Hello all. Sorry it’s been a while since our last instalment – I know you’re all hanging in there with baited breath. When I last left off we were heading down to Windhoek for the week long VSO conference. It was held in a slightly dilapidated lodge about 10km outside of Windhoek, but the views were amazing (anyway, I’m sure as UK tax payers you wouldn’t want to hear that your donations have been supporting volunteers to live in luxury!). There were about 50 volunteers at the conference from all over Namibia, plus staff members, and the purpose was to re-look at VSO’s in-country strategy. All well and good; lots of consultation went on, some subtle hinting and persuasion from management that we need to be focussing on climate change and gender issues – point noted. There were lots of slightly too lengthy debates and far too many terrible power point presentations whereby the mission appeared to be to get as many words on a slide as possible, avoid any eye contact with the audience and try not to alter the tone of your voice throughout…..there are definitely some skills that could be shared in that area.
The conference did mean that we had the opportunity to meet all the other volunteers and now have people we can go and stay with in other areas of the country. It was interesting to hear stories about others’ placements too – both re-assuring and worrying that lots of people seem to have the same frustrations as us, particularly where the government ministries are concerned. Issues such as transport, lack of planning, poor communication and apathy seemed common themes.
The week after the conference Ant went straight up to Oshakati in the north of the country for a Ministry of Health workshop – he can tell you about that – so I headed back to Okakarara by myself to see if I could make any inroads into our placement. I had a much busier week than previously. I think in part because there was only me there, but also because Eben, a Community-Based Rehab (CBR) volunteer has suddenly shown more interest in developing her rehab skills and also brought more patients into the department. Apparently some patients have been too scared to come and see us as we don’t speak fluent Otjiherero (yet). Luckily this is Eben’s first language so she can translate – although I’m pretty sure there’s a lot that gets lost in both directions.
Towards the end of the week one of the rehabilitation instructors who works across the region came to visit and held a couple of meetings with the Okakarara CBR committee. These were in part to give them a motivational boost for them to do something, but also to raise the issue of families and carers who abuse disability grants and empower the committees to address some of these issues. The second meeting to this effect was held in the community under the shade of a tree – this seems like quite a good place to hold meetings – relatively cool, plenty of space and everyone brings their own chair. The chair that was lent to me was a plastic garden chair that was precariously wired together so I had to sit really still in case it caved in which would have been embarrassing It was a good turn out with about 50 people there, some with disabilities and their carers. However, it lasted for 3 ½ hours and was all in Otjiherero so I couldn’t understand a thing. I don’t know what it is, but people in a position of relative power seem to like to preach and deliver lengthy speeches at the expense of the interest of all involved…there were definitely heads nodding after the first 2 hours.
I had a couple of real successes during the week. The first was getting Okakarara’s version of Rentokil in to sort out our cockroach problem – she’s put some sort of toxic gunk in our cupboards and so far it seems to have done the trick – marvellous. My second achievement was sourcing someone to do our washing for us for a mere £12 per month. The novelty of hand washing has most definitely worn off!
This week we’re back down in Windhoek going through the painful process of importing our car. Naively I thought it would be a bit more straight forward than it has been as we’ve appointed an agent to sort the port clearance processes and someone at VSO was sorting our tax and customs clearance. However, as is the Namibian way, the Customs office (or rather one awkward woman in the customs office) has decided to change the VSO agreement so that I cannot import my car tax free and at the moment I’m only allowed to keep it in the country for 12 months until I apply for an extension. All incredibly frustrating and we have spent the last 3 days going to and from various officials to try and get the numerous pieces of paper stamped in order to be able to collect our car from Walvis Bay. In the mean time the car is sat in storage and I’m really hoping that as each day goes by more of our stuff isn’t being nicked out of the car, but it’s pretty likely. Hopefully we’ll be able to collect it one day next week…fingers crossed.
On a more positive note, we’ve just booked a 4 day 50k unguided trek through Waterberg National Park with a couple of friends at the end of October. It should be good fun – you take all your own food etc and camp in stone shelters along the way - a proper adventure.
Hope it’s not getting too chilly at home. The temperature is ramping up here and everyone seems to be looking forward to the rains. Keep us posted with news from home.
Julia xx
