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

PST - Pre Service Training

We made it! So let me give you a rundown of our little journey.  We flew from DFW Airport to Pennsylvania for staging (basically a Peace Corps introduction deal with the whole group that came to Namibia) at 6:30 AM last Monday morning, after about 3 hours of sleep. We were at staging for the entire day, and all got on a bus at 2:30 AM to drive to JFK for a flight that was at 11:15 AM after about an hour of sleep - no bueno. After a 15 hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, a 5 hour layover, a 2 hour flight to Windhoek, Namibia, and a 2 hour bus ride, we FINALLY arrived at our destination of Okahandja, Namibia.

Total travel time = 40 hours. Ouch. Good thing I took 3 Benadryl on a first flight.

This week has been more of an introduction week than anything. The training staff said they didn’t want to give us too much information yet because we wouldn’t retain anything due to the jet lag. So NEXT week is the week where we have intensive, 8-10 hours a day, of language and cultural learning. We will also move in with our host family this Tuesday (right now we are living at a hostel), which we are both pretty excited about. The training staff has been having interviews with all of the other volunteers this week to try to determine where they would be the best fit in the country for the next 2 years after training. Apparently, since we are a married couple, they picked the exact location of were we are going to before we even accepted the invitation to join - pretty cool. While they are not telling Lindsey and I exactly where will will be (to be fair because no one else knows yet), we were told that it is in the northern part of the country by a river with lots of crocodiles and hippos - relax parents, I will only play hungry, hungry hippos if the hippos ask me to :)

Erens, the man that told us where we are staying also said “In my opinion, it is the most beautiful part of all Namibia.” We were excited to hear that! Since it is in the north, we will most likely not be in a desert, but we will give you guys more information about that when we know because right now everything is more of an assumption.

The town Okahandja, where we are staying and where our training will be for the next 2 months, is pretty interesting. There is a large tower in the middle of the city that was used in the Apartheid era (segregation of races) that was used as a watch/sniper tower. Apparently, there used to be a curfew in effect for all blacks and they had to be out of the city by 8 PM every night, unless they had very good reason for staying. All the whites lived inside the city which was referred to as “The Town”, and all of the blacks lived outside the city in what was referred to as “The Location”. The majority of the blacks still live in The Location and walk into the city each day for work, except now they don’t have to be afraid of the sniper in the tower in the centre of the city.

We went on a hike this morning (Sunday) to the top of a mountain called Pride Rock. It is obvious that Disney’s limits know no bounds! It was definitely a hike in “the bush”, and I realized I definitely need to know what poop goes with what animal. “Tim, why do you need to know that?” you might find yourself asking..... Well, when you are walking along a trail in Africa and see several different types of poop, it is good to know if it is a predator, or just a donkey or something, especially when you see a carcass. Our two guides Antony and Franze, who were 14 years old, assured us that they hadn’t seen a lion in “a while”.  We saw several baboons off in the distance (too far to photograph) but their poop was EVERYwhere. Fun stuff right?

 That is the update for now. Lindsey and I will have way more information about where our permanent site will be and what language we will be learning in a few days. Keep us in your prayers, but right now, it is smooth sailin.

BUT ACTUALLY, I wrote this a few days ago but I haven't been able to upload it because the internet here is ridiculously slow, which right now, means no pictures because they never upload. Hopefully we will be able to figure this out, so sorry for no pictures yet because we have some good ones. SO, there are more updates, but to keep you on the edge of you seat..... you will have to wait :)

-Tim