9/1 – 9/5
On September 1st, we moved in with our host families. I live in two-bedroom house in a neighborhood of Okahandja called “Smarties” with my mom host mom and one of her two daughters (the youngest is staying with grandmother). When I asked why it was called that, I laughed when my host mom told me it was because the colorful houses look like the candy of the same name. The houses are indeed all different pastel colors, about the same boxed-size as ours, and the neighborhood is latticed with unpaved, dirt roads. All the houses have fences with barbed wire and most have dogs of some sort. One thing we have learned is that America is very unique in its “dog culture”; dogs here are not pets but parts of one’s alarm system.
The food my host mom has cooked so far has been pretty standard Namibian fare: meat with a starch of some sort. The food is pretty salty and oily as well but very tasty. The staple starch is called porridge (also called “pap”) and is a boiled mash of maize that is very similar to grits. I’ve only had it with a kind of lamb gravy on top but my host cousin told me several other different variations to expect. The host families make several accommodations for us trainees. Namibians don’t usually eat vegetables with their meals but they are asked by PC staff to throw some greens and oranges on our plates for nutrition. Also, Namibians don’t usually eat breakfast so my host mom is always asking me what I want to eat in the mornings. Coffee makers are non-existent. Some other trainees tell me that their families have French presses but no such luck at my house. I don’t mind the instant coffee too much as I still need it in the morning.
The way that I hang out with my family aside from meals is watching “soapies” – primetime soap operas. The current saga on NBC (not our NBC, y’all can figure out what it stands for) is “India – A Love Story”: a Mexican soap opera set in India and Brazil dubbed in American English. It is terrible. Conversation in the house during this time is limited to talking about how ridiculous the plot is. Unfortunately my host family is not really in to sports but I can occasionally watch a sports channel to catch some rugby. The Rugby World Cup is coming up in a few days and Namibia indeed has a team. They have never won a game in WC play and apparently only whites and coloureds care (please note: “coloureds” is a socially acceptable term dating back to the classifications from apartheid). Hopefully I will get to watch as the All Blacks cruise to victory in New Zealand.
On Saturday we piled into a bus to the capital city of Windhoek on a little field trip. We went to the mall to get cell phones. I got the worst/cheapest phone I’ve had since my first phone in Marist days. It looks like something you’d expect to see Poot buying at a gas station in The Wire. Some trainees got internet phones but you won’t be seeing me update my facebook status every 10 minutes (ed. note: until I got to site where I have internet at my school!). I’m having a little trouble activating it but hopefully I’ll figure it out soon. The mall was incredibly nice with a ridiculous amount of white people. After a couple hours at the mall we went and saw some real Namibia.
Our first stop after the mall was the historical monument in Namibia – Heroes Acre. It honors the heroes and heroines of the Namibian struggle for independence against the Germans and South Africa. The layout is a wide path of stairs, with heroes’ graves to the left and right, leading to a statue of a soldier that represents a tomb of unknown soldiers. At the top, we were treated to an incredible view of Windhoek and the surrounding mountains. After Heroes Acre, we went to the Old Location graveyard, which honors a 1959 massacre that killed about 100 people who refused to evacuate their homes so that a white neighborhood could be built there.
We then went through a couple open markets where they sell traditional foods and cook meat you can buy off the grill. In one of these markets, the main business is bars known as “shabeens”. They are basically tin shacks that serve alcohol at all hours of the day. We’re told these are found all over Namibia and are a pretty big problem. In these markets, we also saw “kapana”, where men grill all kinds of fresh meat to be bought and ate on the spot. Some trainees were a little put off by the flies swarming around the raw meat but I of course ate a piece. The last leg of our journey through Windhoek was down Evelyn Street, which runs through the slums of Windhoek and is peppered with bars and shabeens.
On Sunday, my host family went to Windhoek for back to school shopping for the girls and left me behind with another family that is also hosting a fellow trainee, Giovanni. They took us to a pair of soccer games where two local teams faced off against a top Namibian team called Black Africa FC. Apparently Black Africa won the Namibian Premier League last year so I guess we saw the best Namibian team? It was great to watch some live soccer and I hope I can see more games in the future.
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