Thimbukushu, Marathons, and Painting

Some students researching in the computer lab.

Our second term as teachers is underway, and everything is going just peachy. We are both teaching different grades than we were the first term, and it has been very enjoyable for the both of us. Lindsey is teaching 9th and 10th grade English and I am teaching 9th and 10th grade math, whereas before we were both teaching 7th and 8th grade. The older students seem to be much more responsive and motivated to learn - especially those that are in 10th grade. The 10th graders know that if they don’t pass in December, then they are probably done with school for good and will most likely have no chance to move on in their education. 

Language Manual

So, I have been spending most of my freeish time working on redoing the Thimbukushu to English language manual that the Peace Corps gave us during training. I am trying to make it more practical and useful by organizing everything in a more logical way, and I am also adding a bunch of new words and phrases that previously were not included. I am by no means an expert at Thimbukushu or anything, but I certainly want to help everyone else learn what I already know. I am also hoping that the Peace Corps will actually completely “renovate” their entire language program that is used during training based on the manual that I am making (the key word here is hoping). Whether or not that will actually happen..... I have no idea. It depends on whether or not the language trainers like what I make I suppose.

Either way, just the fact that I am making a Thimbukushu manual will greatly help Lindsey and I learn the language. Putting ideas in words and on paper really forces you to learn and causes you to realize what you don’t know. So all those things that I don’t know, I am trying to figure out. Hence, I am getting much better at the language much faster than I would have if I didn’t tackle this project.

“But Tim, I want to know some Thimbukushu! Can you teach me!?” 

Well, that is a great question and I like your enthusiasm for learning - so, here is a very brief excerpt from the manual I am making. 

The phrases you can’t live without - crash course for Day 1 in the village

Mbadi na kutjwathana. – I don’t understand.

Ghambe muthihingirisha. – Speak to me in English.

Shime ghani kukuhongo Thimbukushu. – I am learning Thimbukushu.

Kadi shoni dimuke. – I don’t know.

Name. – Me too.

Wiye kuno. – Come here.

Basic Questions and Responses for Everyday Situations

Yinye wa kutenda? – What are you doing?

Kadiko. – Nothing.

Kuna kutoya mbapira. – I am reading a book.

Kupi wa kuyenda? – Where are you going?

Kuna kuyenda kuthitora. – I am going to the store.

Kupi ghuna kara? – Where were you?

Kudimbo – At home.

So you are pretty much fluent now right? The cool thing is, after you learn the basic greetings, the few phrase above will handle almost everything you could encounter if you venture out into the village. And if you don’t understand what they are asking you, all you have to say is, “Mbadi(don’t) na(I)  kutjwathana(understand).” and you are covered - more or less.

The other reason I am writing the manual is to help teach the students at our school English. As far as I know, there isn’t a single book that is practical for Thimbukushu speakers to learn English, and I guess the same goes for English speakers trying to learn Thimbukushu. There is a Thimbukushu to English Dictionary, but have you ever tried to learn a language by memorizing words in a dictionary? It is horrendous. So, I honestly think (yet I could be wrong) that I am the first person to ever try to make a good language learning manual for these people. 

Once I’m done, my hope is to give it to all of the other volunteers in the area so they can also give it to their own schools. Then, hopefully, the Namibian teachers will start practicing English with the kids at a much younger age so that by the time they get to 5th grade (when all of their classes switch to English) they will already be comfortable with at least the basics. Can you imagine how hard it would be to learn a new language with just a dictionary? Well, that is all these students have to work with right now, but hopefully they will have something much better soon. 

Wall Mural 

Lindsey is heading up a new school project that I am very excited for as well. We are going to paint a huge, colorful map of the world on the outside of the school - super cool. A lot of the learners will be involved in helping, so it will be a great learning experience for them and it will leave them with a nice, big map that they can look at and learn from for years to come.

We are going to use a projector to trace the outline of all the countries, and then fill it in with paint that will hopefully be donated from a hardware company here called Build It - it is kind of like The Home Depot of Namibia. She is just in the planning stages right now so there are no pictures of our wall yet, but it should look something like this when we are done. (We did not take this picture.)

Marathon

Lindsey and I have started training for a marathon this October in Swakopmund, where we will be running in between giant sand dunes and the ocean. Sounds cool right? We are also running a half marathon in Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls on July 14th just for kicks as part of the training. Since there is only one gravel road running through Mayara, training consists of running for a long time in one direction, and then simply turning around to come back. We run along a little dirt/sand path next to the road that is sort of the “pedestrian path”, plus or minus a few cows and donkeys. I am currently reading a book called Born to Run (Lindsey already read it), which I would highly recommend reading if you are a runner. It is inspiring you know? Back on topic - running here is actually really enjoyable, until a car drives by and kicks up a cloud of dust that we have to run through.  Ahh, dust, that brings me to my next point....

Weather Change

We are now entering winter in Namibia. Since we are in the northernmost part of the country, it doesn’t get nearly as cold as Windhoek (the capital), but it still gets pretty dang cold at night. To take the edge off of the cold we bought a little space heater from the grocery store for our little hut, and man - that thing is nice. It is not that cold yet, but we have been told that July is the killer month. And you might be like, “But Tim, I looked up the weather on Google and it says it only gets down into the 40’s there. That’s not that cold.” Well, that is true most of the time - but remember, if gets down into the 40’s, so that also means it is 40 degrees inside as well. There is no escaping the cold just as there was no escaping the heat during the summer. We are just much more exposed to the weather.

It also is very dusty know. It hasn’t rained in a very long time and all the grass is now gone, leaving just sand. Everything is much more sandy than it was a few months ago. So, back to the previous topic, when a car drives by when we are running, there is a serious cloud of dust that follows.

Since this post was a little slim  on pictures, here are some that we took in May. 

The sunset on top of Table Mountain in Cape Town.

Lindsey hanging out with Simba and Nala

It was really hard to actually get a picture of him running. I had to push the button like 2 seconds in advance. He flew by us going around 60 mph.

The Next Few Weeks

The next few weeks are actually going to be very busy for us. We are going to Popa Falls (it seems that this is our designated hangout spot) to celebrate the Fourth of July with other volunteers, then the next weekend we have to come back to Rundu to buy food, and then we are going to Vic Falls the next weekend to run in the half marathon. So, our weekends are pretty full for the foreseeable future. Other than that, our health is great and everything is going swimmingly. Snakes are hibernating, so Mom - that is one less thing you have to worry about. Until next time!

Peace,

Tim

From Cape Town to Vic Falls and back again

This is a rather lengthly post. Stay with it until the end. You can do it. At least there are a lot of pictures along the way.

Camp Glow

The day after school was over last term, we had a week long camp in Windhoek for 80 Namibian students from all over Namibia. The students selected were pretty much the best students from volunteer’s schools. In order to be chosen they had to fill out an application and be nominated by a Peace Corps Volunteer. It was nice to be around students that understood and responded to everything. There were also 13 Peace Corps Volunteers teamed up with 16 Namibian facilitators to be the counselors for the week. 

Glow stands for Girls and Guys Leading Our World - so it was essentially a leadership camp. We did a lot of team building activities and had a lot of interactive sessions with the students. One day, a bus came and picked us all up and we spent the day in downtown Windhoek. We went to the parliament building, the University of Namibia, the mall, and stopped along the way for ice cream. It was an amazing experience for a lot of the students. Windhoek is not a big city by American standards, but a lot of kids with us had never even left their village. For many of them, it was the first time they had ever seen buildings bigger than their school, not to mention 30 story skyscrapers. 

Cape Town

After Camp Glow, we hopped on a bus from Windhoek to Cape Town in a journey that lasted 20 hours - fun right? Luckily, we were able to grab a few hours of sleep on the bus so we showed up with at least a mild amount of energy. Cape Town is amazing. It is surrounded by mountains, the ocean, wine vineyards that stretch for miles, restaurants of all kinds (even McDonalds, Namibia doesn’t have any), and everything there is actually cheaper than in Namibia. A group of 8 Peace Corps Volunteers met up there, and we all stayed at the same hostel.

Shark diving

Our first activity in Cape Town was of course, diving with Great White Sharks. It sounds scary to most people, but it literally isn’t scary at all. If the movie Jaws had never been made, we all probably wouldn’t really fear sharks, or at least not as much. Anyway, we were picked up by a van at 5:30 AM from our hostel and we drove two hours down the coast to a town called Gansbaai where people are allowed to go cage diving. Our guide said that if cage diving were allowed in Cape Town (it is not), it would be really easy to find sharks right off the shore because there are certainly plenty of them there as well. We were given a brief tutorial on how to properly hold on to the cage once we were in the water, and our guide emphasized repeatedly that it was important not stick your hands out of the cage to try to touch the sharks when they swam by - I decided it was best to keep my arms intact so I followed his advice. We went about 2 miles offshore, to a spot where the sharks tend to hang around where the water was roughly 20 feet deep. The deck hands started to throw chum (chopped up fish bits) into the water to attract the sharks, and within 2 minutes we already had a monster swimming around the boat under us. We all put on wetsuits and in groups of 5, took turns in the cage for 15 minutes at a time. I spent more time in the cage than anyone on the boat so I was really cold because the water was ice cold. 

The visibility in the water was only around 10 feet, so the sharks had to get really close in order to be seen. You actually don’t use any scuba gear or snorkels or anything like that when you go, you just hold your breath and pull yourself underwater by holding the cage as the sharks swim by. You chill with your head above the water until one of the guides sees a shark coming, and then he yells “DOWN!” You grab a quick breath of air and go underwater to watch the shark glide by. You are underwater for less than 10 seconds usually before they disappear again, so there is no need for scuba gear. The guide also puts a chopped off tuna head on a line right in front of the cage (kind of like fishing and it is to give the shark a target) so the shark is constantly drawn to the area right in front of the cage by this tuna head. 

All in all, it was an amazing experience. Our guide said we saw 7 different Great Whites, and the biggest one was a male and probably around 18 feet long. 

Table Mountain

Cape Town is famous for a giant mountain that is almost perfectly flat on the top, almost just like a table, hence the name of Table Mountain. I think we took the ridiculously long route, but it took us nearly 3 hours to climb to the top and it was not an easy hike by any means. The view from the top was great. You can see the Cape of Good Hope off in the distance, and you tower above the city and ocean that surrounds it. We decided that rather than hiking back down the mountain, it would be better to stay at the top and watch the sunset over the ocean and then just take the cable car down. It was a pretty exhausting day, but totally worth the view. 

Just to the left of my foot, you can see the 2010 World Cup stadium

Wine Tour

The whole area surrounding Cape Town is full of wine vineyards, so we of course wanted to go on a wine tour and sample some of the best wines in the world. We signed up with a company called Wine Flies, who brought us to 5 different vineyards where we got to try 25 different types of wine, various cheeses, chocolate, and had a scrumptious lunch on a tour that lasted almost 10 hours. Wine is good stuff.

Old Biscuit Mill

Every Saturday in Cape Town, there is a giant fair (that has a free entrance by the way) where local vendors come and set up stands which serve gourmet food and drinks. The reason we went was for the free samples. Almost every stand had  samples of food, and after 2 hours of sampling the best Cape Town has to offer, it was more than a meal - it was a free meal. They also had free wine samples - fancy that.

Livingstone

After Cape Town and all its glory, we got back on the same bus that we used to get there but this time, the trip took 23 hours - talk about brutal. We then got on another bus from Windhoek that took us all the way to Livingstone, Zambia - the town with Victoria Falls. 

Victoria Falls

The falls are stunning. The area inside the Victoria Falls Park is a densely vegetated jungle, full of monkeys and birds and mist. The Zambezi River is very high right now, so there is a TON of water pouring over the side of the falls. It is a sight to see because the tremendous amount of water causes a spray of mist to fly up into the air nearly 300 feet above the falls, and then literally pour back down on you when you are inside the park and close to the falls. It was like standing in a torrential downpour - no joke. The mist was an experience in itself, but it unfortunately also blocks the view of the falls in most places. Luckily we were close enough to the falls that we will probably go back at least 2 more times (we are only about 6 hours away), so we will also get to see the falls in the dry season when the water is low.

We were there on Mother's Day - so happy Mother's Day!

That is what the mist looks like from a distance.

Crafty Baboons

I mentioned earlier than the park was full of monkeys - well it was mainly baboons, and they were everywhere. They were in the trees around us and on the trials in front of us. I mistakenly asked Lindsey if I could have a sandwich at one point while we were walking on a trail, and she pulled out a bag full of three sandwiches. A baboon started to quickly approach her and she screamed and threw the bag full of our sandwiches on the ground in a panic. The baboon grabbed the bag and quickly ate all three delicious, Lindsey-made sandwiches. The interesting part is that he did not eat the crust of any of the bread...... he just threw it on the ground. So not only was this baboon a thief, he was also a picky eater.  We were mad that we lost my lunch but it ended up being pretty dang funny after the fact.

Notice the crust he didn't eat on the ground....

Bungee Jumping

I was actually terrified in this picture.

Victoria Falls is home to the second highest bungee jump in the world (the first is in Cape Town). There is a bridge that spans the gorge between Zambia and Zimbabwe (that was actually the highest bridge in the world when it was built) and out in the middle  of the bridge is where the fun begins. And why stop at bungee jumping? For just 30 USD extra, I also zip lined and did this thing called “the gorge swing” off of the bridge. It was intense. The wind was blowing, rainbows were everywhere, and the water from the Zambezi River was raging underneath me as I stepped to the edge. Everyone counted down from three and I took a leap off into the canyon. Let me tell you, gravity is no joke. I have been skydiving before, but when you skydive, you honestly can’t even tell that you’re falling because the perspective changes so slowly. With bungee jumping, the ground in front of your face approaches real fast. Needless to say, I survived and it was thrilling. The gorge swing was actually the most fun of the three and even Lindsey says that she also wants to do it the next time we go. Will shall see.

Lions, Cheetahs, and Elephants 

We spent half of a day at a game park nearby Livingstone where we rode elephants through the bush and got to feed them, pet cheetahs and walked them (like a dog on a leash haha), pet lions and accompanied them on a walk (we certainly didn’t/couldn’t walk them like a dog). I never thought that I would actually pet a cheetah or a lion, and we got to do both in the same day. 

We started the day with an elephant ride through part of their game park. They are massive animals. The ones that we rode were very well trained and we were able to feed them after our venture. Pretty cool stuff.

Last December, we went to a cheetah reserve and were able to “get close” to some cheetahs - that didn’t even compare to this. Cheetahs are the largest cat that still purr when they are content, and we were able to actually make them purr - kind of a weird thing to say, but really cool when you think about it. We were able to pet three cheetahs  and spend about an hour with them. We pet them just like you would pet a house cat. On the head, the neck, anywhere on the body really, except for the feet - the guide said they are ticklish and will think you are trying to play with them if you touch their feet. They were even licking us. Cheetahs are just big softies at heart. Really fast, big softies.

The lions on the other hand were a little different. You can’t actually pet lions (because they too are ticklish and will think you are playing), so you have to almost smack them with your hand in a semi-hard, semi-light fashion so they know that you are there but they are not being tickled. We also had sticks to distract the lions incase they took an interest in playing with us. The guides said if the lions look at you, step back and put the stick in front of their face to distract them. These were very tame lions of course, but a tame lion can still be dangerous if it wants to play. So we had the sticks not to hit them or anything (because what good would a little stick do for that anyway right?) but to distract them from us if they wanted to play. 

Just walking some lions....

It was cool because we got to go straight from the cheetahs to the lions, so it was easy to see the shear size difference between the two. I mean, cheetahs are pretty big cats - they are really skinny, but they are about as tall as a Great Dane. The lions though, oh my gosh, are simply huge. They’re thick and tall and long and their heads are bigger than five of my own. That is why it was so invigorating to be so close to them. They had two females that we were able to get close to. One was a typical brownish female lion, and the other was a white lion. She was not albino, but the guide said it is some recessive gene that some lions have but it is extremely rare. She wasn’t really pure white - it was more like creamy white. 

The male white lion

We pet them for a few minutes and then went on a walk with them as part of their daily exercise. They were really well behaved and even let us play with their tails. Afterwards, we got to see a male white lion and pet him for a few minutes, and then got to hang out with some lion cubs. It was a good day.

Side note: if you are like, “Why would they get so close to those lions? That is so dumb!” Think about this - lions don’t kill very many people each year but do you know what does? Elephants. Elephants kill way more people than lions. Did you think it was dumb when I said we were riding elephants because you were afraid for our safety? Probably not. If you were there, you certainly would have pet them too.

Croc Park

Livingstone is also home to a big crocodile park where they have lots and lots of crocs. Apparently they can live to be 150 years old and they never stop growing until the day that they die. They had one that was 80 years old and was seriously twice as big as any crocodile I have ever seen. It was nearly 20 feet long and looked like a dang dinosaur. Our guide got in the pin with them and started to poke them with a stick to irritate them to show us their roar (which also sounds like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park). He said that all the ones they had were so big and heavy, that they have a really hard time moving on land - so they are very slow once you are out of the water. He even let us get in for a few pokes.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but this guy was huge!!

Back to the village

So here we are again in Mayara after a month full of adventure and crazy activities. I was just telling Lindsey how strange it is how fluidly we can bounce between two extremes of living. Just two nights ago we were having a drink on the balcony of a hotel in Livingstone that cost a minimum of $600 a night while watching the sunset over Vic Falls, and today we are in a dirty mud hut without running water. It just seems normal now. School starts back up next Tuesday, so we have a few days to relax before we go back to work. Let me know if you have any questions or if there is anything you would like me to talk about in the next post!

Peace,

Tim

Living in Mayara, Black Mambas, and Cape Town

Living in Mayara

So what does a typical day look like for us in Mayara? Several people have asked us what a normal day is like - hopefully this will help. We usually wake up around 6:30 AM and eat a pretty typical breakfast that consists of either oatmeal or scrambled eggs. Here is a breakdown from there:

7:15 AM- arrive at school after a 2 minute walk from our hut

7:30 AM - school starts

10:10 AM - 30 minute break. 

1:20 PM - school is over which means lunch time, followed by a 30-40 minute nap - everyday. We love naps.

2:30 PM - study time for the students. They come to back to school for an hour and a half to study or do homework

4:00 PM - study is over and we go home.

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM - we normally read

5:00 PM - I go play soccer for a few hours, Lindsey goes for a run

7:00 PM - 8:00 - eat a delicious Lindsey prepared dinner (I’m pretty sure that we eat better than any other volunteers in Namibia)

8:00 PM - 9:00 PM - clean up the kitchen and take a luxurious bucket bath

9:00 PM - 10:30 PM - watch a TV show or movie on our computer (we have quite the collection of media on our external hard drive)

10:30 PM - sweet dreams

That is our typical, Monday thru Friday schedule. 

 A donkey grazing as a women carries a jug on her head - a typical village scene.

On the weekends, if we stay in Mayara, there isn’t a whole lot to do. We read a lot, read some more, take a nap, then maybe read a little, then maybe take another nap, sweat a lot, and then go for a run and sweat way more. There is not a lot to do in the village on the weekends. The phenomenon of doing nothing is known by volunteers as “village chillage”, because when you aren’t busy at school, you certainly have a lot of time to just.....chill. A good friend of mine from another village said this exact phrase - “I am afraid that when I go back home, everyone is just going to be like, ‘Dude, whats wrong with you? You just sit there all the time, like staring at stuff.’ Yeah, I guess I’ve got really used to just chilling......” Luckily, Lindsey and I have each other to talk to, so our sanity in the village lasts much longer than volunteers who are by themselves. Some of the loners try having conversations with goats when they are bored. To each his own I suppose.

On Sundays we usually do our laundry, which can take between 2-3 hours and then we read or take a nap. Those are usually the only options haha

Doing the Sunday laundry.

End of Term 1

So believe it or not, we are already done with our first term of teaching. Remember, Namibia is on a trimester schedule, so they have three semesters throughout the year instead of two like in the US. So we have another month long break that starts on April 24th and goes until May 20th.

Exam time here is..... unusual. All of the students have 8 classes each semester, and they have a final in all of them. However, they only take one test per day, and some of tests are broken up into two parts for certain classes which spreads the final for that class over two days - so it takes over two weeks for them to take their finals. The students come to school in the morning, study for a few hours, then take a test and leave. They do that everyday for over two weeks. For the teachers, it is a pretty slow time, but it is certainly nice to have a break from teaching.

We had to make all of our exams for the end of this first semester. For the next two, the Ministry of Education makes the finals, so the students unfortunately usually do much worse on those exams because they throw some weird material in the questions that most teachers have not covered - which I am sure will include me.

Easter

We spent Easter at Popa Falls, the same place that we went for Thanksgiving, and had another little get together with about 10 other volunteers. The food was great and we all had a great time. One evening, we were all sitting on this hill that overlooks the Kavango River, and all the guys were talking about how awesome it would be to make a rope swing and swing from the top of the hill down into the water. There was even a perfect tree that hung way out over the water from where we were. We debated the best way to make it possible but then all the conversation stopped when we saw a 15 foot crocodile swim by, right where our theoretical rope swing would drop us. We then decided it would be too much work to build a landing cage and abandoned our imaginary rope swing idea. Too bad.

We took a little river cruise over Easter as well.

Black Mamba

This past Thursday, I came into our hut to fill up my water bottle and guess what slithered across the ground and under our stove? A snake of course. I freaked out and grabbed my trusty axe handle and waited for it to come out, standing a few feet back from the stove. It wasn’t very big and it was tan, so I thought it was another Mozambique Spitting Cobra, like the one we had an encounter with a few months ago. I didn’t want to leave the hut, because then it could just hide in our hut somewhere without us knowing - so I waited with my axe handle ready to swing. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes, it stuck its head out and I gave that thing the last beating it would ever have. After further inspection, it turned out to be a black mamba, the most dangerous and aggressive snake in all of Africa. They are called black mambas because the inside of their mouths are black, not because their bodies are black. They are huge when they are full grown. This one was only about two feet long so it was definitely a baby, which explains why it was active during the middle of the day.  Two Namibians also confirmed that it was a mamba. 

I hate snakes.

Our killer cat was also present for this whole episode, and it was curled up asleep the whole time..... completely oblivious to the snake. But really, our cat actually has become quite the killing machine. Almost everyday this past week, we have found either dead or half eaten mice around our yard.  She also has taken a fancy to bats - 

Our cat leaves us little presents outside our door sometimes.

Cape Town and Victoria Falls

At the end of April, there are six of us that are taking a marathon 20 hour bus ride to Cape Town, South Africa. We plan on staying for 8-9 days, so we should have a pretty awesome time. There is great white shark cage diving, wreck diving, canyoning, hiking, mountain climbing, wine tours, and surfing and much more - even though it is kind of scary to surf in the same water where you go great white shark cage diving..... I have no idea if we will actually do all of those things, but we are certainly going to try. After Cape Town, we are going to eventually make our way back up to the north of Namibia and head over to Victoria Falls - the biggest waterfall in the world. In addition to the giant waterfall, Victoria Falls has white water rafting, crocodile cage diving, and the second highest bungee jump in the world. So as you can see, May is going to be an action packed month for us. I am sure that the next post will not be for quite a while since we will be traveling, but it will be a good one for sure. If you have any questions, shoot them over!

Until next time

-Tim

Hiking and Teaching

School thus far

Teaching my 8th grade math class.

Teaching is going really well so far for Lindsey and I. There are a handful of students that care a lot and try really hard, a handful that somewhat care and try sometimes, and about half that don’t care at all and don’t do anything. Maybe it is like that in all schools across the world? I don’t really know. We are trying to focus on the ones that care and care somewhat. 

Lindsey helping some students. Look how focused they look.....

They get so excited to be in pictures. They kept saying, "Sir, sir, take my picture." 

Me with our two Peace Corps supervisors. They came for a visit to check in on us.

Getting Around

I don’t know the exact percentage of people here that actually have cars, but according to Google it is less than 5%. In the villages (where we are), basically no one has cars. Therefore, getting around in Namibia is quite tricky. We have two options for getting around here. We can either 1.) Pay for a ride in these big vans that they call combis or 2.) Hitchhike 

This is what a combi looks like - a hippie van

Option 1 - When we go to Rundu to buy food, we pay for a combi ride. It is essentially a taxi service in a van, and that is how most Namibians get around. They like to cram anywhere from 10-20 people into ONE van, which pulls a trailer full of the groceries/supplies that people carry around when they travel. Being in a combi is not a fun experience. Imagine riding for 3 hours in a cramped van when it is 100 degrees outside and somehow - all of the flies in Namibia managed to get inside the van. And there is no A/C. AND the drivers like to blast Namibian music as loud as possible, which is a strange mixture of keyboard, electronic drums, and people yelling into a microphone with the Autotune on 100%. Does that sound fun? Nope, not for three hours at a time. Nevertheless, we try to avoid combi rides if it is possible. 

Option 2 - Hitchhiking- What? Are you guys crazy? No, not that crazy. It is also very common for people here to hitchhike. If you miss the combi or if you can’t afford it, this is your option. For Lindsey and I to hitchhike out of Mayara, we have to walk almost an hour to the one asphalt road going through the Kavango Region, and then wait by the side of the road until someone picks us up. That is why we don’t hitchhike out of Mayara because sometimes you can wait on the side of the road for hours because there are NO cars on the roads here. For example, over December, when we were traveling all over the place, we got dropped off in Keetmanshoop on the way to Luderitz (not like you know these places but just incase you wanted to look them up) and ended up waiting on the side of the road for 7 hours for a car, until we finally gave in to the scorching sun and paid for a combi.

However, hitchhiking is usually a much better option than taking a combi. Like in December, we hitchhiked from Rundu, all the way to Luderitz, and back up again - a distance over 1000 miles - for free (minus the one combi ride I mentioned earlier). We usually get picked up by white Afrikaners (those are the decedents of Germans still living in Namibia) who drive really nice cars, WITH A/C, and they never ask us for money. It is a much more comfortable ride, and completely free - usually. Of course, the Afrikaners don’t do that for everyone in Namibia. They only stop to pick us up because we are white and it is very unusual to see a white person on the side of the road. Needless to say, we have met a lot of interesting/cool people.

Rules of hitching

1.) You never, EVER ride in the back of a pickup truck. It is probably the scariest thing ever (have only done it once and it was our very first hitchhiking experience) and if you get in a wreck, hit a bump, blow a tire = death. So not worth it. Just wait for the next ride.

2.) Never ride in a Semi-truck unless it is the last resort . They go ridiculously slow and it will end up taking at least twice as long to get where you are trying to go.

3.) Negotiate price before getting in. As I said earlier, most of the time we get hikes from Afrikaners who don’t want money, but when we get hikes from anyone who is not an Afrikaner, it is best to talk about price before you get in. Otherwise, it will be awkward when you try to explain that you are a volunteer and are dedicating your life to the betterment of Namibia and you don’t have money because we are not paid (that is not true, we are just paid very little), but they don’t care because we are white and they assume we have lots and lots of money. If you talk about it first, they either say it is no problem or you can wait for the next car.

4.) Wear bright colors or your Peace Corps shirt. This obviously draws attention to you.

5.) Let Lindsey flag the cars down. Why? Sex appeal matters. Most of the drivers are men, and they are much more likely to stop for a helpless looking, white girl in a bright t-shirt on the side of a road than for a man. Lindsey and I almost always get picked up faster and get in better cars than most volunteers. Just sayin, Lindsey is a pro.

How could you not stop for this poor, helpless girl?

Bye bye kitty

So this past week one of our kittens died. I have never been a big softy for animals, but that was honestly one of the saddest things ever. We watched her slowly die over a period of 5 days and couldn’t do a single thing about it because there are no vets around here. We actually tried to bring her to a vet (we still have no idea what kind of vet or if he even could have helped) last Monday in a nearby village called Mukwe, but the vet wasn’t there and we were told he wouldn’t be back for several weeks. The next day, Lindsey brought the kitten in a box to Rundu, but the vet there said that she was already too far gone and he put her down. I don’t want to go on and on about a dead cat, but it was a very sad few days to say the least. I guess the only good thing about it is now we don’t have to buy as much cat food?

More questions? Send them over.

Peace,
Tim

School has started!

School

Lindsey and I have FINALLY started teaching. I teach 7th and 8th grade math and computer class to 8th, 9th, and 10th grade. Lindsey teaches 7th and 8th grade English and art for 5th, 6th, and 7th grades.

Classrooms here are much different than the classrooms in America. We speak to them in English, but have to speak very loud and very slow, and can’t use ay contractions in our speech (like I just did when I said can’t) because they probably won't understand those. Most of them don’t understand English very well at all, so we repeat ourselves quite frequently. It is expected though, because 1. they are not used to our accent at all and 2. they are most likely only exposed to English at school when it is spoken by a teacher. We are trying to get them to practice speaking more so they gain more confidence in their ability.

We took pictures of all our students to learn their names. They don't like to smile in pictures here.

The good news is, there has already been a lot of improvement for me in math in just the last three weeks. I ask my classes so many questions and do so many examples every single day, that they have already started to get used to raising their hands and answering. Not a huge step, but at least it is a step in the right direction. I also give quizzes to them every Friday about what we have covered in the previous week, and today (I am writing this on Friday) I had a lot of the students get an A on the quiz in both 7th and 8th grade. Then again, there are a handful of students who missed every single question. That brings me to another point...

Namibia has one of the most peculiar rules in education I have ever heard of. The rule is, if you fail the same grade twice, you automatically get promoted to the next grade. Hence, there are students in 8th grade, ranging in ages from 14-22. Most of the older ones are students that have simply been passed on from grade to grade. If they fail one year, they know that whether they try as hard as they can and get an A, or if they do nothing at all and fail, it won’t matter because they still move on to the next grade. It completely kills the motivation for students who don’t do well. And it also explains how students can be 22 years old in 8th grade and be at a 3rd grade level. So for the students who don’t care at all about learning, it is like fighting an uphill battle that I’m sure teachers deal with all over the world. But I would imagine that the problem here is significantly worse than in any American school. How do you teach someone who simply doesn’t know how to learn? That is a question that I am sure most of us Peace Corps Volunteers up in the Kavango Region are pondering.

New pit latrine

The cats even struck a pose.

Construction began, and by that I mean a hole was dug in the ground, for our brand new pit latrine while we were traveling in December. It was actually finished two weeks ago. Look at it. Isn’t it a beauty? The fence of grass reeds are covered in gold and the concrete seat is sprinkled with diamonds. It is a toilet for royalty to say the least. It is connected to our homestead, so it certainly beats walking three minutes to the school’s pit latrine. The guy that made the seat out of cement and bricks made it a whopping 10 inches tall, so it is more like squatting than sitting. There is a song that was made by some other Peace Corps volunteers in another country called “poop in a hole” that you can watch here. I now feel like those words are relevant to our everyday life.

Athletic competition

Last Saturday, Mayara had an athletic competition amongst the students in the school. They were split up into 3 different teams - red, yellow, and blue.It was more or less a track and field meet with events such as 800m, 400m, 100m, long jump, and shot put (it took some serious convincing to get them to believe that it is called shot put and not short put). Lindsey helped with the yellow team, who ended up winning. - and I helped with the Blue team who came in second. Next weekend, the top finishers from Mayara will compete against the top finishers from 5 other schools in nearby villages - so that should be fun. Most of them don’t have running shoes, so they run barefoot or put layers of socks on to provide at least some level of comfort while running across sand, rocks, donkey poop, and broken beer bottles. Their feet are tough as nails though and dang... they sure can run.

Some of the girls doing laps around the soccer field.

The Namibian running gear. Bare feet, socks, and the occasional shoes

Birthday’s

A part of the culture here is, on your birthday, YOU are supposed to give other people gifts. Very cool, but quite the opposite from American culture I must say. For example, when it is your birthday, you are expected to provide a cake for your friends and buy them gifts - instead of them baking a cake for you and buying you gifts. This worked out to our advantage the other week when Lindsey baked our host mom a cake for her birthday and she bought us a bottle of wine. Apparently a common question to receive on your birthday is, “What are you going to give us for your birthday?” 

Lindsey and I have both had our birthdays in Namibia, but they were both before we actually came to Mayara. It will be interesting to see how our birthdays are celebrated this year.

The Heat

So in the last blog post, I said that it had been raining everyday and is much cooler outside than before December. Well I don’t know what has happened, but the past three weeks of this “rainy” season have been bone dry and stifling hot. No clouds, no wind, just sweat. Lots and lots of sweat. One of the other teachers told us that there is a correlation to rain and the phase of the moon. When the moon is more full, it doesn't rain, but when it is in a crescent it rains. And the moon has been out for a really long time it seems. However, they also believe (like legitimately believe) that all Americans belong to the illuminati and/or are spies, and that we are best friends with every celebrity. So it is hard to know what is mere speculation on things they believe are facts, or actual facts. 

What do YOU want to know?

So if you are reading this and are like, “Man, this Tim sure is a great writer and an intriguing person in general, but I really wish he would talk about ________.” , then you should either post a comment or send me an email at tim.habenicht@gmail.com and let me know what you want me to write about. So the content is in your control now!

Here are some pictures that were taken a while ago, but I thought you might all like to see them.

Some hippos in the Kavango River that we saw during Thanksgiving.

Taken right before we went skydiving in Swakopmund.

A brightly painted, classic German style building in Luderitz.

A famous church in Luderitz.

A famous building in Swakopmund.