Summer in the city

Hi everyone -
The WorldTeach group I'm volunteering with is here in the capital of Namibia, Windhoek, for a week of orientation before we head out to our various sites. We're staying in a hostel called Backpacker Unite (which is an interesting concept; we all wonder how one backpacker can unite!) about a ten minute walk from the center of Windhoek (pronounced either WInd-hook or Vind - hook.

We've been doing lots of different trainings in preparation for our 2 month placements: cultural, educational and historical information about Namibia, travel and safety issues (including the possibility of marriage proposals by taxi drivers who think we can take them back to the US with us) teaching practice, and handwashing our clothes and taking showers with water heated on a stove (because only a few of us will have running hot water.)

There are 26 in our group, 20 of us who are here for the summer only, and 6 who will stay for a semester. There are 4 men among this amalgamation of estrogen, and another teacher who is chronologically gifted like me. They were very kind to us and gave "Mike" (her real name is Michelle and she is a retired librarian from CA) and me a room by ourselves with our own bathroom. We are concentrating on enjoying this now while we can! Most in the group are college student, but there is one volunteer who is half Danish and half Iranian who just graduated from high school, and another one who is from Colombia. Most are not teachers, but almost all have had some experience living, or at least traveling, abroad.

We've had language lessons in either Oshiwambo (for those who are in the north) or Afrikaans, for those (like me) who will be posted to the other areas of Namibia. Afrikaans is spoken as a lingua franca by many people here due to Namibia's history as an unwilling part of South Africa from WWI until declaring independence in 1990. Afrikaans is basically a dialect of Dutch and involves a lot of gutteral g's and rolled r's, with a fair amount of similarity to German, and some cognates in English.

It's a dry, desert-like climate here, although there are also some beautiful flowering plants (bouganvillea, HUGE poinsettias) and some unusual trees with either huge thorns or large pods with seeds that rattle inside. I'm constantly putting on moisturizer or chapstick because the humidity is incredibly low - the other day it was 16%! Before the sun comes up in the morning and after it goes down in the late afternoon it is quite chilly and most of us have regretted not bringing that heavy fleece sweatshirt or jacket. The days are lovely and warm in the soon, pleasantly cool in the shade, and often with a breeze.

I've read that Omaruru (which means "bitter" in Oshiwambo, for the bitter milk cattle gave after eating a particular plant that grows in that area) is a "dry, dusty, outback" town, but they did have wonderful amounts of rain this year in the summer (November through March) so I'm hoping it won't be too sandy. Although the school I'll be in is large and we'll be in a town of 5,000, we were still warned that a goat or chicken is quite likely to wander through our classrooms. I say "we" because I have a volunteer colleague, Katherine, who will be in the same school, S.I. Gobs Secondary School, with me. We'll both live in a hostel (dormitory) on the grounds of the school. Most of the hostel residents are students (or learners, as they are called here) but we will each be living with a Namibian teacher in a small "flat" in the hostel.

Well, I'm off to bed for the night, bundled up in a sleeping bag borrowed from Tony and Lisa.
Goeie naand (good night)!!
Debbie