Namibia Love!

November 30th

I hope everyone is doing well! Life is still great here in Namibia! Hot, but great! I just got back from my permanent site and a week of shadowing. We will all stay together as a group for the next few days, then split up again for community based training (CBT) and will live with host families and teach in a model school for a month.

My permanent site is great! I have a roommate, a cute little house, amazing learners, wonderful teachers and a really great principal. The village I am living in is very very rural and small (maybe 500-1000 people). 50% of the people are Damara and 50% are Herero (those are two tribes in Namibia). The village is in the middle of a mountain range and is gorgeous. I am so excited to climb the mountains around me!

My roommate is Colleen and she is also a Miami grad! Funny story…Colleen and I graduated in May, lived across the street from each other senior year, had mutual friends, almost the same major (I was English Ed and she was English Lit), didn’t know each other, and are now random Namibian roomies! Colleen will be teaching at the primary and I will be teaching 8th grade English, Life Skills, Computer and Library classes at the secondary school. We have a cute little house across from the secondary school with three small bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom (so nice!). We have cold water (not hot) that works off and on from about 8 or 9 am to around 7 pm most days and electricity. Water is scarce in Namibia and a problem in my little village. We fill up buckets so we can use water when the water doesn’t work or if we don’t have water for a few days.

The village is small small small! It is located between Windhoek (capital) and Swakopmond (coastal town). The only homes that are made of cement are the teacher houses, which the ministry of education pays for. The rest of the homes are shacks made out of tin or scrap metal. It is a very very poor area and the people living there basically have nothing. But while it is very poor, it is a happy place to live. The people could not have been more friendly or welcoming to Colleen and me. Everyone came by to say hi, the choir at my school came and sang to us and my future learners came by our house to keep us company and play cards. I already love and miss it (I will not return until January 9th!)!

Colleen and I both have plans to start an HIV/AIDS support group for the youth of the community and our schools. We want to have peer support groups that would deal with HIV/AIDS and the effects (death, infection, etc). We are also building up the libraries at our schools and starting girls clubs. It is very exciting!! I am just so excited to get started and do not think I could have a more amazing placement!

I do have a phone here in Namibia and can now actually check (but not yet send) e-mail and facebook on my phone (crazy!)! My number is 001264813642881 (in case you want to call or text me!) and my e-mail address is aly.martin4@gmail.com . Thank you so much to everyone that has been sending me e-mail…it means so much to me!! I love getting e-mail (and snail mail!) and would love to hear from you and what you are doing in your life (its hard being so disconnected from everyone!). I promise to write back, but sometimes it might take me awhile to actually be able to write you an e-mail…I still don’t have regular real internet access (although being able to check facebook on my phone is fabulous…if you leave me a message on there, I can definitely send you message back—as long as I still have money on my pay as you go phone!).

December 2, 2007

It is already December! Hopefully I will be able to post this post at the internet café. We are in a larger town right now as a group for a couple of days of training. Then we head off all over Namibia for model school (student teaching) and host families. We will be spending Christmas with our host families, which has caused most of us to be not too excited for our first Christmas holiday away from home. This is the first year that PC Namibia has not had the trainees together for Christmas and we all kind of think it will be a bad idea. I think it will be hard to be away from home for the holidays and it would be really nice to be together as a training group, but I guess we will just have to make the best of the situation. There will be six other trainees with me at my community based training site, so maybe we will be able to get together on the evening of the 25th. Christmas is not a really big deal for most Namibians like it is for us in the States, so it should be interesting to see how they celebrate.

I still cannot believe how gorgeous Namibia is! It is very very dry and hot, but beautiful. Yesterday, a group of us took a hike up the largest mountain in the town. Climbing a mountain is a little harder than it looks, but a lot of fun! And the view was unbelievable. I took a lot of pictures, but they do not do the scenery justice. You look out and see mountains, desert, the bright blue sky and just the beauty of Namibia. There will be mountains at our community based training site, and the six of us staying there want to climb them as well, so this mountain was our little warm up. It also told us that maybe we should start running to get in shape to climb bigger mountains…haha!

Sorry I have not been able to update this as often as most of you would like! Hopefully, once January rolls around, posting on the blog will be a more regular occurrence. If you have any specific questions or want to hear more about what I’m doing here, feel free to e-mail me! My e-mail is aly.martin4@gmail.com I can answer more questions or post more specific things on the blog. Also, I would love to have some pen pals for my learners! So all of the teachers I talked to before I left, I will have about 85-90 grade 8 learners who would need pen pals (I have two English classes with about 40 + learners in each class…very big classes!). If you are interested in doing a little cross cultural learning with your class…send me an e-mail! Also, I would also love to correspond with other classes in the States, even if you don’t want to do the pen pal thing (that might be better if you have an elementary class). One of the main goals of the Peace Corps is to educate and share the Namibian culture with everyone back in the States…so hopefully I will be able to do that through corresponding with you all!

Also, people have been asking what I need over here. Right now is actually not the best time to send packages. All of the mail goes through Jo’burg (think theft central) and Christmastime is their fav time to steal apparently! I have gotten one package (thanks Sarebear!), but it might be best to hold off until January. Also, writing Bible quotes, addressing it to “Sister Aly”, wrapping it like crazy in clear tape, putting tampons in the package and writing that there are tampons and missionary supplies on the outside of the box helps it get here! But at any rate, I will write up a list of things that my school (and I!) need in January. But thank you so much for thinking of me! It means so much!!

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday season! I am sad I won’t be spending it with you, but I will be there in spirit! You all are in my thoughts and prayers always. I cannot begin to tell you how much all of your e-mails, letters and prayers mean to me!

Sorry these blog posts are so long…I don’t blame you if you don’t make it all the way through them! Hopefully I will be able to post something during my host family stay and community based training! Have a great day and I miss you lots, but am still loving it here in Namibia! If you ever find yourself roaming around the deserts of Namibia, know that you will have cute little house in the middle of nowhere to stay in!