Please remove your arm from my bedroom

Hello Friends.  As I was warned, just about everything in Namibia comes to a screeching standstill this time of the year.  Most of my friends are off in other parts of the country or the world.  I’m staying in Rundu for much of the holiday season as I have an absurd amount of travel planned next year and will need all of my vacation days (and then some) to accommodate it.    My only responsibility over the next few weeks is maintaining my friend Nathan’s garden and checking in on his two puppies.  So I’ll do that 240-mile round trip hike to his site once a week until mid January.  I’m thankful for having at least that to do. 

The only drama that’s unfolded for me in the last few weeks is that my laptop was briefly stolen.  I had a gang of PCVs staying at my house and all were fast asleep when at about 1AM, a noise woke me.  I saw a guy standing at my bedroom window with his arm through my burglar bars and something in his hand (turned out to be my MacBook that I love with all my heart).  I jumped up and tried to grab him but he was a fast little thief.  Door locks here don’t allow you to exit your home quickly (hopefully I’ll never have a fire), so by the time I got outside he was long gone.  I scared the hell out of everybody sleeping in my house, as they had no clue what had happened or what/who I was cursing loudly at. I was able to track down the kid who stole it with the help of some people in my neighborhood.  The look on the kid’s face when he answered his front door was pretty priceless.  Pure shock.  I got it back in less than 24 hours.  No damage.  The police, his mother, and I are orchestrating a scared straight style lesson for him.  We’ll see how that goes.

In other news, I did a boat tour of the Kavango River near Divundu (120 miles east of Rundu) last weekend with some of my PCV friends.  The most eye opening part was seeing a large crocodile sunning itself on rocks that Nathan, Geri, and I had hiked on just a few months ago.  We also saw a lot of hippos.  They’re huge.  You never go very far on the Kavango River without encountering a naked family bathing and washing their clothes.  Nudity isn’t a big deal here.  It was unusual to see folks bathing just about 75 yards from a pack of about a dozen hippos.  They kill more people than any other animal in Africa and I often hear stories of attacks.  I’m so used to rivers being a nice safe get away.  It’s still unusual to me to feel like I need to watch myself when hiking along the Kavango.  

My belief that my mono issues were behind me has turned out to be false.  I knew I was being a bit stupid when I started training aggressively for an ultra marathon so soon after “recovering” from mono.  What I learned is that aggressive training can make mono right back if you haven’t given yourself sufficient time to recover, which is where I am now.  So, lesson learned.  I’ll be putting my sneakers in my closet and trying to find other ways to occupy my time for the next few months.  Shitty timing, but if Peace Corps has done anything for me, it’s made me more patient. 

I’ll spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day at the pediatric unit of the local hospital.  The doctor that oversees the hospital’s operations told me it was fine to hand out as much candy as I wanted.  I’m not sure if that’s wise, but I’m going to make it rain candy.  New Year’s I’ll camp with some PCV friends at a local campsite on the river.  It’s hard being so far from home during the holidays and all the down time makes it that much more difficult, but I have made some good Namibian friends that will make the days a bit less lonely.  I also have some great travel and visitors next year to look forward to.

I hope this holiday season is a good one for all of you.  Take care and thanks for reading

What would you say you do here?

Hello Friends.  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  Mine was nice.  I spent the weekend with 19 other volunteers at the Popa Malaria Camp in Divundu.  I think it’s an indication of how I’ve gotten used to things here that it didn’t faze me that I was having Thanksgiving dinner at a malaria camp.  My Christmas dinner last year was at a snake restaurant outside of Hanoi.  I guess that still wins the odd-holiday-dinner-location award. 

I often get questions about what exactly it is that I do here, so here you go…

Accounting training at local schools: 

Money is a big issue for Namibian public schools.  They get some government funds, but that only covers a portion of their needs.  If you ask any government official, they will tell you that school is “free” and that “school fees” should not be charged.  However, all schools charge school fees as the support received from the government is inadequate to support day-to-day operations. 

It’s up to each individual school to manage school-fee funds.  I’ve begun working with one of the larger schools in Rundu to help them address their accounting issues.  This particular school has been plagued with money issues including a large embezzlement situation last year.  The school has over 900 learners and, constructively speaking, zero accounting procedures.  The only thing they really keep track of is who paid them what.  Expenditures are not tracked and school fee money is always long-gone before the end of the year, meaning there isn’t money left for basic needs such as paper for tests and light bulbs.  I, and another volunteer, are currently developing some accounting procedures and tools that we’ll begin training the school staff on in early January.  If the project goes well, we’ll try to get other schools in Rundu to adopt the procedures.

Rundu Hospital Tuberculosis Clinic:

My prison project was a quick one (I hope).  It seemed to only require a few phone calls and some clarification of expectations.  However, I’m skeptical.  The fact is that people will often say “yes” here when what they really mean is “we’ll see” or just plain “no” or “I would do or say anything that would result in us ending this conversation”.  I’ll follow up with the clinic in a few weeks to see if things have improved. 

My new project at the hospital is working with the tuberculosis clinic.  The clinic is spilt into two wards.  One ward is for normal tuberculosis, and one for multi drug resistant tuberculosis.  Regardless of the ward you are in, your inpatient stay will be between 1 and 6 months.  It’s similar to prison in a lot of ways.  The wards are small, the only outside area is a tiny courtyard, and they are not allowed to leave.  The hospital social workers and I decided that we would try to introduce some training programs in the TB clinic to address the issue of boredom while simultaneously providing skills that the patients can use to generate income once they’ve been released from the hospital.  After interviewing some of the patients, we found that sewing was the skill they were most interested (followed by basket weaving and jewelry making).  They already have a women that does some sewing training on site, but she only has one sewing machine and there are no materials available for the patients to practice with.  She hasn’t been paid yet and is losing patience (with a “c”).  My goals are to significantly expand the project and to make is sustainable.  I’ll need to work with the hospital administration to get an outlet to sell some of the products produced by the patients to generate revenue so that materials can be purchased for future patients as well as to pay the trainers.  I have a project kick off meeting scheduled with the hospital administration and social workers next week.  Hopefully, I’ll have good news to share on this project in the coming months. 

Nyangana water tower

I mentioned in an earlier blog that my friend, PCV Mary, had a set back in her garden project when a stand holding a 10000 liter water tank collapsed.  Her garden is meant to support persons living with HIV/AIDS in her community.  Our original plan was to just rebuild the single tower that collapsed, but then we realized that the other towers weren’t in much better shape.  So, we’re now getting a large 4-tank tower built.  It won’t be cheap, but the contractor does good work and I’m confident this tower will be there to support the garden for a long time.  I managed to get the price down by begging and offering to write a business plan for the man’s company.  It helped, but we’ll still need every penny of the money that we have and I’ll have to beg, borrow, and steal the rest.  Work on the tower should begin in the next week or two.  I’ve done some workshops and trainings and business plans here, but this will be the first project that involves actual construction.  I’m looking forward to that.

Odds and ends:

Then there are my day-to-day activities of working with various aspiring entrepreneurs in Rundu as well as small business owners.  I work with people on business plans, product pricing, marketing, accounting, and other typical small business challenges.  These meetings vary from fun to excruciating.  I get some very level headed aspiring entrepreneurs and sometimes I get people demanding thousands of dollars because they were born to act and I have to help them make a movie (this has occurred twice now). 

I had been working on a expanding a local school to include a tailoring program.  It seemed like the project was going well but then my counterpart lost interest.  I tried to encourage him to follow through, but it wasn’t getting me anywhere.  It’s disappointing because I’d already done much of the footwork for a grant application and I think the project had a good chance of being sustainable.  Failed projects are a fact of life in the Peace Corps.   

Down time:

Down time is a big part of the Peace Corps experience.  Try as you might, you will only ever fill up a few hours of most days with actual work.  When I do have some real work to do, it’s a treat that doesn’t last very long.  There are some great, super busy days, but they typically take weeks of planning and phone calls and frustration and sometimes begging to get to them.  Sometimes I look for ways to help during my down times, but often I just turn to a book or exercising or texting friends to pass the time.  Socializing with people in my community is fun and it's part of why I'm here.  It’s also a way to pick up a bit more Rukwangali, though nearly everybody in Rundu speaks English.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I do my best to stay busy, there are often days of boredom and questionable productivity levels.  This is a common theme in many PCV’s lives.  This down time will increase over the coming weeks as everything in Namibia shuts down in December and early January.  Learning how to deal with that down time in a constructive way is a challenge, but I’m doing pretty well at it.  However, I’m at a point now where I can understand why some volunteers quit and go home.  It can be tough, particularly as a health/business volunteer that doesn’t have a prescribed job.   You have to be a self-starter or you will sit on your ass for two years.  Even when you're really fighting, real productivity can be hard to come by.  While I don’t want to quit, and have never considered it and never will, I can understand now why some do.  It takes a lot of work to be a little productive here and if you measure yourself by your productivity, as I do, it can make you question the value of your presence. 

So that’s it for this week.  I hope you are all well.  Take care and thanks for reading. 

Afrikaner Mullet: The Nuclear Option

Hello All.  Things had been moving in the right direction project-wise for me until the time I went to reconnect (mid August).  After that, a lot of things got in the way.  Two weeks at Reconnect, followed by about 5 weeks of sickness, then a week long power outage, and declining support from the ministry I’m attached to left me feeling like all my work had come to a standstill.  However, over the past few weeks, I’ve managed to get things moving again.  I will give you all some more details on what I’ve been working on here in my next post, but for now I’ll just say I’ve been busy and all is good on the volunteering front.   

So, what’s been going on other than work?  I finally got to do some personal travel.  Other than a trip to Oshikati (north west) and a couple small trips within the Kavango, I really haven’t traveled much since I started Peace Corps.  One of the nice things about being in the part of Namibia that I am is that I’m relatively close (8 hour drive) to one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls.  Vic Falls is located near the town of Livingstone, Zambia (as in “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”).  Google it.  Even though this is the worst time of year to visit due to low water levels, it was still a beautiful site.  After having seen only savannah and desert and some nice mountains over the past 8 months, walking through the woods and encountering a massive 360-foot deep crevasse was out of the ordinary.  Late in the rainy season, the entire length of the 1-mile long gorge is a roaring waterfall.  I’m excited to return and witness that.  So, in the pictures below, imagine that entire face is a waterfall.  I’ll post some before and after rainy season pix in April.  The elephants below delayed our travel a bit in the coolest way possible.  The passengers of the car I was in weren’t the least bit happy when I got out to take pictures.  I was later given the following warning about elephants, “if one looks at you and waves its ears back and forth, you’re in trouble”.   

The city of Livingstone was a blast.  Being able to visit nice restaurants, bars, nightclubs, was a welcome change of pace.  It was small enough and safe enough that everything was walkable.  They even had a gym!  The people in the town were all very friendly and accessible.  I’m sure I’ll visit this town many times between now and whatever comes after Namibia for me.    

I need a haircut.  The last haircut I got was in Nazareth, Pennsylvania over 8 months ago.  It’s gotten long enough that I now often catch myself reminiscing about my skateboarding days when I look in the mirror.  I’ve resorted to slicking it back for work, which is a ridiculous look for me but passable for work purposes.  My options in Namibia are pretty much this: 1) shave head 2) hand PCV friend scissors and wish them luck, or 3) Afrikaner mullet courtesy of local barber.  The PC NAM35 mullet club is now defunct (you can’t cut the party off and still call it a mullet.  no.), so I don’t need to consider the unthinkable option 3.  On the bright side, my consultees and attendees to my presentations all seem to still take me seriously.  However, I feel that I’m pushing it a little and need to act soon.  Maybe by Christmas.   

Thanksgiving is coming up.  This is a particularly big day for my family back home as we have our yearly family reunion at “McCauleyville” in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania.  I’ve been to every McCauleyville Thanksgiving since I was 3 years old.  I’ll certainly miss it and be thinking a lot about my family that day.  I’ll be celebrating this Thanksgiving with some PCV friends in Divundu.  We’ll have chicken instead of turkey, but we will have stuffing.  Turkey is hard to come by here and expensive when you do.  We’ll have a big gang for a river cruise, safari, and a Thanksgiving meal.  It’ll be nice to have so many of my PCV family in the Kavango. 

I love my country, but I cannot tell you how nice it was to miss an election season in the states.  I highly recommend moving far far away sometime in early 2016 and returning, say, sometime after early 2017.  Maybe the Peace Corps is right for you?

A final note.  I started this blog sitting in my sister Kate’s house in Shepherdstown, West Virginia on November 21, 2011.  Just about one year and 34 posts later, I feel like there’s a whole lot more between me and that first post than 365 days.  Thank you to those of you who have stuck with me.  I know my writing consistency hasn’t been great since I got sick, but life is getting back to normal now (Namibia normal, anyway).  I’m hoping my blogging enthusiasm will recover soon too.   

That’s it for now.  Have a great Thanksgiving and thanks for reading. 

roadblock

Baboon looking for handouts near the Vic Falls craft market

Baby zebra chillin in the shade

Small portion of the mile long Vic Falls.  In the rainy season, the entire right side of this scene is a roaring water fall. 

Long hair Jimmy

Heeeeere kitty kitty kitty

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 11^th 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

Cultural Dance Group - Photos

Hello Friends.  I hope you're all well.  I'm doing a bit better each day.  I should be all back to normal in a week or so.  Here are some photos from last Friday.  This was an event encouraging reading/literacy at a school outside of Rundu.  Our cultural dance group performed.  They were great.