knowledge that it is a new beginning, a fresh start of another year.
It seems pregnant with possibility, replenishing my optimism. After
much hullabaloo, I have figured out how to hook up my phone to use the
internet, so I now have access to email and as one can deduce from new
blog updates, a way to update you all on my life here in Namibia. I've
put the two group emails up on this site to catch up on training thus
far.
I just finished a month-long home-stay that was part of our community
based training. I was with a wonderful family, who lived in the town
part of Grootfontein and had two kids (with more relatives coming over
the holidays). They were encouraging of my language skills and wanted
to teach me how to do everything, from handwashing my clothes to
cooking buhobe, hard porridge. Even still, I find it stressful being a
guest in someone's house. By far it was the best homestay experience I
have had, far smoother than France or Senegal. I think this was
partially due to the fact that my family all spoke English fluently
(or Namlish, as we say here), so there was less of a communication
barrier.
Grootfontein is an urban city, but we found it necessary to readjust
our expectations of what a city is here in Namibia. There was not a
lot going on in Grootfontein, even though it had a military base,
prison, a few grocery stores, tons of shabeens (bars) and three
locations. There is a big divide leftover from apartheid between town
and the locations. When I refer to the "location" it is the equivalent
as talking about townships in South Africa, or the communities where
black Africans were forced to live during the apartheid regime. The
economic inequality is still pretty much divided along racial lines,
leaving the living arrangements still intacted. We were surprised at
how this affected our training. Those of us in town felt very isolated
from the rest of the trainees who lived in the black and coloured
locations. And when we put on a community health workshop as part of
our technical training, it was difficult for us to reach out to those
that did not live in the location, since families living in town or
even the coloured location would not be willing to go to the location.
Racism and tribalism are very ingrained here, even amongst the
numerous black ethnic groups. My host family only hung out with fellow
Caprivians and tried to distance themselves as much as possible from
those living in the location. I have yet to know what language to
greet people in because I do not want to offend anyone by greeting in
the wrong language, so usually I stick to English unless I know for
sure that they speak my target language. (on a side note, there is
less baggage with speaking Afrikaans to Namibians, despite the fact
that it was the language of oppression under apartheid. This is a big
difference from South Africa. I had been weary of learning Afrikaans
and was surprised to find this difference. Most Namibians that I've
talked to about this hold very little ill-feeling towards Afrikaners
and seem to have moved forward since Independance).
We continued with technical training sessions during CBT, in addition
to four hours of language instruction each day. Some days we traveled
to Tsumeb (about 45 minutes from Grootfontein) to have joint sessions
with the other group of health trainees. These sessions mainly focused
on statistics and did not provide a lot of strategies for behavior
change or actual stuff that would be useful to our jobs, so it was
frustrating at a time to sit through hour after hour of how AIDS is a
problem in Namibia without a lot of emphasis on ways to reduce
transmission and spread in our work in our communities. Even still, we
were able to practice facilitating workshops, which proved to be the
most useful part of training. I led sessions on healthy
decision-making, risk-taking and nutrition/hygiene. Despite having
very little time to prepare and resources to put together our
sessions, they went quite well. I was afraid that the information I
had was too basic and was afraid of coming across as condescending
when talking about the food groups and hand-washing, but the
participants really ate it up and offered a lot of positive feedback.
We did a lot of interactive activities, role-playing and games to make
it as engaging as possible. Namibians love attending workshops since
it provides something to do, free food, and most importantly
certificates.
A big difference between Senegal and Namibia that I have noticed is
how much more of a problem alcoholism is here in Namibia compared to
in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country. Yes, in Dakar, the
capital, there were lots of clubs, bars, and people drank, but it was
not near the extent and amount consumed here. The shabeens (bars) are
full by 7 am and stay full all day/night. Even our host siblings (as
young as 2!) drank beer by the glass-full and would cry until they got
more. The concept that alcoholism is a disease is not recognized here,
and the government is just beginning to initiate programs to raise
awareness, recognizing that alcohol is one of the main drivers of
fueling the AIDS epidemic here.
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