Oh Give Me A Home...

I have a home and it’s in Nyangana! The town is about 100 km east of Rundu up in the northeast region of the country called Kavango. I am going to be working with Catholic Health Services (CHS) at the Nyangana Hospital which is also attached with the Ministry of Health. I have so much to tell you all… so hang in there… this might be a long post!
 First thing I should explain I guess is my job description. Apparently this site requested 2 volunteers, but they only got me, so I guess there is a lot of work to do. We received a packet on our site placement and in it were several documents, including the application from the host organization for a volunteer, so this is where I am getting all of my information from.


The main goal/objective of Nyangana Hospital and CHS is to prevent diseases, promote health, provide curative services, and rehabilitation services. My supervisor is the nurse manager and my counterparts name is Joseph Ndafediva. They speak Rumanyo (NOT Ruwkangali) there, so that means I get to learn a whole new language in one month! Oh boy. That should be fun.


There are several things they want me to accomplish over the next two years, so I’m just gonna list them all:


-Train health workers in HIV/TB/Malaria


-Awareness and mobilization of youth


-Raising awareness on reproductive health, teenage pregnancy, family planning, carrier guidance, and alcoholism (specifically in the youth population)


There was a checklist on the application to identify which program areas the PVC will primarily address. My supervisor checked:


-Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC’s)


-Home based care


-Abstinence and being faithful


-Reproductive health


-Immunizations


-Income generating activities


-Malaria/TB


-Organizational capacity building


-Food & nutrition


-Voluntary counseling and testing


-Energy saving technologies


They checked everything except “Other prevention (including condoms).”


So would you like to learn a little about the hospital? Too bad… I’m going to tell you anyways! The Nyangana Hospital has 120 beds, 4 doctors, 10 registered nurses, 22 enrolled nurses, and 67 paramedical and admin staff. Sounds awesome!


One thing I forgot to tell you, I am their first volunteer! I am not replacing another volunteer so this should be pretty interesting!


I bet you’re wondering where I am going to live. Well I have good… no AWESOME news! I am living on the mission compound which is very close to the hospital (if not right next to it!) I have my own brick home on the compound as well! I talked to my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) about the compound and she said it was beautiful. This is how she described it: there a church, a girls school and dorms for the girls to stay in, living quarters for the nuns, a garden, a conference space, and a rec room/sewing room. Then there is my house. It is just a 2 room house so you walk in and there is the living room, dining room and kitchen all in one, and then the bedroom is separate and the bathroom is off the bedroom. I have running water and electricity!


All that being said, I won’t actually be living in these quarters until after my first three months of service. During that time, I will be living with another host family which is 2 km away from the hospital. I only have a little bit of information on this family and where they live, so here it goes. They live in traditional housing, which to my understanding means a homestead with huts. Yes… huts. I will have my own little hut, but I will cook and eat with the family. They live in a village just outside of Nyangana. I am actually really excited about this homestay! My family right now is great and all, but this next family will be such a different experience. If I had to guess, I will probably not have water or electricity for these first three months. Thank goodness for my solar shower and my solar charger I brought!


On Saturday, I will be traveling up to Nyangana to meet my host family and spend a week with them and at my work site. Tomorrow I meet my supervisor and I spend the day doing a workshop with them. I am very excited. So excited that I can’t even begin to express it!


Today we also had our first language test. It was so hard! I placed novice-mid, which is what I was expecting. I need to be at intermediate-mid in 4 weeks. Eek! All 6 of us Rukwangali students placed in the novice-mid category though. So I don’t feel so bad! It got really tough toward the end of the test when Raymond (our tester) started really pushing us. He would ask these really long questions and I would only get like 4 of the words, so I decided to take those 4 words that I knew, form a new question in my head and answer that one. So for a good 5 mins I don’t think we were talking about the same thing. Oh well! It was funny at least.


Well, thanks for reading this all if you made it this far! When I get back from my site visit next Saturday I will give you another update with some pictures!