Tashi ende ookaume kange! (How’s it going my friends). I’ve been operating on Africa time lately, so apologies on the delay in posting this update. As of November 17, it is officially official! We are Peace Corps Volunteers and done with training! This means my cohort has left the training camp in Okahandja and dispersed to our respective sites across Namibia. I am currently writing this blog post live from my bottle house in Windhoek! My future blogs from this point will be all about volunteer life at site, so I will use this blog as one last recap about life as a Peace Corps trainee.
Culture Day – October 24, 2022
On October 24 we celebrated Culture Day. A big part of the Peace Corps mission is cross cultural integration. We dedicated a day in training where we split up by our language groups to prepare foods and showcase cultural traditions of the different regions and tribes we will be representing during our time in Namibia. As an Oshikwanyama language learner, I was a part of the Oshiwambo group. Culture day was a beautiful day filled with colorful traditional attire, lots of food, and the slaughtering of many animals. My Oshiwambo group was in charge of beheading the live chickens and the Otjiherero group was in charge of slaughtering the goats. While I could not get myself to partake in the killing of the animals, I did my best to observe and appreciate the processes. One of my favorite takeaways from the day was a point my volunteer friend, Colin, made around the ethics of the slaughtering. Unlike Americans, when Namibians kill an animal for food, they use each and every part of the animal. There was not a single gram that went to waste. I remember even the blood from the goat was drained, collected, and cooked to enjoy the next day.
America Day – November 12, 2022
A few weeks after our Namibian culture day we had America day! The Americans were in charge of hosting so we threw a classic tailgate where DJ Kaelin crafted a solid country music playlist and all the trainees made a smorgasbord of American food. The spread included cheeseburgers with in-n-out sauce, tex-mex tacos, avocado and cucumber sushi rolls, a low country boil, southern baked mac and cheese, sweet tea, lemonade, diet sodas, apple pies, and more!
Entrepreneurial Workshop & Market Day
Although training is filled with a lot of fun, we also did some technical work over the last three months. Within the Economic volunteer team, we hosted a 3-day Entrepreneurial Mindset training and opened it to the community of Okahandja. With the help of our teachers, the trainees welcomed 70+ attendees and catered to everything from workshop logistics to content creation. We also hosted a community Market Day where we invited local vendors to set up market stands and sell their goods. Both of these events served as learning practicums for us trainees to get a little exposure to some of the real work we will be doing at our sites. We are so thankful to the Okahandja community for helping us learn how to make our work effective and impactful over the next couple of years.
Highs & Lows of Peace Corps Training
One of my favorite traditions during training was at the end of the night when someone would ask “Should we do Highs & Lows?” Naturally it only makes sense for me to do a recap of some of my top Highs from training. As for the Lows, I don’t really have any, other than the fact that it’s over. I’m sad it’s over, but grateful it happened, and excited for the next two years at site to make new memories and experience new highs.
- Peace Corps Training Staff: The staff at Peace Corps took us in as their own. They were the first Namibians we met when we stepped foot into this brand-new country, and for me, they instantly made Namibia feel like home. I cherish the memories and bonds made with our training staff and look forward to developing similar bonds with the memes (women) at my site and being their nghelo (last born).
- Peace Corps Volunteers: I have raved about the volunteers and our bonds plenty already, so I will not drag on about it again. I will mention that the last few weeks of training showed me that the friendships developed over the last three months will be life-long, and that is one of the most special feelings.
- Language: I did not expect to love language learning as much as I have. There is no feeling that compares to seeing the way people genuinely light up and open up when you speak to them in their native tongue. At times I regret not being more adamant about learning Hindi growing up, as now I understand the true value that language plays in forming bonds and relationships. Another aspect that made language a high of my experience was my language team. Meme Rachel, although a huge savage, had my whole heart. She was a mother figure to me during training and I already miss her tremendously. Additionally, nothing could top having my boys Chris and Colin with me every day. Chris was always a natural with the language, having been fluent in no less than 10 other languages. And Colin and I were the Dumb & Dumber duo most of the time, trying our best, but usually slipping up. In the end we all passed our language benchmarks with flying colors!
- Soccer: Training sessions would end around 4:30 daily, and we quickly established a tradition of soccer at 5PM on the dirt lot behind our training building. Although I left every game with a new injury or bruise, playing soccer on the daily was pure serotonin. Whether it was talking smack to the other team, watching the locals wreck us while they played barefoot, or nutmegging the ball through Colin’s, Nolan’s, or Ethan’s legs, soccer was a consistent high during training. I look forward to hopefully starting a grassroots soccer initiative with the youth at my site here in Windhoek.
- Handwashing Clothes: We learned how to hand-wash our clothes during training, and although it is back breaking work, I grew to love the process and found it therapeutic to sit, soak, scrub, and rinse while listening to some good tunes on a chill Sunday. Handwashing also provided some comedic relief, mainly from the boys in the group who could not seem to figure out the process. One volunteer got called out for “draining the Mississippi river” due to the excessive water usage during handwashing and another volunteer admitted that he was not aware we had to “scrub” our clothes / underwear and was simply letting them soak in soapy water before rinsing them out and calling them clean.
- Cold Showers: We did not have hot water at training after the water boiler broke in Week 2. I am a morning shower gal and although some mornings could be quite crisp in Okahandja (sometimes as low as 50 degrees Fahrenheit), I grew to really enjoy the cold showers. I had always heard of the numerous health benefits of starting your morning with a cold shower, but was never brave or motivated enough to actually implement it into my routine. Upon being forced to try it out for the last three months, I’m thrilled to share that the cold water helped my hair grow longer and thicker and cut my morning routine time in half. Might have to continue the cold showers while I am out at site!
Swear In & Looking Forward
As I shared at the beginning of this blog, on November 17, we completed Peace Corps training, swore in as official volunteers, and departed to our permanent sites where we will be living for the next two years. I get the pleasure of working with an NGO focused on empowering the rural women of Namibia. My site is breathtaking, the memes (women) are inspiring, and the organization itself is the kind of place I always dreamed I would get to work for one day. I will reserve the details about my exact role and the type of work I will be doing for a future blog post. For now, the journey looks promising and I’m looking forward to the start of something new. It feels so right to be here, it’s true.
Oshi li nawa (Farewell) & Happy Thanksgiving!
Kajol (Ndahafa, my Oshiwambo name)
Kajol's Peace Corps Blog 
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