And Now Namibia!

Hello from Namibia! I am happy to say that I have finally made it here and I already love it. Just merely flying into South Africa those of us awake were able to witness probably the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. Since I was not sitting on that side of the plane I do not have a personal picture to share with everyone so you are just going to have to trust what my tired eyes witnessed in my sleepy state. The orange African sun beginning to bring the electric blue sky into the pitch black of space is something I don’t think any artist could give justice to.  But then again, it might have been my over exhaustion and over excitement. Anyway, speaking of over excitement, let me just put it out there that a 5 hour layover in South Africa almost destroyed my wallet and any weight limit I was already slightly over. Everything I have never seen before from necklaces to dresses to serving spoons and pillows, I wanted to buy it all. It was then that I had to remind myself that I would be living here for two years probably about 10 times so expect cool souvenirs ;)

Anyway, NAMIBIA! We embarked off the plane right into the beautiful crisp clean winter air of Windhoek. It felt like a warm spring day so like perfect and the sun was warm and there were palm trees. I instantly knew I was in a good place. It took a while for the 40 of us to get through immigration so once that was completed and all the bags were accounted for the rest of the airport was cleaned out except for the near parade route of Peace Corps staff, current Peace Corps Volunteers and whoever else may have wanted to cheer for a bunch of stinky Americans after their 36 hour travel.  We were greeted with a traditional fried dough treat which was essentially a doughnut and some juice which mind you was not the apple/grape/orange/fruit punch like in the states they also threw in mango, guava, and some other color no one really knew. Of course we inhaled it.

A majority of the group has taken on the mentality that we never know when our next meal is so when food is presented we eat it all without question so far though we have been fed really well and for some of us this whole “Peace Corps diet” thing we thought was going to happen, has not yet. Please stay tuned for the starvation chronicles.

While were on the subject of food, I am sure everyone is curios what weird food I have had to eat in the past week. The answer: nothing weird, just delicious. Maybe they are just easing us into it but while every meal is meat based with a carb and a vegetable it is generally really tasteful. The vegetable might be a slice of cucumber and tomato but everything at the hostel place so far has been homemade (because we literally watch them make it outside of our room door). The meat always tastes good, we were served hot dogs for breakfast with our toast and fried egg. I could totally get used to hot dogs. The only down side right now is no fresh fruit and the coffee is instant. I made the mistake of listening to the suggestion of only two baby scoops in my cup and I drank coffee flavored water which I desperately needed more of soon after while falling asleep during a session.

So now you are probably wondering what I am doing all day. I wish I could tell you that I am taming wild animals and enriching the minds of all the Namibian students that I have but actually right now we are going through intense medical, security, cultural, and diversity training. All these efforts are to ensure that we will be able to be the best Peace Corps Volunteer we can be while at our site further away from everything. So for example, the doctors want us to call at any hour of the day in the event of an emergency, however a broken condom is not an emergency. Okay but seriously it is useful stuff and we have an awesome medical kit that we get to take with us. I feel like I can be a certified doctor with all the medical material I have (not really though)…. Other sessions on security informed us of the most common crimes such as theft and burglary, how to prevent them, and what to do in the event that it does happen (We call security man Joey).

Oooohhh let me talk about the weather. First of all, its winter here and let me tell you this is the best winter I have ever had. It drops to like 30 at night so its like freezing and the sun goes down at about 6pm and then in the morning its slightly chilly like a cool spring morning and then it gets HOT well not like Africa in summer hot but like 70 hot so in like 4 hours the temperature jumps like 30 degrees and its crazy and I love it. Can you tell I kinda love it? Its just perfect here. I’ll describe more later but that is about it in a nut shell.