Last Weeks in Khorixas!

Well, a week from today I will be celebrating my 4th birthday in Namibia (I came here 22 and am leaving 26...makes me feel a bit old!) and moving out of Khorixas! It is hard to believe that is time to start packing up and leaving. Parts of this year seemed to crawl by, but, for the most part, this year reall has flown by.

So how have I been spending my last weeks here?

I have been spending a lot of time at the senior secondary school here. I think I have written about teaching Life Skills to Grade 11 there, so I wrapped that up last week. Everyone told me Grade 11 was a bad grade, but I just loved them! I looked forward to all of my classes and appreciated how open and honest they were. We focused on romantic relationships, touched on gender roles and, of course, talked about reproductive health/sex (always a theme in any classes in Namibia, and rightfully so!). They are great learners though and I have LOVED spending this term with them.

When I was at the school, I would also pop into other classes who were free (maybe a teacher was sick or just didn't come to the class for that period) for "open talk", which the learners love. It is basically just "ask any question you want" time. A lot of times it is about dating/sex, but sometimes it is about friendship or how your body works (I have done a lot of pregnancy actually happens inside the female body talks). A learner usually asks a question and I throw it out to the class to answer and make sure that the discussion is going in the right direction.

The other project I wrapped up was my Girls Club. This term I only had my junior Girls Club (grades 8-9) as the the senior girls were writing national exams and were busy studying. Again, I just loved hanging out with these girls. They are really sweet and a lot of fun to work with. I think they had a lot of fun this year and hopefully learned some things too :).

Besides that, I have been hanging out with the OYO staff and helping out with school visits and magazine distributions with them. Oscar (one of my favourite colleagues) quit at the beginning of this term, which I was really bummed about. He was like a little brother and we just always had fun in the office together. But, luckily, we have a great new colleague...who is a girl!! All of the OYO (at least the OYO staff I work with and visit our office) are guys. So I was more than happy to have another girl around. Plus, she is great and we get along really well! I am sad that the timing was off in that right as she is arriving, I am leaving.

While I know I am ready to go home and be with my American family and friends, it is still hard to leave my Namibian family and friends. I am not looking forward to all of the Khorixas good byes I will have to say next week. While these good byes won't be quite as tough as the village good byes (just because I spent 2 years there and only a year here), they will still be hard. The OYO boys have really become family to me. I could not have asked for better people to work with--we have a lot of fun joking around and chatting...plus, they really couldn't be nicer to me. And Khorixas is a wonderful little town. One of my Nam friends called it a big village, and that is how it is--traditional and friendly! I will miss kids running up and giving me hugs and everyone greeting everyone with smiles. I have made some wonderful friends here (most of whom are on FB--got to love technology!) and will miss them dearly. But, I know I am ready to go home! And after a couple of months of traveling around Africa (I will save those plans for another post), home is where I will be...can't wait!