Coast

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.