One month down

First of all, for your viewing pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koUWaAr-itY

  So, as many of you know, I recently had my site visit. And many of you are also aware that this visit ended in a personal tragedy at the same as the US suffered a major tragedy of its own. However, this weekend was not all bad. In fact, there is a lot of good to talk about, and writing is the best method I know for coping with tragedy and stress anyway. So, here we go.

On Thursday we had our Supervisor/Counterpart/Host Organization representatives visit come for a workshop. It was great getting to meet my counterpart and get an idea of what my host organization expect from me. Over two days we sat through seminars and bonding activities. I was originally supposed to leave Friday afternoon, but my counterpart decided leaving Saturday would be better, since it would be a prettier drive and allow us to stop in a couple towns along the way. This turned out beneficial, since I finally got my cellphone fully working (especially the internet).

So, Saturday afternoon I arrived in Khorixas, in the Kunene region After a quick stop at the gas station (which I would later learns marks “downtown”, along with the MultiSave next door, the post-office, hardware store, bar, and Pep around the corner, and a church), I was driven to my host family, where I will be living my first 6 weeks at site until my permanent house is liveable. I was welcomed by 4 confused kids, some super cute puppies, and my host mom offering me a plate of goat intestines (not my favorite food, but not bad, though they could've used a little hot sauce). I took an hour to unpack and then my counterpart came back to give me a tour of the town. We drove around for a couple hours, with our first stop being a fried chicken place close to my homestay called Yummy Chicken where we got amazing soft-serve (ok, it was probably just normal soft-serve, but it was super hot out, so it really hit the spot). After that, he took me to his parents home to introduce me to his family (but really because he wanted to watch the Arsenal match). One the game ended, the tour resumed. He showed me how to get to the hospital, the youth center where I'll be working, the shantytown, hike points to Outjo and Otjiwarrongo (where I can go for groceries), camp ground with a swimming pool I might get to use, a few local ministry offices, local government building, the police station, and the soccer stadium, which will be next door to my future house.

Sunday was a slower day. I spent most of it watching TV and soccer with my host family, taking advantage of them having wifi for a bit, did some reading, and playing with puppies. In the evening I met up with the 2 current volunteers in my town for drinks at the nicest shebeen in town and to be introduced to just about every person they met.

Then came Monday. I was woken by a friend of mine, a fellow PST who graduated from Boston College, who was sad to be missing Marathon Monday. After a quick jog and a shower (I think I did maybe a mile before I ran out of roads I knew how to get back from), I proceeded to spend the next hour trying to contact my counterpart. I was supposed to have my first day at my future workplace, and needed to arrange a ride for the first day (since I didn't know how to navigate the town yet) and find out when I should come in. Then my host mom came in, telling me she had something to tell me. Turns out, the reason I couldn't get in touch was him was he had died in a car crash the night before and she was going into work and would arrange the ride for me (she works in a different office under the same ministry). I was frozen and barely remember the next few hours, when I was driven to the center by a co-worker, met people, got a tour of the center and the town from my boss, and read some folders on programs the center runs before leaving because I was feeling sick (the first time I've been sick since I got here, probably the result of shock and dehydration mixing at a bad time).

I stopped on the way home to get some chicken and a drink, but ended up only drinking the coke. By this point, I felt like I was going to vomit. I kept trying to call people at the Peace Corps office, but for some reason I kept freezing halfway through and forgetting how to make a phone call. I tried calling my training manager, but again, I kept freezing. I had told a friend that morning, and gave him permission to tell whoever he wanted, figuring with the rumor mill that is Peace Corps, eventually it would reach the right people. Eventually, I got called by training staff. After trying to eat some dinner (I managed to get a slice of bread and a spoonful of rice down), I decided to try and go to bed. I read for a bit and was about to fall asleep, when I got the urge to take advantage of having wifi to check Twitter. This was right after the explosion at the Marathon. I immediately SMS-ed my friend from BC figuring she would want to know. After exchanging messages for a bit, I fell asleep.

Tuesday, I went to the hospital to shadow the other health volunteer in my town (who I'd met Sunday night). She showed me around and was going to take me to her girls' club meeting at one of the local schools, but it was canceled because the schools had gone on break. So, I met everyone at the hospital and grabbing lunch, I went home to pack. I was supposed to leave Thursday, but since I didn't have to travel to my shadowing, and in light of what had happened at site, I needed to leave a day early. Turns out, this was fortunate, since my host mom was going to Windhoek Wednesday, so she was able to help me get back to Okahandja. Wednesday afternoon, I got back, still feeling sick, so I had a couple slices of bread and went to sleep it off. Thursday afternoon I needed toilet paper and some of my friends were returning, so I went into town for a quick stop at Spar and met them at a bar to catch-up, share stories, and down a couple beers.

Friday morning we were all back together, the whole group and our trainers, sharing stories, our trainers asking about our towns, comparing potential projects. We had a short session and then an informal morning with various staff there for us to chat with if we had issues or just wanted to talk about our sites. The morning had a shadow hanging over it with news from Boston, with those of us who know people there worrying (one person ended up having to go home for the day because she was so upset). After the tea break we had a couple short sessions on the different types of relationships we will experience during our two years and on coping during service. After lunch we got together briefly to write speeches in our language groups that we will be reading at swearing-in in a couple weeks (yup, I'm finally close to making it). When we were done, we went over to the nearby Garden Cafe to celebrate all the April birthdays in our PST and trainers group. Of course, the real reason we were doing this was that one of the girls had had her birthday during site visit, and her boyfriend had contacted the Cafe and bought her a cake. So, we hung out, celebrated, I took advantage of he Cafe's wifi to check in on friends back home. That night my host mom had family visiting, so the house was crowded to the point where I could not leave my room in the morning until everyone awoke because there was no space to open my door. Which was a problem because around 2:30am I received an SMS from my friend (the one who had left early that day) saying they'd finally caught the guy, and because Okahanja is a lot colder than Khorixas and winter had essentially set in over night the night before, I was freezing. So, I read, I wrote some of this, and I took some time to be grateful that these guys were caught before anyone I knew or anyone my friends knew became victims.

Saturday was a sunnier day. I don't know, I mean it's always sunny here, but it just felt sunnier. Maybe it was the news, maybe it was seeing my friend smile again, maybe it was that a few of us had gotten together at her house for a movie day and I finally saw Despicable Me, maybe it was the bottle of rum I'd gotten my hands on, maybe it was that another friend had coxsackie virus (yes, I did include Saturday in this post just to say “coxsackie” and because it's the first exotic African disease in our group that I an aware of).

So, anyway, as I mentioned, winter is setting in, so I need to held to town to buy stuff to cook chicken soup for my host family tonight (they wanted me to cook them something Jewish). We have an American cultural day next weekend, and I will probably be cooking jambalaya (because my American friends want me to). It's a chance for us to share our culture with our staff and host families and show of some of our talents, which in this group don't really exist. Once I move to site, I plan on opening a mailbox at the local post-office, so if any of you want to send me mail, you'll have my address. Later.