In Which I Encounter Namibia

Happy New Year (a little late), everyone!

I don’t really know where to begin. I’m in Africa. It’s REAL hot. But I’m OK with that because it’s just like…yeah, Namibia. It’s awesome. It inspires awe. And also confusion.

So, a gang o’ girls from WorldTeach and I flew in from JFK a few days ago. The plane ride was about 17 hours total, and I swear my butt is still asleep from sitting down for that long. The first day we were here was New Year’s Eve, which was a struggle because me + jetlag + a day of Orientation meetings + booze - sleep = what? It equals jumping into the hostel pool with your clothes on. Why? You got me.

What does Namibia do on New Year’s Eve, you may ask. Well, they ain’t got no ball drop. In fact, I’m not sure what they had. It mainly consisted of a TV broadcast of a popular music group dancing and sweating about on stage, while girls in sports bras and biker shorts gyrated in the background and the audience stared on in silence. After the singers jumped on each other’s shoulders (forming a sort of overly excited pyramid of men) and waddled off stage, some important guy came on stage to do the count down. That’s when we ditched the TV to go outside and sip champagne like classy ladies (plus Ted, the sole male volunteer) with the hostel owner.

Since then, we’ve been in training most of the time or bopping around Windhoek. Language training is horrifying. I have no clue how I’m going to learn Otjiherero. But it just sounds so cool I want to be immediately fluent. The language has 16 noun classes. And I thought memorizing masculine and feminine nouns was rough. Ha. My Otjiherero teacher has decided that my nickname is Mwa. I have not yet gotten used to him trying to get my attention by making what sounds like a kissing noise (muah) in my general direction.

Also, I’m not sure how effective this blog will be once I’m at my host school. Hopefully, I’ll figure out a way to get decent internet, but I expect the internet speed will be pretty slow, in which case I will not be posting too often. I’ve been told by quite a few people that I am “in the bush.” So, my expectation for the interwebs is not high.

I won’t bore you quite yet with my adventures in learning to teach. You’ll get enough of that for the next year.

It’s 9:30 pm here. So, tokerwa nawa, kids. Have a good night.