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.