There's no denying it, these bloggers are bound to make you jealous. Whether it's their guts, their energy or their tan you admire, overseas volunteers have got plenty to share with you about their remarkable work in fascinating countries. Read on to find out what you could be missing.

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Monday Feb 12, 2007

1 month in...

its been a long time!


I've just had an extra half an hour added, so please forgive spelling cause its slightly hurried writting.

To be honest cant remember what had happened since last time i wrote, so ill write about my last week or so.

Im still learning kiswahilli in Iringa, so 6 hours a day in a class room, but over the last few weeks weve been able to get some other activities going as well, on wednesdays we go to a local youth center and redecorate. the last two weeks have been spent marking out and painting a netball and volleyball court, which was really rewarding, and I cant wait till we get to play on it against the iringa netball team.

Also being in homestay I've managed to get really intergrated into my family. I try to help cook, but unsuccesfully, and entertain the 3 and 4 year olds with my blonde hair and crazy disney songs. Added to that is that now the group of 15 of wazungus have bonded, and so Im constantly round different peoples houses making fruit juices and cornflake cakes! At certain times i almost forget im in Tanzania when we listen to western music, eating chocolate and chatting ,that is until i need the loo, or wander outside for the 1 smoke a day that I still cant stop myself from having, even with my current chest and sinus infection!

Last week I taught my first lesson, which was really exciting. We were in groups of 3, and luckily the girl in my group called val is REALLY good at swahilli. We arrived at the school with a lesson plan due to last 40 minutes maximum for 10-20 children, but being africa our group got the 52 strong class and told it had to last 80 miunutes to make up for the extra students! all I'll say is my game of "simon says" lasted a very long time, and the children spent a long time trying to do the splits and lick their elbows!  but  Nathan, Valerie and I all walked out after just over an hour with huge grins on our faces. We did it!! I danced like a chicken, jumped up and down, and hopefully taught them something new about V.V.U/U.K.I.M.W.I (sorry, as my swahilli improves, my english gets worse!)

This week is our second to last week of swahilli, which is daunting, but all that is left to do is for us to practice, we know almost all the theories and grammatic rules (not that i use them much) and i need to continue talking to random people to practice vocab and sentence structure. which should be easy to do in the week holday weve been given, and the following month with our fellow tanzanian volunteers.

I think thats about all for now, except to say, aswell as everything else im getting a bloody good tan!!

em x

P.S unfortunatly no photos uploaded yet, but hopefully next week i can steal some from another volunteers camera as i forgot my lead!

x

Posted by Emily ( 3:28 PM )
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Sunday Feb 04, 2007

Where I Live

 

It's sunny and hot outside, but the wind's blowing so hard there's no point in attempting to walk anywhere, which is annoying. As it's Sunday everything is shut; I don't have anything I have to do right now, but during the week we just have to brave the wind and come back completely coated in sand at the end of the day. I can still count myself lucky in a way though – Marcel wears contacts, and is temporarily blinded every week or so!

We've delivered our last edition of the paper now, despite getting it back from Windhoek late. I'm quite proud that we've got the delivery subscriptions up by 400 while we've been here, and hopefully they'll keep increasing. There are so many little shops in the townships and places away from the middle of town that we keep finding new ones. If I've got a paper on me, I'll pull it out of my bag, head into the shop and start my little sales pitch: “Hi, I'm from the Buchter News [brandish paper as proof of it's existence], we're the only local newspaper in Lüderitz. I was wondering if you'd be interested...” A few times I've been faced with fairly blank looks while it slowly dawns on me that the shopkeeper speaks no English, and so has very little use for an English newspaper. It's always worth a try though.

I haven't really written much about what Lüderitz is actually like. It's a significant settlement by Namibian standards, but there is only one road in, as we're surrounded by either restricted diamond area or national parkland. This creates an odd sensation of being cut off from the world despite being in a town. Most people that live here say that if you don't manage to leave every few months or so, even for just a little while, you go mad. I must admit I think there is a fair amount of truth to this statement!

I've heard estimates of the population of Lüderitz ranging from 25 to 40 thousand. Despite this, the main town is quite small, but has enough shops for us to get by. There's also the port, a doctor's, a police station and the other vital things you'd expect. Shark Island is just outside town – not actually an island anymore since the causeway was made into a proper road. Not many people live there, but it's where some of the biggest houses and richest people are. In the other direction is Benguela, originally the black township, which is still a poor area although there are quite a few new developments. It's by no means the poorest part of town, but the difference in wealth you find in a 10-minute walk from one of the big houses in town to the middle of Benguela is still surprising. Just past Benguela is Nautilus, which was the 'coloured' township. There some quite nice houses in Nautilus, as it's richer than the other areas away from the centre of town. The hospital is there, and though it's shabby by English standards it doesn't seem too bad. The only other Namibian hospital I've seen was in Ondangwa; we went there to pick someone up while we were getting a lift from a friend (as a rule, you can't drive anywhere in Namibia with only one purpose – there's always friends and relatives to be picked up and dropped off along the way). That seemed a lot more crowded and basic, so perhaps Lüderitz Hospital is good for a state-funded one. The secondary school which we work at is in Nautilus too; it's extremely overcrowded, over 800 pupils in a building designed for 270. Many lessons have to be held outside and in the corridors as there aren't enough rooms. Crystal, the headteacher, is fantastic, and dreads the day when the school will have to turn pupils away because it will become impossible to hold any more.

The other areas are Agate Park, which has small houses but real houses nonetheless, which is a step up from many. There's also Old Location, which is mostly shanty houses, and New Location (inventive names) which has more recently constructed houses, the kind that look like they could have been put together with some kind of concrete flat-pack. They're all identical which makes it hard to get your bearings, especially if, like me, you a non-existent sense of direction. Jakkalsdraai is part houses and part shanties which have sprung up alongside the more permanent dwelling-places.

Just past Nautilus is Area 7, where people live in tiny corrugated iron shacks without running water or electricity. Astonishingly, this still isn't the poorest area. It was built by the town council to move people out of Sand Hotel, the shanty town on the hill behind Benguela. There, 'houses' are built out of any available material in a sprawling maze. The advantage of Area 7 is that the houses are relatively evenly spaced and there is access by road. Without electricity, people cook on open fires; if a fire gets out of control in Sand Hotel there's no way the fire department could get near enough to put it out quickly.

I think I've mentioned everywhere now but there's probably some area I've missed off, as there are so many names it's impossible to keep track of them. It's hard to tell where each of the different townships/suburb parts start and stop as they seem to overlap quite a bit, but it's easy to tell when I'm out of town – purely because I'm the only white person walking.

Apartheid left it's mark very strongly on Namibia; all of the white people in Lüderitz live in the middle of town, and although now people of other races can live freely alongside them, there's no white person poor enough to have to live in a township. Racism is a big problem, though thankfully I haven't had any directed at me as yet. Well, I get the occasional shout of, “Hey, white girl!” if I'm walking in Benguela or somewhere, but that's more because I'm such a novel sight. A lot of the white people here can be very racist at times. I can't help being shocked at the things people say. I was talking to Kieran, a friend of mine who's mixed race (here they say coloured but that's not exactly PC in England...); he suddenly came out with some sweeping statement about all Owambo's being lazy and good-for-nothing. I pointed out that over half of Namibia's population is Owambo, but he didn't seem at all perturbed that he was insulting a lot of people, including the president.

Well I should stop rambling now, this is far too long. Sorry!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 5:14 PM )
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