Donkey cart boys

These little dudes cruise around the neighborhood on their donkeys some afternoons. 

Girl with her unamused sister.  I work in the building behind them on the other side of the street.

Reconnect

Group 35’s much-anticipated Reconnect is over and I’m now back in Rundu.  It had been, since I arrived at my site, the big thing on the horizon, the welcome break, the great reunion with my friends, who were spread all over Namibia, from city to bush, from the freezing south to the temperate north.  Now that it’s past, it feels like I’ve reached the end of a probation period and am now officially a PCV.  I returned to a town I’m very familiar with.  A place I call home and mean it.  I returned to my office and felt relief to see and speak to my friends there.  

The pace of reconnect quickly forced me back into an American frame of mind.  I realized how much my brain had adjusted to the African pace and demands and it was really a bit jarring to suddenly find myself in a modern city, among so many Americans, with a full agenda day and night for 17 days straight.  I think I managed pretty well for like 13 of the days.  While I was there, I reflected on the fact that this jarring feeling is only a light rain foreshadowing the much larger storm I’ll experience in about two years, but I’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow. 

One of the really strange things about Peace Corps service is that you’re suddenly put into such close contact with complete strangers for two months and then just as quickly pulled apart.  To drive home how strange the feeling is, you get yanked back together for another two weeks of togetherness three months later.  I do, at times, feel like this entire experience seems like some sort of human psychology experiment. 

The trip home:

Nathan and I stood on the roadside in Otavi.  We were searching for our third hike of the day and challenging each other to hit various targets with rocks when a truck driver I’d signaled stopped.  I jogged to where he pulled over, still clutching a fistful of rocks, reaching him as he climbed down from his cab.  We chatted for a moment and he offered us a ride to Rundu, commenting, “I know peace corps volunteers”.  The next five hours were slow and quiet.  Our friend talked a bit about his work.  He hauled 29 tons of fish from Wavis Bay, Namibia to the Congo three times a month.  Nathan commented on how lonely that sounded and he agreed.  He later mentioned that with three passengers we were technically overloaded and could be fined by the police, though he didn’t seem that concerned.  I was sitting on his sort of back seat/sleeper cabin bed.  Nathan was shotgun.  When we approached a police checkpoint, I considered asking the driver if I should hide in the top bunk, but then I remembered that I was a grown man and a Peace Corps volunteer and that hiding from the police in the sleeper cabin bunk-bed of a tractor trailer was probably something that crosses some critical threshold of irresponsibility.  I said nothing. 

So, about a minute later there was a sideways police head pushed through each window, their four eyes trained on me.  I wondered why their hats didn’t fall off and greeted them with a large smile and big “hello!”  About 5 minutes after that, Nathan and I stood in a police tent pleading with the officer to give the driver a pass.  He was preparing to fine him N$2000, but finally just gave him a warning.  We all climbed back into the truck and went on our way.    

Back at site:

On my first day back to work, I spent a few hours with our traditional dance group.  About a dozen of them had gathered to make new outfits.  I sat in the grass next to my friend David who taught me how to weave one of the wide bead sashes worn across the chest of the dancers.  I tried to follow along with what they were saying but I could only pick out a few words here and there.  I felt uncomfortable in my office and was happy that my one meeting of the day had postponed until the next day. 

Chewy, my sort-of adopted dog, has vanished.  He was a skinny, scarred, sorry looking thing that wouldn’t let me near him for weeks.  In the few weeks before reconnect, he finally started taking chicken bones out of my hand and letting me pet him.  He’d come to my door most nights and sleep in the sand just off my doorstep as I cooked.  I named him Chewy because his ears looked like two chewed nubs, which I assumed came from fights with other dogs.  They bled constantly and I later realized that somebody had simply cut them off with a knife or shears.  Local kids liked to harass him.  Dogs here have hard lives and I think Chewy’s has come to an end.  I’m glad I was nice to him while I had the chance. 

I think the moment I really felt back at home was yesterday when I found myself running with 5 youths from a truck, that I had moments-before been sitting in, because a large container that was stored in the back of it fell over and started loudly gushing pressurized gas.  The orderliness and predictability of Windhoek was gone and I felt genuine relief to be standing 50 feet from a truck full of gas containers all the while hoping it wouldn’t explode because it still contained my backpack.  Perhaps it’s how well these little twists and turns distract me from other thoughts, or the fact that, even with all my complaints about punctuality and dependability, I do sometimes enjoy the corralled chaos of it all. 

Looking forward, I’ll hopefully be holding my first female entrepreneurship meeting early next month.  I returned to Rundu to find that all of the workshop issues I expected were not issues, but that the things I expected to go right had gone wrong.  I have facilities and food money for the event, but applications for the workshop are lacking so I’m scrambling to find new sources of interested participants.  However, that can wait until next week.  For now, I’m headed back out into the grass with our dance group to see if I can fashion a wind chime out of thick reeds.  They’ll think I’m a little crazy, but my hope is to teach creativity by demonstrating it.  There are other PCVs who would be better suited for this task, but I think it’s good to sometimes step out of the person you see yourself as, if only to see what happens. 

Thanks for reading.  I hope you are all well.
 

Motorcycle dog

Hello All.  No blog post this week.  I'm sick and just deleted a totally mediocre blog post.  It was for the best.  Tomorrow morning, I leave for a couple weeks of training in Windhoek.  I'll be standing on the main road out of Rundu at about 6AM trying to find a hike with two other PCVs.  In Windhoek, I'll be reunited with the rest of my Peace Corps group.  It'll be good to see them.  Over the next week or so, I'll do my best to involve myself in shenanigans sufficient to produce decent blog material.  I hope you are all well. 

Here's one of my favorite photos from last summer.  Motorcycle dog awaits the return of his owner.  Watkins Glen, NY.