Monday, March 21, 2011

Being normal is overrated

Namibian Independence Day was celebrated with a three day weekend since my last post. Myself and the other volunteers in southern Namibia (we call ourselves “southies”) got together in Mariental for good food and a few good laughs. There were about twelve of us in total but not everyone showed up. After meeting all of these people from different places in The States; I’ve come to a conclusion about Peace Corps. Every volunteer is a varying degree of insane, or at least the volunteers who make it as long as we have, the sane ones leave before being here too long. We are an unusual mosh-posh of thrill seekers, idealists, and weirdos. I have a joke here that I keep saying “In August I came to Africa with 44 of my best and only friends.” Sadly that number has dwindled because two people in our group left and there are people from my group that I won’t see until we get on a plane to go back to the states. Now I’m in Africa with about 15 of my best and only friends. Now don’t get me wrong. I am very happy here. I fit in with all the craziness. But sometimes in life you just have to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of the situation you’re in. Here I am in Rehoboth Namibia, trying to educate nearly unmanageable children whose parents are likely abusive alcoholics, I spend at least 20 minutes a day breaking up fights, I have been cursed at in multiple languages for nothing more than being white, I sleep on a bed that is likely giving me back problems, and every now and then I start randomly vomiting from food I am given that either wasn’t cooked or stored (or both) properly. Yet, I am here and perfectly happy with my life. Yeah I’m pretty sure I’m insane…

Saturday, March 12, 2011

it's been a while

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a blog post but teaching full time is exceptionally time consuming. Last week my school had control tests. A control test is when the administration forces all math, science, and English teachers to give a test at specific times. It was annoying because I had already given tests the previous week and had to write (make) new tests and grade five classes of tests this week. It was a pain but I got everything done.
This week I was in Okahandja at a Peace Corps seminar on gardening. I have never had a garden before but I managed to grow an onion by throwing rotten onion out of my kitchen window. I have a small area next to my flat that has space for my garden. It won’t be very big but I will be able to grow a few things for myself and maybe a few others. The first part of the seminar was about microgardening with hydroponics. This method is not very feasible for most of the group because it requires a lot of trips to Windhoek to get the supplies and all. The second part of the seminar had a former Peace Corps Volunteer (from Haiti in the 80’s) who explained permagardening, which is a form of permaculture. He showed us how to make these small gardens that are extremely high yield by double digging the soil and using basic rain capturing techniques. It’s pretty cool and my counterpart Dawn became more interested in doing this at the TRC where I live and at various schools and aid relief programs. I’m pretty excited about these gardens too. It’s going to be a lot of work but it would be nice to get the garden going and have a few trial runs before I attempt this at my house. Not my parents house but the someday imaginary house that I have in mind which includes a brewery in the basement and now a garden in the backyard.