Payback's A B*TCH

So last week while the Minister was at the homestead, we all enjoyed having hot water and being able to take hot showers. Over the weekend I adjusted back to taking a cold-water shower (as much as I can adjust to it). This morning there was just the tiniest trickle of water from the outdoor tap and I was only able to partially fill the kettle for my morning bucket bath. The toilet was a mess – I guess having a household of 16+ people and only one toilet had to catch up to me at some point. No running water.

Several other volunteers experience water outages fairly regularly and many people in Namibia live without having running water and depend upon a community tap or on drawing water from a well. Thankfully, I had planned to go to Eenhana after school to stay with Tiela, one of the year-long volunteers, to print out the pictures from my fundraising efforts and use her computer to upload pictures that I’ve taken and also to pay my bills. Tiela had the internet installed in her house, she’s in teacher housing. Although I could print the pictures in Oshikango or Ondangwa, in Eenhana it only costs N$3.50 per print vs. N$10.00 per print, so I’ll be able to donate more money to the school and charge less for each print.

I left school at 1pm to walk to the gravel road (20-30 minutes) to wait for a hike. I was hoping to catch a ride heading east to Ondobe and then take a taxi to Eenhana from there. But, I knew that there would be more cars heading to Oshikango, which is to the west and about 40km out of the way. Victor, from my homestead, and Lebbeus were near the hike tree at the gravel road, they had carried Ashiyana’s briefcase home for him, and waited with me. It took about an hour to get a hike – as I was passed by government SUV heading west, a full (and I mean full by Namibian standards, not American ones) heading east and several bakkis that were just heading into the village, which is just past the hike point tree. Finally, 2 government workers in a covered bakki (heading west, not east) stopped to pick me up and I was on my way, the long way and to any logical person, the wrong way.

Once I arrived in Eenhana, I bought a fat cake from the open market and headed into the photo shop. Being white (and a woman), the first thing that people ask is if I am a teacher, where I teach, where I am from and where my husband is. It turns out that the guy that works at the photo place is from Edundja. Once I finished printing photos, I SMS’d Tiela to get directions to her school and headed off. Coincidentally, Monty, the British summer volunteer who is staying in a nearby village was at Tiela’s checking his email and doing some internet research for a colleague of his. Shortly after I arrived, Krishna, another summer volunteer who is teaching just outside of Eenhana stopped by as well. As we switched off using Tiela’s internet, we used someone else’s laptop to watch a couple of episodes of Entourage. There was a scene where Turtle was walking over to get into the Hummer and I expected him to get into the driver’s seat on the right side of the car. This is when it hit me that coming back to NYC is going to be an adjustment in lots of small ways. Tiela made pizza, homemade dough, for dinner and we chatted and watched more Entourage before going to bed. Since there was no water at home, I was really looking forward to a hot shower at Tiela’s – yes, she has hot water – in the morning.