1 Month Down!

 Hi guys!
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I also am sorry I haven’t posted photos either. 1. Internet is slow and Im lazy. And 2. I haven’t taken any photos at site. Just haven’t really had the opportunity to. But I promise I will start taking photos and Ill post photos from training and such soon.
Anyways! I have been officially at site for exactly a month now. Isn’t that crazy!? It feels like I’ve been here longer. All in all, I like the town I live in a lot. It’s a bit hard to integrate into because it’s definitely pretty big by Nam standards, so but I’m hopin I’ll find my niche here soon!
I haven’t been doing a lot lately. I still don’t have a job, so I’ve made it my full time job to work on my community needs assessment packet for Peace Corps. It’s super helpful because it helps me figure out what the community needs, as well as helps me meet a bunch of people from different organizations in hopes to work with some of them in the next few years. While many people have different opinions on what the needs of the community are, there are some underlying themes that I keep hearing about in interviews. So here is what I have been learning from my assessment of the community thus far:

1. Alcoholism a huge problem in the community, and there really is not much support. Many people, in particular the youth, don’t have work or any activities for them to do. There seems to be a general sense of hopelessness amongst many of people, thus it drives them to drink. I’ve been learning too that the underage drinking laws are not really enforced here either. For example, most teenagers can go into a shebeen (kinda like a bar) say they are buying drinks for the parents, and the shebeen owners will sell to them.

2. Poverty and malnutrition. There really isn’t much work here in Mariental and so people do not have any money to take care of themselves or their family. What money they do get, they purchase pap (kinda like a porridge like substance) and meat because you can feed a lot of people for a little bit of money.

3. Lack of activity for the kids and youth: There are not really any after school programs, activities, etc for the kids and youth to do in the community, and so they get into trouble a lot. School drop out rates are high as well as teen pregnancy. I have seen many kids who instead of going to school, spend their days begging for money on the streets outside of Shoprite and other stores in the area.

4. TB and HIV: TB is a huge problem in the community. Many of the people in the location live in small, unventilated housing, which can make TB spread like crazy in an environment like that. People also do not adhere to the medication (it’s about a 6-9 months treatment), thus MDR TB (multiple drug resistant TB) can develop from that. Also, do the many of the things mentioned above, as well as things like multiple and concurrent partners (MCP), are huge drivers of the HIV epidemic in the community. While HIV is pretty low in comparison to other areas of Namibia, it is still a problem in the community.

So, that is what I have been learning thus far. I do not exactly what to do with all of this information, because honestly it gets pretty overwhelming, but I keep trusting and hoping that somehow, someway I can figure out something to do from all of this.

I miss you all very very much. I love you and I promise to get better at updating!

Prayer requests: Some sort of direction, good relationships in the community, that I can learn to seek God in all things.