Rehoboth

So finally we've been out of windhoek (though now we are back) into the less developed parts of Namibia. We spent the past week in a town called Rehoboth about an hour south of the capital, where we practiced teaching with local students. Rehoboth was founded by Basters (a group of mixed race people that came from South Africa about 150 years ago), but we were primarily teaching to poorer black students who lived in the former location ( an apartheid era term that is similar to township in South Africa). Most of the peole in Rehoboth speak Damara, which is a language involving several click sounds written as !, //, /, and #. I tried to learn some, but mostly failed miserably. I've also learned some Afrikaans, and most imp0rtantly Oshivambo, which is the language I'll be speaking up north. Ongiini (hi- how are you in Oshiwambo)

The teaching went well, Loren Niemi (another volunteer) and I taught writing, math, and HIV/AIDs information. The math seemed to be particularly helpful, students really needed remedial help with things like square roots. It was funny, and a little sad because students said they wanted to learn things like integration and trigonometry, but then we found that they were having trouble with concepts like simplifying square roots, so we spent most of our time on that. I think this will be a common theme while teaching here. We also did a class on Hiv/AIDS, and this was interesting because it seemed like students had already heard most of what we were telling them. Granted we had older students (from 15 to 20), but still it made it clear that there is not a huge absence of AIDS education that is behind the epidemic here. (My class is shown in the first picture above).

Staying with a host family was really enlightening. I and another volunteer (Gavin McCormick) stayed in a house with a mother, two sons (ages 1.5 and 6), a daughter (age 11) a niece (21) and a nephew (25) (the second) picture above is of the family). At first I found it hard to relate with them, but after a few days we had a BBQ, and then the next day Gavin and I played games in the street with the younger kids, and both of these events seemed to help us interact with the family on a more personal level. (The BBQ was amazing- I helped to make hand made rolls that we then cooked over a fire, definitely something I want to bring back with me, beer would have been nice though.) At the end I felt sad to leave, and I was hopeful that my experience with my host family was an indicator that it would be relatively easy to make friends with Namibians.

After our four days in Rehoboth we headed south for two nights at a huge reservoir near the town of Mariental. It was excellent to be in a quiet, resort type setting, though it also felt a little artificial. We did see a lot of baboons (eating garbage) and also some hyraxes (little groundhog like critters that are related to elephants). Now we have been back in Windhoek for 4 days, doing more training. Sineads parents come today for a short visit, and her dad will drive us up north to our schools on friday. I am still very nervous, about starting teaching, but it has been good to have some time to get used to Namibia before really beginning this adventure.