Ok, so there's plenty that's happened in the last month as I already mentioned. I'm going to take it a little bit at a time, and probably update a few times in the upcoming days. We have this Friday and next Monday off for Easter and then we only have 2 days of classes next week because we take a class trip to another coastal town. It's amazing that I've only really been in Windhoek for about 5 weeks and I only have 4 weeks left. If there is one thing I don't like about this program, it's that we really only have 8 weeks in the community we live and even those weeks were split up by 3 weeks. It has made building relationships in the community difficult because it isn't until now that I've really built up good friendships and now we are past halfway.
Going back to beginning of March...
I had previously talked about my urban homestay. The complete stay was 10 days and I was sad but relieved to be finished with it. Despite the fact that I made the house my own, it was still draining always feeling like a guest. However, I mainly wanted to continue my homestay because I came here to spend time with Namibians. Coming back to the house put me back in community with mostly Americans. It was also interesting to become part of a family structure apart from my own. I also experienced this during my rural homestay (which I'll mention later), and in both cases, I eventual came to feel like I was a member of the family. I helped with the chores when they needed help. My urban hs parents talked about how they had to kick a nephew out of their house because he had no respect for helping out around the house. This caused me to feel pretty shitty about how little respect we have for our parents in the US. Here, if a parent asks you to do something, kids basically do it no questions asked. Seeing it here really makes me realize that it has nothing to do with whether I want to do it or not.
Way back when, we also visited parliament and met with the first prime minister of Namibia. This guy was intense, and was definitely a politician. He refused to admit any direct faults of his party and would play off things that they weren't as bad as people claim. It's difficult to challenge political authority in this country because one party, SWAPO, dominates the parliament and the executive branch. Despite corruption in SWAPO, people here still vote for them because SWAPO was the liberator from South Africa and apartheid. People vote on the allegiance rather than issues, but the prime minister admitted this will change with youth coming in to vote because they didn't experience apartheid. So much of politics here and in much of Africa relies on ethnic groups as well. This creates great difficulty in creating unity. ahh, to go into any of this would require a basic understanding of Namibia.
The weekend before we left for our 3 week break, I was killing time on Saturday morning when Courtney asked me if I wanted to attend a picnic with someone from her internship. I'm like, "sure," so we went and I met probably the most amazing and Godly person I have ever met, Taura. She comes from what we would consider a way underpriveleged and difficult childhood, and now she is a 23 year old working as a preschool teacher in mornings and volunteering daily at a youth center with little income to spare. She focuses her life on God and it shows. Everyone that met her couldn't help but say she was amazing as soon as she steps away. I know without a doubt that this comes from her deep Christian faith. I went to Katatura swimming pool on Sunday after she invited me to hang out with kids from the center. I was at the pool, feeling a bit awkward because there were probably 300 kids and I had no idea where to engage, when some kids challenged me to a swimming race. Proud to say a won by a nose, ha. But I started hanging out with some kids and they turned out just to be some local kids not with the center. It is amazing how engaging with people here doesn't matter whether you have connections.
I went to church in the afternoon and God just blew my mind. I was feeling kinda lost in where I'm supposed to go with my life (I've been thinking seriously about peace corps in the last few weeks) and how do I really live this Christian faith seriously. So I sat a prayed during worship about it. Before the sermon, the pastor then goes up and prays that God laid 3 things on his heart and the first is about a young man. He said the young man is questioning his calling and looking for God's presence and that God will make it clear. My heart jumped at this because he was describing me exactly. From a Lutheran background, this kind of prophetic voice is different from what I'm used to but it is still something I've been around my last two summers. Hardly has God spoken to me so directly and yet still I wonder. Taura later told me as we were writing a song that her heart went out to me when he mentioned this. Faith continues to be such an elusive thing to me because despite believing intellectually and wanting to follow on this level, my heart just can't seem to fully seek God. I know what sacrificing for following Jesus should be, but I struggle to pull it to my context.
So yeah, I'll talk about yesterday while it's still fresh. I finally had the opportunity to volunteer. I was going to volunteer with this Young Life-type of organization, so I went on Monday and he basically said there was nothing for me to do. Since this didn't work out, I had another lead on volunteering with the BNC youth center. So I gave Taura a call and asked her where the youth center she volunteers at is. Instead of giving me directions, she quickly says, "I'll pick you up tomorrow at 1:30." I still can't get over the heart of this woman because he had to take an extra taxi to come get me. Then she pays for my taxi. Mind you that this is someone that makes N$600 per month and a taxi is N$6.50 per person. So I go to the center where at least 100 kids were running around. Their max is 250. Somehow there is order despite only having about 6 volunteers who are mainly Germans. I'm feeling lost with so many kids running around until Mary Beth, an American woman who runs the center, greets me quickly and asks if I'll help some kids out on the computers. I ended up spending 2 hours helping kids load random games onto 7 different computers. Magic School Bus was the favorite. It was funny because they lock the only gated door to the computer room for crowd control. After the two hours, I went outside where Taura was playing guitar with the kids. All of the kids were singing along to songs that she had written. While sitting around singing with a handful of kids, Elizabeth, comes and just sits on my leg. She is a 5 year old with a dirty face, she had a constant tear out of one eye, and the tiniest little cough. I didn't need to do anything but just sit there and hold her in my lap and my arms. For all I know, she could have had AIDS or TB, but that didn't matter for the five minutes while I showing her love by simply sitting with her. I had to leave, but the image of the girl has yet to leave my mind today, picturing her holding up her hands to reach around me. The 2 hours in the computer room was fine, but these 5 minutes are making me die to go back.
And sure enough, I left with Taura and when I challenged her that I'll pay for the taxi home, she tells me firmly, "Accept the blessings you receive." And then she made me watch her buy me a fanta. Now that I think about it, she spent 3% of her monthly salary on me for these couple things. God is truly alive.
and for you aunts and uncles that always care and are making assumptions... No, romance is not in the air.
