Onda Ku Yuulukwa Namibia!

In case you missed a photograph, here is every single photo I took during my two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia.

One Hundred Book Challenge

It is said that PC makes non-readers become readers, readers become writers, and writer go insane. In the States I was a mild reader, reading about one book a month. When I got to site back in 2009 I became a fanatical reader. I was on a pace of about one book per week and thought, "Hey, I could read 100 books while in PC." Well the day has come where I've finished PC and have read 100 books! Here is my list in chronological order:

1 Henry David Thoreau - Walden
2 Kalikos - Physics of Superheroes
3 Dawkins - God Delusion
4 Sagan - Pale Blue Dot
5 Hitchens - God is Not Great
6 Tolkein - The Hobbit
7 Tolkein - Lord of the Rings - Fellowship
8 Harris - End of Faith
9 Tolkein - Lord of the Rings - Two Towers
10 Tolkein - Lord of the Rings - Return of the King
11 Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation
12 Dawkins - Time to Stand Up
13 Dennett - Breaking the Spell
14 Lord of the Rings and Philosophy
15 Kafka - The Metamorphosis
16 Vonnegut - A Man Without a Country
17 Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
18 Vonnegut - Deadeye Dick
19 Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
20 Sagan - Contact
21 Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism
22 Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals
23 Plato - Eutyhphro
24 Plato - Crito
25 Plato - Phaedo
26 Harris - An Atheist Manifesto
27 Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
28 Steinbeck - Travels with Charley
29 McKittrick - To Dwell Secure: Colonialism, Christianity and Generation in Ovamboland
30 Dostoyevsky - Notes from Underground
31 Sartre - Nausea
32 Marx and Engels - The Communist Manifesto
33 Orwell - Animal Farm
34 Weinberg - The First Three Minutes
35 Sobel - Galilieo's Daughter
36 Sagan - The Dragons of Eden
37 Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
38 Nujoma - Where Others Wavered
39 Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
40 Jennifer Davis - Tales of the Caprivi
41 Goethe - Faust (translation by Fairley)
42 Paine - Rights of Man
43 Stewart - Yoga
44 Pullman - Northern Lights
45 Pullman - The Subtle Knife
46 Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (translation by Muller)
47 I Ching (translation by Cleary)
48 Bryson - A Walk in the Woods
49 Bryson - Notes from a Big Country
50 Pullman - The Amber Spyglass
51 Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
52 Feynman - The Meaning of it All
53 Melville - Moby Dick
54 Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind
55 Heisenberg - Physics and Philosophy
56 Dawkins - The Selfish Gene
57 Zinn - A People's History of the United States
58 Our 'Freedom' Documents

Jefferson - Declaration of Independence
Constitution of the United States of America
Lincoln - Gettysburg Address

59 Huxley - Essays of T.H. Huxley
60 Steinbeck - The Pearl
61 Steinbeck - The Moon is Down
62 Koran (English Translation by Dr. T.B.Irving)
63 Steinbeck - Cannery Row
64 Hishongwa - The Contract Labor System
65 Joyce - Dubliners
66 Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel
67 Kierkagaard - Fear and Trembling
68 Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
69 Schrodinger - What is Life?
70 D'Esposito - Neurological Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience
71 Mansfield - A History of the Middle East 2nd Edition
72 Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
73 Singh - Fermat's Last Theorem
74 Homer - The Odyssey
75 Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin
76 Bible NAB
77 Tolstoy - Family Happiness
78 Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day
79 Hessler - River Town
80 Norman - On Humanism
81 Plato - The Republic
82 DeLillo - White Noise
83 Rand - The Fountainhead
84 Joyce - Ulysses
85 Henderson - The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
86 Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
87 Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilych
88 Feynman - What Do You Care What Other People Think?
89 Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
90 Dickens - A Christmas Carol
91 Dickens - The Chimes
92 Einstein - The World as I See It
93 Hofstader - Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Braid
94 Voltaire - Candide
95 Voltaire - Zadig
96 Voltaire - Micromegas
97 Shakespeare - Merchant of Venice
98 Miller - Death of a Salesman
99 Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
100 Tolstoy - War and Peace

It's mostly classics and non-fiction, as those are definitely my favorites. Some people may gripe and say that some of these are very short and should not be counted as full books. I'll counter that and say that my last book was War and Peace and that its extra length makes up for any page deficiencies found in other books. I advise current volunteers to keep track of the books they read and post their lists when they COS. I hope that when I return the States I'll keep up with my reading and not be sucked into the entertainment vortex that is America.

Officially RPCV

That's right, after jumping through three days of hoops in Windhoek, I'm no longer a PCV. I'm just a happy guy vacationing in South Africa for the time being. I'll be spending some time in Cape Town with Brittany, accomplishing everything I didn't do last time I was here. I'll try to post a few updates during my travels, but don't expect too many photos.

Final Words from the Village

The hostel project was wrapped up last week. I'll let the photos do the talking on this one.

Before:


After:


With the PCPP funds we built a floor, sixteen beds, a ceiling, and now the room can be recognized as an official hostel by the Ministry of Education. This means that next year the school will receive food for the students living in the hostel. This is a huge victory for the school and Okando.

The builders threw my directions to the wind and built the floor as they wanted, they ended up only using half the cement we had bought. So we used the extra cement to build an outdoor kitchen and shower area for the girls. Unfortunately, this drew funds away from purchasing mattresses. The Ministry has said they will provide mattresses for next year, let's hope they follow through on that.

For science club in term three we tried to beat the heat. Namibia is incredibly hot and dry during October, which makes it a perfect time to build an evaporative cooler. I had been selling photos for the past year in hopes of having a tour or field trip. However, every single one of my transportation requests was cancelled for some reason or other. I used the funds instead to buy a quality fan and we went to work. We used broken desks and tables to make a frame for a piece of burlap. Four two-liter bottles keep the burlap wet as hot air passes through it which evaporates the water creating a cooling effect. We've been tuning the evaporative cooler the whole term. It's able to drop the temperature by about 4ºC. However, it doesn't seem to have enough cooling power to cool the entire room. I'm very happy with how it turned out, I hope they use it next year for the science fair.


The never-ending map project finally came to a close this week. I kept adding details, tuning coastlines, creating islands, and labeling Luxembourg-sized countries. One thing I've learned here is that HIV/AIDS education can be incorporated into everything, even a world map. We painted a banner this week.


These past few months I've been applying to graduate programs in physics. This doesn't leave much time for blogging, which is why my posts have been so sparse. I have a back log of stories that I want to tell, but just don't have the time to get them out. So expect some after-the-fact blog posts sometime. There's so much to tell, my host-brother's wedding, my vacation to Katima, a weekend at a game count, and so much more.

Tomorrow I'm leaving Okando, words fail to describe how I'm feeling. I've been so busy these last few months that I haven't really thought much of my impending departure. It hit me today just how emotionally attached I've become to this place. I'm going to miss all the daily challenges that life presents. I'm going to miss how the air feels just before a thunderstorm hits and the sound of the first raindrops striking my tin roof. I'm going to miss the liberating feeling of bathing outside under the stars. I'm going to miss the crunch of the salted sand under my bare feet. But most of all I will miss everyone here; my learners who always try so hard but end up not quite reaching the mark in the end, the school staff who always manage to find the strangest topics to discuss, and my host family who have provided me with so much for the past two years.

This is me signing off from Okando for the last time. I'll try to keep you informed as I travel around Africa. I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

Ta Ti Tye? Onda landa ohostela.

Every time I come from school one of the first things I do is greet Kuku. Oshiwambo greetings are quite long and one of the inevitable questions is, "Ta ti tye?" Which means, "What are they saying?" Usually one responds, "Aa-ee ya mwena (They are quiet)."

But today I had something different to tell my kuku, "Onda landa ohostela." That's right, you guessed it, "I bought a hostel." The money from my PCPP grant came through yesterday and my well formed plan sprang into action. So I went to town this morning with my welder and we purchased all the materials to build a floor, ceiling, and bunk beds. But that statement misses all the fun that is Namibia. So here's what really happened.

The local welder disappeared a few months ago but turned up in Walvis Bay, over 1000km away, last week telling me that he won't be able to make the beds for our hostel. However, he gave me the phone number for another welder in the nearby town. This morning, I got in contact with the new guy and we set up a meeting at 10AM in the most professional of all places, a bar. I had a tough time getting a lift out of the village this morning and showed up half an hour late. But no worries, Africa-time allots at least one bonus hour to any specified meeting time. The welder showed up at 11ish and we got down to business. We discussed designs, quotations, and a work contract. When we finished, we went to Oshakati, the megalopolis of Owamboland.

It was really nice that he had his own car, Oshakati is a sprawl of unplanned buildings along a 4km stretch of highway, i.e. not very pedestrian friendly. We went to several building supply stores before settling on the best. Even though they didn't have enough cement on hand, we went with them anyway. Also, our order ended up being just over 1.5 tons so we have to pay an extra delivery fee for a bigger truck. When our shopping spree ended, I pulled out my plastic and swiped away. Big problem, First National Bank thinks spending 14 grand is an exorbitant amount. So my new friend dropped me off at the bank and wished me luck.

Banks in Namibia are black holes, you never realize you've crossed the event horizon until you've been in line for over an hour. When I finally got to the teller and asked to withdraw N$22,000, he said it was too much and I had to go to another queue. After spending another hour in a different queue, I had to explain to the teller that I don't have my passport because my visa expired, the Ministry of Home Affairs in Windhoek has it, and I won't be going to the capital until next month when I leave the country! While I waited some more, I enjoyed the AC and read some Shakespeare. AC is a rare treat here especially when it's 100°+ everyday. I guess that's why we use the metric system here, 38°C doesn't sound too bad. Around 4PM the bank locked it's doors and the cleaners came out, soon I was the only customer left in the lobby. Forty minutes later I had the biggest stack of Namibian dollars I've ever seen. The most common big bill in Namibia is N$100, so they had to give me a cloth bag to put my gobs of money in. I ran to get a taxi back to the building supply store on the opposite side of town

I got to Oshana Build It just as they were closing their doors. Thankfully, they let me in and allowed me to pay with the biggest stack of Namibian dollars the cashier had ever seen. We had to count it numerous times, it's tough to count 144 things quickly, try it sometime. I left the store and got in another taxi to return to the other side of town. I stopped by spar and bought a chocolate eclair to indulge myself a bit before heading home to my tin roof box of a room.

Looking back on this day, I can see that I've changed quite a bit over the past two years. I would like to see my old self dropped into this situation just to see how I would've reacted. It's difficult to imagine what life in America will be like, which is why I'm procrastinating in the best way possible, traveling for many months across Africa! My goal is to do a Cape Town to Cairo, but we'll see if I have the endurance to go for four months of constant adventure and excitement, or will the crushing boredom and seating arrangements of mini-buses destroy me?