A little light...

So I'm sure some of you have been wondering what has been going on here these first few days. It's been a lot and little at the same time. After that REALLY long flight we only had to wait in Johannessburg a few hours before our final flight. Flying into Jo-burg was really weird as it looked just like flying into a normal city but flying into Windhoek was when it started to sink in, I didn't even think there was pavement for the plane to land on!

We got off the plane and met our country director (CD) and a couple other people. Gilbert (our CD) seems really cool and I've heard many good things about him from the other Peace Corps personnel. They are all really cool too. And last but certainly not least is all the other volunteers! Namibia group 32 is so awesome! We're 44 people stong, 9 or 10 of us are doing small business development and the rest are all in education. I think there are 4-5 IT people, 6 math, 7 or so science and 17 English volunteers! As far as I can tell we are all really excited to be here. Most of us are fresh out of college but there's a a decent mix of us too. A few more mature volunteers, some that had career plans fall through a few years in, and we also have a married couple.

As far as training goes things haven't gotten underway too much. We did a couple interviews and they have debrifed us on a few topics like safety and security, medical, and what it will be like with our host family. We did get introduced to all the languages we might learn, there are 8 of them!! I was so happy because the teacher for the "click" language said I had the potential to be able to learn it. She laughed and said "I can tell who will be able to do it but I can't choose my learners" so I actually did feel special. Sadly I won't be speaking that one as my site will be using Afrikaans. A little sad that I won't be learning some cool exotic language but Afrikaans is probably one of the most useful languages to learn as it is spoken in most of Namibia as well as South Africa.

All of the instructors seem very personable and I've already started bonding with them closely. I love it when they are talking to you and say "Thank you my brother." It happens back in the States but only with a small specific population so it was really cool. Oh! So we went to this festival that was meant to honor the Herero people who were very lucky to escape complete genocide during Africa's colonial years. They now number around 200,00 which is very impressive since their numbers were all the way down to 10,000.

This is one of the biggest contrasts I've seen and that we've talked about with other PC trainees (we're not volunteers yet :( ) A lot of the people that we have met actually lived and were a part of their country's gaining of independance, something that does not exist in the States. For example their second president was at the Peace Corps swearing ceremony for the last group, the second president! If that doesn't do it, think of this: every volunteer in our group is older than the country...our youngest is 21.

It shocks me to think of what our founding fathers did and that I have the chance to help do the same for another country while I'm alive. In some ways I think wow, it's actually really easy to be helpful in this country. Maybe I was just too lazy in the U.S. But then less than 3,000 people make the committment to serve every year out of the entire eligible population (out of 100,000 applicants) so it must be a pretty big and I maybe just have no idea what I'm getting into.

Also, a lot of times we think how we can change things on a large scale. People get into politics trying to change the big picture but we've seen how that can turn sour very easily. Honestly, it just starts with your community. Here in Peace Corps I talk to directors, current and past volunteers and hear amazing stories of how they started a small project in their village and it grew bigger and bigger and when they returned the group would have it's own small market stand or store in the nearest town. This may not seem like a big thing in the States where you can just go get a small business loan, start a business, and if it fails just bail. Here, you're responsible for your financial committments and a lot of these projects get started from nothing, just the host nationals going out, making prodcuts, and then selling them.

So get out there and get involved! We talked about what we really liked about the U.S. and a common theme was how many programs it has to help others. So they are out there! Go get some! Cowboy up! I just said that!
Well, I don't have much to say right now. We hiked a mountain which was cool haha. Anyway, I am SURE I will have some good stories soon!