Our KKG language instructor, JJ, agreed to videotape this greeting so that you could hear the unique sounds of his “clicking” Khoikhoi language.
Continue reading “Listen to this!”Category: Culture
Pertaining to cultural observations and lessons learned.
Images of Life in Namibia
Sunday marked the end of Week #5 of our Pre-Service Training (PST) – and time for a day of rest at Gross Barmen, a new resort & conference center 25km out of Okahandja.
Images of Life in Namibia
Listen to this!
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, we begin our PST sessions with a number of songs to get the blood flowing. Starting with the national anthems (where you’ll hear the low energy in this audio clip), they get more and more rambunctious and end with stamping, swaying, dancing, clapping, finger-snapping and lots of laughing. It certainly wakes us up!
Continue reading “Listen to this!”Images of Life in Namibia
Images of Life in Namibia
Some random photos from this past week…
Day of sightseeing in Windhoek
We spent last Saturday exploring various sites in and around the nation’s capitol, Windhoek:
- Heroes Acre national cemetery.
- The Grove shopping mall.
- Old Location Cemetery at site where signs of South Africa’s apartheid regime are still evident.
- Katatura (meaning “the place where we don’t want to go”) – the district where Windhoek’s blacks were relocated during apartheid.
- Single Quarters open-air market where traditional food and drink are prepared and sold.
- Independence Memorial Museum with impressive galleries commemorating the country’s struggle for freedom from German, British and South African rule.
Breaking News: I’ll be learning to speak Afrikaans!
Our language assignments were announced last night to many cheers of excitement & gulps of nervousness. This morning, we all had to learn some basic greetings in all 6 languages that Group 43 is learning, which gave us a sense of the amazing diversity of this vast land. Detailed instruction (full immersion!) have started and our host families arrive in 30 minutes for first introductions. We move in with them tomorrow so stress levels are at a peak!
Images of Life in Namibia
A growing collection of images from Namibia, any of which illustrate differences from my life back home…
