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Published: January 10th 2007
Hey everyone!
Well, I tried to send pictures today and I was so excited for all of you to see what I have been doing over the past 2 weeks but unfortunately the internet cafe with a USB port would not open this site so I couldn't do it...so I was unsuccessful...so i just spent a lot of time running back and forth between 2 internet cafe's because I thought it was just the connection...phew!
Anyway, I'll just get started...the past week and a half has been really good! We were in Windhoek, the capital, for training until last Tuesday. My luggage came in last Sunday, and I was pleasantly surprised that nothing had been stolen considering Johannesburg is the World's Capital for luggage theft! It was funny, only the locks on the bags were taken off but that was it. Hey, I didn't care if they looked through my stuff as long as nothing was missing! We had a great New Years too. A few of us went to this club and danced and drank champagne. Very fun 😉
Then, last Tuesday we went to a small town about 2 hours south called Rehoboth to stay with a host family for 4 days and do practice teaching. It was great...very hot....but very interesting and very different from what I expected...I loved the little boy we stayed with. He was so creative...it's amazing what children will play with when they don't have any toys or games and how much autonomy they have here. He was constantly running errands for his mom and walking all around town and he was only 6 years old! Our host mom loved to watch soap operas everyday! We watched Bold and The Beautiful, This mexican soap opera, and an Afrikaaner soap opera...I have never been so happy to not watch a soap opera!
During the day, we got paired up with a fellow volunteer and had to teach whatever we chose. My partner and I will both be teaching Math at out sites so we decided to give that a whirl...it was fun! First of all, these kids were on their summer break and chose to come to school because there were "white people" teaching and they got a candy at the end of the day! It was amazing to see what level of academic differences the children were...we had kids that were all in about third grade yet some could read, write and knew all their numbers, adding and subtracting, and others couldn't even tell us what the number 1 was or write their names, or had a clue to what we were saying. Most of them spoke a language called Kwe Kwe that used cliquing...It was really neat to hear them all speak it and hilarious to hear all of the volunteers attempt to clique. Now, considering that English is the national language, this is a problem because all of their school subjects after first grade will be taught in English. Anyway, it was definitely a fun and eye-opening experience.
It was also interesting to see their level of awareness of HIV/AIDS. It was all over the school we taught at, and many commercials on TV, and on Billboards. It's funny, our field director says that they all know about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it but they are pretty hopeless about their future so they don't bother protecting themselves. Very frustrating considering 1/4 of the population has AIDS here.
Then we went even more south to this place called Hardup Dam for 3 days...It was absolutely beautiful! It was a national park that was overlooking a dam and it was so refreshing to jump in! We did a lot more training there where we learned a lot about the culture, history, and language of Namibia.
They divided us up by what region we will be teaching in. It's kind of funny that the town where I will be teaching in, Usakos, is considered to be in the south although if you look at a map, my town is still in the northern part of the country. They speak a lot of Afrikaans so I have been trying to learn that. There is definitley a lot of German influence all throughout Namibia considering it was colonized by the Germans (if only I took German in High School!)
So now we are back to Windhoek, and it is nice to be back in familiar territory.
I got a cell phone for anyone interested in calling me (please call!). It's pretty cheap for people from the US to call and pretty expensive for me to call the US so you can go on the internet and find cheap calling cards if you type in "cheap calling card for Africa or Namibia"
My number is 011-264-81-332-5772.
ok, this has gotten quite lengthy but I just had so much to share...I hope I didn't bore you all!! Hope you are all well! Miss everyone lots! Please keep the e-mails coming!
Love,
Jessi
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Judy Fern
non-member comment
WOW!
I read yours with fascination. Some difference between Windhoek and Newtown, eh? I was struck by your paragraph about the populace disregarding HIV-AIDS prevention. How sad. But your adventure continues and it sounds wonderful. "The Bold and the Beautiful?" In Afrikaans, Dutch or Namibian? I might surprise you with a call from me at some point. I've never called that part of the world. Will you phone when I'm in Vietnam in March? Keep on keeping on and have fun. Love, Judy