I made it back! To Namibia, obviously. But really, I meant my blog. It’s been a long time since Thanksgiving, and I was starting to worry that my blog had died. But it didn’t. It’s still here! Yippee!
My time at home was wonderful. Honestly, it was a bit surreal though. I cried getting off the plane at the beginning. And I cried getting back on the plane at the end. I don’t know if I can explain either emotion but they were both a mixture of fear, missing certain people and an overwhelming sense of not belonging anywhere… or maybe belonging too many places.
Before I left for home last year, I would spend a certain amount of time everyday visualizing things that I felt were shocking about America. For example, I visualized an entire row of the grocery store being dedicated completely to ice cream. I visualized getting into a clean car with seatbelts that would travel directly to where I needed to go! I visualized a clerk in a store who said, “oh yes, of course I can help you.” Instead of the regular, “I don’t want to speak English today” or “Buy me these sweets when you buy your things.” Yes, I visualized many fantastic things about America. But when I finally got there for my vacation, some things still shocked me.
I had a ten-ish hour layover in JFK airport when I first arrived in America. It was hellish (“Hellish” defined as: completely jet lagged, tired, dirty, wearing summer-weather clothes, without American money, hungry, forbidden to check in until a mere 6 hours before my flight and doomed to carry ALL my bags around outside in the cold rain waiting until Delta would accept my worn and ragged soul… and that is no exaggeration, that is, until I found a McDonalds…). Just before my connecting flight left for the west coast, I finally found some coffee. It was, of course, at Starbucks. I didn’t mind because it was coffee, the only beverage confirmed to improve my outlook on life. When I tried to get an Americano, though, I ran into some trouble. I had in my wallet a fresh $20 from an ATM I had stumbled across – a whole different challenge – and a few coins left over from 2007. I figured that I would make life easier on this Starbucks worker by counting out exact change for my coffee. But instead, she angrily stared at me as I counted the coins. And when I finally put them down she said, “This ain’t right!” I counted them again, twice. They were right, I thought. The employee just got more and more angry before she finally took the coins and counted them for me... in a loud and clear voice… like a math teacher… in first grade: “25! 35! 36! 37! 38! … You’re 25 cents short!” I looked at the coins in horror as I realized, a quarter is worth 25 cents. Not 50 cents. I just quietly put down a second quarter and grabbed my drink that had long since been prepared by the second employee and shamefully slid away to a dark corner of the terminal. Where I then examined the rest of the coins in my possession to ensure I knew all of their values before attempting to purchase something else.
The quarters were only the beginning. The little things seemed to shock me all over the place. The rolls of toilet paper in America are huge! Internet is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen. Why does everyone drive so fast on the freeway? Was TV News always so entertaining? Remote controls have so many buttons. Pop tarts cost more than I make in a day. Why is everyone so strict about the order of words in sentences – you got the idea, didn’t you?! And, you definitely don’t get to choose if you want to wear a seatbelt or not.
There were a few things that were not as great as I remembered though. For instance, customer service really confused me. It was just too much social stimulation. By the end of my visit, I would just make nods in the direction of things I needed instead of using full coherent sentences. And snow! Oh the snow! It was so… cold. And wet. And yucky.
There were some things that were just as good as I remembered though: Family, friends, curlers, pets, the cd player in my car, boots, the microwave, clean socks, the washing machine, lots and lots of blankets and fantastic tea with fantastic honey!
Overall, my trip home was really great. And I did get my hair cut.
I returned to Namibia on Thursday, the 8th of January. My first act upon arriving was to leave my cellphone in the taxi that drove me from the airport. It was a devastating loss. But the kindly Europeans who were bunked in my hostel room became concerned about my seemingly unhealthy attachment to a piece of technology and, with many phone calls and a little yelling, managed to get the taxi driver back to the hostel, resulting in my phone’s safe return… And who says Europeans don’t like Americans?
The next day, I made a quick visit to Khorixas for the weekend to make sure my flat hadn’t been broken into or otherwise damaged. I felt very lucky to see that my flat looked just as I had left it. Luck had very little to do with it though. It probably had more to do with my neighbor/friend/colleague who promised to watch it during the holiday. The inside of my flat smelled like something rotting though and it was a little more than I had bargained for. And, to make the smell worse, there wasn’t a whole drop of water in the entire hostel for the entire weekend. I survived by buying 3 liters of water and eating the leftovers from the lunch my mom had packed my for the plane ride. She’s a good lunch packer.
That Monday was the Nam27 Midservice conference in Windhoek. It was kind of like the Reconnect conference last year… the only difference was that we already had Reconnect…
About half of our group had visited home for Christmas. The others did some sightseeing in east Africa or South Africa. Only a few stayed at their sites in Namibia. It was good to see everyone though. They’re a pretty great NamFam. Slightly dysfunctional… but then, who isn’t?
Midservice was during the first official week of school - Thank goodness. The first week of every term is chaos. But the first week of the First Term is a special breed of chaos that also happens to provide a lot of time to bang your head against the wall and question your purpose in Namibia, and life in general. Luckily, my school proceeded through this period without me. When I arrived the next Monday, they already had a timetable (class schedule) and about half the registered learners for most classes.
At the staff meeting in the morning, it was good to see a lot of familiar faces. There were a lot of new teachers too. And a new principal! (We didn’t have a principal last year. The last principal passed away in 2007) When I saw my supervisor at the meeting she said, “you’re going to be a very shocked person when you look at the timetable” and then ducked behind another teacher before jumping into the prayer for the morning.
After the meeting, she cleared everything up for me. I was going to be a shocked person because I was no longer a science teacher or a math teacher. Which is really a pity, because I happen to have a huge binder full of a years’ worth of lesson plans for both subjects. Instead, I was going to be a B.I.S. teacher and a Life Skills teacher.
B.I.S. stands for Basic Information Science. Volunteers commonly call this particular course “BS class”. It’s supposed to help learners become familiar with information resources available to them, such as computers, books, videos, references, etc. The “BS” description comes in when the volunteer then discovers how many “resources” actually are available to the learner. Life Skills is a mix between health, study skills and social studies. The curriculum is basically common sense (which unfortunately is not always so common in these parts).
At first, I was in shock. I love science and math. And last year, I loved trying to force little kids to love them too. But after a while of thinking and looking over the syllabi, I decided that this could be a lucky break for me. You see, BIS and Life Skills are non-promotional subjects. That means that kids don’t have to take any government tests to pass the class. And after further investigations, I found that, basically, I can teach whatever I want!
It’s exciting that I get to choose the most important and fun things to teach. But it’s also a lot of pressure. I spent the majority of my first week getting a general idea of what I wanted teach for the first and second terms. And then taking those ideas and tailoring them to vastly different skills of learners in grade 5, 6 and 7. It’s a lot of work, but it’s going a lot more smoothly that making lessons for science and math. That’s mainly because there are so many more resources for Life Skills. There aren’t very many for BIS. But for BIS I chose to read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with the grade 6 and grade 7. We have a class set, left by the previous VSO. The small book should take up all of term 1, so lesson planning is taken care of up until June. Grade 5 is doing Phonics – which I’m quickly growing to detest.
For Life Skills, I chose Term 1 to teach about health – a healthy digestive system, a healthy diet, and a healthy mouth. If we have time we’ll finish with the nervous system and drug education. I chose health for first term because I thought it was the least important topic of the three things I wanted to teach. Granted, I only chose three topics I thought were important (one for each term). The other two are environmental education and conflict resolution (yes, and entire term can be spent on conflict resolution… probably a whole year if we’re honest). I think these two are more important because, in all likelihood, they will not be getting very much information about them in the rest of their education. They do get a lot of health education though. And by teaching it in term one, I can omit the things they probably know more about when, say, classes get cancelled for the whole week because we’re changing the timetable… which happens a lot in term one.
The other challenges starting this school year are the organizing the library and the dinosaur in the office. First of all, the library is full of books. At least that’s the way it looks when you walk in. The problem is that you, an American, can quickly see that more than half the books are written in Afrikaans. The learners can’t tell the difference between Afrikaans and English, though. And then will happily spend an afternoon applying English phonics to Afrikaans and making up who-knows-what-story in their head to go along with the pictures. So, at the end of last year, I decided to pack up all the Afrikaans books and send them along to a different school. The problem I’m encountering now is this: the library doesn’t look as beautiful without all those books. … … Yes, that is a problem. Almost a big enough problem that our school would rather keep all those useless books. So, the challenge becomes 1) making the library look beautiful and fun and useful with a tiny number of books and 2) getting teachers and kids to USE the book we do HAVE! And, by that, I mean actually reading the words and understanding the content… But to help that along, I also have a pot of beautiful red fake flowers that make reading look more enticing… Maybe.
And the second problem is that darn dinosaur in the office. And by that I mean, our computer. This computer, particularly today, is driving me INSANE! Insane. It’s so old they turn it on and hour before the secretary gets to school, so that it might actually be on by the time she gets there. Today, the mouse just broke. That means the only thing left to use is the keyboard. I wrote a previous post about the keyboard. I would bet money that the keyboard is actually older than the computer. Whenever you press Enter or Shift or the Spacebar, you then have to pry up the key with your fingernail before proceeding. But without the mouse, that keyboard is the only link to our dinosaur. I googled keystrokes in my phone and taught the secretary a few so that she could keep working. But the whole situation had almost become comedic.
As an extracurricular task this year, our new principal assigned me to computers. “You can be I.T.,” he said. I was really excited about that. My plan is to get a new computer for the school. Maybe two. Last year, I wanted to get a new computer for the school but the cost of one almost seemed unreal. While I was home for Christmas though, family and friends donated money for the school to get a new computer. It was so cool to see and it was almost overwhelming at times. Now that I’m back here, I really just want to tell my coworkers about all the cool people in America that care about them and their school.
Right now, I’m looking at a computer donation company based in Seattle for the computers. It seems like a good place. I start to worry when I think about shipping costs and customs though. There’s just so much that goes into being the computer person. Plus, the title of “I.T.” goes so completely beyond my skill level, it’s bit laughable.
Well, that’s about it for the start of the year. I hope I didn’t bore you with too many details about school. It’s about all I’ve been doing though. My down time pretty much consists of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Weeds and the Year Of Fitness… which is definitely a story for a different blog. It’s all been pretty hectic but it’s also been good. I did leave out one huge detail. Huge detail. It’s a tradition of Namibian schools everywhere. A magical moment designed to welcome learners back from summer holiday with warmth and love and… CHAOS! It’s Athletics. For those of you regular readers, you may remember the running fiasco from last year. For the rest of you, tune in next time and I’ll tell you about the craziness.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
And the Word Opaque
OCTOBER 30 2008!!!!
(I get really excited about dates lately… they seem to come as a surprise to me most of the time)
Well, the good news is that October 30th is right in the middle of Nam 27’s Week O’One Year Anniversaries. The celebration mostly just includes Facebook updates and SMSes about what we were doing one year ago – who we met first, who we thought was crazy, how many times we broke down crying/freaking out/calling home, how great per diem was when it was in American dollars instead of Nam dollars, etc. The week started on October 28th, when all the west coasters were flown to DC for PC staging on the 29th. The group flew out of DC on October 31st and finally made to Namibia on November 2nd. And the rest is history. Well at least until January 9th. That’s when we became real volunteers. And that anniversary means I’ll only have 11 months left.
The bad news is that October 30th means that it’s Namibian springtime, which really means its summertime. Make sense? No? Let me try explaining another way: I’m in an oven. At first this weather wasn’t so bad. It was just searing sun. When I went inside, it was easy to cool down. Now, the heat follows me everywhere. It’s because of the humidity. Recently the clouds came back and added humidity to my life. I thought maybe I was being a wimp because it’s probably only about 1.1% more humidity than normal. And being springtime, there are still a lot of pleasant days. But on bad days, by adding that extra stuffy humidity to the regular 125-degree weather, I think I’m going to pass out in class if I talk too loud.
Today was actually a bad day weather-wise. I was sweating in the morning meeting at 7am. When it’s this hot the learners actually do pass out, sleeping. At first, I thought that this was unacceptable. I would wake them up and insist that they participate in class. Now, I just let them sleep. Honestly? It’s the best thing for everyone. Over the past two days, I’ve seen more acts of violence in the school than all of term 2. Kids are just irritable.
Actually, violence is typical at school. It’s all pretty tame violence though, if there is such a thing. Everyday, at least 5 to 35 times, I hear, “Miss, this one is beating me!” or “I’m going to beat that one!!!”- Which is usually accompanied by a unique to Namibia pointing-glaring combination to ensure that I understand which child they are about to beat. In January, I was lucky enough to come across Appropriate Touch in the Health portion of the Natural Science Curriculum. One of the solutions grade 7 thought of to deal with inappropriate touch was to move away. Even though I had only been teaching for a week or so at that time, I could already tell peer beating was a problem that I wasn’t going to be able to put a scratch in by myself. So I took the opportunity to make them put down their pens, fold their hands (how I make them show they’re listening to me) and listen to my mini lecture. Ahem:
“If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, or bad…”
(I usually say the big word first, then the easy synonym second).
“You should MOVE AWAY! Don’t keep staying by that person. If someone is beating you or not respecting you, MOVE AWAY! Even in this class, move away! Lift up your hand and tell me that you need to move. Don’t sit there. Move! …”
I’m all about taking control of your own destiny. Since that lecture, its not uncommon for me to be writing on the board and turn around to see a learner holding his desk – “Miss, I need to move away.” And he’ll shuffle his desk over to the other side of the classroom. It’s hard not to laugh because they’re so cute. But I try to stifle the laughing because they’re also usually really angry at whomever they’re moving away from. I just get so proud when they choose to take the high road. It’s rare and it takes a self-restraint that they don’t have much practice with.
Anyway, all that’s to say, there hasn’t been much moving away the past couple of days. Yesterday was the big blowout. We have a break from 10:00 to 10:30. It’s “required” for all the teachers to come to the staff room during break in case there is an accidental meeting during that half hour. I kid you not – “Some information may slip out during that time and all teachers must be present if there is something important said”. I like to gamble and skip. Some teachers don’t gamble at all, they just don’t care if something important is said and they don’t come. Others have teamed up with their friends and one of them has to go every other day and then relay the important information, if any, to the absent friend (Now seeing how there are 20 teachers all together, I don’t see how this relaying information thing would be so hard to establish school-wide… especially since small boys are sent with all note carrying/message delivering matters anyway. The teachers wouldn’t even have to stand up).
So, we’re all sitting in the staff room during break and there are movie-quality shrieks out of the window. I look through the lace curtains and only see a lot of dust and a sea of blue uniforms. I turned and looked back at the teachers. One of the teachers takes a bite of his mayonnaise and margarine sandwich. He says over the bite, “Oh, they’re fighting” and then continues chewing. No one else even blinks. Trying to make more sense of the situation, I walked out of the office block to the courtyard of the school. Sure enough, there was a fight of over a hundred kids in progress. One of the prefects (handily wearing a white uniform shirt for easy identification) was standing there to inform me calmly, “Miss they are fighting”. I said, “No, really?” before I realized that my sarcasm doesn’t fly here. She said, “It’s true, miss”. And I said, “hmm”. I think what surprised me the most was that I wasn’t that surprised.
Maybe a minute later, the teacher with the mayonnaise-margarine sandwich came out, casually wiping his hands with a dishcloth. He said something to the prefects standing around and pointed to the bustling crowd. The prefects ran off into the fight. A few seconds later the intense crowd broke into smaller fights and soon kids were just standing around looking angry – the prefects were still hanging onto the shirt tails of a few of the most guilty contenders. About that time, a few more teachers came out of the office block waving sticks and yelling in their Damara angry voices.
Damara angry voices are truly a trait worthy of awe. 60% of the women and girls I know here are capable of this tone. Never have I experienced a tone of voice that I would believe is literally poisonous. You can almost see the green cloud of toxins coming from the person using this tone of voice. Really, an inspiring tool in the area of crowd control. But definitely not one I envy. The teachers were yelling in their angry voices and waving sticks around the courtyard. Less than 30 seconds later, the kids were in perfect lines, boys and girls, outside their classrooms waiting for class to start again. Even the dust took longer to settle than the kids. Unbelievable.
Actually, a school-wide fight is pretty believable here if it weren’t for the two things that happened later.
Later in the day, I passed a crowd of teachers and a grade five learner on the sidewalk. They were using their Damara angry voices so I just kept walking, as usual. A few minutes later, one of the same teachers came into the office behind me. She was talking to me about Peace Corps and how they had called earlier that day. As she was talking, she pulled out a phone recharge card and started to scratch off the silver layer over the number. She tried her fingernail first but it wasn’t working so she pulled out a big flip knife (I don’t know anything about knives, but it was big) and started scratching with that. I said, “uuuuuuuuuuumm. Ahem.” And pointed to the knife. The teacher said, “Oh, that boy brought it to school today” and then waved the knife around in a displeased manner and went back to the phone charger. That was it. Angry poison voices, taking the knife away and sending the kid back to class! Unbelievable.
Luckily, the knife thing was towards the end of school. And also luckily, it was Wednesday so I didn’t have to go back for study. I just sat in front of my fan all afternoon. I loooooooove my fan. Love it.
This morning was pretty calm. In my third class of the day, I was doing a serious lecture about finding the area of a rectangle. I had to keep talking louder and louder because the kids next door were making so much noise. A few months ago, one of the teachers told me I needed to take more initiative in discipline and general order around the school. I do have a tendency to ignore things that don’t have anything to do with me. That’s a very American thing to do. Plus, I’m really quiet compared to most of the learners and teachers here. So, keeping the more initiative suggestion in mind, I left a practice problem for my class on the board and headed next door.
A girl was standing in the door. It was a grade 5 class. Apparently, I look like I need the obvious explained to me because the girl said, “Miss, they’re fighting”. Then? She laughed! I looked around the room and everyone was enjoying themselves! And in the very center were a boy and a girl fighting. I thought, more initiative! So I walked over and grabbed their arms and pulled them apart. It didn’t do much though because they just twisted free and kept fighting. This fight was something else. I wanted to look around the room to make sure there were no cameras – it almost seemed scripted. The boy was obviously winning. And he was obviously not going to stop. I didn’t really know what to do so I grabbed his ear and his shoulder and pulled him back. It didn’t do a single darn thing. Then, do you know what he did? He pulled free and bit into the neck of the girl he was fighting and started twisting his head back and forth trying to tear the skin.
Alright. Initiative schmitiative. I called the prefects.
Sure enough the prefects pulled them apart and carried the boy outside. I was checking the girl for blood when the class teacher came back (mayonnaise margarine man). He glazed over the class and walked to his desk and started shuffling papers… Um, excuse me? This boy just tried to exercise his canines on this girl. Both of which were hanging out in your abandoned class! Was this homework or something?
But I didn’t say that. I just walked out and went back to rectangles. I was totally traumatized. Every time I turned around to write on the board for the rest of the period I would almost start crying. I don’t understand how anyone can go to school and try to learn about rectangles when they don’t even feel safe. Obviously these kids are way tougher than I was at their age. But some degree of safety and security is needed just to be a normal person, let alone move on the other things like geometry.
I never felt in danger. I wasn’t even upset because all these things were happening in proximity to me. No one is angry at me. I give them stickers – they love me. They’re angry at each other. And the fact that no one is watching their backs is upsetting. That’s not a normal childhood – in any culture.
But, yeah, it’s been a crazy few days. In the last class of the day, half the kids fell asleep. So, I took up the papers we were working on and said, “shh, nap time. We’ll review tomorrow”. It was too long and miserable of a day for anyone to have to think about science.
November 6th 2008
Yesterday was an incredible day! With the time difference, McCain made his concession speech at about 6:00 in the morning yesterday. I got an SMS from a teacher at my school at about 6:01 that said, “Obama wins election!!!!!!” Then, not even a minute later I got an SMS from one of the Nigerian volunteers that said, “Congratulations fo d excellent manner ya country conducted her elections and d subsequent victory of B. Obama. That is why I love Americans”.
Let me tell you, I have not received that much America-love in the entire time I’ve been here. Well… that’s not entirely true. A lot of men love America. That is until I tell them I won’t marry them and buy them a plane ticket to my homeland… then they’re full of words one should never use whilst in an attempt to woo a future spouse.
Anyway, the rest of the day at school, it was easy to pick out the kids who have TVs at home. They would run up to me and say, “Miss, your country is having a new president! He’s a black man!!!!” To which, my two favorite responses were, “Oh my! I have a new president?! That’s so exciting!” and “So, what country is that exactly?” The answer to the latter was split three ways: South Africa, Germany and North America (They don’t let volunteers teach social studies… but I’m not exactly sure why because I feel that I could at least explain that just because people look alike it doesn’t mean they’re from the same country).
Kids and adults alike are equally inspired by the “son of Africa” that will be the head of the free world. I’m sure that Barak wasn’t running to please the African continent. And I’m also sure that he wasn’t elected because people in Namibia have been holding their breath since May for a black man to become the next American president. But I am sure that the soon-to-be 44th president has already restored a huge amount of faith in America from overseas.
I know that image isn’t everything. I also believe that we shouldn’t choose our leaders just because of what they look like. And I am interested with the issues and plans for the next four years. But I do want to say that, while living in an African country, I have never been so thankful that the American image has significantly improved in the course of the last three days. Earlier this year, some volunteers were on a tour of Botswana and actually got boo-ed for being American… Let’s be honest, an image boost couldn’t hurt, right?
All that’s to say, it was a good day for America across the globe… no matter who you voted for.
November 7th 2008
The new group, Nam 28 gets here today. I can’t believe it – we’re not the Peace Corps freshmen anymore. Weird.
Well, today, I had a couple of really cute conversations. The first one was with a learner named Silvanus. He is one of my favorite learners because he tries so hard.
Silvanus’s sir name ends in a B. On the other hand, his mother and sisters’ sir names end in an S. That’s the way Damara sir names work. If the family name is Gaingob, all of the sons will keep Gaingob and all of the daughters will get Gaingos. Gaeb/Gaes, Nunueb/Nunues, and Aebeb/Aebes are all family name pairs. And while Silvanus’s actual sir name ends in a B, all of the learners make fun of him by changing it to an S and calling him Miss. But Silvanus is one of my favorites because it doesn’t faze him. He usually deals with it by saying “Ai! Leave Me!” and making a waving motion – no beating or yelling as with other learners. He does have his fair share of actual friend… all of them girls though.
So, a few of the teachers were missing from work today. That usually means my library is full of learners who are bored. Silvanus was hanging out in there during an early morning period. He was looking through our new collection of Ranger Rick Magazines – donated by generous American kids. I was busy making “turn in your library books or else!” posters for every class and he was just chatting away. I don’t know if he stopped to breathe for the whole 40 minutes he was in there. My favorite part of the conversation was about his plans for secondary school (high school): He doesn’t want to take Khoekhoe in secondary school because the teacher is mean. Instead he wants to take the Afrikaans option. But he’s upset because his mother won’t let him take Afrikaans. He said, “My mother tells me that I will pick up Afrikaans in the street. But I go out in the street and no one is out there teaching it. Even yesterday, she tells me that I can learn Afrikaans in the street and I go outside and there is no one, Miss. I don’t know how I am going to learn Afrikaans in the street if no one is out on my street teaching it.” All I could picture was him going outside everyday looking for an impromptu classroom set in the middle of the dirt road. I thought about explaining the phrase “on the street” but decided against it. He’s so good at English already he’ll figure it out soon enough.
A little later, Elma came in. Elma is another favorite because she never gives up. She’s in my math class. In math class, I try to get them to work faster by giving a sticker to the first four or five who finish their problems. Elma gets so excited she’ll raise her hand to show me each step of the problem she writes, just in case she accidentally wrote the answer and she’s inadvertently won a sticker. She has a lot of problems with columns (you know, not adding in a diagonal) and multiplication (for some reason 6 times 0 equals 6 no matter how many times we practice it) so she only has four or five stickers in her book. But that doesn’t get her down. No sir-ee, she just works harder. That sticker is hers; Miss Jessica just doesn’t know it yet.
Elma is also in our girls’ club. The very first girls’ club, we had the girls decorate their journals with some markers that Jill got in a package from home. Most of the girls copied drawings from each other or had the one good artist draw for them (they’re so afraid that they might mess up, they’d rather not risk it). But not Elma. No, Elma took the full time allotted. Elma used every color in the box. And I’m not exactly sure what Elma drew but it’s really colorful and really enthusiastic and it’s a hell of a lot more exciting than the other girls’ journals.
Anyway, Elma came in and she wanted to know about the last girls’ club meeting next week. Yesterday, I made the announcement that the last girls’ club would be on Thursday next week and that we would do something fun. The words “something fun” were then run through the middle school gossip gamut and reached Elma’s ears as “a great big party with lots and lots of food”. I tried to explain to Elma that we weren’t having a party but it just wasn’t getting through. So, then I switched to explaining that the meeting would be a “tiny party”. She kept asking why we couldn’t have a big party. She even suggested we take up a donation. It took her a few moments to calculate how much money we would have for our big party if everyone brought in a dollar… she used her fingers and looked up and the ceiling… We would have… 2… 5… 9! We would have 9 dollars for our big party! …We have 13 girls in our club. I’m not sure where 9 came from. Finally, I explained that we just couldn’t do a big party. It was going to have to be a tiny tiny party – like the size of my fingernail. She looked at my fingernail really closely and then said, “oh” and looked a little sad. I said, “Its ok. It’ll be like Wooo!” and put my hands in the air like a roller coaster. Hesitantly, she mimicked me, “Woo?” and kept her hands in the air as she looked at me for approval. “Exactly,” I said. Hands straight up in the air in a Charlie-Brown-good-grief fashion, she walked out of the library she practiced her, “Woo” – it was still a little half-hearted. Then, from down the corridor I heard “Woo!!” and knew she had gotten it… I am SO looking forward to our fingernail-sized party next week. You have no idea.
Well, TGIF. Plus? One more week of teaching! Then, two weeks of exams. Then, Merry Christmas to me – I don’t have to go to school for a month and a half! Woot.
November 18th
End of the year exams started today. All of my classes take their exams today or tomorrow. It’s really nice that way because I’ll finish all my work this week. Then next week I can visit some other volunteers for Thanksgiving and focus on making my house into a fortress for the Christmas month. We don’t have a lot to steal, but we also don’t have a lot of money to replace things that are stolen. An ounce of prevention…
… I don’t really know the end of that saying.
I wasn’t allowed to invigilate today because the learners were writing my exam. So instead I cleaned my corner of the library so I would have a place to mark the exams when they were finished. In the library, I have a learner’s desk and a learner’s chair tucked behind the checkout counter for my workspace. The desktop doesn’t really attach to the metal frame below. I never really thought it was weird until today when the whole desk collapsed with my papers on it. Guess it serves me right for laughing at the learners that had similar troubles all year.
But while I was cleaning up all of my papers, I found some old papers I hadn’t returned to the learners yet. Two of them had answers that I had to share with you.
Question: What are the colours in the rainbow?
Answer: Pollo and beber and rett and vaett and baroont and blue
That’s to say, yellow and purple and red and violet and blue. I’m not sure what baroont is. When I’m grading I usually have to take on a Namibian accent and read the answers aloud. Sometimes, still, I have no idea what I’m reading.
And the second,
Question: Why does your body make a shadow in the sun? (Please use the word “opaque”)
Answer: The body mas ket the energy and the word opaque.
Ha, he used the word opaque (“Mas ket” means “must get”) but I still didn’t give him credit. I was trying to get him to use one of the properties of light – light beams travels in straight lines. And at the same time, make him remember the vocabulary – opaque and translucent. But, while wrong, I do admire the creativity that went into his answer. And the word opaque.
In some ways I’m going to miss my grade 7 classes a lot. They’re growing up and moving on to secondary school. They were with me through all of my learning experiences (like when I discovered that you can’t lean on a learner’s desk when you come over to help them – you end up falling along with the desk. Or the time I learned that a crazy man lives in the boys bathroom – he’s perfectly friendly but gets a little too curious about new teachers). They’ve been gracious in a lot of ways and, overall, they’ve been good sports about the whole cross-cultural science experiment. But in other ways, I’m excited for a new year and some new experiences.
Well, I’m ending it here. I’ve got less than a month before I get to visit America for Christmas. I’m really excited for friends and family and a hair cut (October 2007 was my last) and fresh fruit and cold cold cold weather (it’s around 130F today, so “cold” isn’t hard to achieve). Never fear, though, I’ll be back to write in January again.
And for those of you who continue to read my ramblings and opinions and random stories, I really appreciate it. You’ve been reading for over a year and you don’t think I’m crazy yet. Or you do and you’re just being polite. But either way, thanks for listening.
(I get really excited about dates lately… they seem to come as a surprise to me most of the time)
Well, the good news is that October 30th is right in the middle of Nam 27’s Week O’One Year Anniversaries. The celebration mostly just includes Facebook updates and SMSes about what we were doing one year ago – who we met first, who we thought was crazy, how many times we broke down crying/freaking out/calling home, how great per diem was when it was in American dollars instead of Nam dollars, etc. The week started on October 28th, when all the west coasters were flown to DC for PC staging on the 29th. The group flew out of DC on October 31st and finally made to Namibia on November 2nd. And the rest is history. Well at least until January 9th. That’s when we became real volunteers. And that anniversary means I’ll only have 11 months left.
The bad news is that October 30th means that it’s Namibian springtime, which really means its summertime. Make sense? No? Let me try explaining another way: I’m in an oven. At first this weather wasn’t so bad. It was just searing sun. When I went inside, it was easy to cool down. Now, the heat follows me everywhere. It’s because of the humidity. Recently the clouds came back and added humidity to my life. I thought maybe I was being a wimp because it’s probably only about 1.1% more humidity than normal. And being springtime, there are still a lot of pleasant days. But on bad days, by adding that extra stuffy humidity to the regular 125-degree weather, I think I’m going to pass out in class if I talk too loud.
Today was actually a bad day weather-wise. I was sweating in the morning meeting at 7am. When it’s this hot the learners actually do pass out, sleeping. At first, I thought that this was unacceptable. I would wake them up and insist that they participate in class. Now, I just let them sleep. Honestly? It’s the best thing for everyone. Over the past two days, I’ve seen more acts of violence in the school than all of term 2. Kids are just irritable.
Actually, violence is typical at school. It’s all pretty tame violence though, if there is such a thing. Everyday, at least 5 to 35 times, I hear, “Miss, this one is beating me!” or “I’m going to beat that one!!!”- Which is usually accompanied by a unique to Namibia pointing-glaring combination to ensure that I understand which child they are about to beat. In January, I was lucky enough to come across Appropriate Touch in the Health portion of the Natural Science Curriculum. One of the solutions grade 7 thought of to deal with inappropriate touch was to move away. Even though I had only been teaching for a week or so at that time, I could already tell peer beating was a problem that I wasn’t going to be able to put a scratch in by myself. So I took the opportunity to make them put down their pens, fold their hands (how I make them show they’re listening to me) and listen to my mini lecture. Ahem:
“If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, or bad…”
(I usually say the big word first, then the easy synonym second).
“You should MOVE AWAY! Don’t keep staying by that person. If someone is beating you or not respecting you, MOVE AWAY! Even in this class, move away! Lift up your hand and tell me that you need to move. Don’t sit there. Move! …”
I’m all about taking control of your own destiny. Since that lecture, its not uncommon for me to be writing on the board and turn around to see a learner holding his desk – “Miss, I need to move away.” And he’ll shuffle his desk over to the other side of the classroom. It’s hard not to laugh because they’re so cute. But I try to stifle the laughing because they’re also usually really angry at whomever they’re moving away from. I just get so proud when they choose to take the high road. It’s rare and it takes a self-restraint that they don’t have much practice with.
Anyway, all that’s to say, there hasn’t been much moving away the past couple of days. Yesterday was the big blowout. We have a break from 10:00 to 10:30. It’s “required” for all the teachers to come to the staff room during break in case there is an accidental meeting during that half hour. I kid you not – “Some information may slip out during that time and all teachers must be present if there is something important said”. I like to gamble and skip. Some teachers don’t gamble at all, they just don’t care if something important is said and they don’t come. Others have teamed up with their friends and one of them has to go every other day and then relay the important information, if any, to the absent friend (Now seeing how there are 20 teachers all together, I don’t see how this relaying information thing would be so hard to establish school-wide… especially since small boys are sent with all note carrying/message delivering matters anyway. The teachers wouldn’t even have to stand up).
So, we’re all sitting in the staff room during break and there are movie-quality shrieks out of the window. I look through the lace curtains and only see a lot of dust and a sea of blue uniforms. I turned and looked back at the teachers. One of the teachers takes a bite of his mayonnaise and margarine sandwich. He says over the bite, “Oh, they’re fighting” and then continues chewing. No one else even blinks. Trying to make more sense of the situation, I walked out of the office block to the courtyard of the school. Sure enough, there was a fight of over a hundred kids in progress. One of the prefects (handily wearing a white uniform shirt for easy identification) was standing there to inform me calmly, “Miss they are fighting”. I said, “No, really?” before I realized that my sarcasm doesn’t fly here. She said, “It’s true, miss”. And I said, “hmm”. I think what surprised me the most was that I wasn’t that surprised.
Maybe a minute later, the teacher with the mayonnaise-margarine sandwich came out, casually wiping his hands with a dishcloth. He said something to the prefects standing around and pointed to the bustling crowd. The prefects ran off into the fight. A few seconds later the intense crowd broke into smaller fights and soon kids were just standing around looking angry – the prefects were still hanging onto the shirt tails of a few of the most guilty contenders. About that time, a few more teachers came out of the office block waving sticks and yelling in their Damara angry voices.
Damara angry voices are truly a trait worthy of awe. 60% of the women and girls I know here are capable of this tone. Never have I experienced a tone of voice that I would believe is literally poisonous. You can almost see the green cloud of toxins coming from the person using this tone of voice. Really, an inspiring tool in the area of crowd control. But definitely not one I envy. The teachers were yelling in their angry voices and waving sticks around the courtyard. Less than 30 seconds later, the kids were in perfect lines, boys and girls, outside their classrooms waiting for class to start again. Even the dust took longer to settle than the kids. Unbelievable.
Actually, a school-wide fight is pretty believable here if it weren’t for the two things that happened later.
Later in the day, I passed a crowd of teachers and a grade five learner on the sidewalk. They were using their Damara angry voices so I just kept walking, as usual. A few minutes later, one of the same teachers came into the office behind me. She was talking to me about Peace Corps and how they had called earlier that day. As she was talking, she pulled out a phone recharge card and started to scratch off the silver layer over the number. She tried her fingernail first but it wasn’t working so she pulled out a big flip knife (I don’t know anything about knives, but it was big) and started scratching with that. I said, “uuuuuuuuuuumm. Ahem.” And pointed to the knife. The teacher said, “Oh, that boy brought it to school today” and then waved the knife around in a displeased manner and went back to the phone charger. That was it. Angry poison voices, taking the knife away and sending the kid back to class! Unbelievable.
Luckily, the knife thing was towards the end of school. And also luckily, it was Wednesday so I didn’t have to go back for study. I just sat in front of my fan all afternoon. I loooooooove my fan. Love it.
This morning was pretty calm. In my third class of the day, I was doing a serious lecture about finding the area of a rectangle. I had to keep talking louder and louder because the kids next door were making so much noise. A few months ago, one of the teachers told me I needed to take more initiative in discipline and general order around the school. I do have a tendency to ignore things that don’t have anything to do with me. That’s a very American thing to do. Plus, I’m really quiet compared to most of the learners and teachers here. So, keeping the more initiative suggestion in mind, I left a practice problem for my class on the board and headed next door.
A girl was standing in the door. It was a grade 5 class. Apparently, I look like I need the obvious explained to me because the girl said, “Miss, they’re fighting”. Then? She laughed! I looked around the room and everyone was enjoying themselves! And in the very center were a boy and a girl fighting. I thought, more initiative! So I walked over and grabbed their arms and pulled them apart. It didn’t do much though because they just twisted free and kept fighting. This fight was something else. I wanted to look around the room to make sure there were no cameras – it almost seemed scripted. The boy was obviously winning. And he was obviously not going to stop. I didn’t really know what to do so I grabbed his ear and his shoulder and pulled him back. It didn’t do a single darn thing. Then, do you know what he did? He pulled free and bit into the neck of the girl he was fighting and started twisting his head back and forth trying to tear the skin.
Alright. Initiative schmitiative. I called the prefects.
Sure enough the prefects pulled them apart and carried the boy outside. I was checking the girl for blood when the class teacher came back (mayonnaise margarine man). He glazed over the class and walked to his desk and started shuffling papers… Um, excuse me? This boy just tried to exercise his canines on this girl. Both of which were hanging out in your abandoned class! Was this homework or something?
But I didn’t say that. I just walked out and went back to rectangles. I was totally traumatized. Every time I turned around to write on the board for the rest of the period I would almost start crying. I don’t understand how anyone can go to school and try to learn about rectangles when they don’t even feel safe. Obviously these kids are way tougher than I was at their age. But some degree of safety and security is needed just to be a normal person, let alone move on the other things like geometry.
I never felt in danger. I wasn’t even upset because all these things were happening in proximity to me. No one is angry at me. I give them stickers – they love me. They’re angry at each other. And the fact that no one is watching their backs is upsetting. That’s not a normal childhood – in any culture.
But, yeah, it’s been a crazy few days. In the last class of the day, half the kids fell asleep. So, I took up the papers we were working on and said, “shh, nap time. We’ll review tomorrow”. It was too long and miserable of a day for anyone to have to think about science.
November 6th 2008
Yesterday was an incredible day! With the time difference, McCain made his concession speech at about 6:00 in the morning yesterday. I got an SMS from a teacher at my school at about 6:01 that said, “Obama wins election!!!!!!” Then, not even a minute later I got an SMS from one of the Nigerian volunteers that said, “Congratulations fo d excellent manner ya country conducted her elections and d subsequent victory of B. Obama. That is why I love Americans”.
Let me tell you, I have not received that much America-love in the entire time I’ve been here. Well… that’s not entirely true. A lot of men love America. That is until I tell them I won’t marry them and buy them a plane ticket to my homeland… then they’re full of words one should never use whilst in an attempt to woo a future spouse.
Anyway, the rest of the day at school, it was easy to pick out the kids who have TVs at home. They would run up to me and say, “Miss, your country is having a new president! He’s a black man!!!!” To which, my two favorite responses were, “Oh my! I have a new president?! That’s so exciting!” and “So, what country is that exactly?” The answer to the latter was split three ways: South Africa, Germany and North America (They don’t let volunteers teach social studies… but I’m not exactly sure why because I feel that I could at least explain that just because people look alike it doesn’t mean they’re from the same country).
Kids and adults alike are equally inspired by the “son of Africa” that will be the head of the free world. I’m sure that Barak wasn’t running to please the African continent. And I’m also sure that he wasn’t elected because people in Namibia have been holding their breath since May for a black man to become the next American president. But I am sure that the soon-to-be 44th president has already restored a huge amount of faith in America from overseas.
I know that image isn’t everything. I also believe that we shouldn’t choose our leaders just because of what they look like. And I am interested with the issues and plans for the next four years. But I do want to say that, while living in an African country, I have never been so thankful that the American image has significantly improved in the course of the last three days. Earlier this year, some volunteers were on a tour of Botswana and actually got boo-ed for being American… Let’s be honest, an image boost couldn’t hurt, right?
All that’s to say, it was a good day for America across the globe… no matter who you voted for.
November 7th 2008
The new group, Nam 28 gets here today. I can’t believe it – we’re not the Peace Corps freshmen anymore. Weird.
Well, today, I had a couple of really cute conversations. The first one was with a learner named Silvanus. He is one of my favorite learners because he tries so hard.
Silvanus’s sir name ends in a B. On the other hand, his mother and sisters’ sir names end in an S. That’s the way Damara sir names work. If the family name is Gaingob, all of the sons will keep Gaingob and all of the daughters will get Gaingos. Gaeb/Gaes, Nunueb/Nunues, and Aebeb/Aebes are all family name pairs. And while Silvanus’s actual sir name ends in a B, all of the learners make fun of him by changing it to an S and calling him Miss. But Silvanus is one of my favorites because it doesn’t faze him. He usually deals with it by saying “Ai! Leave Me!” and making a waving motion – no beating or yelling as with other learners. He does have his fair share of actual friend… all of them girls though.
So, a few of the teachers were missing from work today. That usually means my library is full of learners who are bored. Silvanus was hanging out in there during an early morning period. He was looking through our new collection of Ranger Rick Magazines – donated by generous American kids. I was busy making “turn in your library books or else!” posters for every class and he was just chatting away. I don’t know if he stopped to breathe for the whole 40 minutes he was in there. My favorite part of the conversation was about his plans for secondary school (high school): He doesn’t want to take Khoekhoe in secondary school because the teacher is mean. Instead he wants to take the Afrikaans option. But he’s upset because his mother won’t let him take Afrikaans. He said, “My mother tells me that I will pick up Afrikaans in the street. But I go out in the street and no one is out there teaching it. Even yesterday, she tells me that I can learn Afrikaans in the street and I go outside and there is no one, Miss. I don’t know how I am going to learn Afrikaans in the street if no one is out on my street teaching it.” All I could picture was him going outside everyday looking for an impromptu classroom set in the middle of the dirt road. I thought about explaining the phrase “on the street” but decided against it. He’s so good at English already he’ll figure it out soon enough.
A little later, Elma came in. Elma is another favorite because she never gives up. She’s in my math class. In math class, I try to get them to work faster by giving a sticker to the first four or five who finish their problems. Elma gets so excited she’ll raise her hand to show me each step of the problem she writes, just in case she accidentally wrote the answer and she’s inadvertently won a sticker. She has a lot of problems with columns (you know, not adding in a diagonal) and multiplication (for some reason 6 times 0 equals 6 no matter how many times we practice it) so she only has four or five stickers in her book. But that doesn’t get her down. No sir-ee, she just works harder. That sticker is hers; Miss Jessica just doesn’t know it yet.
Elma is also in our girls’ club. The very first girls’ club, we had the girls decorate their journals with some markers that Jill got in a package from home. Most of the girls copied drawings from each other or had the one good artist draw for them (they’re so afraid that they might mess up, they’d rather not risk it). But not Elma. No, Elma took the full time allotted. Elma used every color in the box. And I’m not exactly sure what Elma drew but it’s really colorful and really enthusiastic and it’s a hell of a lot more exciting than the other girls’ journals.
Anyway, Elma came in and she wanted to know about the last girls’ club meeting next week. Yesterday, I made the announcement that the last girls’ club would be on Thursday next week and that we would do something fun. The words “something fun” were then run through the middle school gossip gamut and reached Elma’s ears as “a great big party with lots and lots of food”. I tried to explain to Elma that we weren’t having a party but it just wasn’t getting through. So, then I switched to explaining that the meeting would be a “tiny party”. She kept asking why we couldn’t have a big party. She even suggested we take up a donation. It took her a few moments to calculate how much money we would have for our big party if everyone brought in a dollar… she used her fingers and looked up and the ceiling… We would have… 2… 5… 9! We would have 9 dollars for our big party! …We have 13 girls in our club. I’m not sure where 9 came from. Finally, I explained that we just couldn’t do a big party. It was going to have to be a tiny tiny party – like the size of my fingernail. She looked at my fingernail really closely and then said, “oh” and looked a little sad. I said, “Its ok. It’ll be like Wooo!” and put my hands in the air like a roller coaster. Hesitantly, she mimicked me, “Woo?” and kept her hands in the air as she looked at me for approval. “Exactly,” I said. Hands straight up in the air in a Charlie-Brown-good-grief fashion, she walked out of the library she practiced her, “Woo” – it was still a little half-hearted. Then, from down the corridor I heard “Woo!!” and knew she had gotten it… I am SO looking forward to our fingernail-sized party next week. You have no idea.
Well, TGIF. Plus? One more week of teaching! Then, two weeks of exams. Then, Merry Christmas to me – I don’t have to go to school for a month and a half! Woot.
November 18th
End of the year exams started today. All of my classes take their exams today or tomorrow. It’s really nice that way because I’ll finish all my work this week. Then next week I can visit some other volunteers for Thanksgiving and focus on making my house into a fortress for the Christmas month. We don’t have a lot to steal, but we also don’t have a lot of money to replace things that are stolen. An ounce of prevention…
… I don’t really know the end of that saying.
I wasn’t allowed to invigilate today because the learners were writing my exam. So instead I cleaned my corner of the library so I would have a place to mark the exams when they were finished. In the library, I have a learner’s desk and a learner’s chair tucked behind the checkout counter for my workspace. The desktop doesn’t really attach to the metal frame below. I never really thought it was weird until today when the whole desk collapsed with my papers on it. Guess it serves me right for laughing at the learners that had similar troubles all year.
But while I was cleaning up all of my papers, I found some old papers I hadn’t returned to the learners yet. Two of them had answers that I had to share with you.
Question: What are the colours in the rainbow?
Answer: Pollo and beber and rett and vaett and baroont and blue
That’s to say, yellow and purple and red and violet and blue. I’m not sure what baroont is. When I’m grading I usually have to take on a Namibian accent and read the answers aloud. Sometimes, still, I have no idea what I’m reading.
And the second,
Question: Why does your body make a shadow in the sun? (Please use the word “opaque”)
Answer: The body mas ket the energy and the word opaque.
Ha, he used the word opaque (“Mas ket” means “must get”) but I still didn’t give him credit. I was trying to get him to use one of the properties of light – light beams travels in straight lines. And at the same time, make him remember the vocabulary – opaque and translucent. But, while wrong, I do admire the creativity that went into his answer. And the word opaque.
In some ways I’m going to miss my grade 7 classes a lot. They’re growing up and moving on to secondary school. They were with me through all of my learning experiences (like when I discovered that you can’t lean on a learner’s desk when you come over to help them – you end up falling along with the desk. Or the time I learned that a crazy man lives in the boys bathroom – he’s perfectly friendly but gets a little too curious about new teachers). They’ve been gracious in a lot of ways and, overall, they’ve been good sports about the whole cross-cultural science experiment. But in other ways, I’m excited for a new year and some new experiences.
Well, I’m ending it here. I’ve got less than a month before I get to visit America for Christmas. I’m really excited for friends and family and a hair cut (October 2007 was my last) and fresh fruit and cold cold cold weather (it’s around 130F today, so “cold” isn’t hard to achieve). Never fear, though, I’ll be back to write in January again.
And for those of you who continue to read my ramblings and opinions and random stories, I really appreciate it. You’ve been reading for over a year and you don’t think I’m crazy yet. Or you do and you’re just being polite. But either way, thanks for listening.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
There's Dust In My Nose: A Memoir by Jessica Royer. Maybe?
26-09-08
It’s been a long long time since I’ve written. I’d like to take that as a sign that I’ve become more comfortable and busy here. I remember in January and February, I would have to pace my day so that I wouldn’t run out things to do. If I was walking home from school and I got an SMS, I would wait until I got home to read it. If I was cooking something on the stovetop, I would stir it while I waited instead of cleaning the preparations dishes. I couldn’t do two things at one time or I may run out of things to do that day. It’s a burden of being a fast worker, American, and completely without family and friends to distract you.
But, I got over it. And here I am begging for time to sit and stare at the walls or to read a whole book in one day. I still have a lot of free time on the weekends, which I love. But weekdays are filled with school and meetings about school and clubs and grading papers and organizing my file (an absurd collection of papers required by the Ministry of Education. I have yet to meet one single person who sings The File’s praises).
At school, we’re in the third trimester. This trimester started on September 1st with a Khorixas cluster meeting. As always, these meetings are informative and motivational and a completely blatant reminder that I am a terrible terrible mingler – you see, we have to stand outside and wait anywhere from one hour to three hours for these meetings to start. The men and the women usually separate into two groups to talk about the holiday and gossip, etc. This is usually the first thing that confuses the mingler in me. I work with the men because they are all the upper primary teachers, grades 5 -7. They are usually the most welcoming of foreigners, also. They told me it was because the women are threatened by English… But they also told me that women aren’t good at science and math. So, what do they know? And the group of women is all the lower primary teachers. They’re nice enough when I try to talk to them. But when I walk up, the conversation stops so that everyone can look at me while their eyes inquire, “what do you want?” Hanging out with the women at my school requires being in a certain mood because they treat me like a child. They call me “ti oa”, meaning my child. They’ll tell me how I’m getting fat. They’ll tell me that I got a pimple because I ate too much chocolate. Or how my hairs are looking like a horses tail. Or they’ll tell me how to iron my clothes that I can be more presentable next time… I can’t even imagine growing up here. They’re earnestly trying to help. I think. But it does require a certain kind of mood.
The first week of the trimester was a little slow. On the first teaching day of a trimester (usually a Tuesday), I’m lucky to get half of each class back. And I’m even luckier if we actually hold school with the learners who are there. This particular Tuesday we chose to clean the school instead. The learners who don’t show up to school are missing for any number of reasons: They could’ve dropped out of school. They’re still at the farm working and their family does not currently have enough money to pay for a taxi to take their child back to school. Or, my personal favorite, “they are just now remembering to find the donkeys from the field to pull the cart”.
It was ok that the first week was so slow because I used the spare time to get ready for the National Science Fair. The Kunene Region Ministry of Education (Kunene is one of the 13 regions in Namibia and it contains Khorixas) had this brilliant idea to have all the Kunene kids just bring the papers from their board and not the actual board that the papers are displayed on. At first, I thought this was a good idea because the boards I had made were fair quality for the materials I had available - there was a lot of duct tape. But they weren’t exactly my idea of award winning material. When we actually got to the fair and Kunene passed out the new boards for the kids, I wished whole-heartedly that we had my duct-taped boards. I think the “new” boards had been used for three or four science fairs before ours. And maybe a few roller derbies and monster truck rallies too… I distinctly remember footprints… and burn marks…
Anyway, I spent the first week of school with a stick of glue, a paper cutter and 6 young Namibian scientists – Olivia, Wynand, Cynthia, Katrina, Kennedy and Losia. Then, on Monday morning of the second week of school, a minibus owned by the Ministry of Education motored into our Monday morning school assembly held out in front of the school. The little lower primary school kids scattered so they wouldn’t get run over by Torro – our amazing Ministry driver (He actually is amazing but pedestrians, even tiny tot pedestrians at their morning school assembly, NEVER have the right of way in Namibia). And the upper primary kids took the opportunity to have a spontaneous dance party to the music blaring from the minibus speakers. The minibus already had all the Secondary school kids going from Khorixas. They loaded up our 6 kids. The Kunene Ministry had chosen two teachers from our region to accompany the learners to the science fair. Our learners were the youngest of the group – all the others were around grade 10. But the region didn’t choose anyone from our school to watch over the six youngins. So my principal offered to have to school pay for my trip there.
The science fair was held at Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek. It was the 6th Annual fair, I believe. When we arrived that Monday afternoon, it was a flurry of registration and set up. I helped my 6 kids set up their 3 projects. We did the best we could with foot printed, burned boards. Actually, there was a really dark hour in the whole afternoon when Olivia and Wynand did not find their name on any registration sheet. Then, once I cleaned up that error, we returned to find that their boards had been stolen. Luckily, the actual report was still there. So in the end, I would say we all got to prove our resourcefulness by producing a project board out of nothing... And I had even left my duct tape at home. It all turned out OK. But, really thought? Who steals a science poster board with footprints on it from a couple of thirteen-year-old kids?
The kids and I were staying at different youth hostels, so I met them on Tuesday morning back at the fair. Katrina and Cynthia were so excited to tell me about driving to their youth hostel the night before. They said that Windhoek look like “the stars had fallen”. It’s true; the lights in the city are beautiful, especially when you haven’t seen that sort of thing in awhile. Tuesday was actually a really boring day. Three different judges judged each project. The kids had to sit in front of their project from 9am until 4pm waiting to be judged. The day felt stressful though because the two teachers assigned to accompany the kids were scarce to be found. I spent most of the day putting out fires for the Kunene kids. I started the day by telling the learners, “Go find your teacher and tell them”. But that answer eventually turned into, “Alright, I’ll take care of it” when I realized sending them away would only mean I would have to listen to the problem twice.
Wednesday morning we all got a chance to go into to town and explore. The 6 Eddie Bowe kids decided to stick together. And they also decided to let me choose where to go. That was too much pressure for me, so I made them vote at every turn. Torro dropped us at a place called Werne Hill, said “vern hill”. It’s a small mall that is attached to an outdoor mall called Post Street Mall. Post Street Mall is a long, wide sidewalk with stores and restaurants. At the far end of Post Street is the famous Zoo Park. Zoo Park is settled on a hill. It has Palm trees, Ancient elephant remains, an amphitheater and a swing set. But Zoo Park in missing one obvious thing: A zoo! People often realize this after they’ve spent an hour or so searching the park for animals and only coming across a couple of lizards. I have yet to research the actual meaning behind the park’s name. Instead I revel in the absurdity of it all. At the top of the hill that Zoo Park sits on is a historic church. I’ve been told the story behind the church a few times but it went in one ear and out the other. There’s probably a photo of it on 45% of the webpages about Namibia though. So, feel free to research. Then, a little farther beyond that is the Namibian Parliament Building, which, along with housing the Namibian Parliament, also boasts one of my favorite views of Windhoek.
So, We get out of Torro’s Minibus – 6 grade school kids from Khorixas wearing bright yellow shirts and blue Eddie Bowe jackets and me.
Vote 1: Upstairs Werne Hill or Down stairs?
Majority says: Upstairs. So, I steer the crowd towards the escalator and hop on. I glance behind me and realize that my kids have never been on an escalator before. Katrina’s eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them before. Wynand is running up and down and up and down and annoying the man in a business suit riding behind him. Kennedy can’t quite figure out where to put his feet and Olivia has to catch him before he falls and gets escalator burn. Magically, we all make it to the top safely and with most of our pride still intact.
Vote 2: Ice Cream store or Music store?
Majority says: Ice cream! Soft serve is 5 Namibian dollars.
Vote 3: Stay in Werne Hill or go outside to Post Street?
Majority says: Post Street. We wander down Post Street mall. I’m amazed at how few people bug me. When I walk down Post Street by myself, all the street vendors constantly call for me to look at their crafts. When I walk down Post Street with my kids, the vendors barely lift a lazy eye to make sure my kids aren’t trying to abscond with their crafts. I guess we just don’t ring “tourists” as much as I do by myself.
Vote 4: Stay in Post Street or hit Zoo Park? Footnote: No, kids, there is no zoo.
Majority says: let’s go find the animals! I grab Kennedy’s backpack to keep his over enthusiastic little legs from running ahead and we all cross the street into Zoo Park. In Zoo park, we find the swings and see saw. We also find the amphitheater where Gaza performs on NBC (Namibian Broadcasting Company). Gaza is one of the Namibian singers I actually know. I see “GMP 4 life” written on kids’ assignments all the time. It means Gaza Music Production. Gaza is a popular guy and seeing the stage where he performs is a big deal.
Vote 5: Go back to shop at Werne Hill or go to the top of the hill for the view?
Majority says: As high as we can go! The kids and I start up the steep hill towards the old church and Parliament. The hill deters a few so we have to take vote 5 over again to make sure the kids want to keep going. After we pass the church, we have to enter into the gardens surrounding the Parliament building. We all pause for a moment to observe the sign leading into the garden. The kids are busy deciphering the pictures on the sign: no dogs, no sleeping, so bikes, no skates, no soccer, no hunting, no running, no jumping, no skipping, no breathing, no laughing, no fun… ok maybe not, but the sign sure kills the mood. We walk quietly through the large garden like we do not belong and someone will remember that we don’t belong at any moment. We walk until we reach the steps up to the Parliament building. My question to the kids: Who do you think can run to the top first? Everyone is off like a shot. I was surprised that I wasn’t the last one to reach the top. We all turn and face the view. It is beautiful. At least to me. But I don’t think it’s enough for the kids. Wynand turns and looks at Parliament then he looks at me. “Miss, can we go in?” I peak inside the building. It’s marble and official looking. I tell Wynand that he is a citizen of Namibia and as a citizen he had a right to see the building. Wynand takes the next vote.
Vote 6: Go inside or continue to cower outside?
Majority says: We’re young political activist! I’m looking at my watch and realizing that we only have 40 minutes to make it all the way back to Torro before he leaves us on the townside and goes in search of some meat to eat for lunch. But we all file into Parliament anyway. All we see is a tiny room, a tiny woman and a big metal detector and bag scanner. The woman looks at us blankly. It takes a beat before I can try to explain. “Um, we’re at the National Science Fair this week. We’re on a break right now while the judges are working and, well, we came here. And we just wanted to see inside. And, um, this is inside. Um…” The woman looks at me, blinks, silent for a little while longer and finally says she’s just going to call someone. Great, someone could be anyone. Who is someone? After she gets off the phone, Wynand’s curiosity continues and he insists the woman x-ray his backpack, his jacket, Kennedy’s backpack and jersey, Katrina’s bag, Losia’s bag and Cynthia’s jersey. All the things look the same in the X-ray but the awe is equally great for all the objects. I hear him say, “Oh, that could be a gun. It’s the right shape.” He says this about Losia’s bag. I’m rubbing my temples, imagining what’s coming next: newspaper headlines, “6 Future Namibian Scientists Aid Peace Corps Worker in Storming Parliament With Gun-Shaped Pencils and Straws”.
Finally our Someone arrives. He says he is going to take us on a tour of Parliament. I make all my kids file through the medal detector and into the next room. I was last through the medal detector and set it off with my cell phone. This requires me to walk through again without my cell phone and tell my kids numerous times that, no, I can’t walk through just to make the noise again. Olivia says, “What person thinks of such things? You cannot even see the phone on the person but the thing can.” Our tour guide leads us around the building and explains all the rooms. The room where parliament meets is the biggest attraction. The kids have seen the room on TV and they have seen it on a poster that is displayed in almost every school. But they have never imagined that they would be standing in the very center of the room. 6 VIP guests to Parliament. They all sort of wander around the room in a glazed-over awe. Kennedy lightly grabs the gavel on the front desks. Wynand quickly walks over and takes it from his hand makes slight adjustments to it until it looks precisely as it did when we arrived. Our Tour Guide concludes the tour by looking at me and telling me I may take a picture now. I start to explain that I didn’t know I was coming to Parliament that day but instead decided to just say that I don’t have a camera – I mean, who accidentally winds up in the Namibian Parliament building on a random Wednesday?
We all file out into the hallway as we wait for our guide to lock up the meeting room. The kids gather in front of the elevator. They are speaking in Damara but I gather that they’re asking what it is. Our tour guide walked up and presses the up arrow. The elevator opens almost immediately. It’s one of those elevators with a mirrored wall on the back. The 8 of us just stare at ourselves on the back wall. Our tour guide finally tells the kids to go in. The kids all take an internal vote and decide that they are not budging. The door closes. The guide presses the up arrow again and the door opens again. Go in, he says. Wynand says, “I don’t take risks, sir.” (We all know that’s not true). So the guide nudges Kennedy, Olivia, Losia and Katrina in. He reaches around and presses the button that says 1. The door closes. I hear some faint whimpering. We hear the “ding” and move around a corner so we can see the balcony above us. Four kids come spilling out of the elevator. Our tour guide has to walk up the stairs and steer their shaky legs down to the ground floor. Olivia tells me, “Miss, I could not figure out where you were hiding when the door opened again”. Losia tells me, “Katrina was crying for Miss Jessica the whole time: ‘Miss! Miss! Miss!’” Katrina tells me, “No, Miss! It’s not true”. Kennedy tells me, “Miss, I wanted to cry”.
I thanked our guide. We all maneuvered back through the medal detector. I looked at my watch. We had 5 minutes to make it through the fun-sucking Parliament garden, the old church, Zoo Park, Post Street Mall, Werne Hill, The Escalator of Death and back to the Minibus. We book it. I hold Kennedy’s backpack the whole time. I refuse to loose one to traffic – the pedestrian always looses in Namibia. It took us ten minutes to make it through the whole path. The escalator took a long time to get down – Did you know that you have to go up one escalator and down a completely different escalator? Hmm, who knew? Not my kids. We made it all the way out to Torro. And he had not left us. In fact, welcome to Namibia, we had to sit there for another 15 minutes before we actually left.
Wednesday night was the award ceremony. There were a limited number of chairs. So my kids, resourceful as they are, scavenge for a folding table that they place against the back wall for us to sit on. Medals were given to projects that earned a certain percentage. The Kunene region won 6 bronze medals and 2 silver medals. Kennedy and Losia were the only two from our school to earn a medal – Bronze. The ceremony continues for hours and hours and hours. I can see my kids becoming more and more restless.
Thursday morning, Torro comes to pick me up at my youth hostel. All the youth Hostel workers come into the common area asking, “who’s going to Khorixas?” It’s amazing how much more interest workers take in you when they find out you’re staying in the country. The guard takes the opportunity to ask who I know in Khorixas. In the end, he decides it doesn’t matter and I should just tell everyone in Khorixas that Randy says hi. “Oh, it’s your place?” is the correct way to ask if he’s from there. “Yes, It’s my place.” Randy says and finally lets me go to deliver his message to his place.
Back at school, the teachers were excited to have something to show for their kids’ efforts. Kennedy and Losia got to wear their medals around school for the morning. I think it was a good experience for the kids (And I think that we’ll be more prepared for next year. Wynand told me that he’s traveling back from secondary school (grade 8) next year so I can help him with his project on weekends). But overall, the experience was a little hard for me to watch. When all 13 regions come together it is so obvious to which ones are more privileged than others. For example, the two regions that won the most medals were the regions that include Windhoek and Swakop. Their projects were easy to pick out from the group because they boasted laptops, microscopes, elaborate models and wooden backboards. My kids barely noticed the difference between their boards and the fancy ones. And they learned a lot by investigating the microscopes and playing on the laptops. It’s all a learning experience – for everyone.
Since the science fair, I’ve just been biding time at site. We finished the fourth week of school today, and I’m already behind on the syllabus. I’m really enjoying the subject matter, though. We’re working on forces and energy in science. And before that we had a week of insects. I send all of grade seven out to catch an insect to draw into their notebooks. I thought each group might catch one or two – instead they all filled the jars I gave them. My kids have some of the strangest talents. And it’s always a joy to discover them.
Last weekend we hosted a sports tournament for primary schools in the area. Since our school was hosting, each teacher had a job. I was in charge of concessions. I sold NikNaks, small candies, coke, beer, and oranges from 8am until 6:30pm. The concessions worker also gets to be in charge of the stereo system. Anything with a guitar is “white people music”. Gaza and The Dogg are always acceptable. Rhianna (-ella, -ella, -ella), Shakira (I beg to differ – the hips can lie), Justin (two years later, Sexy sure is a slow traveler…), Sean Kingston (my favorite: Me Love), P Diddy, Alicia Keys (I can’t stand her) and R Kelly are all good. I could have played the song “It’s too late to Apologize” the entire day and the kids would have been happy (and I would have been entertained – imagine adolescent boys trying to hit those notes while thinking that the stereo is loud enough to cover their singing… it wasn’t… I could still hear them).
Before I go, I have two more things to tell you: 1) Khorixas got a paved road! Well, we already had one paved road that ran into town from Outjo and out of town towards Twelfontein and the Skeleton Coast. But this new one forms a horseshoe from town into the location, around the Ministry of Education and back to town. When I came back to Khorixas just before school started, they had cleared those stretches of dirt road. I got a little suspicious. Then, that week, they completed most of the road. My supervisor was late to work everyday because they started on both sides of the horseshoe at the same time. People who lived in town had to drive/walk/cart almost out of town before they could find a drivable road into the location. I love this place.
And 2) I went to South Africa in August! It was fun. It was rainy. It was artsy and western. I wore converse. I bought a scarf (Namibian cold isn’t real cold). I saw the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. I visited the penguins. I “climbed” table mountain… Well, I climbed the stairs to the tram that took me to the top. I stayed in a fancy hotel with a fancy bathroom and filter coffee every morning. I watched a movie being made outside my hotel – it was about Christmas. There was a lot of fake snow, props, huge wreaths, food service and a big statue of Santa that people cautiously ventured from our hotel to get their photo with. I tasted wine with a bunch of old tourist and had a blast. The over 60 crowd knows how to party in the wine cellar. I went to 3 movies. Count them, 3. I sat in 60% of the bookstores in Cape Town. “Where’s Fiction?” I ate Subway and McDonalds! Fantastic! I saw GAP jeans for sale. Two words: Haagen Dazs. Three scoops, please. We made a Nelson Mandela history pit stop. Throw two 18-hour bus rides on top, a side of food poisoning (short lived. I survived) and a couple of Mojitos and you’ve got yourself a genuine SA experience.
Yeah, Cape Town was epic.
October 4, 2008
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot. It’s a side effect of all Peace Corps service, I hear. But, I seem to be on memoir streak. First I read about Augusten Borough’s childhood and subsequent struggle with alcoholism in “Running with Scissors” and “Dry”. And, most recently, I started another book about a childhood gone awry called, “The Liar’s Club”. But before that I read a memoir about a PCV in Zaire called, “The Ponds of Kalambayi”.
The Ponds of Kalambayi was written about a Peace Corps service between 1985 and 1987. The Volunteers name was Mike and he was sent to Zaire to teach locals how to raise tilapia in man-made fish ponds (meaning, dug with a shovel by one person). I found myself jealous of Mike as I read. His Peace Corps service included a lot of things I hadn’t even considered for mine. First, he was teaching people how to make and stock fishponds. That job inherently has immediate results. A pond could be made in two weeks with intense manual labor. The fruit of all that work was obvious – a big gleaming water-filled pond. In stark contrast, I look at my job and feel like nothing is happening. I daily fill out endless Lesson Plan forms. I spend break times and afternoons talking and hanging out with 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old Namibians. I spend class times saying, “listen” and forcing 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-old Namibians to write endless notes about natural science and math. This is all work that could be done by anyone. And I am not anymore equipped to deal with the job than any other trained Namibian. In fact, maybe the opposite. The kids frequently teach me something – “no, miss, THIS is the test book. THAT is the exercise book.” or, on a lesson about Energy and Fossil Fuels, “Miss, we DO have a coal mine. In Tsumeb.”
Second, Mike got a ten-week training in the local language (after a ten-week training in Fish farming). And, then, The SHOW-OFF, became fluent in the tribal language and ONLY conversed in it. Ugh. I’m an utter failure.
These are the Damara phrases I know:
Matisa = How are you?
!Gai i ge a = I’m good.
!Gai Tses = Good Afternoon/day
Tita ge Donkey //gani !gaibahe tama = I don’t like donkey meat
Marie aute re = give me money
Marie uha tama ta ha = I don’t have money
/u = white person
/usa = you are white (thanks for the reminder)
Toilet sa mapa ha? = …
And, most important for encountering drunk men in the street:
/Nam sida ge a = I love you
Tita ge Khoeba uha = I already have a boyfriend (lies!)
I like to fool myself into thinking that I can follow the drift of a conversation in Damara. But to be honest I only follow conversations where people are discussing where they left there keys, whether the white person is getting fatter or where they are recounting ages, phone numbers, house numbers, amounts of money or how many fingers they have on their left hand (Goro. Usually).
Third, he was a volunteer in the 80’s in the inner part of the continent. In the 80’s, Peace Corps volunteers were allowed to drive! Unthinkable these days. And Zaire, I feel is probably worse off than Namibia. Namibia borders South Africa. They have a university in Windhoek. They have a steady government and economy. And, chances are, if Peace Corps withdrew entirely from the country, they would be all right – just in my personal opinion.
All this is to say that the book really got me thinking about my current situation. Far too often, I let my mind wander to the ever-present thought, “What am I doing here?” And far too often, I can’t think of an answer. Lately, my inability to conjure an acceptable answer has been compounded by the fear that I am actually becoming a worse person in my time here – I have never said “no” so many times in my life: No, I will not buy you bread. No, I will not let you come in and eat from my cupboard. No, I will not do your work/lesson plans/laundry for you. No, I will not leave you my cell phone when I go back. No, I do not want to “know” you. No, I will not push your broken car to town. And, no, you cannot have a dollar. Why? Because if I gave you a dollar I would have to give one to the 82 children standing behind you with their palms outstretched and, worse, would only enforce the “fact” that white people will give you money so you should ask EVERY opportunity you get.
See, complicated, right? All this has led me to believe two things. 1) That Jill’s friend back home was completely right when he said, you have to think of Peace Corps as a nice cultural exchange and that it. Thanks for sharing. And 2) I need to stop reading memoirs. Especially by RPCVs.
But, as I was reading the Ponds of Kalambayi, I came across some sections that I could totally relate to. And, even though Mike was serving 20 years before me and in a poorer region of the continent, maybe African culture has a lot of things in common all over this huge expanse of land. So, here I leave you, post-rant, with some quotes from my latest memoir:
“Like most people who go overseas to do development work, I did so expecting to find out what it’s like to be poor. But awakening to my surroundings after a few months, I discovered that’s not what happened. Instead you learn what it’s like to be rich, to be fabulously, incomprehensibly, bloated with wealth.”
“That I could go an entire week and not wear the same shirt twice was, in this African setting, the gleaming pinnacle of affluence… In a strange way, this consequence of poverty proved useful to me when I arrived in Kalambayi. It helped me remember people. If I forgot faces, I could often place names simply by using clothes as memory cues.”
“Eager to get to work and confident (naively) of Peace Corps’ judgment, I decided not to worry”
“Many times while I was in Africa the hardships I saw forced me to rework my understanding of what hell must be like”
“In Africa, children are the central, insuperable, all-important fact. They roam everywhere, five to every parent… so many children were there in every village that at the slightest spectacle – a soccer game, a heated argument, a fallen tree blocking the road – they appeared in droves this way, attaching themselves like barnacles to whatever was happening.”
“Play sessions never lasted more than thirty minutes, however, because an enormous wave of other children would quickly arrive… the children seemed to emanate from nowhere, popping out from behind cornstalks, dropping from trees, emerging from thin air. They came and came, dozens of them, until there were more than I could count. ‘Swing me! Swing me!’ they would roar simultaneously, standing together in my yard as if part of a clamorous crowd scene in some epic meeting. With tiny hands pulling me in every direction, I would start backing up towards my door”
“The local system worked. Everyone was taken care of. Everyone did stay afloat.”
“Above the horizon, the sun hung orange-pink, soft and perfect, coloring the valley with that lustrous final light that made ‘even ugly people look beautiful.’ Soon the orb sank behind a low ridge, passing with such a speed that, watching, you could almost feel the earth turning and hear the creak of it unfathomable weight. Africa was sliding beyond the gaze of the sun."
It’s been a long long time since I’ve written. I’d like to take that as a sign that I’ve become more comfortable and busy here. I remember in January and February, I would have to pace my day so that I wouldn’t run out things to do. If I was walking home from school and I got an SMS, I would wait until I got home to read it. If I was cooking something on the stovetop, I would stir it while I waited instead of cleaning the preparations dishes. I couldn’t do two things at one time or I may run out of things to do that day. It’s a burden of being a fast worker, American, and completely without family and friends to distract you.
But, I got over it. And here I am begging for time to sit and stare at the walls or to read a whole book in one day. I still have a lot of free time on the weekends, which I love. But weekdays are filled with school and meetings about school and clubs and grading papers and organizing my file (an absurd collection of papers required by the Ministry of Education. I have yet to meet one single person who sings The File’s praises).
At school, we’re in the third trimester. This trimester started on September 1st with a Khorixas cluster meeting. As always, these meetings are informative and motivational and a completely blatant reminder that I am a terrible terrible mingler – you see, we have to stand outside and wait anywhere from one hour to three hours for these meetings to start. The men and the women usually separate into two groups to talk about the holiday and gossip, etc. This is usually the first thing that confuses the mingler in me. I work with the men because they are all the upper primary teachers, grades 5 -7. They are usually the most welcoming of foreigners, also. They told me it was because the women are threatened by English… But they also told me that women aren’t good at science and math. So, what do they know? And the group of women is all the lower primary teachers. They’re nice enough when I try to talk to them. But when I walk up, the conversation stops so that everyone can look at me while their eyes inquire, “what do you want?” Hanging out with the women at my school requires being in a certain mood because they treat me like a child. They call me “ti oa”, meaning my child. They’ll tell me how I’m getting fat. They’ll tell me that I got a pimple because I ate too much chocolate. Or how my hairs are looking like a horses tail. Or they’ll tell me how to iron my clothes that I can be more presentable next time… I can’t even imagine growing up here. They’re earnestly trying to help. I think. But it does require a certain kind of mood.
The first week of the trimester was a little slow. On the first teaching day of a trimester (usually a Tuesday), I’m lucky to get half of each class back. And I’m even luckier if we actually hold school with the learners who are there. This particular Tuesday we chose to clean the school instead. The learners who don’t show up to school are missing for any number of reasons: They could’ve dropped out of school. They’re still at the farm working and their family does not currently have enough money to pay for a taxi to take their child back to school. Or, my personal favorite, “they are just now remembering to find the donkeys from the field to pull the cart”.
It was ok that the first week was so slow because I used the spare time to get ready for the National Science Fair. The Kunene Region Ministry of Education (Kunene is one of the 13 regions in Namibia and it contains Khorixas) had this brilliant idea to have all the Kunene kids just bring the papers from their board and not the actual board that the papers are displayed on. At first, I thought this was a good idea because the boards I had made were fair quality for the materials I had available - there was a lot of duct tape. But they weren’t exactly my idea of award winning material. When we actually got to the fair and Kunene passed out the new boards for the kids, I wished whole-heartedly that we had my duct-taped boards. I think the “new” boards had been used for three or four science fairs before ours. And maybe a few roller derbies and monster truck rallies too… I distinctly remember footprints… and burn marks…
Anyway, I spent the first week of school with a stick of glue, a paper cutter and 6 young Namibian scientists – Olivia, Wynand, Cynthia, Katrina, Kennedy and Losia. Then, on Monday morning of the second week of school, a minibus owned by the Ministry of Education motored into our Monday morning school assembly held out in front of the school. The little lower primary school kids scattered so they wouldn’t get run over by Torro – our amazing Ministry driver (He actually is amazing but pedestrians, even tiny tot pedestrians at their morning school assembly, NEVER have the right of way in Namibia). And the upper primary kids took the opportunity to have a spontaneous dance party to the music blaring from the minibus speakers. The minibus already had all the Secondary school kids going from Khorixas. They loaded up our 6 kids. The Kunene Ministry had chosen two teachers from our region to accompany the learners to the science fair. Our learners were the youngest of the group – all the others were around grade 10. But the region didn’t choose anyone from our school to watch over the six youngins. So my principal offered to have to school pay for my trip there.
The science fair was held at Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek. It was the 6th Annual fair, I believe. When we arrived that Monday afternoon, it was a flurry of registration and set up. I helped my 6 kids set up their 3 projects. We did the best we could with foot printed, burned boards. Actually, there was a really dark hour in the whole afternoon when Olivia and Wynand did not find their name on any registration sheet. Then, once I cleaned up that error, we returned to find that their boards had been stolen. Luckily, the actual report was still there. So in the end, I would say we all got to prove our resourcefulness by producing a project board out of nothing... And I had even left my duct tape at home. It all turned out OK. But, really thought? Who steals a science poster board with footprints on it from a couple of thirteen-year-old kids?
The kids and I were staying at different youth hostels, so I met them on Tuesday morning back at the fair. Katrina and Cynthia were so excited to tell me about driving to their youth hostel the night before. They said that Windhoek look like “the stars had fallen”. It’s true; the lights in the city are beautiful, especially when you haven’t seen that sort of thing in awhile. Tuesday was actually a really boring day. Three different judges judged each project. The kids had to sit in front of their project from 9am until 4pm waiting to be judged. The day felt stressful though because the two teachers assigned to accompany the kids were scarce to be found. I spent most of the day putting out fires for the Kunene kids. I started the day by telling the learners, “Go find your teacher and tell them”. But that answer eventually turned into, “Alright, I’ll take care of it” when I realized sending them away would only mean I would have to listen to the problem twice.
Wednesday morning we all got a chance to go into to town and explore. The 6 Eddie Bowe kids decided to stick together. And they also decided to let me choose where to go. That was too much pressure for me, so I made them vote at every turn. Torro dropped us at a place called Werne Hill, said “vern hill”. It’s a small mall that is attached to an outdoor mall called Post Street Mall. Post Street Mall is a long, wide sidewalk with stores and restaurants. At the far end of Post Street is the famous Zoo Park. Zoo Park is settled on a hill. It has Palm trees, Ancient elephant remains, an amphitheater and a swing set. But Zoo Park in missing one obvious thing: A zoo! People often realize this after they’ve spent an hour or so searching the park for animals and only coming across a couple of lizards. I have yet to research the actual meaning behind the park’s name. Instead I revel in the absurdity of it all. At the top of the hill that Zoo Park sits on is a historic church. I’ve been told the story behind the church a few times but it went in one ear and out the other. There’s probably a photo of it on 45% of the webpages about Namibia though. So, feel free to research. Then, a little farther beyond that is the Namibian Parliament Building, which, along with housing the Namibian Parliament, also boasts one of my favorite views of Windhoek.
So, We get out of Torro’s Minibus – 6 grade school kids from Khorixas wearing bright yellow shirts and blue Eddie Bowe jackets and me.
Vote 1: Upstairs Werne Hill or Down stairs?
Majority says: Upstairs. So, I steer the crowd towards the escalator and hop on. I glance behind me and realize that my kids have never been on an escalator before. Katrina’s eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them before. Wynand is running up and down and up and down and annoying the man in a business suit riding behind him. Kennedy can’t quite figure out where to put his feet and Olivia has to catch him before he falls and gets escalator burn. Magically, we all make it to the top safely and with most of our pride still intact.
Vote 2: Ice Cream store or Music store?
Majority says: Ice cream! Soft serve is 5 Namibian dollars.
Vote 3: Stay in Werne Hill or go outside to Post Street?
Majority says: Post Street. We wander down Post Street mall. I’m amazed at how few people bug me. When I walk down Post Street by myself, all the street vendors constantly call for me to look at their crafts. When I walk down Post Street with my kids, the vendors barely lift a lazy eye to make sure my kids aren’t trying to abscond with their crafts. I guess we just don’t ring “tourists” as much as I do by myself.
Vote 4: Stay in Post Street or hit Zoo Park? Footnote: No, kids, there is no zoo.
Majority says: let’s go find the animals! I grab Kennedy’s backpack to keep his over enthusiastic little legs from running ahead and we all cross the street into Zoo Park. In Zoo park, we find the swings and see saw. We also find the amphitheater where Gaza performs on NBC (Namibian Broadcasting Company). Gaza is one of the Namibian singers I actually know. I see “GMP 4 life” written on kids’ assignments all the time. It means Gaza Music Production. Gaza is a popular guy and seeing the stage where he performs is a big deal.
Vote 5: Go back to shop at Werne Hill or go to the top of the hill for the view?
Majority says: As high as we can go! The kids and I start up the steep hill towards the old church and Parliament. The hill deters a few so we have to take vote 5 over again to make sure the kids want to keep going. After we pass the church, we have to enter into the gardens surrounding the Parliament building. We all pause for a moment to observe the sign leading into the garden. The kids are busy deciphering the pictures on the sign: no dogs, no sleeping, so bikes, no skates, no soccer, no hunting, no running, no jumping, no skipping, no breathing, no laughing, no fun… ok maybe not, but the sign sure kills the mood. We walk quietly through the large garden like we do not belong and someone will remember that we don’t belong at any moment. We walk until we reach the steps up to the Parliament building. My question to the kids: Who do you think can run to the top first? Everyone is off like a shot. I was surprised that I wasn’t the last one to reach the top. We all turn and face the view. It is beautiful. At least to me. But I don’t think it’s enough for the kids. Wynand turns and looks at Parliament then he looks at me. “Miss, can we go in?” I peak inside the building. It’s marble and official looking. I tell Wynand that he is a citizen of Namibia and as a citizen he had a right to see the building. Wynand takes the next vote.
Vote 6: Go inside or continue to cower outside?
Majority says: We’re young political activist! I’m looking at my watch and realizing that we only have 40 minutes to make it all the way back to Torro before he leaves us on the townside and goes in search of some meat to eat for lunch. But we all file into Parliament anyway. All we see is a tiny room, a tiny woman and a big metal detector and bag scanner. The woman looks at us blankly. It takes a beat before I can try to explain. “Um, we’re at the National Science Fair this week. We’re on a break right now while the judges are working and, well, we came here. And we just wanted to see inside. And, um, this is inside. Um…” The woman looks at me, blinks, silent for a little while longer and finally says she’s just going to call someone. Great, someone could be anyone. Who is someone? After she gets off the phone, Wynand’s curiosity continues and he insists the woman x-ray his backpack, his jacket, Kennedy’s backpack and jersey, Katrina’s bag, Losia’s bag and Cynthia’s jersey. All the things look the same in the X-ray but the awe is equally great for all the objects. I hear him say, “Oh, that could be a gun. It’s the right shape.” He says this about Losia’s bag. I’m rubbing my temples, imagining what’s coming next: newspaper headlines, “6 Future Namibian Scientists Aid Peace Corps Worker in Storming Parliament With Gun-Shaped Pencils and Straws”.
Finally our Someone arrives. He says he is going to take us on a tour of Parliament. I make all my kids file through the medal detector and into the next room. I was last through the medal detector and set it off with my cell phone. This requires me to walk through again without my cell phone and tell my kids numerous times that, no, I can’t walk through just to make the noise again. Olivia says, “What person thinks of such things? You cannot even see the phone on the person but the thing can.” Our tour guide leads us around the building and explains all the rooms. The room where parliament meets is the biggest attraction. The kids have seen the room on TV and they have seen it on a poster that is displayed in almost every school. But they have never imagined that they would be standing in the very center of the room. 6 VIP guests to Parliament. They all sort of wander around the room in a glazed-over awe. Kennedy lightly grabs the gavel on the front desks. Wynand quickly walks over and takes it from his hand makes slight adjustments to it until it looks precisely as it did when we arrived. Our Tour Guide concludes the tour by looking at me and telling me I may take a picture now. I start to explain that I didn’t know I was coming to Parliament that day but instead decided to just say that I don’t have a camera – I mean, who accidentally winds up in the Namibian Parliament building on a random Wednesday?
We all file out into the hallway as we wait for our guide to lock up the meeting room. The kids gather in front of the elevator. They are speaking in Damara but I gather that they’re asking what it is. Our tour guide walked up and presses the up arrow. The elevator opens almost immediately. It’s one of those elevators with a mirrored wall on the back. The 8 of us just stare at ourselves on the back wall. Our tour guide finally tells the kids to go in. The kids all take an internal vote and decide that they are not budging. The door closes. The guide presses the up arrow again and the door opens again. Go in, he says. Wynand says, “I don’t take risks, sir.” (We all know that’s not true). So the guide nudges Kennedy, Olivia, Losia and Katrina in. He reaches around and presses the button that says 1. The door closes. I hear some faint whimpering. We hear the “ding” and move around a corner so we can see the balcony above us. Four kids come spilling out of the elevator. Our tour guide has to walk up the stairs and steer their shaky legs down to the ground floor. Olivia tells me, “Miss, I could not figure out where you were hiding when the door opened again”. Losia tells me, “Katrina was crying for Miss Jessica the whole time: ‘Miss! Miss! Miss!’” Katrina tells me, “No, Miss! It’s not true”. Kennedy tells me, “Miss, I wanted to cry”.
I thanked our guide. We all maneuvered back through the medal detector. I looked at my watch. We had 5 minutes to make it through the fun-sucking Parliament garden, the old church, Zoo Park, Post Street Mall, Werne Hill, The Escalator of Death and back to the Minibus. We book it. I hold Kennedy’s backpack the whole time. I refuse to loose one to traffic – the pedestrian always looses in Namibia. It took us ten minutes to make it through the whole path. The escalator took a long time to get down – Did you know that you have to go up one escalator and down a completely different escalator? Hmm, who knew? Not my kids. We made it all the way out to Torro. And he had not left us. In fact, welcome to Namibia, we had to sit there for another 15 minutes before we actually left.
Wednesday night was the award ceremony. There were a limited number of chairs. So my kids, resourceful as they are, scavenge for a folding table that they place against the back wall for us to sit on. Medals were given to projects that earned a certain percentage. The Kunene region won 6 bronze medals and 2 silver medals. Kennedy and Losia were the only two from our school to earn a medal – Bronze. The ceremony continues for hours and hours and hours. I can see my kids becoming more and more restless.
Thursday morning, Torro comes to pick me up at my youth hostel. All the youth Hostel workers come into the common area asking, “who’s going to Khorixas?” It’s amazing how much more interest workers take in you when they find out you’re staying in the country. The guard takes the opportunity to ask who I know in Khorixas. In the end, he decides it doesn’t matter and I should just tell everyone in Khorixas that Randy says hi. “Oh, it’s your place?” is the correct way to ask if he’s from there. “Yes, It’s my place.” Randy says and finally lets me go to deliver his message to his place.
Back at school, the teachers were excited to have something to show for their kids’ efforts. Kennedy and Losia got to wear their medals around school for the morning. I think it was a good experience for the kids (And I think that we’ll be more prepared for next year. Wynand told me that he’s traveling back from secondary school (grade 8) next year so I can help him with his project on weekends). But overall, the experience was a little hard for me to watch. When all 13 regions come together it is so obvious to which ones are more privileged than others. For example, the two regions that won the most medals were the regions that include Windhoek and Swakop. Their projects were easy to pick out from the group because they boasted laptops, microscopes, elaborate models and wooden backboards. My kids barely noticed the difference between their boards and the fancy ones. And they learned a lot by investigating the microscopes and playing on the laptops. It’s all a learning experience – for everyone.
Since the science fair, I’ve just been biding time at site. We finished the fourth week of school today, and I’m already behind on the syllabus. I’m really enjoying the subject matter, though. We’re working on forces and energy in science. And before that we had a week of insects. I send all of grade seven out to catch an insect to draw into their notebooks. I thought each group might catch one or two – instead they all filled the jars I gave them. My kids have some of the strangest talents. And it’s always a joy to discover them.
Last weekend we hosted a sports tournament for primary schools in the area. Since our school was hosting, each teacher had a job. I was in charge of concessions. I sold NikNaks, small candies, coke, beer, and oranges from 8am until 6:30pm. The concessions worker also gets to be in charge of the stereo system. Anything with a guitar is “white people music”. Gaza and The Dogg are always acceptable. Rhianna (-ella, -ella, -ella), Shakira (I beg to differ – the hips can lie), Justin (two years later, Sexy sure is a slow traveler…), Sean Kingston (my favorite: Me Love), P Diddy, Alicia Keys (I can’t stand her) and R Kelly are all good. I could have played the song “It’s too late to Apologize” the entire day and the kids would have been happy (and I would have been entertained – imagine adolescent boys trying to hit those notes while thinking that the stereo is loud enough to cover their singing… it wasn’t… I could still hear them).
Before I go, I have two more things to tell you: 1) Khorixas got a paved road! Well, we already had one paved road that ran into town from Outjo and out of town towards Twelfontein and the Skeleton Coast. But this new one forms a horseshoe from town into the location, around the Ministry of Education and back to town. When I came back to Khorixas just before school started, they had cleared those stretches of dirt road. I got a little suspicious. Then, that week, they completed most of the road. My supervisor was late to work everyday because they started on both sides of the horseshoe at the same time. People who lived in town had to drive/walk/cart almost out of town before they could find a drivable road into the location. I love this place.
And 2) I went to South Africa in August! It was fun. It was rainy. It was artsy and western. I wore converse. I bought a scarf (Namibian cold isn’t real cold). I saw the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. I visited the penguins. I “climbed” table mountain… Well, I climbed the stairs to the tram that took me to the top. I stayed in a fancy hotel with a fancy bathroom and filter coffee every morning. I watched a movie being made outside my hotel – it was about Christmas. There was a lot of fake snow, props, huge wreaths, food service and a big statue of Santa that people cautiously ventured from our hotel to get their photo with. I tasted wine with a bunch of old tourist and had a blast. The over 60 crowd knows how to party in the wine cellar. I went to 3 movies. Count them, 3. I sat in 60% of the bookstores in Cape Town. “Where’s Fiction?” I ate Subway and McDonalds! Fantastic! I saw GAP jeans for sale. Two words: Haagen Dazs. Three scoops, please. We made a Nelson Mandela history pit stop. Throw two 18-hour bus rides on top, a side of food poisoning (short lived. I survived) and a couple of Mojitos and you’ve got yourself a genuine SA experience.
Yeah, Cape Town was epic.
October 4, 2008
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot. It’s a side effect of all Peace Corps service, I hear. But, I seem to be on memoir streak. First I read about Augusten Borough’s childhood and subsequent struggle with alcoholism in “Running with Scissors” and “Dry”. And, most recently, I started another book about a childhood gone awry called, “The Liar’s Club”. But before that I read a memoir about a PCV in Zaire called, “The Ponds of Kalambayi”.
The Ponds of Kalambayi was written about a Peace Corps service between 1985 and 1987. The Volunteers name was Mike and he was sent to Zaire to teach locals how to raise tilapia in man-made fish ponds (meaning, dug with a shovel by one person). I found myself jealous of Mike as I read. His Peace Corps service included a lot of things I hadn’t even considered for mine. First, he was teaching people how to make and stock fishponds. That job inherently has immediate results. A pond could be made in two weeks with intense manual labor. The fruit of all that work was obvious – a big gleaming water-filled pond. In stark contrast, I look at my job and feel like nothing is happening. I daily fill out endless Lesson Plan forms. I spend break times and afternoons talking and hanging out with 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old Namibians. I spend class times saying, “listen” and forcing 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-old Namibians to write endless notes about natural science and math. This is all work that could be done by anyone. And I am not anymore equipped to deal with the job than any other trained Namibian. In fact, maybe the opposite. The kids frequently teach me something – “no, miss, THIS is the test book. THAT is the exercise book.” or, on a lesson about Energy and Fossil Fuels, “Miss, we DO have a coal mine. In Tsumeb.”
Second, Mike got a ten-week training in the local language (after a ten-week training in Fish farming). And, then, The SHOW-OFF, became fluent in the tribal language and ONLY conversed in it. Ugh. I’m an utter failure.
These are the Damara phrases I know:
Matisa = How are you?
!Gai i ge a = I’m good.
!Gai Tses = Good Afternoon/day
Tita ge Donkey //gani !gaibahe tama = I don’t like donkey meat
Marie aute re = give me money
Marie uha tama ta ha = I don’t have money
/u = white person
/usa = you are white (thanks for the reminder)
Toilet sa mapa ha? = …
And, most important for encountering drunk men in the street:
/Nam sida ge a = I love you
Tita ge Khoeba uha = I already have a boyfriend (lies!)
I like to fool myself into thinking that I can follow the drift of a conversation in Damara. But to be honest I only follow conversations where people are discussing where they left there keys, whether the white person is getting fatter or where they are recounting ages, phone numbers, house numbers, amounts of money or how many fingers they have on their left hand (Goro. Usually).
Third, he was a volunteer in the 80’s in the inner part of the continent. In the 80’s, Peace Corps volunteers were allowed to drive! Unthinkable these days. And Zaire, I feel is probably worse off than Namibia. Namibia borders South Africa. They have a university in Windhoek. They have a steady government and economy. And, chances are, if Peace Corps withdrew entirely from the country, they would be all right – just in my personal opinion.
All this is to say that the book really got me thinking about my current situation. Far too often, I let my mind wander to the ever-present thought, “What am I doing here?” And far too often, I can’t think of an answer. Lately, my inability to conjure an acceptable answer has been compounded by the fear that I am actually becoming a worse person in my time here – I have never said “no” so many times in my life: No, I will not buy you bread. No, I will not let you come in and eat from my cupboard. No, I will not do your work/lesson plans/laundry for you. No, I will not leave you my cell phone when I go back. No, I do not want to “know” you. No, I will not push your broken car to town. And, no, you cannot have a dollar. Why? Because if I gave you a dollar I would have to give one to the 82 children standing behind you with their palms outstretched and, worse, would only enforce the “fact” that white people will give you money so you should ask EVERY opportunity you get.
See, complicated, right? All this has led me to believe two things. 1) That Jill’s friend back home was completely right when he said, you have to think of Peace Corps as a nice cultural exchange and that it. Thanks for sharing. And 2) I need to stop reading memoirs. Especially by RPCVs.
But, as I was reading the Ponds of Kalambayi, I came across some sections that I could totally relate to. And, even though Mike was serving 20 years before me and in a poorer region of the continent, maybe African culture has a lot of things in common all over this huge expanse of land. So, here I leave you, post-rant, with some quotes from my latest memoir:
“Like most people who go overseas to do development work, I did so expecting to find out what it’s like to be poor. But awakening to my surroundings after a few months, I discovered that’s not what happened. Instead you learn what it’s like to be rich, to be fabulously, incomprehensibly, bloated with wealth.”
“That I could go an entire week and not wear the same shirt twice was, in this African setting, the gleaming pinnacle of affluence… In a strange way, this consequence of poverty proved useful to me when I arrived in Kalambayi. It helped me remember people. If I forgot faces, I could often place names simply by using clothes as memory cues.”
“Eager to get to work and confident (naively) of Peace Corps’ judgment, I decided not to worry”
“Many times while I was in Africa the hardships I saw forced me to rework my understanding of what hell must be like”
“In Africa, children are the central, insuperable, all-important fact. They roam everywhere, five to every parent… so many children were there in every village that at the slightest spectacle – a soccer game, a heated argument, a fallen tree blocking the road – they appeared in droves this way, attaching themselves like barnacles to whatever was happening.”
“Play sessions never lasted more than thirty minutes, however, because an enormous wave of other children would quickly arrive… the children seemed to emanate from nowhere, popping out from behind cornstalks, dropping from trees, emerging from thin air. They came and came, dozens of them, until there were more than I could count. ‘Swing me! Swing me!’ they would roar simultaneously, standing together in my yard as if part of a clamorous crowd scene in some epic meeting. With tiny hands pulling me in every direction, I would start backing up towards my door”
“The local system worked. Everyone was taken care of. Everyone did stay afloat.”
“Above the horizon, the sun hung orange-pink, soft and perfect, coloring the valley with that lustrous final light that made ‘even ugly people look beautiful.’ Soon the orb sank behind a low ridge, passing with such a speed that, watching, you could almost feel the earth turning and hear the creak of it unfathomable weight. Africa was sliding beyond the gaze of the sun."
Friday, August 15, 2008
The proud learners with their awards!July 12th 2008
Saturday morning on my tiny piece of land in Africa means sleeping in until 7. This is the time that the one healthy rooster meanders towards my window and starts to crow at irregularly maddening intervals. 7 is also about the time my neighbor wanders out of his flat to start working on his car. I’m not sure what he’s doing to the car because for the 5 months I’ve been in this flat he’s been working on it like a religion and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I do like it though because he lets the boys in the hostel help him and that gives them something to do. Saturday also means that I get to hide in my flat until maybe 10 or 11. This is the approximate time the walls start to drive me crazy and I have to leave.
All that is to say, it’s Saturday! Outside the rooster is alternating its crows with some sort of mechanical banging and it’s all to the tune of adolescent boys getting in an argument about something. Oddly, the argument is in English. When people speak English, I assume its because its something I need to hear. But when they don’t know that I’m listening, it really confuses me. Maybe, this morning I woke up with a magical power to automatically understand all languages. Yes, I love Saturdays. Not as much as I love Sundays, though, but that’s a whole different story.
Yesterday was a very special days for me. But to understand why, I have to start on Thursday… Or maybe even Tuesday… but I only need to start on Tuesday because I’m a logical person and if I go out of order then I’ll forget what actually happened and spend a whole blog post talking about the price of avocados or something.
So, Tuesday, I finally made it home from Windhoek. They shipped me home on Monday but at sunset I still wasn’t home. So, I stayed the night in Outjo. Then Tuesday morning I traveled in true Namibian style – in a crammed bakkie, with all the luggage tied to the roof going approximately 70km/hour. Five hours after we left, we made it the 120km to Khorixas. School was finished by then, so it was like another vacation day.
Wednesday is usually a really easy day for me. I only have three classes that bookend the day – one in the morning and two at the end. But Wednesday morning the administration decided that the last two periods of the day would be canceled so the whole school could listen to the learners who were in the science fair present their projects. When the two grade 7 learners heard this they got really nervous and asked to be let out of class so they could practice. So, then my really easy Wednesday turned into listening to “Light from Above” presented 7 or 8 times. They were getting really good at it and could actually explain any part of the project.
When they actually presented to the school that afternoon, they did well. The English teacher offered to meet with the all three groups (grade 5, grade 6 and grade 7) after school to polish the projects. I really like him. He’s always volunteering for odd jobs – kind of a rarity. He also only responds in English at staff meeting no matter what language the question was asked in. Understandably, I would like him. Also a lower primary teacher offered to help. She was the teacher that coached all the beauty pageant contestants last week. She’s one of the young, hip teachers... I’m actually jealous of her cool clothes… and how clean they are… how does she do it? And, obviously invested, I volunteered to show up also.
Grade 5 had a nice project. It was on dental health and how to care for your teeth. It was well put together and had all the requirements. The two learners had the cute-factor too. The boy is adorable but, at 12 years old, would hate being described as such. 60% of the time he’ll run where he’s going but only on his tiptoes. His run looks like something Willie Coyote would do off a cliff and into mid-air. The girl is a little soft spoken but smiles a lot. They really just needed to work on speaking loudly.
Working with grade 6 was all about damage control. The kids had a poster and topic way beyond their skill level – Diabetes Mellitus type I and type II and all the medical gibberish that slow Namibian dial-up Internet could produce. This was coupled in disaster with the fact that the poster was poorly put together, the learners didn’t have any involvement whatsoever, there were spelling and grammar errors everywhere and there was absolutely zero linear logic in anything. One of the kids was actually put on the project that afternoon because she had a louder voice than the previous candidate. When we were working with them, I forced the two girls to abandon their poster and just explain the topic in 6th grade language. Meanwhile, my grade 7s undertook the poster to attempting to fix it. I also forced them to listen to me explain Diabetes in three or four different ways until they understood what they were saying. Gosh, they hated it – they thought Wednesday was going to be easy too.
And grade 7 was sparkling by the afternoon. They could tell about their project and results without even looking at their poster. I know this because I took their poster away and made them explain without it. Did I ever explain what their project was? We put out 5 different boxes covered in colored paper – black, white, blue, green, and red. Then we put thermometers in the boxes and left them in the sun. After an hour we checked the thermometers to see which box had the highest temperature. The black box was 45C. Blue and green were 42C. Red was 40C. And white was 35C. By Wednesday afternoon grade 7 even had theories about why blue and green were 2 degrees hotter than red. They could explain IR light and UV light. They could explain absorption and reflection. And they had a few examples of applications for such information. They were good and they knew it.
Thursday morning, we put the six kids in matching jerseys and packed them and their projects up into the other science teacher’s bakkie to take down to the youth hall near town. When we got down there, some Ministry of Education officers met us to explain that the fair was being postponed until the afternoon. They just forgot to tell our school. So we toted the learners and projects back to school. That afternoon, at 2:00, we toted everything back down there to set up the projects. Then they told us the judging wouldn’t start until 6. So, we set up the projects and toted all the learners back to school. Then at 5:45, we pulled the learners out of the dining hall; most of them still holding porridge in their hands, and toted them back down to the youth hall. By this time, I was getting really tired. It gets dark at about 5:30 and lately it’s been bitter cold in the shade and inside, especially at night. The kids were nervous and it was making me nervous too. But, my nervous energy was soon transformed into my patience-practicing energy when they informed me I would be a judge.
As a Kunene Regional Science Fair judge, the first obstacle you have to overcome is the judging form. This form is the worst form I have ever experienced. And I’m not even exaggerating. I cannot even explain the terribleness because explanations require reason and logic and this form had zero of either. But, after 45 minutes of debate, the 7 other judges and I finally came to an agreement on how to fairly use the numbers on the form. I was set loose to judge “Innovations and technology” and “Agriculture”. I suspected a little foul play when I noticed some judges giving marks to their learners but, sneaking peaks at my kids, I felt like they were doing ok on their own. Plus, I learned a lot from Innovations and Technology. I learned how to make a water heater from a soda can (small amounts of water – not enough for my bathtub. Bummer). I learned how to make a hair relaxer from burned aloe, how to make detergent from the sap of a tree, how to make glue from gasoline and Styrofoam and how to make a fun math game with circuits. It was really odd to strike so much fear in the kids when they saw me coming. All of them had really wide eyes when I would say; “tell me about your project”. It would take them a few seconds to say, “weeeeelll…” and start explaining. It turns out I was a really mean judge too. I didn’t know I was until I added all the numbers for Innovations and Technology. The highest score was 53 out of 100. Luckily, the kids all got two judges and, therefore, two scores. Judging Agriculture was also ok but there were only two projects. One was about chicken feed. I told the girl her board was cute and pointed to the spray paint on the background – it was yellow dots with little runs. I thought it was supposed to look like someone had thrown eggs at it. But the learner got embarrassed and apologized profusely. Oops, guess it wasn’t supposed to be and egged board. The second project was from Braunfels, the all-boys high school 30Km or so outside of Khorixas. It was about fertilizing soil with ants. It was really interesting and the kids had even collected an ant colony in an aquarium. The two grade 12 boys definitely had good marks in confidence. After I asked them to tell about their project, they talked for a good 7 or 8 minutes straight and only paused to make sure I was not confused by the difficult science they were explaining. Future tip: Don’t insult your judge’s intelligence… you know, I’m just sayin…
At the end of the night, the kids from my school all felt like they had done well. The grade 7s were asked how far the sun is from the earth and how fast light travels – two questions I feel are slightly irrelevant. The kids were kind of disappointed that they didn’t know the answer. I was happy though, because they remembered that they should know the answer from our section about the solar system in class. They were listening! Not remembering… but listening… half the battle, right? Anyway, we all finally made it home around 11:00. It was cold and the kids were locked out of the hostel. But in the end, we woke up enough people to get them in. The next morning, they told us to be at the hall at 9 am. It’s really hard to give up American habits because I made all the kids and the other science teacher leave the school at 8:45. We got to the hall and had to sit there for 2 hours before anything happened. I should have known. But it was a great opportunity to teach my six learners how to play Hangman. Though, I never realized how gruesome the whole premise really was until one of the grade 6 girls asked, why is it bad to hang a man?
The award ceremony started with the judges’ awards. I got a dictionary! And a picture with the mayor of Khorixas! Woo! The dictionary is maybe 150 pages long and is from USAID. It has a paragraph about George Bush on the back. I thought that was silly – American charity making its way all the way over here and into my hands. No fear, I’ll leave the USAID in the library when I leave. There were a lot of speeches and songs after that. This is when I realized that I was magical. I taught my learners how to trick their friends into believing their thumbs were detachable. I taught them how to make a squirming worm halfway underground with their two middle fingers. I taught them how to spin a pen around their thumb. And when I say, “taught”, I really mean, “showed them at least a hundred times and they still think it’s all magic”. It was entertaining because we got in trouble. We were fine until the boys started trying to spin a pen over their thumbs and the pens started flying into peoples’ heads. Luckily, the actual award giving saved us.
Everyone who entered the science fair got an award – certificates. Projects that score below 30 out of 100 got third place. Projects that scored between 30 and 50 got second. And projects that scored above 50 got first place and gets to go to the national science fair (remembering that 50% is a good grade here. 70% is stellar. And maybe one in a class of 38 will get an 80%). They called all the third place winners first. None of my learners were called. Then they called the second place winners. None of my learners were called. I thought, “Great. Just great. They forgot to print the certificates for my kids. So, now they think they’re going to national and then, they’re going to get nothing. This sucks…” Then they called the first place winners. All the names they were calling were from secondary and high schools. My heart was sinking for my kids. Then, they called our grade 5 learners. Our principal was on stage, she almost fell over I think. The kids just stared. Then, they called our grade 7 learners. The principal was giggling now. The kids were still just staring. Then, they called our grade 6 learners. The principal was shaking everyone’s hand. I was laughing. The kids were all still staring. They took a picture of all the first place winners. My grade 7s were standing next to the two tall grade 12 ant-boys from the all-boys school. My learners were still just staring. Someone had to tell them to move when it was time to come down from the stage. When our grade 7 boy came down from the stage he said with wide eyes, “Miss, I am in shock. I almost fell over. I need you to hold my certificate… I’m coming now…” (“I’m coming now” means “I’ll be right back”) and he walked straight out the back door. I have no idea where he went. He came back maybe ten minutes later and was still staring. I couldn’t help but laugh at him. Our grade 7 girl was beaming. She said, “Miss, all my dreams have come true! I’m going to take my certificate to my mother this afternoon” (her mother lives 4 or 5 km out of Khorixas). Then they gave an award to the highest scorer in every category. All of the awards for the tops scorers were books about math and science. Our grade 6 learners were called first. They were the only project in their category, “Medical Science”. But they hardly noticed that tiny detail – they were first! Then our grade 7 learners were called for “Physics”. It was a little difficult for them because they were still in shock from their first award. The other projects in the Physics category were all from secondary schools. The top scorer was called for “human sciences” but it was not our grade 5 learners. They were a few marks too short of the top scorer… who was in grade 10… just FYI…
At the end of the ceremony, one of my grade 6 learners came up to me and gave me a big hug. She said, “Thank you so much, miss! Thank you so much for helping us!” I thought maybe we were in some cheesy sports team movie where they win the big game at the end. It sure felt like that. They all didn’t want to ruin their awards so they gave them to me to hold. I had an armload of books and certificates walking out of the youth hall. Someone stopped us and explained that it appeared that Eddie Bowe had gotten just what it had come for. I said, we hadn’t. I said, we’re going to Windhoek to get that.
The kids were the school heroes when they got back to school. The other learners were giving them hugs and running up to hear the news. The hostel matrons gave them bread, jam and butter to eat. It was definitely a moment that they will never forget.
I am super excited about the national science fair. It is the first week of September. It should be interesting to travel with learners. But I did just spend two days straight with those six kids. They’re a great group and it should be fun to travel with them. I’m already trying to think of where I should take them in Windhoek. Maybe out for ice cream or to the sweets shop. I haven’t decided.
The rest of the afternoon, random kids were knocking on my kitchen door. When I would answer the door, they would beg me to detach my thumb, make a squirming worm from my middle fingers or spin a pen over my thumb. Luckily, I didn’t have to play a round of hangman with them. If you teach one, you have to teach them all.
I swear, this has to be one of those cheesy movies. Where are the cameras? Really.
July 16th
So, on the other end of the spectrum, two kids got in a fist fight in science class today. I asked the kids to bring in plants. I was going through the class taking down the names kids who brought in a plant. I turned around to the sound of a desk flying somewhere and saw a tall girl with a boy in a headlock hitting him. I just stood there. I didn’t just stand there because I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there because I had this feeling that any second the kids would magically realize how absurd they were and stop. But, as per usual in these parts, I was wrong. That poor boy just started losing more oxygen to his head. But, on the plus side, I had stood there long enough doing nothing that other kids in the class had already taken action and started pulling the two apart. I took them both outside and was about to practice some well needed mediation when something else was said or sworn and they were at it again… with me in the middle… and a rock… ugh. I feared for my head, as it is not so fond of baseball sized rocks in the hands of enraged 14 year old girls. When I stopped that bout, I took them to the principal’s office. On the way to the office, I tried to think what normal people do with kids who get in fist fights. And I tried to remember what people in America would do with kids who got in a fist fights. Luckily, the principle was there to answer some questions… Parents! We find parents! But, parents are a luxury that we didn’t seem to have. Well, I left them both there, bawling, and didn’t see them again until after school when they both sobbed an apology to me. Sheesh.
I just thought I would give you both sides though – science fair… fist fight… I can’t figure out what I feel about teaching here. So, I’m just going to focus on this being a pleasant cultural experience with new and interesting friends. Then, I’ll just gauge the worth and value later. And if that fails, I’ll still have my pumpkin bread, right?
July and August were the months that PC sent out invitations to come to Namibia last year. So, if we’re on the same timeline, the lucky winners will soon be getting a letter in the mail informing them that they have won a two-year vacation in Namibia. Namibia? Is that a disease? No, I think it’s near Morocco. Rick, is that you? Well, wherever it is, I’m living in a hut and slaughtering chickens for dinner every night – the real Africa!!
Fine print: Once accepted, this two year vacation comes complete with gray hairs, decreased sanity, increased water consumption and constantly dust-coated nostrils. Half of all participants’ feet increase in size due to calluses. Patience was shown to be tested in all winners. Increased awareness of skin color, language usage, monetary habits and fuel efficiency was noticed in most candidates. 97% chance of sunburn. 110% chance of homesickness. All candidates were showing an increasing in the using of the ending “-ing” in day-to-day speech patterns. 3 out of 70 had to discontinue use of this vacation before completion.
If they’re normal people, they’re probably searching the web for any answers they can scrounge. You have to look online because the Peace Corps doesn’t tell you anything. At first, you think that they don’t tell you anything because they’re maliciously forcing you to be a braver person. But later, you realize that they aren’t telling you things because they can’t. They can’t even insure that you get a ride to site. They can’t guarantee that you’re even going to have a place to stay when you get to site (though, disclaimer, we know they try). And then, even later, you start to realize that all those complications and gaps in information don’t really have anything to do with the Peace Corps and have more to do with the fact that you’re moving to Africa and if you want details (Can I bring my hair dryer? Will there be seatbelts? So, does “business casual” mean khaki pants or my ruffle skirt?) You’re on the wrong continent. And, in the very end, you finally realize that the details don’t matter at all – I’m always wrong anyway and nothing I brought from America is really that life-changing... except my Ipod… and computer…
So, really, all this is to say, if you’re an invitee and you stumbled here: Booga dee Booga dee booga dee boooo! Namibia is scary!!
Ok, not really. It’s pretty great. The worst part is getting on the plane when mom and dad are sad-waving from the other side of security and you’ve got crocodile tears coming down your face and the man you’re sitting next to on the plane seems to think you’re in some sort of condition to carry on a conversation about baseball. I don’t care about baseball! My life: upside-down! What part of sobbing do you not understand?
But just focus on the Africa being cool part. And think of all that character you’re going to build. Nothing says, “I’m awesome” like character. So, like a band-aid… just do it. See you here in about 4 months.
28 July 2008
I think it’s been implied that I’m addicted to Facebook Mobile. Facebook Mobile is great for a whole lot of reasons. It’s much cheaper than text messaging here, it’s reliable and it’s possibly the most brilliant way to stay sane while questioning and metaphorically head butting the whole perception of one’s own as well as a plethora of foreign cultures… Um, what I mean to say is, when I’m stuck in a meeting that is just so “Namibian” or in the midst of a purely Damara argument that makes me really feel as though I stick out like Tupperware in a china hutch, Facebook is where I turn. It’s a distraction. It’s a connection. It’s a calm moment of familiarity. It’s a coping mechanism.
What can I say? I’m addicted. But I justify this addiction because I know, out there, in this tiny country, in the midst of the other 2 million residing here, are other volunteers who have morphed Facebook so completely into their life, the phone has become permanently attached to their thumb. For those who I am Friends with… not friends, but Friends… you know that I change my status every other day, on slow days. My Friends know it usually takes less than 24 hours to get a response to a wall post (quite the record time for communication from me, I would say). But, I justify this because I know that I will make it through Facebook Mobile rehab with flying colors when this is all over.
There are ramifications to this addiction though. For instance, Tango. Tango is what the phone minutes are called here for my phone company, MTC – Make the Connection. It’s kind of fun to be able to say “Tango?” to a street vendor who doesn’t speak English. Who will, in turn reply, “MTC?”. Which is your cue to say “Mmm” while nodding your head yes and holding up 1, 2 or 3 fingers to show how many ten minute units you would like to buy. It’s a universal language… but only in Namibia…
But, the most serious ramification of this addiction comes in my evaluation of day-to-day events. This is how you know your addiction is serious: When something happens in my life, I have a tendency to make it a Facebook status in my head. And all these status updates seem fine and dandy. But then I realize that I’m thinking in status updates. Which, somehow, makes all of my thoughts in third person… Which, somehow, is really weird. But, Lucky for us,
Jessica is becoming a whiz at justification.
So, I justify that: generally, the possibility of sharing the situation I’m in makes me feel better. Sometimes it makes me feel better because I can make light of an absurd circumstance:
Jessica is staring down the cow head in the kitchen sink
Jessica is standing in Lake Khorixas... A.k.a. her kitchen floor. Plumber?
Jessica is trapped in her house by a herd of goats with crazy eyes. Um, Heeelp!
Jessica is Ice Skating on the library floor wax. The school inspector’s coming - Clean everything!!!!
Jessica, after further analysis and observation by tiny tot experts, is actually more of a pink color than white. Hmmm.
And sometimes it makes me feel better because I can voice my concerns and emotions knowing that someone will listen and understand:
Jessica just wants to go home-home.
Jessica keeps forgetting to breathe.
Jessica needs a hug.
And sometimes it makes me feel better because I can just share the mundane facts about my life that make me feel connected to others:
Jessica is watching MASH MASH MASH – anyone got some potatoes.
Jessica is a baking whiz. Somebody stop me… I mean her…
Jessica is a camel.
Jessica CAN feel it… so turn off the The Dogg already, neighbors!!!
Yeah, Facebook has become a staple in my life. I’m a little ashamed and little apathetic to the addiction. But, overall, I’m grateful for it. I’ve heard it said by many in the Nam27 group: I wonder, how did volunteer before us survive in the developing world without Facebook? … Hmm… maybe things weren’t as culturally complicated back then. Yeah, that must be it.
Saturday morning on my tiny piece of land in Africa means sleeping in until 7. This is the time that the one healthy rooster meanders towards my window and starts to crow at irregularly maddening intervals. 7 is also about the time my neighbor wanders out of his flat to start working on his car. I’m not sure what he’s doing to the car because for the 5 months I’ve been in this flat he’s been working on it like a religion and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I do like it though because he lets the boys in the hostel help him and that gives them something to do. Saturday also means that I get to hide in my flat until maybe 10 or 11. This is the approximate time the walls start to drive me crazy and I have to leave.
All that is to say, it’s Saturday! Outside the rooster is alternating its crows with some sort of mechanical banging and it’s all to the tune of adolescent boys getting in an argument about something. Oddly, the argument is in English. When people speak English, I assume its because its something I need to hear. But when they don’t know that I’m listening, it really confuses me. Maybe, this morning I woke up with a magical power to automatically understand all languages. Yes, I love Saturdays. Not as much as I love Sundays, though, but that’s a whole different story.
Yesterday was a very special days for me. But to understand why, I have to start on Thursday… Or maybe even Tuesday… but I only need to start on Tuesday because I’m a logical person and if I go out of order then I’ll forget what actually happened and spend a whole blog post talking about the price of avocados or something.
So, Tuesday, I finally made it home from Windhoek. They shipped me home on Monday but at sunset I still wasn’t home. So, I stayed the night in Outjo. Then Tuesday morning I traveled in true Namibian style – in a crammed bakkie, with all the luggage tied to the roof going approximately 70km/hour. Five hours after we left, we made it the 120km to Khorixas. School was finished by then, so it was like another vacation day.
Wednesday is usually a really easy day for me. I only have three classes that bookend the day – one in the morning and two at the end. But Wednesday morning the administration decided that the last two periods of the day would be canceled so the whole school could listen to the learners who were in the science fair present their projects. When the two grade 7 learners heard this they got really nervous and asked to be let out of class so they could practice. So, then my really easy Wednesday turned into listening to “Light from Above” presented 7 or 8 times. They were getting really good at it and could actually explain any part of the project.
When they actually presented to the school that afternoon, they did well. The English teacher offered to meet with the all three groups (grade 5, grade 6 and grade 7) after school to polish the projects. I really like him. He’s always volunteering for odd jobs – kind of a rarity. He also only responds in English at staff meeting no matter what language the question was asked in. Understandably, I would like him. Also a lower primary teacher offered to help. She was the teacher that coached all the beauty pageant contestants last week. She’s one of the young, hip teachers... I’m actually jealous of her cool clothes… and how clean they are… how does she do it? And, obviously invested, I volunteered to show up also.
Grade 5 had a nice project. It was on dental health and how to care for your teeth. It was well put together and had all the requirements. The two learners had the cute-factor too. The boy is adorable but, at 12 years old, would hate being described as such. 60% of the time he’ll run where he’s going but only on his tiptoes. His run looks like something Willie Coyote would do off a cliff and into mid-air. The girl is a little soft spoken but smiles a lot. They really just needed to work on speaking loudly.
Working with grade 6 was all about damage control. The kids had a poster and topic way beyond their skill level – Diabetes Mellitus type I and type II and all the medical gibberish that slow Namibian dial-up Internet could produce. This was coupled in disaster with the fact that the poster was poorly put together, the learners didn’t have any involvement whatsoever, there were spelling and grammar errors everywhere and there was absolutely zero linear logic in anything. One of the kids was actually put on the project that afternoon because she had a louder voice than the previous candidate. When we were working with them, I forced the two girls to abandon their poster and just explain the topic in 6th grade language. Meanwhile, my grade 7s undertook the poster to attempting to fix it. I also forced them to listen to me explain Diabetes in three or four different ways until they understood what they were saying. Gosh, they hated it – they thought Wednesday was going to be easy too.
And grade 7 was sparkling by the afternoon. They could tell about their project and results without even looking at their poster. I know this because I took their poster away and made them explain without it. Did I ever explain what their project was? We put out 5 different boxes covered in colored paper – black, white, blue, green, and red. Then we put thermometers in the boxes and left them in the sun. After an hour we checked the thermometers to see which box had the highest temperature. The black box was 45C. Blue and green were 42C. Red was 40C. And white was 35C. By Wednesday afternoon grade 7 even had theories about why blue and green were 2 degrees hotter than red. They could explain IR light and UV light. They could explain absorption and reflection. And they had a few examples of applications for such information. They were good and they knew it.
Thursday morning, we put the six kids in matching jerseys and packed them and their projects up into the other science teacher’s bakkie to take down to the youth hall near town. When we got down there, some Ministry of Education officers met us to explain that the fair was being postponed until the afternoon. They just forgot to tell our school. So we toted the learners and projects back to school. That afternoon, at 2:00, we toted everything back down there to set up the projects. Then they told us the judging wouldn’t start until 6. So, we set up the projects and toted all the learners back to school. Then at 5:45, we pulled the learners out of the dining hall; most of them still holding porridge in their hands, and toted them back down to the youth hall. By this time, I was getting really tired. It gets dark at about 5:30 and lately it’s been bitter cold in the shade and inside, especially at night. The kids were nervous and it was making me nervous too. But, my nervous energy was soon transformed into my patience-practicing energy when they informed me I would be a judge.
As a Kunene Regional Science Fair judge, the first obstacle you have to overcome is the judging form. This form is the worst form I have ever experienced. And I’m not even exaggerating. I cannot even explain the terribleness because explanations require reason and logic and this form had zero of either. But, after 45 minutes of debate, the 7 other judges and I finally came to an agreement on how to fairly use the numbers on the form. I was set loose to judge “Innovations and technology” and “Agriculture”. I suspected a little foul play when I noticed some judges giving marks to their learners but, sneaking peaks at my kids, I felt like they were doing ok on their own. Plus, I learned a lot from Innovations and Technology. I learned how to make a water heater from a soda can (small amounts of water – not enough for my bathtub. Bummer). I learned how to make a hair relaxer from burned aloe, how to make detergent from the sap of a tree, how to make glue from gasoline and Styrofoam and how to make a fun math game with circuits. It was really odd to strike so much fear in the kids when they saw me coming. All of them had really wide eyes when I would say; “tell me about your project”. It would take them a few seconds to say, “weeeeelll…” and start explaining. It turns out I was a really mean judge too. I didn’t know I was until I added all the numbers for Innovations and Technology. The highest score was 53 out of 100. Luckily, the kids all got two judges and, therefore, two scores. Judging Agriculture was also ok but there were only two projects. One was about chicken feed. I told the girl her board was cute and pointed to the spray paint on the background – it was yellow dots with little runs. I thought it was supposed to look like someone had thrown eggs at it. But the learner got embarrassed and apologized profusely. Oops, guess it wasn’t supposed to be and egged board. The second project was from Braunfels, the all-boys high school 30Km or so outside of Khorixas. It was about fertilizing soil with ants. It was really interesting and the kids had even collected an ant colony in an aquarium. The two grade 12 boys definitely had good marks in confidence. After I asked them to tell about their project, they talked for a good 7 or 8 minutes straight and only paused to make sure I was not confused by the difficult science they were explaining. Future tip: Don’t insult your judge’s intelligence… you know, I’m just sayin…
At the end of the night, the kids from my school all felt like they had done well. The grade 7s were asked how far the sun is from the earth and how fast light travels – two questions I feel are slightly irrelevant. The kids were kind of disappointed that they didn’t know the answer. I was happy though, because they remembered that they should know the answer from our section about the solar system in class. They were listening! Not remembering… but listening… half the battle, right? Anyway, we all finally made it home around 11:00. It was cold and the kids were locked out of the hostel. But in the end, we woke up enough people to get them in. The next morning, they told us to be at the hall at 9 am. It’s really hard to give up American habits because I made all the kids and the other science teacher leave the school at 8:45. We got to the hall and had to sit there for 2 hours before anything happened. I should have known. But it was a great opportunity to teach my six learners how to play Hangman. Though, I never realized how gruesome the whole premise really was until one of the grade 6 girls asked, why is it bad to hang a man?
The award ceremony started with the judges’ awards. I got a dictionary! And a picture with the mayor of Khorixas! Woo! The dictionary is maybe 150 pages long and is from USAID. It has a paragraph about George Bush on the back. I thought that was silly – American charity making its way all the way over here and into my hands. No fear, I’ll leave the USAID in the library when I leave. There were a lot of speeches and songs after that. This is when I realized that I was magical. I taught my learners how to trick their friends into believing their thumbs were detachable. I taught them how to make a squirming worm halfway underground with their two middle fingers. I taught them how to spin a pen around their thumb. And when I say, “taught”, I really mean, “showed them at least a hundred times and they still think it’s all magic”. It was entertaining because we got in trouble. We were fine until the boys started trying to spin a pen over their thumbs and the pens started flying into peoples’ heads. Luckily, the actual award giving saved us.
Everyone who entered the science fair got an award – certificates. Projects that score below 30 out of 100 got third place. Projects that scored between 30 and 50 got second. And projects that scored above 50 got first place and gets to go to the national science fair (remembering that 50% is a good grade here. 70% is stellar. And maybe one in a class of 38 will get an 80%). They called all the third place winners first. None of my learners were called. Then they called the second place winners. None of my learners were called. I thought, “Great. Just great. They forgot to print the certificates for my kids. So, now they think they’re going to national and then, they’re going to get nothing. This sucks…” Then they called the first place winners. All the names they were calling were from secondary and high schools. My heart was sinking for my kids. Then, they called our grade 5 learners. Our principal was on stage, she almost fell over I think. The kids just stared. Then, they called our grade 7 learners. The principal was giggling now. The kids were still just staring. Then, they called our grade 6 learners. The principal was shaking everyone’s hand. I was laughing. The kids were all still staring. They took a picture of all the first place winners. My grade 7s were standing next to the two tall grade 12 ant-boys from the all-boys school. My learners were still just staring. Someone had to tell them to move when it was time to come down from the stage. When our grade 7 boy came down from the stage he said with wide eyes, “Miss, I am in shock. I almost fell over. I need you to hold my certificate… I’m coming now…” (“I’m coming now” means “I’ll be right back”) and he walked straight out the back door. I have no idea where he went. He came back maybe ten minutes later and was still staring. I couldn’t help but laugh at him. Our grade 7 girl was beaming. She said, “Miss, all my dreams have come true! I’m going to take my certificate to my mother this afternoon” (her mother lives 4 or 5 km out of Khorixas). Then they gave an award to the highest scorer in every category. All of the awards for the tops scorers were books about math and science. Our grade 6 learners were called first. They were the only project in their category, “Medical Science”. But they hardly noticed that tiny detail – they were first! Then our grade 7 learners were called for “Physics”. It was a little difficult for them because they were still in shock from their first award. The other projects in the Physics category were all from secondary schools. The top scorer was called for “human sciences” but it was not our grade 5 learners. They were a few marks too short of the top scorer… who was in grade 10… just FYI…
At the end of the ceremony, one of my grade 6 learners came up to me and gave me a big hug. She said, “Thank you so much, miss! Thank you so much for helping us!” I thought maybe we were in some cheesy sports team movie where they win the big game at the end. It sure felt like that. They all didn’t want to ruin their awards so they gave them to me to hold. I had an armload of books and certificates walking out of the youth hall. Someone stopped us and explained that it appeared that Eddie Bowe had gotten just what it had come for. I said, we hadn’t. I said, we’re going to Windhoek to get that.
The kids were the school heroes when they got back to school. The other learners were giving them hugs and running up to hear the news. The hostel matrons gave them bread, jam and butter to eat. It was definitely a moment that they will never forget.
I am super excited about the national science fair. It is the first week of September. It should be interesting to travel with learners. But I did just spend two days straight with those six kids. They’re a great group and it should be fun to travel with them. I’m already trying to think of where I should take them in Windhoek. Maybe out for ice cream or to the sweets shop. I haven’t decided.
The rest of the afternoon, random kids were knocking on my kitchen door. When I would answer the door, they would beg me to detach my thumb, make a squirming worm from my middle fingers or spin a pen over my thumb. Luckily, I didn’t have to play a round of hangman with them. If you teach one, you have to teach them all.
I swear, this has to be one of those cheesy movies. Where are the cameras? Really.
July 16th
So, on the other end of the spectrum, two kids got in a fist fight in science class today. I asked the kids to bring in plants. I was going through the class taking down the names kids who brought in a plant. I turned around to the sound of a desk flying somewhere and saw a tall girl with a boy in a headlock hitting him. I just stood there. I didn’t just stand there because I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there because I had this feeling that any second the kids would magically realize how absurd they were and stop. But, as per usual in these parts, I was wrong. That poor boy just started losing more oxygen to his head. But, on the plus side, I had stood there long enough doing nothing that other kids in the class had already taken action and started pulling the two apart. I took them both outside and was about to practice some well needed mediation when something else was said or sworn and they were at it again… with me in the middle… and a rock… ugh. I feared for my head, as it is not so fond of baseball sized rocks in the hands of enraged 14 year old girls. When I stopped that bout, I took them to the principal’s office. On the way to the office, I tried to think what normal people do with kids who get in fist fights. And I tried to remember what people in America would do with kids who got in a fist fights. Luckily, the principle was there to answer some questions… Parents! We find parents! But, parents are a luxury that we didn’t seem to have. Well, I left them both there, bawling, and didn’t see them again until after school when they both sobbed an apology to me. Sheesh.
I just thought I would give you both sides though – science fair… fist fight… I can’t figure out what I feel about teaching here. So, I’m just going to focus on this being a pleasant cultural experience with new and interesting friends. Then, I’ll just gauge the worth and value later. And if that fails, I’ll still have my pumpkin bread, right?
July and August were the months that PC sent out invitations to come to Namibia last year. So, if we’re on the same timeline, the lucky winners will soon be getting a letter in the mail informing them that they have won a two-year vacation in Namibia. Namibia? Is that a disease? No, I think it’s near Morocco. Rick, is that you? Well, wherever it is, I’m living in a hut and slaughtering chickens for dinner every night – the real Africa!!
Fine print: Once accepted, this two year vacation comes complete with gray hairs, decreased sanity, increased water consumption and constantly dust-coated nostrils. Half of all participants’ feet increase in size due to calluses. Patience was shown to be tested in all winners. Increased awareness of skin color, language usage, monetary habits and fuel efficiency was noticed in most candidates. 97% chance of sunburn. 110% chance of homesickness. All candidates were showing an increasing in the using of the ending “-ing” in day-to-day speech patterns. 3 out of 70 had to discontinue use of this vacation before completion.
If they’re normal people, they’re probably searching the web for any answers they can scrounge. You have to look online because the Peace Corps doesn’t tell you anything. At first, you think that they don’t tell you anything because they’re maliciously forcing you to be a braver person. But later, you realize that they aren’t telling you things because they can’t. They can’t even insure that you get a ride to site. They can’t guarantee that you’re even going to have a place to stay when you get to site (though, disclaimer, we know they try). And then, even later, you start to realize that all those complications and gaps in information don’t really have anything to do with the Peace Corps and have more to do with the fact that you’re moving to Africa and if you want details (Can I bring my hair dryer? Will there be seatbelts? So, does “business casual” mean khaki pants or my ruffle skirt?) You’re on the wrong continent. And, in the very end, you finally realize that the details don’t matter at all – I’m always wrong anyway and nothing I brought from America is really that life-changing... except my Ipod… and computer…
So, really, all this is to say, if you’re an invitee and you stumbled here: Booga dee Booga dee booga dee boooo! Namibia is scary!!
Ok, not really. It’s pretty great. The worst part is getting on the plane when mom and dad are sad-waving from the other side of security and you’ve got crocodile tears coming down your face and the man you’re sitting next to on the plane seems to think you’re in some sort of condition to carry on a conversation about baseball. I don’t care about baseball! My life: upside-down! What part of sobbing do you not understand?
But just focus on the Africa being cool part. And think of all that character you’re going to build. Nothing says, “I’m awesome” like character. So, like a band-aid… just do it. See you here in about 4 months.
28 July 2008
I think it’s been implied that I’m addicted to Facebook Mobile. Facebook Mobile is great for a whole lot of reasons. It’s much cheaper than text messaging here, it’s reliable and it’s possibly the most brilliant way to stay sane while questioning and metaphorically head butting the whole perception of one’s own as well as a plethora of foreign cultures… Um, what I mean to say is, when I’m stuck in a meeting that is just so “Namibian” or in the midst of a purely Damara argument that makes me really feel as though I stick out like Tupperware in a china hutch, Facebook is where I turn. It’s a distraction. It’s a connection. It’s a calm moment of familiarity. It’s a coping mechanism.
What can I say? I’m addicted. But I justify this addiction because I know, out there, in this tiny country, in the midst of the other 2 million residing here, are other volunteers who have morphed Facebook so completely into their life, the phone has become permanently attached to their thumb. For those who I am Friends with… not friends, but Friends… you know that I change my status every other day, on slow days. My Friends know it usually takes less than 24 hours to get a response to a wall post (quite the record time for communication from me, I would say). But, I justify this because I know that I will make it through Facebook Mobile rehab with flying colors when this is all over.
There are ramifications to this addiction though. For instance, Tango. Tango is what the phone minutes are called here for my phone company, MTC – Make the Connection. It’s kind of fun to be able to say “Tango?” to a street vendor who doesn’t speak English. Who will, in turn reply, “MTC?”. Which is your cue to say “Mmm” while nodding your head yes and holding up 1, 2 or 3 fingers to show how many ten minute units you would like to buy. It’s a universal language… but only in Namibia…
But, the most serious ramification of this addiction comes in my evaluation of day-to-day events. This is how you know your addiction is serious: When something happens in my life, I have a tendency to make it a Facebook status in my head. And all these status updates seem fine and dandy. But then I realize that I’m thinking in status updates. Which, somehow, makes all of my thoughts in third person… Which, somehow, is really weird. But, Lucky for us,
Jessica is becoming a whiz at justification.
So, I justify that: generally, the possibility of sharing the situation I’m in makes me feel better. Sometimes it makes me feel better because I can make light of an absurd circumstance:
Jessica is staring down the cow head in the kitchen sink
Jessica is standing in Lake Khorixas... A.k.a. her kitchen floor. Plumber?
Jessica is trapped in her house by a herd of goats with crazy eyes. Um, Heeelp!
Jessica is Ice Skating on the library floor wax. The school inspector’s coming - Clean everything!!!!
Jessica, after further analysis and observation by tiny tot experts, is actually more of a pink color than white. Hmmm.
And sometimes it makes me feel better because I can voice my concerns and emotions knowing that someone will listen and understand:
Jessica just wants to go home-home.
Jessica keeps forgetting to breathe.
Jessica needs a hug.
And sometimes it makes me feel better because I can just share the mundane facts about my life that make me feel connected to others:
Jessica is watching MASH MASH MASH – anyone got some potatoes.
Jessica is a baking whiz. Somebody stop me… I mean her…
Jessica is a camel.
Jessica CAN feel it… so turn off the The Dogg already, neighbors!!!
Yeah, Facebook has become a staple in my life. I’m a little ashamed and little apathetic to the addiction. But, overall, I’m grateful for it. I’ve heard it said by many in the Nam27 group: I wonder, how did volunteer before us survive in the developing world without Facebook? … Hmm… maybe things weren’t as culturally complicated back then. Yeah, that must be it.
July 31, 2008
Look what I did! I made it to August! I’ve got this Peace Corps thing down! I’m amazing - Just ask me, I’ll tell you so.
At the end of August Nam26 is having their COS (close of service) conference. After that they start trickling home as they finish their assignments. I guess that means now is the time to tell you that Namibia volunteers usually have a shorter service period than other countries. It’s just the way it works with schools. It would be kind of odd to stick around through the first month of your third year of school before you went home. Final exams are a good time to make the clean break. If I stay for two school years it’s about 23 months of service plus 2 months of training making 25 months in total. Peace Corps service is defined as 27 month though. So really, it just means in the world of volunteers, we’re a little wimpier than others. But, generally, I feel ok with that.
Today was the first day of exams for term two. I feel a little more upbeat about exams this time around because I have a better idea of what’s going on. For instance, I know that I’m responsible for binding (stapling) and sorting all my own exams (Natural Science and Math) – we have a copier but it is ancient. That is to say, copiers that can collate, staple, sort, print in color, magnify, reduce, touch screen… not break every third day… are approximately 11 generations newer than our copier. But that’s not to say we don’t love it. After binding all my tests, I felt a wave of generosity come over me and I bound three more random tests. At the end of yesterday, my binding hand was beginning to look like someone trying to play A-flat on an air guitar. But, in the end it’s ok because I use the other hand for marking – which is what I’ll spend the rest of exams doing. With the exceptions of the times I’m invigilating. During these exams I’m also more prepared because I know I will be called upon to invigilate in the stead of other teachers. And, I’m more prepared because I know invigilate isn’t a dirty word. And because I know invigilating is boring.
Anyway, today was the first exam for grades 5 through 7. My grade 6 kids took their first math exam. Their second math exam is a week from Tuesday. I’m thankful that there is so much time between the two tests because we need all the time we can get. I just finished marking the exams from today… highest score 18/30 (belonging to one of my brightest girls, Uazundaije. I knew I had become a better person when I could say her name without thinking for a few seconds first. She’s adorably short with freckles that belong painted on the face of someone headed for a hoedown). Not bad score, all things considered. Next highest score? 13/30. Average score? 6/30. Ugh. I’m not taking it too personally because the kids I don’t teach performed equally as… somehow. And, I was happy to see that most of them were actually trying instead of just writing any words and numbers they could read on the classroom walls (a very very common occurance – it’s the main reason to erase the board before a test. Otherwise, you’ll get random words for answers. It’s not uncommon to get “welcome to classroom 5B!” for an answer on a question about circuits… Some kids just can’t read – one of the many reasons two years is just not enough time. I could tell they were trying because there was some kind of logic in their answers. Unfortunately, where they possessed logic, they severely lacked in skill. But, I was also pleased to see that nearly all of my learners have improved in their long division skills. We do at least two long division problems together everyday in class. I like long division because it makes you practice subtraction and multiplication at the same time. And I like it because you have to follow the same pattern every time. Patterns tend to be foreign to my learners, so anything I can do to force step 1… step 2… step 3… step 4… makes me feel better about the general state of my learners.
Natural science for my grade 7 classes is next week Wednesday. I feel like there’s no hope for them. I love working with my learners, I do… Well, most of them… The others I love the challenge they present. But the lack of hope has nothing to do with them. The exam is, yet again, awful. Awful. Yesterday, when we were all sitting around in the staff room strategizing about exams, one of the other teachers clued me in to why the Khorixas cluster science exams are so terrible. He said, “I’m sorry, dear, to be the one to tell you but some of these teachers are lazy. They’ll just take questions from old exams without checking them first.” It sounds like an ok idea but the questions weren’t good the first time around. And they’re even worse this time around… for a lot of reasons… but mostly because the syllabus changed 2 years ago!
Luckily, I’ve mellowed a little since first term. This term, I spent my review time just going over things we learned during term two. Last term I spent a huge amount of time teaching new things that had randomly appeared on the test. I felt like it would help them get better scores on their exams. Since then, I’ve realized it’s probably better to just review and let the chips fall. The kids will be ok because, even though all of Khorixas has to write the same exam, I’m allowed to curve the scores before I put them into the report cards.
Which brings me back to the main reason a curve will be needed on this exam. There are questions on the exam that I’m not supposed to teach until term 3. There are questions on the exam that I’m not even supposed to teach. And then there are questions on the exam that are just… well, they’re just… well, just let me show you:
Khorixas School Cluster Exam
Term 2 – 2008
Natural Science
Grade 7
1. We can purify water from germs if we _____________.
a. Litter it b. Boil it c. Decanting it d. Drop it
2. Identify the following animal
a. Crab b. Kelp c. fish d. Salamandar
3. Mention the habitat of the animal mentioned above.
a. Trough b. Water c. Kraal d. Camp
4. Study the following diagram and answer question 1.6
a. Trough b. Water c. Kraal d. Camp
4. Study the following diagram and answer question 1.6
5. Which organism is a producer
a. Grass b. Zebra c. lion d. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons and ____________
a. Mars b. Oxygen c. Nitrogen d. Elections
24. Explain how you can separate sand and water mixture. Name the only process you can use
__________________________
25. Construct a food chain of a Jackal.
26. Similarities of Earth and Mass is
Total: 60 Marks
There were a lot more questions but you get the idea. I did proof read above and there’s nothing wrong with the way I typed it. Yes, an atom does consist of Protons, Neutrons and Elections. 13, 14 and 15 year olds do have to identify a picture of a fish and know that it lives in water. No, question number 4 doesn’t have a question. Yes, the planet Earth and the Planet Mass is very similar. I can think of two ways to separate sand and water. Who knows the food chain of a jackal right off the top of their head? Because I don’t. And I didn’t teach it. And, Yes, we did jump from number 5 to number 24.
So, as becoming tradition, we do the best that we can do. We accept what we have and make it work. The kids are excellent at this. I am new to it. Some call it being passive. I call it a new talent.
14-8-08
I’m in Windhoek again. And I just saw The Dark Knight. And I ate Kiwi today. Hmm. It’s good.
A lot of our group is in Windhoek this month because it’s time for Mid-service medical exams. Honestly, the exams are a bit of a pain but it’s really nice to see a bunch of familiar faces.
To come to medical I had to dodge out of the last week of school. My learners finished taking their exams on Tuesday though. I hurried and got all of my paper work in before I traveled to the big city. As it turns out, Natural Science was ok. The kids pointed out some of the weird things about the test though.
Next week, I’m leaving Windhoek and traveling down to Capetown in South Africa. I am so excited about it. A new country! A new city! Should be great.
a. Grass b. Zebra c. lion d. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons and ____________
a. Mars b. Oxygen c. Nitrogen d. Elections
24. Explain how you can separate sand and water mixture. Name the only process you can use
__________________________
25. Construct a food chain of a Jackal.
26. Similarities of Earth and Mass is
Total: 60 Marks
There were a lot more questions but you get the idea. I did proof read above and there’s nothing wrong with the way I typed it. Yes, an atom does consist of Protons, Neutrons and Elections. 13, 14 and 15 year olds do have to identify a picture of a fish and know that it lives in water. No, question number 4 doesn’t have a question. Yes, the planet Earth and the Planet Mass is very similar. I can think of two ways to separate sand and water. Who knows the food chain of a jackal right off the top of their head? Because I don’t. And I didn’t teach it. And, Yes, we did jump from number 5 to number 24.
So, as becoming tradition, we do the best that we can do. We accept what we have and make it work. The kids are excellent at this. I am new to it. Some call it being passive. I call it a new talent.
14-8-08
I’m in Windhoek again. And I just saw The Dark Knight. And I ate Kiwi today. Hmm. It’s good.
A lot of our group is in Windhoek this month because it’s time for Mid-service medical exams. Honestly, the exams are a bit of a pain but it’s really nice to see a bunch of familiar faces.
To come to medical I had to dodge out of the last week of school. My learners finished taking their exams on Tuesday though. I hurried and got all of my paper work in before I traveled to the big city. As it turns out, Natural Science was ok. The kids pointed out some of the weird things about the test though.
Next week, I’m leaving Windhoek and traveling down to Capetown in South Africa. I am so excited about it. A new country! A new city! Should be great.
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