November 28

I went with a delegation of St. Mary’s students and teachers to pay our respects to the family of Ngonyofi, my student who died last week. The tradition here is that after a death, the entire extended family and friends sits and mourns together at home until the burial. They accept visitors during this time. When we arrived, we shook hands with everyone at the homestead. Then the school chaplain said a prayer and made a speech, and a relative made a speech and introduced Ngonyofi’s mother and father to us. I didn’t understand the speeches because they were in Oshikwanyama. Then we sang three songs, one of which was a song about Ngonyofi that was written by the Oshikwanyama teacher. We left money and food donations with the family. I think the visitations are a nice tradition. The funeral and burial will be on Thursday.
I learned recently that one of the girls in the dorm has a teddy bear named Smock! Or rather, Smaak. When I asked her if she named the bear after me, she said no, it’s named after the Afrikaans expression “lekker smaak” (sweet taste).
Now all of the exams are finished, and the teachers are working on report cards while students try to entertain themselves. I passed back all of my marked exams and said goodbye to a few students who had to leave early. Today feels like an ending. Things will be quieter the next few days, although I’m sure we’ll get a lot of knocks on the door from students looking for attention or something to do. We’ll be leaving Odibo in a couple of days. This week I’ve been appreciating all of the things I will miss about St. Mary’s. I’ve been in the habit lately of waking up very early and going for walks around the village. It’s cool and quiet in the mornings; it’s my favorite time of day here. All of the farm animals are out early but at that hour few humans are up and about. I like walking slowly and soaking in the rural scenery. I’ll really miss living in a rural village. The things that were annoying in the beginning don’t bother me anymore, like hearing roosters crow all morning. I won’t miss cramming into small taxis with eight other people to get to town, though. I’ll miss a lot of the people that I’ve gotten to know here. Some of the younger students call me Mom, and I’ll miss that. Earlier in the year, someone asked me what foods from home I was craving and I couldn’t think of any, but now that I’m closer to being home, I can think of a hundred things I want: good pizza, ice cream, Starbucks coffee, Thai food, Indian food, Chinese food. And I keep thinking about the moussaka at a little Greek restaurant on Mass Ave. MUST HAVE MOUSSAKA.
We had our end-of-service meeting with the other volunteers from our organization about a month ago. We talked a lot about reverse culture shock, and discussed different readjustment scenarios. Right now I don’t think it will be too awkward…being home seems easy, but maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe I’ll be missing millet porridge, and the sound of baby pigs outside the bedroom window, and the hot sunny weather. I wonder if I’ve changed noticeably this year, but I don’t think I’ll know until I’m back home. I’m completely mentally here right now and everything here seems normal to me now. One thing I know I’ve learned is how to say no without guilt to people I care about (my students ask for hundreds of things a day). And I live in the moment a bit more than I used to. I’m a bit more patient about time.