Small animals, small people, and small victories.

These guys took stuff from our campsite, they were cool to watch though. Wonder if they are saying the same thing on their blog about me?





This is my garden....the maize is no longer there.





They call me Jesus round here....thats alotta wine








Can I just be this guy?


Its 4:23 and I am just eating lunch. That can mean one of two things, either I had a really good day where I just forgot to eat, or I had such a bad day I didn’t have time to eat. Well, luckily, today was a good day. It started off by an email from the goodwoman. She’s acquired a kitten, who would have guessed that would have happened? She returns from CBT on Saturday and is very excited. Her language is leaps and bounds ahead of mine, she tells stories of thinking in Spanish and getting stumped when it comes to English. Quite a good start to the day. Then I began the quite daunting task of trying to get my end of term test printed. I had it typed, it was just a matter of printing and copying, which isn’t such a small deal when I have 160 “plus minus” (namlish) learners taking my math exam. After some exchanging of printers and many times where I didn’t think it would actually happen, I walked out of the village counselors office with a copy of my exam. Our school has yet to see value in purchasing a printer and/or copy machine. They are both hefty purchases, though ones that I feel could actually happen soon. Anyway. Copying was the next task. The primary school that feeds to ours has a copy machine that we use. I am just finding this out….yes I have been here for a full 1/3 of the school year. It was great to see this different school. And let me say, the goodwoman says she has some cute Dominican kids….well I don’t think she has anything that compares to how cute the little Namibians are. Standing outside of the principals office, there was a game going on between the kids about who could walk closest to me, or who could look me in the eyes for the longest before they looked away, laughed, and ran. It was also very exhilarating for them to practice their newly acquired English skills. “Hello, how are you?!?!?!?”….”IM FINE”. It was awesome. Got my prints done there, 160 copies, 2 pages each. That’s a large amount of printing by Namibian standards. It made me realize just how much we take for granted our resources in the states, where we have rooms built just to hold the bricks of paper we can’t live without. The principal of the school told me this paper was from 2004, when their brother school (a UK school that donates and flies teachers to the UK to visit and vice versa) brought them a bunch of stuff, probably where this copy machine comes from. I don’t know if I am doing this justice, but it is a minor miracle that tomorrow my learners will “write”(namlish) my exam on two stapled, typed, printed sheets of paper that they will then hand in, that I will then use to write them encouraging messages, their “symbols” (namlish for grades), and any missing work. Crazy. Then, after school, I had scheduled a meeting/workshop for some members of the school and community. Well the highlight is that, even though it started 30 minutes late (Africa-time), people came! We had 11, enough for two good sized groups. An aside about workshops in Africa. From what I have seen, they are not quite workshops, they are more like meetings held by one person. So when I asked the group to write stories about times when the school community was working well and things were being accomplished, they were a little put off. They did it though, and both groups wrote about a bizarre that happened here last September. As soon as they were done sharing about the bizarre, I explained that even if nothing more happened with this meeting, it was beneficial for me, cause this bizarre sounds awesome. They had members of the community donate items to the school and then sell them. They had music, traditional food and drink, a braii, and local businesses were involved. I mean….sounds definitely like something I am gonna try to make huge. Then we spoke about the external and internal factors that contributed to the success. Well, I didn’t even have to guide them to think all about the internal factors; they listed way more internal factors than external. Almost like my job is done, huh. I sometimes think that, but then most of the time don’t….so yeah. Had each group write their dream statement for the school community and then we were done. All in all, people came, they talked and wrote, and I did see a smile and hear at least one laugh…so it was a total success in my eyes. I write when I am happy, if you have not noticed, and I am very happy right now, hence the length of this update. It does present a very skewed version of the country however I think it does provide an accurate depiction of my overall experience. On the emotional roller coaster that is Peace Corps Namibia, I am at the top of a hill…I am gonna ride it, cause I know that it will come down soon. Hope everyone is well. I am gonna go read a book, watch my garden (the goats ate my maize over the weekend), listen to the kids yell and scream in some language that I don’t understand, and think about being in Africa.