the start of the last term

One day…
Sunday, 22 August, 2010

I’m going to have a kitchen sink.
And a drying rack next to that kitchen sink.
Hell, maybe I’ll have a dishwasher.

I’m going to have hot water.
And one tap per sink so I can make warm water

I’m going to have a pair of sandals that don’t hurt my feet.
And aren’t held together with super glue.
And sneakers.

I’m going to have plates that aren’t plastic.
And more than one fork, knife, spoon and mug.

I’m going to have chairs.
And a couch
And a table.

I’m going to have double ply toilet paper.
And not think of it as a luxury.

I’m going to have trousers without holes.
And I’ll call them pants.

I’m going to have working outlets.
And I won’t need extension cords everywhere.
And working ceiling lights.

I’m going to have a shower curtain.
And a towel.

I’m going to have shelves.
And books to put on those shelves.

One day I’m going to have those things.
And it’ll be great.

For now, I’ll just keep dreaming.

Walking Nicky home
Sunday, 22 August, 2010

I’ve been asking Nicky for about a week now if anyone is selling tomatoes in the village. I just finished my last one tonight, with a few days to go until I leave and can restock, but I’ve been rationing pretty heavily because I definitely didn’t buy enough on my last visit to town. We haven’t found any tomatoes to buy.

She told me Kalenga told her to go to his garden and take something because she had watered for him. She went. She found a beautiful tomato. She told me, “It was beautiful! So red! So big! So beautiful! I thought to myself, ‘Miss Lori will like this tomato!’ I brought it home and put it in the house. I came back from the river and my mother had cut it! I wanted to cry!” I told her to save her tears for something else. “There are more.”

Tonight when I walked her home, the moon was already out. I asked her what she sees when she looks at the moon. Does she see anything in it? “There’s a man, like a chief, who is wearing the thing on his head for the chief and he is sitting.” I have never seen it that way, but with her description, I saw that too. I told her we call that “The Man in the Moon.” I told her I see a face with two big eyes and a mouth. I stopped in the path, turned, tilted my head and made the expression of the man’s face I see in the moon. She agreed that might be what it is.

Welcome home dinner
Monday, 23 August, 2010

Last week I went for a walk.

On this walk I was talking to all of you.

I was imagining us at my parent’s house in Ashby. It was my welcome home party that my mom said will happen. I need to cook for you. And I need it to be the foods I eat here – porridge, fat cakes, cabbage or other greens prepared the way they’re eaten in Andara. So in this conversation I was imagining, I had just finished cooking (on a stove, not outside which is how these foods are usually prepared) and we were all sitting down in the living room (the way I remember it) to eat together. There were bowls of porridge and plates of cabbage, maybe one bowl and one plate for each 3 or 4 people. No silverware. We eat with our hands. We’re not in the dining room, I don’t know what tables are for. We’re all sitting on the floor.

Now that you have that visual, all I was doing in this conversation was trying to put a different visual in your heads…

Now, before you start eating, close your eyes and picture all of this…

You’re sitting outside in the shade under one of the only trees big enough to offer shade to more than one person. You’re sitting in the sand or on a threadbare blanket or mattress or on your sandals to try to keep your trousers relatively clean because hand washing them is your least favorite thing to do or on a log or on the one chair around which you find uncomfortable because then you’re higher than everyone so you move to the ground anyway or on the crate someone has offered which is more comfortable than the chair somehow.

Even though you’re in the shade, the sweat is dripping down your back between your shoulder blades because it’s still so hot!

The people with you are either 10 years younger and speak enough English to have a decent conversation or they’re older than you and don’t speak any English so you communicate about basic things using charades.

You can see your best friend’s house in front of you – the mud is starting to crumble at the top, the thatch roof probably leaks when it rains.

You can see your best friend’s distant relative’s house to your right. It’s made of bricks (not the red ones, but of concrete) and has a zinc (tin) roof. You’ve slept in that house before and were so thankful there was electricity so there was a fan.

You can see your best friend’s kitchen made of reed walls and zinc roof to the left of the brick house.

You can hear the flies buzzing in your face and landing everywhere.

You can hear kids crying and no one attending to them.

You can hear chickens calling to their chicks and roosters crowing even though it’s the middle of the day and you were always led to believe they only crowed at sunrise but have learned that’s a load of crap.

You can hear the river, which you know will make you sick if you drink and if you’re offered water, it is probably coming straight from the river.

You can hear the drunk adults only 100 yards away sitting in bigger shade all day everyday drinking traditional beer.

You can smell the salty oily deliciousness you’re about to consume.

You can smell sand.

You can feel the flies landing on your lips.

You can maybe even feel a small kid sitting in your lap while you pray to whatever powers that be that she won’t pee on you because you just washed those trousers and you wonder how long you can pretend not to smell the pee if you don’t wash them if she does pee.

You can feel the relative fullness of your stomach compared to those you’re about to share a meal with.

You can feel their honor that you’ve chosen to visit them for lunch.

You feel honored to be sharing a meal with them instead of being fed off to the side, something different because they think you can’t eat porridge and whatever leaves they’ve prepared.

So now, I know this setting isn’t quite the same as all the places I’ve eaten porridge, but I’ve always eaten it with people I care very much about. And one thing I’ve learned to appreciate more is sharing a meal with someone. Eating is life and for so many people food is something they have to fight for. Going to the grocery store whenever you run out of something isn’t an option. Running out of something is a concept they don’t know. You either have something or you don’t. You enjoy it when you have it and when it’s gone, you don’t miss it. And you probably grow about 80% of what you eat, and if you didn’t grow it, you know exactly where it was grown.

All Talk
Monday, 6 September, 2010

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are all talk. They tell you what they want to do, but then they never do it. So I try to do the opposite – keep my mouth shut about things I’m not sure will happen, but if I know I need to do something, I’ll talk about it.

Like killing a chicken.

One time when I was 17 I became a vegetarian because I wouldn’t eat what I wasn’t willing to kill myself. Fish, well, they aren’t so cuddly to me. I kept eating them for the most part. Chicken was out. Beef, pork, turkey even.

Then I moved to Namibia where fish and chicken are considered vegetables. So instead of making a big deal out of meals, I just adapted and began eating a lot of fried fish and more chicken than I’ve probably eaten in America. Somewhere along the line I started enjoying the chicken. So I started talking about killing one.

Over my final holiday, I spent some time in my village. Mary, an RPCV who worked in my same village before me, was visiting and she invited me to her party that Twayapa Shotuyowe, the group she worked with, threw for her. I went. I had no idea what to expect. Here’s the sequence of events…

Saturday I met up with Mary and showed another visiting PCV around the village. We went to the river, sat and enjoyed the beauty and terrors of those crocodile and hippo infested waters. We went to the mission. We just walked around, showing him the place I call home. Mary invited us both to the part for the following day. She said they had killed a goat already. I asked about chickens and mentioned I wanted to kill one. She told me to ask any of the women on Sunday and they’d probably bring one to my house, help me kill it, pluck it, clean it, cook it and even eat it.

Sunday, we went to the party. There was a brief welcoming for Mary before we ate. As we walked from one building to the next for the different activities, Mary told me she had a chicken for me. What??? Oh, ok, I guess I’m killing a chicken today. One member had brought it for Mary as a gift, but Mary explained that she couldn’t bring it home with her and would it be ok if she gave it to me and they helped me kill it? Yes, that’d be fine.

Lunch was mahangu porridge with cabbage and goat. I ate around the meat, still not willing to make a scene and just give my meat away to kids after eating what wouldn’t make me sick.

After lunch, clothes were given out to orphans who are somehow supported by the group (just figured out where I’ll be giving all my clothes in December). Then the chicken was brought out, one man held the body and head with the neck stretched out, handed me the big yellow handled knife and there was suddenly a crowd of adults and kids watching me.

I started pausing, looking for a way out. How sharp is the knife? Sharp. Very sharp? Yes. Just cut? Yes. I was advised to put the knife under the feathers first. I did. I could feel the skin. I started shaking a little and wasn’t sure I could do it. Mary told me not to if I couldn’t. The other PCV told me to just cut hard and fast. I cut hard and fast. Blood. The head was still hanging on. I cut a little bit again and it was separated. The body thrashed, still in the man’s hand. I only had a few drops of blood on my cutting hand. If he’d put the body down, blood would have gotten everywhere as the nerves shook off their last bits of life.

We found a plastic bag and I had a headless chicken for dinner.

But now what?

Christophine, one of the chairpeople of the group, told me she’d come to my house to help me pluck and clean it. Before she showed up, Nicky was there. We boiled water, soaked the body, plucked out the feathers, cut up the pieces, threw out not as many pieces as I expected, and I had a pot full of chicken pieces. The pieces we kept that surprised me a little, only a little because I know a lot more is kept than what we eat in America, were the gizzard (which is hard and you have to slice open so get out the sand), the neck, the liver, maybe some other organ I couldn’t identify and weirdest of all, the feet. I was brave enough to try all of them except the feet. The gizzard just grosses me out a little.

So now it’s done, I know I can kill a chicken, pluck it and clean it. I can eat chicken more guilt free now. But maybe I’ve just been turned off of it. Don’t know yet. I did enjoy eating it. And since I had killed it, I felt more compelled to eat the parts that seemed grosser than others. I wanted to make its life and its death worth more than just for my own “vegetarian” endeavors.

Last First Day
Tuesday, 7 September, 2010

So it starts. My final term teaching in the place I never thought I’d like, let alone fall in love with. Three months from today the school will close, learners will get their reports and whether or not I’m still in the village or already on my way to Windhoek and America, I’ll be finished as a teacher here.

Every holiday, I forget how miserable school can be – the black hole of no motivation, the chaos of teachers not teaching, the million and eight interruptions to my classes that are completely avoidable. I particularly forget how rough the first day of the term can be – school starting late, classes half empty because learners just didn’t come back for some reason or no reason, no one following the time table, hardly anyone teaching at all. And I definitely forgot how hard it is to stand on those concrete floors all day!

But amidst the stresses of returning to school one last time, there were 2 very bright spots today.

Mary brought me the most vegetables I’ve seen in the last two years!! Or at least the most vegetables that I could buy for N$20 and call my own! There were about 10 carrots, a giant bag of beautiful swiss chard, 2 massive onions and 3 beets the size of both of my fists. I’m leaving in a few days for a week of Peace Corps things, so I’m gorging myself on LOCALLY grown vegetables from the river side! And I have the cell phone number of the person in charge who I can message any time I want more vegetables and arrange a pickup or drop off! Finally, more FRESH vegetables than I know what to do with!!!

During period 8, I was walking back to school from my vegetable drop off and my Chaco broke. Again. I had “fixed” it with super glue and a bent paper clip but nothing stands up against the sands of Africa. Or at least no American solution. So I was once again left with a flapping strap on my sandal. I showed a couple teachers, just for something to talk about, and Mr. Thinyemba told me to go ask Mangundu in his class. Mangundu who? Alphons. Huh, I know that name. But I didn’t place it. He yelled after me, Kayoka! Ohhh!!! Kayoka can fix shoes? Yes. Great! I brought it to him, asked if he could fix it and left with only one shoe on.

After a lunch of locally grown beans followed by a glorious nap, Nicky and Kayoka came over with my fixed sandal! It’s definitely better than anything I could have done myself! I finally have a sandal that will likely last me the next 3 months, and hopefully will last someone longer when I give them away.

So even though it was nice to have a break, and it certainly was not long enough, it was also nice to see a lot of the faces of my learners who I will miss come December and my departure. I reminded all of my classes that I will be leaving in December. I asked them not to talk about it with me, but just to know that I’m really going. Today I’m ready to leave, tomorrow might be another story.