Don't Forget Your Jersey!

The urban homestay started on Thursday night, when my family picked me up. I’m staying in Rocky Crest, which is a little outside of Windhoek. My family is crazy! There are so many people who live in their house. Family members who live there:

-Dave and Amanda: the parents. I haven’t really spent time with Dave, he’s always at work when I’m at the house, and he spent all weekend at the village, about 8 hours away. Amanda’s great though. I’ve spent lots of time talking with her about everything, and helping her in the kitchen.

-Julian and Cecil: These are my brothers who are in their 20s. Cecil is amusing, but isn’t around very often. Julian is one of the two drivers in the family, so I talk to him a lot when he’s driving me places (because I’m always told to sit in the front, it actually has a seatbelt). He goes to the polytechnic and is studying to be an electrical engineer. We have some very interesting conversations, because we tend to disagree on pretty much everything.

-Uendjii: Uendjii is the oldest of my younger siblings. He’s in sixth grade (I think age 11) and is usually calm and mellow. Most afternoons I get home from school and he’s sitting at a table working on homework. However, he can also get a little crazy, and he likes to dance.

-Kuna: Kuna is six, and is in first grade. He is really energetic, but it took him several days to get used to me and be willing to interact with me. He also likes to dance crazily in the living room, and made the most ridiculous faces when I got out my camera to take pictures. For one of my homework assignments this week I was drawing some pictures, and Kuna stood behind me and was talking to himself about the pictures while I was drawing. Kuna and Uendjii are also really entertaining to listen to while they are getting driven to school. Kuna especially likes to talk to himself and sing songs as we’re driving, and it’s obvious he looks up to Uendjii because he copies all of his actions while they’re getting ready for school in the morning.

-Suko: Suko is my little sister. She’s not in school yet (I think she’s 4), and I think she finally appreciates having another girl in the house, since she only has brothers. She finally decided she liked me on Monday, and now every time I return home in the afternoon she runs to greet me. Suko is pretty quiet most of the time, although she does run around with her brothers a lot.

-Muye: Muye has so much energy all the time! He’s two, and can be cranky fairly often (like two year olds tend to be). There has been many a night where his crying and whining has almost driven me crazy. But that being said, Muye is a joy to be around most of the time. The only English he knows is “Hello,” so he’ll say that to me over and over again sometimes. He also smiles a lot, and will dance all the time, even if there is no music on. I am definitely impressed with the dancing abilities of these kids! Muye makes entertaining faces, and somehow managed to get chocolate all over his face yesterday.

The family itself is pretty low key most of the time. It’s nice because it means I’ve had lots of downtime, but it also means I’ve had a little too much time to reflect on my experiences, and it’s a lot easier to feel out of place when there’s nothing going on, compared to times that are very hectic. Most nights the family sits around and watches tv. This wouldn’t be an issue, except their television tastes are rather eclectic and not very similar to my tastes. In addition, the kids don’t know very much English and the parents get tired of speaking in English (which I totally understand, I know how exhausting it can be to constantly think and speak in another language), so most nights the conversations are in Herero. As a result, I usually sit on the couch and read a book. I force myself to stay with the family and try to interact until about 9, and then I go and read or journal until I go to sleep, usually around 10 because their family gets up so early.

Most mornings we left at 6:30 to drop everyone off for school and work. Kuna and Uendjii go to different schools, so we end up driving all over Windhoek to drop them off. It’s unfortunate to have to be up so early, but at least I’ve gotten to see some great sunrises!

Most of the time I’ve spent with my family has been over the weekends. The first weekend I was there I was woken up early on Saturday morning to go to Kuna’s school for Athletics Day. We got to the school by about 7:30, and of course it started late, so we were sitting there for a long time. But from what I observed, Athletics Day involves all the students at the primary school, and they all participate in some events just for fun. The different events were so entertaining! All of the kids were in the 60 m dash, and they all had matching uniforms. Another event was a sack race. The kids hopped down the field in a burlap sack, and then their parents were waiting at the other side. Once the kids got to the end, one of their parents took the sack and hopped back to the starting line! This also happened with a race where the kids were balancing a potato on a spoon and running down the field (like the egg on the spoon race, but with a potato so it wouldn’t break), and their parents were waiting to come back. It was so great to watch all the kids having fun and being active, and I liked that their families got involved too.

Saturday afternoon I went with Amanda and her sister Lucia, who works at CGE, to a salon to get their hair done. It took a long time because it takes about 3 hours to get their hair done, but we were waiting for their appointment for another couple hours. It was interesting to see the whole process, and I ended up getting a lot of reading done for class.

On Sunday I went to church with my host family. They go to a Baptist church in Rocky Crest, just up the hill from their house. I felt kind of awkward most of the time, but the service was in English and they had a powerpoint so I could actually follow what was going on in the service.

I spent my Super Bowl Sunday doing what every good American does: I watched a football game. But I watched the other football, the better football (aka soccer). Yes, I realize that my Sunday afternoon is not the actual time of the Super Bowl, but it was at the same time of day as the Super Bowl is for the west coast. It was a fun game. I went with Lucia and some of her other relatives and, of course, there was a small thunderstorm. The game was some sort of cup game, so it was loser out. My team is apparently the African Stars, and they won with a goal at the end of the game.

Every time I went anywhere this weekend, Amanda would tell me, “Don’t forget your jersey!” While this might seem to make sense for a soccer game, I was really confused because I don’t actually have any sort of jersey for a team. Turns out, jersey means jacket, so she was really just telling me to bring a jacket. But any time I went anywhere, that’s what I was told.

This past weekend was a little more low key. On Friday I went to another soccer game with Lucia, Julian, and some other relatives. When we got there, Julian informed me that the “die-hard fans” sat on the side of the field that wasn’t under cover. After 20 minutes of rain and a thunderstorm, Julian abandoned us for the covered stands. The rest of us toughed it out. It was cold and wet, but the game was fun. It was the African Stars again, but it was just a league game. The game ended in a 0-0 tie, but it was still fun to watch another soccer game.

Saturday I went on an interesting adventure, all due to the 7th birthday of a cousin. I went on lots of errands with another cousin (to multiple grocery stores, a cake store, someone’s apartment), and then we eventually ended up at a park by late afternoon. We had a braai, and hung out at this park for a long time. There was cake for the birthday, and lots of people hanging out. I think it would have been fun it I had known anyone there, but there was no one to talk to and I just kind of sat there for about 5 hours. It got cold, and I was tired, so I didn’t really enjoy it like I should have. But the park was beautiful!

Today was another experience. Amanda wanted to take me to a Lutheran church so I could see the differences between Lutheranism here and in the U.S. Her brother told her about an English service in Windhoek, so we rushed there (because she forgot it was at a different time). Well, it turned out that service was in Damara and Afrikaans, so neither of us could understand anything. However, neither of us wanted to say we didn’t want to stay, so we stayed for almost two hours before we finally left. It was really funny, when we got home and Amanda told everyone about our church, Kuna just came up and yelled, “Damaras!” like we shouldn’t have been there. It was amusing.

My family then took me out to lunch, but they made it very clear that it wasn’t “good bye,” but rather a “see you later.” They’ve already set a date for me to come over for dinner in April before we leave Namibia. I love this family! I’m glad I’m not living with them anymore (as welcome as I was, it’s hard to really feel at home in another house), but I’m hoping to stay in touch all the time and will gladly go visit them again! At lunch Amanda had everyone in the family go around and tell me how they felt with me this week, and it was really sweet. They then drove me around Windhoek and showed me some other sights, including a park with a reservoir thing.

This homestay was an intense experience. There were times I loved it, and times I hated it. I had a lot of down time, which meant a lot of time to think about hoe homesick I was (because that always happens when there’s nothing to distract me). But I definitely feel like I have a family to go visit in Windhoek now, so I think it was good. Lots of good stories!

(also, this post was written in several installments, which is why it's in different tenses. Part of it was written during the homestay, and part of it was written afterwards)