Christy in Namibia - Peace Corps

Anywhere you live in the world and any job you work at, you will always have good days and bad days. But somehow, the bad days as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) seem particularly bad and the good days particularly good. During my time as a PCV, I have felt some of the highest of highs of my life and some of the lowest of lows. On my blog, I normally write about the good and the routine. However, today I’m writing about the bad! Today was an awful day at school. Yesterday, I had a great lesson with each section of grade 6 all about how to write a friendly letter. I was so happy and had so much fun and they really really seemed to understand the content—a success of a lesson! I had such high hopes for today and was excited to see the letters that grade 6 wrote as homework. Things took a turn for the worse when I went around this morning to check their homework… in section 6A, 12 of the 22 learners either copied their letter from the examples in the textbook or didn’t write a letter a...

Hi again! Look at this, two posts in one week! I’m trying to make up for my severe dearth of posts these past few months. Term 2 started on May 30 th . Prior to the start of term, I had a quick trip to Swakopmund for a meeting for GAIN (Gender Awareness in Namibia), a committee that I’m on within Peace Corps. As a committee, we are very busy planning a camp called Camp GLOW (Girls and Guys Leading Our World). Camp GLOW will take place in August, during the 1 week holiday. Camp GLOW happens in many Peace Corps countries world-wide, but each camp is a bit unique. For Namibia’s Camp, we focus on developing leadership skills, emotional intelligence, communication, and teamwork, fostering equality across genders and tribes, and setting goals for the future. I am co-planning and co-facilitating leadership day with Steffi, an awesome PCV! Camp GLOW has been going on for many years and is a life-changing experience for the 44 schoolchildren who are selected to attend. In order to make...

Hi all! I hope that this blog post finds you very well. I am doing great! My apologies for the lack of updates—it’s been a busy couple of months! School just started up again after a month long break. It was a much needed and incredibly enjoyable break. I started out by traveling to the deep south of Namibia with a group of 7 other volunteers to hike Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world! We hiked the ~70 kilometers in four days, carrying all of our gear with us. In order to cut weight, we decided to ditch our tents and camp primal, under the stars. It was an amazing decision… falling asleep looking up at a Namibian sky is unlike anything else. The hike itself was challenging, as we decided to cut out a day of the hike and do it in 4 days instead of the typical 5 days. The terrain alternated between watermelon-sized loose boulders and deep, deep sand. Needless to say, you can’t cover the kms too quickly! While the hike was a challenge on my muscles, the tru...