Day 32

I was so frustrated and worried about my computer, I didn't feel like typing much earlier. But now, after a long walk with Hermanas to the store for ice cream, then the river, then the rail road tracks, now I'm ready to write.
People are getting frustrated. I mentioned an incident earlier in the week. What happened was one of our Omaruru group had their host parents leave last weekend. According to the PeaceCorps rules, this is not supposed to happen. The PCT didn't want to make a fuss of it, perfectly happy to take care of them self. Sunday night, three PCT's went to a movie at the house of the American that runs the Sand Dragon restaurant. They weren't done until late, so when they left to go home, they quickly realized that walking home in the middle of the night was a bad idea. They went back to the house and spent the night. The next morning is when the problems started. One PCT's host mother didn't know they would be spending the night and was quite worried. Then when PC found out that another PCT's family was gone, and they weren't notified, they began to think it was some sort of conspiracy. They made one of the PCT's sign a document outlining what happened, which was quite weird, and threatened to send her home. By Tuesday, we were all talking about this. The short of it is that some PCT's made some bad mistakes, and the PC didn't react very professionally to it, thinking there was some sort of conspiracy (planning to spend the night somewhere else) and not listening to the reasoning of the PCT's. The PCT's shouldn't have been out so late to begin with, and should have notified the PC when the host family left.
So that's the story. One of many. Another more general story is one I got on my trip to Okombahe today. There I spoke briefly with some PCT's who have been spending the whole week doing model school, a sort of mini-school where they run classes and get experience as a teacher. They spend the mornings teaching, the afternoons in a debriefing session, the evenings in language class, and the nights writing lesson plans for the next day. They are very tired and are in need of some time off. I didn't have the heart to tell them all the fun things we've been doing here.
Things are constantly in a state of chaos. Even when Naf asked me to be ready to go this morning at 6:20 outside the Spar, I somehow knew this was not going to be the case. I waited a half hour for them to pick me up- chaos. Jay is sick. I haven't had the chance to talk to him about it yet, but he said he had a headache yesterday. We had KFC for lunch and I don't think that helped either. This has added to the chaos, for since he needed the day to rest, he couldn't go check the status of the computer lab in another town. This means it will have to be done sometime this weekend or Monday, because we start classes Tuesday. Tomorrow we have the language class that was canceled today. Sunday we will rest when we should be taking our language exams; they were postponed due to a death in the family of one of the testers. Chaos. As of now, I am planning on making everything up as I go next week, even if someone says there is a plan. Chaos reigns supreme.
I can't wait to get to Windhoek. I just want to burry my head in some work for a while, forget about the endless stream of problems and possible projects I see every time I start talking to someone. There are so many needs here, it's hard to imagine how anything you can do would help in the slightest. Here I am, an IT volunteer, hoping to leave behind some computer skills in the people I work with; but even then I'm not addressing the huge problems with English, math, and science education in the schools. I'm not touching the vast abyss that is health education. It's hard to justify my work when you can see the whole picture. For the first time since I've been here, I want to stop learning about Namibian and just get to work on something, anything.
My computer is having problems. It shuts itself off about ten to fifteen minutes after I turn it on. I think it has something to do with the temperature of the processor, it's possible that the heat sink may have become detached or the fan is not working properly. Either way I cannot fix it and will have to spend tons of money on a phone call to HP then shipping, even though it's still under warrantee. I'm considering just buying a used desktop when I get to Windhoek. I tried to take it apart this evening to inspect the processor, but I don't want to make it worse than it is, and it's not a simple task; getting to the processor. At least I can use it for ten minutes at a time now. It's just so frustrating!
Tomorrow we have language in the morning, then the rest of the day to ourselves. Should be a nice break.