Cormac
McCarthy - "You never
know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
The last you heard from me, I was recovering from mono. I’d spent much of my sick time
reflecting on my experiences here in Africa and how I might adjust my approach
to volunteering based on my successes and failures. Since I’ve become mobile again, I spend less time in my
office and more time in the community.
I’ve developed a relationship with the Rundu Vocational School, which
has resulted in several projects. I
gave a series of presentations there this week to all of their soon-to-be
graduates on personal finance, preparing for interviews, and other similar
topics. The school administration
agreed to allow me to include some teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and binge drinking
messaging. They also agreed to
allow me to have multiple teen pregnancy and male engagement workshops early
next year. It’s great because this
audience is like fish in a barrel.
It’s a large, constantly changing audience that has to listen to me if
they want to graduate. I’ll take
it.
Another big benefit of doing work like this is that since
it’s a vocational school, they can build stuff for me. They wanted to pay me for the
presentations, but since I’m a volunteer, I can’t accept payment. But, instead of payment, what came to
mind was a setback a friend had on a project in a nearby village. That friend, PCV Mary, is in a small
village about 100KM outside of Rundu called Nyangana. She recently had a major setback in her community garden project
when a 3-meter water tower collapsed destroying it and the 10,000-liter water
tank it held. Trying to help Mary
with this has become a side project of mine. So, I asked that the vocational school do what they can to
help her and they agreed to donate all necessary labor to get a new 4-tank
stand constructed. Between that and
another connection I made here in Rundu, I think I might be able to get the
cost of the project down to something manageable. Fingers crossed.
It’s not a win yet, but close enough to get excited about.
I’m also now working with the Rundu Hospital ARV clinic (ARV
– antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS) on a project to encourage
therapy adherence among prisoners.
Scheduling and timeliness (shocker!) are issues regularly encountered by
the clinic staff when dealing with this population. Basically, the police are pissed they have to haul prisoners
to the clinic for their ARV appointments and are often late or they bring people
on the wrong days. Given that the
local ARV clinic handles 10,000 cases among 2 doctors and maybe 10 nurses,
schedule adherence is critical (schedule adherence is also important for
treatment effectiveness). The ARV
clinic is a madhouse even when people are showing up on time. But when a busload of prisoners shows
up 3 hours late, or a day late, it’s completely unmanageable. The doctors and nurses at the clinic
say it’s currently their biggest issue.
I feel like it’ll be in interesting project on a few levels such as dealing
with Namibian police, prison administration, prisoners, and dealing with the
ever present Namibian disrespect of clock time (a Namibian gentleman told me
the other day that Europeans own watches, but Namibians own the time). I have no idea what to anticipate with
this project, but I’m eager to get involved.
In other news, on Thursday October 11th the power
went out and everything in Rundu and the surrounding areas went sideways in a
hurry. On Friday morning I started
hearing rumors about a power tower collapsing and a time frame of 5 to 10 days
for the power to be restored.
Though the power goes out a lot here, it always comes back on in a
couple hours. However, this time
was different. It turned out that
11 power towers had collapsed during a storm because some folks stole pieces of
the towers to build donkey carts. No
power also means no running water or cell reception for much of the Kavango. Rundu sucks in a most profound way
without electricity or water, so my friends Anneke, Alice, and I
decided to turn it into a little camping vacation until things got back to
normal.
On Sunday, Peace Corps decided that all Kavango volunteers
needed to be consolidated into an area with cell reception and water until
power was resorted to the region.
I suggested they consolidate at the campsite where I was staying since
it had everything we needed. They
agreed and so on Monday most of the Kavango volunteers had arrived at Camp
Hogo. The following couple days
were fun. A lot of Frisbee,
volleyball, reading, and some beers at night. I’m sure most of the volunteers would have rather not gotten
yanked out of their sites, but given the circumstances everything turned out
pretty well. Peace Corps
Volunteers are good at making the most of situations like this.
I’m working, running, and writing again, and, in general,
feeling really well. I’d never
been sick like that before, and being here only exacerbated some of the
challenges, but the experience has left me with a greater appreciation for my
health. There was a point, right
after my first doctor’s appointment in Windhoek, when I was worried that I was going to
be medically separated and sent back to the States. I’d been sick for a month and it just kept getting worse
every day. It was by far my lowest
point in Africa. I spent a lot of
my downtime daydreaming about the projects I wanted to do here. I look at it now as a sort of rehearsal
for when I’m really leaving Namibia and motivation to keep pursuing worthwhile
projects. I imagine I’ll have many
of the same thoughts about my projects and about what I actually accomplished
here when the time really does come to leave. I think for this and other reasons, getting sick has turned
out to be a good thing. Though it
was bad luck, it’s left me in a better place than I think I would have been had
I not gotten sick.
Of course, some things never change. As soon as I felt better, I decided to
start training for two upcoming races.
I’ll run a marathon in February in Swakopmund, Namibia and an Ultramarathon (36
mile) in March in Cape Town, South Africa. Having goals like this makes me feel like things are really
back to normal.
I’ve
received a number of care packages from home since arriving in Namibia. They mean
a lot to me. Little things from
the states can totally make your day.
I swear this isn’t a hint!! But, I did want to thank all of you that
have sent me something. It means a
lot. So, thank you Mom, Dad,
Tammy, Joe, Aunt Helen, Rosellen+Paolo+Daisy, Josh+Rochelle (you have no idea
how nice it was to have so many cliff bars available for me and my friends when
the power went out here), Jacqui+Steph+Adam (most hilarious care package ever). I also received a really great gift
from my PCV friend Samantha (photo below).
I’ll leave you with a few stories from the past few weeks (coincidentally,
they’re all related to African creatures). I’ve cut and paste these directly from an unpublished post I
was writing while sick, so please excuse the tenses. This all happened about a month ago.
·
The other night I got up to use the bathroom at
about 3AM. When I got back into
bed, I heard a strange sound coming from the corner of my bedroom. It sounded like something scratching at
my backpack. So, I got up, turned
on the light, and stood staring at my backpack for a few seconds thinking I don’t want to deal with whatever-the-hell
this is right now. But I knew
that, whatever it was, I needed to deal with it before getting back into
bed. I considered just putting my
backpack outside of my room, but then I thought it might be a mouse and my
backpack had my computer and power cord in it. I’ve seen a number of ruined laptop cords chewed through by
mice here. I didn’t want to be
part of that club. So, I knocked
my bag over on its side hoping the mouse would walk out. But, instead of a mouse, the biggest,
ugliest spider I have ever seen in my life literally jumped out of the bag and
onto my curtain. It took a second to register what I was looking at. It was
3AM, I’m in my underwear, I’m weak from mono, I’m on a pain killer that’s made
me feel drunk, and I have to deal with this thing that I don’t want to even
look at. It was just shy of the
size of my hand (not my palm, but my entire hand). Cursing Africa loudly, I get a plastic bag from the kitchen
and grab the thing like I was picking up after a dog. Its strong little legs were struggling against my hand as I
quickly threw it and the whole bag out the window of my bedroom.
·
I saw my first hippo in the wild. It’s a rare sight in Rundu (they tend to stay away from populated areas). This
particular hippo was a huge mama and it had a baby with it (sorry, didn’t have my
camera). It was in the river near a
lodge I was eating dinner at with some other volunteer friends. They can get as large as 7,000 lbs. This one had to be close to that. It was the size of a small bus. It was cool to see something like that outside of a zoo or game reserve.
·
I think I have a rabid cat under my bed. It started behaving strangely about
three days ago and now it’s acting like it’s auditioning for a role in a Pet
Cemetery sequel. Joking aside, I’m
not taking it lightly. It’s
exhibiting all the common rabies signs (except for foaming). It’s my housemate’s cat and he’s out of
town, so Jimmy’s gotta deal. Not
sure how exactly. I’m bringing a
shovel home from work. Africa
problems. I’m inoculated against
rabies, in case you were wondering.
(Update: the cat is
fine. Turns out it was freaked
because another cat had moved in under my housemate’s bed. I didn’t have to beat it to death with
a shovel after all.)
That’s it for now.
I’ll try to get back to my normal post schedule. I hope you are all well! Take care and thanks for reading.
 |
| From PCV Samantha. |
 |
| Lazy afternoon during the Hogo consolidation |
