"That which is in between"

 Yesterday was a BIG day. I found out where I will be going for shadowing next week and where I will be going for the next two years!

For shadowing, I will be going to Lüderitz!! The purpose of shadowing is to follow a current PCV for a few days to learn about how people go about their daily activities. Lüderitz is an old German coastal town located in the far southwest corner of Namibia. It's apparently got a lot of colonial style building, which seems like a pretty strange concept. It's going to be completely different to the north of Namibia, which is where I will be living, so it'd be good to witness how diverse Namibia really is. The volunteer who I will be shadowing works for COSDEC (Community Skills Development Centre). The vision of COSDEC is to “provide focused, practical skills training that incorporates business skills, entrepreneurship, and life skills” and to “relate the training programs to opportunities in the local economy in terms of demand for goods and services.” I'm very interested to learn more about this organization and I'm sure the shadowing experience will be very valuable.

Now, as for the site where I will be working for the next two years, I will be going to…. OSHAKATI!!!

 Oshakati means "that which is in between" in the Oshiwambo language. It is one of the larger towns in Namibia and is located in the Ovambo region and the organization that I will be working with is called the Namibia Development Trust (NDT). According to the description, NDT’s main goal is to empower community groups in their efforts to become self-reliant and alleviate poverty by facilitating and supporting sustainable environment sensitive projects and participatory-gender inclusive development programs. I will be working with women craft makers on marketing and product development; training crafters on business skills; helping promote and market the Mopane conservancy; assisting various groups with bookkeeping and developing market strategies. Additionally, I will be supporting tourism SME’s within the conservancies and playing the role of a mentor to conservancies and cooperative groups.

Although I will be working in Oshakati, I will be living in a town called Ongwediva. For what it's worth, Ongwediva is the second largest entertainment town in Namibia, just behind Windhoek. My accommodation will be a two-bedroom house and I will be living with a Namibian family -- still not exactly sure about how many people. It’s either one femal host country national, a Namibian middle-aged couple or a Namibian couple and two kids, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough. The house has safe drinking water, electricity and a hot shower!!! Looks like I’ll be living the high life. I will also be close to a few other volunteers, which is a big plus! Unfortunately, some of the people who I have become close friends with during PST will be quite far from my site, but that’s what happens when you get put in a country as big and unique as Namibia. However, it gives me a good excuse to travel all around the country :)

I’m absolutely thrilled about my assignment and I’m definitely looking forward to starting soon. During the first week of PST, we got a list of the Main Assignments and all the volunteers had to list their top three choices. The assignment that I had ranked as number 1 was “promote community-based tourism enterprises as well as income generation activities (such as craft projects, mopane project, for various conservancies)”. So yea… you can see why I’m happy about my actual assignment. I got what I wanted :). The job also involves a lot of travel as the bulk of the work that I’ll be doing involves supporting projects in the different Ovambo regions. This makes the job even more awesome.  Anyways, life is pretty good right now and can’t wait to get started!

Business Time

 Yesterday was the end of a rather hectic week. Throughout the week, the SEED Volunteers conducted four days of Business Skills Workshops for Small Business owners in Okahandja. The event was a success as we consistently had 20+ Namibian entrepreneurs attend our workshops. We addressed many topics that they wanted to learn about, ranging from goal setting to bookkeeping to marketing. Myself and another volunteer named Queenie led a session about Customer Service. We held a brief 25-minute session due to time constraints, but our part went very well. We got the audience to participate by sharing their thoughts about Customer Service, we gave them tips about how they can improve their business practices and we also did a role play which was apparently a big hit according to the feedback they gave us. I had a great time being involved in these workshops because the attendees constantly said how grateful they were to have our help. It was really special hearing their gratitude and appreciation towards our efforts. Now, I just hope they can retain all the information that we gave them and then apply them to real life situations soon. 

My homestay experience has still been enjoyable. Apart from a brief stint of the upset stomach, I can’t say there has been anything wrong with my homestay. It’s usually just me, my host mom and sister because my host dad works in Windhoek and the other daughter is attending university in Windhoek. I’ve had some pretty unique dinners here (I had warthog the other night! Also, Springbok is delicious). However, my breakfasts here have consisted of peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, weetbix and peanut butter sandwiches. I don’t usually have time in the morning to concoct myself a nutritional breakfast, so I just settle by overdosing on peanut butter sandwiches, which I’m OK with. I guess I’m not doing a very good job of eradicating the preconception about Americans and their love for peanut butter! 

I’ve been attempting to speak to my host mom in Oshindonga, and the other day, I was able to rattle up a few sentences about my family and she seemed to understand everything I had said. Oh yeeaa, progress!!! I’m still lacking the confidence in my skills to regularly strike up a conversation with her in Oshindonga, but hopefully, I’ll get there one day. Also, on a completely different note, I’ve been force fed to love Telemundo. Just about every night, I watch (or hear from my room) about 3 hours of Telemundo shows. My host mom and I are quite fond of the show Aurora ;) but honestly, I always find myself discombobulated and lost while watching these shows because of the constant plot twists. To be honest, they are quite rubbish.

And speaking of being discombobulated and lost, I had my Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) yesterday! This has been something that most volunteers had been dreading for the past couple of weeks because a lot of us didn’t feel very prepared to have a conversation in another language for about 15-20 minutes. However, the test wasn’t as terrible as bad as I had anticipated. Only a couple of times I found myself completely lost, but overall, it wasn’t too shabby. I was able to talk about myself, what I’m doing in Namibia, my family, colours, days of the week, months, my likes, things I can cook, the time and other things. Hopefully, my Oshindonga trainer won’t be disappointed with the outcome of my LPI.

Also, this is completely random, but here is a picture of a dog hanging on top of a wall. I don't really understand how the dog was doing this but I thought it was very amusing and wanted to share it with the world :)

 

Viewer Discretion is advised

Just a heads up, this post will have some graphic images!

- The past week has been very eventful. It started with having to learn to live with very little. First and foremost, the walk-around allowance that we were given shortly after our arrival should have more than enough to live off for a couple of weeks… if I had strategically planned how I would spend my money. With that said, I did not spend my money wisely and almost immediately after receiving it, I spent about ¼ of my allowance on a towel and a converter. Big mistake! On Monday, I realized that I only had about N$35, with 5 days left before our next payday. For those of you who are wondering, N$35 is about USD$3.50. I managed to stretch that out to last almost three days before finally making a trip to the ATM to withdraw money from my personal account. I’ve definitely gained a greater appreciation towards the value of money. The other day, I was fortunate enough to find N$5 on my bedroom floor. I never thought I’d be so ecstatic to find something that is only worth about 50 cents!

- Language class is going…ok, I guess. I’m beginning to realize that Oshindonga is a very difficult language to learn, and may take a long time for me to reach a slightly competent level. There are just so many rules regarding prefixes, suffixes, then there are numerical suffix, then there are other tenses like present defective and present habitual which have different rules and its all just very confusing. I still do enjoy classes and I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it eventually. It’s just going to take A LOT of practice. My class is small and there are only three of us and we all seem to be on the same page, which is reassuring. Hopefully, we don’t all fail miserably in the upcoming test next weekend! 

Here is my Oshindonga class!

- I’ve also started working with my business partner who I will be helping out for the remainder of PST. My business partner is a welding/construction company. They make lots of products like cloth lines, steel gate doors, steel fences and basically anything with steel. The issues they are facing are mainly with marketing, bookkeeping and inventory management so hopefully I’ll be able to help out a bit for the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing how a small business in Namibia operates.

- Yesterday was the cross-cultural cooking and culture exhibition day. The day was very amusing to say the least. A lot of us made an attempt to dress up in the native clothing of the region where we will be living. Since I will be heading to Ovamboland, I got a traditional Ovambo shirt, as well as the other guys heading out to that region. We definitely had the looks of a Namibian boy band.
 

 Ovamboys!!                                                                        

 

Me and my awesome host mom

One of the biggest events of the day was the slaughtering of some of the animals! A lot of us decided to toughen up and decapitate some chickens. I felt very uneasy about it at first and didn’t really want to do it. However, I realized that this is something that I may end up doing eventually because it is a big part of the Namibian culture, so I thought I may as well get used to it now rather than at an unfamiliar environment. Sorry chickenz! And sorry if this photo offends anyone.

 

Another volunteer slaughtered a goat, which I didn’t watch because that is something I definitely didn’t fancy seeing. I did see them skinning the poor thing and the whole thing was quite surreal.

But animal massacres aside, it was a really fun day. All of the volunteers and host families were there and the food was great. I think the host families enjoyed seeing us all dressed up and we definitely appreciated everything that they have done for us so far.

Weekly update

I’ve been in Namibia for about a week and a half now and I feel like I’ve been here for months. Pre-Service Training (PST) has been overwhelming at times, mainly due to the amount of sessions we have everyday. Classes start at 8am and finish at 4:30pm, so some days can be very draining. During the past week, we have started our language and technical classes, as well as adjusting to our new host families, so I’ll try to break down this post into a few sections.

Language

If you saw my last blog post, you’ll know that I have started learning Oshindonga. It is one of the dialects of the Oshiwambo language and is spoken in northern Namibia and southern Angola (so although I haven’t been told where I’ll be posted for the next two years, I’m pretty certain it will be in northern Namibia). It’s been difficult learning the language so far because the phrases that we have learned don;y always have direct English translations, which makes learning vocab particularly hard. On the other hand, the phonetics of the language seems Indonesianesque, so I think I’ve been handling that aspect of the language pretty well.

Even though learning this new, exotic language has been challenging, it has only been one week and I’m sure it’ll start to make more sense in the coming weeks. I’ve also really enjoyed the classes because there are only three of us in the class and there has been a lot to learn. Learning Oshindonga has definitely been entertaining.

Technical

So far, we’ve only had a couple of technical training sessions. The first one was about the Economic Environment in Namibia and the other one was about the Workplace Culture and Professional Expectations. I feel like I haven’t learned too much in terms of learning new business skills, but I know that PC are just trying to get us prepared about what to expect while working in a completely different and unique country. I’ll definitely have a busy schedule with lots of technical classes next week.

The other day, we went on a small field trip to observe some of the local businesses that are operating in Okahandja. I talked to an owner of a small crafts shop that primarily sold wooden artifacts made out of wood from the Kavango region. Although the shop had a lot of interesting products, it was located on a strip with about 15 identical little shops, so it’s hard to see how all of these small businesses can remain functional. I also spoke to a lady who works at an electronics repair shop. It was difficult to get an understanding about how their business operates because her English wasn’t great and she seemed generally reluctant to talk about her shop.

Next week, we will be meeting more NGOs/businesses and a Small Business Partner that I will be helping out during PST.

Homestay

So far, my Homestay experience has been very… interesting. I am living with my Homestay Mom and her 15 year old daughter in a little town called Veddersdal. They have both been very accommodating and the meals have been delicious too. When I’m at my homestay, I spend most of the time watching predominantly US TV shows with my family. This includes E! News, WWF Wrestling, various Disney shows and some South African Idol. I’ve got a nice, big bed here so I’ve been having better sleeps compared to my first week. Every morning, I’ve been taking a bucket bath. For those of you who don’t know what a bucket bath is, it’s basically what is sounds like. It’s washing yourself out of a bucket. I struggled with the ways of thy bucket bath during my first attempt. However, I’m starting to get the hang of it and I’ll be a pro in no time. Also, I just did my laundry for the first time at my homestay. It took ages and it was all done bucket-style. Now my forearm is killing me due to the constant wringing of my clothes.

The one thing that I have really disliked about my Homestay experience so far are the dogs in Veddersdal, which is strange because I’m usually a fan of the canine companion. But these dogs are mean. The first morning, I had to walk to the bus stop so I could get a ride to the training centre in Okahandja, but during my walk, three dogs (two of them were big, nasty things) ran up to me and started barking. I kept walking and they kept following me and continued to bark and got very close. Eventually, they backed off, but it definitely was not a pleasant experience. I’ve had other minor mishaps with barking dogs here, but I’m just hoping they’ll get used to me and leave me alone.

Other than that, the homestay experience has been fine. My Homestay Dad is a police, like my Homestay Mom, however, he works in Windhoek during the week so he has not been around very often but he I met him the other day and he seemed very nice.

Windhoek

Yesterday, we all went on a trip to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. We saw the Heroes’ Acre, which is a monument to honour the heroes and heroines and opened after Namibia’s 10^th year of independence in 2002 . Then, we went to the mall so we could all get our phones sorted out, so now I finally have a phone number. After that, we saw the Old Location Cemetery. Finally, we went to see Eveline Street, which was a small district filled with shebeens (small bars), barber shops and meat cutting shops. Strange combination, I know.

The inequality amongst Namibians was extremely prevalent during our brief trip to Windhoek. We were able to see both the upper and lower class. The alcoholism issue was definitely at full effect during our visit to the capital, since it was recently the end of the month (Namibian pay day). It seemed like the entire city was out drinking.

I would like to include more in this post but time and access to internet is generally limited, but hopefully I'll have time to add more soon. Sorry if there are a bunch of spelling/grammar errors. I'm rushing to get back to class and I don't have time to proofread!