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....”