Complications

I'm busy planning a 3-day Business Plan development workshop.  The workshop will be from June 18th through the 20th.  My biggest stress is that the subject matter is a bit technical at times and my Namibian English, or "Namlish" as they call it here, isn't great.  I find that in most conversations with Namibians, I have to repeat myself often.  That's fine when you're speaking to one person.  However, my workshop will have about 40 attendees.  Further, the attendees' grasp of English and education levels will vary widely.  I'll have two translators; one for Rukwangali and another for Thimbukushu, the two most common languages in this part of Namibia.  I'll try to make the material as clear as possible, but I can only reduce its complexity so much before it becomes useless.  

My counterpart, who is responsible for all of the day-two planning and securing guest speakers, has vanished for over a week.  This is not unusual in Namibia.  My supervisor seems unconcerned.  I am concerned.  I'll wait a few more days before panicking and taking over that portion of the workshop as well. 

The water in Rundu has gone out 5 times in 10 days.  The electricity has gone out 6 times in the same period.  Each time they go out, they typically stay out for somewhere between 6 and 24 hours.  One water outage event began in my yard.  The story goes like this; 

 On Tuesday night I was woken at 2AM by the sound of water rushing by my bedroom window.  That’s a disconcerting sound to wake up to in the desert.   I peaked out of my bedroom window and found exactly what my ears were telling me I would find, a wide stream of water.  I went out to my kitchen to see what the situation was in the back yard and found an even wider stream.  My house had become an island.  The water was only about an inch below my front door, which is about 8 inches off the ground.  The water, I assumed, was coming from a water-main break, but I wasn’t interested in wading out in the stream to find the source.   The water continued to flow until about 5AM.   

Got pretty close to making it in my door which would have been a disaster;

When I finally made it out of the house to find the source of the water, I didn’t have to go far.   Just a few feet from my front door I found this:

By 3:00PM, the scene looked like this;

I have a bike.  It’s a brand new Chinese made hunk of crap.  The crank arm fell off the other day as I rode it home much to the entertainment to all who watched.  The crank arm is the part of your bike that the pedal is attached to which makes it of considerable importance.  Traditionally, they remain attached.  I’ve been trying to find a socket wrench and a washer to fix it all week.  I even pressed the NamWater folks that dug up my yard to see if they had anything.  Nope.  This weekend I’ll try a few service stations.   Complications are a way of life here. 

The good stuff;
We have about two dozen goats at the youth center.  I help our grounds keepers run them out of their enclosure in the morning to go feed in the larger field at the back of our grounds.

One had babies last night.  One lived, one died.  Here's the new member of our goat family. 

I got to spend a day last weekend in Divundu, a small town about 120 miles east of Rundu.  There, I visited with my friends Nathan and Geri.  Some shots;

Nathan is assigned to the Popa Malaria Camp, which is where regional mosquito control efforts are based out of.  

Nathan's hut. He can hear hippos in the river behind the hut at night and had to help one of his host brothers chase a Hippo off their property last week.

One of Nathan's host brothers.

We found this snake skin not very far from Nathan's room at the Malaria Camp.   That'll make you watch your step. 

 My favorite photo of the week I took during a walk near the Popa Malaria Camp in Divundu. 

That's it for this week.  I may be quiet for the next two weeks as my workshop will likely take over my life.  However, I'm sure I'll return with more than a few good stories.  I hope you are all well.  Thanks for reading.