I Am A Resource

Looking back to May 2016:

Each April, and again every August, a group of mostly-young Americans debarks from a looong flight at Hosea Kutako International Airport in Windhoek, Namibia, to embark on the glorious journey that is in-country Peace Corps Pre-Service Training (PST).  (Chief Kutako was  a soldier, prisoner, teacher, miner, paramount chief of the OvaHerero, and one of the drafters of the first Namibian petition for independence sent to the United Nations.  Among other things.  Click the link; it's an inspiring story.)  The April trainees are part of an odd-numbered group -- mine was 41 -- serving in community economic development and community health and HIV/AIDS prevention (CED and CHHAP, respectively).  The August trainees are even-numbered and serve as teachers, with a very few in education-related administration or training positions.

Group 41, mine of April 2015, benefited from the services of a number of volunteers who'd been serving for a bit less than a year or two, who came to our training facility for a week at a time and were called Resource Volunteers.  Alicia and Julia were two of the first PCVs I met in Namibia, and they were great.  They and Kaitlyn, Aaron, J.T., and a handful of others provided some of the most useful, practical, applicable info I got at PST.  As with the shadowing experience, when it came time for us Group 41-ers to be Resource Volunteers to April 2016's Group 43, I was glad to apply.  It's that service mentality; that gratitude thing.  Okuhepa.

There's a couple of Group 41 Resource Vols at the back of the room here.
They kindly returned to Okahandja for our swearing-in ceremony.

In early April 2016, I gathered with a group of colleagues at the training center in Okahandja for Training of Trainers.  It was not the best-organized or most-useful of events, which was disappointing, but it was good to see PCVs I love, a few language trainers I admire and respect, and meet some new language trainers.

About four weeks later I went back to Okahandja to be Resourceful for Group 43's Week Three of PST.  They had 18 CED volunteers and 15 CHHAP volunteers, including a sound engineer, a community organizer, an M&A attorney, a DJ (and small businessman; he had run his deejaying business himself) and a clutch of social workers.  Cool.  Linda the Magnificent, my PC boss, had devised a diabolical learning scheme by which the new CED trainees would train themselves.  They had materials from which to learn about things like bookkeeping, creating a business plan and conducting feasibility studies, and they had to learn those things and then teach them - to each other and to a group of the language facilitators, who are all Namibians, albeit with much better English language skills than is the norm here.  So it was great practice for conducting trainings at site.

Gosh, Resource Volunteering gave me all kinds of flashbacks.
Peanut butter and brodjes for tea!  Yaaaaaaaah!!!

The magnificent Linda shows how training is done, y'all.

Cross-cultural conversation out by the bees.  This one was about gender
norms and sexual relationships.  Tannie Martha played the role Mama Rosa
took with my group, of the mother who is thrilled her daughter has attracted
a rich American who will marry the girl and buy the parents a Land Rover!

Week 3 included Cultural Cooking Day, which included our janitor/all-purpose
woman Melodia's awesome fatcakes WITH RAISINS

and a whole lot of other food, some of it still quite new for these trainees.

Thank goodness, and Melodia, for raisiny fatcakes, 'cause it's going to take a
very lot to get me to eat a 'smiley' -- that's the goat's head Afrikaans teacher
Joel is waving jubilantly here.  Guess why it's called a smiley...

I loved working with the trainees, which mostly meant providing feedback on their trainings ("Talk slower."), and felt energized and optimistic about their skills and commitment.  I felt, too, like I had forged the beginning of something like friendship with a few of them.  A few weeks after I got home, Linda phoned and told me that, very sadly, one of my colleagues was suffering medical issues and wouldn't be able to take his week as a Resource, and asked if I could fill in for him.  I agreed readily, although it's a bummer of a hike and PCN doesn't provide their Resources with an allowance to cover the higher cost of feeding ourselves while living in a kitchen-less dorm room, so meals got pretty pricey, too.

Plus I got to climb a little mountain outside Okahandja.  It had been
far too long since I climbed a little mountain.

Man, am I glad I agreed.  I shipped back to Okahandja with a few shadows, and installed myself back at the dorm-style guest house.  I greeted everyone happily the next morning, and did my best to share what I'd learned in my first year at site.  On maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, one of the training staff gave me the full report on the mid-training evaluations, where I learned, among other things, that at least six trainees had found me dramatically, painfully unhelpful and unlikable.  Ouch!

After considering my options, and running a plan past staff and a trainee who'd come to Namibia out of an unusally enlightened corporate HR team, I chose to speak to as many of the trainees as I could, one-on-one, to apologize.  I told 22 or 23 of the 33 that I was sorry to have disappointed them, that my intention was never to cause distress but instead to share my joy in my Peace Corps journey and support them in theirs, and that I would find it very helpful to know what, specifically, I had done to warrant negative feedback.  I also asked them to share my apology and request with others, as I didn't think I would reach everyone.

A couple shared ideas with me, which were very helpful.  (Many said they had no problem with me and appreciated my taking time to apologize, and a few were kind enough to tell me they found it brave.  What else could I do, though?  I hurt people I wanted, quite enthusiastically and unconditionally, to help.  This sucks.)  What I believe as a result of this is that I had, foolishly, underestimated the degree to which some of the trainees, especially in just their third week in training, needed soothing, comforting presences around them.  While I tried to provide that, one early incident in particular came across to some of them as insensitive and officious.  I guess it wasn't important enough that anyone chose to talk with me about it, or express their concern to my co-resource, but unpleasant enough that they recalled it at evaluation time.

Group 43 put on a great Market Day in week 7, which included this very
talented sandal-and-purse-making entrepreneur.

I am so happy to have had the chance to mend, to a small degree, some of those fences.  Gosh, I hate needing to apologize, but doing it when necessary is so much better than leaving the harm unaddressed.  Plus, this is valuable life-lesson stuff. Loving the life lessons, everyone! I just hope I can keep them with me.