Shushwa (Chicken)

The next few days of training went a lot better than the first, and the presentations were far less terrifying. A lot of it was repetitive and common sense, but like all government institutions, you have to cover those policies and procedures. None of it really interested us though because all we could think about were our language assignments. Since the first day of training, we had known that soon enough we would be placed into language groups based on our site placements.

We had interviews on the first two days of training with our APCD, Lejeune. During the interviews, her and Philomena (another PC staff member), asked us series of questions in order to get an idea of where we would fit best in all of the potential sites in Namibia. They asked us questions about rural vs. urban settings, what type of work we were looking to do, about our experience and background, various preferences regarding living situations, and then some people were even asked random questions about gardens, raising chickens, and fish farms.

Finally on the 25th of February, after all of the interviews were conducted and Lejeune had time to finalize placements, we found out our languages. We didn’t find out our actual placements on that day for reasons unknown to us. They handed us slips of paper with the name of an animal on it, and then we were suppose to make the sound of the animal until we found our language teacher and classmates through the cacophony of badly mimicked animal noises.

After many indiscernible clucks, I finally found the other “chickens” by looking at the slips of paper in their hands. There were only three in my group, Paul, myself, and our language instructor Raymond (who is a national news anchor for Namibia and is tribal royalty). When we went outside to talk more with our instructor, we learned that the language we would be studying was called Thimbukushu. It is a Bantu language spoken by the Hambukushu tribe in the northeast of the Kavango region in Namibia and parts of Botswana as well.

Aside from Thimbukushu, the other languages our group will be learning include Afrikaans, Oshindonga, Otjiherero, Silozi, Rukwangali, and Khoekhoegowab (a clicking language). At first, I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t learning Afrikaans, which is spoken throughout various countries in the southern region of the African continent. But the more I think about it, I’m really excited to learn such an uncommon language. Apart from native speakers, there is probably a small handful of people around the world that know this disappearing language. It makes the experience that much more unique and interesting. I mean, how many people do you know can say that they have heard of Thimbukushu, let alone can speak it? Mbadiko (There aren’t any)