Kristen and Jena

I have also had a request for a profile of some of my fellow volunteers. Since Kristen and Jena are the ones I am closest to and the ones I see most often, I figured I could tell you a little about them. Also, the three of us are the babies of the group, we are the only ones who graduated from college in 2009 and we all live in the Erongo region.

Kristen is a sassypants. She always has a sarcastic comment ready and answers any question with plenty of attitude. That being said, she has a huge heart and is actually kind of a sappy sweetheart (shh.. don’t tell her I said that). She is from Virginia and studied social work, which is what she wants to do. She always lights up when she talks about social work and has great stories from some of the things she has already done. She is also obsessed with cats (her cat radar rivals my baby radar) and loves wine. She can be pretty shy, especially around big groups, and gets really intimidated by traveling here, but once she’s comfortable with you she chatters away (especially after a glass or two of that wine she loves…). I don’t really know what else to tell you except maybe to mention that I sms (text) her somewhere between 5 and 50 times every single day.

Jena is… well.. sweet. She is kind, caring, friendly and almost never cranky. She is basically just a nice person, which (along with the fact that her kids are devil children) means she has a lot of difficulties with discipline. She’s a little hippy-ish and spent a month after graduating from college working at a children’s home in Tanzania and then spent several months backpacking around southeast asia. She already has tons of friends all over Swakopmund. She is from New Orleans and her mom is an artist, which for some reason totally helps me understand why she is the way she is. Jena is a lot of fun because she’s always up for anything. Sorry if this makes her sound like one of those people who is so nice they are boring, because that is absolutely not true about Jena, but I don’t know how else to describe her!