For three months, I’ve been trying to come to terms with how I feel about having to leave Namibia due to a security threat. Anger was the quick emotion that came to mind, but now I can finally identify some others:

Misunderstood. Ignored. Rejected. Forgotten. Abandoned. Jilted. Manipulated. Exploited.

Notice that threatened and afraid don’t come close to making the cut.

I miss being in the Peace Corps and my friends and colleagues in Namibia every day. Anger isn’t going to get me back to Nau-Aib Primary School, nor will it fulfill my dreams of Pope John Paul II intervening on my behalf to get my service reinstated (thanks for that one, mefloquine). Identifying my emotions won’t either, but it’s another step closer to being fully happy again in America.

Jan 1: Devote myself to reading one national newspaper a day (WSJ, NYT or Washington Post)

Jan 2: Apply to MBA/Public Policy programs

Jan 3: Read a book about U.S. Foreign Affairs

Jan 4: Memorize Constitution/Amendments

Jan 5: Read a book about U.S. History

Jan 6: Find a running club to join in DC

Jan 7: Quit reading comments on newspaper articles because they make me hate the “average American”

Jan 8: Write letters to my colleagues in Namibia

Jan 9: Find alumni/networking groups to join in DC

Jan 10: Read a book a week

Jan 11: Use reusable grocery bags

Jan 12: Train for a half marathon

Jan 13: Pack!

Jan 14: Move to DC!

You’ve probably noticed by now that my webpage looks a little different.

In an effort to jumpstart my career, I’m trying to work more on marketing myself professionally. I’m ready to move away from home and find a job.

In January, whether or not I receive an offer from a couple companies I’ve been interviewing with, I’ll be moving to Washington D.C. It’s about time I pick somewhere to live, and in my travels since I’ve been back I’ve enjoyed my time in D.C. more than anywhere else.

So Santa, if you could help me out and find me a job that will compliment my analytical and quantitative skills and experience with external business development and project creation/management, that would be great.

Probably not, due to the most disgusting cover up in recent history.

Let’s look at the facts:

On August 31, Elizabeth Seeberg was allegedly sexually assaulted by a Notre Dame football player. She thoroughly recorded the incident and reported it to campus security the next day. She went to a local hospital for a DNA test, rape exam, and sought counseling.

Elizabeth “feared people would dislike her for accusing a Notre Dame athlete of a sex crime.”

On September 10 she died of a drug overdose.

On November 22, the prosecuting attourney for St. Joseph County received the completed report from Notre Dame campus police and “will decide whether further action is warrented.”

Was the player (who still remains nameless) ever benched, admonished, or investigated for this act?

Of course not. That would tarnish not only Notre Dame’s sterling reputation of Catholic education, but would interrupt their football season.

The Irish finished this season with a 6-5 record. I hope that was worth it.

Two years ago when President Barack Obama was chosen as the commencement speaker for the 2009 class of Notre Dame, the Catholic community was in uproar because Obama’s politics don’t match with the Church’s pro-life agenda. I have friends that attended a demonstration on the day of commencement against “Notre Dame has chosen prestige over principles, popularity over morality,” read a petition with over 60,000 signatories against Obama as the commencement speaker. Though I disagree with the basis for the argument, truer words couldn’t be said for this situation.

I can’t even wrap my head around the hypocrisy. How can a University, a Church, a community, take such outrage at someone who they think disrespects human life, which in their opinion begins at conception, when a 19-year-old life was taken probably because of their very actions? When will the people who demonstrate outside of abortion clinics take their signs to Notre Dame and the countless other Universities where this happens all the time?

I lived for a year in a region of the world where this type of thing happens all the time, and is not headline news. In a culture where women are in many ways inferior, it’s all but impossible to prove allegations of rape.

It’s something I never got used to. Whenever I heard a story about a young girl being raped (usually by an older, more powerful man) I thought about America, where this would never be allowed.

I guess I was wrong.

We rant about how women are treated in Muslim countries and cultures when women’s voices are being silenced in our own backyard – literally, South Bend, Indiana. In my opinion, what happened to Elizabeth Seeberg is hardly comparable to having to wear a headscarf.

I encourage all women (and men) to speak up for the rights of a young women who no longer have a voice.

A question I receive often from family, friends, and over-interested strangers who find out I’ve been back for about a month now.

I hit the “month mark” and celebrated by watching sleet fall from my grandparents’ house in a Connecticut suburb of New York City. Against all my better instincts, I had taken a road trip that would lead me through DC, Baltimore, New York, and Pittsburgh before heading back into Ohio with a lesson learned that will surely be looked back upon as the turning point in my recovery process.

At the beginning of this trip, I could hardly be considered “ready for society.” I drove to DC alone, and just in time for the Rally to Restore Sanity. Though a crowd of…200,000? Six billion? Who knows…might have been a bad idea for someone for whom social interactions were difficult, I found the crazy crowd, all hoping for more more sanity and (sorry Colbert) less fear, endearing. They were there to call to mind the same frustrations I’ve felt since returning. So being smooshed in a crowd was worth it.

Halloween was also a welcome taste of home. I didn’t get to celebrate my favorite holiday last year, as I was stuck at site and not allowed to travel. Not to mention I celebrated it with a wide range of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Turns out in DC you can’t throw a stone without hitting one. And they all had sound advice to give, the best of which I received in the RPCV Career Center: “The R in RPCV should stand for Recovering Peace Corps Volunteer.”

Recovery often indicates overcoming a negative experience: cancer, alcoholism, what have you. Peace Corps service is anything but negative, but it still requires recovery. I think the breadth of the experience indicates that I will never truly recover. This realization was the lesson that will be my turning point in recovery – that I’m recovering, and it’s ok.

I left for New York where I spent a relaxing weekend with my best friend and watched my dad run the NYC marathon (further inspiring my running). By the time I left for Pittsburgh to stay with night with Katie, another PC/Namibia alum and meet up with Mark, my site mate for a couple months in Okahandja.

I returned willingly to Ohio. Too many days on the road can make me as tingly for a home base as too many days at home can bring on the wanderlust.

It was only a couple days before I left for Boston for an RPCV Career Fair and to spend some time with my Uncle Bobby. It was in Boston that I realized something else important. It’s ok that things are different now. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m different, I’ve changed and matured from the experience, and if that means I want to go to bed at 8pm, then that’s ok.

So I’m back at home now, and trying to figure out what to do next. I’ve come up with a routine: Get up. Run. Shower. Eat. Sit down in front of the TV with my computer, watch Man v. Food and apply for jobs (if Adam Richman can eat that enormous burrito, I can find a job). Work on my C++ class. That’s about it.

Slowly, routine will bring me back to “normal.” But like I said…I’ll always be recovering.

I’ll post my TSA full-body scan photos on another page.

I was really bad at keeping up with my blog in the last few months of my service, and I’m not going to start it up now as a place to whine and cry about where my close of service has left me. Well, maybe I will a little bit…

So where am I now? Chances are, on the couch obsessing over DVR and wondering how I lived without it. Oh yeah, I had basically the same thing going on with a terabyte of movies and tv shows on my hard drive. My time in Namibia has left me addicted to many, many tv shows and I didn’t hesitate to find all their airtimes and rerun times and record them all. Mom isn’t pleased when she can’t watch Dancing With the Stars on Mondays. A show that, by the way, I hate to love because of the 10 minute commercial breaks that surround each routine.

One thing you can count on me doing every day is running.

If I had been blogging, many of you might know that I was training for a half marathon. Unfortunately I left Namibia exactly a week before the marathon. Shout out to everyone over there who ran. Love you and I’m so proud.

Now it’s time to start training again. Not for anything in particular yet, as I could very well be moving away from Lima as soon as late November.

I’ve been using miCoach, a gadget I hadn’t heard of until I came back. After making a training plan online (mine is GET FIT WITH RUNNING! a premade plan with 40 sessions) you synchronize the device with your computer, plug it into you iPod and it talks to you. Tells you how fast to go, to speed up, slow down, how far and how long. It’s nice to have a voice talking to you, telling you what to do at every step.

After your workout you synchronize the device with your computer again and it tells you how many calories you’re burned, how far you’ve gone, and how well you did staying on the speed it has predetermined for you in creating the training.

My total time so far is 2:56:30, 1507 calories and 9.56 miles.

Not bad for a first week back.

America is something I’ve talked about and dreamed about for the last year. The only glimpses I got, however, were through the packages I received from friends and family (my endless thanks to those who sent them – I am indebted to you, and without you would have lost my sanity months ago) and reading headlines from the New York Times on my Nokia. Now that I’ve been thrust back into “the land of plenty” (as Miss Sarah Gibney so eloquently puts it), I see that there’s so much more than Cheese-Its and Tea Parties.

I’m in a constant state of confusion. It’s not that things are different here than when I left. Rather, they’re more or less exactly the same. It’s as if time stood still while in Africa, the last year flew by.

My 6th grade social studies teacher once described what it was like for people living in the Soviet Union to go into their first supermarket. I can think of no better description of myself. Yesterday I went to Meijer with my mother to pick out food. I wandered wide-eyed and open-mouthed through the aisles of the supermarket, appauled and shocked by the sheer amount of choice. Not only were there Cheese-Its. There were seemingly hundreds of types of Cheese-Its. In my wanderings I lost my mom, and almost started crying due to the overwhelming emotions I was struggling with.

It’s the little things about America that I’m struggling to adjust to in my first 24 hours. How green everything is. Screaming NO!!! when my mom turns onto the right side of the road and realizing that’s the way things are here. Looking over a bridge and seeing water instead of a dry river bed. Internet speed. Stairs. Mass amounts of people. White people playing soccer. Girls playing soccer. Not standing out like a sore thumb because I’m the only white person for miles around. Things I never noticed before suddenly jump out at me and scream, IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS. YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BACK HERE YET.

My friends in Namibia and I spent hours speculating how funny it would be to go back to the States – how appauled our friends and family would be at how dirty we were, the clothes we wore, the Namibian ways of speaking, eating, and other mannerisms that would seem so utterly foreign. That is the very least of my concerns now, as I’m realizing America is so much more than the way you talk or eat. And one of these days, I’m going to find myself used to the way things are.

Until then, I’ll be trying to readjust to my homeland, taking things one day at a time, and attemption to restart my life.

My learners cleaning my China mattress (cheap mattress that accommodates my guests from time to time). I have since been told that I’m not allowed to have learners help me with my chores. Not that I really have a choice….they walk in my door and begin washing dishes, sweeping the floors, and doing my laundry before I even have a chance to say hello.

Every year each school participates in Athletics. It starts with an Interhouse Competition, where the learners of a school compete against each other. From there, it moves on to the Sub-Zonal (generally the town and it’s surrounding farm schools, i.e. Okahandja). The best of the best move on to Zonal (cities in our region, i.e. Okahandja, Otjiwarongo, and Omaruru). Now you may be asking yourself – “Self? Why do Caitie’s learners have javelins, high jump equipment, shot puts, and discuses (disci?) when they’re lacking things like, say, a decent education?” The answer is that I have no idea. But it seems vital that the learners take off the second half of school to train for this event for the first 3 weeks.

I’ve become much more comfortable with hiking over the last few months. Weekends have brought me to Rundu, Otavi, Mariental, and Windhoek. Standing by the side of the road frantically waving my arm for the next kind soul to pick me up has become my specialty. It’s gotten to the point where I haven’t had to wait at a hike point for more than a few minutes before I get a ride. I’ve become comfortable even with turning down hikes from people who look too drunk/creepy to be driving me anywhere. Don’t worry family and friends – they’ve all been safe! Sometimes I have to don my handy dandy shetenge to avoid sunburn, but a good PCV always has copius amounts of water and sunscreen on hand – not to mention a good book for those long hikes. Now, if I could only learn to avoid hikes from racist white Namibians, I’d be set. If I have to listen to another person talk about how Independence ruined their country and marvel at how I can work with “those people” in the location, I’ll flip.

Central Namibia, WHAT UP!?!??!

I’ll take this time to wish Namibia a happy 20th birthday! It’s astonishing to think back on the way things were 20 years ago. Even though Namibia still has its issues, it has developed in leaps and bounds. I’m proud to be teaching the first generation of “born frees” – Namibians who were born after independence. We had a long weekend for March 21st, and my school put on a short ceremony (read: “let’s have a ceremony after 10am break and get out of here so we can go on holiday already”). The entire student body gathered and each grade performed a skit, song, or reading of their choosing. They ranged from a description of what the colors on the Namibian flag mean (Grade 1), a “skit” by Grade 6′s (they were completely unprepared so they just ran around yelling “We’re independent! We’re independent!” So cute…) It was impossible to teach in the morning, so I helped some of the boys turn their heads into Namibian flags – pictured above.

More updates…

The end of the term brings craziness to all learners. I don’t know if they stop taking their pills a month before exams, but they are just completely out of control. Even the tried and true discipline measures I’ve been using have been failing the last couple weeks, and they have stopped trying on their question papers and topic tasks. I’m excited to get done with this term and go to Cape Town after Re-Reconnect (In-Service Training Part II, aka Group 30 debauchery time Part XXI). If anything, this term can be considered a success because I actually got through all of the material suggested on the Scheme of Work. Yay me!

We got a new member of Group 30 – a transfer from Peace Corps Benin! I met her in Mariental over Independence Day weekend. Her name is Emily and she’s swell.

Group 31 has arrived! They’re training in Okahandja so I’ve run into them a few times, and they’re awesome! They’re currently on site visit and return this weekend, so I’m excited to hear all their stories. It’s interesting to watch a new group go through what my group went through only 6 months ago. Except, the Dirty Thirty did it infinitely more awesomely.

At Reconnect Part I, we signed up for committees. I put my name down for HIV/AIDS Committee and GAIN (Gender Awareness In Namibia). More importantly, however, I signed up for IZIT, the publication created entirely by PCVs in Namibia. Two weeks ago in Otavi we worked on compiling all the works we’d received from fellow PCVs, and I took most of the work home to finish myself. This weekend I will complete the task, so look forward to a copy in your inbox!

Signing off now. I promise I’ll be better at updating!

I am so pleased how this safari itinerary has come together for you, Aimee
and Caitlin. Your adventure includes some of the most scenic regions in
Namibia combined with time in Swakopmund.  Allow me to walk you through
the itinerary.

You and Aimee will arrive Windhoek on August 23rd where you will have a
comfortable overnight at the Elegant Guest House.

The following morning board your flight to Walvis Bay and you will
transfer to Swakopmund.  Your accommodations will be the delightful Villa
Margherita which is centrally located in the colonial town.  The morning
of the 25th you will have a seal and dolphin cruise which will take you
out onto Walvis Bay and is the perfect way to experience the region.

On the 26th there is not a scheduled charter flight that operates from
Swakopmund to Sossusvlei so I have arranged for an economical road
transfer.  Although it is a bit of a drive (approximately 6 hours) it
really gives you the opportunity to see a different aspect of Namibia.

Caitlin will fly the morning of the 26th from Windhoek to Sossusvlei and
meet you both at your luxury camp.  Little Kulala is an ultra-luxurious
camp and each thatched suite has a private plunge pool.  I am currently
holding the Family Tent which is perfect for 3 people.  On the 27th you
will have a variety of activities as you explore the world’s oldest
desert.

Before departing Sossusvlei on the 28th you will experience the serenity
of a balloon safari at sunrise over the dunes.  Continue by scheduled
charter flight up the Skeleton Coast of Namibia and inland to Ongava
Reserve where you will have three nights.  I am currently holding space at
both Ongava Tented Camp and Ongava Lodge as I am waiting for a waitlisted
night to clear.

Ongava is such a unique game viewing environment.  Here, game viewing
takes place around water holes where the animals congregate.  It is
interesting to witness the pecking order of the various antelope and other
mammals.

Return to Windhoek on August 31st for one last night at the Elegant Guest
House before continuing onward to Victoria Falls.

End your trip with a visit to Victoria Falls and Cape Town.