Since my last post, a lot of things have happened. About three weeks ago I went on my site visit to see where I will be living and working for the next two years. The town I will be living in is called Oshikuku, which is in the Omusati Region of Namibia. I met my supervisor, Ndilipo, a day before departing to Oshikuku and the following day we drove the 8 hours up north to Oshikuku. On the drive up, it was the first time I got to see some true African wildlife. (Giraffes, elephants, and some crazy looking monkeys)
While my supervisor and I were driving up to my site, he began to inform me about the record breaking amount of rain fall that has been occurring in the north and that I should prepare myself for some flooding. Now, I thought that flooding in the states and flooding in Namibia wouldn’t be much different from each other, but it is very different. The problem with the flooding in Namibia is, people are extremely stubborn and do not want to leave their housing, the housing the people are living in is made of tin, and sewage is leaking into the flood waters in which people are walking through and catching/eating fish from. Fortunately for me Oshikuku does not flood as much as the surrounding towns so I was safe from water the first two days.
The town of Oshikuku was just declared a town last December; prior to being declared a town it was called a village. Now being a town it has a fairly good grocery store and a clothing store as well. What is nice about the town is that it’s pretty easy to get a hike to and from if I wanted to leave for a weekend. The school I will be working for is Nuukata Primary School, which has around 600 enrolled students, ranging from age 5 to age 14. I will be teaching English, Life skills, and hopefully some sort of after school HIV/AIDS awareness club. I think that the first major project I will have is to complete the school’s library/computer lab, that for the past year, has halted its construction. After sitting down with the staff, they would really like the library to be finished and working by the end of this year. There is still plenty of work that needs to be finished (about $20,000Namibian dollars worth of work) and books and computers still need to be found (donated). It’s a pretty big challenge but I would rather have a project to keep me busy with then to have nothing at all to do.
So site visit was planned to last from Friday to the following Thursday but as usual with me and my bad luck, the rain and flooding increased and Peace Corps decided that evacuating all volunteers from my region was the best decision. So on Monday, while I was at school, my supervisor for Peace Corps called me and told me that they have decided to pull me out early from site visit and that I needed to go to a hotel that was about an hour way from where I was. Ndilipo decided that he would drive me to the hotel, and after saying goodbye to several hundred students, I headed to the hotel.
Now on the way to the hotel I had to pass through some really bad flooding, that if I would have stayed at site, I am not sure if I could have left that Thursday because the water was flowing over the road. But we did make it eventually to the hotel where I was greeted by about 25 other Peace Corps volunteers who had also been evacuated from their sites (I was the only one who was on site visit and still in training). I stayed at the hotel for two nights and then Peace Corps drove me back to Okahandja to finish out the rest of my training.
The following 3 weeks of training went on as usual, the rain in the north kept falling, and the flooding kept rising. This past Thursday was the day that all of us in training had been waiting for-- The SWEARINg- IN CEREMONY!!! This was the day when I officially went from being a Peace Corps trainee to a Peace Corps Volunteer, and when my 2 year service officially begins. The ceremony was a lot of fun. We had choir that sang for us, the U.S. Ambassador for Namibia came, and many other important guests that are a part of Peace Corps Namibia. After the ceremony a few of us decided to take one last hike up the mountain where it all started for us.
Now usually immediately after the ceremony or the following day, the new volunteers depart and move to their official site. But because of the flooding, I am not allowed to go to Oshikuku for at least another two weeks. So while I leave all my luggage with my host family in Okahandja, I will stay a week in the capital, Windhoek, where I will attend a male engagement seminar. If at the end of the first week Peace Corps still believes it is still not ok to go to site, then I will go to another volunteer’s site where I will live with them until I get the all clear to go to Oshikuku. Until then, I’m going to live it up in the capital where I will have free food and hot showers every day. Not much complaining can be had so for now, all is well.
My new address is (which hopefully is my permanent address unless the flood changes things again for me)
Brandon Plocinski-Nuukata Primary School
P.O. Box 5155
Oshikuku, Namibia
Until next time………
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