My First Counterpart

Last Monday a man named Benedictus came into my office to ask for assistance in his efforts to help young boys living on the streets who were formerly in prisons. I learned that Ben has been working with these boys since 2002. For the past five years, he has solicited ministries and other organizations for support but unfortunately, nobody was willing to help him. So he was rather dejected when he came into my office on Monday. We had never met before and I had never heard his name mentioned around the water cooler (we don’t really have a water cooler by the way, that’s just an expression J). However, in spite of the fact that we were not acquainted with one another, we both immediately recognized in each other a shared determination to help this community.

Ben asked me to help him draft a letter to a local pre-school in order to secure meeting space for his discussions with the street children. After he explained what his goals were, I sat down and typed out a letter for him. With tears in his eyes, he expressed his gratitude for my simple gesture and informed me that he has visited all the ministry offices in Gobabis over the past few weeks but nobody would take ten minutes to sit with him and help him draft a letter. Frankly, I was not all that surprised that none of the ministry workers were willing to help him. Sadly, it seems that most of the ministry workers rarely complete their own tasks and thus, would be extremely disinclined to assist someone else with his work. In fact, my supervisor had even refused to help Ben the previous week when he came into the office (I was out visiting the hospital then and did not meet him that day). Hence Ben was extremely surprised that I was so willing to assist him last Monday. I really don’t think that he understands how desperate I have been to begin my work here in the community or how long I have searched for a friendly face in Gobabis. I’m honestly not sure which one of us appreciates the other more.

So Ben has become my first counterpart (a term PC uses to identify the community members who work with PCVs on various projects) and we are working together on the issue of child justice. He and I have met a few times since last Monday. We are hoping to begin a life skills program for the young ex-offenders living on the streets. Currently, the boys are destitute and thus, likely to be imprisoned again as they are forced to steal in order to survive. He wants to encourage them to make an honest living so we are brainstorming small income-generation projects to initiate with them. We have yet to tackle the funding issue but I’m taking things one step at a time.

Ben has also been conducting cell visits at the local prison which I hope to accompany him on someday soon. The purpose of the visits is to inspect the quality of the cells in which youth offenders are placed. In Namibia, there are no juvenile detention centers so underage offenders are imprisoned with older, seasoned criminals which often leads to physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Additionally, most of the children are denied access to an attorney, many of their families are not contacted upon their arrest, and some of the cells lack proper toilet facilities. By documenting the unethical conditions at the prison, we hope to pressure the regional government into changing its policies in order to uphold the rights of the children. Ensuring child justice, incidentally, is one of the charges of the Ministry of Youth. Unfortunately it seems that the issue has not been addressed since the departure of the last PCV so I am hoping to put it on the agenda again.

The Meaning of Friendship

About two weeks ago, a man stopped me on the street when I was walking home from work. Such incidents are not unusual. I have discovered that typical when anyone, male or female, stops me on the street, they want one of three things: sex, money or a job. However, there have been a few occasions when the person did not want one of these things from me so I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, this tendency to trust people, which is compounded by my desire to make friends, sometimes supercedes my common sense; I really ought to realize by now that most people don’t want to be my friend here, they just want something from me.

So anyway, this man stopped me on the street and told me that he is a police officer and the Chairman of the Child Justice Forum. I got excited because I have yet to meet many community members (owing to the fact that my supervisor repeatedly denies my requests to introduce me to anyone) and this man is someone I will likely be working with in the future because I am attempting to reform the now-defunct Child Justice Forum. When he asked if he could have a friendship with me, my excitement led me to enthusiastically tell him yes.

As our conversation progressed, I quickly learned that his perception of friendship greatly differs from my own. So without knowing it, I basically agreed to have a sexual relationship with this guy! Once I discovered my error, I told him that I was NOT interested in having a relationship with him and tried to explain what my view of friendship was. While he was not happy with my sudden change in enthusiasm and refused to accept no for an answer, I was able to walk away (although I wouldn’t exactly describe my bumbling exit as graceful).

I really thought that I was in the clear since I had not seen the man for a few weeks. But of course, my assumption was proved incorrect this morning when he appeared at my office and once again, began pestering me about our budding ‘friendship.’ He again asked for my phone number and I again, spent about ten minutes telling him no. The fact that this meeting took place in my office was particularly concerning though because my phone number was printed in red ink right above my head. I don’t think he was perceptive enough to notice this though so I am really hoping that I don’t receive calls from him in which he professes his undying love for me. In all reality though, it’s probably just a matter of time…

Any suggestions on how to deter his advances are most welcome!

Kudu Shit

This past week I left the confines of Gobabis and went up north to Otjiwarongo for the Ministry of Youth’s Annual Plannery Meeting (as far as I know, ‘plannery’ is not an actual word but the Namibian government seems to think it is). The week-long enlightened me to the politics of working within the Ministry and allowed me to solicit some much needed advice from the four PCVs who have been working in the Ministry for the past year. But the most interesting event of the past week was the car accident I was in.

Last Sunday, I boarded a bus along with four other PCVs and about twenty colleagues from the Ministry. When we were less than an hour outside of Otjiwarongo, the driver of the bus began rapidly breaking. I looked up just in time to see the front window cave in before I braced myself and ducked down. We had hit a kudu. For those who do not know what a kudu is (nearly all of you I would suppose), a kudu is a large deer-like creature that is about the size of an okapi or slightly bigger than an elk. So if you imagine hitting an elk at about 120 km/hr, that’s what it felt like to hit this kudu.

The kudu apparently jumped into the bus from the right-hand side of the road. It hit our front windshield, and then wrapped its body around the right side of the bus hitting the driver’s window and the front safety window which popped out at the impact. When the window popped out, it presented an excellent opportunity for the kudu to release its bowels throughout the bus. So by the time we all got out, we were covered in kudu shit (I’ve never been so happy to have sanitizing wipes with me!). At the time of impact, a small truck was approaching from the right lane. When we hit the kudu, it bounced off our bus and into the right lane where the truck then hit it and dragged it for a few meters. The kudu broke the trucks front axle before it laid to rest along the side of the road.

Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured in this accident. We were extremely lucky. If our driver had reacted differently, the accident surely would have been fatal. If we had veered into the right lane, we would have suffered from a head-on collision with the truck and if we had gravitated even a few more inches to the left, the bus would have rolled down the steep embankment and tumbled to rest a few feet below.

We sent a few people to the hospital in passing cars (a baby who wouldn’t stop fussing and a woman who was six-months pregnant and had gone into shock), dressed the cut on the drivers head, and bandaged the few scrapes a few people had. Considering the fact that it took the ambulance an hour and a half to arrive on the scene, we are tremendously fortunate that none of the injuries were serious.

However, if hitting the kudu weren’t excitement enough, we quickly discovered that the passerby who stopped to witness the scene were more interested in stealing the dead kudu than they were in assisting the injured. People here seem to prize roadkill meats (perhaps because game is so expensive). One van actually pulled up next to the kudu so that its passengers could load it into their car. The Ministry officials rushed over, scolded the people for ‘stealing the evidence,’ and removed the kudu from the van. I believe that the police eventually ‘stole’ the kudu; they likely enjoyed a nice braai (barbeque) that evening.

To make the incident ironic, the Ministry sent down a car from Otjiwarongo to ‘rescue’ us. While attempting to overtake a slower car, that Ministry car was in a head-on collision. So it was not a good day for the Ministry. We sat in a field alongside the road for over two hours before finally loading up into the back of trucks to finish the trek to Otjiwarongo. The sun was setting so all the wildlife were out to enjoy the cool afternoon weather. I saw more kudu on that short ride into Otjiwarongo than I have seen in all my months here in Namibia. Of course, now seeing kudu on the side of the road makes me a bit more nervous than it used to.

What Do You Do At Your Job?

For those still in the dark, I am working for the Regional Ministry of Youth Office in Gobabis. The office is charged with providing activities for local youth (ages 15-35). As far as I know, the only functioning youth group in Gobabis is the choir. Other than assisting with that, my office coordinates annual events for important days (such as World AIDS Day or World Water Day).

My job is to initiate youth programs and assist with the planning of events. Thus far, I’ve been at my site for about eight weeks now and haven’t accomplished a whole lot. The pace of life here is much much slower than what I’m accustomed to; I’m still settling into the rhythm of things here. Although I have yet to begin any on-going programs, I do have a number of them in mind. The first one that I will start (on March 12) is a Girls’ Club which will consist of about fifteen teenaged girls. I hope to empower them to make positive life choices by helping them to develop self-esteem and life skills. That’s a rather vague description, but I’ll update more as things progress. Other than the Girls’ Club, I am considering starting a town newspaper, forming a drama group, and reactivating the Child Justice Forum (which advocates for the rights of incarcerated minors). I have a list of about twenty total ideas, but those are the ones I plan to focus on for the immediate future.

A Beefy Diet

Namibians love meat. They love beef. They love their cows so much, in fact, that by law, it is worse to steal someone’s cow than it is to murder another man. People eat a lot of beef here. Fatness is an indication of wealth, a mark of how much beef is in a person’s diet. So it is supposedly a compliment when someone calls you fat (I’m rather happy that nobody has called me that yet, but I’m sure the day will come soon).

The other day a man came into my office from a neighboring village, Otjinene. He told me that I need to move to Otjinene and work at the Youth Office there because Gobabis has too many vegetables and Otjinene has more beef. I imagine he was looking out for my best interests but I have never in my life decided where I ought to live on the basis of how much beef is available there. Furthermore, (although I dared not tell the man this as he would think me foolish) I don’t eat much red meat. Many of the Herero women here sport full-on beards, mustaches, and chest hair; although I cannot confirm this with scientific evidence, a few PCVs presume that the growth of facial hair is due to the vast quantities of red meat consumed in this country. Thus, the moral of the story is, I don’t plan on eating too much beef here as I’m rather fond of maintaining a beardless face.