Okuhepa: Re-Connecting

At the end of September last year, when my PCV group had been at their various sites for three months, Peace Corps Namibia hosted a mandatory, week-long training they call 'Re-Connect.' The 28 of us remaining from a beginning count of 31 headed, from our myriad different locations, to Windhoek, the capital and more-or-less geographical center of the country.

[An aside: not all of us had been at our sites for three months. Several had had to change sites for various reasons, and a few had spent days or weeks effectively site-less, camping at another volunteer's housing or what have you. Stay flexible, Group 43 who just arrived yesterday. I'm typing this on 15 April 2016 -- taxes filed a month ago -- the one-year anniversary of Group 41's arrival in Namibia. It's one year and one day since I kissed Philadelphia and JFK good-bye.]

I got GREAT RIDES to Windhoek, pretty much. First a nice cab driver offered a free lift to the highway -- he kept saying, "You are my customer." Then a shiny, new, empty van stopped and picked up me and the one guy waiting to get to Windhoek, and we rode the whole three hours without someone else's toddler on our laps. Faboo. I SMS'ed the van's license plate number to PCN as they ask we do, and when the driver let me out in the big city, he told me, "You know not all blacks are crooks." "Whaaat?" I asked. "I know that. Of course not." He said I didn't need to write down his license number, so then I had to explain that my work makes me do that, no matter what, and I really appreciated the ride and everything. I hope he believed me.

Once we were all gathered at the HQ building, PCN loaded us into several vans and drove us to the edge of Windhoek, up into the mountains to Greiters Hotel and Conference Center. The views were amazing. Sadly, the swimming pool was amazingly gross; opaque pine green and about 20% solid matter - some kind of vegetation. They got it cleaned up for us by Thursday, and I risked a few laps.

The view from the dining room patio

The very first night there was a lunar eclipse; one of the PCVs knew about it and said it would take place at 2:00. I set the alarm, and crept out into the dark at the appointed time, hissing greetings to the half-dozen or so other volunteers gathered. One of them was quietly drunk, and kept repeating that he felt like he was in an existential play.

It was four in the morning. How steady a hand do you expect?

The moon was high and nearly full and gigantic in the deep blue sky above our hills. And it stayed that way for about 20 minutes, until someone with a data plan and a smart phone informed us that the eclipse would be at its height at about 4:00. I crept back and re-set the alarm, and re-crept out at the new time, and yep, there was an eclipse. Very beautiful and maybe a good omen for the event.

We had five days of workshops and field trips; lots of information on monitoring and evaluation, Peace Corps grants and how leave works. Also a networking session with a bunch of organizations that support SMEs in various ways in Namibia. We also offered each other slide shows describing our sites and our projects; it was very interesting to get those various perspectives.

Group 41 gathers for tea after two hours conferring.
Still another five hours ahead.

They fed us up pretty generously; as at PST, there was a 10:00 tea break every day. One day, fatcakes; two other days, these sweet muffins that people call cookies. Several volunteers kind of boasted to each other about how many of each they had.

I think six was the record for these cookies. Call it carbo-loading for the race.

Many of the volunteers had registered for a marathon in Swakopmund that weekend, and they ran up and down the hills in the evenings. I walked, with plenty of friends for company if I wanted. It was such a beautiful space - though we got a lot of warnings about theft.

I like monitoring and evaluation, and the networking was helpful, and they didn't make us do role-plays (there were a lot of role-plays at PST; I remain uninterested in doing any more any time soon), so I found the week very helpful indeed. Now it's almost time for our Mid-Service Conference.