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.