News from Namibia
We heard from Lisa this morning and now know some details.
She's gotten her assignment: a small town in Nambia called Aroab. It's on the edge of the Kalarhari about 170 km east of Keetsmanshoop and over 600 to the southeast of the capital at Windhoek.
This map shows where it is (look at the lower right).
As is typical, the person who was supposed to brief her didn't show up, but evidently she'll be living in a nice two-bedroom house and teaching middle school physical science (which is physics and chemistry).
She also got a cell phone. I was hoping she'd text me, but it doesn't seem to be working (althought it may be a function of her number). Susan was getting concerned that she hadn't tried to contact us (we phoned her today at her training center), but there's something about texting.
I tried phoning back. Calling internationally means punching in a lot of numbers. Calling internationally using a dial-around service so it's not a $200 phone calle requires quite a few more. And I kept getting a "number does not exist" error. So I'd do it again. Same "no such number." I knew I was doing it correctly. Finally it occurred to me: the phone number she gave me started out with a leading zero. That seemed odd to me, so I tried again without the zero. Went right through.
It looks like Aroab has wireless phone service (she got a data package so she can eventually be able to send e-mail). Probably no real Internet (we don't know if there's a cafe there), but it does seem to have a grocery, a health center, and a Catholic church. But it's in one of those areas where the satellite photo is only so-so, and too blurry to show individual buildings. And the town isn't even listed in Wikipedia (at least, not in the English version).
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crothman) wrote,
