Training

June 8

Today we had a meeting in the morning – a little redundant – more about the expectations we have for ourselves and for what WorldTeach has for us. Then, we went to the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek for a scary presentation on safety issues. The State Department evidently has levels of concern about various things like crime. Well, guess what? Namibia is rated at the highest level for crime that they have. It was actually a little disconcerting to hear him speak, but Maggie (the WorldTeach field director) said that in the 2 ½ years she’s been here there’s only been one instance of crime against a volunteer – this involved a knife but the volunteer wasn’t hurt. I figure that in our village we’ll have to worry less because everyone knows everyone (?). 

Fortunately I was able to apply for more pages to add to my passport while there because with less than brilliant planning I find that I’ve used up my whole passport. I spent a day in Germany on the way over, had to transit through South Africa to get here and their visa takes an entire page, and my work permit for Namibia took another entire page. I have to go back through South Africa to leave using more space so extra pages I must have.

Next we had a session about “Namlish” which is the way Namibians speak English. A lot of it is actually Brit-speak (like “rubber” for “eraser”) but a lot of it is unique to Namibia (such as “shabeen” for bar, or the concept of time. Evidently, “now” means in a while, "now now" means I'll get to it, but if you want some thing right NOW, you have to say “now, now, now”. 

Next, I walked into town with a group of the students where I updated my Livejournal  at an internet cafe and changed some money. In the afternoon we had more culture shock therapy, and then a doctor came and talked to us about health issues in Namibia. We’re kept pretty busy, so no time to really be homesick (that comes later). I was able to talk to Jeff, Breezy and Garrett for a while last night – Jeff bought a calling card so he can phone me much more inexpensively than I can him…. I’ve already used up half my minutes I purchased. I spent $295 Namibian dollars, which is about $US45 on a minutes card for my cell phone.