I’ve been in Namibia for just over a week now, so I figured
now was as good a time as any for an inaugural blog post. Hello and welcome.
For those who don’t know me, I’m Mina (Amelia) Sheldon, a soon to be Peace
Corps Volunteer in Namibia. I’m already in country going through Pre-Service
Training (PST), and until my swear-in date in October, I will refer to myself
and the others with me as Trainees.
For training, we have a pretty intense schedule that started
this week, but until now, it was quite relaxed. We were staying in a hostel in a
town called Okahandja and going to classes at a community hall that we
affectionately call the Training Center. Breakfast started at 6 every morning
and we usually headed to classes around 7. Now we are all in host family houses. When I wrote this blog last week, such was not the case! But do to the scarcity of internet here, I haven't been able to post yet and this is already quite long, so I'll post about the host family later.
Our classes are covering a wide range of topics from medical
information, safety lessons (which everyone hates),language, and occasionally culture. We were finally assigned
languages after more than a week, but we won’t receive notification on our permanent site placement
until right before we swear in. Not knowing site placement has been driving
everyone crazy, but now that we know our languages the agony of not knowing is
a little more bearable. Mostly because now we are all struggling through the stages of early language learning.
We have an option of
6 languages we can learn to help transition into our new homes: Afrikaans, KKG,
Oshikwanyama, Oshidonga, Otjiherero, Rukwangali. I personally really wanted to
get KKG, or Khoekhoegowab, a click language that promises to be the hardest
language I’ve ever tried speaking. I practically begged during my interview.
Yesterday they finally unveiled our languages to us through a sort of game. We
were each handed a slip of paper with our name and an animal on it and then had
to find our group without speaking. After finding our group, we were to go to
one of the trainers around the perimeter of the room and again mime until we
found the correct trainer. I was a cat. I walked around and was rejected from
so many different groups and trainers, I was starting to doubt that I was doing
this right. I walked by the KKG tutor I already knew, but the people around him
were all ‘snakes’ so I started preparing myself to have a different language
than my desired one. I still couldn’t find a group. Maybe I didn’t have a group,
which meant I would be alone at Community Based Training (CBT). It all made me
nervous. Then I found to other people with my ‘cat’ motions. We found only open
trainer, who I recognized from the KKG demo. My heart raced. We made our ‘cat’
motions as a group. We waited. Finally, he gave us a thumbs up. That was
probably the happiest I’ve been since I came here. So now I’m learning Damara
dialect Khoekhoegowab.
I’ve also been making a lot of friends through training.
It’s been a pretty stressful week for the introvert that I am, but I realized
that I can check out from time to time and no one really cares. A lot of us are
introverts and everyone is really nice. Our Namibian teachers are also really
kind. They tell jokes with us and teach us to sing three times a week. We love
them all dearly. During down time, I have been hanging out with people, sharing
media interests, playing card games, playing charades, hiking, drawing, and so
much more. It sounds like we stay busy, but over the weekend we had no
scheduled events and the days really dragged on. But now that we are all moving
out of our hostel and into family homes I’m a little sad. I’ll miss everyone a
lot, but I do think I’m ready to move to a new place with a bit more space!
Despite what I have said, however, I’ve already had a few
adventures, so I’ll tell you about them now.
Our first big adventure was to the mall on the outskirts of
town (or, at least I think it is). It took about 20-30 minutes to walk there
both ways. We all went after class on Thursday for cellphones. It was my first
time leaving the immediate area around the hostel and Training Center. I felt
like I got to see a lot more of Namibia there. I could see the beautiful
mountains in the distance. I’m sure I can see them from where we are, but I
hadn’t noticed them as much when there were more buildings and people to be
looking at. The mall itself was really interesting. It was both outdoors like a
strip mall and indoors like what we would think of as a mall without actually
having doors except those on the stores. It was insanely clean for being in the
sandy area that Okahandja is. It took a long time to get the phones, after
which I was thoroughly annoyed and exhausted. I had a good conversation on the
way back with another woman in PST that really helped me overcome at least the
annoyance bit. It made me realize how much I need to grow and put me at a good
starting point for the next two years.
Another adventure was going to the doctor’s office. As could
be expected with me, I’ve already been to the doctor’s! Like when I was in
Korea, my left ear has yet to pop from the plane. I told the Peace Corps
Medical Officers (PCMO) about it and they gave me a few tips of medications I
could take from my med kit and told me to contact them again if those didn’t
work. They did not, so on Friday I told our head trainer and he contacted the
team in Windhoek for me. Within 30 minutes I was at the doctor’s office here in
Okahandja. It was such an interesting place and I’m not sure I could describe
it. It was much more like a US waiting room than the ones in Korea, but there
was definitely something different about it. I met the doctor in his actual
office where he tested my hearing by whispering words at me from behind to see
if I could hear them out of both ears. The words he used were “Jesus, Joseph,
and Joshua.” It started getting a bit predicable after Jesus. In the end, they
couldn’t do anything for me. I had an appointment scheduled for an ENT in
Windheok, but it started getting a bit better over the weekend so I’m going to
see if it’ll just fix itself after a week.
We also went for a hike into the mountains on Saturday
morning. Hiking in the sand was really hard, and moving in the group kicked up
a lot of sand, which made it a little hard on my asthma. I ended up choosing a
spot to stop early on with a friend to sit and draw. We saw some beautiful
birds and made a good halfway point to help direct people back as they came
back down. I now have a pretty painting of the mountain and surrounding bush.
I'm really pressed for time and internet now, but I'll try to get some pictures up next time. I also wrote a post on some interesting history that I will post next time I have internet! There's also a good chance that I need to make a new blog for my service, so please give me ideas for names!!! I like alliterative things!
