We’ve now been in Tsumeb for
almost six weeks, which means we have pretty much completed Phase 2 of Peace
Corps! On Sunday we’ll be going to Windhoek for our “Reconnect.” This is a
chance to see the rest of our group and receive further training now that we’ve
been at our sites and know what things will be like. After that we have summer
holidays until January! We’ll be travelling to the coast and doing some hiking
in the mountains and spending Christmas with other volunteers in a town nearby.
Then it’ll be back to the grindstone, preparing lessons for next
year!
             
We feel much more settled at our site now that we’ve been here for a
while. This weekend we finally bought a wardrobe and some shelves so we could
finish unpacking our suitcases! The wardrobe is kind of a novelty (I think)
because it’s made of poles covered in canvas – it came in a flat box, some
assembly required. But it works really well! And it’s blue, how great.
=)
             
On Saturday, the Tsumeb Family Support Center held its Peaceful March and
  Clothesline Project in town. I joined in on the march, with some other
  volunteers, which was really good. There were a bunch of kids at the front
  singing the whole time, followed by the adults, everyone wearing a t-shirt
  decorated with a message about domestic violence. We strung all the shirts up
  on a clothesline around the park when we finished, and heard a nice speech by
  the regional councilor. 
             
This week there’s a praise and worship gathering on Thursday with worship
leaders from various churches in Tsumeb (including ours) so we’re looking
forward to that tomorrow. On Sunday we saw the children’s Christmas program at
our church – a little early, but many of the kids will be leaving next week as
school finishes. It was a good program including lots of songs, a puppet show,
and a movie of the Christmas story.
            
As we are still without gas for our gas stove, we’ve become pretty good
at cooking things in our electric broiler – pizza, chicken, garlic bread, apple
crisp, tuna melts, frittatas, toast… Who knew a broiler could be so useful? I
miss baking cookies though, especially with Christmas coming
up!
             
We will probably have very limited internet over the holidays since we
obviously won’t be able to use our school networks. We’ll find internet cafes
when we can, but otherwise we’ll have lots to report in
January!
             
I’m so glad our whole group has made it this far! Dylan and I feel ready
to start teaching in January, and excited about all the possibilities the new
year will bring. In the meantime, please pray for safe travel for our group as
we traverse Namibia by hitchhiking and public transport. =) Hopefully all the
activity will keep us from being too
homesick!

We had an  awesome
Thanksgiving meal at our house this weekend. My only complaint – not  enough
leftovers!


Our gathering  consisted
of the five Tsumeb volunteers and six visitors from other areas of  Namibia.
Most were from nearby towns, but a couple people from our group came  from the
northeast Kavango region, which is definitely a lot more…rustic than  Tsumeb.
They were pretty impressed at our American-style town, grassy areas, and  three
bedroom house!


We voted  beforehand to
try to have as much traditional food as possible (some people were  angling for
an Asian or Mexican theme but we talked them out of it), so the meal  consisted
of chicken (no turkey here), stuffing (so good and easy to make from  scratch!),
mashed potatoes and gravy, and veggies (spinach, carrots, salad). For  dessert
we had apple and pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and brownies (all  delicious!). It
was quite a production pulling all this together because we  cooked in three
different houses and the other two brought their stuff to join  us for the meal.
Our house was pretty warm after all the cooking, so we all ate  outside and then
sat around chatting until it got dark.


Like I said, the  only
problem was that is was so good that we hardly had any leftovers! We  finished
the pies for breakfast the next morning (Dylan’s idea), and other than  that we
just had a half piece of chicken and some stuffing left. Our visitors  left on
Sunday morning and I promptly went back to bed for a nap. It was a  little
exhausting having people here all weekend. But I feel like we all got a  little
taste of home and maybe won’t be missing Thanksgiving with our families  as much
as we would have if we hadn’t been able to celebrate here.


 Dylan had a  great
experience in Windhoek, although the learner he went with did not end up  doing
very well in the spelling bee – she was too nervous! But they got to do  some
sightseeing and meet the former president, and several people here told me  they
saw Dylan on TV during the event coverage! His picture was also in a recent 
newspaper.


It rained all  weekend,
which was lovely and cool! Makes cold showers significantly less  appealing
though.


On the home  front, I’m
happy to say that my parents are in Hawaii with my brother who just  returned
safely from his tour in Afghanistan! So glad he’s  home! 

*Written Wednesday 16th November

After our one refreshing rain about a week ago, it’s gone back to being unbearably hot and stuffy. I always know it’s going to be a really hot day if I’m hot at 6:30am when I get picked up for school! Yesterday I was proctoring an exam from 10:30 to 12:30 in a tin-roofed building. Wow, did that room get hot! I felt pretty bad for the learners having to write their exam in that heat. I’ve been told this is not normal weather here, that usually it’s not so hot for so long. I also remember being told that in Egypt in November last year, seems to be a pattern…

            Anyway, Dylan and I were tipped off by another volunteer to a really good cool snack – Oshikandela and fruit juice mixed and frozen for a few hours. Oshikandela is a yoghurt drink that comes in little cardboard cartons like we used to have for milk in school. I’m not a big fan of it by itself, but it’s great when you mix it with some sugary fruit juice! Dylan and I fill up two glasses with half Oshikandela and half fruit juice and put them in the freezer in the morning. When we come home from school it’s frozen into something like sorbet. Yum!

            In other news, Dylan’s actually on his way to Windhoek right now for the national SpellQuizBee Competition (it’s both a spelling bee and a general knowledge quiz)! When we got to site, Dylan got involved in helping the learners at his school prepare for the regional competition, especially helping with the spelling part. As it turned out, one of the learners from his school won the regional competition and is going on to nationals! Since Dylan was so involved in the regional bee, he is the teacher accompanying her to nationals. This is definitely a big deal – the competition will be broadcast on national TV, the contestants and teachers will be meeting both the current and former Presidents of Namibia, and there’s big money prizes involved. Dylan will be back on Saturday so we’ll get a full report then.

            Last weekend I was able to be involved in an event at the Tsumeb Family Support Center, which works with issues of domestic violence. We held a community meeting to decorate shirts for the peaceful march and Clothesline Project that will be happening in a couple weeks. The Clothesline Project is actually an American thing that was introduced here by another volunteer. Community members (including learners, officials, domestic violence victims, teachers, etc) decorate t-shirts with messages about domestic violence and then display the shirts on a clothesline in a public place to raise awareness. Another volunteer actually organized this event, but she was out of town and asked me to fill. I enjoyed meeting so many women from the community and helping to paint the shirts!

            This coming weekend also promises to be eventful. Several PCVS from other towns are coming to our house to celebrate Thanksgiving (I know, we’re a week early), which will be a lot of fun! However, due to lack of gas for our gas oven and our electric oven being broken, we will have to prepare the entire Thanksgiving meal on the stovetop and in a broiler. There are no turkeys available here, so we’ll be improvising anyway. =)

            It’s partly cloudy right now, so I’m holding out hope for a bit of rain. Fingers crossed!

Addendum: It rained Thursday morning to Friday morning - so refreshing!
Below: Pictures from T-shirt decorating for the Clothesline Project.

Just saying “November” makes me think of changing leaves and pumpkins and Thanksgiving! Of course it’s not at all fall here, but I can imagine it anyway. =)

I’m not sure if I explained before that these first six weeks at site are our “settling in” phase of Peace Corps. We’re supposed to be getting to know our schools and the other teachers, and also getting to know our community. Surprisingly, that’s more or less exactly what we’ve been doing!

We’ve gone to school most days (so early in the morning!) and have done a mixture of observing and teaching (Dylan), marking (Christiy), and spending time in our respective computer labs (both). It’s almost the end of the school year here – 10th and 12th graders (who take national exams) finished two weeks ago and everyone else starts their exams on the 14th. Consequently, there’s not a lot of teaching going on, it’s more review of past papers (tests) or getting in final assignments for grading.

It’s a real challenge to learn all the names of my colleagues – you have to learn the first and last names because they use both interchangeably. And there seem to be a lot of similar ones like Nyumbo, Nayombe, Kayanda, Kanyunde (and none of those are spelled right). I think I’m making progress on that front, but it’s going to be interesting trying to get the names of the learners next year!

As for getting to know our community, we arrived just in time to attend the annual Copper Festival, an event celebrating the history of Tsumeb as a copper mining town. We were able to go to the opening ceremonies (which took place two days into the festival) and hear all the speeches (mostly consisting of greeting the dignitaries that attended) and see the special music performances. The music stuff was pretty cool; it was a band with dancers and also a couple groups of learners who did traditional dances. In addition to the ceremonies, there are stalls set up all over the park selling stuff (mostly “China shop” junk, but a few cultural stalls) and food. We had our first Tsumeb fat cakes there (which were delicious)!

We also spent two days this past week walking around town with another volunteer (who’s been here since April) and being introduced to various community organizations. These included the SOS Children’s Village, which is very close to our house, Tov (means Good in Hebrew), Tsumeb Family Support Center, Hope Child Center, a couple of government ministries, SOS Family Strengthening Center…and maybe more that I’m forgetting. Many of these organizations work with OVCs – orphans and vulnerable children. It was good to make contact with the people there and know what opportunities are available for us to serve outside of our schools.

School finishes at 1:00 and for the most part our afternoons are free! I’ll admit, the first week we spent all that time playing games on the computer, reading, watching movies, and just generally relaxing. Now we’re starting to be a little more productive, brainstorming ideas and making plans for our classes next year. There’s a great book called The First Days of School that we’re using to help prepare, along with the national syllabi for our respective subjects (although the English syllabus at least is not very helpful in my opinion).

Some fun stuff that’s happened during these two weeks include a PCV Halloween party where a bunch of volunteers came down from the north to hang out here, and a dinner with our colleagues from school (the husband teaches at Dylan’s school and the wife teaches at my school). They prepared a traditional chicken for us which they call a “marathon chicken” because it runs free. We ate this with mahangu, the traditional porridge, and then had a braai with more meat afterwards! It was quite a meal.

On the downside, I did have my first experience of being sick here. I had a fever and a stomachache and pretty much spent three days only moving between my bed and the bathroom. Peace Corps has a doctor they work with here in Tsumeb though, so I went to see him, got some meds, and was better soon after that. Dylan stayed home to take care of me, which was really nice. And, while I was sick I had a lot of reading time so I read through the Chronicles of Narnia. What great books! I highly recommend them to everyone.

We had our first “hiking” adventure this past weekend (hiking here refers to hitchhiking). We wanted to go to Otjiwarongo, about 180 km south of us, to buy second-hand bikes from a place Peace Corps recommended. So, at 8am Dylan and me and another Tsumeb volunteer went to the hike point and started trying to wave down cars. I felt so ridiculous! You stick out your arm with your hand palm down and wave your hand up and down. About five cars went past us and I was beginning to think we’d be there forever when one actually pulled over! We were like, “Oh my gosh, it worked!” It turned out to be a nice German man, who had a very nice car, and also was going to Otjiwarongo. Yay!

The way back was not quite so easy. We successfully found the bike place and bought bikes, which meant we had to get them back to Tsumeb too. Several cars stopped as we flagged them down, but none could really fit the bikes inside. Finally we ended up getting in a public transport combi with our bikes in a trailer in the back. This was a bit slower, as we ran on African time, and not free, but we made it back in the end, bikes and all.

So, on to our third week as volunteers!