Hello all!
My host sister Martha (Mbute) and I at the wedding! I was in traditional Wambo attire.
Helvie, Me, and Lempie on Christmas Eve having a cookie breakfast in bed!
My host dad was thrilled about the Reese's-- his new favorite candy, I think!
After the game reserve, we went to Swakopmund, a German coastal town in Namibia where my host sisters Lempie and Turkie live. We stayed on in Swakop for about a week. My host family also took me and some other volunteers to Dune 7, the highest sand dune in the world. It was really fun to see and fun (yet difficult!) to climb. Here we are at the top!
My host parents had a photo shoot by my host sister Helvie while waiting for lunch to be ready!
As the holiday break comes to a close here, I find myself slightly baffled by how 5 weeks off have passed so quickly! As the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun.
At the beginning of break, I moved to my foster family's house (in the same village where I live). I brought over a few bags of my things and unpacked into my new room on their homestead. I then proceeded to spend about 2.5 weeks here in the village with my foster family and had a fantastic time. There was a family wedding (a cousin) one weekend, so there was a lot going on for that. Many of my host siblings that I hadn't met before who live in different parts of Namibia came home for the wedding. It was fun meeting new family members and taking part in the wedding celebration with them!
The wedding wasn't all fun and games, though; in Namibia, weddings aren't catered. Rather, different aunts set up kitchens on the homestead and prepare boatloads of food! My host mom had a kitchen, so on the day of the reception, we (the girls) went to help cook. I grated cabbage and carrots on a dull grater for SIX hours. Needless to say, my arms and upper back were sore the next day! Typical wedding food is potato salad, cole slaw, macaroni salad, rice with mixed veggies, and lots and lots of beef.
I really enjoyed the time I spent with my foster family at the beginning of the holiday. I really feel much more comfortable and at home in their house now. I got to know everyone much better and really got to know the rythms of life within their family. I felt very lucky to get to spend such quality time with everyone!
After two weeks of slow-paced (read: relaxing) village life, I departed for a serious adventure! I was lucky enough to get to go with my Okahandja host family from training on their family vacation. We went to a game lodge in central Namibia (Erindi Game Reserve) for Christmas and had a fantastic time. We went on a few game drives and must have had Christmas luck on our side, because we saw four lions, two white rhinos, a black rhino, many giraffes, wildebeest, crocodiles, hippos, springbok, impala, and kudu. It was so incredible to see all these amazing creatures in their natural habitats. Check out the photos below!
The lodge was so incredibly beautiful; I was so spoiled by my generous host family and enjoyed the luxury of the lodge, the adventure of the game drives, and most of all, the amazing company over Christmas. I felt like I was really among family with them! It was also really special to share my mom's (American mom's) Christmas cookies with my Namibian host family. She is so thoughtful and sent a Christmas box filled with our family's Christmas cookies, chocolate chip cookies (both gluten free!), Reese's, mint meltaways, and a few Christmas cards and gifts from my parents, John & Kelsey, and my aunt Mary. It was so fun to open a box from home and to be able to share my family's yummy traditions with my Namibian family! The cookies were a big hit and it felt like being at home when we were eating "S" cookies in bed on Christmas Eve morning.
The cookies were actually such a big hit that we decided to make some more once the ones my mom sent ran out!
We also went to Cape Cross, which is where the seals mate. It was beautiful and very very smelly! We were glad we went there before our seaside lunch, or else we may have lost our lunch! We had lunch with an amazing view of the Atlantic and it was nice thinking about how the water there reached all the way back to the states :)
Being in Swakopmund felt like being in a different country. Honestly, I experienced culture shock and it really showed me what a diverse country Namibia is. As I said, Swakopmund is an old German town, meaning that there is German architecture everywhere and also German Namibians everywhere! It was really odd seeing so many whites people, as I'm used to being one of the very very few in the north! It's also much wealthier than the Namibia that I know. To try and paint a picture of the extreme differences and why I experienced culture shock, I'll give an example. I was in the Fruit and Veg market with my sister Helvie, which is much like a Whole Foods. Gluten free everything, fresh herbs, several types of lettuce greens, almond milk, lots of cheeses... The variety was mind boggling and Helvie kept losing me because I kept getting distracted by the options! If that wasn't enough, when we were standing in line to check out, I looked to my left and saw a sushi bar. Then I looked a little longer and noticed the rotating conveyor belt of sushi... That was when I started questioning if this was really still Namibia and not some European city! Anyway, despite the culture shock, I enjoyed the options available in Swakop and made guacamole (with tortilla chips!!!) for my host family. It was a major hit! I was glad again to be able to share a part of our food culture with them! :)
After 1.5 luxurious weeks with my host family, I got on a not-so-luxurious minibus (called combis here) back up to the north. I headed to Ohangwena region, another region in O-land, to help out another volunteer in building a basketball/netball/volleyball court in her village. She was working with Courts for Kids, an American NGO dedicated to building courts abroad. Through CFK, a group of about 10 American, University of Cincinnati students came to help build the court as well. It was really fun being with this group and working together. It also was a really cool opportunity to see how much we've learned in our short time here. The U of C students asked us a lot of cultural questions and language questions and it was really fun to realize how much we know! It was also a ton of fun to see Namibia through their newly-arrived eyes and see the things that I also thought were strange a few months ago and now seem like normal aspects of daily life. Anyway, I'm in town at the lodge now for the wifi with some other volunteers and it's now time to order some delicious western food :) So, time to sign off for now-- thanks for reading! Happy new year to you all!
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