A quick note on neighbors

This post will unfortunately lack the punch of humor I had hoped for due to the fact that it is difficult/impossible to upload photos right now due to the internet connection here. Ah well.

Readers of my last post will recall that I mentioned the slight possibility that wild animals might choose to use my creepy-hallway-of-death as a temporary refuge from rain. Quite soon after writing those very words, it all came to fruition. (this is where a picture would be perfect).

I was hanging out in my room last weekend when it was just raining buckets. I heard scuffling in the hall, and opened my door to investigate. Seeing nothing immediately, I ventured down to the end of the hall. Out of the two rooms closest to the end pop three goats. No joke. They were all peering out the main door to the outside, as if trying to ascertain from the cloud cover whether the rain would continue for long. I shooed them away in my most hesitant voice.

There is one actual new neighbor in my hall, which is nice, and makes the hallway slightly less terrifying. I am getting to know other people in the community better, and it is now rare for me to walk anywhere without saying hello to someone I know, which is nice. Most often I hear the cry of "Sir!" or "Mitiri," which means teacher. Ah, actual terms of respect from learners, craziness...

On a side note, it occurs to me that we have been in Africa for almost eight weeks now. The time alternates between dragging and rushing by. I know by the end I will know my neighbors even more, and perhaps grow close to some of them. Unfortunately for me, I don't think they will let me bring goats home with me.

On local happenings

Right now it is raining. Pouring really, and it has been for a while. We are currently in the rainy season, which lasts until about May. This means intense rain, though it has not been very regular in our neck of the woods here. Other places to the east are getting three centimeters a day or something. Now, our field director, Jocie, warned us that when it rains goats will look for any kind of shelter. Wait, let me back up a bit. We live in Opuwo, which is above the Red Line. This line stretches across the country, with checkpoints at every road. Above said line there is uncontrolled animal migration. This translates into donkeys, goats, and pigs that tend to hang out wherever they want, including outside my window. Long story short, I am a bit worried that I will come home someday to find a group of goats sitting outside the door to my room. They can access this door because the long, creepy hallway that leads there is open to the public since the door at the other end broke off its hinges when I opened it once. This is basically a metaphor for how things go here.
On to the positive things. Carmen and I get to hang out a lot, and even venture into the exciting world of cooking. My current mission is to buy a bread pan. We’ve met some interesting people, including random people at shabeens (one-room side of the road bar things) that just want to ask about America and such. While teaching is stressful for me, there have been some good lessons highlighting the last couple weeks. And I don’t have any life-threatening diseases that I know of yet. Yay.
More news to come as it happens, and maybe some photos too. The sunsets are unbelievable here, I will try to capture them. Bye bye for now.

On the local flora and faunae

Ok, some pictures...

The airport in Windhoek:

The zebra skin on the wall of the hostel:




Traditional Herero dinner (including goat's stomach and head, called smiley):




To skip ahead a bit during orientation, here is what everyone came to see. Huge animals in Etosha National Park:



Those zebras will someday grace their own hostel wall.



So, I have a ton more photos, but these are taking about 4 minutes to load apiece. I only paid for thirty minutes of internet. Yeah, so, to be continued.
One last photo, my first sunset in Opuwo:

Life in Opuwo

First of all, yes, I know, no pictures yet. Sigh. I have them all ready here, on my nice flash drive, and this old computer at a random hostel will not recognize it (I'm just surprised there are USB ports). So, as soon as I find a computer that does work, they will come.

Anyway. I am in Opuwo, and have been here since Saturday night. It was an interesting 12 hour adventure getting here from Windhoek, though it should have been more like 8 hours. Yeah, drivers tend to take the time for random errands here. I got to my place, which is at the end of a long, empty hallway. It is an old hostel, and mine is the only serviceable room. I started out without running water, no stove, no bed, no fridge. I now have a stove, a nice bed, a fridge, a dresser, and occasional running water (that is the most annoying thing, let me tell you). But other things are good. The teachers and learners have been so nice to me, and try to help as best they can. And Opuwo itself is surrounded by beautiful scenery, with mountains and a plateau visible.

Teaching itself has been hard. We have no textbooks for the learners, and really my room consists of a chalkboard and sometimes chalk. Challenging. Carmen has helped a lot in keeping me de-stressed, as well as seeing Ayoola (another volunteer) last weekend. It's been a tough week, but it's getting better, and I did come here to challenge myself.

There's lots more to say, but I'll try to save some of it until I can post some pictures. Needless to say, I wouild love emails saying hello. Bye bye.

On Perpetual Dehydration

Namibia is a dry place. And hot. But not the uncomfortable, please-shoot-me-now kind of hot from say the south east of the US. It's more in the style of "wow, I can feel my skin cells dying a hot death right now." I am used to drinking a lot of water a day, being a runner, but that does not matter here. "You drank 5 liters of water in the last ten hours?" the sun says with a laugh, "well I am just going to make it seem like that never happened." I expect the land here feels the same way. I have some lovely pictures which are now comfortably residing on my camera. Again, I will post the gorgeous scrubland that extends forever and ever as soon as I can. In the meantime, wait with bated breath for my recounting of our trip through Etosha National Park, where much wildlife was observed and recorded. In the meantime, our training here continues for another few days, and we leave Saturday to go to our teaching placements. I am learning the language used there, Otijiherero, the most charming aspects of which are the 9 different formal greetings to use throughout the day. Yeah, greeting is important here. And staying hydrated.

Untitled Post the First

Last night I ate goat's stomach and tongue. Pretty good actually.

On International Travel

So, I like airports. They always seem a little disconnected from time and location. Example: I've been to the Phoenix airport, but never really been to Arizona. I don't care what time it is at Dulles because in a few excruciating hours I will be in Johannesburg, 7 time zones away. I am now in Windhoek, and all the traveling went well. There was a small baggage fiasco at Dulles, and I was required to check my carry-on. Everything turned out all right, though there is a little dent in my checking account because of it. New Years in Johannesburg was fun, especially swimming in the hotel pool on Dec. 31st.
Namibia, or what little I have seen so far, is lovely. It is sunny and in the 80's during the day, and nice and cool at night. Outside of the Windhoek city limits it seems like there is nothing but flat scrub land then mountains; no ugly suburbs to clutter things up. No pictures yet, though I will post some as soon as that becomes possible (I have to install some software on Carmen's computer). The other volunteers are all great, and we seem to be getting along just fine so far.
When I went to Austria last year I was somehow unaffected by jetlag. Slightly different this time. I fell asleep at 10:30 last night, then woke up at 2:30am. I couldn't fall back asleep, but neither could some other volunteers, so we just hung out watching weird animal documentaries. The US to Namibia dollar exchange rate is basically 10:1. This is good news. And items only cost maybe 3 times as much in dollars. Very good news.