My Final Frontier, But Not My Last

Many of you are probably wondering where I am, assuming I left Namibia or just left behind my blog. June 3rd marked my final day of being an “active” Peace Corps Volunteer and my last day in Namibia. Now I am considered a “Returned” Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) since the organization says you never cease serve the global community. That said, I haven’t “returned” to the US just yet. I am in South Africa and will remain traveling around the southern African continent until July 27th.

I’ll try to provide a recap on the final months of my Peace Corps service, my current travel plans and where I’m going next. March marked three years living in Namibia and I can honestly say year three included some of the most exciting days of my work life on the CDC team and some of the most home-sick moments I’ve ever felt. Life and work has been extremely rewarding and challenging and it took on a new dimension between months 29-38 in Namibia. I often questioned if I actually fared better in my mud hut on the river than my air-conditioned flat. In my modern flat I reconnected with a morning routine blending up green smoothies and embraced NPR daily news streams. Surprisingly, it was opening a refrigerator; the ease of flushing the toilet, hopping into a warm shower compounded with endless frustration from poor skype internet connections that made me miss home most. That said, I think it was challenging to have spent 2 years learning one language, Thimbukushu, then moving to a new area and community with a different language and culture. I felt an attachment to the community who had taken me in for my first two years, a level of isolation living alone and the discomfort with a large town filled with taxis and metal gates separating neighbors. That said, never before being a morning person, I found enjoyment with wake-up workouts and a 7:30am in the office schedule (wow, anyone who knows me well should be shocked by this statement).

CDC

Everyone on the CDC team in Namibia is brilliant, really! What made the team most remarkable, besides great management, was the absence of ego despite extremely competent and specialized skill sets of each individual. Everyone worked collectively, clearly focused on one goal, HIV epidemic control in Namibia. In my small northern office I was constantly in awe at my colleagues depth of knowledge, pragmatic approach and dedication to the mission. The Field Officers invited me on their site mentoring visits, encouraged me to take on projects and welcomed my support on theirs. They mentored me, allowing me to ask endless questions and provided continuous guidance. I got to travel across three regions and understand not just what was not working but what was. Observing the tremendous challenges facilities were facing was matched by seeing how much progress was taking place despite the barriers. There was never a lack of work to be done or project ideas to build a path. Here are some highlights of my work (and play) over the past 6 months.

Our CDC Field Officers for 5 regions holding up our SIMS tools and completed dashboard report triumphantly. SIMS (Site Improvement Through Monitoring) is the monitoring and evaluation tool for PEPFAR (US Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief). The assessment tool(s) are giant (“compressive”) and include a series of questions to assess HIV care and treatment for hospitals, clinics, health centers and NGO’s. For example we look to see if all babies born to HIV+ moms are getting the prophylaxis drugs to prevent HIV transmission or if facilities have TB infection control measures in place. The tool is a beast but insightful.

Total Control of the Epidemic (TCE) Trackers Juliana and Louida updating an electronic health patients tracking list. We attempted to track 7,588 patients who appeared to be missing HIV treatment for 3 or more months. Unfortunately many had been missing treatment for greater than 5 years. Not taking HIV medication is dangerous for the health of the individual infected and the people he or she can pass the virus onto. I worked with the facilities Data Clerks to create a plan to track the patients and we organized project review meetings with the clinic staff. We were able to track 43% of the patients on the list finding many active on ART treatment at other health facilities. The project provided insight to address challenges needed to improve HIV patient retention rates, a crucial component of epidemic control.

 

Site monitoring visit in Okongo District with Field Officer Linea Hans. We worked on many projects together including patient retention, pediatric HIV disclosure and Teen Clubs, and viral load tracking. It is amazing how much you can learn when you are surrounded by a passionate visionary with tremendous experience.

Immanuel Sheefeni, an HIV/AIDS Activist, speaking at the first of two HIV Workshops for Peace Corps volunteers and their community counterparts. The YEAH program was taken over by new volunteers and the 4th camp ran last month. Passing on the YEAH torch gave me time to join the PC HIV Working Group. Putting on HIV trainings for Peace Corps Volunteers has been something I have wanted to do after seeing that volunteers across different sectors outside of health lack knowledge and confidence to provide HIV awareness education or there HIV awareness is 10 years outdated. I had the opportunity to mold the schedule and create the presentations for the trainings pulling from country data and our old YEAH curriculum playbook.

 

I checked one more box on my bucket list when hiking Fish River Canyon in Southern Namibia this May. The second largest canyon in the world, this grueling 5-day hike included baboons and wild horses. Waking up to crescent moons lingering over the top of the canyon and being mesmerized by the various animal tracks along the water reminded me of the importance to find wilderness more often.

Saying goodbye to my homestay family was challenging but I do believe technology is making it easier for people to stay connected from around the world. My homestay sisters Erika (left) and Toto (right). We went to Toto’s work my last day visiting the village and I ended the night with my homestay mother sitting around a small fire.

Exploring more of Namibia’s beauty hiking around Epupa Falls after summer rains

 

Where Am I now?  

I just wrapped up 4 safari days at Kruger National Park in South Africa with 3 lovely friends (Jazmine Jackson, Rita Minjarez, Gretchen Klein) who flew over for a Southern Africa road trip adventure. We drove through Swaziland yesterday before reaching our current destination, Durban. We had a wonderful day in Durban walking through one of the oldest botanical gardens viewing exotic plants and the elaborate Indian wedding taking place. We wrapped up the night eating Indian food next to the Indian Ocean. Tomorrow we head to Drakensburg, along the border of Lesotho, for 2 days of hiking around giant green mountains. I’ll continue onto Zimbabwe after my girlfriends leave and then onto Malawi to spend a month with another amazing friend, Emily Cohen. This is Em’s second visit to the continent and we are planning to explore mountain mushroom farms in Livingstonia, get out on Lake malawi for a 3-day kayak trip and do some volunteering.

What’s next?

I’m moving to New Orleans to start a Masters of Public Health at the end of August. In this two-year program I hope to apply my experience over the past 3 years to expand on my knowledge and follow my curiosity for community health and developing programs that make an impact. We will see what my Tulane adventure brings.

Looking for Scholarships – Please ask around. If you are aware of any scholarship opportunities please send them my way. Who ever thought “follow your passion” could come with such a major price tag? I’m looking to apply for some scholarships to assist me with covering my cost for graduate school and welcome any advice on how to make this happen.

My Next Blog..

I will not be returning to Namibia in the near future and will not be continuing  with this blog. Thank you to everyone who has been reading it and who has sent me messages. It has been an eventful journey and I’ve felt blessed having supportive friends and family cheering me on along the way. I’m excited to return home to be closer physically to so many special people who surround me with love no matter where I am.

  Natumera

Thank you-Thimbukushu

All Eyes on Namibia…An AIDS Free Generation

I’m back in Namibia and excited to spend the next year continuing to tackle HIV/AIDS while working with the US based agency, Center for Disease Control (CDC). We have an extremely ambitious goal to drastically curb the spread of HIV in the next two years by ramping up efforts now. Living in a country with the 6^th highest HIV prevalence rate in the world, in some ways the plan seems so far fetched and in other ways its feels like it is right at our fingertips. If there is one country in the African continent that has the right combination of geographic advantages and infrastructure in place, it is Namibia. CDC knows this and our Director recently returned from Atlanta headquarters and let the staff know that “all eyes are on Namibia” to successfully stop the HIV epidemic.

It is interesting to see the epidemic from a public health policy perspective. I spend the last two years on the extreme side of “grass-roots,” where I’d like to say, I was living in the dirt. I worked side-by-side with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and interacted with their children and families. Often their family was my family in Hambukushu culture. So while I step away from the individual to look more at policies and numbers, I feel my insight into the country and culture will be a major advantage in my work and understanding what is truly happening on the ground.

           Ovambo youth performing for the US Ambassador’s at a clinic which provides HIV medication to over 500 patients.

While I do miss bucket bathing under a starry sky and waking up to snorting hippos, I’m settling into my new role and all the perks that come along with it. I had to contain my excitement when the agency flew me down to the capital for a two-week training and put me up in one of the nicer hotels in Windhoek. I didn’t feel like I was a Peace Corps volunteer taking advantage of the new gym to balance the extreme indulgence taking place each morning at the elaborate breakfast buffet.

                        Photo from the top of Kalahi Sands Hotel, Windoek

That said, I must warn all readers that you may find yourself learning more about HIV/AIDS than reading about spitting cobras wrapped around bike tires or pig meat confiscated from crocodiles. Working in the field of HIV boundaries are constantly being broken with medical advancements and technology is allowing us to question what is really possible. Today, I went to a hospital that provides HIV medication to over 1,000 positive patients. They said they have had only 1 child born with HIV this year. This giant reduction in mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) is the result of a consistent effort to provide positive pregnant women with HIV medication during pregnancy. Check out this article of Cuba reported they have recently stopped MTCT.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/30/cuba-first-eliminate-mother-baby-hiv-transmission?CMP=share_btn_link

It is truly astonishing what is happening. I want to share what I know and what I am working on in HIV and I hope I can find a happy medium to be both informative and entertaining.

                 A rare sight but it still happens. The facility was requesting additional space for HIV testing and counseling to avoid using this dilapidated trailer.

One of the projects I am currently working on is voluntary male circumcision (VMMC). Yep! Men who are circumcised are up to 60% less likely to contract HIV and geographic areas that have higher rates of circumcision have statistically lower rates of HIV. I’m meeting with the VMMC team this week to look at their data and figure out how to get more men to come in to get circumcised. The data clerk and I have many creative ideas and hope to gain more momentum working with the team. The World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank are strong proponents of scaling up VMMC programs. It doesn’t matter what culture you are from, anyone can imagine the challenges a program would face if its primary job were to convince grown men to come for circumcision. Check out this commercial from South Africa trying to convince men to get circumcised by calling it “an upgrade” and playing on males desires. More to come on this front!

New BFL Campaign Puts Some “Zing” in VMMC Promotion

I went to the funeral of my home-stay father, Chapi Kapinga, last weekend. He was diagnosed with cancer in June and had been deteriorating for many months. I visited him when I first returned from the US and was lucky to have gotten to say my goodbyes. I called him Tate, which means father in Thimbukushu, and he built my house on the homestead (like he did for most of his children) and he treated me like one of his own daughters.

I traveled from my training in the capital to the village for the funeral. The number of people who had come, and were staying at the homestead shocked me. I have attended many funerals in the past 2 years but never one taking place directly on my homestead and not many this large. I knew that most people there had been at the house for weeks for the kwifa. In Hambukushu cultural the Kwifa is a time where the family gathers at the house of the deceased while funeral arrangements are made and the body is prepared for burial. I was happy to have my hut to sleep in when looking out at all of the small tents crammed inside the bamboo fence walls of the compound along with tarps laid out where people bundled themselves in blankets to sleep outside. Many people looked at me confused as I freely entered and existed my hut feeling comfort once again in my house and surrounded by my home-stay siblings. Family came from all across Namibia and many family came from across the border in Botswana. It spoke to what a well-respected man Tate Kapinga was and the strong family bonds he upheld.

There were 4 fires going throughout the homestead compound to accommodate all of the people. The older men sat separately from the woman and 1 co-ed fire serviced the youth and younger couples. Two massive cow heads hung outside my hut on a makeshift wooden stand, probed through the neck with a fence wire. Giant cast iron black pots sat over fires cooking meat, traditional porridge and cabbage for the following day. Before I went to bed I sat with my home-stay mother and the other older ladies in one of the brick rooms of the homestead. I tried to follow along to their banter in Thimbukushu and tried not to cry but it was hopeless thinking of my home-stay mother’s pain and the loss I felt for my home-stay family and myself.

Before Tate was buried, I was able to read a eulogy I wrote. It is written in English and Thimbukushu.

Tate Chapi Kapinga was a great man and I feel lucky to be able to call him my father. I will never forget the 1^st time I stepped onto the homestead over 2 years ago. I had two giant bags and I was nervous to live so far from home and with people I didn’t yet know, in a land that was still foreign to me. In minutes, Tate took the door locks the Peace Corps gave me and he went to work on installing them on my hut, which he had built for me. He made a fire and used two hot pokers to make holes for the lock…no power tools were used. I never needed those locks because I always new that I was safe and protected on the homestead by Tate, Nawe and my many mothers, sisters, brothers and cousins.

Tate Chapi Kapinga mukuru mwene. Kadi nakuvurama duyua dyo kutanga niye pa dihumbo diyendi. Nakarire no manjato ma wadi ndani natukukire shemwa no diyano dyo kupara okune kayenda o ku nashwagha. No ruvedhe temba ghayene ko ku shimba makumba ghange ma wadi gha ka ni turere kundugho othi hani royithere mararo ghange. Kadi na nyandire makumba yoyi shi nganyi hanikunge no rohakitho ha Tate na Nawe no waheya.

Tate loved to fix things and liked to stay busy. I liked to help him stay busy with all my projects. He fixed my bike, rebuilt my little garden fence that did nothing to keep out the chickens and fixed tools for the clinic garden. He never said no to any of my project even when I asked to extend my hut, which I called “ku-extension.” He taught me how to build a thatch roof and how to plant mahangu in a row and made sure I learned how to make traditional “shi” after I had boiled it for 2 hours too long the first time I cooked it.

Tate gha ghakire kuroitha yinu no ku kara no yirughana. Gharoyithire mbasikora wange no kuroitha ndarata tho thi garden mburu thange. Ndani Tate kadi muguva gho kushwena ngeshi una rombo maghamweno. Tate ghanighongere kutenda nduho dho muhonyi ndani kutwa mahangu. No kune honga kuteneka “shi.”

He checked on me when I was sick and always made sure I ate. For all of his kindness and everything he gave me and did for me, he never asked me for anything in return. He treated me like one of his own children on the homestead as he has done for so many others who are here today. It felt right because Tate and Nawe didn’t treat me differently from the others because I was a white. They treated me as if I was one of their own.

Ngani takamithanga ngeshi no tjiju nidi. No kumona eshi nadi. Muyi tenda yendi kadiko ani rombire yinu endi kutatera kughutha nyara. Ngani kenganga no diho eshi nomwanendi ira hanendi wa heya gho wa hadipano. Nakuyuvire thiwana yo ishi kadi ha nikengire no diho eshi no mukuwa. Kwanimonine eshi no mwanagho vene.

Tate Kapinga was a very proud man and a kind man who loved his wife and his children. They have wonderful, smart, kind and hardworking children and grandchildren to attest to their love and dedication to family.

Tate Kapinga gha karire munu omujima oghuwa no ruhakitho rorukuru kwa munuwendi no hanendi atwe. Hanendi no heku rwendi ghakara noma ghano mutjima gho ghuwa ndani ghaho hakara no ghuotoro nyara.

He was a teacher and would tell me about growing up here and teach me about Namibia and Hambukushu culture. I had lots of questions and he always tried to help answer them. I will always remember Tate for everything he has taught me, for the kindness he has showed me and I will always remember and respect him for the amazing father and man he was. Thank you-Natumera.

Gha karire mitiri gho kunitongwera edi aparire kushwaa gha wanuke wendi no ku ni ghonga thitjo thambukushu. Mbadi nakuvurama yoyi gheya ghoyi ghani honga no yi ani nithiyure mumavuruko ghange no makutekero eshi nadimukere mwana nyambi.

NOT My Last Blog in Namibia

I write to you from my new, furnished apartment where my laptop sits on the kitchen island table. There are six light switches in the flat, six more than my hut. There is a stove, a sink, a refrigerator and the bathroom has a shower and flush toilet. In reality the flat is newer and nicer than anything I’ve stayed at since I left my parents house for college. That said, anything is a stark contrast from my mud hut I’ve lived in for the past two years. The flat is eight times the size of my hut. No more sitting on the edge of my bed with a headlamp cooking over a camp stove again (or at least for a while). It also means no waking up to stare at the thatched roof and think of how my home-stay father methodically tied the thatch and when and why in some places he used cut cows hide to tie the grass, while in other areas he used car-tire string. No more hippos to wake me up but also no more neighboring baby goats crying throughout the night or leaving me fresh morning gifts at my front door. There will be obvious things that I will miss and some I won’t, ever. My home-stay family said the hut will always be mine and they expect me back for a visit soon.

I said goodbye to Bagani village and hello to Oshikati town. Goodbye to my mud hut and hello to white washed walls and a humming refrigerator whereby you can buy fresh produce and store it for multiple days without it going bad. I will appreciate these old, but once again new luxuries. I spent most of my unpacking day playing with the sink, washing the sand and dirt out of most thinks I own while being amazed by how hot the water could get and how efficient the split silver holding areas make it easier to soak and clean things.

My two years of service comes to an end tomorrow and I’ve been doing some reflection on what I identify as my successes and failures. I think there have been quite a bit of both. It is trivial to say today, “I wish I knew what I know now when I started in the village two years ago.” That said, it is very true. The learning curve in Peace Corps is tremendous and while two years seem long, it only brushes the surface of the many complex challenges impacting global health equity and development.

I helped create Youth Exploring and Achieving in Health (YEAH) in 2013 with three other Peace Corps Volunteers. The project sought to engage young Namibians filling a need to create safe and open platforms to discuss sensitive health topics including HIV/AIDS awareness. Namibia, being ranked 6^th in the world for the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence, young people are at a high-risk of contracting the virus and spreading it. The program also was meant to “promote best practices” whereby Peace Corps Volunteers could avoid unnecessary time or even struggles and frustrations by providing them access to shared health education geared toward youth engagement. As well, YEAH could provide a needed network for volunteers and community health educators to collaborate with one another. The program kicked-off with our first Camp YEAH in August of 2013!

Last month we put on the 3^rd YEAH Camp and I think it was our best yet. Also, I stepped back in my role and did the least amount of planning and work I have ever done for camp. It was inspiring to see a hand-full of passionate Peace Corps health volunteers take on the camp planning process, promoting the YEAH philosophy while making it their own. They came up with some amazing interactive and extremely creative activities to teach the youth about HIV/AIDS and they did a great job of engaging Namibian counterparts to lead camp sessions and help better relate culturally to the youth.

 

Being able to pass on the camp and the program knowing that it will continue past my service is really awesome. I know first hand how running the YEAH camp and clubs can help transform young people into confident, knowledgeable and healthy leaders. I do hope YEAH continues to grow and touch more young people across Namibia.

Being at the last YEAH Camp was one way to say goodbye after 26 months of volunteer service. Next, I had to say goodbye to Tunyandere Support Group. I had been slowly pulling away from the group to encourage other staff at the clinic to get more involved with the project and to encourage the support group members to be more proactive to grow vegetables and run the project on their own. While wanting to help the group, I realized they stopped listening to me (funny) and that they needed to figure some things out on their own. I also realized that I had helped them progress but they needed time to adjust and adapt to owning their project.

Tunyandere Support Group

Part of spending so much time with my hands in the soil was for the HIV support group but it was also because I love growing vegetables and haven’t been without a garden since I was practically 14 years old. In the past five months I haven’t worked in the garden much but rather have tried to facilitate other key stakeholders in the community who could support the group long term. The Chief Control Officer of the Regional Council and his staff came to the small going-away party with the clinic staff and support group. I was flattered by his kind words and appreciative of his encouragement towards the support group and the clinic staff to ensure the project continues past my departure.

Yes, my 2-year service is up and I am staying on for a 3^rd year to work with the Center For Disease Control (CDC). I departed the Kavango Region and Bagani village but I am not leaving Namibia. Oshikati, my new home, is a town with a population of 37,000, located less than 100km south of the Angolan border and is the most populated area of the country (remember Namibia’s is only 1.2 million). I am ecstatic to have the opportunity to work with the CDC Namibia staff and continue to do work on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. This is a great opportunity for me to learn more about the data side of HIV/AIDS. Much of my past work has been focused on one-to-one education, counseling and social support so I’ll be challenging myself in a new way and developing new skills. I’m happy to be bringing with me two years of cultural experience living with and working with Namibians from a range of different background.

Before I officially start my 3^rd year post with CDC I am taking some vacation time including a visit home in June. Tuesday, I am off to Madagascar to explore an island I have always dreamt of visiting. Next will be a trip up to Swaziland, a country with one of the last monarchs in the world. Unfortunately, I will not be there during their yearly festival where over 70,000 topless virgins dance for the king whereby he picks some to add to his feat of wives. That said, I will be going to an arts and music festival before exploring the countryside. On June 6^th I will head home and see friends and family. Two years of missed hugs and warm conversation I am excited to have again.

On Sunday, June 14^th my parents and I will be hosting a gathering at my parents home in Petaluma. I’m sure not everyone reading this blog can attend but the invitation is open to all. Since I gave up my US phone two years ago, this is as close to a phone call invitation as I can give. Everyone is welcome starting around 11am (and going until 4/5pm). We would like it to be potluck style so if you are inclined to bring something to share, that would be great. If not, just stop by. I hope to see you all and thanks for reading!

Some faces I will miss….

 

 

The Sexploratorium at Camp YEAH 2015! 

---

 

Trying to step back and let other volunteers lead the camp was challenging. Building the “Sexploratorium” with one of the founders of YEAH was a great way to put our creative energy in a direction. The “Sexploratorium” was a place where campers could learn more about puberty and reproductive health in a fun and interactive way. Check out some of the activities…

DRUNKEN LOVE- Campers try to put condoms on a wooden  penis while wearing glasses simulating impaired vision while drunk. Each activity was followed by a range of questions to explore the topic further with campers.

HIGH RISK, LOW RISK: A game that explores different contraceptive methods and their protection against, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and STIs.

CYLCE BEADS: Making beaded necklaces to track your menstrual cycle. A family planning method used when contraceptives are not available or not accepted. It was also a great way to get the youth to learn and talk about the menstruation cycle. We had the boys maKE the necklaces too!

STI MATCHING…A FEAR TACTIC! Matching STI signs and symptoms with some scary pictures to hopefully make any young person think twice about sex.

Two Years Away From Home

The month of March marks two years since I left home. It is hard to believe that my Peace Corps service is almost over and I do feel the time has passed quickly. These past 6 months seem to have flown by. Last week I traveled down to Windhoek to complete paperwork to close out my contract. Framed certificates were passed out and a photo shoot with the country Director was nicely planned. I raced back up north for a weekend youth workshop on Teen Pregnancy for Youth Exploring and Achieving in Health (YEAH). I couldn’t help but feel some sadness knowing that my time in Namibia will soon come to an end. I thought some pictures could help me to tell the story of the experiences I’ve had since last writing.

One of the highlights of my service was getting selected to go to Senegal for Stomp Out Malaria Boot Camp. Being surrounded by passionate Peace Corps Volunteers from across the continent made me feel both challenged and inspired. The program brought together malaria experts from around the world working in various fields of health, dedicated to eliminating malaria. The Boot Camp was a powerful experience and helped me step back from my work in the village and look at international health and development on a larger scale. Unknowingly, my village isolation had deprived me of a bigger picture and general awareness of my work and it’s relationship to a larger international development network.

Volunteers looking at mosquito larvae at a lab in Senegal. The lab tests Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLIN) and their effectiveness over time

A major movement has erupted and continues to gain momentum. Malaria deaths decreased by 47% between 2000 and 2013 and went down by 6% last year (http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world_malaria_report/en/) Like polio, we will eradicate malaria and I can’t wait for the day that I get to tell my children (and grandchildren) that I played a part in it.

Aid efforts in reducing malaria demonstrates how powerful these international programs potential really is. There has been a major scale up in implementing improved tools, increased political commitment, regional initiatives and major increases in international funding. We can do so much more! Contrary to popular thought, less than 1% of the US federal budget goes to foreign aid. While the US spends $663 billion towards yearly military spending, we are spending only $30 billion on programs that assist the worlds needy (http://borgenproject.org/foreign-aid/). That means an individual American spends $73 on aid per-year while they spend $1,763 on defense. I can imagine how wonderfully differently the world would look if those numbers were switched. Malaria is still responsible for 430,000 child death in continent of Africa each year. Malaria was declared eliminated in the US in 1951. 

Senegal Coast

I am blessed to have amazing friends willing to travel over 26 hours across the world to be with me. It was wonderful to spend time with two of my best girlfriends over the holidays. Emily and Daniella you made it happen!

We had a wild adventure filled with safaris, sundown boat rides, delicious meals and time with my home-stay family. I enjoyed how curious and open-minded both Emily and Daniella were and how genuinely interested they were to learn about the country and culture. They seemed surprised by Namibia’s beauty and the Namibian peoples’ gracious hospitality as well as their relaxed demeanor. The girls’ observations and their questions made me appreciate Namibia more and helped me realize how much I have absorbed over the past two years.

My home-stay sister Crestencia cooked us a traditional meal of dimbombo and cabbage. Emily and Daniella respectfully dove right in with their hands. They mimicked how my home-stay sisters molded the dimbombo like plato and picked up the stringy, salted cabbage, pinching it between the porridge and their thumb before pilling it in their mouth.

The next day Emily treated some of my home-stay family to a lunch at the lodge my sister Toto works at. It felt like a reverse cultural experience listening to my home-stay mother announce in Thimbukushu that she did not feel comfortable using a fork and knife. I secretly felt the same way. Hambukushu culture is a perfect fit for me. My US family knows I’ve always been more comfortable eating with my hands and in Namibia I can do it with less ridicule. My home-stay sisters, on leave from their work at lodges, helped explain to my home-stay parents how the menu worked. The lunch outing was a hit though I did not enjoy having to convince the management to let my home-stay parents into the lodge without a fee. Most lodges try to “keep the locals out.” While I understand the need to maintain order in the establishment it can be disappointing the imagine how race separates even minor opportunities to see the world through a different lens.

My home-stay mother and aunt looking into the lodge boat

Sunset on the Okavango Delta

Cheetas loundging in the afternoon at Afri-Cat Foundation

Last month I was able to help distributing over 1,000 bed-nets to 5 schools in my Constituency. Each of the schools had hostels and we worked with the students to ensure that each of the nets were properly hung. I worked with other volunteers and community health workers to provide malaria health information in a fun and interactive way that everyone seemed to enjoy. We were able to incorporate games to encourage bed-net use and talk about malaria prevention and treatment. I work with some amazing Namibian counterparts I love to watch take the lead.

Last weekend was our first YEAH weekend workshop which was held at the nearby Ministry of Fisheries facility close to my village. The workshop focussed on Teen Pregnancy which is reported to be as high as 36% in my region. The workshop was jam-packed with presentations and thoughtful activities. A panel discussion with guest speakers (who were once or currently are pregnant teenagers) was moving and I can only hope made a great impact on the youth. I was impressed by the questions the youth generated throughout the weekend, demonstrating a desire and ability to think critically. As a major perk we managed to squeeze in a safari park ride to Mahangu with the help of 3 nearby lodges.

Most impressive has been watching our Namibian counterparts take on leadership positions within YEAH. This has required hours of prep and practice but the payoff is worth it. The goal is to transfer skills and knowledge to our counterparts so that they can apply it to their clubs, in the classrooms, at the clinic and in the community. The weekend workshop stirred excitement among volunteer and perfectly lead into a planning meeting for this years YEAH Camp. I am happy to be a part of the 3^rd YEAH Camp. I am also taking a step back to allow other Peace Corps Volunteers and counterparts to play a greater leadership role and carry on the YEAH program. I am hopeful that the program will continue to on after my service.

My two leaners form Bagani YEAH Club impressed all of the Peace Corps Volunteers and counterparts at the Teen Pregnancy workshop when running a condom demonstration. I am still working with a small but dedicated bunch of Bagani Combined School youth for our YEAH Club and mentoring a community health worker to take over the club this year and continue on in my absence.

I am still wrapping my head around what next…More to come! Thanks for all of your emails and warm wishes and thank you for sending books!

Better Late Than Never..Trekking through Namibia with my parents

Like most blog reports, this one comes a little late. The month of August marked my 29^th Birthday and I was lucky to have my parents come for a visit. Our journey was magical and I got to see more of Namibia than I ever imagined. I was also reminded again and again that I have amazing parents who would willingly travel across the world to see me. I can’t pass up the chance to tell you about it.

It wouldn’t be a Symons family vacation if it didn’t look like we were packed to accommodate 15 people. Some men with the unfortunate duty of carrying our luggage from the car to our lodge room asked if we were moving to Namibia. I wanted to feel bad for the lodge staff that had to lug our stuff from the car to the room, which happened daily because we were constantly on the move to make the trek through Namibia. My guilt subsided knowing the bags were filled with birthday gifts, Trader Joes lute, homemade cookies and cards from friends and family (thanks!! Well worth it!).

First thing my father and I did together was to go out and buy matching safari hats in Windhoek to make sure we really embraced the experience. We concord what felt like the entire country and by the third day, Mom was feeling more confident pronouncing some of the places, telling everyone she encountered where we had just come from, as only my mother is so capable of doing (the “gift of gab” is a family trait).

Our car was a well-known beast to the African continent. The Defender, a workhorse of Land Rovers, was only truly appreciated when we passed many stranded tourists with busted tires, hundreds of miles from the closest gas station, across the rugged terrain. It was the right choice to meet our ambitious itinerary and my wish list of places to see while zigzagging across the giant country. Our mighty Defender also wouldn’t start, after reaching our first destination, in the middle of the desert. In the continent of Africa resourcefulness is linked to survival and we were lucky to have a well-qualified hotel maintenance man hot wire the beast. Despite the car rentals insistence that they would provide support “anywhere at any time,” I don’t think they would have ever showed up to help.

When I was 13, my father wanted to take me on a hot-air-balloon ride in Sonoma Country for my birthday. After three attempts to drive at 4:00am to the balloon launching point and having the trip cancelled due to whether, we gave up. 16 years later the Sossusvlei desert hot-air balloon ride was a birthday treat. There is no way to explain and give proper justice to the beauty of the orange sand under the balloon and ones ability to have a panoramic view from so high above ground. The champagne breakfast and watching our tour guide holding his ATM machine above his head for service in the middle of nowhere reminded me of all the different experiences one can have in Namibia.

After the hot air balloon ride we were on our way to our next destination, more desert! Mom was horrified at first. A swimming instructor that rarely likes to leave the water and has a great distaste for sand; I feared she might collapse with the site of being in such a desolate place with no one and more importantly, no water in site. Fortunately, when the air conditioner of beast decided to die on us, we were already on the coast where the weather was cooler. Still, convincing my mother to role down the windows on the dirt roads was difficult. I preferred avoiding copious amounts of sweat to dust coated luggage and gritty bananas but she begged to differ. By day 3 of no air conditioning the windows were down.

I embraced being a tourist and the luxuries that accompanied traveling with my parents. We enjoyed tasty gourmet meals, took-in magical sceneries throughout the country, and had some of the most unique experiences. I was both nervous and excited to get the chance to go to a Himba village. The Himba’s are a distinct looking tribe in the north, west region of Namibia. Himba women cover themselves with a red oxide they mix with animal fat and don’t bathe for life. I’ve been told recently that Himba women must bathe to receive treatment at a hospital, since staff want their bed sheets spared. Also, health ministries have been painting the bottom half of health facilities red so when Himba women lean against the building, they don’t leave their mark. The Himba people live in extreme conditions, places with very little water. Many continue to live a life where they have little use for money. While awkward to walk into someone’s home and ask them to stand around for you to look at them and snap pictures, the entire experience was eye- opening and we eagerly bought some crafts the villagers made at the end of the tour.

Still I think the most memorable moment of the trip was getting to bring my parents to my homestead and having them meet my home-stay family. I think it lay to rest a major fear by my mother that I am solo, out and alone in Namibia with no one watching over me. This is not the case and the location of my hut (surrounded by my other sibling’s huts) is proof of how insulated I really am. Upon entering my family homestead, mom had little trouble rapid firing questions and Dad pulled out the mega lens camera to start snapping away to capture the moment. My home-stay sisters loved the experience and despite my home-stay mothers inability to speak a word of English, she seemed pleased and nodded her head many times. We got to take some of my home-stay sisters and their children out for a boat ride and safari, which they enjoyed. Interesting enough, many of my sisters work for local lodges but they don’t get to experience what their guests do.

Lastly, my parents met the members of Tunyandere Support Group and saw the clinic garden.  They also met the rest of the community that wondered in to see them and give them a Hambukushu greeting. The support group was pleased to see my parents and even more pleased to receive their baby blue polo t-shirts with their names printed on the back. They read Mbadi twa yapa kurughana. Twashana ghunjewa-njewa” meaning, we are not afraid to work, we want good health. They had been doing a lot of work while I was on tourist mode and the garden is thriving.

The trip was a lot of traveling but I felt lucky to have seen so much of Namibia when I know most Namibians never leave their small village. I also felt lucky to get to share my Namibian life with my parents. Next blog, hut extensions and the HIV Support Groups’ growing green clinic garden report. Thanks!

Frost in Africa

 

The leaves of the ngongo trees have dried and are starting to fall so that I can once again see the stars clearly during my nightly, outdoor basin bath behind my hut. I woke up early this morning to rake the leaves around my house after my sister Chico killed a spitting cobra next to my bike yesterday. The snake tried to make her home under a patch of leaves only steps from my hut door. After the incident, I looked around the homestead only to realize, that the entire compound was raked clean except around my room. I had told my home-stay sisters to leave my corner of the homestead so I could make a compost pile to feed my little writhi gho mukuha-madi (vegetables of the white lady) garden filled with basil, zucchini and radish. Procrastinating week after week, the leaves had piled up. I always thought it was somewhat depressing the way villagers throughout the community insisted on removing every blade of green grass around their homestead, leaving nothing but exposed bright and sandy earth. Now, I think I understand why. I am convinced I heard the cobra spit before my sister beat it to death with a stick. Too close to home, I decided that cleaning the leaves around my hut would detour any snakes or other reptiles from trying to find refuge as my neighbor or even worse, as a roommate, which is not an uncommon peace corps experience in Namibia.

 

While most of you are gearing up for summer, winter is in full swing here. It is cold in the morning and even colder at night. My mud walls and thatched roof provide the best kind of installation throughout the year but even with their ability to hold in heat, I’ve still found myself huddling around the fire until I’m ready to jump underneath the covers. There is one major change from last winter when we spent every night around the fire and I sat listening to my home-stay parents and siblings banter back-and-forth in Thimbukushu. This year, we have World Cup Soccer! We even got cable just to watch the games and now most nights are spent huddled around the television in my sister Toto’s half built brick house.  The room is far to small to accommodate the entire family but we manage to squeeze a lot of people in the room, forcing the kids to sit in the dirt up front or on cinder blocks while the older ones are on wooden benches or sit in plastic chairs. Recently, we put a door on the room. The sure number of bodies packed into the small space is a fare replacement for the heat of a fire. My young home-stay brothers, who I have rarely seen, now show up evening time to watch the games which run late into the night.

 

 

White ladies can’t pound!

It is harvest season and while my home-stay father says the harvest is not as good as years passed, there is still a lot of corn and mahangu to be pounded by my sisters. The praised mahangu grain takes some major work to be able to eat. My sisters have been pounding and sifting for days. They use giant wooden mortal and pestles, called dhimuto, to pound the grain.  They use large weaved baskets to sift through the pounded grain until they get it to the consistency of flour. Trying to help pound, I was immediately stripped of my duty before any pounding rhythm was acquired. I think because they were fearful I’d nock over the dhimuto with my lack of aim and spill all their hard work into the sand. I thought I was an athlete with some coordination but I have no skill in pounding and their paternalistic attitude towards me leaves me sitting on the sidelines watching. I can’t blame them, but I was embarrassed to have my home-stay sister of 4 year-old laughing at me while demonstrating her skills with a miniature dhimuto made just her size.  Like washing cloths by hand or dancing Hambukushu culture, I think it helps to start young and maybe I am a lost cause?  For once, I’m okay with that, and I will willingly embrace my washing machine, leisurely trips to Trader Joes and a microwave when I return to America!

Camp YEAH!

Last month a few volunteers and I headed the second camp for Youth Exploring and Achieving in Health (YEAH!). While last year we tried to tackle malaria, drugs and alcohol along with HIV, this year, the week was solely dedicated to HIV/AIDS. With a region wide teen pregnancy rate of 36% and an HIV prevalence of 25% it is an important topic to cover.

With so many layers driving the epidemic we decided, “go big or go home,” focusing on the ultimate challenge; creating behavior change among youth ages 13-19. Getting 22 of the brightest youth from 11 schools around the region at camp, we knew it would be easy to teach them HIV facts and games to play with their clubs back at school. We wanted to take it further. In the Namibian education system students are accustomed to writing down information and regurgitating it, often not having a clue what it really means or being able to apply it to their lives. Running YEAH Health Clubs at schools, I’ve grown more skeptical of the education systems’ ability to change health behaviors surrounding HIV despite efforts to incorporate HIV/AIDS education across multiple subjects.

Myself and Bonnie, another Peace Corps Volunteer and YEAH project founder, poured countless hours into building a camp schedule filled with sessions, games, activities and guest-speakers to try to create the ‘aha!’ moment. The ‘aha!’ moment was for campers to understand all of the underlying social issues that affect our fight against HIV and for them to see their role in protecting themselves.

The camp combined, self worth, goal setting, leadership skills, character building and communication skills with HIV knowledge and a more critical look at the different social layers impacting the spread HIV/AIDS. It was extremely fulfilling to see the transformation of the campers throughout the week gaining more confidence and pushing themselves. We gave out nightly VIP awards, ate way too much food and demolished the box of art supplies. Many of the campers were crying on the last day because they didn’t want to leave. We pushed them extremely hard and it was rewarding to see that they enjoyed their time at camp so much.

 

I found myself challenged throughout the week and satisfied with the outcome.  The next six months will be dedicated to passing on the torch to other Peace Corps Volunteers in hopes they will be leaders in next years camp so that YEAH camp and the YEAH project continues past my service.

Inspirational

Having completed my first year of Peace Corps I’ve recently found myself feeling a little melancholy.  I love the work I am doing and the experience that I am having but I am constantly asking myself, what next?  Where do I go from here? This uncertainty is maddening. Recently, I received an email from a close friend who has been passionately working on a film about child sex-trafficking in the bay area. It is a blast from the past and reminds me again of the importance of being true to myself and following my heart.

In my life, I have been blessed to surround myself with the most passionate people. It is inspirational to look at someone in awe of them and want to embody the same spirit in ones own life and work.  I have so many men and women in my life that I feel this way about. Sheri Shuster is one of them!

Sheri is a passionate humanitarian who I worked with at Covenant House before leaving for my Peace Corps stint. Covenant House is a homeless shelter in Oakland, California, targeting youth ages 18 to 24 years old. As an Employment Specialist, I had the honor to work one-on-one with youth coming out of some of the worst neighborhoods in the US.  Some youth came straight from incarceration to the shelter, while others had been kicked out of their homes or endured unimaginable struggles in the foster care system and passed around group-homes. All of these young people were very special individuals once you broke through the hard shell they put on to try to protect themselves from further abuse. The most challenging individuals I worked with were the young woman who had been trafficked for sex. The level of trauma that they had been subjected to was heart wrenching and their volatility explosive. Sadly, I was not able to help most of these young girls as they were often lured back to their torturing pimps or even murdered.

More than 100,000 children are sold into sex slavery in the United States everyday.  Sheri and her team have been working in the bay area for the past two years in order to put a face to those numbers and bring attention to the modern day torture and slavery happening in our own communities. Sheri’s film will help us understand what is really driving this human rights violation and highlight those is the fight to bring an end to the exploitation. I’d like to help Sheri get this movie out. I’ve donated and you should too and then share it with your friends!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/child-sex-trafficking-a-story-about-love

 

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” — Howard Thurman

 

 

Exploring more of Namibia

 

I woke up this week confused by my surroundings. A modern apartment building fully equip with furniture and a humming refrigerator next to my head where I was laying in a make-shift couch bed, more comfortable than my iron frame and thin mattress in my hut. I rolled over expecting to brush my face against my mosquito net and feel the sand impeded in my sheets; I’ve never fully gotten accustomed to either. Quickly, I realized that I wouldn’t be looking up at my straw, thatched roof or hear the voices of my young sibling at the water spicket, strategically placed outside of my hut for convenience, but also inconvenient for soundless sleep.  I am in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, and far from the pulse of village life I have grown so accustomed to over the past year. That morning, in the city, I got dressed to join friends at an outdoor restaurant downtown to eat blue-berry pancakes that tasted more heavenly than ever before.  One friend took a picture of our colorful plates to upload on Facebook and I immediately felt I had been teleported back to the US in my sleep.

It wasn’t difficult to sink back into using the abundance of luxuries built for both convenience and indulgence now once again surrounding me while back in a city.  I know that for friends and family it can be hard for them to imagine this kind of life existing in the continent of Africa, but it does. For me, right now, “luxury” comes from a different perspective. A sink to wash your dirty dishes after cooking a meal over a four-burner stove is a luxury.  Throwing your cloths into a washing machine and walking away instead washing your cloths by hand is a treat.  Internet cafes with bottomless filtered coffee next to an Indian restaurant and Spanish tapas bar provide a diversity of choices I can embrace right now. It is a different kind of life I do relish in it at times, yet in the last year I have loved the simplicity of spending a Sunday morning in the village washing clothes while sitting under my favorite tree next to the river bank, listening to hippos in the distance, scouting for hungry cross and being serenaded by what feels like an full Audubon society CD of bird calls.

While I’m enjoying a bacon wrapped piece of Oryx game meat presented on a white table cloth drinking pinotage from South Africa on a patio of a wine bar overlooking the city, I know others in the country are struggling to find a way to put a simple meal of maizmeal porridge out for their families once a day. The gap between the wealthy and the poor in Namibia is one of the highest in the continent of Africa and in the world.  Namibia’s population for the entire country is less than 3 million and in the city it sometimes feels like everyone is in the capital or in one of the many infrastructure deficient sprawling neighborhoods on the cities’ outskirts.  The city is like an indisputable picture of the inequality that exists within Namibia but it is also a glimpse into the growing economy and growing middle class that is being birthed within cities across the continent.  There are multiple malls in Windhoek and a dense population of restaurants and retail shops catering to not only tourist but locals. Just what they need some blue jeans for liberation from historical oppression rooted in colonialism and apartheid?  But in response I like to say, “Development is messy” and just like the colonizing countries efforts to gobble up the continent of Africa and make it look like a jig-saw puzzle of awkward boarders, development here seems to move in the same chaotic progression.

My venture to the capital was planned in order to meet the new group of Peace Corps Health volunteers.  Almost half of the volunteers are being placed in the Kavango region, so the goal of the trip was to present the YEAH program model and encourage them to get involved. For Youth Exploring and Achieving in Health (YEAH) we want all the new volunteers coming to the Kavango to start a YEAH Health Club in their village and utilize the health curriculum and resources we have developed while helping us to continue to build on them. Ideally, these new volunteers will join our small YEAH team to continue what we have started, sharing resources and ideas to be more successful health educators targeting one of the largest demographics in Namibia, youth ages 13 to 25.  It is not enough that we teach young people in Namibia the catchy acronym Abstinence, Be-faithful and Condomize (ABC) to try and tackle the AIDs epidemic.  These words are hallow if no-one incorporates the behavior and practices that these words mean and it appears that this is exactly what is happening with youth in the country and primarily in the Kavango.

 

The trip was a great opportunity to meet the incoming volunteers and get to share with them a project that myself and two other Peace Corps volunteers have been so passionate about. We also met with the headquarters Peace Corps management staff who were hugely supportive of our efforts and approved a grant to help fund next month YEAH Camp.  Lots of time in the capital was spent planning the camp schedule.  The focus this year is on leadership and HIV prevention through behavior change.  A doctor specializing in HIV who is coming to the camp to present as a guest speaker caught a glimpse of our camp schedule and said we were being extremely ambitious.  We are!

 Bagani YEAH Club!

 

 Kanarombwe Girls YEAH Club!

Over the weekend I got to explore Spitzkop.  The word means “pointed dome” in German and the place is considered the “Matterhorn of Namibia” with 700 million year old granite peaks beautifully jutting out of the earth all around the park. I was blown away by the size of the rocks, their unique shapes and different formations of the boulder filled mountains.  I felt like a kid scaling up the faces of the rocks.  I also found myself taking pictures of the same rocks over and over again without hesitation.  We camped between 3 giant boulders.  My friends and I were a little surprised to have to wake up in the night to put the rain tarps over our tents.  Though the rain did not let up in the morning, I felt lucky to see Spitzkop when everything was green, the rock pond was full and purple, white and yellow wildflowers were scattered in fields everywhere we drove in the park.  It has rained everywhere in the country, a giant relief after two years of extreme drought.  It has also been pleasant to drive across the country and see rolling green hills, with lush green bushes and trees, a huge contrast from the same area I saw it last October.

 Spitzkop Arch

 Spitzkop Rock Pond

This next month will be spent working with the garden group at the clinic and gearing up for Camp YEAH.  We will have 24 learners and 10 teachers from 9 different schools attending the camp.  6 of the attending students I will work closely with after the camp to run 3 YEAH Health Clubs in my village and surrounding villages.  Sometimes I think I am crazy, stretching myself a little too thin, but I love working with the youth.  Youth have a special life-force and they challenge me in a unique way.  Not to say my garden group is not a major challenge as well.  We secured a grant and support from the Kavango Regional Council and Red Cross to assist with our garden expansion at the clinic.  The nearby correctional facility brought in workers to donate their time last month and help construct the fence along with digging trenches to put in water taps in the expanded garden area.  There is a major language barrier when it comes to me assisting with the leadership development that needs to take place for the group to successfully manage their own garden project. I am trying to think of creative ways to maneuver around these barriers and continue to be a cheerleader for my powerful group members. I am sure this garden project will keep me heavily occupied until the end of my service next year.  I have been away in the city for over one week and I am more than eager (and a little nervous) to see what has transpired with the garden group during my time away.  Wish us luck!

 

Until next time….

 

Garden Group Members preparing beds for transplanting

 

 In February I worked with another Peace Corps Volunteer to put on a 3 day Workshop for both our garden groups which focused on Project Management and Financial Literacy.  It was extremely successful.  Now it is time to put everything into practice!

 

 Some garden group members with the guys from the correctional facility who came to construct the fence.  They were a huge help!

The adventure continues…

Next month marks one year abroad for me living in Namibia. Wow, how time flies by so quickly. This is my first blog of the New Year so many apologies for those hoping I would be a consistent blogger. My adventure seems to continue and sometimes it can be difficult to stop and write it down. I’ll try to backtrack with some insight on my holiday travels and catch you up on my current work in the village.

 On my way to Lake Malawi

Holiday Travels

I didn’t realize how much effort I had been putting in over the past 10 months to try to integrate into my community and almost forgot about the world outside of my little village. It wasn’t until I put my backpack on my back that I felt the exciting rush of freedom knowing that I was going on a holiday adventure, crossing boarders and exploring new lands. I knew I needed nothing else but what was on my back. My hammock, sleeping bag, my trusted Chaco shoes, a passport and the clothes on my back were the bare essentials I took with me (but in reality my back-pack is always filled a little more than I would like it to be).

I trekked east across the continent for 3 days in order to spent New years as I had hoped, dancing on the shoreline of Lake Malawi staring up a a star filled sky, surrounded by calm, turquoise waters. Lake Malawi is the the 3^rd largest lake in the continent of Africa, the 9^th largest in the world. It is stunningly beautiful. I was blessed to have my good friend Josh come visit me from Oregon. He brought with him many hugs from friends and the feeling of a small piece of home that was extremely rejuvenating. We took a leap of faith booking ourselves on a small private island for New Years.

Mumbo Island Hike

We managed to explore almost ever inch of MumboIsland and had our own private “Family Camp” area and what felt like our own private beach. Kayaking, snorkeling and hiking around the island was our only duty and I found myself easily slipping into the comfort of 3 catered meals a day, a pleasant treat away from the hut life cooking over a camp stove with a headlamp and refrigerator-less. We woke up to biscuits and hot coffee at our fancy tent doorway every morning. We were surrounded by couples and joked that if neither of us ever really got to go on a honeymoon, this experience would suffice. We managed to break every rule in the private island handbook, including having to be rescued on the tandem kayak, being late for most meals and swimming after dark (I think they were happy to see us go but they can’t deny that my nightly fire spinning performances on the beach did liven up the environment). The day we left they rung the morning breakfast bell extra loud. I think they were worried we would miss breakfast and try to stay longer, which we were tempted to do.

 Spinning fire on Mumbo Island beach

I returned to my village with Josh, but not before a stop in Zambia at Victoria Falls. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site and truly one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world, right on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Though we tried, it was difficult to capture the falls beauty on film with water coming in every direction including from the sky. I played photo-assistant for Josh and found myself extremely inspired by his passion for photography and ability to capture the most amazing images. I also benefited by having my own personal photographer in the village to capture pictures of me and my home-stay family along with my day-to-day life. He recently told me that he has now narrowed down the shots to 550 photographs, all winners!

Victoria Falls, Zambia side!

When we returned to the village I was shocked to see so much green. It had rained while I was gone and has continued to rain since I’ve returned. It is “summer” and the rainy season. I haven’t “melted” from the heat like I told my home-stay family I might. Rather, I have been pleasantly surprised by the way the rain is able to break what could be unbearable humidity, cooling the ground and forcing us to wear sweaters at night. Unfortunately, my hut isn’t holding up as well as I’d like in the rain and I am experiencing some flooding at the doorway but only a couple of drops through the thatched roof.

After spending a week in my village eating mangoes with Josh in front of my hut and hiking up and down the river bank chasing birds and hippos, I was slow to rush back to the clinic. It has been difficult to recollect the garden group members where many have transitioned their efforts to their own fields since it appears the 2 year drought in the region may have subsided. I am planning a Garden Group Workshop in the coming weeks that will address nutrition for people living with HIV/AIDS and also provide financial literacy education. I hope to regain some focus by group members and find a new direction for me on how I can best use my passion and knowledge to support the community through eduction on food security.

I’ll likely be running 3 health clubs this year and am excited to be working with young people again in 2014. Five girls from last years Bagani health club group showed up to my house last week to ask me when we could start the club again. I was shocked and truly enthused that they were eager and willing to spend time after school to learn about health.

Making posters for World AIDS Day

Finding my place

I feel lucky that there is a word for people like me in the Thimbukushu language. The word is “ghururu” which people define in English as “clever” or “naughty.” It feels as though it is almost encouraged to be “ghururu.” As a child you may be beaten for it, but you are also seen as the curious and clever one. I am good at making people laugh using the limited Thimbukushu vocabulary I have and continually find comfort in knowing that while major cultural and social differences may exist, there is still space for me to make jokes and find humor in our day-to-day lives.

Rolling out dough to fry up some tortilla ships over the fire with my little home-stay brother Mosie and his friend….man I miss mexican food!  (Thank you to Brooke, Jake, Shane and Suzy for sending me tortilla chips and cans of salsa for x-mas!)

New Years Resolution

Being with my friend Josh who is an extremely talented and knowledgable photographer inspired me to pick up my camera once again. To often I am trying to isolate myself from looking and being stereotyped as a tourist. Taking pictures, that is what tourists do, right? They take lots of pictures, and then they take some more. But there is also something extremely important about capturing the moments of ones life and also it is an artistic outlet I enjoy. I found a lot of courage in watching Josh take photographs and hope to being snapping more shots in 2014 to post on this blog.
Stocking the photographer near the River

 Hanging out with two Bagani Health

Club members

Happy New Year!

The Pig in Bagani

Last night my 11 year old home-stay brother knocked on my hut door. I am becoming accustomed to having absolutely no personal privacy, an American value I used to hold very dear to my heart. With so many family members around, everyone is very curious to know what the “Makuha sister” is doing at all times of day. When my little home-stay brother Glen came to my door I expected the usually request, a moko, knife, or a torch, flash light. At the time I was cooking on my propane stove while being entertained by Mochedi, my two year old home-stay sister. Mochedi is one sister who never knocks and usually shows up around dinner time to see what I’m cooking. She continues to surprise me with her appreciation for salads and curried vegetables with rice. Glen asked for my knife. He has a fascination with my Leatherman tool and seems determined to find a purpose for every attachment. His favorite tool is the saw which he likes to use to cut the bones of ngombe (cow) for cooking. After I gave Glen the Leatherman, he asked me for a 2^nd knife. I was curious why he needed two knives for but couldn’t understand his response in Thimbukushu. It was only when I left my hut that I found the raging fire and saw the giant animal laying on a corrugated piece of metal next to the reed fence. On the fire stand sat our largest pot we have on the homestead. The large dead animal turned out to be a pig (ngundu) but I had never seen a pig in Bagani. We have goats, cows, chickens, dogs, hippos, a couple donkeys and crocodiles. I’ve never, ever seen a pig in Bagani. I asked where did it come from and what were they doing with the pot and the pig? They said that a crocodile approached them when they were fishing. After throwing rocks at the crocodile, it disappeared in the water while overturning the dead pig. Crocodiles are known to drown their prey rather than using their powerful teeth and jaws to kill. I’ve been told that after killing a large animal the crocodile likes to store it dead prey in an underwater cave and return days later for its feast. My brothers had intercepted the crocodiles plans and removed the pig from the water. One of my brothers expressed guilt for cooking the pig and said it would be impossible to find the owner since they did not know how far the crocodile may have carried the pig down the river. Glen seemed most occupied with the excitement of trying to remove all the hairs off the pig with my the Leatherman tool. My younger brothers had decided that the only way to remove the hair would be to boil it off the pig. The way they tried to fit the giant pig in the comparably small pot made for an entertaining evening. So now that we have pig, I’ve been asking “Ngepi una kuamba bacon?” meaning how do you say bacon.

Summer Time

I expected to be melting from the heat by now but summer has not been as extreme as I imagined. People are still preoccupied by the uncertainty of rain. In Bagani, most all villagers are subsistence farmers who rely on rain to grow their mahangu grain and maize which they store to eat all year round. For the past two seasons, the government has had to step in to provide drought relief food because of hunger from failed crops due to lack of rainfall in the region. The topic everyone seems to be talking about is “mvura” rain. Two weeks of overcast skies and staring at rain clouds that don’t seem to let out rain drops, hasme questioning what kind of growing season my family here will have this coming year. One of my home-stay sisters and my home-stay mother and father have been going out to the field by 5am to hand plow and get ready for planting. It seems the sky is at odds; that there is a desire for rain but it just won’t come down. Almost daily I can see lightening off in the distance and while other areas are receiving some rainfall, villagers in Bagani are growing anxious.

Our clinic garden group wouldn’t mind the rain fall as well. Villagers have been coming to the garden to ask to buy mutete, a traditional leafy green. We have already eaten and sold one crop and the group just planted a new crow of mutete. The tomato plants are green and lush with only a couple of green tomatoes on them thus far. I’m still trying to convince all the woman to pick the beet root leaves to cook and eat like mutete; some are more convinced than others. I’m learning from the garden group members as well and used pumpkin squash leaves in a pesto pasta I made over the fire last night (I’ve never cooked pumpkin leaves before).

If you want to help…

Many of you have asked “how can I help?” I am so thankful for everyones support. I love receiving your blog responses, short facebook messages, emails and cards. It is a nice reminder of all the love I have backing me especially during challenging days in the village when all I really want is some chips and salsa but I’m eating maizmeal porridge and chewing on a part of a cow intestine trying to temper my wandering imagination that is thinking about what part of the cow I’m really eating. My ultimate goal as a volunteer in my community has been to support villagers to help themselves rather than to give them things or to do things for them. This can be extremely challenging for me as a volunteer who “just wants to help” as well. I continue to remind myself how important it is to focus on the analogy that it is better to teach someone how to fish to eat for a lifetime, rather than to give them a fish to eat for a day.

Recently, I met with one of the teachers at the school who was grading the end of the year exams. The students are required to pass standardized tests in order to move onto the next grade level. I asked the teacher how the students were doing and he showed me a couple of the exam he had finished marking. Some students were passing but many were failing the exams. The teachers response was that the students new the materials but they were unable to understand the questions which were written in English. While Thimbukushu is taught at the school as a subject, because it is only one of many different languages in the country, English has been set as the national language and is used for all standardized testing after grade 4. This does not mean that all the learners understand how to read and write English and even the teachers who write the exams could benefit from some English grammar review.  I asked the teacher how I could help. We discussed how critical it is for these young people to be reading. Unfortunately, in most cases, the only types of books the students have access to in the village are outdated text books.

I thought that this would be a great way for those of you who want to help, to get involved. Instead of one of you doing a book drive and being stuck with trying to ship 500 lbs of books to Namibia, I thought each of you could put one book in an envelope and send it off to me in the mail. Please go look on your bookshelves or at the second hand section of your local book store for a story that you think a young person would enjoy reading. It can be Harry Potter, your daughters old babysitting series, animals that talk or anything at a grade 6 reading level or below. I’d like to target more of the teen population but children’s books are great as well. I spoke with the principal of Bagani school and he is open to any book donations. If you come across any dictionaries or children’s dictionariesplease send them too. One of my Health Club leaders asked me to buy him a dictionary when I went to the capital last month.  I was shocked by the request and believe that many of the young people in Bagani rather have a pencil or a dictionary than a trendy piece of apparel. I told him I would try to incorporate giving away dictionaries as part of the Health Club prizes. Another Peace Corps Volunteer who opened up a library said that the students will sit for hours just looking through the dictionaries she has. If you have some extra space in the envelop throw in a couple pencils or stickers.

Address:

c/o Peace Corps

Jaime Symons

P.O. Box 114

Rundu, Namibia

(there in NO Country Code)

 

Until next time!

Hippos, water buffalo, warthogs and elephants

Walking out of my homestead this morning I caught sight of the Kavango River bringing a giant smile to my face and making me reflect on how beautiful the place I live really is. I heard a hippo on my walk to the clinic but I couldn’t see it through the trees. I’m getting very good at differentiating between the sound of a cow versus a hippo. I’m also getting good at spotting hippos which typically look like giant rocks in the river that weren’t there the day before. Two times a hippo has come to eat my home-stay mother’s corn crop in her garden, so I have set out to build a hippo trap with my younger sisters which is made  out of coca-cola cans and tin cans on a string. The hope is that the hippo will walk into the string which will make the cans bang together and the noise will scare the hippo back into the water (supposedly hippos get scared easily). The project is also a great way for me to use the tin cans I have been stacking behind my hut for the past 4 months not knowing what to do with them.  Living without a fridge and using a camp stove has forced me to incorporate canned foods into most meals (I hope my little personal garden next to my hut will help give me some more leafy greens and fresh produce in my diet) There is no organized trash or recycling system in the village so people discard their trash anywhere and everywhere, try to burn some of it or throw it in holes near the river (yikes! It drives me crazy!).

 

Along with the hippos are so many other amazing animals nearby and in many ways I am living in Safari Land. I’ve gotten to visit the nearby animal parks within a few miles of my village and they are filled with elephants, zebras, kudu and warthogs. Fortunately, they try to keep the large animals in the parks but every once in a while an elephants escapes. People also travel from all around the world to see the birds in the area and I recently started bird watching after finding a book in the Peace Corps regional office. I just acquired a CD of 100 bird calls from my bird enthusiast and mentor who is a Botswanian tour guide (people really love their birds!). More than anything, I enjoy the mbukushu myths and stories about the different types of birds flying around the village. There is one bright, turquoise bird my sister said when she is chirping a lot and you are breast feeding you must pinch your nipple to squirt out some milk; or else your child will cry and be fussy throughout its childhood. The only problem with the birds is that they have all but obliterated our cabbage in the clinic garden. I now refer to our cabbage plants as “yidya ne yinyuni” – bird food and there is almost nothing left of the sad plants.

 

The rest of the garden is looking great and I am extremely impressed by the members of the Tunyandere Support Group who are so dedicated to watering and maintaining the garden. Actions speak louder than words, so despite the language barrier, working side-by-side with the group members has really helped demonstrate my level of commitment to the project, but there are so many times I wish I could communicate more with them. We have recruited two agriculture classes from the local school who are coming twice a week to help in the garden. They have been a great help and we’ve been building compost piles, planting fruit trees, weeding and picking up up garbage. The youth are great to have and many of them are a part of the health club.

 

My Health Clubs are off to a great start in both Bagani and now in a small village nearby called Karangombwe were I have my Girls Health Club. We have decided the month to malaria since it is now malaria season, summer (meaning extreme heat and lots of rain). Malaria kills 3 million people a year (mostly children) and 90% of malaria cases are in the continent of Africa. Most of Namibia is a dessert and does not have malaria but the Kavango region of Namibia I’m living in does. Namibia is one country trying to fully eliminate malaria which is possible if everyone takes preventative measures to reduce malaria transmission. We are awaiting a supply of bed nets from an organization called Global Fund which is expected to provide enough nets to cover every region affected by malaria in Namibia but citizens have to make sure they use these nets. Our YEAH Health Club members are now experts on malaria and tomorrow we will take a field trip from the school to the clinic to learn more about testing and treatment for malaria. We will also start to talk about ways that our class can teach the rest of the community about how to protect themselves from malaria. The club members said they felt they know more about malaria now than anyone else in their families and I told them that we want to use this knowledge to teach others. Also the winner of the health club logo competition got one of the soccer balls send from home (we will see how long this one will last).

 

Best wishes!!

 

Jaime