Tuesday 28 February 2017

SMS - Send Me Silliness

Note to self: come up with a better title.

I do a lot of SMS'ing, or texting, in Namibia.  It's the cheapest way to communicate privately, and while telco is generally a lot less expensive here than in the USA, my income is dramatically cheaper.  So.  As is true anywhere, sometimes these abbreviated messages can be, intentionally or not, pretty amusing.  So I've collected a few to share.

This is the one that set me off:  "Ant cheese is still cheese, in my book."


And the next day, trying to connect with a friend, I learned, "I'm at home now and will have to foot ['foot' = 'walk' in Namlish] at the garden in 4min."  All right!  But a minute after that, I got, "I mean 45 mins."

"I'm a good creep."

From a colleague zooming off to dinner with the only key to our three-person hotel room:  "I didn't know u were rooming with us until M shouted at u from the taxi lol I thought it was just the two of us."

"The gods of the internet must be displeased.  Sacrifice something."  Follow-up:  "I have heard municipality workers who don't get back to you work best."  (A. was pretty ticked with a municipality worker at the time.)"

I write something's going well; C. writes that she's green with envy; I reply that it looks good on her; she responds, "Please, I look good in any color.  LOL."

"Please accept my deepest condolences for your head cold."

"Thank you miss, I love you" from a student I don't actually know that well.  Sometimes 'love' = like, appreciate, or miss in Namlish.

"Omigod stopppp its contagious!!!!  Fuckez nous! :(  waaaah! Why oh universe why?!"  I think this was in reply to a text saying I'd had a sudden, inexplicable craving for a Pop-Tart.

"ps happy invisible Wednesday"

"Ha yeah I bet 'a rift in the space-time continuum' isn't even a good enough reason for failing to text the OOS."  The out-of-site phone is the number we PCVs have to notify whenever we're away from our home sites overnight.

"... I keep telling myself I don't smell bad, just not as pleasant as I usually do."

"... In other news, Clementine just brought a bat inside to eat in front of me.  The crunching is awful."  I'd explain that one, but I think it works really well on its own.

"Was cleaning aphids off the spinach.  Let me know a good time to call."

"No.  There is no going back now.  You're eating rice and lentils and you're going to love it or at least pretend to love it."

"oh no the Trump won the election."  I'd share some other texts from that day, but I don't want this to get all political.  This one is from a Namibian friend.

"Oh my.  Who is basting you?"

"Ugh these youngster partiers."  From, like, a 28-year old.

"Smashed between 2 dudes in a bright yellow bakkie.  Riding in style.  Haha!  See you soon"

"Thanks me toooo feeling a lot better but just all weird"

"Jacket weather!?  Now that's exciting.  It's been getting close to that here in the evenings.  We've been getting lots of rain too.  The only problem is there seem to be snakes everywhere."

Wednesday 22 February 2017

Going to the Chapel

looking back to September 2016:

A.'s visits to my town are cause for much celebration amongst my colleagues, who are thrilled to hear the American woman who speaks such good Damara-Nama!  (Damara-Nama is a Khoisan language, which includes clicking and popping sounds as well as the consonant and vowel sounds we use in English.  It is often considered quite difficult to master.  A. would be quick to tell you she hasn't mastered it, but she can get along well in basic conversation.)  So when Ester invited me to her daughter Yolanda's wedding, she made sure to include "that one of Khorixas" in the invitation.  (Proper names just aren't a big thing for a lot of people here.)

That one.


Serendipitously, the wedding fell on the day after my birthday, so A. could get two events for a single hike.  I'm pretty sure the wedding was the bigger draw.  To clarify:  the actual ceremony was quite early on Saturday, when we were still in Swakop, recovering from cold, driving winds and a multi-course birthday dinner with good wine.  So we skipped that part, held at the Roman Catholic church.  We were all in for the reception, though, which began in the town hall at 17:00.

There's no standard format for a wedding reception in Namibia, although food and drink and music are common elements..  This is just about the one I attended.

We put on dresses and gussied up a bit, and headed to the Town Hall at about 18:00.  (In my New England childhood, town hall was the building where the business of the town was conducted.  Here, that's usually called the municipality building, or the town council office, while the town hall is an exhibit hall or entertainment space, usually with a stage at one end.)  I'd held my winter trainings in the Hall, a bare and drafty space, but it was transformed for the reception.  The caterer had decked it out in banquet tables, covered chairs, and white and light blue draperies and decorations of various kinds.  These elaborate decors, usually just two-toned, are the norm in all the caterers' brochures and wedding reception preparations I've seen.


Fancy!


One hour after the stated start time, the band was warming up, and we were the first guests, although there were a few gathered outside.  We poked around, checked out the cakes, gazed awestruck at the bride-and-groom thrones, and around 18:30 joined a few of my colleagues at a banquet table toward the back of the hall.  Conversation was jolly and mixed, in subject and language.  The mother of the bride stopped by to exchange congratulations and stresses.  A. gathered a few new fans who hadn't yet been exposed to the marvel that is an auslander speaking Damara-Nama.


Cake!  They looked like suitcases.  I don't know why.


The bridal party arrived!  It was wonderful!  Parents and other relatives were in their best, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen and a bunch of little kids were all color-coordinated and cute or beautiful or handsome as they preferred, and dancing.  They danced through the caterer's fancy arch to the flash of many bulbs, and up to the stage.

A musician and family member in typical Nama dress.

Aunts, probably.

Yolanda and Eric

Everyone so happy!


There were lots of speeches, mostly  in Afrikaans, that I think were largely about the value of family and the blessings of God.  The band played.  The Yolanda and Eric danced together beautifully.  A. said they danced like a couple that would last, and I agreed.  Ester stopped by again and collected everyone's cash gifts.  A man named Stephanus joined our table, and proved to be the best wedding-table partner ever.  Food came; plates full of the standard stewed and braaied meats, potato salad and macaroni.  Here's where it gets weird.

Good marriage ahead, right?


I have heard many stories of Namibian wedding guests, and funeral guests, and other-kinds-of-banquets guests, eating large quantities of food, and packing larger quantities into containers they've brought with them specifically to carry food away.  At this wedding, at my table at least, people picked at the food, piled leftovers onto two or three common plates, and handed it off to a crew of little kids who'd gathered at the hall, presumably in search of something like this.  So.  That's my experience.

Note vegetable matter, upper right

Informal guests

After the food was disposed of, the dancing began.  The band had packed up at some point and been replaced with recorded music.  I love to dance; I think most people at this reception did not even stand and shimmy a bit.  But Stephanus danced.  Oh, yes.




At some point the drink came out.  First it was sparkling wine, which allowed for a couple of toasts.  Then the servers came around with six packs of beer and cider (the alcoholic kind), and bottles of brandy, vodka, whisky, maybe other hard stuff - beer and cider were capped, but the tops were off the big bottles.  That's so you can't take them home, A. and I speculated.  However... earlier, we'd gotten small bottles of water.

My colleagues and table-mates

Stephanus took charge of liquor distribution; he could also open one beer bottle with another.


The bride and groom left around this time; A. and I did not meet them.  They didn't do that walk-around common at weddings I've attended in the U.S. and Ireland to say hello to each guest.  At my table, people were drinking, but also pouring the hard liquor into emptied water bottles, and capping those to take away.  And some more dancing.  And Stephanus flitting about, flirting in a gregarious and entirely un-aggressive and reasonably charming way, and dancing vigorously and creatively.  Guests started mingling a bit more, and fairly suddenly, and before midnight, people started leaving.  A. and I declined all offers of escorts and rides home, so I cannot report on what happened at after-parties.

I tried to persuade A. into the bouquet-toss, but she declined with vigor.
Good thing, too; it got a bit scrum-y.


That's DANCING!

So's that.

Do you know where that thing has been?

Mine came straight off the table.

Silas, my best bud at work.

A. and me

Maybe I should put all the Stephanus pictures.


I saw Ester a few days later back at the office, and she and I were both still elated by the party, though she maybe a bit wrung out still.  She told me that many of their guests were very impressed that she'd scored two whites as guests.  This is something A. encounters a lot in her town -- the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks -- but I almost never hear.  We talked a bit more, and I hope that our value was more in our foreign-ness (I've gotten shout-outs at Irish weddings for coming all the way from the USA) than our skin color.  And Yolanda and Eric did look truly, peacefully happy together as they danced.


Wednesday 1 February 2017

Happy Birthday to Me

 
looking back to Septembers 2015 and 2016:

I have celebrated two birthdays in Namibia. The first was in 2015, about 10 or 12 weeks after I settled in ‘at site’, in my small desert town. I had heard that in Namibia, the celebrant is responsible for his or her festivities, though I’ve since seen plenty of evidence that’s not always true. However, no one in my small circle of acquaintances at that point would know it was my birthday, and I had a hankering for yellow cake with chocolate ganache.

Coincidentally and happily, my Peace Corps boss and her assistant, the magnificent Linda and Ephraim, planned a site visit for the day, to see how I was settling in to home and work. So that worked out very nicely indeed.

I arranged to meet them at the Ûiba Ôas Crystals Market, with which I consult, as they headed from a colleague’s site to mine. I was hoping that Linda, who bedecks herself in PC volunteers’ projects’ products, would pick herself up a few aquamarines or amethysts. She decided she would wait, however, seek out advice, and return for a real investment purchase – so we just toured the market and met a few of the miners and merchants there. Then we headed home, where we toured Dreamland Garden (“I love this place,” Linda exclaimed. She had seen it when she first vetted my project’s potential, and was delighted to visit again.) and then headed to my office.

I wasn't in photo-taking mode in 2015, given the newness and company and all, so this is 2016's cake, which was just the same as the year before.


At the office, I whipped out the cake I’d baked the night before, jabbed in the candles, jogged to the libraries to invite colleagues, and set the thing alight as the colleagues and bosses serenaded me with the standard birthday song. That’s when I discovered Gideon’s lovely singing voice. Ephraim and he reminisced about their childhood birthdays and the lust for cake. “Now I just ask, ‘Where’s the meat?’” Ephraim confessed to much laughter. Later Ester stopped by, and I demanded a song from her before handing over a slice. “I love you with my heart,” she told me, and I have never heard a nicer birthday sentiment. Later another colleague came by and discussed politics whilst munching, and finally two little girls, Kasey and Marisa, poked in looking for crayons, spotted the mostly-hidden pan and exclaimed, “Cake!” So I demanded my vocal tribute and unloosed the last two slices. It all made for a lovely birthday
 
Eunice sings for her slice of supper - or dessert.

The following year, in 2016, dear friends in the US sent an e-mail saying they wanted to send me a chunky cash gift that I could use for a Swakopmund spree. As I read their e-mail, I was mentally composing my response: “You’re so very kind, and I am entirely grateful. However, it’s just too much – my life here isn’t one of any significant sacrifice, I’m enjoying myself and I would just feel like a charlatan if I were to accept...” Then I got to the final line of theirs: “Don’t you dare say you can’t accept!” I could hear L’s voice especially in my head, and she can get a bit ferocious. So I re-composed: “Thank you so much! I’ll book a fancy hotel and spend a night or two.”
 
View from my birthday room - semi-clear sky on birthday eve.

 
View from the fancy roof deck - cloudy sky, birthday

Which I did. The day after the certificate ceremony, I headed for the Beach Hotel, six stories of moderate luxury capped with a roof deck with ‘swimming pool,’ which is actually a small-ish, unheated hot tub. The view is amazing, and the staff are professional yet friendly, and I had a balcony over the beach, and I just flopped onto that crisply-linened bed with the slider ajar and listened to the waves. Bliss. Bliss, with a more-than-brisk wind slicing off the Atlantic, but you only need the slider open a smidge to hear the waves, and I’m okay with cold.
 
I take many, many photos of flamingos. I love them so.
 
 


 
On birthday-day itself I woke early for a beach walk and marveled at the flamingos in their lagoon, and the slamming waves and dramatic wind. Then I walked the beach to the fancier hotel, which has a spa but no roof deck, and got myself professionally scrubbed and oiled. Limber and shining with emoluments, I headed back to my hotel to watch the sun set over the ocean. This isn’t necessarily a thing in the desert, where sunsets are most often gentle, nor yet in Swakop, where the heavy fog over the Benguela current usually obscures light and color. My PC vol friends A. and S. were joining me for dinner, and I urged them on to catch the last of the glow.
 
Grey skies, rough seas, high winds - perfect celebrating conditions for the desert-dweller.


Rather a good sunset for Swakop.
 
But not the last of the wind! Or the cold! A. lives well inland, in savannah country, where it gets hot and stays hot. (My desert setting gets at least cool for at least a few very-early-morning hours even in the hottest part of the year.) In Swakop, real heat is rare. S. is a Swakopmunder, so she was bundled up, and we’d reminded A. to bring scarves and jackets, but really none of us were prepared for that high-level gale scrubbing the cold out of that Antarctic current and blasting it across us on the deck. We laughed and laughed, and scurried down the stairs to warm up (though A. and I both tried to store some of the cold inside our bones, to release when the home weather hits its baking worst). Then we had a fine dinner at the hotel’s fancy restaurant, with a lovely South African Bordeaux-blend. Definitely not one of the sacrificial-service experiences! (A. and S. were both most impressed by the multi-ply toilet paper at the hotel -- seriously, screaming from the bathroom.)
 
From North Carolina; probably doesn't own a parka.
From Arizona; first saw snow at age 24, in DC.

Back home, I made myself a repeat of 2015’s cake and brought it to the office Monday, and extorted lots more songs. Everyone was generous and tuneful. I do love candles and singing for birthdays. (And luxury hotel stays with fancy wine!  Thank you, L & G!!)
 
Anneline, Petra (who had her own birthday cake a few days later), Rita and Ndategelela


Ester and Valerie