I dreamt of a white Christmas...no such luck

Hello to all, and a very belated happy new year! The holiday season in Namibia is a time when much of the country basically shuts down, with many people returning to their home towns and villages, wherever they may be. It’s also the summer vacation for schools, as the school years here are in sync with calendar years. Basically, all of this added up to a rather fun and eventful holiday season for me.

The first full week of December was Reconnect, a Peace Corps training event for everyone from my group after our first six weeks of service. It was nice to see everyone from the group and hear about how things were going so far for them. For me, the first six weeks were rather slow in terms of work load. It was the end of the school year, so all of my fellow teachers spent much of their time with all of the year-end duties, and the idea of starting anything new during that time wasn’t very well received. Thus I spent a lot of time just trying to keep myself busy with various tasks. I was able to get a few things accomplished, but it can still be frustrating to not have much guidance. At Reconnect, I learned that many of my fellow Volunteers were feeling the same thing, which is a bit comforting to know. All in all the week was a good chance for everyone to report on their progress so far and get a little more training in along the way.

Following Reconnect, the huge majority of our group went west to Swakopmund, often called Namibia’s only “resort” town. We stayed there for a week, which was full of plenty of fun, including skydiving (Merry Christmas, me) and sand sledding down some enormous dunes bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, it wasn’t quite like the December sledding I’m used to, but at least it’s still sledding. Swakop also has a pretty extensive selection of restaurants, including Mexican and Chinese, which made for a not-so-easy on the wallet kind of week.

From Swakopmund, several of us traveled to Luderitz, another coastal town in southern Namibia, where we stayed with another volunteer for about two weeks. We celebrated Christmas and the new year there. The time in Luderitz was much less adrenaline-filled, but it was a great couple of weeks there as well.

In both Swakopmund and Luderitz, we were able to escape the scorching heat that grips most of the country this time of year, which made for a pretty rough awakening upon getting back to the “real” Namibia. Here in Outjo the weather is quite hot—high temperatures during my first week back were often over 100 degrees! It is also getting into the thick of the rainy season, so there have been quick showers/storms most days since I’ve been back in town (in fact, I just lost electricity in a rather strong storm going on now…stay strong laptop battery!).

I think that’s my cue to wrap up this post. In all, it was quite a fun month, although not exactly Peace Corps-y. Now, however, I’m back to the normal Volunteer lifestlye, especially after the dent I put in my bank account!

Stay well, world!