Happy Easter!!!

Hi!

I wrote this blog a few days ago and I am now in Swakop on our first vacation! This place is unreal...it is really hard to believe we are still in Namibia! There are a lot of other volunteers here and we are loving life!

Hope you all have a FABULOUS Easter!

Miss and love you!!!
Aly


Hello!!

How is life? I hope everything is wonderful over in America! Everything is great in the Bing! I am very very very busy, but absolutely wonderful!

I am writing this at home in the village, but I am sending it when I get to Swakop—the lovely little coastal town where Bradgelina had their baby! It is Independence and Easter weekend so we have a 5 weekend, and even though it is within our first 3 months as PCVs, we have been given permission to travel. There is a big group of us meeting in Swakop! I am really excited to see Swakop (I hear its amazing!) and I cannot wait to see some other PCVs…I miss them!

Life in the Bing has been amazing. I really could not ask for a better site. Everyday I pinch myself because I cannot believe how lucky I am to be here. I was thinking about it the other day, and there is not one thing I would change about my life here. I just really feel that I am in the place where I am supposed to be for the next 2 years.

While I am loving life here, I am also extremely busy and stressed almost 24/7. One thing I am beginning to realize is that I cannot do everything. For some strange reason, I am pretty sure my school believes that because I am American I have some kind of special power that can add about 10 hours to the day, allows me to perform miracles and complete any task thrown my way. For about two months, they had me convinced I could fulfill every need of the school and community as well. But, this past week, I have truly realized what it means to burnout! I was spending a ridiculous amount of time at school (some days I would be there from 7am-10pm only coming home for two 1 hour breaks for lunch and dinner) and then would come home to do lesson plans. I just love being at school with my learners and there is always something more I felt I could be doing to help them. But, after trying to be superwoman for almost 2 months, I have come to the realization that no matter how many hours I am at school, there will still be more things I could do to help the learners. There will always be more I can and will want to do, but spending that much time at school is insane and will lead to a physical and mental breakdown. So, I have decided to not go back to evening study (from 7-9:30) for two days a week and instead spend my time running, cooking with Colleen and relaxing. I think this will be a very good life decision!

Teaching is going pretty well. I keep reminding myself that this is the first time I have ever really taught (does student teaching really count?), and definitely the first time I have taught English to non-English speaking learners in a foreign country. I am not sure how good of a teacher I am, but I have a lot of fun. I love being in the classroom and I am absolutely in love with teaching grade 9 English. Since moving to grade 9, I have not had one discipline problem (knock on wood!). Grade 9 is amazing! It’s funny, because I know the other teachers complain about some of the learners in grade 9, but I don’t have a single one I don’t love having in class. There are a lot of pretty low learners, and, to be honest, I have no idea how to teach them, but they are still great kids.

Our first term is ending soon, and then we will go into exams (kind of like intense finals). I am not really sure what I have taught in my English classes (not the best sign, I know), but I figure this term is really just trial and error (or so everyone has said). And, I missed the first 3 weeks of teaching grade 9 because I was teaching the grade 8 terrors. So I figure I have a little more of an excuse for having my first term be pretty chaotic. But I have really learned a lot about teaching and I am planning on kicking some serious English ass next term! If anything, I have built up my classroom community, so I think that should count for something!

My learners have really made my life here amazing. I love spending time with them, and they have truly have become my friends. I know that sounds weird (and so not what would be kosher in the States), but it’s true. Everyone told us that the learners are what make being here great and that they will become your best friends, but I never quite understood that until moving to site. They constantly make me laugh and are just fun to be around. I honestly miss them when I don’t have them in class. I’m sure I will miss them when I’m gone for the 5 day vacation. I know, I have become a really big nerd since moving to Africa!

Well, life in the village has been interesting. We get out to go to the grocery about once every two or three weeks. Otjimbingwe has become a gorgeous little village! It was beautiful before, but now everything is green! Really really green! We have had a lot of rain at night. It’s funny, because it is never fully cloudy when it rains here; there’s always still sun, so we have unbelievable rainbows. The sunsets at night literally take my breath away. I am always talking about how beautiful the sky is and my learners just laugh at me because they are so used to it. I hope I never get to the point where I do not stare at the sky in awe in the evening. The other night the sky was literally neon pink with purple and yellow highlights. I cannot begin to tell you how lucky I feel to be able to see the sun rise and set over the mountains here!

One really fun thing about the rainy season (besides bugs as big as my face) is that the river is flowing for the first time in years! One day I was running in a dry sandy riverbed and the next week it was green and there was actually a river! The hostel (where the kids live) had a little adventure to go to the river to walk through it and swim and Colleen and I tagged along. It was one of the funniest and most crazy Saturdays of my life here. First of all, the river is pretty gross. The riverbed is full of donkey and goat poop, so of course there is a lot of fun stuff floating along. But nonetheless, its running flowing water and that is pretty exciting when you live in a desert! The kids went absolutely nuts and were rolling around in the muddy water (the water was only shin deep at the deepest), laying in it and pretending to kick their arms and legs to swim. I have some hilarious pictures and videos of it all!

My life becomes a little more hilarious, awkward, bizarre and insane everyday. I swear, everyday I have another unexplainable conversation or experience. From the stories my colleagues tell me about their sweet dog “Fluffy” who only murdered eight dogs before the family had to kill him by poisoning his food (apparently he had some territory issues) to the learners taking me in the “taxis” of Otjimbingwe (a donkey cart of course!) and having the owner of the cart tell me how beautiful my smile is and how he just wants to be my close friend (and then watching the learners yell at him in Khoekhoe as they lead me away), everyday I realize how unreal my life has become.

Here are some funny moments of the last couple of months:

“Get away. These are my white people!”—Donnata
Donnata is one of my favorite colleagues adorable little 3-year-old daughter who is basically obsessed with Colleen and me (slightly more obsessed with me as I am the one she considers her mother). I decided today that she could be a Baby Gap model because she is that cute. Well, today, we had a volleyball tournament between my school and the primary (Colleen’s) school. Colleen and I were playing with Donnata when one of my learners came up and put her arms around Colleen and me. Donnata started hitting her and talking to her in Herero. Elizabeth told us that Donnata was telling her to “get away…these are my white people”! haha! She was serious too—it was one of the funniest most bizarre things anyone has ever said to me! By the way, Donnata also refers to Colleen and I as “Mr. T’s wives”. Mr. T was the volunteer I replaced—haha! She thinks we are his wives because we are white, female and are now living in his house!

“Are those your eyes? Did you paste your hair on?”—learners
My learners are constantly asking about my hair and eyes. I was legitimately asked if my eyes were mine and real because the only real eyes are brown eyes of course. And they are amazed with my hair because its “long and soft”. Sometimes I will just feel hands touching my hair and realize a learner has just reached out to touch my hair as I am walking by—a little odd, but I’m getting used to it!

Drama, drama, drama
The learners LOVE to do dramas. And their dramas are intense too, long and intense. Well, I of course was in charge of organizing a few dramas for the Women’s Right Day Celebration a couple of weeks ago. So, I make an announcement and have a few crazy learners show up to help with the drama. As I am walking over to my classroom to meet them, one of my most hilarious and dramatic learners starts walking to towards me, calling me mother and begging me to leave my scum-for-a-husband who is beating me. She then gets down on bended knee, holding my hands and telling me I must start valuing myself. Apparently, this was her little “try-out” to convince me she was best for the lead of one of the dramas. Of course, she took the lead and also starred in the monologue she invented on the spot where she played three characters—a woman and her two lovers. It was a half an hour of her changing voices and postures and ended with one of the lovers shooting the other—it sounds slightly disturbing, and I guess it was, but I almost peed my pants laughing. I have no idea where these kids come up with some of this stuff!

Saturday Movies
I have been randomly showing some learners some movies on my laptops on Saturdays. Last Saturday I was kind of a spaz because I had about a thousand things going on at once. So I was finishing up a meeting about the newspaper I am supposed to be organizing (no clue what I’m doing there) and trying to convince the learners to write the articles (still not written) when I just sit down at a desk while I let the learners decide what movie to watch. As I am sitting there, I have about 8 learners crowd around me and start telling me how beautiful I am and how nice my hair is. The next thing I know it, they start plaiting (braiding) my hair and I suddenly have some new cornrows. Mind you, they are saying all of this and playing with my hair when it is at its grossest--it is about a thousand degrees and I had already spent my morning sitting in the sun watching the kids play soccer so my hair was nasty and drenched in sweat. I just sat there and laughed at how crazy my life has become!

Ms. Newcomer
Ms. Newcomer is a beauty pageant for all of the new girls to the school. If you are a new girl you either have to be in the pageant or pay $20, weird, I know. First of all, the whole thing is actually quite disturbing because there is a swimming wear round and most of the girls cannot afford a swimsuit so they just wear their bras and underwear. That was pretty awkward and painful to watch, but the dancing in-between rounds is unreal. These kids are unbelievable dancers. I have no idea how they move their bodies in the way they do. My favorite dancer is this adorable little grade 8 boy, Martie. He is probably the cutest little boy I have ever met and he looks like he is in grade 4, but he is so smart and such a sweet little kid. And can he dance. He dancing with these two other boys and at one point he is in between the two boys with his legs wrapped around each of the other boys’ legs and they are all dancing together. It is maybe the coolest thing I have ever seen.

Sunset Runs
Well, I have kind of started to run or should I say slowly jog in the evenings, key word being slowly. It is definitely not every night and I am definitely slow, but I kind of like it. I run through the locations when the sun is just about to set. Not only is it an unbelievably beautiful run, but its also quite humorous. I have about ten children under the age of ten that call me their mother who run with me halfway through my run. They are all Damara and speak khoekhoe, so they ask me questions in khoekhoe has I am running. I always say the same ten lines I have memorized and count for them and they just die laughing and think it’s the funniest most amazing thing in the world. It is actually really nice to have the company when I’m running and helpful as well, as my learners are gravely concerned with the fact that I run alone in Namibia where there could be a crazy person who will try to grab me. I have never once felt unsafe in the Bing and am pretty sure no one is going to try to grab me, but the kids do come in handy when a crazy dog wants to attack the crazy white running American as they yell at them in khoekhoe and pretend to throw rocks at it.

Well, I have about a thousand more moments I wish I could describe to you. I just love my life here. I am absolutely obsessed with it. I miss home and miss all of you, but I am so happy here! I feel really lucky to be placed at such an amazing school and in a great village. The volunteer I am replacing loved it here and seemed like he was a truly all-star volunteer (I hear Mr. T stories quite frequently; apparently he baked cakes for the whole village and was fluent in khoekhoe—haha, big shoes to fill!). A lot of volunteers don’t like to replace volunteers, but I think it’s a great thing. Dan was a great volunteer, so my school was ecstatic to get another PCV and I think it’s good that the bar is set high for my experience here. I can only hope that two years from now some new volunteer is hearing Miss Aly stories about how Miss Aly ran through the village clicking with the hundreds of primary kids who called her mother.

Well, I hope you are having a lovely March and that it is starting to get warmer in the States! It is starting to get a little cooler here. It was about 70 this morning and I was shivering. I think I will be in for a rude awakening once winter rolls around here. Colleen says I am as bad as the kids, as soon as it drops below 80 I am ready to throw on a sweater!

Thanks so much for all of the cards, prayers, thoughts, packages and e-mails you have been sending my way! I may not get to respond to all of the e-mails right away, as my internet access is less than once a month now, but I can’t even begin to tell you how much it means to me! I know the support you have shown me is a very big part in the reason why I am so happy here.

Love always,
Your fav Namibian

P.S. My mom asked me to post a wish list of things for my school, classroom and me. So here it is!

School
• Books! Any book from the grade 5 reading level through grade 12. The kids will read anything! I would love some more great lower level young adult literature, but any kind of book will be great—new, used, and any level. I also have a few students who read at a pretty high level, so basically any book you send would be perfect  Some titles I was just thinking of off the top of my head were: Freak the Mighty, Holes, Roald Dahl books, books by Chris Crutcher, Judy Bloom, and Beverly Clearly. If you want book ideas, I always liked to go to listomania on amazon.com and type in young adult literature and just see what kind of good lists of books they had.
• Paper—construction paper and spiral notebooks
• Pens
• Colorful sharpies and markers
• Any kind of school/office supplies

Me
• Magazines (just send old ones you have already read—they are new to me!)
• Pictures—I miss you!
• Toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, tampons, anything like that!)
• Mac and Cheese packets (you can actually just take the packet out of the box—we don’t need the macaroni because we have plenty of it here!)
• Crystal light packets (or the cheaper off brands)
• Any kind of dry mix (food, cake, cookies)
• American candy (nothing says America like candy! Haha!)

Anything you send will be perfect! We are still testing my new address to see if packages arrive here safely, but letters can definitely be sent to my new address. It is
Aly Martin
c/o Da Palm Secondary School
Private Bag 1007
Karibib
Namibia
Afica

If you want to send a package, still send it to the Windhoek address. I am hoping that we can get packages here at our site, but we are still not sure if it will actually arrive—things get a little lost when you live in a village with no way to post a letter  I will keep you updated though!!

Miss and love you lots!!!