Rundu

Hello All.  Just a quick update.  Our permanent sites were announced last week.  My assignment is exactly what I was hoping for.  I’ll be able to pursue some small business development and entrepreneurship projects as well as my primary health-related projects.  My site will be the city of Rundu, which is the largest city in the Kavango region.  I’ll be attached to the Ministry of Youth.  My office will be at the Rundu multipurpose youth resource center.  The supervisor of the center would like to expand the center’s offerings over the next year to include computer training, business and entrepreneurship training, a garden club, and a small car wash to generate revenue for the center.  Though the center has the word “youth” in its title, its target age group for intervention, support, and training is 16 and 35 years old.      

Some of the issues the youth center tries to address here are HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, promotion of healthy gender roles, and unemployment.  I’ll facilitate various clubs and health initiatives targeting city youth and younger adults.  I’m also going to be teaching basic business and entrepreneurship skills.  I’ll be able to use the carwash project to bring a group of teens and young adults through all the steps from planning, construction, start up, book keeping, marketing, money management and expense planning.  It’ll be a very small car wash, but it will be large enough to generate some money for the youth center and to teach some people basic business start up and management skills. 

My living arrangements here will definitely not be quintessential peace corps digs.  I’ll be living in an apartment with another volunteer.  In contrast, one of the other volunteers in Kavango is living in a mud hut.  Her bathroom is a pit latrine (hole in the ground) across the street, and her bathtub is the Kavango River.   Another volunteer had caterpillars and sour milk for dinner last night.  I feel a bit guilty for having such modern accommodations, but I’m also in an area that has a lot of people in need of support and where my professional experience and health training can be put to good use.  To be clear, the term “modern accommodations” has a different meaning here than in the states.  My baths are cold-water bucket baths and my cooking area is a hot plate and a toaster oven.  Still, it’s way more than most PCVs get. 

I’ll spend the next few days in Rundu meeting some of the city leaders, including the governor and mayor (they have both here).  Today, I met the Rundu HIV/AIDS outreach and education coordinator as well as the director of the local New Starts, which is the HIV/AIDS testing and counseling facility, both of which I will coordinate with on various city health initiatives.  I sat in on a USAID/NawaLife Trust meeting regarding a four year plan to coordinate multiple HIV/AIDS organizations throughout Namibia in order to more efficiently and effectively pursue their shared goals.  I also sat in on a few of the youth club meetings.  This morning I was working with some teens in one of our clubs on a proposal for a performance they will be giving in two weeks.  They’ll be paid for the performance, but were unsure how to go about negotiating a price.  So, I gave them a quick Negotiations 101 lesson, which was fun.  When we were done chatting I asked for whom the performance would be for.  They said “The President”.  I asked, “president of what?”  They said “Namibia”.   

A bit about Rundu; Rundu is on the Kavango river.  The other side of the river is Angola, which Americans are not allowed to visit.  It’s flat savannah.  The riverfront is beautiful (my camera is in Omaruru, so you’ll have to wait for some photos of Rundu).  Everybody seems to know that the town is growing, but nobody knows why or how many people are actually here.  Based on dead reckoning, I would say much of the development is government funded.  There are a lot of people who are here working on various construction projects and they also get a lot of people coming in from Angola to shop at the markets.  The river is full of crocodiles and hippopotamuses (the Rundu petting zoo sucks).  I asked a local if people fish in the river.  He said “yes, you can fish, but then something is also fishing for you”.  I’ll stick to running. 

My diet is preposterously poor.  Namibians love meat, carbs, salt, sugar, and fat.  To a Namibian, green leafy vegetables are things of horror.  Corn, carrots, onions, and tomatoes are about it for them.  I’m certain I’ve consumed more salt in the last month than I did in all of 2011.  As I’ve spent my entire time in Namibia so far as somebody’s guest, I don’t have a lot of control over my diet.  I eat bread and butter for breakfast.  My lunch and dinner are typical Namibian combinations fat, salt, meat, and carbs.  They love “cool drinks” here, like coke.  In short, my diet is 100% different than what it was in the states.  I’m running about 30 miles a week, and I still managed to put on a couple pounds.  The scariest part is that I’m really starting to like it.  I’ll need major diet rehabilitation once I’m finally on my own. 

I’ll return to Omaruru on tomorrow to finish training followed by PCV swearing in on May 10^th.  After that, I’ll return to Rundu for my two-year assignment.  There are things I encounter here that I wish I could share, but that are just a bit too much for an open blog like this.  The poverty here, in some areas (particularly the unofficial settlements), is brutal and there’s no shortage of reminders of the suffering that poorer residents endure.  While some of the suffering seems self-inflicted (rampant alcohol abuse, for instance), it’s also easy to see how a sense of hopelessness might overwhelm some given the lack of opportunities to escape lifelong poverty.  I wonder how I’ll feel about my work here and its impact a year from now.   The peace corps is about capacity building and sustainability (in other words, train Namibians in the skills needed to help themselves to a better life).  They tell us to concentrate on small successes and remind us that it will sometimes be hard to see how we’re helping.  Change here occurs at a glacial pace.  A nudge in the right direction might be the best I can hope for.  Impacting a few lives so that they might have the skills to live a fuller life than they otherwise would have; I’m guessing, right now, that’s what I’m here for.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from Omaruru.  The ones with me in them were taken by my friends Christina and Pamela.  Thanks for reading.  I hope you are all well.    

Most of the gang (18 of 22)

If you read my last blog post, you know the history of the chicken in my hand.