Yeah, I totally had to step up and hep fix a blown tire. Kind of crazy/hilarious but welcome to Namibia.
This place is awesome! I'll be working at Tsintsabis Junior Secondary School in Tsintsabis (Teen-sah-biss or Cheen-sah-biss, I hear both). I will be living with the Principal Ms. Betty Kaula in a house on the school grounds. Tsintsabis is the "Capital of the Bushmen" (heard it called that somewhere) and is kind of like a big permanent campsite. It's meant to be a resttlement camp for the San community around here. The road to here just became tarred (paved) within the past few months so access to and from it has shot way up! Before it was just a 60 km stretch of gravel from my shopping town (Tsumeb, "Soo-meb" or "Chu-meb", I hear more of the latter) and it was definitely a lot less convenient to get to. The only places I can actually buy things here are the shebeens (tiny little 10'X10' bars/clubs) so looks like I'll be stocking up on things most of the time. Tsumeb is a huge place and luckily has pretty much anything I'll need. Quinn (the other minority male in our group whoop whoop!) is stationed there so that'll be way cool.
Now to my place.
The house I am staying at is really nice. It is owned by the ministry and located literally 10 or so meters from my classrooms. It is well furnished, I think, and I have a lot of space for myself. There is a washroom that has a shower and a sink (no bath, which is fine with me) and, separately, a toilet room which has a toilet and another sink.
Then at the end of the hallway is my bedroom on the left, with a wardrobe, desk and chairs on the way (hopefully).
On the right is my storage room/guest room. It has another bed for people to sleep on and a cabinet where I can store my food and other things I don't want in my room.
The sitting room is really big, a couch, bunch of chairs, breakfast table, big TV. Below is a picture of Ms. Betty in our kitchen.
It's so nice. And then Ms. Betty has rooms on the other side just like mine but more permanently furnished. I'll work on spicing up the place once I get all of my stuff here and have more money.
As for the school grounds, they are nice too!
This place is actually a rennovated German army base. The entire lot is fenced in and split into two sections. The second section contains a hostel-in-progress and large field that Ms. Betty hopes to turn into a nice soccer field or something. The main section has a soccer field already but I think she's hoping to either have two or change that one into something else.
There are the multiple buildings that contain all of the classrooms, then a building where the staff offices and room is located. A few buildings that houses the staff and then a building that houses some of the learners (students). We also have some buildings that belong to the ministry of Land and Resettlement on the property.
As for how Tsintsabis is...well, I'll put up pictures. It's so hard to describe it! First off, I'm learning Afrikaans as i've stated before but the dominant language spoken here is Kwoekwoe-gowab (KKG). Yep, the awesome click language a few people are learning. Funny fact, one of the KKG people really wish they were learning Afrikaans haha (and they wanted a secondary math and science teacher too...hmmm.....)! So hopefully I can pick up some KKG on the side (and take some videos because you all totally won't believe it when you see it) while still trying to learn Afrikaans. The Bushmen actually speak a different language called !Khu, yeah, even my principal doesn't speak it so i doubt I'll be learning much of that. I'd have to use KKG as my conversational language to learn !Khu which I don't see happening haha. Not sure if I've explained it before but if you ever see a "!", "/", "//" or "not equal sign" that's how you write out the click language.
As for the actual camp, lots of corrugated metal shacks in location and some small huts/tents in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere.
Keep in mind this is a resettlement camp so a lot of these people come from very disadvantaged groups. It's crazy to think that many days these people go without any food, and here's the kicker, no matter what they still share everything.
If you didn't know when your next meal was going to be 90% of the time, would you share all of your food equally every meal without hesitation? I'd like to think I would but I know I'm not that pure hearted of a person. I'd probably be a little greedy and try and save some for myself, heck I sometimes do that with a bag of cookies even now.
Some has rubbed off on me though, I'll go buy a lough of sweet bread with the assumption that I will tear off a piece and not see it again after passing it around. The whole counting your blessings is starting to sink in a little more, especially because I have it really nice out here. Shower, hot water, electricity, consistent food, and not even a couple kilometers away people don't even know when their next meal is and are building their own homes out of practically nothing. That still hasnt sunk in and feels weird saying it. It's going to be an eventful two years, that's for sure!
I promise I will try and get pictures up soon! I'm going to try and copy all the ones I want to upload onto a flash drive sometime this so I don't waste time at 3am trying to choose what I want to upload while I'm barely awake.
