CBT in Tsumeb

I'm having a problem posting pictures to my blog. I was hoping to post quite a few today. I can tell you I'm back in Tsumeb. It's great to be home! I'm here with 12 other health volunteers for our CBT (community based training). They are all quite jealous that this is my permanent site. We will be training here thru the end of December. I'm staying with a different family for the month. I live with Meme Egumbo and her grand-daughters Winnie and Susana. They have been most accomodating, except when it comes to speaking english. They are pressing me to learn Afrikaans, and I'm very thankful for that. Unlike my permanant family, this one speaks mainly Afrikaans in the home. They are patient with me and always slow their speech when I ask them.

(Cont)...
So training finally got intense last week. Our job was to prepare a Community Health Workshop for Tsumeb that runs Dec. 17-20. On Monday we invited the community to a needs assessment meeting. They gave us very good feedback and some direction for our workshop. We spent the rest of the week in training with very little time to prepare our workshop. While many of us were frustrated we worked through the weekend and I think we're putting on a pretty fun, interactive workshop for youth age 13-30 (that is the rough definition for youth in Namibia). The volunteers have decided we should introduce me to the community on the last day of the workshop so they know they have a resource over the next two years. I suppose that's an obvious thing to do, but I was touched that the group has made it a point. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Saturday was our first language proficiency test. I was not prepared for the questions I was asked, but I think I did fair. I'll know my results later this week. This test is just preliminary. The important test is at the end of December, and I plan to be ready.

Interested in what I'm eating? Lots of Meat! Namibians love their meat. We eat mutton, pork, beef, you name it. We usually accompany that with pasta or rice, some tossed veggie/macaroni salad, maybe homemade soup (usually a tomato w/ veggie type soup) and sometimes porriage... that's typical dinner stuff. Lunch is very similar on the weekends. Weekdays I pack a lunch to the training center (5 min. walk from my house). I have bologna or pb&j sandwiches and fruit, usually mango as they are now falling off the trees. All the volunteers are enjoying the surplus of mangoes. For breakfast I eat weet-bix, oatmeal, bread, fruit and sometimes tea. Oh that reminds me, I quit coffee the day I got to Namibia. So far so good. I haven't had any problems with the food or water here. The water is supposed to be good out of almost all taps in Namibia. I avoided a nasty bug that went through about 80 percent of the volunteers. Many were throwing up regularly and some had to go to the hospital. Lucky me!

I'm really happy to be part of Nam27 (2007 Namibia PC volunteers). We are a great group, and nobody has gone home yet! Our trainers tell us this is quite unusual. We are all tired of the heat and looking forward to fall which is still a ways off. I hope some of you are enjoying snow by now. Let me know if you are so lucky.

Til next time.