being the long-awaited update: the fish river post

"these springbok, they are not serious!"
our driver was not happy with the way the animals kept running at our car. we had just entered the fish river canyon; it was 9am and were wending our way along the dirt road to the park's entrance. our voyage had commenced at 5am in keetmanshoop, the "capital of the south," where we were overnighting at another volunteers' house. the real voyage had started the day before when we boarded the starline, from windhoek, celebrating a bit raucously on the way down in our very own sleeper car. the trip had been good, although a bit long. the trains in namibia take forever; we left windhoek at 7pm and arrived at 6am. the trip in a car takes about 5 hours. then again we hadn't left at 7pm and we did eventually make it, the real benefit is you don't have to contend with close-calls and near-misses. plus, as our groups "Transportation Czar" I have to set a good example for safe travel. at least it's impossible to "make a turn" using a train, otherwise the train would be heading over to someone's cousin's house to pick up three chickens and a grandmother.

in keetmanshoop we had laid in provisions for the trip as well as rendezvous'd with the rest of our troupe who were "hiking" down from windhoek. our host in "keets" jay haase lives at the youth center in sy blocken, the nama location, located about 20 minutes from town. it is much more arid there; the lack of greenery and trees is remarkable. it really is in the middle of the desert. but that's because IT IS the desert. the landscape is relieved by some mountains to the north as well as an ancient volcano. it was amazing to walk around with jay -- people really really like him. up and down the dirt road blocks would shout to him, "hello, mr. jay!" young and old, everyone wanted to wave at mr. jay. i think it partially had to do with the sheer spectacle of ten white people walking around in the location but everyone was exceedingly friendly. i particularly liked seeing the stores and shebeen names: chuck norris happy bar no' 3: we sell ostrich product.

back to fish river: so there were zebra and kudu running around near the car. at the park's entrance there was contretemps over our supposed reservations -- but after assuring the staff that we were actually resident teachers we were let in without paying foreign visitor surcharges. that's when the fun started. it's a hundred meters of precipitous cliff action, occasionally assisted by metal chains that were put in to avoid you falling off the side of the canyon, but really quite difficult terrain to manage, especially with a backpack. Within the first hour we had run into a couple who were hiking out to call for help -- another hiker they were with had fallen and couldn't hike out, two days later we saw a helicopter circling the canyon, presumably to help the fallen hiker. we made very, very slow progress. i had seen pictures on the internet with grannies making their way through "the toughest hike in africa," piece of cake i thought. wrong.

because we've had record rainfalls and this was the second day that the canyon was open to the public the water level made you hop among boulders for hours on end. according to all the guidebooks the first two days are supposed to be the toughest, but you are supposed to be at the first hot springs at the end of the first day. by the end of the first day we had run into a group from south africa that actually on their second day in the canyon, and like us they were stymied by the extremely difficult passage along the river. i immediately noticed something about their campsite. it was these shiny neon covers that they had drying on the sand. survival bags -- something we hadn't planned on. which would put us at a great disadvantage.

we immediately realized our position the next morning. the Afrikaners had elected to swim with their bags to the other side, while we were not fain to cross as it was still extremely deep (up to your waist) and quite quick moving. because they had survival bags to stuff their backpacks in the south africans could basically cross at will, while we were forced, for the next few days to struggle to find a passage where all ten of us could get across. i'm not going to describe the travails of the fish river canyon -- it's treacherous as hell, we almost got mauled by baboons luckily we invented a beef with the south africans which provided us with some zeal, especially in the dark moments of being two days into the trail and only having covered 15km of the terrain. zoom to the last night in the canyon, somehow we made it without any major scrapes, right as we're settling in after a 20+km day, one of the girls dives into what she thought was more than 1 ft of water, which resulted in a bit of gory mess.
the next day we found our way out of the canyon, that is after matt p and i were abandoned by the rest of the group who decided to break our most sacred rule which was never do a river crossing without the full complement of the group. we were walking around in the middle of the desert for 2.5 hours looking for everyone, because we assumed they hadn't gone on ahead, after all, we never had crossed before. i guess it was partially because me and matt had been up ahead, and we had the maps and the iodine. it ended up being ok, the group left a message in the sand that they had crossed "WE CROSSED HERE - NAM25" which basically explained what had happened and essentially everyone was in a hurry to get to the 70s era hot springs resort which awaited us in ai-ais. unfortunately due to the mixup on the last day we lost precious time and the Afrikaners were able to beat us to ai-ais. we had an elaborate plan worked out where we were going to send a windhoek lager to their table and then give them the thumbs up/wink/shit-eating grin when they got there after us. as it worked out they were there a good two hours before us, making their way to the spa and getting ensconced in the sulfurous jets way before us. we did have one conciliation-- when me and matt were trying to scrounge up the rest of the group i happened on a folded up piece of paper. it was the Afrikaners' map.

not that that made it any better. it would have been better to get there first.

long time, no post...

Long time since the last post, I'm not going to try to vividly re-enact the last month, basically we had our first school break, I hiked the Fish River Canyon and almost died stranded in the desert.

Back in Otjituuo our Principal surprised everyone the first day back by announcing his departure, effective immediately. That was a huge shock and disappointment on many levels. For one thing he was a great principal, he had single-handedly come in and re-invigorated a very troubled school, every one of the staff was literally crestfallen when he told the staff, assuming the school would then revert to the dark pre-//Hoabeb days. From my own personal perspective it is a great loss because as one of the only non-Herero people he was also an outsider here and I shared that bond with him, whenever things got too much to deal with he could sympathize. Then there is the loss from the point of view of sheer staffing -- now we only have 9 staff for nearly 400 kids. Oh, and he was the only staff member with a vehicle, so to get to Grootfontein means going down to the junction and waiting with my hand out for a couple hours to flag down a truck with cattle going to Grootfontein.

The first week of class was ok -- each day I gradually had 10 or so more kids, a gradient that surely effected my lessons as the week went on. Right now we are working with fractions in Maths class and I especially liked doing demonstrations with beans and macaroni with the small class, but by Friday we were back to copying off the board and repeating steps in determining greatest common factor. In English I am doing a section on letter writing. Through Peace Corps' "World Wise Schools" program I got linked up with a teacher in upstate New York -- we have been exchanging emails and my kids are writing letters, drawing pictures and I'm taking photos to send to the States. The crazy part is that the teacher I'm paired with has a sister that lives in Windhoek who did a session for Peace Corps. In a country the size of California with the population the size of Pasadena, Americans tend to stand out.

It's also getting mighty cold around here -- like gloves and wool hat cold. My hot water was out for the first week which made bathing in a tub filled with hot water from the stove necessary. I've also taken to wearing my fleece pretty much always. Apparently as with the rains, it's unusually cold for Namibia and just this morning I heard about snow flurries in the Eastern Cape -- it's only snowed once in recent memory in Namibia and it was hail so it doesn't really count. Oh, and we've been having periodic power failures. Because Namibia imports about 50% of its energy from Eskom, the South African utility company, and they've had one of their reactors down this year for maintenance there is sometimes "Power-Free Sundays" where entire regions are without power.

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new color iPod, I broke my three-year old darling in a fit of hubris (I was showing another volunteer how to open one). It’s stuck in customs hell in South Africa – hopefully it’ll be cleared by the time we have the all-volunteer conference in Swakopmund next week.

Oh wanted to shout out Brian & Marsha, the first Peace Corps volunteers in Otjituuo who found this blog somehow – everyone still remembers you guys around here, it’s cool to think of the continuity. I am still mistaken for Jared, the immediately previous volunteer, but you guys were certainly the trailblazers in setting up shop here. As far as the staff at Otjituuo is concerned I didn’t recognize the names of the police officers you mentioned. I think those guys tend to have a high turnover, the new officers are one Damara-Nama man named Timo and a Caprivian named Mundia. Like I said, David left last week, but Meme Kalunduka is still here as is Ndjarakana, Kavezepa and Tjiriange. We also have a new teacher from Ovamboland and my neighbor, Ms. Kandingua who is from a cattle post near Okamatapati. Other than that the everyone is basically the same.

Another bit of news is that I secured funding for at least one school trip, through the Namibian Nature Foundation we’re going to have a trip to Waterberg Plateau Park, as well as to Windhoek for the best learners. I put in a request for money from Go Green! / Ned Bank for a trip to Etosha, that is still pending but the signs are looking good. The final trip would be for 15 learners to go to Germany along with 5 staff members. We are still in negotiations about that but remarkably that is looking like it will be easier to fund than the trip to Etosha…

Last bit of good news: we are FOR SURE getting a cell phone tower put in this month, the chiefs are meeting with MTC (the Namibian telecom) this afternoon about the exact placement of the tower but it seems like it’s going to be about 12 km from my house which will be awesome. Really looking forward to not having to bother Kalunduka or the secretary if I want to make a phone call or need to receive one.