the road less traveled

Oh, the first days of school in Namibia.

They were very similar to the last days of school, somehow. No real organization. Learners running around everywhere. Teachers not in the classrooms. But there difference is, there’s a feeling of optimism.

Monday and Tuesday were days for just teachers. I arrived in the staff room on Monday to find a group of refreshed, energetic teachers. We sat down and sorted out the calendar for the first term, penciling in dates like our first staff meeting, the Interschool Athletic Competition and when the control exams would be. We then went over a list of about 50 tasks/committees and delegated them between the teachers. I was put on Library Committee, Team Building, and Fundraising Committees, and made Vice Chairman of Athletics. Lots of responsibility, but it’s going to be nice to have something to do outside of the classroom.

Tuesday we registered learners. Each teacher was given a class list from last year, and the parents were to check with us to see if they paid their school fees from the year before. I registered 4 learners in 5 hours. To me it seemed like that indicated there wouldn’t be many learners there on Wednesday when school started for learners. Boy was I wrong.

On Wednesday I woke up for the first time to the sound of learners running around screaming. It’s a good thing, because the past couple days we had started at 8am and we would be starting at 7am that morning. I went into sprint mode at 6:55 when I realized this, and somehow made it to school only a couple minutes late. God bless my 2 minute commute.

We got to the staff room and were told that we would be registering learners again. I spent much of the morning trying to figure out if I’d have a homeroom class. The rest of the teachers were acting under the assumption that they would have the same homeroom classes. All I knew for [fairly] certain was that I’d be teaching Grade 5 Math. Part of me wanted a homeroom so I’d have a classroom to call my own, but part of me was terrified of the responsibility.

The learners went to the classes they were in last year, and those who passed were sent on to the same section of the next grade (i.e. 1A goes to 2A, etc). This was easier said than done. Grade 4 has 3 sections while Grade 5 has 4, so we spent about an hour trying to figure out how to split them up. It took another hour going from classroom to classroom trying to find the learners in each class. There was a similar dilemma with the Grade 6 (4 sections) to Grade 7 (3 sections) transition. I was told by the Head of Department that I wouldn’t have a homeroom class. I was told by my colleagues that there weren’t enough teachers for me not to have a class. Couldn’t really get a solid answer from anyone. I went home confused, exhausted and passed out.

Thursday led to more confusion. The time table wasn’t nearly made up yet. I spent much of the day working with the Athletics Committee trying to figure out the most effective way to split up 1000 learners into Red, Green and Blue teams for the Interschool Athletic Competition. We finally decided after much deliberation that the best way was to get the class lists from the year previous (class lists for this year haven’t been made yet) and write R, G, B, R, G, B down the side. We then argued about the sex ratio of Namibia and the world (my male colleagues are convinced there’s a UN Survey that came out saying it’s 5:1 and 20:1, male to female, respectively, thus making it ok for men to have 19 girlfriends on the side). Even bringing up the CIA World Factbook which shows there are actually slightly more men than women in the world couldn’t convince them.

It was decided that we would spend from 11:30am to 1pm every day until the Interschool Competition practicing athleticism. Part of me cried for the hours of class they’d miss out on, but to be honest, the first weeks of school aren’t really spent learning anyways. It’s better that they’re doing something productive, at least. We started Thursday by announcing the teams and sending them off to the teachers on their team to be separated into age groups.

Friday brought about much of the same. One of my colleagues was in Windhoek taking a test so I watched her Grade 4 class. We played games until break, like Heads Up 7 Up and Simon Says. They got a little rowdy so I made them color and received a few pictures to post on my walls. After break, the upper primary teachers were called in for a meeting and we were told what classes we’d be teaching. To my surprise, I was assigned Grade 6 instead of Grade 5. Good thing I haven’t done any lesson planning yet. A few teachers were switched to another grade for their homeroom, and were fairly upset about it. It’s going to involve moving classrooms, and after seeing how many files Namibian teachers have to carry I can understand their concern. I was also given Grade 6 P.E. so I’ll have to bust out my whistle. I already have the awkward short haircut so I’m set there. My only concern is that right now, Grade 5 doesn’t have a math teacher since one of my colleagues Mrs. Ilukena, got an HOD post at a nearby school. We were assured that they would open the post and it would be filled by the ministry soon, but I’m a little worried that the Grade 5s will get behind. Sure enough, at 11:30 we broke out of class and the kids ran circles around the netball courts with the encouragement of teachers.

So, no learning happened in the first days of school. I was expecting this, but the confusion was more than I could ever have imagined. I am excited to get in the classroom next week and start teaching. Next week. Maybe.

The last few weeks have been without a doubt the craziest and most enjoyable times I’ve spent in Namibia.

On December 20^th I headed out to Khorixas to meet up with some friends who were already beginning to celebrate the holidays. It was a day I had been looking forward to for a while. I had been planning on going to Otji to meet up with Sarah but she was practically in Angola at a wedding so I had to change my arrangements. My first time hiking alone was an epic you can read about on my last entry. So, after a few hours of free hiking I found myself beginning my 23-day drinking spree at Vanessa’s hostel house in Khorixas with Julie and Michael.

The next day we hiked back to Otjiwarongo to meet up with Sarah. We spent the next two days poolside at Sarah’s friend Danella’s house. We lounged with her and her friend Robert, who travels Southern Africa making documentaries. We slept in beds, pooped in toilets, and showered in hot water. We were living the high life.

On the 23^rd Julie and I went with Sarah’s family to their farm. Nearly every Namibian family has a farm. I compare it to a lake house…sans lake. They are generally in the middle of nowhere, have no electricity, running water or toilets (the first two we were privy to…but we had to poop in the bush with the goats.) And goats there were many. When baby goats wandered into the yard one of us would leap up, yell “Baby goat!” and chase it out of the fenced-in yard. We had a tent set up in the yard to sleep in. Life on the farm was good. It was interesting to live in the way that we knew many other Peace Corps Volunteers who aren’t used to our posh lifestyle of toilets and inside showers do.

We woke up on Christmas Eve feeling optimistic about a day of trading stories about how our families were celebrating the holidays. At about 2pm, Sarah’s host father came up to us.

Dad: “Are you guys ready to go to the farm?”

Us: Blank stares. “Aren’t we at the farm?”

Dad: “Oh, we’re going to another farm.” Of course. How silly of us.

We packed up, put some beers in the cooler and grabbed a couple for the road. About an hour later when we stopped to open a gate/pee behind a bush, Sarah’s host father suggested we grab a few more beers. It was going to be a long ride.

About 2 hours later we arrived at what I would call a Nam-mansion, and were shown to our bedroom, which was just a bed in a hallway. We realized quickly that there was no cell reception and we’d be spending Christmas out of reach from our families. Normally this would have been a problem, but we had each other and we were fairly happy from all the beers we drank in the car so we were ok with it. We got out and saw Pumba’s cousin slaughtered. At about 9pm, just when our empty tummies were wondering where the food was, we were told we would be returning to a farm we had made a turn at about an hour back to eat. [A word on Namibian road trips: “Making turns” is the Namibian word for the cultural experience of stopping at every house where you know someone on the way out of town. This is expected, and making turns can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.] So we climbed into the back of a bakkie and sang every Christmas carol we could think of along the way.

We arrived at Farm #3 and were immediately served kabobs, potato salad, and beets. Our plates heaved. I chowed down on my kabob (only pausing for a second to note that what I thought was a potato was actually a large piece of fat). A couple hours later we were back to Farm #2 to pass out.

We woke up on Christmas Day and started wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. Namibians celebrate Christmas the way we might celebrate Memorial Day. It was hot enough, anyways. We took a ride in the back of the bakkie around the seemingly never ending farm, saw some cows get fed, then sat around and had some drinks. Whenever we ran out of beer, some small boy would bring more for us [cultural note: small boys are young children, male or female, between the ages of 8-12 who do all the work around the country in exchange for food or a dollar. I might invest in one to do my laundry, which I am inept at].We took a nap and watched the finale of our favorite soapie, Lorenzo’s Wife. We ate the sheep we had slaughtered earlier. All in all, an excellent Christmas.

The next day we expected to leave but it was not to be so. We did more sitting around socialized, talked to some a Namibian who thought Bacardi Spin was the end-all-be-all and made fun of us for drinking beer. We didn’t tell him he was drinking a 17-year-old girl-drink because he seemed to be enjoying himself. Sarah’s host mom told her we wouldn’t be leaving because they wanted to show us dinosaur footprints nearby. So the next day we got up and went to see said footprints. They’d have been more impressive if we didn’t have to climb rocks to get to them. Sarah fell off a rock and face planted, but it was ok because her beverage was safe. After 4 months at site, this is what it had come to.

We returned to Farm #1. We stayed up and talked to a friend of Sarah’s host dad. Some of my favorite people in Namibia to talk to are those who have traveled, and this guy has been to more countries than I have, including the US and Europe. He had a lot of really great perspectives, and even told us that he had a Peace Corps Teacher in high school who made a huge difference in his life. It’s great to hear that we’re making a difference in general, even though that volunteer might not know it herself.

The next day there was a monsoon. The rainy season had indeed started. Our tent fell over, so Sarah’s host brothers slept in the car and we slept in the house. The next day when we cleaned up the broken tent, we found a scorpion underneath. Ouch. We went back to Otjiwarongo and spent the next day in bed exhausted. We watched movies and had a relaxing time. Thus began the waiting for New Years, a party we had been planning since September. People trickled in and each arrival called for a celebration.

In the way only reunited friends could, we celebrated New Years the right way (with a power hour and delicious dinner).We all kissed and hugged each other. Happiness had found the Dirty 30 once again. Hey, remember last year when we moved to a strange country and spent many long, lonely nights without our loved ones? 2010 is a year of optimism and change.

I and a few others went back to Okahandja on the 1^st. I was mostly worried about my house getting broken into, but it was safe. Everyone else from the North joined us on the 2^nd and we broke in my house with 14 people sprawled across all the available floor space in my apartment.

The next day we hiked to Windhoek in shifts. We met up at our favorite restaurant, and had some drinks as an entire group for the first time in 3 months. We got to the Peace Corps office at 3:30 and were driven to a lodge about 15k outside of Windhoek. There we started a week of Reconnect, which was supposed to be our technical training. The training was good for the most part. It was less staff-led and more of a consolidation of our problems and solutions. I’m not sure how effective it was, because it was people who had only been in the country for 5 months trying to come up with solutions, but there were a few resource volunteers who came and showed their insight. Best of all, we had free food for a week. Being in Namibia has turned me into a binge eater. I never know when my next meal will come so when I get food, I eat all I can as quickly as possible. It’s entertaining to watch me suck meat off bones, I’m sure. The most fun part was the evenings. We spent our time drinking at the pool and trading ridiculous stories from site. Laughter was uncontainable and even continued into many of the sessions.

On Saturday we had a day in Windhoek to do some shopping. I went to the SPCA to look at puppies. They weren’t very nice to me and said they don’t like giving animals to foreigners which I thought was an unfair discrimination, but they said they’d give me a chance and come look at my house this week which I’m excited about. Saturday night we downloaded a karaoke program and had a great party.

By Sunday morning we had all gone our separate ways. It was an amazing holiday with friends, and now I have the end of April to look forward to for our next Reconnect. I’m glad to be back at site. When I parted ways with my friends, I breathed a sigh of relief. Time to get back to school and do what I came here to do. Teach. [Look forward to an email about the first days of school soon]

And that, my friends, was my Namibian holiday. I returned to school to hear my colleagues tell me how fat I’ve gotten. I took it as a compliment, because in this culture it is. And thought fondly to all the free food I’d enjoyed over the last few weeks.

Many of you have expressed interest and/or concern about the fact that my main mode of getting around Namibia is hitchhiking. It’s all very romantic and Kerouac-ian. I’ll explain my first experience hiking by myself.

Sunday December 20^th 2009 was a day I’d been looking forward to for a while. It was the day Peace Corps said we could begin traveling within our region. I had been planning on going to Otjiwarongo, a city just 2 hours north of Okahandja, the site of my good friend Sarah, and an easy hike on the B1 (the I-75 of Namibia). I haven’t waited more than a few minutes to get a hike in any spot on the B1. Sarah SMSed me the day before my departure however to tell me she was still in the 4 O’s for a wedding and didn’t think she’d be returning in time for me to come on the 20^th. I took a quick look at a map, send a few SMSes, and decided to head to Khorixas, my friend Vanessa’s site. Turns out there were a few other volunteers there who would hike to Otji with me on Monday to meet Sarah.

I woke up on Sunday and did some last minute packing. I locked up my valuables and walked to the hike point where the B1 meets the B2 that heads to Swakop. Some women there told me I was in the wrong hike point to head north, so I gullibly took their directions and headed to another hike point I knew of. Sadly, this was not the right hike point either. Finally a woman heading to Swakop took pity on my and drove me to the correct hike point. Feeling pretty dumb, I got out of the car, gratefully took a bottle of cool drink that was offered, acknowledged her words of advice about how dangerous hitchhiking is, set down my pack and waited for my next ride.

It came quite soon. A family heading to Waterburg Plateau said they’d bring me as far as the turn off for Okakarara – about 20k from Otji. We made good time, and they even drove me into Otji since they had to fill up on fuel. I took my first ever steps off the B1 and started the long walk out of Otji on the C28 towards Outjo. It soon became abundantly clear that though I was halfway there, this leg of the hike would be significantly more difficult.

I got hike #3 when I was almost on the outskirts of town. They brought me about 5k outside of Otji to a turn off, where I stared walking. I walked for about 20 minutes before I saw a car coming in either direction. I waved my hand at a car that pulled over. The driver was clearly a taxi and didn’t want to bring me for free. Now this I can respect. If it’s your job to drive people back and forth, I understand. If you’re just going through and can easily drop me off on your way, I’m more hesitant to pay for petrol.  Still, I bargained him down to N$10 from N$50 with the old “I’m a volunteer and the Peace Corps only gives me money for food so if I pay you I don’t eat for a week” trick. He seemed to only half believe me. I argued for most of the ride to Outjo about how just because I’m American doesn’t mean I’m rich. He also gave me the whole “You should marry a Namibian” schpeal. I told him about my fake American husband in the states. Mr. Taxi Man assured me that my husband is cheating on me. Excuse me Tate. You don’t know my fake husband. He just kept laughing at me. Annoying. Hike #4 was not so much fun.

I made it to Outjo, gave Mr. Taxi Man a N$10 after sneakily taking it out of my wallet and hiding all the N$100s I had, and walked to a gas station to try and find a hike. I got some food and chatted with the gas station attendants, who thought me crazy to be looking for a free hike. After not having much luck for about an hour and getting tired of the crazy man who kept trying to steal my chips, I walked out of town towards the turn off to Khorixas.

Outjo is known as the Gateway to Etosha, one of the main tourist attractions and game reserves in Namibia. This being so, you can find lots of white people dressed in safari gear traveling to various lodges in the area. These types of people tend to look at a white person standing along the side of the road, waving their hand into the 35 degree desert like they’re crazy. They tend not to stop, no matter how pathetic I look. And believe me. I looked as pathetic as I felt crazy. I paced back and forth in the sand. I finished the last of my water and even tried to drink the boiling cool drink I got from hike #1. I shared “aren’t we pathetic” glances with the man trying to hike across the way. Every time a car drove by we both shared a look that said “Maybe next time…” Hiking on the not-B1 is not fun.

Finally, my chariot arrived. A bakkie coming from a shopping trip in Outjo with a woman and her children in the back sped by. I sent my most pathetic puppy-dog-stuck-in-the-desert look her way and she asked the driver to stop. My hero.

The final leg to Khorixas was wonderful and well worth the wait. Rainy season had turned Damaraland’s rolling mountains green and purple with vegetation. We pulled into the petrol station at Khorixas and I ran gratefully to my friends. Two months of being alone at site were over. It only took 6 hours to make it 400k. I wasn’t at site for the first time in 4 months, but I was with my friends. I was home. Winter holiday had begun.

I learned a lot in 2009. It was a year of big changes – graduating from college, moving to a strange, new country. I’ve spent more time away from home than ever before in my life. I fell in love, I got my heart broken. In a lot of ways, I guess it’s been like every other year. But I learned a lot. Here’s a smattering of life lessons:

#1: Take on small challenges

Making small goals and completing them can be very fulfilling. I joined the Peace Corps and imagined myself coming to a new country and changing the world. Unfortunately, that’s not in the cards immediately. It’s a lot easier, emotionally, to wake up in the morning with tiny tasks. Make friends with a new colleague. Make a learner smile. Crossing even minute items off a long to-do list feels better than setting lofty, impossible to reach goals and getting frustrated.

#2: Doing nothing is highly underrated

Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, it’s better to take a breath, relax and reboot. I have 2 years in this country. If it’s better for my sanity to waste a day watching Weeds or Prison Break or reading a good book, so be it.

#3: Redefining Productivity

It’s easy to feel productive in college. I spent many days in the cafe at the library, chatting with friends and drinking coffee and feeling like I was getting something done because I had a text book or a laptop in front of me. I’ve spent the last two months at site feeling like I should be doing something, but have had little options because I didn’t have a classroom yet, and can’t start secondary projects until next year. The truth is, I’ve been more productive than I was for most of the 4 years of college. I’ve been integrated into a new culture. If that’s not productivity, I don’t know what is.

#4: Don’t put all my eggs in one basket

The beauty of being in love is having someone to put all of your trust in. When you find that the other person doesn’t feel the same way, a lot of that trust gets ripped away. It’s hard to recover. I pride myself in being able to keep my head on my shoulders and retain a large degree of independence in relationships, and I strive to continue that when love finds me again. I believe that the trust will come back.

#5: Trust needs to be earned

When you move to a strange place, it’s human nature to cling to whatever friends you can find. In Namibia, that has ended in the loss of an iPod and lots of hurt feelings. I don’t think this is uncommon when you move anywhere. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. Trust needs to be earned, no matter how desperate you are.

#6: Going through turmoil brings you together

I’ve never been closer to someone than I have to Group 30. We came from all over the country to meet in D.C. for staging, and it wasn’t long before we were on a plane on the way to Namibia. We went through 2 months of training together, tackled the challenges of new host families together, and shared tears and joy at new discoveries about the culture we have found ourselves in. Now we’re at site, but there’s no one I talk to more than my closest friends from my group.

#7: The beauty in waiting

I spent most of the latter half of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 waiting. Waiting to find out when I was leaving for the Peace Corps, where I’d be going, etc. If I had a nickel for every time I told someone “I’m joining the Peace Corps but don’t know where I’m going, what I’m doing, or when” I’d have a lot of nickels. Some people say the hardest part of your Peace Corps experience is training. Others, the first 3 months. I say it’s the application process. If you’re an applicant and you’re reading this, don’t give up. It takes time. Treasure it. Because in a few months, you’ll think about how silly you were for being worried about it.

#8: Those you don’t think care are the most valuable when you find out they do

After graduating and moving to Namibia a few months later, many of the friends I treasured over the last few years seem to have fallen away. This is natural. It’s easy to be friends when you can just count on someone to meet you at the bar. Long distance friendships are no different than relationships. They take effort. Those who have made the effort – believe that I treasure you more than is possible to imagine.

#9: Finding things in common

I’m used to making friends because I have something in common with them. Most of my friends from college were close to my heart because we shared letters, love for international affairs, political unity, love for a sport, an affinity for alcohol, what have you. It’s difficult to find things in common with someone who grew up a world apart from you. When you make a connection with these people, it’s even more valuable.

#10: I love my family

Sure, we have our differences. But when it comes down to it, there’s no one in my life who has been as continuously supportive over my 22 years. I’ve become closer to my mother with the distance than I ever thought possible over the last few months. Granted, this may be because distance makes the heart grow stronger and she no longer has financial control over me.

Thanks for the memories, 2009!

Finally I’ve moved into my permanent housing. It’s something I’ve looked forward to for quite some time. All my

worldly possessions are in one place for the first time in months. I have spent hours price-checking pots and pans, bowls, cups, knives, forks, and all of the essentials I’ll need for the next two years in Namibia. It feels oh so good. One of my favorite purchases was a mattress and pillows which I have set on the floor to relax on, Moroccan style. My bed is

no longer the only place I have to relax. Which is good, because laying in bed all day can make you feel like your calling might be the world’s oldest profession. Which is not what I came to Namibia to do.

Sadly, in terms of appliances I am severely lacking. I bought an electric kettle on sale. I am now the proud owner of a coffee maker, thanks to the staff holiday exchange. I’m glad I went on a 5-minute rant about how I can’t live without coffee in front of Mr. Matengu, who drew my name. The Ministry of Education was supposed to supply us with three things: a stove, a bed, and a fridge. The bed I have. Granted, the mattress is flimsy and it sits on a metal frame so it’s not the most comfortable sleep I’ve ever had. Ok, that’s an understatement. After one day of sleeping in it, there was a crater in it about the size and shape of my ass. My ass isn’t even that big, but I keep falling into the crater when I try to sleep. That annoyance I can deal with though. The fact that the Ministry has yet to supply me with a fridge and stove is extremely aggravating.

Since lighting a fire to cook over in my yard might not be acceptable to my neighbors (but then again…you never know), I’ve had to search for other options. Most of these options have taken the form of non-perishables from Pick and Pay.

In case you haven’t gathered from my blog entries, Namibia is hot. Hot hot. I swear I heard my mixed fruit jelly boiling the other day. Keeping milk without a fridge is a recipe for cottage cheese type curds to fall into your coffee or cereal mere hours after you buy it. I can’t drink water fast enough. It’s suggested that humans drink 2 liters of water a day. I drink an average of 5 (yes, I’ve counted).

Game biltong. What a strange, glorious snack. Now, biltong is one of Namibia’s many bragged-about wonders. One of the first things Group 30 did when we arrived in Okahandja for training and went on a tour of the town was to stop at a biltong shop to sample. Namibians talk about the South African invention like they came up with sliced bread. Basically you take small pieces of meat, stick them in a food humidifier and after a few days, enjoy. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s jerky. This is why I enjoy the game version of the process (biltong also comes in beef and wors, which is essentially sausage). I like the think that there was a majestic gazelle, kudu, oryx, gemsbok, springbok, etc that died and spent a few days in a dry, hot place (not unlike my flat most days, it seems) to give me a few seconds of bliss. Peace Corps has made me a strange woman.

Macaroni and mince. This was tonight’s experiment. Surprisingly, I only had to boil water in my kettle, pour it over the macaroni, let it sit, and sieve it out twice before it was ready. The mince I found at the grocery store. I glanced at this N$8 “just add water, chilli flavored meat powder” for a while before deciding to make the purchase. Couldn’t hurt, I figured. Meat has been out of my diet for a while. It ended up being pretty good.

Peanut butter and jelly. This one’s a given. I was doing alright living on this for a while, but it got old pretty quickly.

Ouma Bescuits. These hard, “condensed milk and fudge flavored” rusks have become a favorite snack of mine. I think it’s better that they measure energy in kilojoules here and not calories. I shudder to think of how many rusks I eat a day.

Powdered mashed potatoes. Just add water. Made from REAL POTATOES. Yeah right. But not bad. Same goes for powdered soup packets, which are traditionally used in Namibian culture as a sort of gravy. I use them as soup. Oh Caitie, you creative minx…

Trail mix. I found my calling. Safari’s Peanut and Raisin mix doesn’t last long in my house. I think Will, another volunteer, took the words right out of my mouth when he said “This trail mix is my spirit animal.” It’s that good. Add some Black Label and you’re golden.

Apples. I suppose I should be healthy every so often.

And that’s it! That’s what I’ve been living on. Take note, dear friends. One day you will find yourself without a stove or fridge, and you’ll be ever so glad you stumbled upon this entry.

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I take a pause on tales of my now 4-month-old Namibian life for a little reminiscence.

Over the last few months, particularly those where I have been going to school with not much more to do than help teachers with their busy work, and distracting my colleagues from said busy work by socializing and asking questions about how Namibia and the school is run (I’m sure the pauses that precede the answers are just my colleagues thinking to themselves, “Wow. You really are quite dumb.”) with many escapist measures. These measures have varied from reading books to watching movies and TV shows from the vast collection I have accumulated on my external hard drive and received from compassionate and pitying friends and relatives.

Many of these measures have left me feeling homesick…or at the very least, thinking of home. I find myself halfway through the second season of Prison Break, watching escaped convicts scurry across America in search of a hiding places in such places as Defiance, Ohio (a word to the wise for escaped convicts: not a good place to hide). Since buying a 3G adapter for my laptop and taking advantage of the 1-5am free internet time, I have become nocturnal due to hours spent longing for the snow depicted in the Facebook statuses of my friends. Moving to the southern hemisphere in August has left me with 7 months straight of summer, and many more months of heat to look forward to. Rainy season, where are you?

Literary criticism (or rather, praise) is never something I would consider only 84 pages into a 299 page book, but Bill Bryson’s “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America” has left me with little choice. I find myself wondering why “A Walk in the Woods” was a book I chose to skip on high school summer reading lists (luckily, it’s waiting patiently on my bookshelf). This morning in the staff room, I had to stifle fits of giggling as I read. My colleagues, whose literary exploits rarely veer far from a Danielle Steele or a trashy romance novel glance sideways at me as they complete their CASS marks. I tell them that I would explain what’s so funny, but they wouldn’t get it. I’m surprised I didn’t get slapped, as that excuse is one of my biggest pet peeves. But seriously. They wouldn’t.

In the book, Bill Bryson, a Des Moines native (“WELCOME TO DES MOINES: THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE”) who jetted out to England as soon as was humanly possible, returns to the homeland to drive around the small towns his father dragged him through in his childhood. Since reading, I have followed him through Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and into the south in search of the perfect Americana described only in Hardy Boys novels and depicted in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. His mockery of the small towns he visit’s attempts at this are what gets me. Then, some descriptions come too close to home. His portrayal of college towns, for example. “They are the only places in America that manage to combine the benefits of a small town pace of life with a dash of big-city sophistication.” Oxford, Ohio, I miss you so.

Eventually, I had to put it down. It was becoming too painful. He describes walking through beautiful Charleston, South Carolina, which bring to mind my own adventures there with my best friend Kelsey. I’m tempted to skip forward to when he will inevitably reach and ridicule Ohio, but I resist. The mockery would surely match my own.

I think what’s most painful is that I have been stuck in Okahandja, Namibia since August 22. Sure, I’ve made short visits to Windhoek and Otjiwarongo, but getting placed in the same city where I had training has left me feeling like the friend who watches all her friends go to college while she stays and works at the grocery store (NOTE: Nau-aib PS is far from a grocery store. I love my placement) and eventually gets pregnant at 19, buys a wedding dress that hides the bump and marries the manager of Walmart (NOTE: Don’t worry Mom and Dad, that’s not going to happen either). I long to travel around Namibia and enjoy, but also mock my friends’ sites as I now enjoy, but also mock Okahandja. Cities like Rundu, Katima, and Luderitz call my name the same way Americana calls out to Bryson. Except I’ll be Kerouac-ing it, as I don’t have a car and hitchhiking is the mode-du-transport in Namibia.

My site may not be in the North, but this weekend I got the opportunity to pound maize. Mark bought a couple bags of unpounded maize (technical term) while he was in Rundu. While I visited him this weekend, we pounded it.

Pounding is a long, tedious process. It took us  amateurs (with the help of an Owambo neighbor) about 4 hours to finish just one bag. Imagine if every meal you prepared took you that much time and effort. You wouldn’t waste food, now would you.

Pounding away. I’m not very good, but note the concentration and attentiveness of my partner.

The next step it to take the pounded maize out of the wooden thingie. Again. Technical term.

Next you sort the kernels from the shaved off pieces of corn. It’s a delicate process that neither I nor…

…Mark mastered