Naked Namibians and Malaria Dreams!

November 5, 2007

!Gai llgoas! That is “hello” in my new language—Khoekhoegowab. And if you are wondering, the “!” in the beginning and the “ll” are clicks! I am learning a clicking language! I finally mastered the four clicks (not easy—trust me), so now I just have to memorize a million greetings, words and syntax. I am sure you can google or youtube the language and hear it…its really cool to hear spoken.

I am great here in Namibia. I absolutely love it. We are just finishing our first week of training (and celebrating our first week in Namibia). We will have one more week of training as a group here, then we will visit our permanent site for a week, shadow another volunteer for a week. Then we live with host families for another 4 weeks. And will finally be sworn in as volunteers in January.

Right now, my schedule is waking up around 6:30 am, taking a shower, breakfast, then we go into the conference room and sing and dance to traditional Namibian songs. It is amazing…we have about 20 trainers (all Namibians) who lead us in the songs. I am positive all Namibians have unbelievable voices; words cannot describe how talented they are. This part is by far the best part of the day! After the songs, we sing the Namibian and American national anthems and go to language classes for 2 hours (there are about 5 languages being taught). After language, we have a tea break, then some lecture or little session on health, culture and volunteer life in general. They are usually kind of boring. After that, we have lunch and more lectures/sessions for the rest of the afternoon until 6ish, when we have dinner. After dinner, we walk around the town, in the desertlike surroundings, talk and play cards.

The food here is OK. It’s a lot of meat. I have actually tried a lot of it (I make myself try one piece of meat a day –they eat it three times a day so there are plenty of opportunities.) I have had fish, chicken, beef, pork, and something else odd that I cannot remember. They also eat a lot of pasta, canned veggies and mayonnaise.

The effect of the apartheid in Namibia is still very much visible. The whites live in the town (center of the region), and then the coloreds (mixed blood) and blacks live in the location—which would be on the outside and very poor. We are located in a town for training, but traveled to the location to go hear a choir practice the other day. It was really hard to take it all in and process. People live in little one and two room shacks—some made only out of tin. There are kids running around everywhere and many people packed into a small area. The choir practice was amazing though. They were so welcoming, had amazing voices and invited us to sing and dance with them (I think they had fun listening to our terrible singing—we sang our anthem—not such a good song to sing for non-singers. They tried not to laugh!).

Today, we walked around town, just to get out of the training center. The town is semi-urban in Namibian standards (remember…there are only 2 million people here. Its one of the least densely populated countries in the world.) There is basically a few clothing/dollar like stores, a couple of groceries and some bars. There are four of us walking down the street, and all of a sudden, a jogging naked man comes right through us! We just kind of looked at each other and laughed! We realized this was not a cultural norm when we saw other Namibians laughing, staring and pointing at the man as well. He did slow down when he saw us though—apparently he thought we were the odd ones.

The cultural differences here are interesting and fun to observe. Here are just a few:
-Men hold hands and are very affectionate with each other in a nonsexual way
-It is normal in some tribes for men to marry and have multiple wives
-You have to greet people and ask them how they are every time you see them—even if you have seen them many times before during the day.
-Hitting learners is illegal but still practiced in many schools
-Students are called learners
-Chicken and fish are not meat here

I have had a lot of shots (and more to come), many lectures on diarrhea and other fun illnesses PC volunteers seem to get, and am taking a malaria pill. The medicine has some fun side effects—hallucinations, vivid dreams, and stomach issues to name a few. Luckily, the only side effect I have seen is the dreams. I actually dream that I see family and friends from home and have long conversations with them! Sometimes I remember them in the morning, sometimes I just remember the people I spoke with or that I had a dream about someone from home. They are the best dreams ever because I feel like I am talking with you all and makes being so far away easier. So far, malaria pills have been great for me!

Well, I think I am going to go to bed! Sorry this is so long…there is just so much to say! I have a lot more, but I am sure you are bored/have not finished this entry. Hopefully, once I really start learning how to click and interact with Namibians, I will have some more fun stories and spice up this blog! Not sure when you all will be reading this, since I am typing it up tonight and will be going to the internet café sometime soon. But I hope you have a great weekend…I think of you all often and appreciate all the love and support you have given me! I am loving life here in Namibia…it really is a great country! And by the way, the stars over here are unbelievable!