washing dishes. It makes me sad though to think that a lot of them can't imagine life any other way. I hope that I am able to remember these short periods of inconvenience when I return to America and begin to appreciate things like constant electricity and running water (plus HOT water!), but if I forget, and I start to take advantage, I hope I will remember my learners and the process they must go through just get a bit of water to drink.

T.I.A. (This Is Africa)

Pretty sure I've seen this truck
in my neighbor's yard in NH...

While teaching a Namibian class for the first time was certainly an exciting aspect of our week up north, for me the memorable highlights happened outside of school while exploring Omungwelume (ohm-gway-loom-ay) and getting a taste for Namibian culture.

Because it had been getting dark when we arrived, Monday morning offered my first real look at the village of Omungwelume. Jessie and I sat on the back steps planning our lesson, and I snapped the following picture of the farm across the street. Not entirely unlike NH, actually.



That afternoon, after our sessions, a group of us took a walk around the village and enjoy the peacefulness of that beautiful afternoon. We found a massive fig tree that was fun to take pictures under (the shade circle was probably about 100 feet in diameter), got to see the traditional homesteads a bit closer, and encountered the biggest bug we had yet seen in Namibia: a millipede that was about 10 inches long and about 3 inches around.

How's that for a bug?

 After wandering around a bit, we started to make our way back to the school, but right outside the gate, we were stopped by a couple in a bakki (a pickup truck) named Ruben and Monica. They asked about us, where we were from and what we were doing in Omungwelume. They invited us to one of the local bars in town to meet some people, and then offered to drive us there. With a few glances at each other, we figured 'why not?' and hopped into the back for our first bakki ride- a major milestone. We picked up a couple more people on the way, and a few minutes later, we arrived at the village center and got out. We had been taken to a restaurant that Ruben and Monica's friend had just opened, and they invited us in for dinner, but we had to turn them down because some of our group mates were cooking for us back at the house. We decided to explore 'down town' a little before heading back though, and let me tell you- I have never felt like such an outsider. Because it was just before dinner time, it seemed like the entire village was sitting outside all the various bars, shops, and houses along the main road, and here we were, a group of ten white people walking down the street like some sort of parade. People stared and whispered  but it wasn't malicious. Most seemed excited and curious, and nearly everyone said hello. I started getting really excited about meeting the people in my own village. 

One of the side streets in Omungwelume.

The hospitality continued throughout the week; on another afternoon stroll later in the week, we saw many of our learners eagerly waving at us as we passed them cultivating in their fields. Several ran up to us and invited us back to their house to try cultivating for ourselves. We followed and got a mini lesson before trying for ourselves. Essentially cultivating entails going at the land with a hoe, pulling up all the weeds and getting the dirt ready for planting. While it wasn't extremely strenuous, it is definitely not something I would want to be doing for hours in the sun before going to school, which is what many of our learners must do. We stayed and chatted with our learner, her sisters, and her mother for a bit and they introduced to a local treat: frozen custard. These were not only delicious (vanilla custard frozen in plastic baggie), but were also the first frozen thing we had seen our whole time here- we were very thankful for them!

Another amazing treat that is readily available in Namibia are mangoes. They have juicy, fresh mangoes in every store, and we were even able to buy some that our learners were selling one afternoon, fresh from being picked that day! Not only are mangoes cheap and available, but every kind of mango juice one could ever want as well! I am going to be in mango heaven all year. =)

Angelina's homestead. You can see one of the
huts, and one of the concrete rooms in the
 background. Also, a murala tree.

Thursday was our last night in Omgumwelume, and we went to Bret's, girlfriend's parent's house for a traditional Oshiwambo meal. We drove to their homestead and had to wade through some ankle deep water that had accumulated due to the rain in order to reach their gate. Homesteads are pretty cool. Basically there's a big square fenced area, this is considered the "house". Inside the fence are a bunch of smaller building, some concrete, some traditional wooden/clay huts. Each of these is considered a room in the house. While traditionally all of the rooms were huts, most people have cement buildings for the various living quarters, and the huts are used for food storage, beverage storage, cooking, pounding grain, etc. Also inside the fence are various gardens for growing herbs and spices. Outside the fence are the fields where they grow maize, sorghum, and mahangu (pearl millet), and/or raise cattle or pigs.

Mahangu porridge and chicken.

After getting a tour of the homestead, we sat down outside to try the oshikudu, which is a weak fermented beverage made from millet flour and sorghum. It tasted like liquid bread, carbonated with a hint of lemon- definitely an acquired taste. Pretty soon, dinner was ready. Out came clay pots with chicken cooked in a stew with murala oil, and plates with mahangu porridge. This porridge is like bread dough, but made with mahangu. In this meal, there no plates or silverware, everyone eats from the communal pots with their hands- pretty cool if you ask me! The food was delicious. The porridge had a texture like bread dough but with a little sand in it (I later found out this is exactly the case, hey, T.I.A. right?) so that took some time to get used to, but it tasted good. After we ate, we talked with Angelina's family for a bit and then headed back to the school (Bret wanted to get us back before dark because the roads are dangerous at night with all the animals on the roads). We settled back into the hostel for our last night, preparing for the long trek back to Windhoek the next day.

The ride home was interesting. Because I knew what to expect, I was able to see past the initial looks of the towns. Driving through Oshakati a second time, I saw some larger stores and modern strip malls that I had missed on the way up. I could see dirt roads extending deeper into villages, I could look at a homestead and have an idea of what it was like on the inside. A few hours outside of Windhoek, we stopped to get fuel, food and to stretch our legs. We had stopped in the same town on the way up and I remember thinking it was small and not nearly as nice as Windhoek. Driving into town on the way back however, everything seemed so big, and really nice. The supermarket we stopped at seemed massive, and the selection incredible. It's amazing what a little perspective can do.

Well I think that's as much as I can write for now. I'll try to post again when I get up to my village on Friday (let's home my Netman works!)

Till then,
Jamie

First Impressions

Last Saturday we packed up our teaching clothes, put our extra bags in storage and piled into two vans for the near 10 hour trek north. It was hot and cramped, but the scenery was gorgeous and the sky was brilliant blue. After a few pit stops, we crossed the Red Line. Officially, this is a veterinary disease control mechanism and protects southern commercial cattle farmers by prohibiting northern farmers from selling their meat south of the line. Unofficially, this servers as a separation from more affluent  Afrikaans  southern Namibia from poor, native, black northern Namibia. Crossing the line, the striking difference is apparent immediately. Driving through the north was a continuous check of my privilege, as each squalid village we passed through left me thinking "what have I gotten myself into". Going into this experience, I of course was expecting to see extreme poverty, but nothing can quite prepare you for seeing it first hand, especially when you know it is your home for the next year. The cement and aluminum buildings seemed hardly big enough for people to fit in, never mind to be homes, bars, or markets (essentially the only three types of buildings I have seen in the villages). I started to get really nervous about my coming year, and wondered if I was cut out for this after all. I was afraid that I was the only one thinking this, and hated myself for being so judgmental.

About an hour away from our destination, we stopped in the largest city in the north to pick up supplies for the week. This is the city that I will be going to to buy groceries, clothes, school supplies, and anything else I need to buy while I am here. Once again, I was shocked at how underdeveloped it was, considering it's the second largest city in the country. Everything seemed so run down. Another privilege check. We got out at the local grocery store to do our shopping. We had been broken into groups of four to do the cooking for the week. Each group was in charge of one dinner and my group decided to do a stir-fry. After adjusting to the smaller size, I was pleasantly surprised by the selection at Spar. Although I did not have 10 brands of orange juice to choose from, the shelves were well stocked with familiar food items, and I breathed a sigh of relief to know that I would still be able to make some of my favorite foods. (No dill though, this may be an issue...) We managed to locate almost everything we wanted for the stir-fry, with the exception of soy sauce, so we settled for curry and were on our way. 

We drove on for another hour on a dirt road to the village of Omungwelume, where we would be doing our teaching practicum. We would be staying in the dorms of the Eengadjo Secondary School and cooking in the on campus house where two of the volunteers who are placed in this village would be living. As we drove away from the city, the scenery changed a bit from the more barren desert landscape to one that was much more reminiscent of NH/VT farm lands. Trees lined the road and behind them, traditional homesteads sat like islands among the vast fields of wheat, sorgum, and murala. The vans slowed periodically to allow herds of cattle and goats to cross the roads and before long, we pulled into Omgwemlume. The town was a larger version of the villages we had seen on the drive up, but as we drover further off the main road, the houses seemed a little bit bigger and more sturdy. When we got to the school, we first went to Jessie and Ted's house to drop off the groceries. After a sentimental moment of our Field Director (Bret) handing his old keys over the Ted and Jessie, we opened the door and stepped inside. The house was an absolute MESS, to the horror of the new occupants, but after an hour or so of 15 person teamwork, we managed to throw out all the trash and dirty underwear (yup, yup) and had scrubbed the kitchen so it at least resembled a place where food could safely be cooked. I started attacking the oven, which was covered in about five layers of grime, and that became my project for the week. It actually became a bit of a joke amongst the volunteers- whenever we had some free time, I could always be found scouring away. It looked pretty good by the end if I do say so myself. 

When dinner had been cooked, my group cleaned up by candlelight and then we made our way back to the dorms to get ready for bed. We would be arising early the next day to begin our teaching, so I took a quick (cold) shower and climbed into my homemade sleeping bag (thanks mom) and fell asleep. 

Coming soon: our week teaching in Omungwelume, a traditional Oshiwambo meal, and the trip back. Stay tuned!

Peace,

Jamie