The Dangers of Transport

I realize that it has been about a month since my last posting, which I apologize for. Settling in to life here in Gobabis has been more taxing that I'd like to admit. So anyway, I will just publish some random stuff for the time being until things with work pick up and I can inform you all of what exactly I have been up to...

Namibia has a sky-high accident rate because many drivers drive while intoxicated, the tourists don’t know how to handle Namibia’s precarious roads, drivers race down the roads at speeds up to 240km/hr and wild animals frequently lurk on the roads. Just the other day, a group of PCVs from my region arrived at my house late at night speaking swiftly about their encounter with a warthog. Apparently the warthog ‘exploded’ when they hit it; the car was smothered in blood and guts (not to mention a few large dents). Honestly, they are tremendously lucky that the damage was not more severe and that the car did not flip! After the ordeal with the warthog, they ran out of gas and had to push the car about a kilometer into town. The driver (who is from Congo and dating one of the PCVs here) was really upset that they were unable to find the warthog’s meat and left in the night in search of it again. We were rather expecting him to show up at 4am with the meat to begin a braii (barbeque); needless to say, it was an interesting evening.

Transport in Namibia is a challenge, especially for PCVs since we are not allowed to drive. In order to get anywhere, we usually have three options: hitch-hike, take an illegal taxi, or go in a crowded combi. The crowded combis are, perhaps, the most popular option for travel for the locals since they are the cheapest method. However, in my opinion, they are also the most dangerous. As for the illegal taxis, they typically fill-up quicker than combis (meaning that one does not have to wait as long to leave) but the drivers go much faster and there’s always the off-chance that the police will haul you into the station for questioning. Hitch-hiking incidentally is probably the safest method for PCVs (and sometimes the cheapest because most people that pick you up won’t ask you to pay for the lift). I have yet to stand by the road waiting for a ride to some distant location but I look forward to that moment with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Though I must admit that due to the high accident rate (and to the horror stories of accidents one hears from the news and from fellow volunteers – two volunteers had to go home in January due to the injuries they sustained from an accident), I’m pretty nervous about traveling here.

My Wish List

Last Edited: May 13th

For the most part, the items that I want and need are available here in Namibia. However, they are often too expensive to buy on my meager PC salary or too difficult to find (per example, it took me over two weeks to find hangers). Some items are a bit like magic – one day you see them at the store, the next you don’t (three weeks later, I’m still waiting for the chicken filets to return to the local grocery store). For those who've expressed interest in sending care packages (for which I will be eternally grateful), below is a list of items I particularly would like (most of which cannot be found in-country…I think). If you do mail me a package, please refer to the 'My Contact Info' page which has updated information/recommendations on sending mail here.

o Scrabble, Apples to Apples, or any other game that I can play with local kids to improve their English vocabulary
o UNO, SKIP-BO card decks
o Deflated soccer balls, basketballs, or kick balls
o Craft project ideas for my Girls’ Club
o A large world map to put up at my office so I can show people that I came a LONG way to work here in Africa
o Things to put on my bedroom wall (like pictures, maps, posters)
o DVDs (copies, bootlegs or originals…I don’t care!)
o Mixed music CDs (old or new music)
o Dental floss (they don’t sell the waxed kind here)
o Deodorant (what they sell here really doesn’t work)
o Good recipes (that don’t require any fancy/expensive ingredients; you are welcome to email those rather than mail them)
o Fajita spice packets/any other Mexican spices
o Snack foods (plain goldfish, Nilla wafers)
o Fruit snacks! (like Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, or the store-brand ones in the shapes of dolphins, Peanuts characters, etc.)
o Chicken bouillion cubes
o Candy (Sour Patch Kids, Snickers, Butterfingers, etc.)
o Ziploc bags (send items inside of them!)
o Tampons and pads (they serve as a deterrent to postal thieves if packed around items!)
o Heating pad (the kind you put in boiling water)

Publications Wish List
Sadly, the M-Bags have been cancelled in the US so there is no longer a cheap postal rate for publications. Hence, I don't expect anyone to mail any of these items. However, since my mother has so kindly sent six M-Bags, I think I shall have enough reading material for the duration of my service!

o Shakespeare plays
o Magazines

Things I Miss From Good 'Ole America

While I have lived abroad before, I have come to realize that I never really knew homesickness until I moved to Namibia. I miss so many things about America, many of them are completely random things that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would miss. My homesickness oftentimes reaches a magnitude that scares me but at the same time, I get a pretty good laugh about the absurdity of the things that I miss. In completely random order (because what I miss one minute is replaced by something else quite quickly), here are things I miss about the States:
The Material:
o Phone conversations
o Ethnic food (esp. Mexican, Chinese, Thai, and Indian)
o Unlimited, fast internet access
o The ocean
o Buildings that are taller than one storey
o Ice cream (we have it here but it is made from vegetable fat so it’s not as good)
o Hot chocolate and fireplaces on cold winter days
o My scrapbooks
o Air conditioning
o Movie theatres
o Television (I have one but it only gets 3 stations; 1 is a televangelist channel, the other two show news, soap operas, and terrible American TV shows such as Tyra Banks’ talk show)
o Cool weather
o Boston!
o Doorbells (if someone is picking you up, they just stay in their car and honk until you appear, this can be rather annoying for the neighbors!)
o Cobblestone streets (or paved streets extending beyond the main road for that matter!)
o Boats
o Book stores (I really really miss them!)
o Restaurants
o Filtered water
o Leisure activities (like swimming, bowling, plays and movies)
o Trader Joe’s and Costco
o Beds with real mattresses
o Washing machines!
o Deep green vegetation
o My bathrobe
o Familiar foods (like rotisserie chicken, hot dogs, baked beans, root beer, salmon, asparagus, artichoke, cheesecake)
o Halloween
o Candy corn pumpkins
o Weeping willow trees
o Jeopardy (I swear I almost never watched that show!)
o Lighthouses
o The Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland
o Las Vegas
o The season of fall, especially October
o Changing leaves
o Sliding in socks on hardwood floors

The Immaterial:
o The general ease and safety of transport
o Proper English and grammar (people speak “Namlish” here which is something of a brutalization of my mother tongue)
o Productivity
o The finality of the law (here what is illegal on paper often is not enforced such as the mistreatment of children)
o Feeling safe in my own home
o Familiarity
o Dedication and competence
o Logic
o Efficiency
o Random acts of kindness
o Predictability (i.e. knowing what day I’m travelling out of town more than five minutes before my departure)
o Hospitality
o Punctuality (i.e. knowing that if a meeting is supposed to start at 8, it won’t start at 11)

My House

A few people have asked about my living conditions out here in Gobabis, so I thought I’d give you all some details. When I joined Peace Corps, I anticipated that I’d be living in a hut somewhere without running water or electricity. For good or bad, my housing conditions are far more luxurious than that. I’m living in a small, concrete two-bedroom house about a twenty-minute walk from my office that is owned by the Namibian government. I live with another PCV, Angela who is an Education volunteer from Group 25. The house has both electricity and running water (hot water even!). We have all the kitchen basics (which aren’t all basic for Namibia): stove, oven, refrigerator, and freezer. We also have a television which gets three stations, one of them is a televangelist channel and the other two basically only show newscasts and soap operas. In our kitchen pantry, there is a mini-library of books accumulated from the PCVs in the region (I’ve already read most of the good ones). And people have pooled their DVDs to form a small collection from which everyone borrows movies to take to their sites. The most surprising amenity though would like be the internet; yes, I have internet in my house! It’s dial-up but it’s actually pretty fast as far as Namibian internet services go; it uses phone cards so on a PC budget, its too expensive to use daily but its nice to have it for occasional usage. Given the above living conditions, I really don’t have anything to complain about! I don’t have to use a pit latrine, cook on a hot plate or over open fires, travel dozens of kilometers to buy groceries, or take bucket baths in frigid water (all things which some of my PCV friends here do, especially up north). The only abnormal thing I have to do is hand wash my clothes which I hate doing because it takes awhile but it certainly is a good workout!