Tsintsabis JSS get ready!!

So I arrived at my permanent site yesterday! Wow! But first not after some trouble!


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.

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!

And it begins....

I bet those of you checking in on this are curious about how the start of this is going...well, I am NOT! It is freaking AWESOME!!! I had a scare before leaving, that re-illuminated a lot of things for me and put some readjustments on my perspective before departure, but that's something for another time.

Staging was a blast! And so short! I checked in to the hotel Sunday evening, registration only took 5-10 minutes. A lot of people were there at 6pm which is when registration was supposed to start. I suggested we should al head out to grab dinner and so we made plans for lobby at 7pm to head out. I was pumped because a fair amount of people came out was there waiting! First we went out for Philly cheesesteaks at this place called Campo's. They were pretty good, Half Fast Subs is still way better! Side note: if anyone wants my punch card it just needs one more stamp before a free sub...first letter from Boulder wins it! Afterward we were looking for a bar to grab a drink together and chat, combined with another group and took over a good sized section of some place called Mac's Tavern. The bartender and servers went bug-eyed when they saw us, made me laugh. We all talked for a couple hours before calling it a night. I just have to say I am so excited to be calling these 44 (and hopefully it stays at 44!) people my PC family for next couple years, well, no for the rest of my life! And if you want to hear something crazy about family and brotherhood...yep, there is a fellow member of Pi Kappa Phi (my fraternity for those that don't know) in our group!! He is from the Berkely chapter (Oh Gamma chapter...). Talk about crazy coincidences!

Staging went very well and was a super busy day! We got our yellow fever shot at the clinic then actualy had a huge break (so not busy I guess...). I went with my roommate to Wal-Mart to grab a couple things. Turns out it's not "just down the pier". Took us 45 min to walk there, and even with a small run we didn't make it back in time for the big job tour that I was helping promote for this girl Kim! We were so bummed out! And shame on the taxi drivers that teased us and didn't pick us up.

Anyway, we talked about some logistical stuff, our anxieties and aspirations, and threats we may face but the main goal for staging was going over our commitment to serve. At times throughout our meetings we took time out to reflect on why we signed up for the Peace Corps, what we hope to get out of it, etc. Personally for me there is a myriad reasons for why I signed up. (I'm not sure on the correct grammar use of "myriad" right now but I do know that it means 10,000 and I think it was in our letter from Obama...that I threw away.). A big one I realized when I was watching the Blindside with Miles. In the movie the husband says to the adoptive mother "You just have this sick thing where you derive pleasure from helping people" (or along those lines). And I connected with it. I am still not sure I want to make a career out of it but I do genuinely enjoy helping others.

Core Expectation #10 deals with representing the "people, culture, values and traditions" of the U.S. to other nations. What is everyone's thoughts on this? How should I represent the U.S. in this regard? What if I was just representing you, what are your values and traditions? Please tell me, I'd love ideas and stories to tell everyone in Namibia.

I began thinking about this myself and found myself bereft of anything too concrete. Kind of sad really, I mean I have a some thoughts here and there but I also was thinking of how divided this country is right now. We still have our core principles that our country was founded on (or do we...) but not being someone too involved in politics I'm a little out of the "current trends" that we've been moving towards.
One thing that I do know is the U.S. is a very career oriented culture. I feel many other aspects of culture have been pushed aside because of this: family, the arts, just basic happiness for life, etc. We talked about how in the U.S. life and work are separate (for the most part) but during Peace Corps there can be very little differentiation between life and work. The second goal of the Peace Corps is to help other cultures understand America, so anything done to further this is techincally work. For example a morning ritual of breakfast and tea with my teacher counter-part at my site is still considered part my my work towards furthering Peace Corps goals. I want to make sure not to give them the impression that in the U.S. your career is your life but I worry that for many of us it has. I hear from many of my friends that graduated around the same time as me that they absolutely hate thier job, don't find it fulfilling or feel like their life doesn't have much substance to it anymore. Not everyone follows the same path in life but I would hate my life if it revolved around a desk. Just something to think about. I'm excited to see the traditions and values dominant in Namibian culture and will definitely write all about them later!