Day 24-26

What a crazy couple of days! The schedule for our training changes by the minute, making each day a surprise. We started the week thinking we (Jay and I) would be training some employees at the TRC. After we realized that they were struggling to round up people for us to teach, felt like it was a waste of time. Adding to that, we were missing our language classes and getting behind in Afrikaans. We talked to Naf and arranged to drop the trainings formally, but continue to work with some of the employees who needed it on a as-needed basis. This left us free for language classes, which have been fun. That was Wednesday.

We spent yesterday (Thursday) making lunch at one of our hose families house. We’ve met in coffee shops, the TRC (Teacher Resource Center) and other places to learn. The learning is going very slowly. We’re at this weird in between place where we know enough to speak, but not enough to hold a conversation. It will come with time, we are assured. We ended the day in the library checking out children’s books in Afrikaans.

For language today, we met this evening at another house. We worked on fruits and veggies, directions, and a funny poem about grandparents farting. Earlier today Jay and I had several productive conversations with the owners of a computer business here. They do just about everything you can imagine on a computer: flyers, databases, certificates, training, custom building, installations, etc. They are Americans who have been living here for 13 years. They had a great deal of insight and information for us. I now have three good contacts in Windhoek (one at Microsoft!) to get a hold of when I go back there. We also got some great free software.

Next we spoke with a manager at the local phone company who filled us in on the telephony infrastructure of Namibia. We learned that there’s a 64 channel fiber optic line carrying high speed internet and phone running through Omaruru on to a larger town, but no junction here. Thus, the fastest connection in town is a 32 Kbit dialup from which you get about 4 kbits throughput due to poor phone line connections. Good stuff.

I’m getting ready to go to a barbeque at the Camp for us eight volunteers that are in Omaruru. Before that is a school play in which our favorite Omaruru resident is starring in. Dameon is a 12 year old genius of a Namibian. His mother works at the rest camp, so we saw a lot of him these past weeks. He’s very smart, witty, and fun to be around. We’re all going to watch the play tonight.

Tomorrow is reunion day. All 58 of us will be returning to camp to organize our stuff (we’ve got to consolidate rooms to save money), get some more shots, and attend a few sessions.

I have to apologize for the short nature of these past posts, I’ve been busy during the day and very tired at night, plus I’m spending a lot of time with my host family, so writing had been difficult. I’m hoping to get some time this Sunday to write in detail my experiences and feelings.

Until then!