here is my last blog entry from Africa:

 

today pepito decided it would be a good idea to open a jar of baby powder and then throw it at me. i had to tell him he was being naughty, but i was laughing so hard inside. the little ones all still have colds and so of course so do i, but it is ok. i gave vitamin c to all of them yesterday.

i went running yesterday with the older girls, and we talked about what we want to do with our lives and where we want to live and how many children we all want to have and regular things like that. they are all courageous and strong young women and i am proud to be their friend.

today we went to the market for a final shopping trip and bought some presents for people at home. we also- gasp- ate ice cream.

the kids taught me some more kwadam, now i know how to say "i love you and i want to kiss you" but i also know how to say 'i hate you and i want to punch you in the face' hopefully i never meet anyone who i want to say that to. i also learned how to say "an elephant sat on my car' but i forgot it before i could write it down. oh well, i guess that that is another phrase i will probably never have to use.  

tonight we will make flat bread for tomorrow morning, even though i will have to pack mine and eat it on the plane. then mabye the kids will dance, they like to dance to african hip hop music in their free time. they made me a cd of it, so now i can rock out to namibian rap in ovambo at home.

i am going to miss them so much, the three little ones, my champion chicken chaser, and the older girls, especially the ones who i give voice lessons to. it is going to be hard to leave, but it will be nice to go home, sleep, eat sushi, and get rid of my farmer's tan.

i think that God has used me to make cozv a better place for the summer, and to be a good incfluence on the kids, but my time here has proved to me that i am still learning so much that will prepare me to work with kids in the future, and have empathy and compassion for people. i learned how to give and keep giving even when i feel so tired that i worry about falling over. i am so thankful for my time here and i will leave part of my heart with these children.

yesterday  went to church in the village with some of the staff here. the service was half in lozi and half in english, and it was three or four hours long!

i sang some of the songs i know in lozi for them and they loved it, they were so surprised that a white girl could sing in lozi, but they were disappointed that i can't speak it. their singing is beautiful, they make up amazing harmonies and they sing in loud strong voices.

today we went to the wedding of two of our african staff also. all the kids got to go which was fun for them, and they made friends with the kids from the village. the houses there are made of mud and have tin or grass roofs. the kids were all saying 'i have to go to the bathroom but where is the toilet?" and i had to explain to them that they had to use the bushes.

the people are so hospitable but everything in africa always runs late, so the wedding didn't start until an hour after after it was supposed to. all the kids from the local villages danced in singing at the same time and made a circle around us, and then all the mothers and aunts and cousins of the bride came in singing to her. the bride wore a traditional african dress and hat, but the groom wore a suit, pink sunglasses, and chucks.

the reception included lots more singing, dancing, and speeches, and i think it is still going on, they probably will not stop until they run out of food or get totally exhausted.

the little kids have colds, so i gave them cough medicine. we played with play dough all afternoon today.

i cannot beleive that i will be coming home in one week.

today i found out that one of the workers here speaks 11 languages! it isnt unusual for someone here to speak like four, but eleven is so many! she speaks english, lozi, afrikaans, vambo, lesotho, and like seven other ones.

in the last few days we have seen lots of hippos and some crocodiles, and a chameleon and lots of beautiful birds. the sun when it goes down is twice it's normal size and it is getting warmer, because it has been winter here for a while. winter here isn't very cold though.

we also had some birthdays this week. when it is someone's birthday, we make huge cakes with frosting and everyone gets a piece. when the girls turn 16, mama rebecca takes them to town to get their ears pierced.

there is a new baby goat whose mother is sick, so we are feeding her from a bottle. last night and the night before, she slept in a box in the little girls' room so that they could feed her during the night. they were very responsible and we read stories to it.

some of the older kids have gone to windhoek for a sports competition. they will be gone for the weekend, but i am proud of them because the last time they went, they came back talking about the bad behavior of the other kids and how they were the only good ones there.

i am still so in love with these children and i will miss them when i go home. 

 

i spend lots of time here with the three three year olds. since i am not allowed to put their names on the internet, i will call them josefina, miguel, and pepito.

miguel is the sweetest child. he never cries and is helpful. he is getting so big and i said "miguel soon you will be as tall as a giraffe!" he is the one who got stuck in the hole last week.

josefina has the saddest eyes. she is only three, but her eyes naturally look as if she has seen a hundred years worth of living. she is so beautiful. she likes to wear pink, but she is very tough as says things like 'i'll beat you!" and "i'll dig a hole and put you in it". she was sick and sneezing and coughing yesterday and my heart broke for her, but she is better now.

pepito is the one who is always causing trouble. he is the one who threw shoes at me the first week i was here, and the one who stole the vaseline. yesterday he had a glue stick and was rubbing it all over his body. he looks like an angel, however, and he is behaving better now. yesterday i had an adventure with him though.

he scratched josefina, so i took her to the medical room to put some anti bacterial cream on it. pepito was angry with me because i was holding him and i had to put him down, and also because he got in trouble for scratching. i took josefina to the med room and my mistake was that i left the keys in the door when i unlocked it, so the next thing i knew i heard a noise and turned around and he had locked us in! he ran away laughing his head off. i opened the window and one of the workers came and let us out. it was so funny, but i had to tell pepito he was very naughty and punish him.

i love th three of them so much. it will break my heart to leave them.

this week there is a lot of preparation going on for the change in management at cozv. they are meeting with the local tribal chiefs and social workers to discuss the changes, so please pray that everything goes smoothly and that the kids will be able to deal with the transition.

it is starting to get warmer here now, and i learned some songs in lozi and a new word in quadam. it's !koive, and it means kiss.

yesterday we went for a walk with a lot of the younger children on the dirt road. we sang songs. they know the bumblebee song, the noah's ark song, and lots of other ones. when we walk or run on the road we always meet people, some who we know and some who we don't, but in namibia everyone always says hello to each other, even if you don't know them. they say good morning, or good evening, or good afternoon, or just hello. and in lozi, hello is guchwani, which actually means how are you, and you reply hande, which means good. i asked what you say if you are not doing good, but they just laughed at me and said that you always say hande, even if it's not true.

the volunteer team from calvary umc leaves on tuesday but they have been really helpful, they gave the kids a week off from school and taught skills like sewing, drama, and first aid instead.

this morning we had church and then i chased around the little kids and pretended to eat them. one lesson i have learned here is that kids are basically the same all over the world. sometimes they are naughty and sometimes they take advantage of you and take things for granted, but most of the time they are sweet and creative and playful. the older ones are amazing young people also. it is beautiful that this is a place where kids dont have to worry about their next meal or where they can sleep, but they have the freedom to be kids, which means that they might act badly sometimes.

yesterday i was homesick, but today i don't want to come home. if i could smash africa and home together it would be the perfect place.

i have still been carrying the littlest one on my back wrapped in a long piece of cloth. also, i got sunburned, picked wild aloe, and used it for the burn.  i also wear shetenges and then when the kids and i are sitting together on the grass, i use a shetenge as a blanket. when the local staff see all these things, they say 'now you are an african, you have to stay here'. it will break my heart to leave, but i miss home also.

the smallest one has grown even since i have been here. he used to be afraid of white people, now he sleeps on my back. he used to just crawl, now he walks, and he has also started speaking in the last few weeks.

the most misbehaving three year old has also changed, the one who put vaseline all over himself and threw shoes at me. now he has calmed down a lot and is much more respectful. it is so beautiful to be here long enough to watch these kids grow up.

the team from Calvary is teaching the kids first aid, which is something really important for them to know. arrangements are also being made for vocational school for the older ones, and hopefully a few will go to university. they are growing into the most amazing young men and women, i am so proud of them for how hard they work.

yesterday one of the little boys was sitting on my lap and his breath was so bad! i said 'did you brush your teeth this morning?" he said "nooo..." 'did you brush them yesterday?" "noooo..." did you brush them the day before that?" "nooo..." "do you have a toothbrush?" "nooo..." so i then got toothbrushes for the three three year olds, and made sure that they brushed their teeth. today that first one walked around saying 'look at my teeth! my teeth smell good!" it was so cute.

today the older boys and girls are going to town again for soccer, but instead i had to go to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. we fill three or four shopping carts, which feeds the kids for mabye three days, not counting meat which is delivered by a truck every week.

when we go to soccer, we have to take the team plus all the people watching plus any of the staff who want to go to town, so we all pile africn style into the back of the pickup truck, there can be like 20 people back there, it's not very safe but it's fun.

last friday we had some of the staff members to dinner and one of them was telling us about the local marriage tradition. she said "i (the bride) had to hide in a room in the house, and then all of my uncles and brothers and father and cousins and male relatives gathered outside the house. they got a ram and a spear. then my fiancee came driving up and in order to marry me he had to first spear the ram through the heart and then use the spear to fight his way through all of my relatives, who had to try to stop him from getting to me. i was so afriad that he would not suceed, and i really wanted to marry him! then, in the house, he found me hidden behind the deep freezer and i knew we could be married. they took me outside and piled all the intestines from the ram on my head, i did not like this but i really wanted to marry him!"

she said that that is the way things have always been done in her culture.

also another use for a shetenge is to tie babies with it on your back, so yesterday i walked around for the afternoon with the littlest one tied on my back while he took a nap.

today is sunday and we have church. first we sing praise songs together, and then we have a message given by gary or rebecca or one of the voulenteers, and then we pray. the kids often pray in their native languages. then we have solo music, which i often sing trios or duets witht the girls, and then we close with more praying. it is beautiful, but it is hard for the little one to hold still the whole time, they like to poke each other.

African (English) grammar is different from American grammar--for example, they say "are you having " instead of 'do you have' and they say that something is "for" someone instead of saying that it belongs to someone, like "this jersey for sam" or "for who this jersey?" and if you want to buy something at the market, you say 'how much this shetenge" or mabye 'this shetenge is being how much?" instead of saying 'how much does it cost?". also instead of saying that they are missing the match for their shoe, they say 'I am having only shoe for one side" and things like that. the kids here understand american grammar but when speaking with the local workers and with people from the government it is more polite to use their way of speaking, because otherwise they think that you are being condescending.

a shetenge is a long rectangle piece of cloth that can have almost any print. they are usually colorful and cost 40 or 30 namibian dollars, which is 3 or 4 american dollars. they wrap them and wear them as skirts here, and they use them to tie children onto their backs. in kenya they wear them differently, they tie them into sort of strapless dresses, but no one does that here. i bought some, and most of them i will give away at home, but while i am here i am wearing them.

today we took a large donation of food to a camp for people who were displaced from their homes by flooding. we had been trying to contact the government official who was going to escort us for a few days, and today he called and told us to meet him at elven. so we went to his office and did not leave until 12:15, and we took an hour long road trip with him to the camp, at choi village near kongola. it was good to be able to put cans of food into the hands of the little children at the camp. afterwards, we had leftovers though, and then some of the adults began crowd around and raise their voices trying to get it, and that was discouraging, but at least we got to feed the kids and share Christ. it was really beautiful.

please pray for the kids here, most of them have been through a lot of traumatic things and they need love and support and encouragement to grow up and be the amazing men and women whom i know that they will become.

PS From Jamie's Mom, who actually posts the writing from Jamie. If you would like to leave a comment on this blog spot do so, and I will forward it to Jamie. Actually "on line" time is limited, so Jamie sends me the posts and I put them up for her. (You can see that I do not edit them.) If you want to leave a comment here, I will send it on to her.

every saturday night, we watch a movie. they have seen most of the disney movies, and they love the music, so on thursday night i brought my ipod over to the children's home and hooked it up, and we had a disney sing along!

friday morning we went to the market and i bought some shetenges.

it is really beautiful to see how some of the older ones are starting to think about finding jobs that give back to their community. there are some of them who want to finish their education and then mabye go back to their villages and start more children's homes and feeding centers. yesterday a group went to the village of cheto, which is in the western caprivi, and talked to the cheif there about starting one. he gave his permission, so construction should begin soon.

two of the new goats gave birth, so we have three babies. they are so sweet and they walk around on their wobbly little legs. the kids like to play with them and hold them.

i was sick yesterday and had to stay in bed all day. today i am better though.

i also wanted to mention that i don't think i am allowed to use the children's' names on the internet, which is why i never call them by name here.

yesterday the older boys had a soccer match in katima, some of us went with them to watch. we all sat in the back of the pickup truck and drove there and of course our boys won 5 to 1, they are amazing, they run like african gazelles and they use their heads for the ball and they kick like 90 miles an hour.

i sat and watched with one of the boys who couldn't play because his ankle was twisted, and there were kids from the village sitting near us. every time i looked at them they moved closer and they were all staring at me, but were too shy to say hello. the boy who was hurt kept telling them that it was ok, that they could come and meet me, and finally a few of them did come up and shake my hand and when i asked their names they would whisper them so softly in my ear. then they would run away giggling. i sat down on the ground with them and we drew in the dirt and played tic tac toe and then we sang together and then i did some ballet for them which they thought was very funny. soon we were friends and they were sitting on my lap. they kep poking me because they wanted to see how my skin goes from red to really white and then back to normal white when you press it. and they wanted to touch my hair. next week i will go back and bring biscuits and my camera.

this morning we went to the market to buy vegetables and i saw the hugest display of different shetenges, i will buy some later. i will buy pretty ones but there are others that are super outrageous that have really random things like toothpaste tubes on them. (mabye i will buy that one for melissa as a joke).

it is not unusual for african guys to stare at me, but his morning at the market this guy walked right up to me and said 'hello makua, you are lovely, how are you?" i tried to be polite to him but at i really wanted him to go away and as soon as he did we started laughing so hard.

the kids are working really hard in school, the work from books called paces which allow them to learn at their own speed. some of them are taking exams this week.

also today we found one of the pregnant goats in the boys bathroom, we think that it was looking for a place to give birth. so hopefully we will have little goats soon. 

this week mama rebecca and some of the other staff returned from cape town and windhoek, where they had gone to buy new goats. they bought some mama goats and one big, big, boy goat whom we named stinky pete because he smells! there are two chickens who have baby chicks and they are so cute and fluffy, i told the kids what marshmallow peeps are and they thought that that sounds delicious. at chores i sometimes help the little girl who is in charge of the chickens. she chases them in while i stand at the door of the pen and she says in this little high voice "auntie make sure no chicken gets out" yesterday she came up to me with an egg carton which she had filled each section with mud and was like " auntie this is my present for you" and i was like "mmmm chocolate eggs" and we pretended to eat them.

we go running almost every day.

every saturday they have flat bread with peanut butter for breakfast, so today i ate breakfast at the children's home instead of eating cereal in the volunteers bungalow. it was good!

also, i began teaching music class this week, right now i am just teaching how to read music but so far it is going really well.

today and yesterday we organized the clothes cabinet and began giving out new clothes. it is fun to hand out clothes, but it is also hard to organize who needs what and to get them to wait in line, and to find things that fit everyone.

the third youngest boy, who is three, heard me saying see you later alligator to someone else. now whenever he says goodbye he says "see you alligator".

in africa, the stars are clearer, the sunsets and sunrises are brighter, the water is cleaner, the spiders are bigger, and the mosquitoes bite harder.

i learned three words in quadam today, which is the language the bushmen speak. it has a lot of clicking in it, and when it is written down a click is an !. so, if you say something is !na, that means it is cool or groovy. if you say hati!nam, you are telling a girl you love her, and if you say chati!nam, you are saying i love you to a boy.

today i used homemade staff paper to write out music theory exercises so i can teach it to the kids.

last night there was a huge spider on my wall, but i am used to them so i just tucked in my net tighter around my bed and went to sleep instead of getting scared.

i also taught the baby shark song to some of the 7 year old boys, haha.

and today instead of going running out on the dirt road, i went in circles around the barn, and the little kids raced me. running and screaming is good for them.

today I made some really ghetto staff paper by using a ruler and a pen, and photocopying it. i hope to begin teaching a music theory class tomorrow, the kids love music and they want to learn to read it, although they have really good senses of natural rhythm and harmony anyway. yesterday we saved a baby chick's life by putting it back underneath of it's mama, and we put about 50 50 kg bags of animal food into the barn. while i was doing that, i heard some banging noises in the roof and suddenly a panel fell in and with it a chicken, which had been making the noise, the chicken hung from a wire going awka wk awk! and finally flew down. it was really funny but now we have to fix the ceiling in the barn.

i can't decide which time of day i like the zambezi river best. in the morning the sunrise colors are soft and  mist steams off it, and you can hear the birds. in the afternoon, the sun shines on it so that it blazes blue, and in the evening the water is black and silver with the sunset and the dark trees reflected. one of the girls said "i like the sunset best because i am not awake in the morning" haha.

hello,

in the last few days i have:

 

seen hippos footprints and heard hippo noises but not seen any hippos

put mayonnaise on bread for 72 egg sandwiches

had shoes thrown at me by an adorable but misbehaving three year old

taught four really successful voice lessons

been the radio in residence for the kitchen and yard because they always want me to sing

worn a shetenge in public

gotten my hair braided into cornrows by the older girls. they say i look beautiful but i think i look like a space alien, however, i am going to keep it in for a while because they spent so long to do it

gotten up with the sun every morning to unlock the goat barn

gone running with six african girls on an african dirt road on an african savanna at african sunrise and actually finishing faster than half of them which was a surprise to me

gotten a cold...how did i get a cold in africa i don't know...

put on band aids, taken out splinters, and administered hydrogen peroxide to all the scraped up kids

pushed about a million kids on the swing

 

i am so blessed every day to be here. thank you for all of your support.

typically the children get up at about 6:00 to do chores and take care of the animals. they then have breakfast and go to school in a building which is in the compound. they study from books that allow them to move at their own paces. the younger ones only have school in the morning, and sometimes i help them with music, which they use to remember their letters and numbers. they like to scream everything instead of singing it, at the tops of their lungs. it is so loud but i think it is kind of cute.

the older children have school until 2:45. they go to afternoon chores at 4:30 and then have dinner at 6. bedtime, depending on ages, in between 7:30 and 9:00.

yesterday, in the afternoon, one of the boys who is 4 came running outside yelling "auntie jamie i am having the vaseline" and he had it allllll over his face. it was so funny, he looked like a yeti, but i couldn't laugh at him, i just had to get it off and tell him that he was being naughty.

today i played "simon says" with the little boys and then we ran around and screamed. they love to be picked up and for me to hold their hands or sit on my lap, and although sometimes they fight i never get tired of playing with them.

we had kids' birthdays two days in a row this week and everyone got cake.

hello,

the last three days were beautiful. I have been working with the little kids (3 to 4 years old) in the mornings and tutoring the high school kids in the afternoon, and we are putting together a new song book for worship. also in the afternoons before the kids do chores i have been giving voice lessons to two of the older girls, which is a huge responsibility but lots of fun, they are really enthusiastic.

today some of the older girls and i went for a three hour ride in the morning. many of the kids are excellent riders and ride several days a week.

another volunteer told me that my room is 'the scorpion room' so I tucked my mosquito net into my bed really tightly. eek. also yesterday i went to bed after smashing a spider the size of my hand. i thought i would need a harpoon! and that next morning i woke up to a beetle the size of my fist on the floor, which i thankfully did not step on.

the kids are beautiful in every way. the youger ones just want you to hold them and play with them, and the older ones are thoughtful and funny. ~Jamie