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 :)