For now

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.