Kavango Evacuation

1                 I had been at site about 2 weeks and had gotten used to the electricity dropping as well as the cell phone network. That’s why I didn’t think it was particularly strange when the electricity and network were down for two days and it was expected that it would be down for another 3-4 days. We heard that there was a large electrical plant in Grootfontein that supplied the electricity to the region and that people had broken into the plant and stolen copper bolts that held the electrical towers up. When it rains in Kavango it really pours and as this is the start of the rainy season the electrical towers hadn’t been tested against wind or rain since the bolts had been taken. The showers started and eleven towers were knocked out effectively extinguishing all electricity in the region. The water also runs through electrical power so in Rundu there was no more running water. Food in the supermarkets started to get old and there was a mad dash to buy all the food before it got old. People living in town were also forced to walk down to the Kavango river to get their water. This is a town of around 80,000 people so the river banks also became very crowded. With our cell phone network down Peace Corps actually had no idea what was going on in the Kavango area.

 The newspapers in Windhoek left the report that electricity was out to the 7^th page of the newspaper. Mind you electricity dropping in the Kavango would be equivalent to all the electricity dropping in the entire west coast of the U.S. Peace Corps only found out about 2 or 3 days in when a volunteer was able to get a text out. So the afternoon that I was moving into my new house two Peace Corps cars drove into my village unannounced. I was in my room with all my stuff strewn about when I hear my friends Tim and Lindsey calling my outside. I get up confused and look outside and I see them with 6 other volunteers I hadn’t met yet. They greet me then they start screaming “village invasion!” Then they tell me that the entire Kavango region was being evacuated and that we needed to go to Rundu and stay at a lodge where there was power and water. I was convinced for about 5 minutes that they were joking until the head security guy for Peace Corps sauntered up and confirmed it for me. So I invite everyone into my completely messy house while Joey the security coordinator gives me a list and tells me I need to pack everything in it as fast as I can. I get everything packed and we head out while my counterparts looked on confused. We go through Rundu which looked like a zombie apocalypse had just gone through it into the middle of the bush where there was a riverside lodge. We then hang out there for two nights. It was a great time, there was beer, good food, and I was able to meet all the volunteers from the previous groups. For a moment Peace Corps was going to send us to Tsumeb, one of the nicest towns in Namibia, to hang out for a few more days until the electricity, water, and network came back but on the second night the power came back and we were shipped back to our towns and villages. Weird, fun, and an ambiguous experience but that is exactly the way of Peace Corps.