For now

I know, I know, it’s been way too long since I’ve updated this thing. I found out my permanent site, a town called Grootfontein, about 5 hours north of where I am now in Okahandja. That sounds fairly far away, but I’m actually one of the closer ones to Windhoek, the capitol. I spent last week in Grootfontein checking everything out and getting to know the staff where I’ll be working. I’m going to be doing community outreach for the Ministry of Health. Grootfontein is the health district capitol, so the area I’ll be covering is very large, basically like the size of a New England state. The town itself is very green relative to the rest of the country, which is nice, and is in the “mountainous” region in the central northeast. I was expecting mountains a little more dramatic than what I saw, they were just glorified hills. The town is mid-size for Namibia, around 22,000 people, but large for a Peace Corps placement. I have a grocery store with fresh vegetables and everything! I’m super spoiled. It also looks like I’m going to get set up with DSL once I move into my flat on the hospital property. The only thing that’s a bit frustrating is that there are five main languages spoken in the town: English, Afrikaans, Otjiwambo, Damara, and Otjiherero. So, though I’m learning Otjiherero, I’m probably going to be speaking mostly English because it’s one of the most common.

Last week I stayed with the same host family I’ll be living with for the first three months I’m at site. They were wonderful, much like the host family I have now, with two daughters, Fabiola and Magreth, who are 16 and 23, and a son, Turi, who is 10. Fabiola and Magreth were great tour guides, I know I’m going to appreciate their knowledge of Groot. They are also Hereros and, if I haven’t mentioned it before, Herero women have a very interesting style of traditional dress. Sitting at home bored one night, they insisted I try on one of their mother’s traditional Herero dresses. I’m reluctant to post this horrid picture of me in it, but it will at least give you a good idea of what the dress looks like and it’s the only picture I have of my new host family.

Seeing the state of primary healthcare at site was grim. During my week at the clinic, the first HIV counseling and testing I observed was a positive result, I saw hookworm in children at a farm school, and went into the bush chasing down TB defaulters. At first I was excited at the idea of being immersed in these diseases that I only studied in school, but I’m reluctant to be excited about a public health emergency and now I’m just motivated that I get to do some work. There really is so much to do in the community, I’m just concerned with my ability to affect change.

Life at home with my host family is great.  Mara and Congo give me lots of space (which I appreciate) and talk with me about African and American politics and sociology.  They are both so welcoming and open-minded – they already call me part of their family.  Mara told me last night that when I get married, I’d better invite her to my wedding.  I didn’t want to spoil it by telling her she would probably be waiting a while.  Mara bought me my first Namibian beer yesterday, a Windhoek Lager.  While we were sipping it on the porch, enjoying the weather during the planned power-outage in our neighborhood, we realized that we were both born on February 12^th.  She said, “Ah, nature has such a way of bringing people together!”

 Kenao, my host sister, might be the sweetest little girl I’ve ever met. She has been my shadow since I moved in and has been a wonderful language teacher.  We do the dishes together every night after dinner and she enunciates each item she’s drying slowly for me to repeat.  “O-tji-a-ha” (plate), “E-ko-pi” (cup), and so on.

I was able to show off my family to my fellow trainees on Saturday, when we had a Namibian-style cookout, or a Braai, at the training center.  Host families from the different languages (Afrikaans, Otjiherero, etc.) cooked traditional meals using traditional methods and we all gorged ourselves at the end.  Well, some of us did.  For me, it was more of a visual lesson on where meat really comes from.  I couldn’t watch the chicken slaughtering itself, but I saw them alive and then saw them headless and bloody two seconds later.  You’d think that would be the most graphic part of the whole thing.  It turns out that my people, the Herero, are huge meat-eaters and a specialty of theirs is something called, “smiley.”  It’s a fully cooked goat head, called as such because it smiles at you while it’s waiting to be eaten.  I think it was when I saw my language professor trying to get at the brain that I decided to fill up on bread and nothing else.  At least I wasn’t part of the group who eats dried worms.

This is a picture of me pounding corn to make maize, like a good vegetarian

Here is a smoky picture of Mara, Congo, Kenao and I. 

I find out my permanent site on Thursday, which is where I’ll be going for good after swearing-in on April 17^th.  Site announcements can’t come soon enough.  I’ve been so lucky with my host family, but this will be where I live for only two months.  The site is the place I have to be content with for two whole years.  It’s out of my hands now, I know, but I’m still nervous.  

 There are already things I miss about the states, though few and far between so far.  I ate my last Luna Bar yesterday – bad move.  Also, I didn’t realize how problematic finding brewed coffee would be here.  There are a few of us that are pretty much dead on our feet in the morning because of the caffeine withdrawals.  I’m jonesing for a French press, a grinder, and some Stumptown. 

Well, I’ll leave you with a photo of one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen, snapped from my front porch last night.