we had a very nice thanksgiving. we ate a big turkey dinner, then a group of us went out to a dry riverbed near town and watched shooting stars, drank wine, and talked about being thankful. i loved it, and it was really the best medicine for missing all of my friends and family who i normally celebrate thanksgiving with.

the last week of training has been difficult. many sessions have been on the impact of the aids problem in namibia, and the speakers have been much more focused on repeatedly convincing us that the problem is depressing than on telling us what kinds of things we should be doing. three people have decided to leave as well, and one is experiencing medical problems and is in the us getting treatment. we're missing them all a lot. i am holding up ok.... i've been feeling vaguely ill and there is a slightly difficult interpersonal situation (talk about vague) but i think i'm dealing with everything pretty well.

i'm really happy with my permanent site. there's a clear need for my skills, people are friendly, it isn't a big, dangerous town but is close enough to one that i won't go crazy, and we eat with our hands (rather than silverware). what else could you want? read more about it below (i typed this the other day on a friends laptop):

people notice weather here. i asked someone how to say 'the sunset tonight was nice' and she misunderstood me to say 'the sun is nice' and said "we never say anything good about the sun." it turns out that it is acceptable to say good things about the sunset, and she taught me the phrase, but it seemed like an interesting insight into how people think. they also say "visitors are good, they bring rain" and use loose enough criteria for correlating the arrival of visitors with the arrival of rain that (at least during this part of the year) it seems to hold up.

i was fortunate enough to bring !au tsawises (my permanent site) some rain. the peace corps had prepared us (very well, i guess) for dangerous cross cultural situations where inadvertent missteps might result in terrible consequences. i'm only exaggerating a little when i say that we now possess the cultural knowledge to trigger everything from inter-tribe warfare to the delivery of a dowery to our parents. it was a very nice surprise when we rolled in to town to the greetings of kids running around yelling "the americans are here, the americans are here." they took us to the school's dining hall, where they had made posters that said things like "welcome to berseba. feel happy to be a part of our large family." we had a program there involving singing, dancing, and some fine extemperanous speeches from the school principal, the hostel supervisor, and the man who drove the car we rode in. it was a very nice experience.

transportation in rural namibia is problematic and the population density is low, so it isn't really possible to bus students from their homes to schools. instead, they have boarding schools (the dorms are called 'hostels') and students live there while school is in session. our town has three hostels that house around 300 students.
we stayed in a house on the hostel grounds, so we had as much company as we wanted. we often had a card game or language lessons going on, and when we wanted to play outside we'd play tag or break out the frisbee. it was a blast.

nights are nice there. it gets real breezy around sundown and cools off nicely. you can sit on the porch with your book and guitar while sand blows in to your glass of water and think "i am really in africa" while feeling really happy. it doesn't hurt that if you're not playing your guitar that you can hear the students singing in the hostel. they really like to sing.

the village holds around 1000 people, about 40km from the paved road and 100km from a town with a supermarket and a bank. the village residents are mostly students or retired adults--many working age people who grew up in the village have moved to keetmanshoop (the decent sized town 100km away) and only return occasionally to visit. the town is pretty spread out, in sort of a random way-- neither houses nor huts are placed on anything like a grid. huts are made with sperical tops, that are covered in a patchwork of plastic bags that help with the rain. our area is the only place in namibia (maybe the world) where these spherically topped houses exist.

we are near the fish river (two words i've been instructed to never say again -- we kkg speakers call it the //aub, which means 'fish'), and apparently there are lots of fish in it when it runs. i'm not sure where the fish are now, because it is most definitely not full of water. the topography of the area reminds me of nevada. you have to go about 3 miles from the town to find anything that might be called a hill, and the nearby extinct volcano that is nearby (kaitsi !gobeb, or groot brukaros depending on your language) is by far the most dramatic topographical feature in sight.

the school is in pretty good shape. they have books for the students, mostly unbroken windows, and enough chairs for everybody--all things that don't always happen. the principal seems like a really good guy--he has good ideas for organizational improvements for the school, is respected by the teachers, and seems to occupy a good place between following every rule and none of them. the only bad thing about him is that he's been recognized for kind of turning this school around and may well be offered a job at a big school in town. his wife doesn't speak khoekhoegowab, so he would likely move if offered the job so that she would be closer to her people.

he (the principal) has a herd of goats and sheep that graze on the communal land that surrounds the town. we went to see them, which involved an hour drive--with directions that involved stuff like 'turn left where the big tree used to be.' we definitely saw some nowhere--we started out in 'basically nowhere' and drove an hour until we got to 'definitely nowhere.' then walked around looking for his animals. it was cool once we found them--his kids and i walked with the herd and spoke commands to them in khoekhoe (stuff like 'stand up,' 'sit down,' and 'walk there'). they didn't listen, but it was good practice for me, and it was cool to be walking in this big herd of goats in a place that probably won't have an electrical line within 30 miles for the next 30 years.

the school, incidentally, has a pretty well stocked science laboratory. they have microscopes, optics sets, little cars on rollers that can be used to demonstrate elastic and inelastic impact in physics class, and (get this!) a function generator and oscilloscope. it used to be a senior secondary school that received a lot of support from overseas, which i guess is how they got such good gear. i told the principal that we should use the o-scope to open a tv repair business, and invest any profits in more cattle so that we could retire wealthy men. he seemed interested.

that was mostly it for the town visit. it seems like a decent place. as i compare my feelings about it with the other volunteers feelings about their permanent sites, it seems like our feelings about the relative goodness of our sites depend less on the relative comfort of the living situation and a lot more on how clear of a need there is for the volunteer and how healthy the community is. we did well on both of those things--you have to get at least 30% on a relatively easy test to pass math, and about 10% of students are currently doing so), and the community isn't exactly lining up to develop themselves or help their less fortunate, but it doesn't have nearly the level of problems that many do. top that off with the fact that we expect to have a pretty comfortable living situation (although there's a lot of uncertainty about what exactly it will be, as they are 'currently negotiating with the education ministry' over our house) and we did pretty well. it is also a plus for me that most of the community speaks the language i'm learning, so it should be easy to practice without continually offending people by speaking someone else's language to them. and the kids are wonderful. i know that i will only be lonely there if i choose to.

interesting quotations, etc (these aren't coming as fast as they were at first):

last night, after eating a big thanksgiving dinner that we'd all pitched in to make, we went on a hike on the dry riverbed here in okahandja. i was talking with my friend jonathan about how nice it is to walk without a flashlight, because with a flashlight you can only see where the light is shining and really nothing of everything else, and we decided together that it is "great to be able to be thankful for things we don't have."

they call traffic lights 'robots' in afrikaans. there was a construction site where the traffic only moved one direction at a time, and traffic lights coordinated switching direction. the driver of our car (who was a real character) said "now, the robots are controlling us."

I was assigned a permanent location yesterday. I will leave tomorrow or Saturday to visit it. The place is a town called Berseba (named after the woman in the bible that we call Bathsheba) in the south of Namibia (sort of between Keetmanshoop and Luderitz, but a few tens of kilometers on a ‘very bad’ road off of the main road). The Nama people call it !au tsawises, which means “hunt springs” (water, rather than force, related springs). It is a small place--my map says it is between one and two thousand people while someone from a nearby town said it is around 300 people. Most people who work there are farmers, work for the government, or are unemployed. There is a ‘mountain’ ‘close’ to town, although I’m not clear on how close it is (it sounds like somewhere between 2 and 20 km) or how big it is. It may be an extinct volcano. The Fish River is also somewhat nearby, but I’m not sure exactly how close.

Most people speak KhoeKhoeGowab, so I should get plenty of practice. I’m excited about that. I will share a house (located next door to the other teacher’s houses) with a guy named Kiwan--a volunteer working in the parents and community education program. He will be helping the school to improve its educational methods, and to involve the parents more in the education process.

The school there is small—there are 96 students in grades 8 through 10, and 4 teachers. The government pays for 3, and one is sponsored by a fishing company. It sounds like all of the teachers are female. I will be teaching mathematics and physical science. The teacher makes it sound like they will also try to rope me in to teaching english, but I think I will avoid it if possible, at least at first. The man in the Peace Corps who assigned me to this location said it was a school that had really been struggling, but that they had a new principal who was trying to turn things around. Unfortunately, I found out from the teacher who is here to pick me up that this principal will likely be leaving the school before I get there.

There won’t be email access in town, so I may be on the once a month plan. The school does have a computer though, so I may be able to type blog entries and/or emails at school and just post it when I get the chance.

All of the people assigned to the south with me are cool. The nice girl named Kristen that I was running with is closest. The volunteers in Mariental, Luderitz, and other nearby places are also friends of mine. I stand a good chance of being able to hike Fish River Canyon, and some other mountains and extinct volcanoes in that area.

The Lonely Planet guidebook says something like “it is hard to imagine a more lonely or desolate place.” I’ve been thinking two things about that. First, lonely may be a compliment from people who call themselves ‘lonely planet.’ And, second, that I may very well write them a letter after I’ve lived there a while with a more appropriate description.

So that’s that. I’ve been in Okahandja again (at the training center). I miss my host family in Otjiwarongo, and am looking forward to returning to them. We have such a good time together, and they treat me so well. The training has been pretty decent. The information has been useful, although some of the sessions are, of course, boring or worse. The ‘diversity training’ was especially painful.

Some of the other trainees did not have as positive of experiences at training sites. I heard stories of going to communities that were in real poverty – where nobody worked and people spent their montly government pension on brown sugar and yeast that they used to make hooch. The teachers and principal in the school were well trained and knew lots of buzzwords like ‘learner centered education’ but there were real shortcomings in terms of their job performance. I don’t think I should be any more specific here.

Also, some of the former volunteers that we met were not in excellent shape. Some seemed bitter and like they’d lost track of the good things about their service. Ones who’d been successful and were positive gave some good, down to earth, advice about how to have a good stay in Namibia. I will let you know what I think the challenges related to my personal experience are as I discover them.

My KKG is coming along nicely. I’ve not been using it conversationally as much as I’d like this week, because training has gone 8-8 or so. I’m memorizing a lot of stuff, and feel good when I recognize what someone has said. The grammar is still a mystery, but I ordered an english language grammar book in Otjiwarongo that should be there when I get back.

We went around in a circle and talked about our stories growing up. The best one was a guy named Shuman’s—he was placed in special education classes because he was quiet. They offered students a popsicle for every 10 books they read. He read 132 books in 2 months before they realized that maybe he should be in regular education. When I asked him how the popsicles tasted, he said “greeeeat.”

Some of the teachers here are really good. I’m learning a lot as I watch them or practice teaching classes in front of them.

That’s all for now. I’m doing well. I miss you folks.

this time i'm working on this thing first. internet access is expensive (compared to our salary) and really, really slow. half an hour goes by really fast.

i had a really good time with my host sister jane the other night. we were washing dishes, and she took one of the lids for a pan that we were washing and put it on her head. i said 'that's not a hat, and you will get it dirty.' she said 'it is a hat, and i will not get it dirty.' at that point, i realized that i was acting like a grown-up, and should stop. i put a lid on my head, and we laughed all around the kitchen. then, she put a towel on her head and dried all the dishes by rubbing them on her head. it was a good time.

we had a visitor who was a khoekhoe teacher. he came with three other adults and three kids in a pick-up smaller than any that i've ever seen. they had a mattress in the back, and were packed in. lots of glasses got broken with everybody running around, so he taught me to say 'let's break all of emgard's dishes.' (emgard is the woman whose house i'm staying at). and, lots of other stuff including an excessively polite way to say 'sorry i'm late' and a phrase, 'let's not gossip about each other,' that seems to imply a much, much deeper understanding of the culture and language than i have. it goes over really well when i use it.

they use some of the same sayings as we do, with slight modifications. two examples are: 'there is more than one way to kill a cat.' and 'you can lead a dog to water, but you can't make it drink.' they also have one that says 'you don't lose all your hair while walking down the street' that means people don't change too quickly. i think if you do lose all your hair while walking down the street that you should see a doctor.

if you want to call someone a fat clumsy american in herero, you say 'eamerica'. we're using it a lot in fun. in khoekhoegowab, it is '/hup' or '/hubu'.

i tried oshikundu--the alcoholic beverage made from the kavango plant. it is kind of a beer or hooch type thing. people make it in big buckets, and they have a 'oshikundu store' which consists of a bucket to sit on, a bucket full of oshikundu, and a glass. the one i've been to is next to a termite mound that is about 8 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall. as a demonstration of good faith and a universal symbol of friendship, they drink a little from your glass before they hand it to you. they are, as you can imagine, easy people to get along with and it really only looks like an expensive place to go -- it actually costs about $0.20 for a quart of the stuff.

training is still going well. some days it is emotionally difficult to hear about social problems that are common here. it is a poor country, so things happen that shouldn't happen to anybody. sometimes rich families will raise
kids for poor families who can't afford them, and these kids are basically treated as slaves while they're young. they take care of cleaning the house and work and aren't sent to school. another thing is that it is apparently common for secondary school girls to have 'sugar daddies.' there are other things like that, but you get the picture.

here are my recent notes on the language:

1) it is definitely a tonal language, but not to the extent that cantonese is. there are low, high, low-rising, and high-falling tones, but the different tones often tell what part of speech the word is, rather than making a whole new word. there are examples of new words though --the word for morning //goas is exactly the same as the word for knee. knee is just pronounced with a high tone.
2) americans tend to say the letter 'r' without moving their mouth and the short o with moving their mouth. the converse is true here -- i have to pretend my mouth is paralyzed to correctly pronounce 'o' and conciously move it around to say 'r.' they also roll their 'r's even more than i'm used to spanish speakers doing it. i'm getting better at it -- you really have to relax your tongue, which is difficult while pronouncing words.
3) when vowels are adjacent (e.g. 'their') we make a whole new sound (i think it is called a dipthong). they say both vowels, but which one gets most of the attention depends on whether or not the word has a click, and the sounds they make seem to change too. i'm ending up just memorizing a list of vowel combinations and what they're supposed to sound like with and without clicks. it isn't a big deal.
4) i'm really trying to work on saying things. our lessons have been mostly vocabulary and pronounciation based, and i'm not nearly as confident as i'd like to be in saying 'i need a beer' or whatever. and, of course, i'm trying to collect colloquial speech.

i met a guy who owns an electronics repair shop. he took me back to meet his technicians, and i helped troubleshoot an amplifier. it was fun to do it together, because we used a fairly similar procedure. we're all going to have a cup of coffee together when i've learned to speak a little more.

if you're jon isom, and the united states government will pay for you to sit on a porch and learn to speak khoekhoe-whatever from a pretty girl, like they're doing for me, you should take them up on it. it is really nice.

we had a feast on sunday. visitors came, and brought enough goat meat to fill a shelf. they grilled it, and made potatoe salad and cabbage. it was great. one of the people who visited was a khoekhoe teacher, and he taught me a lot.

i used all my time writing personal emails, so that's it for now.

remember when doug corbin went to india and someone asked him how his trip went? (for those who've forgotten, he famously said "i didn't get diahrea.") so far, that is one thing he and i have in common, which isn't something i would have expected.

i'm really digging learning this language. it's only been a week and i feel like i can say a lot of stuff. i guess if you study 4-6 hours a day, you will learn pretty quickly. it turns out that the word order statement i made previously was incorrect--the word order does matter, it just depends on a set of complex rules that i don't understand. i'm just trying to form sentences in one of the correct ways (that i think i understand) and listen for key words when i try to converse.

i feel like a rock star. people know me as the buffoon who will tell them every khoekhoegowab word he knows if they stop and talk to me. and stop and talk they do, old people, young ones, rich people, poor people. this can't last, but it sure is fun while it does. common words are the most likely to have clicks, so sometimes more complex phrases are easier to pronounce quickly and accurately, so people think i speak better than i do. as many of you know, having people overestimate my abilities in a language is something i usually want to happen.

i taught my first class today. i taught 8th graders to multiply (6 days 5 hours 18 minutes * 8, etc). they all learned how to do it, and i had some fun examples. i'll tell you more but i'm out of time now.

hi everybody,

first the business. i promised to post a schedule of when i would be at okahandja and the phone number below. i didn't bring it with me this time either, but i know that i will head back there on sunday the 15th and be there about a week before i visit my permanent site. still no word on where that is.

i'm staying with ms. emgard swartz in orwetoveni (the '1st location' (place where blacks were forced to live during apartheid) of otjiharango). she is rich (she is a director for health clinics in the region), and has satellite tv and a microwave. she is also very nice. also staying with us are her daughter (?), and two granddaughters (jane and catherine). catherine is 12 and jane, my buddy, is 6. at various times another daughter and a baby have been around, and her son (luther) is in town for break. the whole time i've been here, he's only said 8 words to me--'i hope you enjoy your stay in namibia.' i'm trying to get him to go jogging with us in the morning, but he is disinclined to make extra work for himself when there's all that soccer and rugby on tv.

when i showed up to ms. swartz's place on saturday, there was a birthday party in full swing. it was all girls--with ages from 6 to 12. they let me play patti-cakes, some standing in a circle games where you dance, a game like duck-duck-goose except that you select the person by leaving a shoe behind them. then, we danced on the porch and went on a walking tour of orwetoveni. when people asked what i was doing there, they told them 'jon came here to learn to talk like a damara.' (damaras are one of the tribes that speak khoekhoegowab). you should believe me when i tell you that i loved everything about that day.

about khoekhoegowab:
1) clicks are easy. if you hang out with jane, she will have you clicking and loving it in a couple of days.
2) i haven't done science related to this, but it is said that khoekhoegowab is one of the only languages that will 'open the gates of heaven.'
3) the german/dutch 'gh' and rolled 'r' are the things giving me fits.
4) lots of words have nasal or long vowels, and they're pretty easy to form but it can be hard to switch in and out of speaking nasally during a word or sentence.
5) playing 'go fish' is the single best way to learn numbers. it is ok to say 'do you have any' in kkg, but 'go fish' has to stay in english.
6) the language is tonal, in that the tone of a word can indicate its function (i.e. direct or indirect object). the word order is totally up to the speaker (i.e. there is no correct way) which is nice when you're talking and not as nice when you're listenening.
7) kids here are good at languages. catherine speaks good english, better afrikaans, and khoekhoegowab.

afrikaans is really the lingua franca, but afrikaaners aren't loved (i saw a man selling toy trucks for N$50 by the side of the road tell an afrikaaner that he would have to pay N$500 for one, and then get cussed out), so i'm really glad to be learning a language that isn't associated with all that.

ok, a note about my visit to church and i'm out of time. it was normal church stuff (i stood there while people sang and 'got down'). then a singing group came out and sang and danced in traditional ways and it was cool. then, said men went in back to the baptism area and came out dressed in drag--in traditional costumes for native peoples. they sauntered around the room, flirted with guys, and basically had a beauty paegant (complete with personality portion, but thankfully not swimsuit). it was not what i expected from church.

i have more to say, but not time. i will try and come back soon. let me know how you're doing,

jon