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!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monster Eye
Life in Namibia has been sort of a struggle these past few days. We are all just trying to make it to Thursday which is site placement announcement day!!! It is also our first LPI (a.k.a. language test… not actually sure what it stands for but Peace Corps sure loves their acronyms!) We are all desperate to know where we will be living for the next two years!
Yesterday was rough… just before I went to bed I noticed that my right eye felt funny. Before noticing that my eye felt funny, I was just lying down on the bed studying and talking on the phone under my mosquito net. So I went into the bathroom to look at it and it was swollen! It looked like the tear duct was swollen and it was pushing everything towards the outside. I also had some minor raccoon eye going on. It looked almost like I got punched in the face… which of course did not happen. EMT Katie kicked in! It didn’t hurt to touch it. The swelling felt like it was fluid filled. I didn’t see anything in my eye. It wasn’t red or itchy and it didn’t have any discharge! So weird! So I flushed it out with the eye solution that come in our medical kit and slept with a cool rag on my eye. Every time I woke up in the night I looked at it to see if the swelling went down. When I finally got up for training, the swelling had gone down, but I still looked like a monster. I showed my host sisters at breakfast and they didn’t know what was wrong. So I went to training and as soon as I got there, I had the Training Manager (Sidna) call Kate the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer). By this time the swelling had gone down even more and I was looking semi-normal again. Kate was scheduled to come to training in the afternoon so she said that she would just have a look at it then and if I needed to, she would take me to the doctor in the afternoon.
By the time she got to training the swelling was almost gone, but I had some remnants of raccoon eye left. She noticed the swelling in my tear duct and raccoon right away. She took a good look at my eye, (actually both eyes) and couldn’t see anything wrong. So she gave me a different type of eye drop than I already had and told me that she would look at it again tomorrow.
As of now, the swelling is almost gone and the raccoon eye is pretty much all gone. So I guess her eye drops are working! YAY!!! I don’t like looking like a monster. Looking back on this whole thing, I realized that I should have taken a picture of my ugly eye! I would find so much humor in it now (and so would my fellow PCT’s)! Oh well, I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how ugly I looked (and trust me… it was bad!).
As soon as I find out on Thursday where I will be living, I’ll post some more information!
I can update you on what I have learned to say in Rukwangali:
Ame mulizambeli goukanguki go PeaceCorps - I am a Peace Corps Health volunteer.
Ame kwa tunda koPennslyvania moAmerica – I am from Pennsylvania in America.
Ame ngani karugana koKavango – I am going to be working in Kavango.
Ame kukwafa nokupakera mbili vantu vana kuparuka nokambumburu – I support and care for people surviving with HIV.
That’s just a little taste
Yesterday was rough… just before I went to bed I noticed that my right eye felt funny. Before noticing that my eye felt funny, I was just lying down on the bed studying and talking on the phone under my mosquito net. So I went into the bathroom to look at it and it was swollen! It looked like the tear duct was swollen and it was pushing everything towards the outside. I also had some minor raccoon eye going on. It looked almost like I got punched in the face… which of course did not happen. EMT Katie kicked in! It didn’t hurt to touch it. The swelling felt like it was fluid filled. I didn’t see anything in my eye. It wasn’t red or itchy and it didn’t have any discharge! So weird! So I flushed it out with the eye solution that come in our medical kit and slept with a cool rag on my eye. Every time I woke up in the night I looked at it to see if the swelling went down. When I finally got up for training, the swelling had gone down, but I still looked like a monster. I showed my host sisters at breakfast and they didn’t know what was wrong. So I went to training and as soon as I got there, I had the Training Manager (Sidna) call Kate the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer). By this time the swelling had gone down even more and I was looking semi-normal again. Kate was scheduled to come to training in the afternoon so she said that she would just have a look at it then and if I needed to, she would take me to the doctor in the afternoon.
By the time she got to training the swelling was almost gone, but I had some remnants of raccoon eye left. She noticed the swelling in my tear duct and raccoon right away. She took a good look at my eye, (actually both eyes) and couldn’t see anything wrong. So she gave me a different type of eye drop than I already had and told me that she would look at it again tomorrow.
As of now, the swelling is almost gone and the raccoon eye is pretty much all gone. So I guess her eye drops are working! YAY!!! I don’t like looking like a monster. Looking back on this whole thing, I realized that I should have taken a picture of my ugly eye! I would find so much humor in it now (and so would my fellow PCT’s)! Oh well, I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how ugly I looked (and trust me… it was bad!).
As soon as I find out on Thursday where I will be living, I’ll post some more information!
I can update you on what I have learned to say in Rukwangali:
Ame mulizambeli goukanguki go PeaceCorps - I am a Peace Corps Health volunteer.
Ame kwa tunda koPennslyvania moAmerica – I am from Pennsylvania in America.
Ame ngani karugana koKavango – I am going to be working in Kavango.
Ame kukwafa nokupakera mbili vantu vana kuparuka nokambumburu – I support and care for people surviving with HIV.
That’s just a little taste
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Your Life Gives Me Life
Today was cultural day. Oh my… it was quite an experience. Of course we had to get up super early (on a Saturday) and start cooking! We broke off into our language groups so I spent most of the day with my fellow Rukwangali trainees. First thing we did was start 3 fires for our pots. We ended up making in the end a whole bunch of stuff: corn, beans, porridge, traditional spinach, goat (I think), and some chicken.
Our chicken was super fresh! Wanna know why? Because we killed them. Yep, slaughtered them in the corner of the center. I think we killed a grand total of six chickens. In case you are wondering how we did it, don’t worry! I will included a video of it on my blog soon and some pictures. I ended up helping with the last chicken. I held the chicken down while Karley sliced. Karley was super fast, didn’t hesitate and was for sure the best… I don’t know what to call her… butcher (I guess) of the day!
Tangent about Karley, she is a graduate of Susquehanna University! She graduated in 2006 and was a senior when I was a freshman! AND one of her best friends was in my sorority and happened to be in the butterfly family. Awesome! We had pictures taken of us while we were slaughtering the last chicken (which I have of course posted) and we want to send them in to the alumni office to show SU what interesting work their graduates are participating in! We’re not sure if the pictures will be well received though.
So, back to cultural day. I’m going to try and remember all that I had to eat and do my best to describe it to you. I did try a bite of everything, and some things were surprisingly good! Ok, here it goes:
Lamb and Sheep – not sure how all of it was prepared but one dish was like pulled pork BBQ and was super yummy. There was also a brie and that was really good to. Other meat was just grilled I think.
Goat Head – So here is the really awesome one. They smoke the goat head to singe the hairs and then scrape them off with a knife. They then cook the goat head on a fire (pictures below) and shave the meat off the face and … wait for it… eat the brain! YES I HAD GOAT BRAIN! And guess what! It wasn’t bad! It just tasted like a very mild, tender meat… almost like it had no flavor. The meat just tasted like regular goat meat.
Chicken – We all know what chicken tastes like, but it’s really good here because it is so fresh! We also boil it in broth so it has a really nice flavor.
Traditional Spinach – Basic boiled spinach but it is, for some reason, really grainy. It’s almost like sand was mixed in. The women who made it said that you just have to get used to the texture.
Porridge – I think I have described this before. It’s like grits and cream of wheat combined. Or like a really REALLY thick mashed potato that you can eat with your hands. It’s good and is a staple in the Namibian diet.
Brie Bead – The most delicious bread you will ever taste. It is literally grilled bread and is so yummy!
Fat Cakes – Exactly what the name sounds like. Cake batter fried in oil. Really good, but really… fatty.
Raisin Bread – Baked underground. Very yummy!
Sour Milk – Ok, I know it sounds gross, but it was actually ok. They let the milk spoil for a while and it turns into something like a thin yogurt. It just tasted like plain yogurt. But to stay on the safe side, I just had a very little sip!
Ginger Beer – Yes my friends, they make homemade ginger beer! And if you haven’t ever tried it, go to the store now and get some because it is yummy!
All The Side Dished You Could Ever Want – Beans, Potatoes, Corn, Veggies, etc. Basically Thanksgiving the Namibian way.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Peanut Butter Heaven
Things are going very well here in Namibia. My host family is wonderful! Of course, since the last time I blogged I discovered some miscommunications. I do not have a host brother, just three host sisters and they all live at home. Abigail is 12, Memory is 16, and Nancy is almost 22. Nancy has a 3 year old son named Mackenzie. My mother (Florence) is a school teacher. Her niece, Supisu (I’m not 100% on that spelling) is 21 and lives with us too. So, that’s the fam! Mackenzie is afraid of me… and it’s so cute! He doesn’t speak any English so he never knows what I am saying. He has started to come around me more and he even high-fived me tonight! Wahoo!
Meals seem to be pretty standard Namibian food. We have either rice or pasta with each meal and some sort of meat, either chicken or sausage. The sausage here is GREAT!!! It ain’t no Jimmy Dean processed crap that you get in the frozen section of the supermarket. It’s real sausage! That being said, we all know what sausage is made of, but it is still the most delicious sausage I have ever tasted. Lunch is usually a sandwich and some fruit. I bring my lunch from home. So far I have had peanut butter sandwiches and cheese with lettuce sandwiches.
A quick tangent on peanut butter… Namibians think that Americans are smitten with peanut butter. I mean, peanut butter and jelly is something that we have all eaten as a child, but never did I think that our country had an obsession with peanut butter. When we met our host families for the first time last Wednesday, one of the trainers was talking about a balanced meal and what that meant. Of course, she made a comment on peanut butter and said something to the effect of:
“These Americans, they love their peanut butter. They put peanut butter on everything! They even take apple slices and put peanut butter on them!”
There was an overwhelming gasp from the host families.
For some reason, the thought of putting peanut butter on apple slices was just unheard of! Anyways, I guess my host family took the peanut butter chat to heart because since then, peanut butter has been on the table for more than one meal. Even when there is really nothing to put it on! For example, two nights ago we had sausage sandwiches for dinner, and what was placed next to me but the peanut butter jar. We might have to have a chat soon about what I like to eat peanut butter with :)
On Friday we drive to Windhoek so the rest of my group has to opportunity to purchase a cell phone. My number is posted on the right side of this page, so go buy a phone card and call me! As I have stated before, please remember that I am 7 hours ahead of you and as I much as I miss you all, I really like to sleep. The best times to call are between 6:30 and 7:30am my time (11:30pm-12:30am your time) or after 5pm my time (10am your time). I should have regular internet access after Friday because I will have MTC (the wireless company) set up internet on my phone! YAY!!! And I could possibly be purchasing a 3G modem (I think that’s what it’s called???) for my computer if there is a good deal so even more internet!!! MORE YAY!!!
Since we arrived in country over a week ago, we have received lots of candy! And by the word “candy”, I mean shots. We were all misled when the PCVL’s (3rd year volunteers) told us to expect tons of candy during PST. Yeah, I don’t like this kind of candy. So far, the list includes H1N1, Yellow Fever, Meningitis, Hep B 1, and the first 2 of the 3 rabies shots. 2 Hep A, the last rabies, and Typhiod Fever shots are left. Thank goodness I had some of these shots already! I didn’t need to get H1N1, Yellow Fever, or any of the Hep B shots. This type of candy is easy to pass on.
Well, I guess that’s all for now. Once I can actually say a sentence in Rukwangali, I will say something, but not much has changed in that department. Still on greetings!
Mbaa (Bye)
Take care everyone!
Meals seem to be pretty standard Namibian food. We have either rice or pasta with each meal and some sort of meat, either chicken or sausage. The sausage here is GREAT!!! It ain’t no Jimmy Dean processed crap that you get in the frozen section of the supermarket. It’s real sausage! That being said, we all know what sausage is made of, but it is still the most delicious sausage I have ever tasted. Lunch is usually a sandwich and some fruit. I bring my lunch from home. So far I have had peanut butter sandwiches and cheese with lettuce sandwiches.
A quick tangent on peanut butter… Namibians think that Americans are smitten with peanut butter. I mean, peanut butter and jelly is something that we have all eaten as a child, but never did I think that our country had an obsession with peanut butter. When we met our host families for the first time last Wednesday, one of the trainers was talking about a balanced meal and what that meant. Of course, she made a comment on peanut butter and said something to the effect of:
“These Americans, they love their peanut butter. They put peanut butter on everything! They even take apple slices and put peanut butter on them!”
There was an overwhelming gasp from the host families.
For some reason, the thought of putting peanut butter on apple slices was just unheard of! Anyways, I guess my host family took the peanut butter chat to heart because since then, peanut butter has been on the table for more than one meal. Even when there is really nothing to put it on! For example, two nights ago we had sausage sandwiches for dinner, and what was placed next to me but the peanut butter jar. We might have to have a chat soon about what I like to eat peanut butter with :)
On Friday we drive to Windhoek so the rest of my group has to opportunity to purchase a cell phone. My number is posted on the right side of this page, so go buy a phone card and call me! As I have stated before, please remember that I am 7 hours ahead of you and as I much as I miss you all, I really like to sleep. The best times to call are between 6:30 and 7:30am my time (11:30pm-12:30am your time) or after 5pm my time (10am your time). I should have regular internet access after Friday because I will have MTC (the wireless company) set up internet on my phone! YAY!!! And I could possibly be purchasing a 3G modem (I think that’s what it’s called???) for my computer if there is a good deal so even more internet!!! MORE YAY!!!
Since we arrived in country over a week ago, we have received lots of candy! And by the word “candy”, I mean shots. We were all misled when the PCVL’s (3rd year volunteers) told us to expect tons of candy during PST. Yeah, I don’t like this kind of candy. So far, the list includes H1N1, Yellow Fever, Meningitis, Hep B 1, and the first 2 of the 3 rabies shots. 2 Hep A, the last rabies, and Typhiod Fever shots are left. Thank goodness I had some of these shots already! I didn’t need to get H1N1, Yellow Fever, or any of the Hep B shots. This type of candy is easy to pass on.
Well, I guess that’s all for now. Once I can actually say a sentence in Rukwangali, I will say something, but not much has changed in that department. Still on greetings!
Mbaa (Bye)
Take care everyone!
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