Its funny what perspective does to you. Having lived in the UK pretty much all my life, you just get used to being in populous areas.
Okahao is a pretty small village. Driving through it from the “welcome” sign to the “leaving” sign takes exactly one minute and thirty nine seconds. I’ve timed it. A friend is driving in tomorrow and she asked for directions to the hospital. “Drive into Okahao and turn left” I told her, “Then what?” she replied, “That’s it.”, “That’s it?”, “That’s it”. I’m confident she’ll find it.
Yet this is the thing. I live in the happening place around here. In fact, it’s the second biggest settlement in the whole of the region. Because it has the hospital, market, church and post office, people come from miles around to access the place you live. It is the big trip of the week. When you go out into the communities, as I’m starting to get to do, you realise how big a place this small settlement you live in actually is. It sort of gives me a warm buzz (in a self admittedly very sad way) because I’ve never lived in the hub of anywhere before.
I went for a visit to Windhoek last week. Windhoek, I should mention, is no giant, sprawling city either. By European standards it would be classed as a large town, I guess not too different to the size of Gloucester. Yet driving in I felt like I was entering a metropolis. I mean, as we’ve discussed I live in what I class now as a large town, so what the hell was this?
Its all just a trifle odd and I’ve only been here for two and a half months. My plan is to create a new reality TV show called “Shell shock” where contestants live in Okahao for two years and are then warped to a major world city, Tokyo, for instance, or Los Angeles. Their first few days of survival (or not) are aired to a gripped world audience. I reckon it’s a winner.
Now to work on that warping machine…
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
A Rip Roaring Success
So here you go. My first successful picture from Namibia. Oh hold on...
There's two more that have just popped up to say hello. Its like London buses. The top people are Kate, Caroline, Ndatala and myself in Etosha whilst above are a few animals I've encountered thusfar. More to come and I promise to try to keep my blog updated more regularly (whats a broken promise between friends?)
I don't believe we've met
I thought I may write a fairly sobering account of life in the hospital in my blog entry, but I’m in far too good a mood to get you all depressed about HIV statistics and other grim things that instead I’ll give you an insight into the eventful life that is Namibian meetings.
As a manager (depending on who you ask I’m a coordinator, advisor, manager or plain old physiotherapist) I’ve attended a few meeting up to this point. I want to attend more, yet strangely would rather be anywhere else during parts of them.
Now don’t get me wrong, I attended a few interesting meetings in the UK, but I can’t imagine being sat in a meeting when mid discussion somebody stands up and bursts into song. Actually thats a lie, I can imagine a few people doing that, but they would be ushered out quicker than the pigs trotters I ate last week passed through my system. But not here. In fact if soneone stands up and bursts into song, most other people stand up and join in. The person who was making the point before being rudely (but brilliantly) interrupted just has to wait, possibly wondering what words triggered the outburst. The song ends and the debate resumes as if nothing had ever occurred. A days workshop contains at least as many songs as it does information. Everyone gets issued with pad and pen as standard at the beginning of the workshop. These are used, without fail, to create new lyrics for the song you are about to sing and distribute them through the audience. I may try “On Ilkley Moor Baht’at” at my next meeting.
Then there is cellphones. It is perfectly normal, no expected, that you answer all calls during a meeting. This is not done in a subtle sneak out of the room apologetic manner, but answered aka Dom Jolie with at best a half hearted attempt to duck your head under the table whilst lifting your bottom high into the air. I recommend anyone to do it at their next board meeting. Yet nobody stops the meeting, it just goes on without a flinch. Last week I was at a meeting where a board from Windhoek was feeding back to our Chief about recommendations from their visit. Three times her phone went off, each answered with a few minutes of proceeding conversation. But here is the best bit. They continued to feed back to her. Minutes of really quite useful information about how the hospital could be improved was lost because they carried on talking whilst our chief was huddled under the desk pointing her bottom out towards us and, for all I know, discussing what to have for tea tonight.
But the voting processes outdo it all. If someone needs to be elected to perform a task/action etc, then the system becomes a quickdraw of who can nominate somebody else before you get nominated yourself. Its honestly like a fastest fingers round. Then you have to vote to confirm that the person/people nominated can undertake the task. But you have to nominate far more people than are needed just so that the voting process isn’t pointless and some people will be voted off proving their unpopularity (and the irony is the person voted off didn’t want to be nominated in the first place, so in fact wins).
Lost? Welcome to my world.
As a manager (depending on who you ask I’m a coordinator, advisor, manager or plain old physiotherapist) I’ve attended a few meeting up to this point. I want to attend more, yet strangely would rather be anywhere else during parts of them.
Now don’t get me wrong, I attended a few interesting meetings in the UK, but I can’t imagine being sat in a meeting when mid discussion somebody stands up and bursts into song. Actually thats a lie, I can imagine a few people doing that, but they would be ushered out quicker than the pigs trotters I ate last week passed through my system. But not here. In fact if soneone stands up and bursts into song, most other people stand up and join in. The person who was making the point before being rudely (but brilliantly) interrupted just has to wait, possibly wondering what words triggered the outburst. The song ends and the debate resumes as if nothing had ever occurred. A days workshop contains at least as many songs as it does information. Everyone gets issued with pad and pen as standard at the beginning of the workshop. These are used, without fail, to create new lyrics for the song you are about to sing and distribute them through the audience. I may try “On Ilkley Moor Baht’at” at my next meeting.
Then there is cellphones. It is perfectly normal, no expected, that you answer all calls during a meeting. This is not done in a subtle sneak out of the room apologetic manner, but answered aka Dom Jolie with at best a half hearted attempt to duck your head under the table whilst lifting your bottom high into the air. I recommend anyone to do it at their next board meeting. Yet nobody stops the meeting, it just goes on without a flinch. Last week I was at a meeting where a board from Windhoek was feeding back to our Chief about recommendations from their visit. Three times her phone went off, each answered with a few minutes of proceeding conversation. But here is the best bit. They continued to feed back to her. Minutes of really quite useful information about how the hospital could be improved was lost because they carried on talking whilst our chief was huddled under the desk pointing her bottom out towards us and, for all I know, discussing what to have for tea tonight.
But the voting processes outdo it all. If someone needs to be elected to perform a task/action etc, then the system becomes a quickdraw of who can nominate somebody else before you get nominated yourself. Its honestly like a fastest fingers round. Then you have to vote to confirm that the person/people nominated can undertake the task. But you have to nominate far more people than are needed just so that the voting process isn’t pointless and some people will be voted off proving their unpopularity (and the irony is the person voted off didn’t want to be nominated in the first place, so in fact wins).
Lost? Welcome to my world.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Taking out a small village
This is the first photo which I've managed to post. I hope that you like it, it is a lion I saw whilst walking to the shops last week.
Its not really. Its actually a lion I saw whilst I was in Etosha National Park a couple of weeks ago.
It was either at night or downloading photos has a knack I've yet to discover. I'll let you choose which.
Anyway, in order to upload this image for you all to download, it has taken a fair while and possibly drained a small village of what little electricity they were going to have for the evening.
Enjoy. I'm going to bed now to read. With a candle.
Oh and you'll notice a title change. Decided to go with my common given names out in Okahao - The doctor White Man. Kind of catchy I think. Any other temporary title names will be openly received.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
If Language Is The Food Of Love...
Language is always an amusing source for a story or two, and though I’ve already alluded to it in a previous blog, I thought I’d test your patience with a bit of an update that none of you have asked for. It seems pertinent to do this today as I’ve just found out the language I’ve been being taught, by someone who doesn’t speak it herself is, in fact, not the one used in Okahao at all. Brace yourselves, this may get a bit confusing.
The catch-all language is called Oshiwambo which is a Bantu language (i.e. Southern African tribal language). Within this are I think about 7 to 10 dialects all subtly different enough to cause major confusion at, say, a multi-tribal tea party. I’ve been learning Oshindonga from my Rehab Worker who actually speaks Oshikwanjarme. But I found out today that I actually should be speaking Oshikandjera.
To try and explain this on terms you may understand, a simple analogy may be that of living in Liverpool, being taught Cockney by a Geordie. Got it?
Fortunately I’m an Oshilumbu (stupid white person – oddly the same word in whatever dialect you say) which means that people are awfully nice and smile and nod and pretend to understand what it is I’m trying to say. Either that or people speak Afrikaans presuming I’m a White Namibian. Think being an Oshilumbu is probably the better option.
Other than that slight technical hiccup it seems to be going moderately well on the old language front. I can count to a hundred, say the days of the week, quite a few body parts and, above all, apologise profusely.
The most confusing aspect is the number of languages I’ve found myself speaking in the past six weeks. There is a VSO schoolteacher here called Caroline who is French (teaching English – though not in Oshiwambo fortunately which would totally mess with your head) and, hence, has become excited at the prospect of being able to converse with someone in her mother tongue. So far she has found out “the monkey is in the tree” (“la sange est dans l’arbre”) and to “turn into the third street on the left just in front of the tourist office” (“prenez le troisieme rue a gauche juste au fond de l’office du tourisme”). They were both whilst stood in her kitchen, so took her quite by surprise. Actually, I’m doing a bit better than that and quite enjoying it. She’s lent me a couple of films in French to practice one of which, you’ll love the irony, is called Lost in Translation.
Then there are the Cuban Doctors at work whose English is pretty limited. So from time to time I loosen the lips and throw in the odd Spanish phrase or two.
So there you have it. Language in a nutshell. Easy.
The catch-all language is called Oshiwambo which is a Bantu language (i.e. Southern African tribal language). Within this are I think about 7 to 10 dialects all subtly different enough to cause major confusion at, say, a multi-tribal tea party. I’ve been learning Oshindonga from my Rehab Worker who actually speaks Oshikwanjarme. But I found out today that I actually should be speaking Oshikandjera.
To try and explain this on terms you may understand, a simple analogy may be that of living in Liverpool, being taught Cockney by a Geordie. Got it?
Fortunately I’m an Oshilumbu (stupid white person – oddly the same word in whatever dialect you say) which means that people are awfully nice and smile and nod and pretend to understand what it is I’m trying to say. Either that or people speak Afrikaans presuming I’m a White Namibian. Think being an Oshilumbu is probably the better option.
Other than that slight technical hiccup it seems to be going moderately well on the old language front. I can count to a hundred, say the days of the week, quite a few body parts and, above all, apologise profusely.
The most confusing aspect is the number of languages I’ve found myself speaking in the past six weeks. There is a VSO schoolteacher here called Caroline who is French (teaching English – though not in Oshiwambo fortunately which would totally mess with your head) and, hence, has become excited at the prospect of being able to converse with someone in her mother tongue. So far she has found out “the monkey is in the tree” (“la sange est dans l’arbre”) and to “turn into the third street on the left just in front of the tourist office” (“prenez le troisieme rue a gauche juste au fond de l’office du tourisme”). They were both whilst stood in her kitchen, so took her quite by surprise. Actually, I’m doing a bit better than that and quite enjoying it. She’s lent me a couple of films in French to practice one of which, you’ll love the irony, is called Lost in Translation.
Then there are the Cuban Doctors at work whose English is pretty limited. So from time to time I loosen the lips and throw in the odd Spanish phrase or two.
So there you have it. Language in a nutshell. Easy.
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