My Life as a PCV Begins

I am happy to report that I have survived the first two weeks of Peace Corps service. I wish I could say that these weeks have been action packed and filled with great moments of triumph. However, that is not the case. The weeks have passed by slowly with their fair share of ups and downs.

It was exciting to return to my new home, Enguwantale. This time of course I knew I was moving here for the long haul and knew exactly what to expect. It was no surprise to find it exactly as I had left it; flat, hot, and dusty. It was great to see my new host family again and was surprised to find that my host mother had decided to electrify my house. I was prepared and actually looking forward to living with only one light bulb. However, I do have to admit that the electricity is nice to have especially when cooking food after dark. It is still by no means luxury though; there is no running water and no bathroom. All in all, I am very pleased with my new living situation and am settled in enough to call it home.

Most of my days have been spent at the school which is about a 10 minute walk from home. The days begin at 8:00 and finish at 3:00. As a SEED volunteer my assignment is to split my work between the school and the community. I am expected to work closely with the entrepreneurship teacher at the school and co-plan and co-teach with him. So I have been sitting in on the grade 8 and 9 entrepreneurship classes and trying to brainstorm ways to make the curriculum more practical. At times it is hard for me to keep my eyes open and I can tell the students are in the same boat. There is not a lot of interest in the subject due to the lack of practicality. That is where I will hopefully come in.

Besides sitting in on the classes I really haven’t been doing much else except familiarizing myself with the material. In fact, it has been very boring. Unfortunately, these boring times can wear on the moral and has made me question what I am doing here and how am I ever going to keep busy for two years? There have been plenty of moments like this. However, there are “up” moments that come along and bring me back around. The other day the principal asked me to monitor an 8th grade period that was lacking a teacher. I was reluctant to do so. Just me and 25 Namibian 8th graders did not sound like a real enjoyable experience. However, I went to class and spent the next hour with the students. It was a very eye-opening experience. Instead of just sitting there and making sure they kept quiet, like I was expected to do, I engaged them and we ended up having a lot of fun together. At the end of the period, on my way out the door they were thanking me. For what? I wasn’t sure then but now know that they were thankful that I took the step to get to know them and to let them teach me their language; certainly an inspiring moment. Even though the moments of doubt are more frequent right now, the up moments are much more powerful.

On the community side of my assignment…not much happening there. There is less structure in this aspect of my assignment, so it has been more difficult to get traction in that direction. I am not entirely comfortable spending time in the village alone yet since there is a bit of a language barrier. And as can be expected, the village is still weary of having a new foreign member. But I have met a handful of people who seem to appreciate my presence and are motivated to start working with me. These are certainly relationships I am going to embrace and am looking forward to strengthening.

So that is my first two weeks as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a nutshell. Even though it has had its moments, I am thrilled to be here. Each interaction with a new person gives me new ideas and insight into what my potential is here. I think there is a lot to be done here, and with patience and tenacity this will be a very rewarding adventure.

Commencing the evening round-up

The homestead

Kalinga happy after the cows have been corralled

Sun setting over the homestead. Enguwantale

can be seen in the background

Moving forward...

Today marks my official start into Peace Corps volunteerism. After two months of rigorous training I have been officially sworn in as a volunteer. The event was a fairly big deal. Several important people from the community, the Namibian government, the US Embassy, and various NGOs attended the swearing-in of our group. The ceremony was filled with speeches from various US and Namibian officials, singing, speeches by volunteers (in local languages), and the official swearing-in by the acting US ambassador to Namibia. In total, 34 education volunteers and 10 Small Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) volunteers were sworn in. It took a lot of hard work to get this far, in fact many people say that pre-service training is the toughest part to PC service.

This is certainly an emotional and exciting time. It is hard to say goodbye to the community that I have been calling home for the last two months. There has been wonderful relationships developed with my host family, neighbors, and trainers. Okahandja has certainly become a comfortable place to call home. As a PC trainee there has been a lot of support in this community and now that I am officially a volunteer, that immediate support is gone. I will immediately move to Enguwantale and away from the training staff, other volunteers, and a structured environment. However, it is all very exciting too. I will get to learn and integrate into a new community, develop new relationships, and learn to live in a different way. I am excited to begin working and to start testing and implementing my ideas. There is a lot of challenges and hard work ahead of me in my new community but I am looking forward to every moment of it.

Namibia's first group of Small Enterprise and
Entrepreneurship Development volunteers

My host parents and I elegantly
matching at the swearing-in ceremony

Meet the Mbindas

My time here in Okahandja is winding down. A week from now I will be back up north and settling in for the long haul. Okahandja has become a familiar and comfortable place for me over the last couple of months. It will always be a place I will enjoy coming back to and visiting.

During this training period I have been living with a host family. They have taken me as one of their own and have really made my initial Namibian experiences enriching. I have been living with the Mbinda family, which is made up of father Franz, mother Ingrid, and three brothers, Guillermo (also known as Body Boy...I have no idea where the name comes from) who is 6, Emmanuel who is 10, and Henson who is 23. Like I previously mentioned, the family speaks Khoe Khoe and Afrikaans, both of which I have picked up very few words (or clicks) of unfortunately. As much as I would love to learn how to click, I find it very difficult to learn two languages simultaneously.

Despite being in Africa, living with the Mbindas hasn't seemed too different than living at home in the States, which of course has made for an easy transition into Namibian life. The house is a simple western style home in a nice neighborhood on the outskirts of Okahandja. Franz is a teacher at the local school and Ingrid mostly works from home sewing wedding dresses. When it comes to meals, nothing too out of the ordinary. Here, a meal is not a meal without meat. Meat is an important part of the Namibian diet and to eat a meal without it is unfathomable. The freezer is full of goat and mutton, which in my opinion, is not much of a culinary delight. Every time I open the freezer I am ominously reminded of the goat head waiting to be cooked. My host mother keeps telling (or maybe threatening) me that she is going to cook the goat head before I leave. I have been adamantly insisting that she should not go through the trouble. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the goat head is still frozen when I walk out of here.

The boys and I have a lot of fun together. We often hang around outside in the evenings playing tag with the neighbor kids, playing with strange insects, or looking for snakes. When we are not doing that we are sitting inside concentrating on an intense game of chess. I amazed at how well Emanuel can play and am even more amazed at how quickly Body Boy has been picking it up. The homestay experience would not be the same without them and they have provided me with as much entertainment as I have to them.

Body Boy and Emmanuel...always coming alive
when the camera is out

Calm streets of my fairly
western neighborhood

Hanging out with the kids

My simple Namibian home

Enguwantale

Last weekend I got a small glimpse of what my life is going to be like for the next two years. Site visit is an extremely exciting, stressful, and eye-opening time. It is difficult to go into the situation without any expectations. Of course the fewer expectations you have walking into your new community, the better-off you are. But that is easier said than done. I went into the situation with this in mind but expectations still remained...

Enguwantale is in the region of Oshana which is in the greater area known as Owamboland. It is the most densely populated area of Namibia (still not very densely populated) and dominated by the Owambo people, who are currently controlling the government. The drive north took about 8 hours from Okahandja in a Ministry of Education van which despite begin a government rig, did not seem to be the soundest of vehicles. But, it got us there in one piece. I traveled with a handful of other volunteers who will be in the same area and our respective principles. From the town of Oshakati we went our separate ways. My way was down a bumpy, sandy, and rutted road into what seemed like the middle of nowhere...or maybe it is actually nowhere.

My expectations as a business volunteer was to have a vibrant community with economic activity bursting at the seams. I envisioned myself working in a village with street vendors, a market, and people actively wanting to progress. However, I soon found out that Enguwantale is nothing more than a small gathering of cuca shops, shebeens, a taylor, grinding mill, and the school (cuca shops and shebeens translating into beer stores and bars). The 10 or so brick shacks awkwardly sitting in the middle of nowhere looked like a ghost town. I was honestly at a loss. How in the world am I going to keep myself busy here for two years? It is flat, sandy, dusty, hot, and empty.

However, as I found out there is more than meets the eye. Even though the village itself is small, there are farms and homesteads scattered all around. My homestead is located near the village and school and from there I can maybe see another 3 homesteads. It wasn't until Monday at school that I realized there is a lot more going on there. On Monday morning I was amazed to see children of all ages trekking through the fields and down the roads to come to school. In total, about 250 students seemed to appear magically out of the savannah. It was comforting (despite being laughed at by 250 kids, for apparently being different) to see so much activity and this gave me hope.

Despite its apparent flaws and my initial feeling of loss, I am confident now that my time in Enguwantale will be an enriching experience. I have certainly had to change my thinking and reshape my ideas but that is all part of the process. I am sure that after some more time there I will have to change my thinking again. But for now, I have a lot of creative ideas that I didn't have before and am excited to see where they go.

There is a lot more that happened on this visit that I didn't mention...like my new home and the school experience. But in the interest of length and time, I will have to write about those at another time. Thanks for following and for the comments!

Somewhere in Owamboland
(not Enguwantale)

When the cows come home

My new brother and sister showing
me where the muhangu (millet) is stored
(omumwamemememati nomumwamemekadhona...
right, that is brother and sister in Oshindonga; this language is crazy)