Volunteer Site

I found out today that my volunteer sight will be in the city of Keetmanshoop. Keetmanshoop is located in the Southern part of Namibia and I believe it is the second largest city after the capital of Windhoek. I will be working with Karas Huisen Craft Trust which is an organization that helps vulnerable adults, which includes those living with chronic diseases such as HIV/AIDS and TB, etc.  That is all I know for now and we are to know more by next Wednesday and we will also leave for our sights next Friday and spend a week there getting to know the sight and staff.

I’m excited about this placement and look forward to next week and meeting the folks I’ll be working with for the next two years!

Green Spot

The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

I finally have the chance to write! This week has been like mid-terms in college. Homework on Monday, mid evaluation due yesterday and today was the dreaded mid  LPI (language proficiency Interview) which is a spoken evaluation to see how well we are all doing with learning our languages. The rest of the week is more training so no homework tonight! Time to catch up the blog!

Last Friday we went to a farm here in Okahandja that is utilizing perma gardening. The idea is to use less space and produce more abundant produce. A gentleman by the name of Peter Jensen was in town for the week from Tanzania to do a workshop with current PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) on how to bring this idea to their community as food security is a big problem here (meaning people out in rural areas simply don’t have enough to eat…and if you are trying to take medication for HIV/AIDS, that can be a big problem).

The farm was beautiful and he was full of great ideas. We were all sad in that we only had about an hour and a half to spend with him. We all agreed that at reconnect (a month long training in 3 months), we would like to learn more about this. I’m hoping it will even be useful when I come home! It would be great to have a lovely little garden.

Enjoy the pictures and I hope you are all well! Lekker Dag!

The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

I finally figured out how to set up a blog! J Our training group went to Windhoek (the Capital of Namibia) last weekend and we got cell phones and 3G sticks. We have free internet from 1am-5am. The time is challenging but it’s worth it to get up as the 3G charges by the gigabyte or megabyte  and not minutes so it can get used up quickly. I’ll do my best to update this at least a few times a month.

So far I love Namibia and the Peace Corps! The trainers and staff are wonderful and this is a meat eating country so we are being fed quite well! We start our weekday mornings at the training center (we moved into our home stays with local families last Thursday) with songs in all the different languages. The language trainers have great singing voices and really get into the songs which gets us all smiling and going for the day.

I am learning the language of Afrikaans and although I don’t think it is as hard as the tribal languages from up north, it still has its challenges. I have a great language trainer and a great group! We have made up 3 different songs using Afrikaans to help us learn and remember. It also helps us laugh and reduce the stress of the two hour class first thing in the morning. The rest of the day is spent learning health related topics or culture or our role as a volunteer in this great country. We are very busy during the week and this weekend is our first weekend with no field trip or other planned activity. It will be nice to spend time with the host family (who consists of Jan (John), Espiranza and their 3 year old daughter, Janice). They are lovely people and very hospitable. This is their first time hosting a PC volunteer so it’s a learning experience for all of us. I also plan to go into town for a while on Saturday and meet up with some other volunteers to walk around and get lunch. We are all still taking turns having good and bad days. There is so much to learn and we are all still adjusting to our new lives.

Okay…just wanted to give a bit of information for now. I’ll share more exciting stuff about where I’m at and what not next time.  Thanks for reading! Lekker bly!