Corruption. I really, hate Corruption here. Just to put it in prospective, I think every week there is an article in the news paper about how........ money goes missing. Sometimes its has high as 30 million Namibian (4 million US). Seriously its like every week 100,000 US goes missing, and nothing is ever done. I feel like its oh we lots a bunch of money, O well nothing we can do now its gone.

This goes along with other things too like the guy who took his family to the coast while making Emily pay to bring learners. He didn't pay a penny to bring his family, but made her pay to bring kids. A different example is Alex a vol in Rundu was driving with a co worker. They were driving a ministry car and needed 2 pints of oil. The guy at the gas station said here sign for 3 and ill give you some money and sell the third later. His counter part is actually with it and said no, but he is in the vast minority. If you ever hear about corruption in Africa, all i can say is its probably true. Even if its smile like in Okahandja when we visited an orphanage, and they had one chicken to put in the soup of 40 kids, but the staff worker decided they needed food more (yes they were getting paid and it was their job) and they ate half the chicken and left half a chicken for 40 kids. I have tons of stories I can share later this is just the tip of the ice berg.

On an up note, I did meet 2 people that were pretty awesome on my hiking back from the coast, doing volunteer work, raising money for schools, educated, and pretty much all around with the program. I just wish they didn't make up maybe 10% of the population. I would bet that about 90% of the people they work with do nothing and just kinda of stand around waiting for them to do something, if they are not activity doing thing that hurt them. Like take supplies they need, and other crazy stuff.

This also leads me to a republican type thinking, when I am here I tend to only want to work with the top people and help them. I know a few people doing teacher trainings that have come to the same conclusion too. Why is because you have a few people that are really trying, and the rest that could care less if they never go to class, every learner fails their class too. Or think of it this way, you have a few kids in a class that are trying their hardest to study and get into college, and the rest don't show up, or if they do maybe come to class drunk, or have no plans to even finish the school year, and never even learned how to read cause it was not important to them. Now you could drop down levels and try to help the people that could care less and aren't even listening to you, or say screw it and make sure the kids trying are prepared and ready while just letting the others sit and stare into space just like when you tried to helped them.

I went to the Coast this past weekend. The coast refers to Walvis Bay and Swakopmund. Walvis bay is the biggest port in Southern Africa, and has tons of shipping, Swakopmund is pretty much a German city transported to the desert in Namibia, its nice, clean, without children, and has tons of German tourists. Oh and fun fact about Walvis Bay, it didn't actually gain independence from SA until 4 years after Namibia. It was a city state of SA still in Namibia because it was that much more important then the rest of Namibia to SA.

Since I have not updated my blog in about forever, I am actually going to fill you in on my train wreck of a Marathon. First off I should say its wicked hot by about 7 am, and never really cools down, so my training the two weeks before consisted of about one hour long run, and my race went about the same as training.

The trip to the coast started on Thursday at 9, and by started I mean I meet Emily a PCV who came to town at 8, as I was tagging along with ministry transport that she got for her 3 teams of learners. It was chaos for her, I felt sorry, and the ministry guy who was using money donated by the marathon bought a combi (like a bus) for transport and then told Emily they didn't have room for all her learners, she would have to pay money to get the on transport. She ended up paying in the end, since she has some donations from the states to help pay, but he totally just stole some of her money, and didn't have room because he brought his family along on the trip taking up places of where learners should have been.

Moving on past that, we eventually left town at 3:30, though Emily, her kids and me were ready by 9 when we should have left. We then drove to Rundu, and arrived where we were supposed to stay for the night, but turns out the ministry guy who found his way onto the trip didn't book a place like he said so no one was there. After about 2 hours of arriving we got a place to stay at a different Ministry of Youth hostel. Emily and I made dinner for her kids (at like 10 since that's when we got there) then the Ministry guy between making dinner and serving it called us and the teachers that came and pretty much gave Emily a lecture about how you need to take care of the kids and be responsible, even though she was the only adult that did any type of prep or prepared food, and was the only girl.

After serving food, I was just kinda of playing don't let the learns sneak out, and discovered that one of the teachers (who spend the entire trip from Katima drinking) had set up shop in the girls locker room area of the hostel. Most of the girls had just finished showering when i heard a mans voice coming from the shower/bathroom. I sms'ed Emily and about 5 min later she came out and we spent about 10 min trying to convince him that it was not ok to be in the girls locker room area. His reasoning was that he needed to charge his phone and it was the only place he could so he planned to just sit there while girls came in and out while talking on his phone like he had been for the past 10 min. Eventually we managed to send him to the guys area which was exactly the same as the girls. This lead to getting to sleep about midnight, and waking up at 3 to start traveling to the Coast.

Other then the closer we got to the coast the slower the driver went the only thing that happened of interest was that when we stopped one time the Ministry guy was at the counter trying to buy batteries for his camera. He was insisting that they give him AAA batteries but then he had the problem that they didn't fit in his camera. I told him that he should get the AA batteries, but he said that he needed strong batteries, and couldn't use the AA batteries he needed AAA. After a few tries of convincing him it was just a size, I just left and went back to the transport. I also found out that when asked what is better in a movie learners all pick the one with the highest number. Me "hey kids whats better land before time 1 or land before time 6" Kids "Land before time 6". I almost think i should stick around and just sell things at twice the price with a 2 added to the end of something, does not matter if its identical to what it was before other then the 2 I think I could make a good business.

When we got to the coast we chilled, at the beach for a bit, when me and Emily convinced everyone it was the best idea (Lori a different PCV got there about the same time as us and spend 4 hours just driving around lost, we would not have been any better if we didn't get the kids on the beach and spread out quickly). Then we went and registered for the Marathon and had lunch in Walvis Bay. They directed us to a sports field, and then found out hat we were just sleeping on the ground (don't worry nothing naturally lives in this part of Namibia pretty much, its the skeleton coast and has great dunes, but no grasses, or many insects naturally. It was a cold night, and was not the best. Worse part was the Teaches and ministry guy decided they needed to eat and loaded up the kids and just left without telling me or Emily. They didn't come back for 3 hours and we never really got a good dinner.

When morning finally came around (it was cold if i didn't forget, colder then any day in Caprivi during both winters i was here so it was a shock to the system) we got up and tried to help the kids get ready, it was a mess, none of the teachers that came did a single thing, they really only came to see the coast not help the kids in any way. This lead to me missing the first 12 min of my race I am told. It was kinda sucked, I just took off when i get there missed a turn ran a bit extra since everyone was past me, and then got back on coarse but flew the first 10 km (did i mention i didn't really train) Second half didn't go as well, I managed to pull ahead of all the other PCV's by 10 km, but with a strong wind in my face the entire race, and then having a large gap between races so i couldn't see my next person and having to run hills for the first time in at least 6 months it did not go well. I don't know my time but tagged Kaitlin at some point. Then i chatted with Emily trying to help her learners get ready and take pictures (none of the teachers that came we around or helping in any way unless talking on their cell phones counts.).

I guess our 2 X21 coed team finished 3 seconds behind 3rd in the race, that kinda sucks, I am pretty sure that if you don't count the first 12 minutes missed we could have hit 3rd at least. Then what was really bad was the Ministry guy decided that since he had to have learners around to take the van he would just go back right after the race. They wanted to back up and go all the way back to Caprivi driving though the night, not having the kids shower, and leave. I was like hell no and just said screw it I am staying here I don't care if it delays me.

With the kids gone I found a place in town with a bunch of PCV's to crash and go out on the town for Saturday night, most of the people that ran didn't come out, but even not training it was just a half marathon so i figured it would be a good idea to be out jumping around till late in the morning.

Then we hiked out around 11, it was me and 4 kids from group 30. I was laughing at the group 31 kids though, as we walked to the end of town and then got to the palm trees and stopped. We saw some kids from group 31 walking just ahead of us, but instead of stopping they were walking on the wrong side of the road and started walking out into the desert, it was the middle of the day in summer, in the desert, in the sun about 38 C or 100F. I made more then a few comments about how the new kids need to learn, not to walk out to the desert and just stay in the shade. Since the truck that picked us up saw us first we climbed in all 5 of us, then passed the poor 31er's suffering in the sun while laughing at them. Then we ended up passing 4 people from my group, I did a face slap, then laughed telling 30 i guess my group has some slow learners too, and then we passed a 3rd PCV even farther up the road so they had walked like a mile past us in the shade and been out there longer then we were. (Not only did our spot have shade but places to sit too, it was great).

Hiking back about 1500 km took me 3 days, but I for the 4 rides I got I only waited maybe 2 hours total. I also planed to have it take about 3 days since I had places to stay every 500 km and didn't want to rush. Oh and the slowest person was driving about 120 km. It was nice, and helped that I meet a few Namibians that are actually doing good work. I am real jaded, but a solid 10% of the people here do amazing work, its just that the other 90% are happy sitting the shade doing nothing at all. I guess that was my weekend and a day or two.

I have spent a ton of time reading lately. I think getting the Kindle sent was a great idea. I think in the last week I have read 4 books maybe? It is nice cause i am over work right now, and before I never had access to enough books. Now i have just read 4 books this week. Maybe 10 in the month of July and have a solid 190 just sitting on the kindle when a put on a small sampling of books that I picked up. I think i have over 3000 books that I have access without trying to by, or download any more so I really need to thank Grandpa for getting that has a gift.

Other then reading, I went down to the capital with a ride for a safety and security meeting. Its hard to imagine whats worse, that i have had to go down to WHK for a day long meeting (its fun and i was happy to get away this time) or that I am in any part associated with safety. I am pretty sure my ideas tend to leans slightly farther then moderately dangerous most of the time. I still kinda wanna jump off the bridge into the Zambezi, I think think it would go fine for the most part. The down side is Kaitlin thinks the fall would kill me, (if i land right it is close to the jump for the bridge at lester river so its really not the most dangerous part), but just after is kinda a rapids like part and I am still a little worried about hitting a rock that would be bad. Then there are the corcs after the rapids part that also may be dangerous, but if i could get to the shore just before the rapids i should be plenty safe :-) .

After the meeting, I headed to Rehobooth for a few days with Debbie, and that was fun and different seeing the city and school in the south. After that i stayed in WHK for a meeting for basketball. I got to be on the Namibia Basketball Federations national congress for the Caprivi region with Mr. Melima (our regional elected pres). It was good to hear what was happening in the other regions, and with luck we will be able to set up a league in town in about 3-4 months. I also got to meet some interesting people like a few of the guys were on the national team, one guy was the technical trainer for Zamibia and was offered the head coaching job there, a few guys were on the Olympic committee. It was very professional with the exception of a few regions like mine, thus allowing me sneak into a 4 year position for a national congress.

Now its back to the grind in Katima. Booo work

Well it happened I guess. I updated my blog and PC found it, now they can actually know what I write. I suppose I need to stop with things like Katie's PC Zambia motto of "its better to beg forgiveness then ask permission".

Other then that it also means some of the "new" kids in PC may actually end up reading the writings I claim are still in English. (my ability to use English has slowly dropped, and the worse part is if you think of where it was at before I came to Namibia, yikes.)

So with this in mind, I will highlight some of the major, major pluses of living in Caprivi. Like not knowing the language (i swear maybe 3 out of 15 people have conversations in our Bantu languages) does not really hurt you that much. I hope hope hope hope PC finally listens to every vol here in the region and teaches the next group that comes to Caprivi Sefaway or however the name is spelled for the people going to the mafwe side of the strip.

I also just said how much i dislike the desert. But its tropical here compared to many places, we have alot of natural fruits, lots of trees, things stay green most of the year. Like i said if you look at the caprivi strip on the map we have a river above and below. Most of Namibia's rivers seem to be little sandy area's that fill with water when it rains and are dry beds of sand right after. We have 70% of the birds found in Namibia.

Up north we don't have to really deal with nearly as many apartheid issues. So overall most of the stuff here is good. Its just so far from the rest of Namibia, like people on committees here just don't want to leave cause its a long two day trip normally, and you have to hike pretty far to get anywhere. Some of my counterparts or people from other parts of Namibia also feel that Caprivi is about where Kavango (the spot that connects Caprivi with the rest of Namibia) was 10 years ago. The up side is that if your not in Katima (like i happen to be) its closer to living in the heart of Africa. It has most of the feeling that I got from Katie's mud hut in Zambia. Really I am still a little disappointed that I came here and don't live in a mud hut. (mud huts here are about as good as houses, in every respect some even have satellite dishes hooked up to them.

Oh and if you are reading this, just remember, I am probably mostly insane at this point and am not a credible source of information for the most part.

Well, just to pretend i tried to update this week, I will say my current frustration for the day or week then maybe leave a positive note.

First off we got an entire truck of m nets, for malaria for global fund. This was expected, but they sent wooden pallets that the nets are required to rest a days before the nets. Well as sweet as it is, the pallets we needed are slowly getting here from Rundu, its just the nets came on time. The first 25-30 thousand we managed to fit with some creativity. (that was the entire back of a semi packed full, i felt like i was back climbing to get the first few bags out of the back as i had a toe hold and was crimping a spot on the side of the door). Then the second set of nets came.......... the next day, and they were just dropped to the middle of the floor leaving 25-30k packed in rows, and 25-30k in a pile the size of a house. Don't worry a quarter of the pallets to load them arrived late that day (6pm our time) and will hopefully trickle in each day.

Now yesterday I tried to figure out how we would get stuff sorted, cuase it turns out there are two types of nets in the exact same packaging. You have to read the fine print to figure out the difference, but unlike I figured, they were also not sorted before shipping. So that first days work of packing...... Yep need to re pack though too. I hoped they would send one type of net then the other but nope they were mixed up before we unloaded them, luckily if i wasn't worried about space, the Ministry showed up and dropped off about 700,000 condoms too. So right now my warehouse is a mess............ darn

Oh and for the good news, I get to get out of Katima on the 27th, its only a one day training (13000km there, and repeat the trip back) The best part is though the one of the BBall guys said there is a meeting, and they want me to go to WHK for the meeting on the 30th all expenses paid so I get free transport back and to spend a few extra days in WHK. I have a B-day party this weekend too that some people are coming over to Katima for, it should be a fun time. I will have to charge up my e reader and be busy (for I have read 4 books on the e reader and two that came with it as my distressing method)

I am way to busy with work. I know most PCV's you read about are just off doing their own thing in the village, many here work at a place with like 20 employees and have 0 programs activate running. Some are in a village and work on maybe getting a community garden set up, or make a library for a school. That is more of less what I expected, but I was so very, very wrong.

When i got to my office (one of the more active org's in the region) we had 6 people working here and the head office said this region is always behind and basically was not happy with how things were going. To help out they decided to add me (or any other PCV) to help out on programs and build up community involvement, bla bla bla bla I will save that rant for a different day. Needless to say, the region since i have come has managed to get to about average or at least on the same scale as other regions finally. Sadly we have also gone from 6 people and me, to 4 people and me. Who did this other jobs? Well good that you should ask because most of them were just spread out between the people at the office, and I took a large part, since its better to have programs running then not actually have programs.

Some of the programs I was supposed to help get going an get one of the guys here to take over. I have found that to be very challenging, as people in the region are very against doing work in general it seems, and if not its a problem to add work to someone how already has a job. I will get into details someday if you ask me in person. When the new year hit thats when i ended up in problems though, as John the guy in charge of the region finally got his wish and was able to leave the region. What happened with his job you ask? Well that was just one more set up tasks I have picked up. (if you are wondering that puts the office down 3 people who were struggling to hit targets and deadlines if they were meet, and added me along with no one else). This has added even more work, is a good thing i gave up on the community at large, but have help to at least keep our org running in the region. Oh and then while I was at the world Cup our sectary got sick. She also is pregnant now (well for a couple months maybe still 4-5 away from giving birth) and will probably not be coming back for at least 5-6 months. I hope I am wrong, but that will put us (or how it has been for the last couples weeks) at down 4 people and just have the PCV take over all 4 jobs.

I will say these are actual jobs too, so i get the worst of both worlds right now. I make pretty much nothing, doing the jobs of 4 people (the lowest paid of those makes more then twice what PC says I should be living on) PC say's I cannot use any of the perks that come with the job, ( as in if they find out I was driving the company car the SFH say's i should use to do work i could be sent home) So I have been not using some of the tools I would have available if not for PC.

Then there is the things people think I can get done. First off I can magically fix everything (doesn't help that 3/4 of the stuff i can fix by changing the battery, making sure is plugged in or just resetting it.) Second I somehow know everything. Case in point.

On Friday before i left for the world cup I was cc'd late Friday in an email from the US embassy to our HQ in WHK. It said they were thinking of having a training in Katima. Monday comes around and eventually I am asked to get quotes for a training for the embassy. (I had a training Tuesday-Fri i was running with Braster). Tuesday morning i see the email before my training, and then go to the training, I get a call at 11 from our managing director asking why I have not got the quotation yet. I tell him ill get on it, leave the training to Braster (I have been helping him he should be fine for a the day and we had a guest speaking from the clinic coming). I get the quotes, but the fax does not work. I send an email saying there are the prices and write out the quotations in an email, and send it to the embassy guy. Next day i get a call from my MD asking if I saw the email from the embassy. I say no when was it sent? (it was sent 3-4 min ago when i logged on) He is angry at me cause i have not sent the quotes yet, (time frame this is Monday morning to wed morning that they are not there). I tell him i did and then resend everything and CC everyone possible. Next day i get another email asking why i have not sent the quotations, and have to send a 3rd time with Gmail cause the embassy guy (Namibian) has his email set to filtering out my emails from the work address and does not know how this could happen. From there my MD notices oh its an email problem cause he got the email and can see that I sent it to the embassy guy. Long story short, it fell apart eventually (they have not got to Caprivi in the last 15 years for bringing health speakers).

Yeah development here............... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh its like a last min scramble to do the next big thing, and you "should" drop all your current projects, to get stuff done, and then the long term stuff doesn't work cause people have been getting other stuff done. I think I need to stop here cause yeah............... motto, I hate offices and jobs and when i have to go back to the states, I think I may just apply to and outdoor programs or retreat to Alaska and live as a hermit.

Some day I will leave Namibia. (Right now that looks like April 2011) I will probably have a year and some months to kill, and I have no idea where I want to live. Living here in Namibia has taught me some things though.

First off, I don't like sand. I feel like i live on a sand dune, its sand everywhere all the time. I"ts like walking on the beach, people are like "ahh the sand is very fertile." and they are right, if you drop a seed in a pile of sand trees can just pop right up out of the sand. The bad part is except the the couple of small parts of pavement there is nothing other then sand, no dirt, no clay, no grass (at least green grass people are probably picturing when i say green grass), just sand.

Second, I am pretty sure I don't like the desert. Its always hot, sunny, and sandy, and boring. There is never a surprise, sometimes it "feels" cold now, ( I am a super wimp to cold now) and i miss snow and other things. I mean I live on one near most of the rivers in the country but its just not the same.

Lastly, MN is not that hilly but Duluth as at least a hill. Look at a map some time, the entire region has no hills what so ever. IF, "if" this area could ever get snow, the only place i could even try to sled would be where the snow was piled up by our one parking lot like area. This region so flat it boggles my mind. Nebraska may have more hills then where I am...... yeah Iowa does for sure, its just...... I am not a fan.

So yeah sitting here wondering what I actually want to do, So far ideas are.... try to travel for over a year, find a job somewhere, well.... pretty much anything I don't have the slightest clue whats happening.

Well I guess I have been told by enough people to update that I actually have to.

First off i started the other day looking at MCAT stuff. That is not good. I guess there are only 3 times you can take the MCAT in SA, June August, and April when i leave. I also found out that if i am thinking of doing med school it will mean coming back to the stats and having to wait around a year and a few months. That means i need to find something do do with my life for a year, assuming I ever decide med school is the way to go.

Next off on a better note, I got to see 3 world cup games!!!!!!!!!!! They all ended up being US games, two (Slovania, Algeria) we had before coming down, and the last set (US Ghana) we scalped. WE were trying to pick up some other scalped tickets but had problems. I went to the world cup with a different PCV Ben and his dad. We got into trouble when his did got a stomach ulcer, it was a downer but he got to see one game and was overall happy. We may or may not have been close to being told we were under arrest when trying to scalp ben's dad's ticket at the algeria game (he couldn't go). But tickets were being sold so cheep. (a hundred rand that's like 15 us dollars) Either way just cause there is a law in SA does not mean you can't talk your way out of trouble :-).

Next off I guess I can talk about the 4th. I did the traditional hitchhiking to Rundu along with games, actually meeting the PCV's withen 1000km and a freedom penguin filled with candy, toys and condoms since it was made by a health vol. Don't worry we took a broom and attacked the penguin late in the night (9PM oh how sad a life it is that 9 is late). Its only a 550km ride, and I leave on Friday or Saturday and come back Sunday. It is actually one of the worse things about where I happen to be. It is so far to anywhere or anyone. Our region has less people then most of the others, and we just end up feeling isolated. Though the good part is PC is far away from us. Isolated from a lot of other vol's in the country, but I don't think anyone would ever have a problem with PC leaving us alone, I think that's probably one of the best things our region has going for it, along with wild life and trees, and water, and its not that bad, just so so so so far.

I have so much to update and so little time to do it. I will start from whats happening now and maybe work my way back to the past. If i leave gaps in my story you are encouraged to fill it with whatever even you want, just make sure its a crazy adventure that is completely unbelievable.

This last week has been Meets, meets, and reports. It was a meeting chaired by the Governor for disaster relief. For people that didn't read before Caprivi floods every year at this time. Its a flood plain and has flooded as long as people can remember but every attempt to give people land on high ground has failed horribly. So now around the region we have 33 flood relocation camps and they are just increasing in number and the government and Red Cross are scrambling to supply the camps with food, and water, and tents. Well on paper this sounds good, but even the people here are annoyed. It was stated somewhere that unless your living in a tent you don't get food relief. So you have tents people are living in next to their house, you have people in areas that did not flood that had their kids move to flood camps so the camps would feed them. On days supplies come people come to the center asking for food and what ever they can get and then leave. Basically people have become use to it and its free food, tents (that will go missing when they move back to village as they are sold and they get new tents next year). Also the attitude of people annoys me so much, the Namibia Red Cross is setting up Pit Latrines but if they ask for help (like here help me lift this for a minute) are told "were not getting paid, your her to work for us". Or they asked some people to make sure the solar power panels don't get stolen, and in a few weeks will get into a fight when they want money to watch a panel that the entire community is depending on. Its like people see it as not their problem, yet when it is stolen, they are the only people that will suffer, and then we will hear about how they are suffering and need a new one from government. That's the flood stuff, I am a little fed up with that currently.

What i have done in meetings that is good though is set stuff up. I have meetings with the police on the first week of June, I meet with the military the last week of May and the 2nd to last week will be working with vulnerable girls, (meeting means having a week long training). Also the second week of June we plan to repeat a program that happened last week. My counter part Braster meet with 176 inmates in the jail in town. They have never been targeting as far as I know till now, and that was good as lots of them were sharing razors, and probably needed alot of information. After two days at the jail he also had 63 inmates that wanted to get an HIV test. So we work with the testing agency and the last week got 42 inmates tested and 6 officers in a two day even that SGT said was the first of its kinda in Namibia as far as she knew. The only down side was that our number of people to test actually jumped to 84 by the time were done so we missed about half the people we needed and that's why we hope to set up the same event the second week of June. This time we hope to get more officers tested too.

Lets see oh and I was on a 3 week vacation basically before i came back to Caprivi. It was pretty crazy getting back as i think nothing got done while i was gone. but about the trip.

First off i had to go down to Windheok on independence weekend for my mid service conference (don't worry PC sent an SMS saying don't travel unless necessary and WHK is still off limits but who needs to make since) Well i planned to maybe try to hitch hike down starting Saturday (was told i needed to be in WHK Monday by like 4) and it take about two days to get there one day to get to Rundu, if your lucky i have got as far as Otavi but after about 5 you cannot find a new ride and things are just so far apart (800 km to Otavi about leaving about 400 to go maybe), or take like a 16 hour bus ride. Well I also ended up have the inter college games that weekend in Katima. I have been acting as the basket ball coach at the college, and the games were originally for Saturday so that killed my plans of leaving Saturday looked like a quicker hike Sunday. Then the games were extended to Sunday so i though Sunday is the middle of a long holiday weekend no one will be traveling maybe I can stay for the second half of the games and take a bus (all the buses run to WHK on Sunday, or Tuesday and all at the same time or within about an hour on the same route). So I ran around Saturday and looked for tickets, but holiday weekend everything was closed all Saturday, Sunday and Monday basically. (I really am excited to get back home and watch as things are open past 7 on week days, or 1 on a Sunday, or 4 on Saturday, and yes some stuff closes earlier, but by those times just about every shop in town in closed, only small shack bars are ever open its so annoying and why everyone does their shopping while at work) So I went with my last option and talk to the college team from WHK and they were super happy to take me back with them but they left on Monday. We were supposed to leave at 7 and I have been here long enough to know that would not happen, so at 7 everyone was ready and the bus left to get gas, but by 9 we left town. We actually made really good time from there and got to Rundu by about 2. I started to think i would just get in late, then we turned to Rundu beach. This turned into two buses of college kids at a beach with the school starting up a grill, and breaking out drinks for people. We were supposed to leave again at 6 and around 9-10 with a bus full of drunk kids started on our way down to WHK. I ended up getting to WHK at 6am, and dropped off to the Harmony center at like 8;15 So i could end my two days on the bus as the only one late (or not there by like 1 on Monday as most people were down for a different event) to meet our new country Director.

Mid serviced and medical after were all fine and what you would expect. Had a fun two nights out on the town and found out other then losing 10 lbs I am still healthy. (Still need to eat more but I have been eating more then anyone else by allot :-( ). Then instead of going back to Katima i went south, I visited a vol in Mariental, and saw Aranos, becoming the PCV from our group to visit Betsy. If you look at a map and can find it in the south east you can see why me from Katima being the first visitor was odd. I was in the South a week before I went to Otj and visited will for Easter I think? Then headed down after a day or two to the next PC training for health group 31. That was a fun week with Caroline. The two of us acted as resources, and just tried to set people straight, there was some chaos but in the end I think we did a pretty good job of clearing up some issues like the trainers telling the PCV's they were getting sent home if they were not good enough at language.

Language here is so hard. I will explain to anyone at home but really its so hard to learn. Caroline was in PC Madagascar first and after 5 weeks was fluent in Malagasi (i have no idea how to spell it) she could give presentations and talk and speak the language, here she lives with a family and still can't from a sentence after lots of trying. It's no good.

But yeah then I came up here to Katima.

Oh and before I forget, some plans for the future are world cup I have tickets with Ben a PCV in W bay on the coast. The tickets are for 2 of the 3 games the US is in. We didn't get tickets to the US England game, but were close, Ben clicked them and then couldn't select any seats, so we were seconds away.

Then I will hopefully hike Fish river canyon in August, Marathon in Oct, and hopefully I will also get to the Lake of Stars Concert on Lake Malawi also in Oct. Then maybe Capetown or Zanzibar some day or after COS, and some more little weekend trips to Vic Falls.

Lastly I will try to update a little more but no promises.

Well i seem to have fallen off the side of the earth. We all knew it would happen sooner or later, and really I am happy i got as many blog entries as I did. So now i guess I have alot to talk about. For starters what have I been up to?

Well it really has not been that exciting, adventure wise. The heat is not as bad, more like a summer day in MN now, so that's good. Also as happens ever year the water is starting to rise. Katima is going to be so flooded soon. (don't worry it happens every year) But i drive by the river (by drive i mean am in a car near the river or walk) every day and its really high. Good thing is locally we have not got much rain so the puddles that are normally flooded in town are not full yet. So walking around is fine not puddle hopping yet.

Before I forget I also want to say hi and thanks to Eva. I just got her package today and it was amazing. I should say hi to mom and grandma and steph, but yeah of non related people eva is the first/only one that sent me a package (hint hint) and it was pretty much amazing. Probably made my week, at the least. It had some old pics of camp, and cards for various holidays and yeah thanks a ton Eva. (everyone else should know that's probably about 50% of why I actually decided to write today.)

So moving on from thanks Eva I have just been working, for anyone that doesn't know I'm kinda in charge of the office now. Somehow I became management material and this is really not what I expected out of PC. The past two weeks though I have taken my stress out on Basketball at the local vocational college. They have intercollegiate games coming up and i have been playing with them to help whip them into shape. This has had two effects, it kills my afternoon (a great thing) and links me with even more of the community (which would be great if i could come up with a name for 1/10 people I know, but that seems to be getting lower still). It also means that since i showed up im the "coach" of the girls team and assistant coach of the guys team. Its Travis a guy that is related to my co-worker and played on the Namibian and Botswana national basketball team, A doctor from Zimbabwe (he was the Zimbabwe sports doctor for the Zimbabwe Olympic team in Beijing) and me. Our big tournament is in just over a week, and it should be good to see how much more we can get them to improve (lots couldn't dribble without looking at the ball, no boxing out, shooting with two hands, and the left hand is pretty much worthless)

Coming up after that I have a week in WHK for mid service stuff, thats right I have been here over a year now, and then I have a few days of medical to party it up in WHK, then like 5 days off (or two days travel up to katima, sit a day, 2 days travel back down) and then I will be helping train the next group of PCV's). Only down part of that should be the shots, and the fact that our possibly 3 at least 2 new volunteers are no longer happening. We are just an exclusive bunch up here in Caprivi.

Lastly I will take some time to say Hi to some people, like thank pastor mark, and the rest of the church congregation. Gma says you keep talking about me :-). Also I have not heard from either Gpa, do either of you ever get to see this? Everyone else..... well ill try to send you a person message but you can see how good i have been at that lately.

So I went to Zambia and visited with Katie, long story short, She is in the middle of nowhere, it was good to see her again, The hot springs near her were awesome. Oh and I wish PC had regional houses here, or just wasn't as good at being a government org. Went to Lusaka some guys tried to pick pocket me, and it was lame, I did see Avatar on a sweet movie theater and think Lusaka has nothing to offer other then Subway, and a movie theater.

I am also going to the group 31 training of health volunteers in Namibia, but not till the last week pretty much but rushed down to get to that training the other week. Other then that i have been out to the villages meeting support groups or not really in Katima since the holidays.

On a side note my counter part John left to Rundu (he has been trying to get out of Katima since before i came here). That means until they get a replacement I am officially in charge of the region. Pretty much what i did before but no i actually need do the paper work too. Go management exp go i guess. At some point ill update again, but yeah things have got crazy here.

I wrote a blog entry on my laptop, then couldn't upload it to the blog. I am annoyed and writing a shorter version of what you would have got. The Conference in katima i went to was a joke. It had important people, but they have not grown in the way they think. Many were important when HIV was still a mystery, but now they sound the same as they did 15 years ago. The conference made demands of people and didn't offer any ideas, or things that were helpful, just people need to give us A B C. They complained that Namibia doesn't have universal health care, and need to get better access to drugs (Namibia is above their target goal, and some of the people complaining were making like 10,000 and mad they had to pay for their more expensive drugs). Oh and not every clinic in every area has drugs yet, but the ministry is working on it and has shown a lot of improvement. They tried to make the point that if you have been taking drugs for X years it is X experience and qualifies you as a nurse........ oh and the final straw that broke the camels back was on the last day when they realized no one understood what was happening and suddenly we had to have 5 translators say everything. I couldn't take it any more and just left with another guy from the capital in my org that was there.

Then there was Livingstone since my trip to Windhoek was canceled. It was nice to see Livingstone and some of the people there were a lot of fun. Though the actual conference was not so good. They started by having people say their name, where they were from, if they were single, and their favorite body part. Yeah great way to set a tone for the conference. Oh and don't worry inappropriate was the word of the day most of the time. We had one guy tell how he had 5 kids but was still single, (very proud of that) and proceeded to hit on all the youth at the conference (like whould have probably had 5-6 restraining orders if he was in the states just form the conference). Oh and most people were not single but available? Oh and i got to say how Imbuche has informed me that I'm engaged. The regional program person in the region Imbuche is normally a huge pain, but this conference he was cracking jokes and just not being serious. His favorite topic was picking out wives for me. I believe he had me marrying about 4-5 girls after 3 days, apparently my talk about how having multiple concurrent partners didn't happen soon enough in the conference. Lets see, oh yeah and everything about the actual conference was terrible, i believe we got 10 min of a karma sutra video for i have no idea why? Oh and there there was the audience people who talked for like 15 min about how they though something on a topic that the presenter didn't cut off. It was like 15 min of here how its probably 30% men and 70% women and they why............. I was annoyed. Other then the conference though i got to see the falls, and meet a bunch of people, We had tons of food, and played some pool. Oh and the people from the capital that come up..... never saw them at the conference after they dropped us off, they had a huge 3 day part at some hotels nearby, I went one night, but it was like they had a vacation paid for by the ministery and was really annoying to think about.

Then I had some time in Katima and did a Namibia holidays with the host family. Everyone from namibia floods the north for the holidays, and goes back to the village, well except PCV's who normally take off to travel, but i canceled cape town for a trip to Zambia to visit Katie an old camp friend. I ran around town and took some time off, it was crazyness. I did finally have people realize i am not an Afrikaner. I went out to a club here called club Africa. After telling one of my sisters friends that I have no clue how to do this African dance, I have a handle on Latin but its really different. Well she wanted to see, and I went into my salsa spins on a song that worked and cleared the dance floor. That was fun, I haven't danced in a long time, but the next day walking around town Pas my bro said everyone was talking about me all day. I guess living and working in town and walking around for 8 months and its assumed im always some guy who was on the inter-cape traveling to Livingstone, but one night at club africa and everyone knows i am the white guy from club Africa. To be fair there were like a thousand people and I was the entire white population. Still though it would have been nice to think that people noticed me before i went out to a club.

Oh and X-mas Namibian style we had lunch together as we packed up and sat it eat in the middle of nowhere, and were at the village for a bit, then went out to a club for the night with the bro's and sis's. Oh and church service that i skipped started at 1, though people got there at 9PM and went till 6 am........ sounds like hell so i sleep on x-mas eve.

Then I moved on to the visit with Katie, but that will be my next post i should probably do work some day.

So this group is having a national conference of people living with HIV/AIDs in the region this week. I didn't know anything about till Monday. Tuesday, I somehow ended up in the final planning committee. This committee was made up of me, and eight other people. 5 of those people have been national figures for years in the fight against HIV, and then there was a private consultant, and then me and john, and another girl from our office. I don't know how important I look, but credentials wise, I was about 10 years short of the next person there. Long story short I will chair one of the meetings on Friday/tomorrow, and yeah.

The first day (yesterday) was good hearing from the director of Health and social services for Namibia. (like the guy who the president has put in charge of all health issues) But, after hearing some big names realized, that this conference is a much smaller deal then it has been in the past. One case of missing money and global fund pulling out funds from the group has reduced their capacity, immensely (it didn't seem to actually work from stories of the past and what is on their agenda). Importance, aside, now I have to think about how this meeting is a target or platform to attack. This is a conference of people without power at the moment, but who are clearly using it to show that they are now working together (one of the reasons they lost funding is they didn't play nice with other org's). Unfortunately this conference is a mix of ok subjects and and underlined attack at organizations like ours that got their funding and the ministry. I am doing a horrible job at explaining this again, but pretty much they have good speakers, followed by people making demands and trying to undermine other peoples position. Oh the messes I find myself in. Send me a facebook message and i will try to give a better picture, or don't and just try to piece this together.

In other news I just found out my trip to the capital starting Saturday is cancelled. I really hate how people expect you to do things on time here as Americans, but organizations are almost as lots as most people are. Case in point, peace corps still has not official told me that my mid service medical is cancelled. (how this is mid service month 8 into a 26 month trip i have no idea). I talked to Paul, (Paul is a PCV who never left the US till he was 48, and is now like 58 and on his fourth PC assignment, he did Senegal, El Salvador, and finished a tour in Romania about 3 weeks before coming here) He understands PC is slow at getting info across, but though it made more since when we didn't all have cell phones.

Shoot I need to run no proof reading today, as if it mattered at this point.

This post will not be nearly as funny as what happened but I will try.

Last week for lunch one day we were going into town to get a quick lunch and come right back to the office. All 4 guys at work jumped in the truck and we drove off to the closest supermarket Pick and Pay. In the 3 minutes it took to drive there Braster made about 6 comments about how he was hungry going to die, and had no money. We just told him to buy some lunch. After we pulled up he came into the store still upset that he had no money and needed food and wanted to know who would buy for him. We meandered around for about five minutes with this before i caved and said "here I will buy you a small snack so you don't die"

Then I said ok i'll get that piece of chicken and we can share a coke (the 2 liters were on sale). He said no I don't drink coke and that chicken piece wasn't big enough. Kluivert chimed in that a cream soda was on sale, but Braster shot that down too. Braster said "I want a liter of juice, wait two liters of Ceres fruit juice, and then i want that piece of chicken and a loaf of bread and" I cut him off at this point and said wait a minute now, I said I would help ya out, not buy the store. He then tried to tell how if I was buying he could get any amount of food he wanted. This caused me to use lines like in America beggar's can't be choosers. With Kluivert and John giving Braster a hard time too. We sat and threw some jokes around, and after a few minutes pick up some stuff and decided what people wanted. Then I went to pay and bought my food. I started counting up my money (60 rand or just under 10 US) braster whipped out a 50 to buy his own lunch. I was like you, what are you doing. You have just as much money as me and are sitting here talking about how you suffer, and have no money. He just laughed and told me I could pay next time. I just said you, you are not serous.

Like I said, I do no justice to the story. You get the idea though, I think, maybe?

Hannah has brought it to my attention that other then my description of work months ago, I only mention work, not what I actually do. So, here is a rundown of SMA Katima and what we try to do.

First off we have a Malaria program. This program is to educate people on Malaria. Kluivert, is our malaria person, and he is in charge of spreading information about malaria thought the region. He does outreaches in communities, distributes leaflets, and other a ICE material (educational stuff from global fund or USAID). Recently we also distributed about 10,000 mosquito nets to children under the age of 5, pregnant mothers, people living with HIV, TB patients, and orphans and vulnerable children. He really did all the work, but I help him make a form so he could record what he did, and just help him organize the events. He works hard but there is no rhyme or reason to how people do things here sometimes. Oh and we sell mosquito nets for 17 rand, or about 2.50 US. So, I let him do the talking cause its in Lozi and I am terrible, but sometimes help him organize and make sure paper work is done to record activities, or re-make it if I don't feel the paper work has enough information on it.

The organization I work for also has two programs that are the same with the military and police. We go into both organizations and select a small group to train on HIV and other health related issues. TB, Malaria, and just facts so that educators know a lot of information. Some material has been made that is supposed to help facilitate meetings is then given. Lastly we have these members of the police and military train their peers on health related issues. We give them a flip chart with about 25 different topics, and try to make it easy as we can. One example is just a picture on the front, and on the back the facilitator can about 30 true or false statements with the correct answers on the back. The flip charts are supposed to be an hour for each page/section. With about an hour of material planned out that facilitators just need to follow. After 3 week long trainings with the police I really feel that they are probably more competent then anyone from Namibia that's not a nurse or doctor or specially trained in the field. The material we teach is pretty basic, but I am trying to force them to understand it at my level minus the technical terms. Its a lofty goal, but I am pushing hard in trainings, leading trainings, and going way beyond what the flip chats cover. Ideally if we educate the forces enough they will be able to run a program without any assistance from the outside.

Third, we have COH or Corridors, Of Hope, program run by Braster. This is a program that targets Most At Risk Populations. For this program we have two things that happen. the first part of the program is we have trained to local CBO's to go into bars at night, with some supplies and talk to people about health issues. These people go and talk basically about HIV, condoms, or STI's. We train the CBO's and then they get a few dollars to do talks at bars that are considered "high risk", but that should be everywhere here as the HIV rate is still about 33%. The second part of the program is, Braster gathers some girls from locations that are known for having lots of young, uneducated, girls without jobs, and trains them on HIV and health related issues. This women are educated like the police, and are supposed to go back to their community and educate people who live in the area. They receive a small amount of money for running health sessions in their community.

Lastly we have a program called TUSANO, run by us and Albert. Albert is hired by us, but works with the Namibian red cross, with over site by Braster. We provide funds to Tusano, which is supposed to link all the support groups in the region together. We will bring members from support groups into town, for trainings on how to write a grant proposal, nutrition courses, HIV education, and a variety of other topics. Some groups like the one in Singalwi we are actually providing gardening material because they wrote a proposal and have done work to clear a space. Success, is hard to say though as any time money or supplies are introduced people just fall apart. It's culture that if you are fine today, you don't need to worry, so when lots of people don't plan ahead even a day, it makes anything long term fairly hard to keep working.

Oh and then there is my job. I audit the warehouse every month and send a report to the capital, and then jump around to where ever I am needed to make things run closer to American standards. As in if you have a file put it in a folder, hopefully the right folder too. I will also go to trainings so that we have two people at trainings instead of one, and that's when I start to challenge people with hard questions and give answers of why something happens the way it does. A lot of people here know there is HIV, most know about TB, most know breastfeeding should stop after 3 months if a mother is HIV positive, most know that for every man there are 3 women. Yeah but no one can ever answer why right or wrong. Well no one but my police peer educators now at least. So I have tortured people with entire days on how a virus replicates, the fact that we can cure exactly 0 viruses, and how they are different from bacteria like TB and parasites like malaria. I even throw a few ways to answer religious questions because a lot of people feel its a sin to use a condom, since the bible says go forth and multiply. I like to tell people they made these things called the 10 commandments, they talking about only having one partner. Basically we stress, abstain, if not, be faithful, lastly use a condom if you don't do A and B. As far as religion goes, if you are both tested and being faithful you don't need a condom to avoid HIV, its not an issue. The pope says condoms are not the answer, and he is right, if you abstain, and be faithful like the pope wants then you don't need to worry about a condom. If you have sex (its hard to find a girl over 18 that doesn't have at least 1 child) then you should be using a condom. That's kinda my job, with a few other side things that pop up. (OK lots of random other stuff happens, but its Africa, and they tend to be once off type deals)

I hope that gives an idea of what I do? If your not sure still it may be that I'm not sure, either. So yeah make those programs run in a way that I tried to describe them is pretty much it.

I traveled to Rundu this weekend. It was a thanksgiving holiday celebrated at House Barvaria. House Barvaria is a hotel in Rundu run by an Ex-PCV who is now Namibian. Every Easter, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July he invites PCV's to his resort, and we bring food and cook it up. There are world teach people that come along with just any other foreigner's that we know. It was nice to have a bunch of potatoes, turkey, gravy, and the fixings. We even had a football game in the dark. Along with one poker game that i lost horribly at. I lost on my 3 best hands of the night, and in hindsight, the only hand i could have won in like 45 min was when i folded on the river with two tens. I could have possible won that hand but it was not a good night for me, good thing I only started with 10 tango.

The trip to Rundu started Friday, at about 9:00. I started walking out of town like normal, and after like 30 min got picked up by a ministry car traveling to Rundu. It was sweet ride, with a guy and his daughter. They went fast maybe 160-180kph, that's about 100mph. Till Divundu, then with a quarter tank we found out that they didn't have any fuel at the only gas station. We barely made it the last 200km to Rundu and were on E for the last 40km. It also took a lot longer as we only drove like 80kph to try and save fuel.

After making it to Rundu, I headed to Omarashi, the nicest resort in town, and meet up with other volunteers at the pool. We can't afford to stay at the hotel, but it seems they have no problem letting a bunch of Americans chill at the hotel. I even ran down to the river with Kaitlin, but after a little conversation we decided that we shouldn't swim to Angola. (little is about everyone we asked saying there are tons of croc's and Kim saying last time she walked down she saw 9 in that area)

The only problem i had the entire weekend was leaving. There were no cars leaving towards Katima. I was on the road for an hour, and saw 4 cars total. I saw 2 that were only going 10k (they stoped) and the other two ignored me. Long story short, it took about 8 hours hiking, 5 were in the back of a truck filled with tools, at 80 kph in the sun. The only good thing was they were free, and I saw a leopard family, 2 big cats and a baby.

Last weekend I finally fixed up my favorate pair of shorts. I have these green cargo shots, that i love. (If you are Nolan imagine me, ok its those shorts, that I am wearing with my flordia t-shirt.) They kinda got a huge hole warn into them so i couldn't wear them. This changed last weekend. I got my sewing kit back from Jessica, and mended them right up. it was a good sewing job, but i couldn't remember the right knot to finish it off with. So I ended up triple stiching the parts, and using every knot I could think of. I have fishermens knots, I have half hitches, I have a bowline just for good measure. I don't know which knot will give first, but if half of them fail I should still be golden.

Oh and I also finished my supply books off. I got a few books recently, but went on a reading kick and in a two week period polised off maybe 7 books. I kinda wish they took longer to read but I enjoy reading. The only sad part is that we have alot of books in the region, but most look like terrible reads. My sense of humor, and what I enjoy is pretty much the exact oppsite of the people in my region so book wise, it dosent look good.

I didn't say this in my blog yet, but one of the political party's brought a catipult to a rally. I really, want to know what they planned. I would never have guessed someone would make a homemade catipult here. Sure, I would do that in the states, but here? On top of that they brought it to a political rally. What could they have been planning. I don't have a clue, I not so secertly hope they planned to launch goats at Swapo though.

I have stopped being an night owl, unless 9:30 is considered staying up late (I really, really hope not). What made me think of this is the owl i chased out of the warehouse yesterday. Towards the end of the day Annetty freaked out in the warehouse. I asked why and she said "What is that". Eventually I saw that she was pointing to an owl. So i responded its and owl, and she said it was scary. This was strange, she said it was scary like when people here talk about lions or croc's or elephants and hippos. I can understand things that could kill a person, but an owl. I bet owl related deaths a year are well.......... OK I have never heard of one. Then Braster came in and also said they are very dangerous.

Needless to say I ignored them and opened all the doors as wide as i could. I though it may be hard to get the owl out because there are at least 15 feet between the roof and the top of the door trucks use. So like 15 feet of rafters, and it would have to fly down, and my experience with birds in houses have not been good. They get scared and never fly down, its so annoying. I guess owls are difference cause i only had to make him switch to the other side of the warehouse 4 times before he flew out. I'm just going to assume he didn't have a bird brain.

On a different note. I was also told today oranges were not food. I think this is probably close to why, I have not ate meet in a long time. Last weekend on Sunday night I had some beef and my sis said its been forever since I last ate meat. I looked at her and said, I don't think its been that long, as I remembered the fish we had for lunch, the fish for dinner the night before and the chicken for lunch the day before. She was quick to say "E way(what it sounds like) Jake, those are not meat" I just told her how I am pretty sure those are in fact meat, but yes its been a month since I had cow meat probably.

I hate hot weather. It is always hot here. A week in summer in Duluth is probably close to the same as a week in winter here. The nights may be colder in the summer back home, but I'm sure at least one day would be chilly or windy and katima would average being hotter. Its so hot too, and that's in the shade, there are 300+ days of sun a year here. Making it even hotter. I need a fan to sleep blowing directly on me. I think I will even blame my poor writing today on heat delirium. If only it snowed, or there was fog and over cast. So yeah my experience in Katima has made me learn that i probably should never move somewhere warm if i can help it. My coke addiction isn't helped much by the heat either. So yeah any comments about how I am, well dying of heat sums up most of my thoughts.

So comments or thoughts from people in the last few days.

If i was cut i wouldn't lose blood, but coke would pour out of my veins- Kluivert

My host sister needed some fire wood to cook(we have 2 stoves that don't get used) But didn't think i should chop wood cause that should be left to people with experience cutting wood.

Yesterday I surprised the guys at work for wearing jeans for the first time to work.

Oh and with the coke blood i will soon turn orange from all the oranges I have been eating. -Braster

I just want to thank the person steph refers to as the G-unit. She sent me some books and its nice to read a bunch. I have done my best to pound my way through some books lately. The last book I read was Pride and Predjuice and Zombies. I have to say that it was nice to read a book that reseabled actuall litatire. I have lost my ability to speak and write in english but at least i can still read it.

The book was actually pretty good. The parts that were added to make it a zombie book were easy to pick out even though I havent read the book in years. It was nice that alot of changes were just the orginal sentance and then deadly thrown infont of every mention of the arts. I was really surprised how well the book seemed to flow, except that may be due to my lack of english skills. Next up is a book i took from another vollenteer, but then i read the lighting theif, another sent book. I hope i can break up the books sent that i really want to read and the ones i take from other vollenteers, cause the sent books are down to one but I should have two more on the way.

On a different note I'm kinda sad i cant watch this vikings season. I "watched" the last game vs the steelers by going to espn.com and refreshing the live score on my phone. It was kinda confusing though as i was like ok 2 and goal come on viks, refresh, ?how the hell did pit score?. If your wondering, I have been watching the games late on sunday nite (late = 7 to 10). I fully expect most games to be decided in the last 2 min regardless of how good the opponent is, but I have to much experiece cheering for teams from minnesota to expect them to do anything more then have alot of close games, and a really strange finish. Unlike the twins though i dont think they will get knocked out by the yankee's, at least i hope they don't but with them you never know.

Well I guess its been awhile since my last post. Whats new is almost nothing. Last weekend i went swimming the the Zambezi river for Saturday and read most of Sunday. It is just as exciting as it sounds, I just wanted to be in some cool water, hopefully i just don't end up with some cool African water disease. Oh and i finally see why people say the croc's don't go their because of the rocks. What people mean to say is at this time of year the water is low and the rocks form rapids where i swam. They have pools that's are formed near the shore, but its a really really small rapids area. You cant swim against the current but kids were swimming with the current, and just swimming enough to avoid some spots from up river. It looked like fun but I'm probably not going to try, and what ever your thinking I can guarantee that I am a stronger swimmer then those boys were. As for the croc's they would be either confined or swept away in the current and don't have to be worried about. So when i jump in the river next weekend maybe, don't worry about the crocodiles, its the weird diseases and hitting a rock if i decide to play in the currents you need to worry about (95% weird African sickness 5% playing in the current 0% other issues).

As for work what i mostly do..... our managing director was here yesterday, and said this was the first time Katima every had mostly OKs for the review. He was really surprised and happy with the progress in the region. I am going to try to take all the credit now too, (since last time we have lost two people gained me and everything else is the same) In a year we may be the best preforming region instead of way below the rest. So work is busy busy busy, but i feel I'm getting a lot done, or at least organizing my counterparts so they can do their job's better. Examples are if you know you are going to a community a month before you go.... talk to people in the community so they know you will be then and get organize before you show up and say here is my program lets go now, now.

Last but not least this entry, Send me some messages, facebook messages work best because I check it whenever i have to wait around for stuff (70% of the time here) on my phone. I have not heard from lots of people and I am trying to update this blog so send me a message of an update. anyone move, new job, big plans, school changes, school board elections stuff (Nancy). It may even help me write better blogs, cause if my English was poor before coming to Africa its gotta be atrocious by now. It will only get worse too, so forgive me when i show up in the US and cant speak anymore.

Its so hot here. We have lows in the dead of night at like 70. Then there is the day with a blazing sun, its hot. I will probably have trouble surviving the spring that i get back to Minnesota at the rate its going. I will enjoy a cool breeze though, not this 300+ days of sun a year. Other then that my fun trip to the Zambian embassy to get a three year visa went well. I have also made my first travel plans. I think I'm going to spend X-mas down in Cape Town. Then take off some time in earlier Feb to go up to Zambia and see Katers. Other then those plans just work and work and heat.

Oh and just for Gma, like i said before hitch hiking is the safest transport here. I went over this before but here are the pros to hitchhiking- Sometimes the ride is free and they even buy you candy bars and drinks, driving quality is generally better, the trucks and cars and in better condition. and they leave. Cons- you need to find one. Pros to the public transportation here............... they always leave from the same spot and everyone knows where that is. Sometimes they may not leave that day cause they take a mini van and refuse to leave until they have stuffed like 16 people in it. They drive long hours, in the most beat up cars, (think the blue sable, after being junked still probably better then a lot of combi's) many drink and drive, well this list could go on forever so back to the pro's of hitch hiking. Namibia has one of the highest wealth disparities in the world and that means only the really wealthy have cars. That means only important people in nice new government cars or who can afford it drive (unless its a local taxi or combi that's where cars go when they are useless). So hitch hiking leaves me getting rides in new 2009-2010, cars, some vol's have got picked up by new BMW's i got a land Rover last week, Ros Royce, it happens and the people are nice and educated. Really no down side (other then my english skills that continue to tank).

I think the training im going to on the 28th may be the biggest waste ever. Its been 10 years since our region tried to secede from Namibia. Peace corps vol's were pulled out of the region immediately, and didn't come back to the region till the group before use who are getting close to done with their service. Well Every country has an immergance action plan incase things go bad and I have been given a position to make sure that if we have to move in the region that I am one of the people responsible for coordination in the event of a problem. This is good since we have elections coming up in a few months but, it means im going to be going to WHK for a 2 hour training on what is expected. So that means i will be traveling 1300 km (a two day trip or 16 hours straight on the intercape) for a two hour training and then traveling back.

Well its a good thing i feel like going on a trip or i think i would be extremely mad, instead of thinking this a huge joke.

Today i managed to go 0/3 on taking a shower in the morning. Go buck bath go.

The water in Namibia is dependable minus Katima. Here the town council has inserted itself as a middle man between NAMwater and use the consumer. This allows them to A.) make a profit and B.) have the only region that doesn't have good and dependable water. We are also the only region that has to worry about flooding for long periods of time (everywhere else is desert an was better water access then us on a major river).

Oh and i love that other then make us pay way more for water, we had our water shut off for about a month and a half. They said that we didn't pay the water bill, so we hurried up and got the payment in for the office after a week. Takes them 6 weeks to reconnect our water and then the day after a person comes from the water company saying we didn't pay our water bill and they were going to shut it off on a date that was 4 days earlier unless we pay. Gotta love Africa.

I have internet in my office but it drives me crazy. It disconnects from the net after like 5-10 seconds some days. So I go to my email. and log in. Reconnect to the internet, open an email, reconnect to the internet, then hit reply and type something, right before i send it I need to reconnect to the internet. It says its connected to but pages become unavailable. Its worse then the days of dial up. At least then you didn't have to redial before using any link.

I almost never dream, or at least remember it. (3 in Namibia total) So i wondered as i popped my malaria drugs late last night if i that meant i would actually have some crazy dreams. It hasn't been a side effect yet but i also tend to take the meds in the morning with food instead of just before going to sleep. This time i had this crazy dream with Steph coming to Namibia but then needing to be in Hawaii for a reason that make no since and some crazy PC rules thrown in. Then i had this other dream about life in Katima. Just want to let ya know that my crazy meds are only making me slightly more off in the head then normal.

I just want to say that one thing I will probably never get over is when I ask a question like, what do you like better, this or that. Then get a response of yes or no. It happens all the time, im like, do you want to meet at 2 or 3....... yes....... I still don't know how to interpret this but I must say that I may never get over it.

Oh and im pretty sure i have become addicted to Coke. Namibia has turned me into a Coke fiend, and you should worry Eva its still not diet Coke. I think I end up drinking about 440ml a day. That's like a can and a half because well.... its Africa.

I just want to let everyone know that before I came to Africa I had no idea about most TV shows etc.... now im pretty sure im just about out of episodes of Ben 10 to watch with the kids on Cartoon network. Oh and the host family im living with just got a washing machine. Thats pretty sweet, cause washing clothes by hand gets old fast. Infact there are PCV's just just decide their two weeks of clothes can last them two months before washing them (im not in that group). So thats pretty sweet for as long a I stay with my host family. I have no idea if or when ill end up moving out, but I was supposed to stay for 3 months and then make the decision to move out or go. I really like my host family but kinda want to live on my own too. It dosent really matter what i decide though because its month 4 and my org still hasn't managed to find a house in the city that is up to PC regulations (or pretty much anything with 4 walls and a roof). So till then ill have to suffer with my cable TV and washing machine, all i need now is hot water and im good to go.

So I get back to my office that i decided or organized finally right before i left and its a mess. I have inventory (who would have thought they have inventory in Africa) that needs to be done and as far as i can tell everything that doesn't involve money is wrong (i guess its just inventory done correctly that's not in Africa). Other then that its just trying to see what my counterparts are trying to do after 3 weeks out of action. I can tell that they still haven't figured out this communication thing as by Monday morning i realized that my 3 counterparts were trying to plan a total of 5 trainings next week........... Everyone though someone else would help out for the second and long story short at this point I looks like the police training will not happen and maybe one with a local youth group leaving 4 people for 3 trainings,which is reasonable. Till then im gonna go back to plagiarizing about 4 HIV/TB power points to make a presentation that i will show on TB and have a HIV component added to tell support groups in the next few weeks. Thats all for now peace out.

So i spent 3 weeks in Winkhoek, and pretty much nothing happend. The first two weeks were of a peace corps training, it was 8-5 and im pretty sure about 3 hours of it was interesting. Other then that i was just a bunch of PCV's hanging out, we did make a few bonfires though :-) . I think i surprised everyone when we needed some wood and I took off into the bush and came back to two downed trees.

I think the most exciting part of the first two weeks for me was our one day off. The time in the city was really about 20 km over mountains away from the city and PC was nice enough to give us a ride into town a total of one day (not back) on the weekend we had in town. That was sweet because first it me and Ben (another PCV) or the kid, he looks like a 14 year old Afrikaner. Walking around the mall ( i still hate malls as does he) before seeing a harry potter movie. After the movie things go going as we decided to peace out at about 1 from the mall and walk around town. Long story short we went to about 15 local bars since our group asked us to see if we could find a place people could by a drink (its technically illegal on Sundays). That was a wasted venture except that we hit up like every shady spot in town, then started walking back to the road to get a ride back to the conference center.

This is where i got the great idea of lets just walk back, "i think its just over those small mountains that way". Ben was sure but i was like its probably there 95% sure the center is that way through the bush and over that mountain. Now anyone else in the group would have thought this was a terrible idea, but it was me and Ben, and that somehow seemed like a good idea. At about 4 we stared to hike towards the mountains. Well we made if over first 3 hills and didn't see the center, and then it got dark at like 6:30. At this point we couldn't seen any; buildings, roads, well we saw a tower a few miles away on the top of a hill but were kinda just wondering around in the bush. Needless to say we eventually got back at like 8 after lots of hiking and the idea of poping the tent Ben had bought (don't worry I just picked up a sleeping back and we had a liter to start for). I don't think ill try doing that again, but if i did i would not take the same path of kudu (deer) trails that we took and im pretty sure neither of us regretted it when we were finally back.