As I am now officially a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), this will (sadly) be my last blog post. And…I just want to share my simple gratitude. Thank you to the Peace Corps staff at headquarters in Washington DC. Thank you to the AMAZING Peace Corps Namibia team in Windhoek. They say your country staff in Peace Corps makes or breaks your experience. Peace Corps Namibia – you MADE our experience great and truly exhibited the greatest support possible. You are incredible and I am very grateful for your time and dedication. To all of the friends and family who were there when I need you most and who encouraged me even on the worst days – thank you. I am forever grateful, and forever changed, by my experience in the Peace Corps. Looking forward, I pray for the grace to fully integrate the many lessons that I have learned in the Peace Corps back into my life here in the U.S. I pray for my heart to be open to more, continuous learning and for the perseverance necessary to allow my Peace Corps experience to inform my current and future work and projects.
I pray and hope for my village in Namibia to continue to be transformed. In the short time that I lived there, I saw the village continue to develop and better itself. I was heartened to read an article about local activists lobbying for the settlement to become a constituency, which would allow residents more power over the fate of the village.
I will conclude with a quote from the book Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists by Courtney E. Martin. I came across the book during my service and it not only inspired me, I think it truly speaks to the spirit of the Peace Corps.
“We must be fearless in our analysis and our action. We must accept that we will fail and try anyway, try to fail always more exquisitely, more honestly, more effectively. We
must wake up in the morning naively believing in the power of our own dreams and the potential of our own gifts, and go to bed exhausted and determined to do it all over again -- with maybe just a bit of a different tactic, a little less ego, a little more help.
What else are you going to do? Give up?
Of course you’re not. You’re not going to do that, because you are part of a long line of
people who didn’t do that, because you live in a country that was actually founded on the assumption that you would be audacious and rebellious and inexhaustible in your pursuit of a more perfect union. You’re not going to settle, because you’ve seen how that kills people, how resigning and consuming and forgetting are surefire ways to deaden a soul. You’re not going to give up, because it would be terribly boring. You’re not going to give up, because you owe the world, this nation, yourself, bravery in the face of suffering, vision in the face of stagnancy, and blood, sweat and tears in the face of injustice….
We must strive to make the world better anyway. We must struggle to make our friendships, our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, and our nation more dignified, knowing that it might not work and struggling anyway. We must dedicate ourselves each and every morning to being the most kind, thoughtful, courageous human beings who ever walked the earth, and know that it still won’t be enough.
We must do it anyway.”
~~~~~~~
To the many of you still serving, to those of you considering joining the Peace Corps, and to everyone everywhere who tries so hard every day to make the world a better place – thank you.
Keep going.
Some last photos…
To our first girl: thanks to you and all of our other students for inspiring me every day.
To my NIA dance sisters in Windhoek: thank you for the gift of NIA, which allows us to transcend and to find our voices!
A sunrise over Windhoek, my last day in Namibia…
And the sun setting outside my house in Namibia…
Soon, I will be departing Namibia, and wanted to include some photos from my last days here.
First some photos of the students at my school:
And below was our farewell party:
We were even fortunate that some Namibian music stars were at the same venue that night!
Below is Gazza...
Gazza is an ambassador for education, so even gave our teaching staff an inspirational talk about the value of education!
And a good friend of mine with "Boss Madame," a Namibian pop star who is currently famous with this hit, "FIRE"
It was certainly a night to remember, and I feel very fortunate to have had such a wonderful team to work with for the past two years!
And unfortunately, to Namibia, it is, as my students sang at my last school assembly this Monday morning, "Good bye!"
My service is drawing to a close, which naturally brings a mix of emotions. Mostly they are positive. I am tremendously grateful for the lessons the past 2 years have brought – the incredible experiences and the opportunity to live and serve in this beautiful Namibian village. I am happy to return home to see my family and friends, but tremendously sad to leave behind my new family and friends here in Namibia. Without hesitation, I recommend the Peace Corps to each and every one of you. I joined with the goal to serve, to learn, and to somehow become something or someone else. I joined to gain hands-on experience in the world of international development, to put my theory to practice. It is hard to put into words all that I have felt, seen, and experienced. It has truly changed, shaped and formed me forever into a different being. Over and over again, I have been humbled, awed by others, and stunned by the beauty and resilience of the human spirit. I truly believe that to live and thrive in my village, as 4,000 Namibians do, is a true triumph. There are very dark sides here – but people keep on. They live their lives and do their work. People die and yet their brothers and sisters come to work the next day. People do not have food at home, yet their children are sitting in the classes at the school where I teach, smiling, engaging, goofing around. People just get on with their lives – I do not see them sitting around, fussing, feeling sorry for themselves. Yes, they drink. Yes, there is violence. But these are manifestations of poverty and a society which is trying to find its feet and to heal in a post-apartheid society. As Namibia develops, heals and evolves, there will hopefully be more and more opportunity for everyone. As villages learn to work together, the living standard will be improved for everyone.
There have been desperate moments, but what I feel most in these final weeks in Namibia, is hope. I feel hope for Namibia and for mankind. I feel hope that things will get better.
Personally, I hope to integrate some of what I have learned here in Namibia back into my life in the U.S. I aim to live a more simplified lifestyle. There is a quote I am meditating on lately, “Living simply is the primary way everyone can resist greed every day.” This is one of the biggest lessons I have learned in the Peace Corps. As a volunteer, you are given a small stipend, meant to allow you to live similarly to the way local people live. Of course, it will never be the same. But we do generally learn how to pare things down, and how to differentiate between a want and a need. I have great respect for people that live in poverty on a daily basis. And I think of something the wonderful Bill Grace said in a university lecture during grad school, “The media leads us to believe that happiness is just around the corner with our next purchase.” Of course, that happiness always eludes us. From the perspective of where I sit, it seems like a war between the media and our modern society and our desire to lead a tranquil, simplified lifestyle. Who among us can strike that balance?
On a different note, I am including below some photos from the recent school holiday.
First of all, I was fortunate enough to join a tour of the B2Gold mine, which was part of the Diversity Tour. The Diversity Tour is a Peace Corps Namibia initiative in which 40 orphans and vulnerable children are given the opportunity to travel around Namibia and to learn and experience their own country. They go to the coast, swim in the ocean, visit Windhoek, Namibia’s capitol, and much more.
The mine itself was quite interesting. It is owned by Canadians, and is just being established now. Once operational, the life of this mine will be 12.5 years. It will bring in a lot of wealth to Namibia, but I question the environmental ramifications as well as the working conditions of the mine workers themselves, despite the very positive PR spin that we were given.
I also traveled again to the coast. Believe are some photos illustrative the diversity of Namibia – the dry desert dunes and the beautiful coastline.
Finally, I was thrilled to be able to visit Opuwo, in the far north of Namibia, before leaving. A friend and I hired a local guide, “Queen Elizabeth” to take us on a tour of a local Himba village. I am often skeptical of such tours and want to avoid “cultural voyeurism” at all costs, but “Queen Elizabeth” is a local connection made by volunteers who live in Opuwo, and I felt the tour was conducted in a respectful manner. The Himba tribe is one of the last in Africa to maintain their completely traditional culture and way of life. Himbas paint their skin reddish orange with a combination of butter and “ochre” powder which they grind up and apply to their skin. The women mix clay in their hair and wear it long. They dress only in animal skins and walk around, even in town, bare-chested. I found them beautiful and amazing – to think that there are individuals today still living in such a traditional manner. Many of them never come into town, and many of the children do not go to school.
In the village, we watched a woman slaughter and prepare a goat, grind the traditional maize meal eaten as a staple food here, and then were lucky enough to go into a Himba hut and get dressed up like the Himba women! They painted our faces the orangey-brown of the ochre and dressed us in the animal skin skirts and sashes. This was my favorite part of the tour as we got to connect with the women on an interpersonal level. I think that they enjoyed laughing at us, too! And we loved seeing how they live.
Below are photos of the Himba village and the Himba people that we met. The raised hut with the clay, oblong-shaped dome is where the Himbas store food. When they need to remove the food, they punch a hole in the side to remove it, patching it when they are through.
Finally, a friend and I traveled all the way up to the Angolan/Namibian border to see the very beautiful Epupa Falls. The falls crash down where the river crescendos down a steep ravine, and then flows endlessly through a series of canyons, Baobab trees, and additional waterfalls set back and away in the hills of Angola. It was seriously one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. My friend and I even enjoyed a swim in the river below and downriver from the falls.
My friend and I also loved this COLORFUL fabric...
And some pics from a friend's village...
It was a beautiful and unexpected holiday. Not at all what I planned, but as has been my experience here in Namibia, way better than anything I could have imagined or predicted.
