I have to start off with a big thank you to everyone that
has sent me emails. As always they are
lovely to receive. I really appreciate
the updates from home and enjoy hearing what you are up to. This will be a quick update just to tell you
a few things about my site and what I’ve been up to. I have a couple of posts from training and
the first weeks here drafted that I need to finish up. I will share them over the course of the next
few weeks with hopefully shorter more frequent posts. I’ll do my best.
Please note the changes to my side bar... I've added what I think are some interesting links and updated my address. At the moment I don't have any special requests for packages (other than for cheez-its :) ), but will be thinking about it over the next few days. I will add a wishlist to my side bar when I think of some more things that are not available here.
I’m currently in what PC calls ‘Phase II,’ which is the
first three months at site. They say
this is a difficult part of our service because things can go very slow while
you’re getting to know your community, what your job will be, and transitioning
to speaking a new language. I’m
impressed with how well PC knows these things, but they have been doing this
for a while. It has been a bit rough
moving away from the friends I got to know in training and essentially starting
all over again, but things are going well and I’m learning a lot about my
village, the culture, and myself.
Aroab is located on the outskirts of the Kalahari desert and
was originally home to the Nama and San people.
It’s located on a dirt road 170 Km from the nearest town in Namibia,
Keetmanshoop, and 40 Km from the South African border. There is a river that runs through the
village that is dry most of the year and that is where part of the name Aroab
comes from. The Nama people call a dry
river bed an ‘ab’ and the thorn bushes from the area ‘aro.’ Nama is a click language so the technical
writing for the name is !!Aro!ab with the symbols representing clicks.
The village council’s main role is to provide the basic
services to the community. These
services include water, power, sewage, waste removal or refuse, and to ensure
that the village’s rates and vats (taxes) are paid. The council has several IGAs (Income
Generating Activities) set up to generate income for the council to cover the
costs of these services when community members are not able to pay their
individual bills. Aroab is the only
village in the Karas region that has not lost power or water due to lack of
payment. The councilors are appointed by
the community. They are in charge of
listening to the ideas and wants of the community then deciding which ones to go
forward with. It is the responsibility
of the councilors to decide what will be done and the village council office to
make it happen.
I believe my primary role will be to work with the council
to help improve their IGAs that they currently have in place. These include the swimming pool, SME park,
brick making project, campsite, and self-catering accommodations. My secondary role will be to work with
community members to help with SME development, financial literacy training,
and/or youth entrepreneurship development.
The secondary project will be based off of community interest and I hope
to get started on it soon. At the moment
the council doesn’t have a specific plan for me so I have been doing a lot of
reading and studying of Afrikaans. I’ve
read a number of PC books and materials as well as village development plans. It’s pretty interesting to see this side of
village management.
My Afrikaans is slowly but surely coming along. The official language is Afrikaans with some
Nama speaking people, but I’m pretty sure everyone at least knows
Afrikaans. One of my goals is to become
fluent by the end of my first year. I
think it will be very important for communication with the people. Everyone in my office can speak English, but
a lot of the older people in the community don’t.
Another goal I have is to run the Swakop marathon next
September. We have a lot of runners in
our group and they are all planning on doing it… so I figured why not. It’s something to look forward to, work
towards, keep me healthy, and I know I would never have done it in the
states. I’ll be shooting for the full,
but will be happy with a half seeing as how I’ve never run before. We’ll see how it goes!
I’ll end this post with a bit of news. I’m very excited to announce that I am now
the proud owner of a very cute little kitten.
Her name is Lottie and I got her last Thursday (Oct 18). I’m not sure how old she is, but she is still
very small. She was living outside for a
bit and I’m amazed at how smart she is.
She has gotten used to my house very quickly and - BIG PLUS - knew how
to use a litter box right away! I have
made two toys for her from those collected items I shared in my house tour but
need more ideas. If you have any good
homemade cat toy ideas send them my way.
I can see that scratching might become a problem in the future so I’ll
be making a scratching post of some sort very soon. Materials I have are paper, floss (I’m amazed
at the many things you can use this for), cardboard and cardboard boxes, toilet
paper rolls, 1 Liter milk cartons, cans (my can opener doesn’t leave the sharp
edge), bottle caps, and I can find wood on the outskirts of the village. Any tips and tricks for training are welcome
too :)
Here are some
pictures of Lottie for you :)
(Picking her up from
Mrs. Losbar’s place at the hostel)
(Starting to explore)
(What seems to be her
sleeping spot of choice :) )