Hello America! (email from Amy)

The day before I set off for Minnesota there was a blizzard. Apparently snow was dropping at about 2 inches an hour and the temperature was -47 degrees F with the windchill. In Namibia thermometers in the sun in the summertime (it's summer now- southern hemisphere remember) can register temperatures as high as 150 degrees F. Now, I am no expert, but this seems to portent poorly for me. I have added my last random foreign currency to my bag (Taiwan Dollars-I believe that I have a few coins or notes from more than 12 currencies stashed away in my luggage.) I have added the last foreign language that would be helpful to know (Chinese is, I believe, the 5th or 6th language I have wished to know- Thai, Arabic, Kiswahili, and others completing the list.) And I have added my last strange quirks of different places (there was a restaurant in Taipei named- I swear I am not making this up- Gruel and Dishes. That sounded a bit too Oliver Twist for me, so I stuck with Subway.) Now I'm finally home, safe and sound in Stewartville, Minnesota- After traveling for 30 hours I arrived in Minneapolis 18 hours after I left Chiang Mai. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get used to a normal sleep schedule (or, more concerningly, all of the quirks of American life) but I suppose I'll manage. It's been a journey. Thanks for taking it with me.

So long and thanks for all the fish
Amy

There And Back Again (email from Amy)

Well,
I'm finally coming home. Tomorrow at noon I get on a plane and fly to Taipei, Taiwan, then to Los Angeles, then to Minneapolis, where I should arrive on the morning of February 1st, almost exactly 800 days after I left for the Peace Corps. To be quite completely honest, I'm a little scared out of my mind by America. Probably you are not aware of this because most of you live there, but America is WEIRD. For one thing, you're not supposed to pick up chunks of meat with your hands and gnaw at them, taking special care to suck out the bone marrow, you can't just go out onto the road and hitchhike to wherever you're going (not safely, at least), and you're not allowed to send random small boys to do errands for you. For another thing, everything moves so fast and I've missed out on a lot of the technology (my friends here were making fun of me for not being on Facebook-so I set up an account), and things are actually supposed to BE official, not just LOOK official. Plus, I don't think I can just get people on my side by dropping a few words in Khoekhoe and smiling manically like I could in Namibia.

At the same time, I am ridiculously excited about some things- television shows that make sense (don't judge me-you haven't lived without them for 2 years), being able to buy whatever I want even if it's a Saturday or after 6 o'clock or I'm not in a major city, driving myself around, and being able to talk to people without changing my speed or accent so they will understand me.

So now I'm coming to the end of this leg of the journey and I have to figure out the next leg- readjusting to America. To answer all of those nagging questions that I'm sure I'll be answering for the next few months- "Africa" was beautiful and difficult and complicated, and if you want a deeper answer than that, set aside an hour or two (I mean, try thinking about how long you would need to answer me if I asked you how America has been for the past two years.) Nope, I am not sure what I'll be doing now, probably thoroughly ordinary stuff- trying to find a job, figuring out how to retain my health insurance, attempting to find someone willing to go out with me, plus, I suspect, lots and lots of paperwork, it is America, after all. Oh well, I suppose if I survived Namibia, I should be able to handle American bureaucracy. I intend to do some visiting soon after I get back so I'll probably see some of you in real life.

This will be my second to last update, I'll send you all something when I get to the States to let you all know that I am, in fact, not dead. As for the book update, because it's the most interesting thing about my life at the moment, I've been reading in coffee shops like nobody's business. I finished The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, and a book called The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. I have a couple of thick books for the plane (a biography of Ramanujan, the Indian peasant and mathematical genius who basically reinvented Calculus on his own, and a book about Copernicus.) I look foreword to America, where I can find any book I want to read and, probably, have it delivered to my door within 24 hours, but I am also ending the time of my life when I have loads of free hours to spend reading and few distractions to pull me away from 8 hour marathon book-finishing sessions. These are the compromises of life, I suppose.

So, look out for me in America, maybe I'll see you there soon.
Amy

Cooking, Haircut and Shakespeare (email from Amy)

Well,

Not much has changed. I took the Thai cooking class. It was fun, although I'm not sure I will ever be able to replicate the results (at home I don't have people chopping up the vegetables for me and telling me when to add all the ingredients and then cleaning up after me when I'm done.) I also got my hair cut. It had been needing it for a long time and it looks pretty cute now, if I do say so myself. We went to a jazz club last night, which was a lot of fun. I haven't been getting a lot of jazz in Namibia. Still reading. I'm on another Shakespeare kick. I finished That Hideous Strength and started and finished Twelfth Night and All's Well that Ends Well and now I'm in the middle of The Taming of the Shrew. I love Shakespeare. I don't know how you can not love poor Viola pining away after the Duke while he sends her to woo another woman for him, or Celia giving up her place as heir to the throne to follow her ill favoured cousin into the wilderness pursued by her father's soldiers, or, for that matter, even the clown who is consigned to speak all of his wisdom in nonsense. Shakespeare gets me. Anyway, it looks like I'm reading about a play a day. I get on these kicks every now and then, it'll probably end when I convince myself that I have to plug through a few of the histories as well as the comedies and tragedies (The second part of Henry IV ended my last kick.) Maybe I'll just put it off and read Much Ado About Nothing for the umpteenth time. Hope everyone back home is doing well. I'll be back there soon enough- only about a week left of this crazy trip. Take care.

Amy

More Chiang Mai (email from Amy)

Well, not much to tell right now,
Chiang Mai is pretty great. I've been eating Pad Thai for most meals (you can get a plate for about 60 American cents and, as you must know if you've ever tried Thai food, it's delicious.) Lots of shopping, sitting in coffee shops, and reading. So far on this trip I've finished a book called "Lucky," The Chosen by Chaim Potok, a book about biscuits and tea, and I've just started That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (There are a bunch of used book stores here, but right now I'm just mooching books off Miah.) Miah has a bunch of friends who are in town, so it all works out pretty well. It's a lot slower than Egypt was, not as much running around. It's nice, but I'm also excited to get back to the States.

It's nice to not have to worry about whether my arms are showing and who is looking at me and why. I talked to a girl here who spent some time in Pakistan and she hit the nail on the head. She said "The fact that I am a girl was always at the front of my mind." Anyway, although Egypt was awesome, it's nice to not have to think about these things all the time.

Later in the week we're going to take a cooking class and learn to make spring rolls and Pad Thai and other delicious foods, so there's that to look forward to. Hope everyone that side is doing well. I miss you all and will see some of you in the not so distant future.

Chiang Mai at last (email from Amy)

(This email is dedicated to all of the Thai people (and there were a lot of them) who helped me to find my way despite the fact that I speak not one lick of Thai and they spoke very little English and I had only a vague idea about where I was going and how to get there. May I be so generous.)

Hello from Chiang Mai
Sorry I dropped off the radar for a while. Strange as it may seem, there are no Internet cafes at the Bangkok bus and train terminal, although you can buy just about anything else you want (and I mean anything- cantaloupe flavoured milk, whole roast chickens, brand new cell phones, and high heeled shoes.) I think I am adding that to my list of facts that do not fit with the way I was led to believe the world behaved- along with southern African's obsession with Mexican soap operas and the fact that Cairo, as a city, has an abnormally high number of lingerie shops.

I took a night bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. It started off at 8:30 PM and got in at 5:30 AM. It was a rather strange experience. Several times they walked down the aisle serving us all drinks (including steaming coffee) from plastic Dixie cups that they carried down the aisle on a tray and there were the requisite bad American action movies dubbed into Thai. It was a little surreal. It's amazing how independent I become when I travel on my own. When I travel with other people I think I have an annoying tendency to abscond from my responsibilities and follow them around like a puppy. I can be amazingly responsible when I'm on my own (although it isn't
nearly as much fun.)

I hadn't had a proper night of sleep or a nice shower in several days (I've lost count- that's how bad it's gotten) so I took a long shower as soon as I got to the guesthouse and I'm looking forward to a good night of sleep tonight. I met up with Miah and I think we're going to have a fun time. I thoroughly impressed her with my ability to click (the language I learned in the Peace Corps has clicks which act like letters of the alphabet.) Chiang Mai is a moated city and we're staying near the moat. Later in the week we're going to the night market and we're thinking about taking a Thai cooking class together. That's all for now. For those who care (mostly my parents) my new phone number is the Thai country code + 0879884643.

Take care
Amy

Luxor (email from Amy)

Well, We're safe in Luxor. Intending to head off to Hurghada and then on to Sinai tomorrow and the next day. In Luxor we saw the valley of the kings. I happen to think it's sort of their fault that their tombs were all raided. What do you expect if you build a giant room that everyone knows is located in a certain place and then fill it with gold? We've also seen a whole bunch of temples. Some of them still have original paint on them. I can't help but be amazed as I stare up at 4000 or 5000 year old paint. Still, tomb and temple fatigue is a real problem. After a while it's just another goddess shoving an ankh down another Pharaoh's throat, another Pharaoh bashing in the heads of his enemies, and another giant stone structure. I think one of the most exciting things I have seen is the ancient Greek graffiti on the walls. It's amazing to think that these places have not only been here for thousands of years, but they've been tourist traps for thousands of years. We're eaing pretty well. Yesterday we had McDonalds. It seems pretty exotic after 2 years in Namibia (although no bacon cheeseburgers, for obvious reasons.) Today I tried pigeon. It wasn't too bad, not a lot of meat though. There are these amazing honey soaked pastries that are pretty good as well, and, of course, there's always felafel and shwarma. We're staying upstairs from the souk (market) which the hilarious guidebook that we purchased describes as, "fitting all of the stereotypes that Westerners have about the Middle East." It is a little annoying at night when everyone is shouting until late, and when attempting to walk through the market (at one point a persistant seller threw one of the pashminas he was selling over my shoulder and Pat and I decided that the next time that happens I should just set off running.) Other than that I'm doing well. I have a bit of a cold, but I'mn steering clear of schistosomiasis and other parasites. It is surprisingly chilly in this part of the world. Hope everyone is having a good new year.
Take care of yourselves

Cairo (email from Amy)

Hello everyone
So, I'm in Egypt, probably one of the most touristy places in the world. When we got off the airplane we wandered about for a bit. Finally we found a bus to take us to central Cairo and were a little shocked when it cost 25p (about 4 US cents) per person to go the almost 12 kilometers. However, we had no clue when we were supposed to get off. Ah, what can you do? I saw the pyramids. What do you say about the pyramids? They're big. And old. Actually everything here is old. We saw some 6500 year old clay pots. If it's only 2000 or 3000 years old it's barely old enough to be important. We saw the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. I have never seen a less effectively organized museum. Near the end we would enter a room and say, "Ah, good. Another case of unlabeled objects." Parts of it just looked like an antiquities warehouse from Indiana Jones or something. They have so many things that they just have them piled about everywhere. I have heard that Egypt is hard for women travelers but I haven't had that many problems. I've been sporadically wearing my headscarf (mostly in Islamic Cairo) and basically keeping my arms covered and head down and letting Pat deal with all of the hassels which has worked pretty well so far (for me), although he did offer to sell me to a tour guide for 4000 camels. There are always the annoying people trying to extort a little baksheesh (something between a bribe and a tip) but probably the most dangerous thing we've faced, at least in Cairo, is the traffic. The guidebook gets it right when it says it's like playing chicken. We also like to compare it to Frogger. We have a pretty good system now, though. It involves using other people and each other as human shields in the hopes that at least if we get hit we won't get hit alone. We've discovered just how helpful it would be to know Arabic. Pat took a few terms in college and can read some of the signs but I'm just limping my way through the numbers (and I still get those confused sometimes.) Right now we're in Aswan, but we're moving up to Luxor today. We have a few days in Luxor then on to Sinai, then back to Cairo. I'll try to keep you all updated. Take care

Excitement in Nairobi (email from Amy)

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you all know that I am safe in Nairobi. Perhaps
you've been hearing some things about the rioting in Kenya, but I am
far away from the places that are violent and they think that the
violence is dying down now. I knew there would be rioting around
Christmas because of the election here, but I didn't expect it to be
so bad. Anyway, we're going to the airport and flying out to Cairo
tomorrow morning (Sunday) so we'll be fine. In the past three weeks
I've swam in Lake Malawi, wandered the meandering alleyways of Stone
Town in Zanzibar, seen lions in the Serengeti, and been in four
different countries. Zanzibar was my favorite. It reminded me of a
medieval city with all of the streets, wide or narrow, the shops with
persistent vendors and the people dressed in various outfits. We'll
be two weeks in Egypt. Right now it looks like our plans take us to
Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, possibly Mount Sinai, and then back to Cairo
again. After that it's two weeks in Chiang Mai, Thailand and then
home again. I don't know how the internet situation will be, but just
wanted everyone to know I'm safe and to send my love. Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year.

Amy

Zambian border (email from Amy)

You meet interesting people when you are hiking. On my way up to Livingstone I met an Angolan diamond smuggler. "Where does your father live?" he asked me in a reserved voice while sitting close to me in the combi. I responded that he lived in America. "Would he be interested in buying any precious stones?" No, as a matter of fact, my father is not in the market for any blood diamonds from shady Angolan immigrants...I think I will miss these things in America. You just don't meet people like that in your day to day life there. I am on the border between Zambia and Malawi at the moment. Tomorrow I head to Lake Malawi It looks like I will be spending Christmas in Zanzibar, so I may be completely out of touch for a while, but have a very Merry Christmas without me.

Victoria Falls and the kwacha (email from Amy)

Hey everyone,

I'm doing well. I saw Vic Falls yesterday. I have decided not to go see the Zimbabwean side because the visas are just too expensive and Ifigure that it probably looks pretty much the same as this side.Victoria Falls is a very large waterfall. I don't know how else to describe it. Even if I sent pictures they'd be the same pictures everyone takes (Google "Victoria Falls" and save me some internet time.) First we went to a place called the "Boiling pot" basically it's the very bottom of the Falls. This sounds nice and easy, but the Zambezi river is a bit high right now, so once we got to the bottom of a large staircase we had to wade knee deep through the river in the middle of a tropical rain forest. Luckily, nothing and no one fell in. Today I went to the Livingstone museum. I'm still getting used to the currency. The exchange rate is high here (the local currency is kwacha and 3400 kwacha= US$1) so everything looks expensive. It's a bit strange buying a loaf of bread advertised at "only" 2000k. Plus, they don't have coins, everything is notes, and the smallest note is 50 kwacha (about 1.5 US cents) so you carry around these big wads of money.) I meet the tour that takes me to Nairobi tomorrow. I
don't know how regularly I will be able to send email, but I'll try to keep you all updated as I continue on this crazy trip.

Currently Reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Much Love.

Peace,
Amy

Livingstone, I presume.(email from Amy)

So,

I am safe and sound, at last, in Livingstone Zambia. On Tuesday I hitchhiked from Windhoek to Grootfontein. Then, in a marathon bit of hiking I made it all the way to Katima Mulilo on the Zambian borders yesterday (in extremely overcrowded Ford Ventures whose drivers insisted on playing Thimbukushu Pop music full blast and blatantly ignoring the 3 meter signs that consisted entirely of a giant triangle with an exclamation point in it and one word "ELEPHANTS.") This morning I took a taxi from the backpackers where I spent the night to the border, which I walked across. Nothing makes you feel quite so much like a refugee as walking across an African border carrying everything you own on your back. I managed to rebuff the moneychangers (it's not a good idea to change money with random guys talking in fervent whispers and holding wads of cash just outside of border posts.) While I was inside the Zambian Customs Station (which sort of resembled an impoverished 19^th century schoolhouse, well scrubbed oak tables and neatly kept, hand printed registration books where I had to neatly pen my name.) it started raining, no, actually the proper word is pouring. The taxi pulled right up to the bottom of the stairs outside the customs house and in the two seconds it took me to get inside I was soaked to the skin. When we crossed the Zambezi river it was raining too hard and I was too busy trying to keep the front windshield clear of fog, that I didn't even notice. The taxi driver let me off in the town of Seshike. So, without a kwacha to my name (I paid in Rand) I boarded an overcrowded bus and here I am, in Livingstone. In Dark Star Safari Paul Theroux says that traveling is like going back in time and that's what this place sort of feels like. You have the muddy streets, the vibrant street markets, the decaying old buildings, and the beggars, crazy people, street performers and other random people vying for your attention. If Namibia is what the Germans imagined Africa to be, properly ordered with schedules and neatly lined streets and little German frau dresses everywhere, then it sort of makes sense that this is Africa as the British imagined it, muddy and sort of disordered with everyone sort of going about their own business. I stay here a few days, then on to Lusaka and beyond. Finished Middlemarch on my crazy hike. Seems a little strange whilst barreling past mud and reed huts and tropical rainforests, but whatever.

I'll keep you all updated.

Much love

Amy

Itinerary for trip (email from Amy)

OK, here's my itinerary for my crazy trip. Just in case you were interested.

December

3-leave Anker, hike to Windhoek
4-Windhoek, COS (close of service) interviews and stuff
5-Windhoek, COS stuff
6-Windhoek, COS stuff
7-Windhoek, COS stuff - Last day as a PCV
8-Windhoek, hanging out, staying at Jason's
9-Windhoek, hanging out, staying at Jason's
10-Windhoek, hanging out, staying at Jason's
11-Hike north, probably stay at Rundu or Divundu
12-Katima Mulilo, Namibia- probably stay at a hostel or something
13-Cross the border into Zambia, hike to Livingstone, staying at
Jolly Boys (a youth hostel), Vic Falls stuff
14-Livingstone, Zambia- Staying at Jolly Boys, See Vic Falls from
the Zambia side
15-Livingstone, Zambia- Staying at Jolly Boys, See Vic Falls from
the Zimbabwe side

Overland tour - link to description

16-Vic Falls, the overland tour begins
17-Livingstone, Zambia
18-Lusaka, Zambia
19-Chipata, Zambia
20-24 - Lake Malawi, Malawi
25-Iringa, Tanzania
26-Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
27-29 - Zanzibar, Tanzania
30-Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
31-Arusha, Tanzania

January

1-Ngorongoro Crater, Tazania
2-Serengeti Game Park, Tanzania
3-Arusha, Tanzania
4-Namangana, Kenya
5-Nairobi, Kenya-overland tour ends

Continued travels

6-Leave Nairobi, fly to Cairo
7-17-Cairo, Egypt
18-Leave Cairo for Chiang Mai, Thailand via Bangkok (train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai)
19-29-Chiang Mai, Thailand - Staying with my friend Miah
30-Returning home via Bangkok, Taipei and Seattle
31-Arrive home in Minnesota!

my week and my trip (email from Amy)

So,

It's been a bit of a difficult week for me. Eleven of my grade 6 learners ate concentrated cleaning powder (they thought it was powdered sugar) that had, I think, caustic lye in it. Most of them spit it out and were only mildly hurt (although, by that I mean that Queen had a badly blistered tongue and Selma told me that her eyesight went yellow and then red.) But Mercia, Papou, and Thusnelde swallowed some of it and almost died. They were going into seizures with their eyes rolling back into their heads and they were throwing up white, foamy vomit. Papou in particular was very very sick. Someone had taken some of the extra cleaning powder and put it in the tap so she went to get a drink of water not knowing that it had poison in it. Anyway, eventually they took them to the nurse who gave them some sort of injection and they're all OK now, but it was very very scary for a while. I didn't see them until the next day, but they were still sleeping under like three blankets each (and, I know that doesn't sound like much, but we are approaching the middle of summer here. It's been between 90 and 100 degrees F at noon.)

This weekend I went to Otjiwarongo for a Halloween/Thanksgiving/Goodbye party. Several volunteers are leaving in two weeks so we all got together and ate good food and enjoyed each other's company and some nice movies and conversations.

As far as my crazy post-Peace Corps trip I have a tentative itinerary. I COS (close of service) on December 7 in Windhoek. I then attempt to get to Victoria Falls. I probably will hitchhike and it will probably take me 2-3 days. On the 18th I leave Vic Falls with a tour group we go through Zambia, Malawi (including Lake Malawi), Tanzania (including Zanzibar), and Kenya (including the Serengeti.) We end on January 5th in Nairobi. From there I fly to Cairo with a friend (possibly via Dubai or Adis Abeba) and spend a little over a week seeing the sights. Around the 18th of January I fly alone to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Then, near the end of January or the beginning of February I end up back in St. Paul (via Bangkok, Taipei, and Seattle.) That's the jist of the trip although a lot will probably change.

OK, that's about all I have for now. Lots of love to you all.

Stuff (email from Amy)

It rained today. You cannot imagine the sound of rain on a tin roof in October. It is unimaginably beautiful. It hasn't rained here since February. When I heard it I started laughing and I had this visceral joy. I went outside and I felt it on my skin and I started crying, my tears mingling with the raindrops. This probably seems really melodramatic (and it might be- It wouldn't surprise me to discover that a few screws are loose after my time here) but it was my real reaction. I hope it rains a lot. One drought year (like this year) is like a major depression for the people here. They have to sell some of their animals or they will starve and the prices are halved. But two drought years spell bankruptcy and World Food Programme emergency porridge and malnourished kids. The last really bad years were in the 80's. They were telling me about them and these things are recurrent. Anyway, rain is like hope. It is beautiful and it soothes the soul.

Tomorrow I go to Windhoek for a week for my final medical checkups (so they can make sure I'm not bringing back Ebola or Typhoid or something.) Exciting, but I'm trying to save up my money for travel afterwards and Windhoek is not conducive to frugality. So, hopefully I can resist the movie theatre and the used book store and the restaurants. Other than that, it's been a thoroughly ordinary week. Take care.

The educational tour (email from Amy)

Sorry I haven't written in a while. This weekend was the educational tour to Etosha. We thought that we were going to have to travel in the back of three bakkies (pick-up trucks) but the day before we found out that we had procured a bus. The bus was big enough (unlike the one last year) but it was on its last legs (which here means that it will probably be half-repaired and limp on for another dozen years or so.) Every time we stopped, started, turned, or accelerated it would backfire and lurch into place, throwing people and luggage in every direction. There was also a ten cent coin stuck in the horn that completed a circuit, so every now and then we'd have 30 seconds to a minute of solid honking. Before we could leave Etosha we had to hunt down a fan belt because, apparently, we had been driving with a terribly threadbare one. Plus it didn't help that every time we moved the driver ground the gears something terrible. I am not entirely certain that he ever actually used the clutch.

As to the food situation-it was rather ordinary for here. We left with a goat carcass, 12 cabbages, 30 loaves of bread, a case of margarine, plus a large bag of rice, so the kids were eating mostly rice, cabbage soup, and lots of margarine sandwiches. The teachers, however, brought extra "good" food (i.e. strange meat) to supplement the diet. Perhaps you have never been in a situation where you were unable to refuse a pickled fish sandwich for breakfast, but, trust me, I'm speaking from experience her, you start eying the kid's plain margarine and jam sandwiches with more than a little envy.

There is nothing quite so culture-shocking as Etosha with village kids. Etosha is very touristy and fancy. One of my kids pointed out a two story house with astonishment and told me that he would never stay in a house like that because he was afraid he would fall off and die. Stairs aren't necessary in a place with ridiculously low population density. Even in Outjo, the nearest large city, there are only a few buildings with two stories. Almost everyone in Etosha dresses in khaki on khaki with a large camera on a neck strap and a German accent. They eyed my kids with just about as much curiosity as my kids eyed them.

My kids were separated by the gulf of their poverty and naivete about the world outside the village just as the tourists were separated by their wealth and their ignorance about the realities of life in Namibia. They cannot conceive of each other's worlds. Both of them are stuck just looking at each other. We hold apartheid in our hearts- black from white, rich from poor, young from old, Western from African- all of these are small potatoes compared with the true isolation- me from everyone else. We are stuck in the provincial homelands of our own heads. People ask me sometimes why apartheid is still a problem 17 years after it ended. To me it's not strange that it's still a problem, to me it's a miracle that it's not more of a problem, bridging, as we are, the bottomless abysses that separate us, one from another, with the toothpick and dental floss bridges of our own resources.

As for my plans after the Peace Corps, I think that I will not be home for Christmas (you can't count on me.) I will be doing a little traveling with some friends. Right now the plan is to go to Victoria Falls, then Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, and take a plane from Nairobi to Cairo, a little while in Egypt and then probably home. Just a little jaunt through Africa. I'm going to try to do it on some limited resources, so it'll probably be a bit of an adventure. I'm hoping that I don't run out of money and end up living on 20 cents worth of bread in Cairo or Bucharest or something, but (to comfort my parents and grandparents and all the rest of you who worry when I say stuff like that) I'm pretty clever and I have young, tough bones. I can survive a lot. I'll be going with friends, as I said, so I'll be pretty safe and, particularly, I'm going with a guy to Egypt, which is nice because it's hard to go to Egypt alone as a woman. Anyway, I'll let you know more as I know more.

As for the reading update- Read Collapse by Jared Diamond over the holiday (very good- not quite as good as Guns Germs and Steel, but few things are really paradigm shifting like that book was and still definitely worth a good thorough read), also almost finished Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky (very dense, but very good), and I'm halfway through Middlemarch. I haven't really been reading as much lately, but I'm hoping to change that.

Anyway, That's the good word from this corner of the world. Hope everyone in that neck of the woods is doing fantastic.

Windhoek last week (email from Amy)

Well, in a 7 and half hour hike down on Friday and a 12 and a half hour hike back on Sunday, I managed to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Which I love, by the way. I managed to restrain myself and didn't finish until Monday. I'm reading through it again because I was not reading particularly carefully the first time.)

I was particularly nervous about the 12 and a half hour hike back. I left Jason's house, packed, showered, and ready to go at about 7:30 AM and I didn't get back to my house until 8 at night. I had forgotten that hiking from Anker is sort of like traveling a river- on the way to Windhoek it is easy to get hikes, like going downstream, but trying to get back is like trying to swim against the current- it can be harrowing and exhausting, and it takes a lot longer.

I managed to do a few other fun things while I was in Windhoek. I had bottomless coffee at Mugg and Bean (I think that Peace Corps volunteers are the only ones they don't get their money's worth on that one, we are sort of broke so we can't pass up another free cup, and when we're in Windhoek we often have enough time to spend an entire afternoon there. I told another volunteer that I was measuring out my life in coffee spoons but they didn't get it (it's a reference to T.S. Eliot) I have to get some better jokes.) I also went out to dinner a couple of times. I saw a movie at the movie theatre there (Harry Potter 5), I went shopping, I got the photos for my school, and I got as many groceries as I could carry. Still, the main reason I was there was for the book and I'm very glad I went. Hope you all are doing fine.

Harry Potter, Windows, and 4 things Americans are wrong about (plus, what's the deal about HIV) (email from Amy)

hey everyone
I know I haven't written a long email for a while, so I wrote an extra long one this time. Enjoy.

I did a movie night on Friday. We made less money- only about N$80 (US $11) because unbeknownst to me the pensioners weren't getting their pensions until Saturday. But the kids still enjoyed the movie. We saw Madagasgar and Lord of the Rings- The Two Towers. The kids liked them a lot. They especially like Lord of the Rings, which has sort of surprised me.

I've figured out how I'm going to get the next Harry Potter book. In case you were unaware, it comes out soon soon. Next weekend I will be hitchiking to Windhoek (about 500 K away, aproximately a 6-7 hour drive) on a Friday after school. I'm hoping I can get there in one day because my only other option is to stay the night in Otjiwarongo. Then a bunch of us are going to the only bookstore offering it at midnight (I think that Jason might have convinced them to do that for us. Another of volunteers asked if they could buy the book at midnight and they were laughed out of the store.) and spend about 20% of my monthly salary.

The next day I hike back to Otjiwarongo before noon and then I hike back to Anker the next day. Nothing to it. Just a good 14 hour round trip on a weekend and, with the travel expenses (hitchiking isn't free in this country) about half a month's salary. Still, when else in my life do I get a chance to have an adventure like this, and what else is a living allowance for if not for skimping on the food budget for a month or two and buying a book (hey, at least I'll be getting my money's worth page-wise.) Who needs to eat when you can read :) By the way, I know I joke about not having enough money for food, but just to comfort those of you who worry about me, I'll be fine. I have enough saved up that I won't be spending the grocery money.

You have never seen creativity until youve seen a child play for an entire day with a pair of shorts and three coloured pencils. Jenefer was at my house because on Mondays her mother does my laundry. I was only there for an hour or two, but first the pair of shorts was a baby and she fed it with a coloured pencil, then she was ironing the shorts with the pencil, then the shorts became a car that she could push around with three coloured pencil passengers, then she used the coloured pencils as hoes to dig at the earth. And that was just in an hour or two. Most kids have only maybe one or two toys, but who needs toys when you have a whole world full of inanimate (and, occationally, animate) objects just waiting to be transformed by your imagination.

Another teacher got a computer this week. They buy them on an installment plan with the College of Open Learning. I think they end up paying some horrendous amount of interest, but for most of them computers would be horridly expensive anyway because of the double import (things are imported to South Africa and then imported again to Namibia) and because there isn't much competition, and because they'd have to go to Windhoek to get them and at least this way they have some technical support. Anyway, I was reminded again of why I hate Windows. Their copy of Windows is registered for the Middle East and Africa, not places that are known for their vast infrastructure, and yet the procedure for registering it is the same as in the States. It's ridiculous. If you don't want to register by internet (not really an option in Anker) you have to write down a 50 digit number code, then call a long distance number in South Africa, then get another 50 digit number code, then type that code in without making any mistakes. And on top of that, we discovered after making one attempt that the code changes every time you open the box, so you have to leave the computer on and open while you go to the pay phone and hope for no power outages. And if the phones lines are out (which they are a lot of the time) or if you don't have a calling card, or if any number of things prevent you from doing that, too bad for you. Ugh! It makes me want to rip my hair out and stuff it down the throat of whoever came up with this system.

4 Things I think I've learned about Americans while I've been here (when I say "Americans" I am making broad, unsubstantiated statements, but being in a different place gives you a little perspective and trust me, I used to top the list in a lot of these topics):

1. Americans believe that all (or most) problems can be fixed with money and they are wrong. To fix most problems you need some money, but it is by no means the most important aspect of problems and money is powerful and dangerous to use. I've seen a lot of problems that have money just thrown willy nilly at them and the end result is that you till have the problem, but now you also have a whole group of people who are living off the graft and inefficiency, who have a vested interest in making sure that the problem doesn't get fixed. And I'm not saying that money isn't important because I've asked for money before and sometimes it can do a lot of good and sometimes we have to work with the systems that we have, not with the ones that we wish we had, and sometimes a band-aid fix is the best you've got and even if a band-aid won't stop the massive hemorrhage, at least you aren't doing nothing, but still, money can do more harm than good and it seems like not a lot of people are ready to admit that.

2. Americans think the HIV pandemic is about sex and they are wrong. Truly, sex is only the thinnest icing on the cake, but it paints a picture that many Americans find uncomfortable. The HIV pandemic is really about gender inequality, racial and tribal prejudices, unfair work practices, illiteracy and lack of education, poverty, and unemployment. You probably think that I'm mincing words, but I'm not. The truth of the matter is that most people know that if they have unprotected sex they are at risk for HIV, but HIV is still being spread in Namibia, mostly by unprotected sex. If telling people to use condoms worked, then this problem would be fixed already. The HIV pandemic is in the wife who can't confront her husband about using a condom even though she knows he has multiple partners because women are supposed to be faithful and men aren't and she is supposed to accept whatever decision he makes about condoms. The HIV pandemic is in the 20 year old unemployed subsistence farmer who dropped out of school in the 7th grade and has two kids and a couple goats on overgrazed, drought-prone land and who doesn't see much reason why he should /want/ to live to old age. The HIV pandemic is in the man who has a job in a mine hundreds of kilometers away from his family, who sets up a second family out of lonliness. HIV is hardly about sex at all. HIV is about all the reasons for hopelessness.

3. Americans think that there is something noble about going to Africa to help the poor people over here and they are wrong. First of all, I think the people I've lived and worked with have been far more noble than I have. I came over here, messing up on all the cultural cues and making faux pas galore, and changing all sorts of stuff, being weird and emotional from the culture shock, and trying to do ridiculous things, and they fed me and helped me and tried to set me straight when I was wrong. And they did it from tiny, segregated cinder block boxes, tin shacks, and mud huts. The hard truth is that there are only a few things in life that are truly giving, and it doesn't matter that I'm in the Peace Corps in Africa, what I choose to do or not do is more or less the same as it would be in America. I think that there are only a few moments I can point to in these two years that have been truly generous, and they aren't huge or glamorous or anything. When I am tutoring a kid after school in maths and I ask the same question for the fifteenth time after demonstrating it five times and they still get it wrong- its in that moment I have a chance because I can choose to see it as my own failure to communicate properly or I can just get frustrated and yell. That's the moment-not because it's /so/ generous or whatever, because the things that we see as "generous" feed into our own need to be seen as giving- the truth is that you can only be generous when, right there, in that lonely second, when no one is looking and no one will know, if you will choose to side with your better angel.

4. Americans think that culture is all dancing and singing and they are wrong. Culture is about what a certain group of people collectivly tend to remember or ignore, believe or disbelieve, like or dislike, practice or not practice. Sure, dancing and singing can fall under culture, but so can a lot of other things. Culture can be the way you treat your family, or what you think is appropriate behaviour, or how you act towards your children, and it's not just "those people over there" who have culture. In some ways American culture seems sort of bizarre and unique to me now. The way Americans treat children wouldn't make sense to almost any Namibian and it just seems weird to me now. Well, thats about it. I don't know that I have much else to say.

I'm fine. Hope you're all well. Take care

This week ( email from Amy)

I've been invited to go to a Peace Corps conference in Ondongwa next week. I head out on Wednesday and I come back on Sunday or Monday. It's exciting for me. Ondongwa is in the far north and, other than the Caprivi strip (the small strip that extends from the north east corner of Namibia) it's pretty much the only part of the country that I've never been to. Plus, it means that I'll have good cell coverage for the 4th of July so I can talk to my family.

see map of some locations around Namibia

I've been sick this week but don't worry, I'm OK now. I had a fever and a sore throat (I lost my voice for a couple of days.) I didn't miss any school though. I don't know if there's anything quite so bad as waking up and feeling sick and knowing that you still have to go to work that day. (I mean, I don't HAVE to, but there aren't any substitute teachers in this country so if I don't then three to six classes will sit and do nothing for the period and will probably steal the textbooks or rip down the posters and when I come back they will have forgotten everything we talked about for the last month and a half.) Still, everyone took good care of me - a bunch of them visited me and suggested good remedys. And part of growing up is that you have to take responsibility even when you feel sick. I mean, if you're a parent you don't get to take sick days.

We got the window glass from Otjiwarongo on Friday, and we just hit a cold snap so it was not a moment too soon. We'll put them in over the next few weeks. While we were in Otjiwarongo I got a bunch of Lost episodes from Megan, so I've been watching them a little obsessively. It's such a good show. I also managed to get some fabric scraps for the quilt I'm making. It's a crazy quilt.

This week I finished Moby Dick, but I haven't started anything new just yet. Moby Dick was one of two books that I was supposed to have read in college and never finished (Middlemarch was the other) so I'm halfway to catching up.

Actual conversation I had with a traffic officer on a hike:

Him: "Can you drive?"

Me: "Yes, but I'm not allowed to here."

Him: "Why not?"

Me: "Well, I don't have a Namibian license and the Peace Corps is afraid that I'll get into an accident and they'll get in trouble for it."

Then there was a long pause where he looked confused for a bit and then his face cleared, like he figured something out.

Him: "Oh, you are having a chief in America and he says you cannot drive because you will be destroying things."

Me: "Yes, exactly, we are having a chief and he doesn't want our families to get angry at him if we get hurt so we must hike instead."

Anyway, I'm doing well. Not much else to report. Hope everyone there is fine.

Aids awareness week, greeting and lasagna (email from Amy)

Hey everyone,
I think I know what I will miss most when I leave Anker. It's not the children or the animals (although I will miss the kids, the animals I can do without) it's not even the rewarding work (as any teacher can tell you, teaching is not always rewarding and sometimes just annoying.) What I will miss most is shaking hands and saying hello. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "we shake hands in America. We say hello." I am sorry to be rude, but no you don't. In Namibia you greet every person as you enter a room, shaking hands and often going through a long greeting. Yes, it's disruptive to go around shaking everyone's hand when you come in late for a meeting, but you still do it. Someone explained to me early in my time here that not greeting someone is like denying their essential humanity. It says to a person, "You are not worthy of my greeting." So, everyone I pass on the street (in Anker, not in Windhoek, it's not that ridiculous) I say good morning or good evening to, each class says good morning to me chorally, and every time I come into a room I shake people's hands. The longer I'm here, the more I agree with the custom and the more I think that it does deny something of people's essential humanity to not greet them. It, perhaps, is not a denial based on a person's assumption of superiority (here, because of the history of apartheid, people might assume if I don't greet them that I think I'm better than them because I'm white) but it is a denial based, if nothing else, in our assumption of the superiority of efficiency-- in America, it seems, it's more important that we get things done than that we validate people's existance. Anyway, it annoyed me at first and now I think I'll mis it.

Meverlly has been coming to my house for help with her maths homework and she's been giving me some good advice. For example, she told me how the elephants came to her farm and destroyed everything and killed a calf because they were so angry and her family had to run up the mountain because, apparently elephants only climb when they are happy, they stay off the mountains when they're angry (this has been confirmed by other people in the area.) She and Senty also warned me not to write with my finger in the sand at night because a ghost will come up from the ground into my finger and it will swell up, but that if I rub out whatever I write, then the ghost won't come into my hand. They also warned me about the witches who choke people as they are sleeping at night (many learners are astonished that I'm not scared to live alone precisely because of the witches.) So, overall they've been a good source of knowledge.

Oh, on Wednesday there was an announcement over the radio that a pack of 10 lions was loose in the area- so we had to be a little careful (although they weren't that close to Anker so we were all safe- don't worry)

On Tuesday we had a ralley in Kamanjab for Aids awareness week. The kids did a very nice drama and some of the other schools did nice songs or poems. The school inspector came and it was a very nice time. Afterwards I got some groceries.

I made lasagna this week. Someone had sent me noodles in a package last year and I had been hoarding them until I could collect the necessary ingredients at the same time (cottage cheese and the herbs were particularly difficult to get and a little expensive.) When it came out of the oven I literally jumped for joy. It's been so long since I've eaten something homemade and dripping with cheese like that. My life tends to be sort of ascetic (more out of laziness than out of poverty, but I do admit that it's much cheaper to subsist on cooked oatmeal and meatless spaghetti) and I generally don't cook anything that uses a quarter of a kilogram of meat AND a full block of cheese. I know that I've been a lot less obsessed with food this year. I know you all miss my long meditations on that subject. :) That is largely due to the fact that I've finally got some mastery over my transportation problems (not due to any change in circumstances, simply due to my own trial and error education) so I can get food when I need it, and partially due to the fact that I've managed to check some of my grocery store guilt at the door.

When I get groceries I generally buy for at least 2 weeks, sometimes I buy for a whole month in advance, so I buy quite a bit of food (although I have a rule that I cannot buy more than I can carry when combined with my other belongings- it's a good rule to have when you get around by hitchhiking because you often have to carry all your stuff, sometimes for a couple of kilometers.) Anyway, I used to feel guilty when I would spend, say, US$100 on groceries because it's half my monthly salary and because people in the village don't eat like I do- so I'd end up buying less than I actually needed and eating burnt lentil soup for a week (I have never managed to get the hang of cooking lentils and they always end up with a blackened crust and a smokey flavour.) I realised that A. It's OK to spend half your monthly salary if you are buying most of the food that you will eat in that month and B. people eat differently in the village partially because they were raised with different food and it's not good for me to make myself depressed for something that won't help anyone. Anyway, I'm eating better and so I'm not as obsessed.

I have been doing some games with my grade 7 science class. We played a game called "lions and baby elephants" designed to demonstrate how the immune system works and how HIV harms people by harming the immune system. We also reprised a game that we played last year called "The jackels and the little lambs." In this game I pass out "little lambs" (actually white washcloths) and "jackels" (actually clean pairs of gray socks.) The learners start by passing the little lamb around a circle, then I introduce the jackel. If the jackel gets to the little lamb, then the lamb gets eaten. There are three types of players in this game- most kids just pass the jackel and the little lamb at the same rate, some kids (mostly boys) try to pass the jackel faster, and some kids try to help the lamb. When the game is over we talk about the people in our community who need protection like the little lamb-smaller children, older people, orphans, sick people, disabled people, HIV-positive people, and teenage mothers are among the people they came up with. Then we talk about the choice that each of them has. They can be like the ones who pass the jackel faster- they can be a part of the problem, by making fun of people who are HIV-positive or who are orphaned, by taking things from people who cannot protect themselves, or by abusing others. They can be like the people who pass both the jackel and the lamb at the same rate- they can do nothing to harm or help people in difficult situations- at that point we talk about how the ones who weren't helping the lamb were really just allowing the jackels to harm the lamb. Or they can choose to be like the ones who actively try to help the little lamb. At this point we come up with a list of ways they can help vulnerable people in their communities- some ideas they came up with were to share their food or money, give them healthy foods, do chores for them, help them to walk, visit them, sing to them, and pray for them. For homework they were supposed to do something to help someone who needs help in their community.

Teaching quotes of the week "Ms. Amy you are having a brain!" by Amon, one of my favourites, said in a tone of awe as I typed a letter in front of my grade 7s. It's nice when all it takes to impress people is being able to type. That never happened in college.

OK, that's about it. Of course I've been reading- finished The Way of All Flesh and I'm about halfway through Moby Dick. Hope you all are doing well.

Busy week and Day of the African Child (email from Amy)

Well, no one can say that I haven't been working this week. I've been going to school at 6:30 AM as usual (for the teacher meeting) but I have been staying until at least 6:30 or 7 PM. On Monday I held a well attended workshop on making your own teaching aids and then for the rest of the week I helped the teachers, particularly the lower primary teachers, with making aids. Mrs. /Goagoses and Mrs. /Uiras and I made two girls for their classroom to teach about clothing, body parts, and weather. We also made a lot of food, utensils, a birthday cake, and I made printable sheets of Namibian money so the kids can practice with them. I helped Mr. #Narebeb to brighten up his teaching aids. His classroom has always been one of the best for teaching aids, but a lot of them are black outlined drawings because he didn't have the markers and maybe he didn't feel confident. We even made a diagram of the taste sensors on the tongue with a plastic sheet that can be lifted up and put down. Mr. Asser, the maths teacher, and I made a pie chart that can change to any size he wants.

Additionally, during school hours I have been extremely busy getting the window project ready for the hostel (I have been especially motivated because the last few mornings have been really cold.) Thanks to a bank error in our favor (seriously, I didn't know things like that even happened, but I am very very thankful) we actually have enough money to fix all of the broken windows in the sleeping rooms with plastic glass. Then the only broken windows left in the school or hostel will be in the bathrooms, storage rooms, and the kitchen. They say that they can have the windows ready by next weekend, so we could have them fixed in a jiffy.

Also I wrote a letter to a group of people in the States who send blankets to needy children in
developing countries to see if we could get a donation that would belong to the hostel. The hostel could then lend them out to the needier learners so that every child can have a blanket, no matter how poor they are.

Also, I've been working on trying to get 5 of the brightest and most disadvantaged learners' applications ready for a scholarship program. If they are accepted they will be able to get up to N$1500 (US$215) a year towards their school fees, hostel fees, and exam fees, which is more than enough to cover the fees for most of the learners. Primary School fees are much smaller than Secondary School fees, but still at our school learners only pay N$80 (US$11) a year in school fees and N$324 (US$46) a year in hostel fees (if they pay, a lot of them don't have enough money to even pay the school fees.) So that's all I've been up to, nothing much really, just a few minor projects :) .

As I said, I've been helping some of the better and poorer learners to apply for a scholarship and they had to write an essay about why they want the scholarship. They have some really sad stories:
--Elvis, who is brilliant, wrote about how his single mother is unemployed and their animals are too few.
--Sedney, who got the only A I gave out in my class one term, is 16 and in grade 7 because his parents didn't bring him to school until he was 10 and his grandfather is the only one supporting his education and he's afraid that his grandfather will die while he's still busy with his education.
--Erastus was orphaned by both of his parents. Theodor, one of my most diligent and committed learners, wrote how the grandmother who had been paying his school fees out of her pension had died last year. His father is unemployed and he hasn't seen his mother for 4 years, when she abandoned the family, so he is going to school without paying his fees at all and he only had shoes because his unemployed aunt's mother bought them for him.
--The worst story was Nadia's. She was having trouble writing her essay so she asked me for help then she told me how her mother had died while she was sleeping in the same bed as her and how her father refused to support her or her sister because he had so many children by other women who still had mothers to force him support them and also because her stepmother doesn't like her (ironically she loves fairy tales. Maybe stories of evil stepmothers are a little close to home for her.) She told me how her uncle had told her the night before her mother died that God was only waiting for her to pray and then he would heal her mother, so she thought that maybe it was her fault that her mother died because she forgot to pray for her that night (I told her that's not the way things work, that God doesn't let people die because their 11 year old children don't pray enough but I'm not sure she entirely believed me.)

I would really like all 5 learners to get the scholarship. They all need and deserve it, all of them are also getting among the top marks, but they only give out 100 scholarships for all of Namibia and they give out 2/3 of them to girls (4 of our 5 applicants are boys. We tried to get an equal number of girls and boys, but none of the other girls qualified academically. Just a quirk that this year's 7th graders have mostly clever boys. Last years 7th graders were full of clever girls.) Anyway, I think we have a chance that one of them might get the scholarship.

Friday was the Day of the African Child. We had a program-mostly songs and dramas about the need for education or about fighting HIV/Aids. It was sort of like an elementary school program, but we held it in the open sandy part just outside the school. I'm including some pictures. It was my turn to do the morning devotion, so Mrs. /Goagoses suggested that I take the passage where Jesus says that the little children should come to him. She also said that God had wanted Namibia to be independent and then asked me if I thought it was true. I said that I thought that God didn't like apartheid so I thought that he probably was pretty happy that Namibia didn't have apartheid anymore and that I thought that God wanted all people to have a place of their own just like Namibia is our own place. Anyway, it was a nice discussion.

Last week in church the man who shows up for church drunk every week :) pulled me to the front of the congregation and spoke in rapid KhoeKhoe about how God should bless me for coming to church every week and how the children should take me as an example. I'm kind of used to being singled out, particularly in church, but it was still a little weird.

There's still a drought in the area, but no one talks about it much anymore because we're not hoping for rain anymore. Now people are just trying to limit their damages by selling off their livestock and trying to save the money. When you are a subsistence famer livestock is a sort of savings account. Your goats or cattle are your emergency nest egg, your savings, and to some extent, your pension, when you need money you sell some of your cattle. Unfortunatly, during a drought the price of cattle goes down, but if you don't sell them they will probably die of hunger and then you've lost your savings. Anyway, that's the Catch-22. Drought also exacerbates the serious problems of overgrazing and soil erosion, particularly in traditional communal lands like the area where I live. Overgrazing and soil erosion in turn exacerbate desertification (the less plant life in an area, the less rain falls in that area, slowly changing semi-desert savannahs into full deserts) which causes more droughts. It's a vicious cycle. Anyway, not much we can do about it at this point.

Hope everyone there is doing well. I'm doing just fine. I think I've really adjusted to the culture. I rarely feel culture shock anymore. Things seem to make more sense and I understand better what will work and what won't work. I'm just a little worried about the reverse culture shock. I only have 5 or 6 more months so it's just a little frustrating that I've become adjusted when I'm so close to leaving. Also, I'm worried that the more adjusted I get now the worse the shock will be when I return home. Well, what can you do? Take care.