Lately

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.