Mopane Johnny and Site Announcement

The last few days have been pretty noteworthy for me. As I mentioned in the last post, Saturday was our traditional cooking day, during which the training staff and host families prepared traditional Namibian dishes for each of the major ethnic groups in the country. Cooking prep started around 8:00 for our 1:15 meal. It was really quite interesting to see just how much labor and time goes into the preparation of food when it’s really done from scratch (i.e. slaughtering the chicken yourself). I was able to knock a few items from my to-do list by trying mopane worms and a bit of smiley. Mopane worms are actually okay if you can somehow trick yourself into thinking that you’re eating something other than a worm (which can be a little bit tough to do). They taste like gritty meat with a refreshing gush of worm insides when you bite down. My host parents, who have lived in Namibia their entire lives, have yet to try them. 

Although Saturday was great, I was more excited leading up to yesterday, when we received our site announcements at the end of the day. Beginning in late October, I’ll be spending my next two years in a town called Outjo, which is about 300 km northwest of Windhoek. Outjo is a small city of about 9500 people located in the Kunene region. Luckily, I’ll be fairly close to several main roads, which will make transport easy. I’ve heard plenty of good information about the town already, so I’m very excited to see it for myself. We start our site visits this weekend, shortly after meeting our supervisors at the end of the week. I’ll be there for most of next week, when I will learn more about the job and community.

In terms of my job, I’ll be working at a senior secondary school with the entrepreneurship teachers. From the initial description, it seems that I’ll mostly be involved with the learners’ hands-on entrepreneurship activities. The Bank of Namibia sponsors an inter-school business contest, so I’ll work with the learners to develop a business which can be their entry into the contest. I’ll also be working with Junior Achievement and developing partnerships with local businesses that are willing to serve as “real-world” examples for the learners. My job will certainly involve several other tasks, which I’ll learn more about in the coming few weeks. 

(P.S. This entry is being posted as I google "Outjo, Namibia")