2007.03.02: March 2, 2007: Headlines: COS - Namibia: Hillsdale Independent: Michael Nabozny served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia and learned an African tribal language, saw Victoria Falls, rode around the dusty savannah in the back of overloaded pickup trucks and sampled delicacies like caterpillars and goat brains

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Namibia: Peace Corps Namibia : Peace Corps Namibia: Latest Stories: 2007.03.02: March 2, 2007: Headlines: COS - Namibia: Hillsdale Independent: Michael Nabozny served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia and learned an African tribal language, saw Victoria Falls, rode around the dusty savannah in the back of overloaded pickup trucks and sampled delicacies like caterpillars and goat brains

By Admin1 (admin) (ppp-70-249-83-39.dsl.okcyok.swbell.net - 70.249.83.39) on Sunday, March 11, 2007 - 12:19 pm: Edit Post

Michael Nabozny served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia and learned an African tribal language, saw Victoria Falls, rode around the dusty savannah in the back of overloaded pickup trucks and sampled delicacies like caterpillars and goat brains

Michael Nabozny served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia and learned an African tribal language, saw Victoria Falls, rode around the dusty savannah in the back of overloaded pickup trucks and sampled delicacies like caterpillars and goat brains

"I was surprised when I got the letter saying Namibia-I had to look that up on the map," said Mr. Nabozny. "I was excited just going into an unknown place. I couldn't find much [to read] about Namibia." He did not know he'd be learning Oshiwambo, which is spoken by half the population in Namibia, a former German colony. When told of his plans, some people were shocked. "It was kind of strange trying to tell people," said Mr. Nabozny of the weeks before his departure. "They couldn't imagine doing it themselves. One guys said, 'Africa? I think I'd rather go to jail for two years.'" But his family supported his decision, he said, "and I wound up eating a ton of food before I left because everyone wants to kind of give you a last meal."

"Immediately, I knew this is what I wanted-no electricity, no running water," said Mr. Nabozny, whose fellow teachers would give him a ride home from school so he wouldn't have to haul the jugs of water his family needed. "People were so happy to have me at the school," he said. "I felt accepted; I felt welcomed by the school. They were very short on teachers, and you could see yourself making a difference." Fewer people spoke English, but that forced him to develop his Oshiwambo. And he felt better, he said, "now that I was living with a family and having a good time with teachers at the school. I'd go around talking to people in the village, go buy chickens, and my social life was much better." It was also safe to be out at night, and he could hitchhike anywhere. "Just like in the U.S, there's rural poverty," said Mr. Nabozny, who also helped renovate a library and helped his students paint a world map on the school. "They grow their own food, but people don't have a lot of anything."


Michael Nabozny served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia and learned an African tribal language, saw Victoria Falls, rode around the dusty savannah in the back of overloaded pickup trucks and sampled delicacies like caterpillars and goat brains

Peace Corps led him to Africa

By: MATTHEW SHEEHEY

03/02/2007

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KINDERHOOK-He learned an African tribal language, saw Victoria Falls, rode around the dusty savannah in the back of overloaded pickup trucks and sampled delicacies like caterpillars and goat brains ("don't try it").

Kinderhook resident Michael Nabozny, 24, had a great adventure serving in the Peace Corps for two years and three months in Namibia. More importantly, he made lifelong friendships with his science students, host family and neighbors and, he hopes, showed a people still recovering from the trauma of apartheid that white people are okay.

February 26 to March 4 is Peace Corps Week, and Mr. Nabozny talked with a reporter Monday about his time in Namibia, a country of two million on the Atlantic between Angola to the north and South Africa to the south.

He returned home in December.

In addition to teaching and working on projects to improve health and the quality of life in the developing world, the 7,749 volunteers in the Peace Corps aim to advance friendship and cross-cultural understanding. Mr. Nabozny said his students were able to see the U.S. in a positive light, and many Namibians aspire to live here someday.

"But most of my students will probably remember me as a white person," he said. "That's the most important part. They grew up in a brutal Apartheid system until 1990. When you come down to it, people are all the same."

Still, it took people in Mr. Nabozny's host community, Omuthitu, home to a few hundred residents, a little while to open up.

He taught in English, Namibia's official language, but as time went on he learned to speak Oshiwambo, the language of the countryside.

"They would have a hard time coming to you with certain things," said Mr. Nabozny of the residents of Omuthitu, a farming area. "They didn't trust you with everything at first, but when you start talking with them and they realize you're not there to re-colonize them or judge them, they do."

Mr. Nabozny, son of Jack and Gerry Nabozny of Kinderhook, graduated from Ichabod Crane High School and applied to the Peace Corps while still at the University of Maryland, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 2004.

It's a major commitment, two years of service after three months of language and technical training in the host country. Volunteers often struggle with loneliness, health problems and culture shock, but Mr. Nabozny was seeking a challenge. "You can always do volunteer stuff, but I was looking for something longer-more sustained-and a sense of adventure, going to another country," he said.

He studied Spanish in college, and he was originally nominated by his recruiter to serve in Portuguese-speaking Africa. Then he was offered his Namibia post.

"I was surprised when I got the letter saying Namibia-I had to look that up on the map," said Mr. Nabozny. "I was excited just going into an unknown place. I couldn't find much [to read] about Namibia."

He did not know he'd be learning Oshiwambo, which is spoken by half the population in Namibia, a former German colony.

When told of his plans, some people were shocked.

"It was kind of strange trying to tell people," said Mr. Nabozny of the weeks before his departure. "They couldn't imagine doing it themselves. One guys said, 'Africa? I think I'd rather go to jail for two years.'"

But his family supported his decision, he said, "and I wound up eating a ton of food before I left because everyone wants to kind of give you a last meal."

After sitting through an orientation for a few days in Philadelphia, his group of 53 Peace Corps trainees flew to Africa in October 2004.

Walking off the plane in Windhoek, the capital, was a bit of a shock thanks to the 110-degree heat in Namibia's hot, dusty summer.

He lived in a dorm for while during teaching and language training. Keeping in touch with home was difficult; 30 minutes of Internet time at a café cost the equivalent of a day's pay.

But Mr. Nabozny made good friends in his group before going to live with a host family for the remainder of his training.

"The home I stayed at was quite modern-electricity and running water," he said. "The father of the house was an undertaker."

There were 15 to 20 people living in the homestead's buildings, said Mr. Nabozny, and the father was rumored to have 60 children.

He had his own room and he didn't mind the food. "It's okay," he said. "I made a point of eating all the local food-whatever the family was eating that day, that's what I would eat."

That meant a lot of millet, the Namibian staple, which is eaten as a thick porridge with beans or spinach three times a day. People who can afford them have a chicken once in a while.

Fortunately, said Mr. Nabozny, Namibia is one of just three African countries where the water from household taps is clean.

But he didn't feel entirely comfortable with his first host family, he said, and he was glad to be sworn in as an official Peace Corps volunteer and sent to his first teaching assignment in the northern town of Oshakati, which has around 25,000 residents and brutal heat.

There was also brutal poverty, and the 1,000-student boarding school where he taught and lived was five minutes from a sea of tin shacks.

"It wasn't the safest of places to be-you became a target," said Mr. Nabozny, who stands six feet, four inches tall and played basketball and ran track and cross country at Ichabod Crane. "You weren't going to fit in."

As for teaching a class of 40 or 45 high school students for the first time, he said, "I was completely lost-I struggled."

He said the students, especially girls, were never trained to participate in class.

He taught from 6:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. and then gave lessons on HIV and AIDS, showed students how to use computers and played basketball.

Then he'd make himself a little supper or go out for a beer with his male colleagues-"The reputation of women in bars was less than stellar," he said.

But he found people in Namibia's large towns were not as friendly as people in the villages, "more stand-offish," as he put it.

Living alone in a grimy apartment wasn't what he had in mind and he realized he could be of greater value elsewhere. The school didn't seem needy and he kept getting sick with fevers, jaundice and other problems that doctors later attributed to parasites that entered his urinary tract while he was swimming in a river.

He was ready for a change, and he was delighted to accept reassignment to Omuthitu, where he finished his final year of service and lived with the Kathingo family, a mom and dad and five children.

"Immediately, I knew this is what I wanted-no electricity, no running water," said Mr. Nabozny, whose fellow teachers would give him a ride home from school so he wouldn't have to haul the jugs of water his family needed.

"People were so happy to have me at the school," he said. "I felt accepted; I felt welcomed by the school. They were very short on teachers, and you could see yourself making a difference."

Fewer people spoke English, but that forced him to develop his Oshiwambo.

And he felt better, he said, "now that I was living with a family and having a good time with teachers at the school. I'd go around talking to people in the village, go buy chickens, and my social life was much better."

It was also safe to be out at night, and he could hitchhike anywhere.

"Just like in the U.S, there's rural poverty," said Mr. Nabozny, who also helped renovate a library and helped his students paint a world map on the school. "They grow their own food, but people don't have a lot of anything."

When his mother visited, she was treated like a queen, and a sheep was slaughtered in her honor.

Mr. Nabozny, who is working as a technician at St. Peter's Hospital before heading to medical school, plans to return to Namibia someday. And he'll urge people to consider volunteering.

"You see things in a different light," he said. "It's given me a desire to so some kind of service forever-it's hard to walk away from it. You give up two years, but I got a lot more in return. The friendships I made-you can't put a price on that."

Mr. Nabozny invites people interested in the Peace Corps or Namibia to e-mail him at mnabozny82@yahoo.com.

To contact reporter Matthew Sheehey e-mail msheehey@IndeNews.com.



Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: March, 2007; Peace Corps Namibia; Directory of Namibia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Namibia RPCVs





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Story Source: Hillsdale Independent

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