Graduation Day!

On the 18th of June in 2015, the 31 Peace Corps Trainees of Namibia Group 41 officially became Peace Corps Volunteers.  Yee haw.  The training staff were all very pleased with us that NO ONE went home during Pre-Service Training.  Apparently, they usually lose up to 10%, and sometimes more, during the process. 

Graduation day is the same day as moving-to-your-new-home-for-the-next-two-years day, so it was quite busy.  (Well, actually, I and many colleagues moved to our new homes on graduation day, but some people moved to temporary quarters until their new homes were ready, or stayed one more night in Okahandja because they were moving someplace very far away and needed a full day’s worth of daylight to make the drive.  So.  There’s always a wide range of experience in Peace Corps service, even in the same country, specialization and time period.)  I jotted a few notes a day or two later, and took several photos of the ceremony part, and saved my program, so I may be able to reconstruct a bit, from the distant vantage of December.

Trainers prepare the stage.

Two days before graduation – which Peace Corps calls Swearing In – we met the site supervisors with whom we’d be working for the next two years.  (Most of us, of course.  Again, some supervisors did not attend; a few sent counterparts instead; and many PCVs will interact with supervisors only rarely, spending most of their time solo or with counterparts.)  My supervisor is a very cheerful native Namibian man of about 40 who has worked in capacity development for a decade or two.  He is very excited about the opportunities we have to assist local entrepreneurs, both individuals and collectives.  He likes to joke and laugh, so I’m very comfortable with him.

Our whole group – 31 trainees and almost as many supervisors – did a series of exercises on Monday and Tuesday to help set expectations and support our efforts to work together effectively.  For me, nothing surprising emerged from those training sessions, and I think my supervisor felt the same.  I think the most useful and the most fun part was getting to know each other, and other supervisors from other parts of the country, over lunches and tea breaks.

On Swearing In Day itself, we had to be at the conference center – a new one; not our trusty training center – well before the ceremony started, probably to ensure everything was in place when the dignitaries arrived.  Many of the incipient PCVs wore Namibian clothes, either traditional attire or contemporary outfits they had ordered from a fashion designer and seamstress who was one of our Community Economic Development business partners.  We chattered together and took each others’ pictures for an hour or two, and then took our seats for the ceremony.

Traditional Damara dress; contemporary Namibian dress; US dress;
US slacks and shirt; contemporary Namibian dress with US sweater;
traditional Herero dress.  Deliberately silly poses.  Note the 'tradition'
of cloth dresses in Namibia isn't much more than 100 or 150 years old.

We opened, of course, with the African Union, Namibian and US anthems, which all of us PCTs knew well after singing them at least weekly for nine weeks.  Then the Okahandja Youth Choir took the floor and demonstrated how real singers sing.  Benna, our training manager, presented us, and Danielle, our country director, accepted us, and the Peace Corps Regional Director for Africa, Dick Day, celebrated us and all those who supported us through training.  Then Danielle led us in our pledge of service, which we had already had to read and sign, along with an oath of loyalty to the US – a modified version of the ones sworn by federal employees and military personnel.  At that point, we were officially Peace Corps Volunteers, and it was all so exciting we needed the OYC back up for another song or two.

More speeches – lovely and touching and rife with the metaphors of school graduation ceremonies; all apt.  In accordance with Namibian mores, each speaker began by thanking all the other speakers, special guests, and three or four people ‘in absentia’ – those were the dignitaries who had planned to attend but had to cancel at the last minute, who included the US ambassador and the local police chief.  After two to three minutes of thanking, the speaker says, “The protocol is observed,” and moves into the unique part of his or her remarks.  It makes for a longer, slower ceremony than one might find elsewhere.

Benna, Danielle, Dick, Local Official subbing for
Honorable Councilor Steve Biko Boois in absentia

Two volunteers made thank you speeches in their new languages – one Afrikaans, one Silosi – and three recited a poem they had written, together, in their three new languages: Afrikaans, Khoikhoigoab and Rukwangali.  People cheered like crazy.  The Okahandja Youth Choir performed an impromptu song when the P.A. system went wobbly and we sat waiting for it to be fixed.  We did all the anthems again and then went outside on another gorgeous day for a lavish buffet that was not quite lavish enough to feed everyone.  Many of us new volunteers looked a bit bemused, as the realization that training is done and we’re off on the independent, on-our-own part of the adventure.   Two of us will be living in huts made from reeds.

Three days after being sworn in, I took this photo
of the desert sky from my new back yard.  21 June 2015.

Six months later, as I type this, we have a new country director (the impressive and delightful Danielle resigned the day after our swearing-in), and four of my Group 41 friends are back in the States to stay.  Winter has turned to summer, and the difference isn't great:  nights are warm and days are too hot, instead of cool-to-cold nights and perfectly comfortable days.

PCN 41 - My Group

My group of trainees is Namibia 41 – the 41^st team to benefit from service in this beautiful country.  The first team traveled here in 1990, the same year Namibia elected its first president, and became officially independent.

In Philadelphia in April, deployment day.  Three of this
group came to my house for Thanksgiving.

We are 13 volunteers in the Community Economic Development program and 18 in the Community Health program.  We are all college graduates (typically a Peace Corps requirement, which I believe stems more from host country preference than PC prejudice.).  Several of us have lived in Washington, DC; three are from South Carolina.  New Jersey and California are heavily represented.  Enough of us have moved around that we qualify for two or three answers to the question, “Where are you from?”  The Californians like to argue the LA vs. San Francisco question.

The youngest is 21 – there might be two or three of these – the oldest is mid-sixties.  Average age is mid-thirties, although I think there is only one person in his 30s and two in their (late) 40s.  We have five or six in their 50s, and two in their 60s, so 20 or 21 are in their 20s.  Everyone seems smart and committed, and professional experiences vary widely.  There’s a former president of an east African college, a former entry-level investment banker, a coffee-shop manager and a wide range of others.  Religious backgrounds are equally mixed; most of us are not regular churchgoers; a few are devout.

At Heroes' Acres outside Windhoek in May.

Financial backgrounds range pretty wide, also.  There are plenty of us who are accustomed to scrimping, and others who clearly have more substantial financial resources.  The group includes twenty-five whites, four blacks and two Asians.  The blacks and Asians get frequent warnings that locals may not believe they are Americans, since the American media Namibians see is heavily focused on white culture.  The whites get warned that we may get preferential treatment given our skin color, which may make us uncomfortable, or very occasionally encounter anti-white prejudice.  I know I don’t have to check my shopping bags with security when I go into the supermarket, and my black Namibian business partner does.  Ick, right?

It is not uncommon for a trainee or two to decide that Peace Corps isn’t for him or her during the Pre-Service Training, which the staff also admits can be a Pretty Stressful Time.  So far (written in June 2015; posted in December - whoops), we’re all holding steady, even the people learning the quite challenging Khoi Khoi language, with its four precise clicking and popping noises.  Two people have been sick enough to require treatment in the capital, Windhoek, and one person has dropped a water bottle on another resulting in two broken toes.  Everyone seems to have found at least one or two colleagues to look to for support and friendship.  I am still charmed and delighted by my two roommates from the first week, and finding all kinds of other gems in the mix.

Roomies!  In Swakopmund in October.

I wrote the preceding paragraphs in June.  Now it is December, and four of us are back in the US for good – three from the 40-plus demo, which I believe is unusual.  I’ve gotten to know a few of my class better, and two or three from previous classes, and had four PCV friends visit for Thanksgiving weekend, which was wonderful.  (More on Thanksgiving later; probably, like, next May?)  This is probably the most admirable, most likeable large group of not-quite-randomly-selected people of which I have ever been a member.

Shadow Days

In early June, we PCTs got another great practical learning opportunity:  three days shadowing a current PCV (Peace Corp volunteer), with one day at either end for travel time -- which meant a chance to figure out how travel works locally.  Flagging cabs comes into it...

On Wednesday, we partnered up with each other and a trainer or two.  The PC staff wasn't going to turn us entirely loose on our first solo-travel venture!  My gang was three PCTs in the back of a small car with our KKG language trainer and the driver in front.  We were off to Windhoek, where I would debark and spend the next three or four days while the others connected to long-distance combis (vans) that would take them farther south.

I did brave the street with my camera, briefly, to snap this shot of the
Namibian Crafts Centre where I did my shadowing.

Windhoek!  Yes, I got sent to Windhoek for shadowing.  The national capital, by far the largest city in Namibia (viz, about 300k people, so, y'know, not exactly Nairobi, Sao Paolo or Tokyo), the land of delight and danger.  Delight in the form of THREE MOVIE THEATERS, maybe wifi everywhere, and an Indian restaurant; danger in the form of knife-wielding muggers, purse snatchers, extortionist cab drivers, broken-bottle-wielding muggers, and rampant housebreaks.  Yikes.

So simple; so beautiful.
At first I thought they were cartoon-y, but they got to me.

My host (if I was her shadow, what was she to me?  My shadow-caster?  Is there a word for this?) was straight from my own demographic (age, sex, education, professional experience), and had been a community economic development volunteer for a year.  Her insights, which she shared with a generous openness for which I am deeply grateful, were very helpful and honestly come by.  She'd been through some stuff, you guys, and not just living in danger city.

San jewelry, made from ostrich shell fragments.
They get the darker colors by heating the shell in the fire.

Her job was unlike mine in that she was assigned to a single long-running, mid-sized business that she helps out with marketing and organizational management support.  I now work with many different, mostly very small and new, companies.  Her organization is called Omba, and they work with what are called 'formerly-marginalized' communities in local parlance.  They started their efforts with the San people, who call themselves !Kung and Ju'/hoansi.  The second word means 'the harmless people' or 'the gentle people.'  They are the oldest-known human inhabitants of this area, and maybe the original click-and-pop speakers.  Omba has helped them develop their traditional artwork into marketable decorative art and crafts.  My host spends most of her time in the Omba office behind their shop in Windhoek, but occasionally goes out into the bush with a tent and sleeping bag to meet with the San artisans and do trainings or planning sessions.  Fun mix.  They also work with Himba and other peoples.

Traditional San drawing style -- these are reminiscent of the 30,000-year old
rock paintings in the Namib -- transformed into prints for textiles.
Really high-quality textiles.

One of the less-discussed dangers of living in Windhoek is that there are movie theaters and Indian restaurants, and even a few high-end shops.  Excellent in themselves, they sadly tempt you to spend money you maybe just do not have.  My host has chosen to spend some of her 'America money' on taking the lovely one-bedroom flat that comes with her job and turning it into a super-lovely, welcoming home with luxuries like mattress pads, salad forks and coordinating colors.  It was such a pleasure to come 'home' to each evening, and wake up to each morning.  Kiss that good-bye; I am stingy with America money and my walls on site remain pockmarked with prior residents' picture hangers and picture-hanger divots, and my furniture is office cast-offs.  But it was a gorgeous place to have a few days sightseeing.  And we ate well.

Baskets from a drier northern area (not San) use commercial dyes because
natural resources of leaves and nuts and things are in tight supply.

I got to do a lot of database-updating for my host, and sit in on the weekly meeting, and meet her boss and co-workers.  One of the co-workers taught me the Damara greeting, "Matisa," which means more-or-less "How's it going?" and one I use frequently to excellent effect.  There wasn't any wifi.  I didn't get mugged.  I made it back to Okahanja with tremendous success.  I did not make it to the movies or the Indian restaurant, which I don't regret too terribly, as one day I shall see "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and maybe it will be all the better for the long, long wait.

Baskets from more fecund areas use natural dyes.  Judicious representatives
of all these works helped make my host's home elegant and special.

For the most part, I did not dare take my camera into the streets of Wild Windhoek, and didn't want to take any chances with my host's privacy, so the pictures are just of the her shop and its crafts.  I hope you find them as beautiful as I do.

A little info on San artwork.

Technical Training: Results

One of the primary responsibilities many Community Economic Development (CED) Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) in Peace Corps Namibia (PCN) have is working with small- and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs, also sometimes interpreted as small- and micro-entrepreneurs).  We provide counseling, advice and training.  To prepare us to offer those services, PCN provides us with technical training in the form of both classes and practical application.

The classes consisted of 75 to 120 minutes of highly interactive slides, role plays, conversation, exercises and case studies on business-related topics like budgeting, costing and pricing, and bookkeeping.  The practical application consisted of two primary exercises.  For one, we 13 CED trainees planned and delivered a four-day Business Skills Workshop for local entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs.  For the other, each of us worked with a local entrepreneur in starting or improving a small business, and then planned and executed a Market Day where those businesses could sell their products and services to the community.

A tuck shop operator, gone mobile.

The workshop was, I think, a smashing success.  We marketed it around town through various means – mostly just signs posted at all the public gathering spots, plus word of mouth – and got about 40 sign-ups, which included our 13-or-so Start-Up Partners (SUPs).  Probably there were several learners who did not understand English well enough to benefit fully from the training, but many of them were fluent and very engaged.  I know some, too, were not numerate (numbers literate), so they got less from the training than others.  Namibia has an excellent public education system compared to many countries, especially in the developing world (shouldn’t be easier, though, with only two million people in the country?), but plenty still don’t get the level of attention they need to learn fully.

I don’t have any photos.  I co-taught the Business Management and Networking sections, and aired my Afrikaans a bit for each.  Perhaps the highlight was our rugby-playing recent college grad and former banker teaching everyone the Electric Slide.  To a Michael Jackson song.  Now, that was an icebreaker.

Market Day didn't require icebreakers; the kids made their own.

So, on to the Market Day.  We scheduled it for the last Saturday in May, as people in Namibia typically get paid once a month, at the end of the month, so that’s when they’re in a spending mood.  We had a couple of seamstresses, several tuck shops (informal convenience stores, usually run from someone’s home), a pair of braii operators (caterers specializing in regional barbecue), and a few others, including a bathtub-massage-machine operator.  She brings her device to your house and you get 30 minutes or whatever of auto-massage in the tub.  It’s supposed to be very helpful for the elderly.

Not old enough to be getting the demo aqua-massage!

In order to attract the crowds, we also offered a bouncy palace, face painting and other activities for kids.  With massagers and other machines plus the bouncy castle pulling on the electric supply, it kept failing and the castle would deflate.  The kids still had fun with it.  We didn’t actually get much of a crowd – we advise the PCN 43 group to do aggressive marketing!  However, most of our SMEs were pleased with the exposure.  And all of our Community Health and HIV AIDS Program (CHHAP) PCVs showed up, and as per the weather was gorgeous so as the event wore down all us PCVs and our Language and Cross-Culture Facilitators (LCFs) lazed about in the sunshine in great contentment.

A seamstress; her PCV advisor (in glasses) in an outfit of her design

Bouncy!

Not so bouncy!

Namibian-flag face.

Braii-ers basking

One PCV (Not I) Airs Some Guilt

Our Namibian Volunteer Service Network just shared this blog post, a few years old and from Paraguay but an insightful view into what service is and can be.  It includes a link to Peter Singer's 1971 essay on moral action in the face of affluence and poverty, which is thought-provoking indeed.  I hope you'll enjoy it.

Special Days V: Recreation, with SWIMMING!!

In Peace Corps parlance, which is rife with acronyms and initialisms, the initialism PST means Pre-Service Training.  However, some of the PC staff informed us it might also stand for Pretty Stressful Time.  Every now and again, they make an attempt to alleviate the stress.  (The stress-alleviation effort, beginning with Group 42, the one right after mine, has taken the form of a much shorter classroom-based PST with a much longer site-based component.)

Stress-reducing scenery.

Thus, one lovely Saturday (pretty much all days are lovely, at least in terms of weather, in the Namibian winter, so that was nothing special and yet of course wonderfully special), we gathered at the training center and took seats in the combis (vans) for transport to Gross Barmen, about 25 kilometers from Okahandja.  The combis had to make three trips, I think, so some folks got longer at the resort than others.  There was some discussion, during the wait, as to whether spending many more hours in the company of the same 50 or so people (31 trainees plus about 15 staff and trainers) would really reduce any stress.  There was plenty of space, though, and a lot of those 50 people are just wonderful.

Otjiherero trainer Remsey works it, baby, by the small pool.

Gross Barmen is the site of a natural hot spring that was once a gathering site, presumably, for the San people, and definitely for the Herero people as they migrated into the area in the 16th century and pushed the San farther to the drier parts of the region.  Sometime in the late 19th century a group of Germans built a mission there as they worked to convert the Herero to Christianity.  Eventually there was also a police station, and remnants of buildings still exist, though the Europeans seem to have largely abandoned the site with the outbreak of the genocide against the Herero in 1905.

Nowadays it's a resort, run by Namibia Wildlife Resorts, which is similar to the US National Parks Service or the National Trust in the UK.  From what I understand, Gross Barmen is much too expensive for most Namibians to visit.  However, presumably the funds from fees paid by wealthy local and foreign visitors, plus corporations and organizations like Peace Corps, go to help support social services and other initiatives for the poorer people of the country.  So, conscience salved.


The big pool.  I just got in there and more or less stayed.  For hours.

The hot spring has been channeled into a small pool in an indoor facility, which also contains a steam room, sauna, some photos and information of historical interest, and a starkly beautiful spa-services area offering massages, skin treatments and the like.  None of those services was affordable on a Peace Corps allowance!  However, PCN did cover access the the spring and the big outdoor pool for us, and people used them as they saw fit.  The hot spring was toasty but never uncomfortable, and the outdoor pool was sublime.  I did laps and laps and pencil rolls and dolphin dives and hung out in the wet, chatting with other water-centric trainees.  I vaguely recall teaching someone to dive, sort of.  Hmm.



Trainer Rachel, who lived in Scandinavia for many years, took charge of lunch.

At some point we had lunch.  Potato salad, greek salad, chicken and maybe some beef.  Who cares?  Water was the point.

Rather a Pretty View, Really

When I went to Training Manager Benna to make sure it would be okay if a group of us trainees walked one of the hill trails outside Okahandja one Sunday morning, he said something like, "I was wondering when you would ask.  Usually trainees are up there the first weekend."

The road to the trail

Well, we talked about it a lot... but someone said they'd been warned of bad men.  Someone else said they'd been warned of snakes.  No one knew where the trails began or where they went.  Host families seemed to think leaving the streets of Okahandja was a bad idea.  However, I see mountains, I want to climb them, and the bad men don't seem like they'd be much of a match for a dozen or two robust, young-and-strong or middle-aged-and-cranky Americans, and there are snakes everywhere.  So I finally realized that one of the volunteers from earlier classes would be able to assist with locating the trail, and she was glad to do so.  We invited everyone to gather at the training center at 9am, and put up a big sign reminding them (a few of our trainees are city types) to wear good shoes and sunscreen and bring water and a snack.

Steep enough to be interesting, without, mostly, having to scrabble

It's a lovely walk, about 45 minutes to the top of what some previous trainee class decided to call Pride Rock.  There are a couple of nice scrambly bits, though nothing terribly challenging, and great views all the way.  On our first trek we saw numerous baboons.  We never, thank you Tara, saw a snake.

A rocky promontory about halfway up; great lookout and re-group point.

The top was mostly bare rock, with a small tree or two and a few bushes.  The wind was brisk up there.  We broke into clumps and chatted and snacked and basked.  In Namibia, it's always basking weather (pretty much), but I haven't gotten sick of it yet.  At some point I asked whether people would like to try for a few minutes of silence, and everyone stopped talking.  Immediately, the wind seemed to pick up, and it brought the chortling of the baboons with it.  Mystical.

View from the top.  The dry rivers still astonish me.

The next week we went again, and again the wind freshened as soon as we stopped chattering.  That week we didn't have baboons, though.

They are smaller than you, but much stronger, faster, more nimble, and their teeth are huge and pointy.

Here's a link to all the photos, to try to give you an idea of how beautiful it is.

Food Part One

This could have been Special Days V and VI, but no... This is food, part one, as I expect the subject will come up again.  First and most important, I am now at my permanent site and within a very expensive cab ride of expensive Indian food, so my paneer needs are being better met than I had any right to hope.  (‘Expensive’ is a relative term; I get a great Indian meal for about twenty-five American bucks, and enough to take home to feed me for two or three more meals.  Even with the ten American bucks for the round-trip via the informal taxi system, it’s cheap by US standards.  However, my monthly living allowance is about US$ 160, so it winds up being pricey by Peace Corps standards.)

Sharpening the knife before dispatching
a goat.

Anyway, of greater interest, I suspect and hope, is NAMIBIAN food.  Pretty much anyone in this country will tell you, often without your asking or expressing interest in any way, that Namibians love meat.  It makes absolute sense.  In a desert country – and even the riverine area on the northern border, where the population is densest, doesn’t get much rain for eight months of most years – meat makes sense.  Desert plants are naturally tough, as they need to be to survive that climate, and very difficult for humans to digest.  You need multiple stomachs, or super-digestive juices, like a cow.  Or a goat, sheep, or one of myriad varieties of antelope, like springbok and kudu and eland and so forth.  For humans, letting the livestock eat the grass and scrub and then eating the livestock makes much more sense, personally and ecologically, than trying to grow vegetables with little or no water available.

All of that said, in Namibia today lots of people don’t get to eat much meat.  A significant portion of the population lives in deep poverty, and what little meat they might be able to buy, or be given by more fortunate family members, goes to the father.  Many children survive mainly on porridge, and not a lot of it.  Namibia also suffers a wide income disparity, with a few very wealthy people throwing off the World Bank’s average income calculation, so the country qualifies for less aid in some areas than it would if they used median income instead of average.  Soapbox!

MEAT!

Yeah, more meat.  Ooohg.

When the Peace Corps trainers and homestay families put on a feast, however, they take the task seriously, and pots and plates and platters get LOADED with Namibian specialties, almost all cooked over open flames in the side yard of the training center.  We gathered one sunny Saturday morning (there is virtually no other kind of Saturday morning in May in this country, unless you’re by the coast and get some mist some mornings) in Okahandja and met the two goats in the back of a bakkie (pickup truck) that we (well, not me – no way) would soon be eating.  The chickens were in cardboard boxes in the kitchen.  The knives and machetes and axes were spread about a bit.  The Knorr’s soup mix was in plastic bags from the Pick ‘n’ Pay, and firewood was piled everywhere.



Host families, trainers and Melodia’s lovely mother set to work butchering, chopping, mixing and dropping things into pots according to languages.  My Afrikaans group prepared sausages and potato salad, as well as fatcakes and roosterbrood, two of my favorites.  The former is a variation on Dutch olliebollen, which essentially translates as ‘greaseballs’ and is related to what, in English, we call doughnuts.  Why are we squeamish about calling these things what they are?  They are sweet dough – cake dough – deep fried in fat – fatcakes.  Get over it.  They’re delicious, and if you need calories, as you might in a sparsely-populated land with a long dry season and many kilometers to go before you find a duiker or a neighbor’s cow to eat, they’ve got lots.

I don't know if mopane worms qualify as meat,
but they're certainly protein.

Roasting the bread

The Afrikaans ‘brood’ means ‘bread,’ and ‘rooster’ is more-or-less ‘roasted.’  Roosterbrood is unsweetened dough – bread dough – cooked on the grill, and if you like bread it is rip-roaringly delicious.  That many chefs choose to cut the rolls open and rub in a bit of garlic butter before serving is just that many bonus points.  And then one small contingent of Afrikaans speakers pulled out a portable burner and crèpe pan and started making cinnamon-sugar crèpes, and my joy knew no bounds.

Cakes, frying

The long wall of our training center was lined with tables, each groaning with food.  I walked Wilhelmina, my hostess, along the offerings, holding both our plates and requesting a bit of everything with meat for her, and everything without for myself.  Her plate was dramatically more full, but I’ll tell you – that Damara/Nama spinach dish, scooped up with roosterbrood, was tasty-delicious enough to keep me happy for a week.  Wilhelmina had brought an old ice cream container in which to take home her leftovers, and there was enough in that for two meals.  The amount of work and care and knowledge and kindness that went into this feast was astonishing – and enough to keep me happy for a year or two. 

Lots of learning going on here.

Fast forward a month, and it’s our turn.  The trainees got to host an American feast for the trainers and host families, and we somewhat half-heartedly sorted ourselves into regional groups.  There was talk of tacos, banana pudding and salmon – and eventually there were actual tacos and even a taste of banana pudding.  Salmon proved too daunting. 

I use the term ‘half-heartedly’ with caution, because there was huge enthusiasm for the event.  However, everyone, or almost everyone, was getting pretty sick of flip charts, Powerpoints, role plays and each other after eight weeks of forced together-time.  That said, as we counted off the days, the excitement grew, and when a New Jerseyite promised funnel cakes, ambitions erupted.  The trainers kept reminding us that our host families would want MEAT (and so would the trainers).  As a bona fide vegetarian of 30-plus years’ standing, who had been eating meat daily and cooking it weekly for two months, I gave myself a pass and decided to make macaroni and CHEESE – with BROCCOLI! in it.  There was a definite flurry of vegetable-rich recipes flying about the (very informal) meetings.

Grilling, mostly pizzas

Wilhelmina loved the taco meat, but not the crunchy bits.

Buying enough cheese to feed 100 people mac ‘n’ cheese, albeit a tiny serving each, was a thrill.  Getting together with three friends to make pizza dough, sauce and my casserole was a delight.  Our hostess’ host sister or cousin or niece or someone was a great ‘help,’ her host mother fed everyone soup, cheese sauce is like a soul food for me, and we teased each other and stirred and kneaded and tested and texted our host families that we would be out after curfew.  Then we wrote out a list of *everything* she would need to bring to the party the next day for our kind hostess, packed her host family’s refrigerator, and hopped into her super-kind host father’s car.  He drove us three visitors all over town to deposit us safely with our own kind host families.

Singing, listening, graciously accepting thanks

The next day we met early at the training center, wrangled barbeque grills and a dodgy oven, set up tables and laid out paper plates and plastic forks.  Our host families started showing up around noon, and we were almost ready for them.  In fits and bits, we loaded the tables and everyone took seats in the hall.  While the food cooled (we love cold pizza in America!) our ex-Army volunteer MC’d the appreciation speeches.  Our SoCal marketer led us in prayer, and a couple of musical-theater lovers led a sing-along of Namibian folk songs.  A few people made speeches in their new languages, endeavoring to thank host families for their generosity, kindness and patience, but there aren’t words enough in any language to convey the depth of our gratitude.  Training manager Ben and Host Family Coordinator Lydia spoke, too, and passed out certificates of appreciation to each family present.  Then they (finally) let the host families loose on the buffet. 

A health volunteer with an excellent
feel for pizza sauce.

There really wasn’t a whole lot of meat.  There were beef tacos, hummus and fresh-baked bread from the west, jambalaya or gumbo from our southern volunteers (plus that banana pudding), pizza with a great variety of toppings, funnel cakes and mac ’n’ broc ’n’ cheese (I crumbled potato chips on top of one pan!), brownies, apple cake, and a whole bunch of other things I barely got to taste, as by the time the host families and trainers and staff had gotten theirs, we volunteers were down to scraps.  Even a scrap of that pizza sauce was worth the wait.  The sauce chef learned a thing or two from Italian grandparents.  The gumbo not only had many meaty bits, but also hard-cooked eggs.  I heard from a server that a lot of the Namibian guests were eager for an egg.  I think it’s a great idea for gumbo; it came from a Missourian who’s lived in Louisiana for many years.







Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a funnel cake in the U.S.

Digging in at last

The funnel-cake-and-gumbo team

After we got everything cleaned up, a few of us went over to the beer garden next door.  I ordered French fries.  They were good.  Later, one of the other volunteers told me that her host dad had liked the macaroni and cheese especially much, once he had pulled all those weird green bits out of it.

You can look here for more photos if you like.