Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Trip to Five Rand - A location in Okahandja

I felt uncomfortable taking pictures of my location, so some of the other volunteers and I made a trip to another location close by. It is lot like ours but a little poorer. It is called 5 rand because thats how much it used to cost to buy a plot of land there. About the equivalent of 50 us cents.

Pictures:
Picture of one of our language trainers getting ready to cut a piece of goat for us to try.


Where i will someday get my hair cut.


Trying to speak the language with one of the locals outside the shabeen (name for the informal bars in the locations).



Laughing at how bad i did.
Carrying the beverages.






Inside one of the shabeens.


Some of the locals outside the shabeen.




A view of the street in 5 rand.



One of the local children in 5 rand.



Learning how to open bottles the way Namibians do. Noone uses bottle openers here.


More Pictures from 5 Rand

Another volunteer and I. He is a naitive of Minnisota but weve learned to see past that.

From left to right:Mark, Myself, the shabeen owner, trainer Timo, trainer Victory, Levi.


A trainer and myself on top of a very windy hill on our way back from the resevoir.


A nasty snake bite that got infected. Just kidding, red ink from a card board box.



More pictures of the goat meat. You cant see the enormous swarm of flies that found a home in the meet.

Various pictures

Various Pictures from training and events during training:






There is an enormous resevoir outside of okahandja that provides Windhoek with much of its water and us with entertainment. This is a picture of one of the trainers coming in from his first ever boat ride. He is deathly afraid of water and it took a few bribes to get him on the boat. He loved it once he was on.


My host brother and I at the resevoir. It was also hard to get him in the water.


My host family and I at the host family appreciation dinner.


My host brother and I on our camping trip. We are on top of a nearby mountain waiting for the sunset.


At the model school graduation ceremony. We sang some traditional songs to the kids. Victory is trying to tune me up.



Three volunteers after one of our many hiking trips. Greg (Wisconsin), Mark (Minnasota), and myself.



Near Okahandja. On top of the mountain we hiked many times.






Near Okahandja. On top of the mountain we hiked many times.







This was during my first site visit to my permanant site. It is a picture of the kids in the host family I stayed with for a week. We were cooking dinner over the fire. They spoke no english and it was very difficult to communicate that week. Sometimes we even resorted to pictures in the sand.
I group of volunteers on a hike the day after we arrived in Namibia. The rainy season hadnt come yet and everything is very dry and brown. The non american looking children were kids that followed us up the mountain. They loved the cameras.



A picture of the kids I stayed with during my first site visit. The plastic ball is what most of the kids in the village use for a soccer ball. Soccer balls are hard to find.










A centipede outside the door at my homestead.











A picture of my homestead from the road. The field the cows are in is now filled with Mahangu.



A picture of a bunch of the dishes that were prepared at the traditional cooking dinner. There is fat cakes, oshithema, chicken stomach, goat, and an assortment of other things i dont really know where they came from. The drink on the right is the traditional oshithema drink made from mahangu. It is what i take as my lunch every day. It is made with flour from the mahangu, sugar, water, and some other stuff. It ferments and will explode if you put it in your nalgene bottle and forget about it. I found this out the hard way twice now.




The freshly killed chicken head.




The matching body.



A mapanie worm from the mapanie trees. They taste a lot like sea weed.




The sunset from the second night in country.














This is the campsite and shelter we built to keep the rain out. Our tent didnt have a rain liner. The shelter didnt keep all the rain out.


Sunset during our camping trip. It is hard to describe how incredible the sunset and sunrise were.

Camping - 12.21.08

More pictures from the camping trip:




I climbed up on top of the cliff to watch the sunset while greg took pictures of it. It was amazing. It ranks up there with half dome for most majestic expeirences in my life.


The fire pit we built against the side of the cliff for our campsite.


My host brother and I.


Another picture of the sunset on our camping trip.


The otherside of the sky at sunset on the camping trip.



Panarama of the sunset.










Getting ready to watch the sunset.






Building the campsite.


Another volunteer atop the mountain.


The baboons that followed us up the mountain. There were about a hundred of them.



A rainstorm we were thankful didnt hit.





Me on top of the mountain. It was very windy.