Holiday travels: the good and the bad

The first week of December was Reconnect, which is when "Phase 2" ends and our group got together to discuss our first 3 months at site. I was looking forward to seeing everyone, finding out about their living situations and to get away from the village for a couple weeks. Reconnect was well just like training: boring but with much more drinking. There was wifi and a pool and we were in a beautiful spot on a hill outside the city. Oh and food, delicious food. Not mahongu and meat or canned fish and rice. After Reconnect, our (almost) entire group went to Swakopmund to spend another week together. Swakop is on the coast and felt like a German Miami. At first, I felt a lot of culture shock. Sitting at a cafe with white people everywhere, nice cars, nice houses; it was surreal. But after half a day I was able to adjust and seeing the ocean for the first time in a while helped the transition out of the village mentality. That first night I met a couple Germans and went bar-hopping with them; lots of jager. We ended up at a Afrikaner/German bar/club and I met a Herero named Daniel who knew some other Peace Corps Volunteers. We quickly became friendly and as he had his arm around my shoulders talking out of nowhere some drunk Afrikaner punched Daniel in the face. Immediately we were just shocked and kept asking him why he punched him. No response. Some German girl came and pushed us away warning us not to do anything stupid. So we did, I was drunk, Daniel probably was and we would have gotten our asses kicked. Also, it would not have been following the modus operandi of the Peace Corps to get into a bar fight. There was another incident of racism that I encountered in Swakop but I'll save that for those who want to ask me about it personally. Now, I had the chance to meet a young, liberal Afrikaner in Swakop who was just as open and tolerant as most college educated people in America and I met racist, college educated Afrikaners too. My whole concept of Namibia changed drastically during that trip and I couldn't wait to get back to the village. When I finally did come back to the village, I brought 5 friends with me. It made it an interesting experience to show other volunteers from all over the country what my living situation was like and one was definitely amazed at how big and nice my place is. So, I just sort of wrote this on a whim. Sorry if it is not as coherent, concise, or well-written as you hoped this to be but I wanted to write about what happened. The next couple weeks will be filled with more travel, going from Ondangwa to Rundu and then to Katima. I'm very excited to see Zambezi. Oshi li nawa!