March 16 approaches

Yesterday was my last day of paint slinging (the term for what a bad painter does). Now, with nothing to do but get excited for my sioree in Africa, I'm, well, getting excited.

My departure date, March 16, is quickly approaching. At 6:55pm I fly out of Dulles Int'l Airport in DC, bound for Nairobi. I'll arrive at Kenyatta Int'l Airport the next day after a short layover in London. I will spend my 12 days in Kenya with Dan Cross-Call and Clementine James. Clementine has been working as an event planner in London since graduation and Dan has been in Ghana volunteering for an NGO-headed education initiative.

On March 29 I leave for Namibia, spend a night in Johannesburg and arrive in Windohek on the 30th. My friend/boss, Stasja, is planning a little welcoming party, a camping trip, beginning the day I arrive; it looks like I'll hit the ground running. Camping usually consists of consuming kilos of meat and gallons of beer while making small talk and staring into a large fire waiting for more meat to cook, so I should be OK.

I'll be in Namibia until the beginning of September working on a community development project centered around a wilderness campground, the Treesleeper Camp, that offers both lodging and cultural activities for tourists. During April, May and June I will acclimatize myself to living in a small village, Tsintsabis, and to the challenge of operating a small business there. I will split my time between helping Stasja with his projects and working on projects of my own. Projects are, in a general sense, discrete tasks that don't have to do with the everyday functioning of the camp. My projects will include creating a bookkeeping system for the camp, training camp employees in appropriate service standards, organizing women to make crafts to sell at the camp, helping install solar-powered water pumps ("geysers") at the camp, etc.

In July a group of volunteers from Raleigh International, a British volunteer aid organization, will be coming to spend two months helping build a cultural center at Treesleeper. I'll be helping manage their their effort and working beside them to raise the roof, both literally and figuratively.

That's the general gist of what I will be doing in the next six months. I will have email and I will have a mailing address. I'll post those when I know what they are.