Special Days I and II: Ambassador; Language Learning Begins

On 17 April, just a few days into Peace Corps Namibia Group 41's Pre-Service Training, our group received a visit from the Honorable Thomas F. Daughton, United States Ambassador to Namibia.  He had been on the job for about six months at that point.  He was eloquent and friendly and most impressive.  He told us -- and I seriously believe I'm representing this accurately, but cannot guarantee I'm not misquoting -- that the primary goal of the United States in Namibia is to foster its successes, in part as an example to the rest of continent.  That's one of my primary goals in Namibia, too!

Training Manager Ben Kasetura, Ambassador Daughton, and
Peace Corps Namibia Country Director Danielle Chekaraou

Ambassador Daughton with Pre-Service Training and Peace Corps Staff outside the training center.
That is not a typical Namibian landscape in the background; it is the product of much gardening.

On 21 April, we discovered what languages we would be learning.  First the staff members -- there are about half-a-dozen Namibians responsible for the training program and another ten Language and Culture Trainers -- invited us outside, where the the LCTs taught us basic greetings in seven different languages.  We then had to greet at least three of them in his or her language before we could get back inside.  Goodness, were they lenient about that.

Trainees scurried about practicing...

Here is how you greet someone in Khoekhoegowab, usually called KKG, Khoekhoe (kway-kway) or Damara, the click-laden language of Namibia's Damara people:

You:  !Gâi //goas  (pronounced ‘[popping noise with tongue]guy [clicking noise with tongue]ghos’)

Other person:  !Gâi //goas

You:  Mî re?  ('Mee ray?')

Other person:  !Gâi a Atsama ( ‘[popping noise with tongue]guy ahtsahma’)

You:  !Gâi a (‘[popping noise with tongue]guy ah’)

...and then tested ourselves on the Gauntlet of Trainers to get back inside.

Once inside, having consulted my notes on each of my three greetings and gotten help from each of the three trainers I greeted, I learned I would be in the Afrikaans class.  In Afrikaans, we greet people by saying, "Goei more," pronounced, 'Hwee-ah more-ah.'  If I don't know the Afrikaans word, I can just say the English word and have about a 30% chance of getting it close to right.  This is not true with Rukwangali.  Of course, in Afrikaans, I have to convert any v's to f sounds, w's to v's, and pronounce g's as h's at the beginning of the word and a Semitic or Gaelic spitty, throat-clearing, gargly, hch sound at the end of a word.  And the vowels are permanently confusing.  Fun.

In our group of 31, 12 are learning Afrikaans, five Rukwangali, six Oshindongo, one Oshikwangera, two Silozi, two Otjiherero and three Khoekhoe.  At the end of two months of language training, two of the Khoekhoe learners discovered they would probably be better off learning Afrikaans.  Whoops.