Cobras and Christmas

Mozambique Spitting Cobra

Our pet cobra.

Let me tell you a little story...... I woke up on a Sunday morning (four Sundays ago to be exact) and stood up to put my sandals on in our sleeping hut. I felt some liquid drip on my neck and I looked up because I thought maybe our thatch roof was leaking. I didn’t see any water dripping down and it looked like it was sunny outside, so I ignored it and went back to putting on my sandals. Then I felt the drips hit the back of my neck again, but this time I heard a faint “hissss” as well. I turned to look behind me and saw a cobra with his mouth wide open about a foot away from my head, hanging just above the door. I literally jumped across the bed to the other side of the hut and Lindsey and I sat there for about 20 minutes in the opposite corner, hoping that the he would eventually crawl out. He didn’t. He sat there, just hanging above the door staring at us with his neck flared out. Eventually, I put our blanket over my head like a cape for protection (cause honestly, I didn’t know if he was going to like let go of the grass and drop down on me or something) and took one step and did a supermanish jump out of the door, followed of course by a graceful face plant in the sand outside. I ran over to some of the other teachers’ houses who are apparently “experienced” snake killers and they came over with some sticks to kill the snake. Lindsey then jumped out of the hut as well, and we knocked the snake from our roof down to the ground - where he was sentenced to death by sticks.

It turned out to be a Mozambique Spitting Cobra, which according to Google is the second most dangerous (not deadly) snake in Africa behind the Black Mamba. The Peace Corps gave us a snake book about all of the common snakes in Namibia with pictures and everything, so it was easy to find out what kind of snake it was because not that many cobras actually spit. It didn’t really scare me much at the time, but the more I thought about it, the more freaked out I became. The snake easily could have bit my neck or spit in my eyes possibly causing blindness. It was a Sunday morning so the one health clinic in town was closed, so it would have been hours until I got help. I’m telling you, God was watching out for me - cause that could have been really really bad!

I have my trusty axe handle, ready to smack him when he falls

Meet Shiner and Tafel - our two new kittens

To counter the snakes, we got two kittens. The week before the snake came into our hut, an entire mouse family moved into the mud walls of our sleeping hut. I didn’t really care about it that much, besides the fact that they kept kicking dirt out onto our floor from within their holes. It was more of a minor nuisance.  However, snakes eat mice so that could have been one of the main reasons why the snake was in our hut in the first place. If we kill the mice, which I have killed all 7 of the ones that were in our hut with a mouse trap, then hopefully the snakes won’t come. So the kittens will keep the mice at bay once they are full grown which will deter the snakes, but we were also told that snakes won’t even come near cats because cats also kill snakes - so hopefully that is true. Another one of the teachers also gave us an old car tire, and said that snakes hate the smell of burning rubber. He said to burn some of it once a week and it will keep the snakes away. Can anyone verify if that is actually true or just an old wives tale? 

School so far

Since Lindsey and I don’t actually start teaching until the start of the next semester in January, the school day has been going by pretty slow for us since we don’t have much to do yet - which is from 7:30 AM - 1:20 PM. The Peace Corps wants us to use this time to observe the Namibian school system and how teachers run their classes in Namibia. It is a fantastic idea, but unfortunately there is not much for us to “observe.” The students are studying to take their final exams (which are countrywide examinations made by the Ministry of Education), so they have been spending the majority of the day at school reviewing notes and whatnot. Hence, there is not a lot of teaching going on at the moment, so we still don't have a very clear idea of how the school actually functions.

Interesting statistics - Every year, Namibia releases a form that has each school ranked by the performance of the 10th graders according the region they are in. Mayara Combined School (our school) was dead last in the Kavango Region. And the Kavango Region is the worst performing region in Namibia, so that means that Mayara is literally the worst performing school in all of Namibia. Lets see what those statistics say once Lindsey and I are done with them!!

Meeting the Peace Corps Africa Director

All of us with the Peace Corps Directors

We finally saw some hippos chilling in the river outside the lodge where we ate. 

Last Wednesday, Lindsey and I met up with four other PCVs in the same general area of the Kavango Region that we are, and we all met with the Namibia Country Director, Gilbert Collins, and the Africa Regional Director, Dick Day, for lunch at a lodge along the Kavango River. It was pretty cool to meet the man that is in charge of ALL of Africa for the Peace Corps. We all talked for a few hours and got a free lunch out of it so it was definitely worth it. They also offered us a ride back to our respective villages so we did not have to hitchhike, so the Country Director and the Africa Director have both been inside our hut. They were also very interested in the snake story haha 

Thanksgiving and Christmas

For Thanksgiving, all of the volunteers in the Kavango Region (I think there are 35 of us) are meeting up next weekend at Popa Falls, a very nice area along the Kavango River just outside of Divundu. There will be food, drinks, and good ole American fellowship. What more could you ask for on Thanksgiving? We are also going on a river cruise and another safari at Mahango Game Park for half price - because one of the volunteers is stationed right next to the park and is friends with the owners. It should be a good time.

I am not sure if I will be able to post another entry for the next two months so I might as well tell you all now. The first week in December, all of the volunteers in our groups (Group 36) are meeting for “Reconnect”  in Windhoek with the Peace Corps staff for a week of training sessions and whatnot. I imagine it will be very similar to the training we had the first two months we were in country.

After Reconnect, our entire group is going to Swakopmund for a week. Swakopmund is a coastal town that has a huge German influence and apparently some massive sand dunes (Namibia has the biggest sand dunes in the world). We will stay in beach bungalows for the week, at a cost of $7.50 USD a night I might add, and then a few of us are going to Sossusvlei - the most photographed area in all of Namibia. It is in the Namib Desert, and I have heard it is amazing with giant red sand dunes everywhere. We will camp there for a week, and then go to another costal town called Luderitz for Christmas and New Years. There are two other volunteers from our group actually stationed in Luderitz so we will be staying with them for free! After Luderitz, we are staying the next week with another volunteer in a town called Aroab, where we will probably visit Fish River Canyon (the second largest canyon in the world behind The Grand Canyon) and maybe a game park in South Africa. We will return back to Mayara the first or second week of January to get ready for school which starts back up on January 14th. Needless to say, there is a LOT of traveling coming up for Lindsey and I in December and it is going to be awesome. If you do not hear from us through the blog until January, it is because we are either rolling down sand dunes or sucking down some dark German Lager on the beach.  Until we meet again.....

Side note

I also joined the Mayara men’s soccer team, so for the past two weeks I have been playing soccer for 2 hours a day on the fields outside the school. The majority of the players are in their 20’s - and also in 8th grade. Interesting.

I am also 25,000 words into a novel that I started 2 weeks ago. There was a challenge among volunteers to try to write a 50,000 word novel in November, and since I had more than enough free time, I joined in. And don’t ask, I will probably never let you read it :)

-Tim

Our first two weeks in Mayara

Mahango Game Park - The pictures you have all been waiting for!

Lindsey and I are really lucky. There are plenty of volunteers that have been here for over a year, that have still not seen a single “exotic” wild animal. Lindsey and I got to go on a safari our FIRST weekend at site in Mayara. It is about 30 minutes away from us and only $10 Nam dollars to get in if you have your own car! Another teacher has a car and offered to take Lindsey and I if we paid for gas - not a bad deal at all. So all in all, it cost the equivalent of $34 US dollars for both Lindsey and I to go on a safari. We saw zebras, giraffes, hippos, elephants, water buffalo, lots of springboks and other crazy antelope looking things, and a male LION - which apparently is very, very rare because lions stay far away from humans. For example, the teacher that drove us has been on many safaris and has lived in Namibia his whole life, but has only seen one other lion - ever. Apparently we are good luck! So if you have your own car and are allowed to drive in a game park (which I think most of the game parks in Namibia offer that), you are free to drive along all of the dirt paths and stay in the park for as long as you want. We were only there for a little over two hours, so I am excited to go on another and bring some food and drinks and just chill in the car with the windows down, just watching all of the animals for the entire day. In Mahango you are allowed to get out of your car, which we did a few times, but our teacher friend told us to always leave the car doors open incase you have to make a mad dash away from an animal. Not bad advice.

A lot of people have been asking if we have seen any wildlife actually in Mayara. The answer is unfortunately no and here is why - animals stay away from humans. We are the most dangerous predators on the planet and the animals know to stay away from us. We see animals sometimes off to the side of the road when we are driving, but they are not around villages. Most of the wild animals are in game reserves where they are protected. However, there are crocodiles and hippos in the Kavango River, but we have yet to see any..... maybe during rainy season?

This is the first thing we saw when we pulled into the park!

A male lion munching on a zebra.

Hut Life

Our sleeping hut

We are finally in our permanent housing! After 2 months of training in Okahandja, and 2 weeks of waiting in Rundu, we are finally here. We have two huts on our homestead - a cooking hut and a sleeping hut. The cooking hut is where we hang out most of the time because the sleeping hut is so small that the bed takes up nearly the entire thing! They gave us a thatch roof on the sleeping hut which keeps it significantly cooler. Our kitchen hut has a tin roof and is like a dang oven in the middle of the day! Both huts have electricity (a very long extension cord is running from the nearest school building to our hut) but we do not have running water, so I have to fetch water every other day. And let me tell you, fetching water is no easy task. We have three big 25 liter jugs that weigh about 65 pounds each when they are full, and it is probably about 300 yards from the bore hole to our hut. That is a long way to carry two full jugs at a time! The funny thing is, they didn’t install the bore hole until about a year ago, so anytime before that everyone had to fetch water from the river - which is about a 25 minute walk from our hut. Now that would have been a workout......

Our kitchen hut. Lindsey is cutting up some vegetables to cook on the fire

Have you ever wondered how they make a mud hut? Well, let me tell you.... They cut down trees to use as the supports for the walls all around the hut, and then use smaller branches and bind them horizontally all across the frame. They then find an old termite mound (they are everywhere and also huge ha) and mix water in with the dirt, until it turns into a sloppy, muddy goop. Next, they pack the mud in between the tree branches and sticks, and smooth it out on the inside to make the walls look nice. The mud dries as hard as cement, so it is not like what you typically think of as “mud”. It is not just mud - oh no, it is termite mud! We have cement floors in both huts which is nice, because most huts have the termite mud for the floor as well. 

That is 65 pounds of water on her head.... how do they do it!?

We have a little bathing area outside our kitchen hut that they tell us will eventually have  grass reeds around it so no one can see in during the day. However, the fence is not up yet so we have been bathing outside at nighttime so no one can see. Exciting right!? No, not really. They are also going to dig us a pit latrine nearby our huts, so we don’t have to walk so far to go to the bathroom. Our school has a pit latrine (which is basically a nice version of an outhouse), and it is about a 2 minute walk away.... so it is a little less than convenient, especially if one of us was to get sick. But hopefully they will actually dig our pit latrine soon!

We have had several kids that like to come up and stand at the fence in the entrance to our homestead, and just.... watch us.... like zoo animals ha. We are some of the only white people they have ever seen, and certainly the first white people to ever live in Mayara, so it is like they don’t even know how to act around us - so they resolve to just staring. Once we actually start teaching in January I think they will open up to us a lot more. 

There are 7 different buildings like the one shown on the left. 

Mayara Combined School

Mayara Combined School has about 480 students in 1st through 10th grade. The students are excited that we are here but are still very timid and laugh when we speak to them. Their culture here is very different from our own. They have a huge respect for authority, so the kids are often so shy they do not even look at you or speak when you ask them a question. This is probably amplified tremendously with Lindsey and I because they are already so timid around elders, we are white, and they are not even remotely confident in their English - especially when speaking to native English speakers. Hopefully they will feel more confident in English by the time we leave! Also for clarification, we found out that a lot of you were under the assumption that we are teaching with all of the other Peace Corps volunteers in the same school - that is not the case. All of the volunteers are spread out all over Namibia at separate sites. Lindsey and I are actually the ONLY volunteers in Namibia that are teaching at the same school. So Mayara Combined School is the only school that has two volunteers. The few other married couples live in the same place, but teach at separate schools. Lindsey and I are the exception I guess ha

Anyway, in Mayara classes are taught in their native language, Thimbukushu, until they are in 5th grade and then it switches to English. All classes throughout Namibia are taught in English after 5th grade. The biggest problem is, no one here is that good at English. A national language test was conducted among all of the teachers in Namibia, and there were only three teachers that passed as proficient in English. Three. And they were all foreigners from Europe! So teachers are teaching in a language that they are not comfortable with or fluent in (this is a general comment of course- there are certainly teachers at our school who speak English very well), to students who do not understand what they are saying. Needless to say, it is obvious to us why the Peace Corps was asked to come to Namibia - to help with the English! Hopefully Lindsey and I will be able to get their proficiency up!

EAP

We had only been at site for five days and the electricity went out in the whole Kavango Region. The final report was that a big group of guys wanted to steal the bolts out of the main electric transmission lines that supply power to the region, and when they took the bolts out a whole bunch of lines fell down at the same time in a bad storm. Since our power was out for a few days, a lot of the food we had just bought went bad, which was a huge bummer, and we had no cell phone coverage - so we were off the grid from everyone. We cooked on an open fire and ate by candle light for a few days so it was like we were camping for real! Then all of the sudden one afternoon, a caravan of other PCVs showed up with some PC staff members and we were told that all of the Kavango PCVs were being evacuated to Rundu until the power came back on for safety reasons. The power being out didn’t really effect Lindsey and I that much, but it could have turned into a very big deal if it didn’t come back on soon. Many of the villages and cities didn’t have electricity, running water, food, or cell phone coverage, so some of the volunteers at those sites went a few days with little to no food or water, and they couldn’t even tell anyone they were in trouble. Hence, it was a very bad situation for some volunteers, and we were all evacuated to make sure everyone was safe and sound. So we just spent a few days at a secluded campsite on the Kavango River just outside of Rundu, where they had food and water brought in from Windhoek for us. The campsite also had a power generator so we were able to live relatively normal lives for those few days. It actually ended up being pretty fun and we got to meet all of the other volunteers in the region.

Peace,
Tim

Chillin in Rundu

Address update yet again - send ALL mail, letters and boxes to:

Tim and Lindsey Habenicht

P.O. Box 114

Rundu, Namibia

That’s right, send them all to the same address :)

Last Thursday, all of the volunteers in Group 36 (there are 35 of us) were sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. There were several American and Namibian ambassadors in attendance, as well as the host families, and some community members of Okahandja - so there was probably around 150 people there. Many of the volunteers had to leave directly after the swearing in ceremony was over, but we didn’t leave for Mayara until Friday morning. Now comes the funny part.

Lindsey and I have been in Rundu for one week now. We have not actually made it to site in Mayara yet because our furniture and amenities (like a stove and refrigerator) are not quite ready. Last Friday, all of the volunteers staying in the Kavango region were traveling together to our respective sites, and Lindsey received a text message from our principle saying that we needed to stay the night in Rundu - and we have been here ever since. We are staying at this little place called House Bavaria (a lodge owned by a PCV that served in the 90’s. He married a Namibian and never left-pretty interesting), and it has hot showers and a TV; both are things I wasn’t expecting to have for two years. So it has certainly been nice to have a break from bucket baths! I still have no idea how long we will actually be here...... if we don’t get picked up today, then it is highly unlikely that we will get picked up over the weekend (because no one works on the weekends), so it is looking like we will be here for at least a few more days. The whole situation of our huts not being ready is rather laughable, considering that our school has known the exact date that we were supposed to arrive in Mayara for at least 4 months. Luckily, the lodges serves a free, hearty breakfast every morning with eggs and cereal, because that is our one good meal of the day. Since we are staying in a lodge, we don’t have a kitchen and can’t cook anything, so for lunch and dinner we have been eating PB&Js. I have never had so many PB&Js, and hope that I never have to eat so many again haha!

On Monday for my birthday, Lindsey and I went to another lodge right on the Kavango River, and enjoyed some wine with this AWESOME view.

The view from the Kavango River Lodge deck.

We have been relaxing, sleeping in, reading, walking around Rundu, sleeping some more, eating PB&Js, and taking multiple showers a day - not because we need to, but because we CAN!!  That basically sums up our past week. Until we meet again!

-Tim

Almost done with training

HELLO AGAIN!!

FIRST let me tell you about our addresses.

For letters, send all mail to:

Tim and Lindsey Habenicht

P.O. BOX 114 Rundu

Namibia, Africa

For any packages (which of course you would send if you are awesome right?), send to:

US Peace Corps Namibia

19 Nachtigal St

Ausspannplatz, Windhoek

Namibia

Today is September 12th, so we are swearing in as volunteers (right now we are still considered trainees) in just 8 days on the 20th, and then we are leaving Okahandja for good to go to our permanent site in Mayara. It is crazy to think how fast training has gone by! Once we get to site in Mayara, I am anticipating only having internet access once every two weeks, when we travel to Rundu - the nearest city about two hours away - to buy food and check email and whatnot. So if you send an email to Lindsey or I and get no response for a long time, or if you are wondering why you haven’t heard from us through the blog, rest assured that we are probably still alive and just don’t have internet access.

What have we been doing the last few weeks?

Well, we have had a LOT of Rukwangali classes. We have another language proficiency  test next Tuesday, and we have to reach a “Intermediate Low” level, which shouldn’t be too terribly hard to do, considering we both got to “Novice Advanced” after just 9 days of actual language classes. It is definitely hard for us to stay motivated to learn Rukwangali though because once we are done with training, we will probably never speak it again. Then we will get to start all over and learn Thimbukushu - party time.

Students lining up for the morning assembly

Two weeks ago, the Peace Corps set up a model school for all of the volunteers that will be teaching. The students, here in Okahandja, had a two week break from school, and the Peace Corps essentially “bribed” them to come to school for a week, with the promise of receiving a new notebook, and a free lunch everyday at 11:30 AM. There were probably about 150 students that showed up everyday, and they were split up into normal classrooms, which we then taught. The whole idea was to give us actual teaching experience in a Namibian classroom in a “no pressure” environment (it was a “fake” school day anyway right?). That was certainly the first time I have ever tried to teach a group of students anything, so it was certainly a useful experience. We have been told multiple times by all of the other volunteers that Lindsey and I are both “super enthusiastic” about everything, so hopefully that will rub off on the students.

Things in training are switching to the wrapping up mode, and we are spending the majority of the day practicing Rukwangali and listening to Peace Corps required presentations. Next Wednesday, we are all taking a trip to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, to shop for whatever we might need at our site. So luckily for Lindsey and I, we essentially get double the money of what everyone else gets (Ok, so we don’t actually get double - we both get paid the same as everyone else, but since there are two of us then it is short of like double, because it doesn’t cost THAT much more to feed just one additional person. That is my theory at least.....) , and that goes for our monthly salary as well - so we are hoping to be able to live of one of our salaries, and save 100% of the other to use for travel. Will it work? Only time will tell. We still have no idea how much it costs to survive in a rural village. Either way, it is literally impossible to spend money on anything in our village (because there is nothing to spend money on) so the only money we will be spending will be in Rundu on groceries and other necessities.

Last Sunday we all went to a nearby resort for a day at the pool and good food, and we will be going again this Sunday. It probably will be the last time we will see any short of “luxury” for a very long time. Next Saturday, we are having a cultural day for the Namibians (they did the same thing for us - that is when I killed all the chickens) where we will cook American food for them and show them some of our traditions. Apparently Lindsey and I will be showing off our very limited Aggie Wrangler moves - but hey, everyone here has seen us dance and thinks we are rockstar two-steppers from Texas - so I’ll take it!

All of us volunteers hanging out at a nearby resort

Oh, and our brand new mud hut is still yet to be complete, although we are supposed to move in, in just 9 days..... Another PC volunteer nearby went and checked on it, and she said all they have done is knock down one of the walls........ hopefully they will be fast workers so we actually have a place to move into when we arrive. T.I.A right? ALSO, man I almost forgot this, a dumb dog bit me on Saturday and I had to be rushed to a hospital to get a rabies shot. We have already had three rabies shots - but I guess there are actually 5 shots  total that you need, and you don’t get shots 4 and 5 until after you have been bitten. I was the first one of the volunteers to be bitten by anything, and luckily the day before we had just has a session on rabies and what to do if you are bitten by an animal. I know you are probably thinking, “OMG! Tim, you were attacked by a dog! Are you OK?” Yes yes, I am fine. It was more like this - I was standing there and a dog laid down right behind me and I stepped on him, which of course he yelped and nipped at my heal (I had sandals on), causing a minor scratch - this story of course grew among the volunteers and soon everyone thought I had been mauled by a rabid dog.... but no, just a scratch. Also, the dog probably doesn’t actually have rabies, but it did have a gapping wound in the side of it’s head, so better to be safe than sorry.

I would imagine this will be the last blog post for quite a while, unless I think of something important to let you all know about before we leave to site. Please continue to keep us in your prayers, as we will yet again go through another huge adjustment phase when we move to site.

Peace to the Core,

Tim

The Kavango River, Mayara, and Mud Huts

Traveling To Site

The journey to Mayara from Okahandja was certainly a long one. We left on Saturday morning at 7:30 AM, and showed up in Mayara around 5:30 PM, so it was a solid 10 hour trip. If you are wondering what it is like to drive in Namibia, picture this - the whole country is connected by like 8 roads (literally), so the roads between cities are long, straight, and surrounded by game reserves. They are in excellent condition - I think mainly because most people don’t have cars, so the traffic is very, very light. The roads that are paved are called “Tar Roads”, but they are normally referred to as “The Tar Road”, because there is really only one paved road in any city or village. In Mayara, we are about 5 km away from the tar road, out in the bush. Once you enter the Kavango region, you pass through a security checkpoint known as The Red Line. Directly after crossing The Red Line, the scenery changes dramatically. It changes from game reserves and bush on both sides of the road, to homesteads, cattle, and mud huts. I had a miniature panic attack as we drove through thinking, “Oh no......what the heck did we get ourselves into?” Of course, that thought left pretty quickly, but the initial shock of seeing how we would be living for two years was definitely an eye opener. I guess that is why the training staff told us time and time again to throw all expectations out the window, because no matter what we think our area will be like, we will be completely wrong - and I definitely was. But don’t worry, we are definitely excited.

Meeting The Headman

Our first morning at site, our future principle and another teacher took us to meet The Headman of the village. What!? A Headman? Yes, every village in the Kavango region has a headman, who is the decision maker and needs to be informed of any important happenings. I guess Lindsey and I coming to the village was at least important enough to let the headman know. We walked along a super sandy path, passing many huts and even a church service going on under a tree, until we came to a homestead. We sat outside and waited under a giant shade tree in silence. Then, the headman appeared from his homestead, followed by his two wives of course, and came out to greet us. When you greet anyone in Mayara, you clap your hands together three times, reach out your right hand to shake theirs, place your left hand on the forearm of your right arm, and then bow your head in respect as you shake hands. Greetings are VERY important here. Anyway, that was a pretty cool experience to meet the headman, and I have never met anyone with more than one wife haha.

A Sunday morning church service

Homesteads and Housing

I mentioned the word homestead earlier. Everyone that lives in a village in the Kavango has a homestead. Each family has an area that is surrounded by a grass fence (like really tall bush grass), and that area has several mud huts in it, depending how many family members live in that one homestead. So each family has their own homestead with their little mud huts inside. Lindsey and I will actually have our own little homestead. I could post of picture of what our hut looks like now, but that is not accurate of what it will look like. They said they are going to knock out one of the walls, double the size, and replace the sheet metal roof with a nice thatch roof. I was anxious to see what a mud hut was like, but they are actually pretty nice on the inside. The mud is more like adobe brick, so it is hard like cement. Ours will have an actual cement floor, and they are going to run an extension cord over to us so we have electricity. No running water or anything, so we will have to take bucket baths outside behind a privacy fence that they will build for us. The true African experience right?

Our School - Mayara Combined School

Oversized termite mound? Yes.

Every Monday morning, our school has a morning assembly in the front yard of the school, where they all sing a few songs and eventually sing the Namibian national anthem. They sang two welcome songs for Lindsey and I, where Lindsey cried of course, and we were introduced to everyone by the principle. Then the principle asked me to greet everyone, so I started by saying “Good morning everyone. My name is...” and then the students erupted in laughter before I could say anything else. I looked at our principle and was like what the heck, why are they laughing, I didn’t even say anything funny.....  but she leaned over with a smile and said, “They are laughing because they like your English”. Most Namibians don’t even refer to English as English, but rather - Nambish. It is a joke of course, but Nambish is essentially very improper, poorly structured English, with an incredibly thick African accent. So for the students to hear an actual American use correct English, well, I guess they liked it.

The Kavango River

We are about a 20 minute walk from the Kavango River, and it is beautiful. The area of the river by us is surrounded by bush that is like 10 feet tall, but there is sugar white sand along the shore. It is crazy that Angola is just on the other side of the river. Unfortunately we didn’t see any hippos or crocs, but the other teachers said that you see more of them during the rainy season, which is October through February. Right now, Maraya looks like a desert. There is almost no grass, and sand is everywhere. But apparently, during the rainy season, it rains A LOT, and grass grows straight up out of the sand to 3-4 feet in height. Pretty crazy if you ask me! We are moving to site on September 21st (tentatively at least), which is just before rainy season, so it will be interesting to see the change from desert to lush fields/forest. Good thing we packed those ponchos right Mom?

Thimbukushu

In training, we are learning Rukwangali, but guess what? They don’t even speak Rukwangali in Mayara. They speak Thimbukushu - not cool. Lindsey and I are the only volunteers that are in a village that speaks Thimbukushu, so they are teaching us Rukwangali because it is more common throughout the Kavango. We will have to learn Thimbukushu once we get to site. Bring it on!

I think this is Rafikee's tree.

Side note: We stayed with our principle in teacher housing, and there was definitely a bat infestation in the roof. All night I kept thinking, “Man, I am glad we got those rabies shots....”

Where are we going for 2 years? Good question.

We just found out we are going to a small village called MAYARA! It is right on the Kavango River in the northernmost part of the country.


Ignore Lindsey's finger, it is by my finger. I'm not sure what she was pointing at....

So in the rural villages in Namibia, it is very common for the teachers to actually live on the school campus in teacher housing. A majority of the students also live on campus in hostels. We were told we will have one half of a duplex type house, and will not have running water, but will have "access" to running water and electricity.... so I don't know if that means we actually have electricity in our place or not. We were specifically told that we will not have running water though. I don't really know that much about the village as of now, but I wanted to let all of you know where we are going. We have been told it is in an AWESOME location, and it is definitely in one of the prettier parts of Namibia. Again, we are going for a site visit later this week, so I will be able to give much more detail.

On Saturday, all of the trainers and trainees got together, and the trainers cooked a traditional "dish" from their region. NOT the best food I have ever had - cow stomach, cow tongue, goat head, and cooked worms just to name a few..... uhhh, it was a little rough on the stomach. Have you ever wondered what the inside of a cow stomach looks like? Well, it most closely resembles a coral reef and is rubbery like squid. Oh, and it tastes like death. Ha, but I did get to slaughter a chicken. See below.

Oh, this was before the blood started gushing.

One of our little host sisters.

Our walk home everday at sunset.

Rukwanganli, giraffes, and... bucket baths?

Ngapi Nawa! (How are you?)

The last few days we have started off each morning with about 2-3 hours of language classes. The language we will be speaking and are currently learning is Rukwangali (Rue - qwan - gal - ee). It is spoken in the Kavango region of the country, which is essentially a state in the northern most part of the country. While it will be hard to learn a completely new language, the good thing is that the spelling of the language is entirely phonetic. If you now how to make the sounds (which are pretty straightforward), it is incredibly easy to read.  Another factor that will help is that our host family is fluent in Rukwangali and are from the Kavango region! We have a LPI test (Language Proficiency Interview) next Tuesday already, and have to be at a “Novice Advanced” level. Crazy, considering we will have only had language classes for 10 days when we take the test. We have to learn fast!!

 We moved in with our host family last Tuesday (7/31/2012) evening. They are super nice and seem to think that Lindsey and I like to eat 10 pounds of food at dinner, because the mom is constantly stacking up food on our plate. They have 3 kids, but their two cousins and the mom’s brother are also staying here - so a total of 10 people in a house that was smaller than our apartment in Fort Worth and has one bathroom. I guess this is what it feels like to have a huge family? We have to take bucket baths in the morning, which really isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. They have running water but don’t have a hot water heater, so the water would be absolutely freezing in a shower right now anyway. We have to boil water in the morning on their stove, and then pour the water into a bucket and mix it with colder water - we have mastered the art of getting the perfect water temperature for a bucket bath. Nawa unene. Plus, we will probably have to bath in a bucket for the next two years so we might as well get used to it now. But really, it isn’t bad. It has been freezing here for the past few days. We have a nifty little clock/thermometer (thanks Mom!), and our room is usually between 55-60 degrees, and it has been around freezing every night outside. So, it is pretty cold to get out of bed in the morning......

Last Saturday our training class (there are 35 of us) took a trip to Windhoek (the capital of Namibia) to get Namibian cell phones. We saw several herds of giraffes, baboons, warthogs, and gemsboks along the way - which was AWESOME. It is pretty cool to see wildlife actually in the wild, instead of a zoo. On Sunday, we went to church with our host family from 9 - 12:30. They definitely don’t mess around when it comes to signing and dancing. It is almost like a competition to see who can sing the loudest haha, so it was a great time. We also went to a funeral last week for a 5 month old baby (it was the baby of our host mom’s brother). While a rather somber event, it was interesting to see an African funeral service. It was in an army tent in the sand with a campfire in the middle. Literally, I think Africans are born knowing how to sing and harmonize perfectly - they certainly love to sing here, and they sing often.

We also had to wash our first batch of clothes on Sunday, by hand. Our host mom helped us, so it went a lot quicker than it would have if just Lindsey and I would have attacked it. But dang, she really went to town on my socks..... after she rung them out, they were practically twice their original size haha. But no worries, the sun here is strong and shrunk them back to 1.5 times their normal size. Lindsey keeps insisting that ringing out and scrubbing our clothes will be a good “weekly stress reliever”. I don’t know if I believe her.

The Peace Corps will tell us our permanent site on Tuesday, and we leave for a 5 day site visit on Thursday - so we are very excited about that right now. Sorry, these pictures actually should have gone with the LAST post - I am just happy that they actually uploaded. We are going to get a internet USB stick that connects to the internet through the cell phone signal, so hopefully we will be able to upload some pics then a little easier. Right now, the only place in town is sold out because the other volunteers bought them up! Until next time.

Kareni Po Nawa,

Tim & Lindsey