This is the last week of Term 1. The food company that provides meals has stopped coming, so the hostel learners have already been sent home. When most of the grade 1-10 learners, who “commute”, saw that their elders were finished for the trimester, they decided that they were done too. As a result, the school blocks are almost completely empty, and the only learners that do make the trek to school do so simply to play soccer in the field beyond the place where a gate should be or to lounge in the shade of a tree. This would frustrate me more if the majority of the teachers’ time was not consumed by marking exams and recording grades. No teaching would be done this week anyways (little has been done the past few weeks during exams either), so it doesn’t bother me that learners have decided against rising before the sun and walking several kilometers to just sit in a teacher-less classroom.
The close of this week is also the beginning of a month long holiday. Kyle, another volunteer teacher, and myself have very rough plans to sort of hitch-hike around the southern part of the continent and see as much while spending as little as possible (he has told me only half-kidding that he plans on packing two pairs of underwear and laundry detergent). This adventure will most likely render me incommunicado for a significant period of time.
Therefore, to conclude the first phase of my service I thought it would be appropriate to publish some long overdue thank yous. Thank you to my parents for encouraging me to undertake this journey, and for allowing me to take up space in their house while waiting for a volunteering opportunity to materialize. Thank you to my brother for his enthusiastic long-distance support of a few of my Oshikunde initiatives. Thank you to Linell for persuading me to set up this blog. Thank you again to all of my co-workers at Barnes & Noble for their ridiculously generous send-off last year. Thank you to everyone who has read my posts so far for giving me an excuse to toot my own horn so loudly every week. Also, thank you, thank you, thank you so much to everyone (family members, friends, people from my mother’s exercise class) who has generously offered their support or contributed to my fundraising campaign earlier in the year. We have managed to raise a few hundred dollars, which translates to a couple thousand Namibian dollars. I want to take this opportunity to provide all of you with an update as to what that money is doing.
At present, nothing, but that is very soon about to change. Last week I was on an extended high as I worked late nights cataloguing all of the books that I found in a locked storeroom and placed on shelves in the once empty classroom that is now being transformed into the Oshikunde Library. Boxes and boxes of books were collecting dust behind two distinct locked doors, but no more! In my rummaging I located a complete 22 volume World Book Encyclopedia, two enormous, pristine (never been touched?) dictionaries, and everything from Junie B. Jones and the Chronicles of Narnia to foreign language books and books on tape. This means that although a book drive or dictionary order would do nothing but improve our collection by leaps and bounds, they are no longer urgent projects. At this juncture my aim is facilitate the evolution of this newly-born library into a legitimate media center.
As a result, I plan over the holiday to purchase a projector that can be hooked up to my laptop or a colleague’s DVD player to begin showing the learners movies on the weekends. It is harder than you think, but try to imagine what you would do over a weekend if you had: no cell phone, no TV, no computer, no books, very little paper to write on, no board games...That is the situation my learners have found themselves in every day after school and all day on weekends. I once asked a learner a question after I found him sitting alone, motionless in a chair under one of the school block awnings. It was as if I had woken him from a trance. He did not notice my approach or my presence until I spoke. I have no idea how long he had been sitting staring into space or how long he would have stayed in that position.
I have the box set of the series Planet Earth (if you have never seen this I can only recommend that you go do so…right now), and I think weekly episodes projected on the side wall of the class buildings would absolutely blow these learners’ minds (I did “The Lady and the Tiger” with my English class only to discover that the learners had never heard of tigers). I also want to invest in some educational games to be kept in the media center’s cupboard. I brought Bananagrams with me to the country, and I am super-excited about purchasing a chessboard or two. Does anyone reading have any other suggestions for good educational games? Also, depending upon price ranges I have even considered outfitting the media center with speakers to play classical music at a reasonable volume as learners peruse the shelves.
These are some of my ideas that I fully intend to act upon while I am in Windhoek at the end of the holiday (Windhoek is one of the few places in Namibia where I can purchase these products). If anyone has any suggestions as to how else I could better spend this money, please feel free to post ideas to this blog. Also, if anyone reading, or anyone you know, or anyone who is known by someone you know, would like to participate in the development of the media center or some other aspect of Oshikunde, contributions of literally any shape and size, even just one dollar ($1 US = $7 Namibian), are enormously appreciated. Please mail any donations and do not hesitate to dump old, unwanted materials that the media center could use onto my parents at 8429 Early Bud Way, Laurel, MD 20723.
This WorldTeach diary is the first time in my life that I have kept a journal. I never before had experienced the delight of being able to reread and rediscover some of the episodes and emotions that I have lived through until I set up this blog. It is incredible to me when I think about how long I really have been away from home and how many little things I have already forgotten which I have happily put into words. If I were to give, not myself, but this WorldTeach experience a grade after Term 1, I would have to say that it has been far better than satisfactory and that it continues to show great potential.
April 22, 2010
April 14, 2010
The Miscellany Continues
If you clap your hands a few inches above where they are sitting, flies do not stand a chance.
On an evaluation form, after asking how many computer labs and mechanical drawing workshops your school has, the Ministry of Education asks if your school has running water or electricity.
6 year olds scale sand dunes effortlessly.
It is far harder to get halfway up a dune than you think it is to get to the top.
Don’t bother collecting cardboard boxes from a KFC dumpster because it is impossible to ride one down a dune.
Any hair longer than a buzz is a tragic waste of water.
There is over 50% unemployment in Namibia.
The government spent over N$500 million building a new statehouse which you are forbidden to photograph.
My public school has 700 learners and one janitor.
Derrick the professional sky-diver refers to 10,000 feet as “party time”.
Sky-diving after the parachute is pulled is scarier than the free-fall because Derrick insists on performing hairpin turns that place your bodies above the chute.
There is a bar in Namibia called “The Bruce Lee”.
Another is called “Vanilla Ice Bar”.
Yet another is called “Back of the Moon Bar”.
I have never been in any of these establishments; it’s just that it would be an understatement to say that a substantial portion of buildings in Namibia are bars.
When your friend’s colleague says he needs two minutes to shower before leaving, he means that he is keeping you in his house for 3 hours while his sisters cook you chicken and porridge.
Hot chicken and porridge is spectacular.
If one teacher tells you that you aren’t allowed to return your exams to your learners before the rest of the exams are finished, and another teacher tells you that you can, just do whatever the hell you think is best.
The little boy that I play peek-a-boo with is named “Saddam Hussein.”
I call him “Okamati” (little boy).
Learners cannot believe it if you tell them that you don’t care if they write in pencil or pen.
I haven’t yet dared tell them I would prefer pencil for fear of hyperventilation or cardiac arrest.
If you lend a learner a pen, be sure to take one of their shoes as collateral.
I can wipe sand off my feet with my feet.
If thirst compels you to slug down a liter and a half of LiquiFruit Juice, expect to be doubled over in pain about 2 hours later.
If on your field trip your school provides you with cans of jam and no can-opener ask an employee at the local market to open them.
He uses a machete.
Jeopardy! test reviews are a sure-fire favorite lesson.
If a kid doesn’t read simply because there are no books available, just give him or her something with words on it and you will have to pry it away.
To be continued….
On an evaluation form, after asking how many computer labs and mechanical drawing workshops your school has, the Ministry of Education asks if your school has running water or electricity.
6 year olds scale sand dunes effortlessly.
It is far harder to get halfway up a dune than you think it is to get to the top.
Don’t bother collecting cardboard boxes from a KFC dumpster because it is impossible to ride one down a dune.
Any hair longer than a buzz is a tragic waste of water.
There is over 50% unemployment in Namibia.
The government spent over N$500 million building a new statehouse which you are forbidden to photograph.
My public school has 700 learners and one janitor.
Derrick the professional sky-diver refers to 10,000 feet as “party time”.
Sky-diving after the parachute is pulled is scarier than the free-fall because Derrick insists on performing hairpin turns that place your bodies above the chute.
There is a bar in Namibia called “The Bruce Lee”.
Another is called “Vanilla Ice Bar”.
Yet another is called “Back of the Moon Bar”.
I have never been in any of these establishments; it’s just that it would be an understatement to say that a substantial portion of buildings in Namibia are bars.
When your friend’s colleague says he needs two minutes to shower before leaving, he means that he is keeping you in his house for 3 hours while his sisters cook you chicken and porridge.
Hot chicken and porridge is spectacular.
If one teacher tells you that you aren’t allowed to return your exams to your learners before the rest of the exams are finished, and another teacher tells you that you can, just do whatever the hell you think is best.
The little boy that I play peek-a-boo with is named “Saddam Hussein.”
I call him “Okamati” (little boy).
Learners cannot believe it if you tell them that you don’t care if they write in pencil or pen.
I haven’t yet dared tell them I would prefer pencil for fear of hyperventilation or cardiac arrest.
If you lend a learner a pen, be sure to take one of their shoes as collateral.
I can wipe sand off my feet with my feet.
If thirst compels you to slug down a liter and a half of LiquiFruit Juice, expect to be doubled over in pain about 2 hours later.
If on your field trip your school provides you with cans of jam and no can-opener ask an employee at the local market to open them.
He uses a machete.
Jeopardy! test reviews are a sure-fire favorite lesson.
If a kid doesn’t read simply because there are no books available, just give him or her something with words on it and you will have to pry it away.
To be continued….
April 8, 2010
The Haves, Have-Nots, Hads, and Have-Nows
Oshikunde is a small, sleepy village. The locals call town “opate”, which in Oshiwambo just means “road”, and it recently occurred to me that they can do this because that location is the one and only place where there actually is a road. I live about 3km off of this road and into the bush. When walking at night I have to keep my eyes peeled so that I am not startled by cattle or donkeys walking around me in the dark, but when it comes to human animals, almost everyone knows everyone else, and I am at very little risk of any harm. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the homes of some of my fellow volunteers or for me once I leave the geographic isolation of my school.
One friend of mine, after hearing a rattling at her front door lock one night not too long ago, was approached by a man holding a knife above shoulder-level with the blade pointing downward. She is pretty badass and had the wherewithal to chuck her cell phone at him and use her body to barricade herself in her bathroom until he left with her laptop, camera, phone, and approximately $2000 of learners’ money for a field trip that her school had compelled her to unwillingly keep in her house.
After returning home from her Easter Holiday, another teacher also found evidence at her home of an attempted break in. All of the facts are not in, but she was a bit freaked out upon her arrival.
While on my journey to Swakopmund, a developed coastal city, for my Easter Break, I had my own collision with Namibia’s thief element. My friend Julia and I pulled up in a taxi to the “hike point” in Ondangwa where one catches a direct bus to Swakopmund. Old hats at hiking, now three months into our service, we calmly climbed out of our car - I might have even been texting on my phone – and we smacked into one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever witnessed.
A mob of I don’t know how many Namibian taxi drivers and taxi recruiters shouting “Oshilumbu!” (White person!), “This way!”, “Come with me!” pressed against us like preteen girls pushing against the stage at a Donny Osmond concert. My first inclination was to flex my educator muscles, treat these citizens like children, and admonish them that if they all insist on acting so unreasonably, then none of them will get a fare. Then I noticed that their combined weight was uncomfortably preventing us from even getting past our opened car doors and began to get irritated. Then I caught a glimpse of men snatching our bags from the taxi’s trunk and making off with them. I forced my way through the crowd, wrestled my luggage from a rather uncooperative man, and spun 180 to see Julia locked in a similar struggle nearer the heart of the mass of people. In an attempt to help I shouldered into the crowd, placed my hand on the man grabbing her backpack’s chest, looked him in the face, and repeatedly and sternly told him to let go. How ridiculously futile this effort was can be shown by the fact that the man was simultaneously being strangled by the bare hands of someone standing directly behind him and he still had not relinquished. We finally pried ourselves from the mob, dived back into the taxi, and asked the driver to drive somewhere else. When we stopped at a grocery store to take some breaths and regroup, I reached for my wallet and stuck my hand into an empty pocket.
My wallet not only contained the several hundred dollars I had recently withdrawn for the weekend’s journey, but also my debit cards to both my American and Namibian bank accounts, my credit card, my driver’s license, my health-care card, and my WorldTeach ID card. And a piece of paper with my Namibian PIN was in my wallet because I had yet to commit it to memory. There also happened to be a branch of Standard Bank (my Namibian bank), directly across the street from the gas station where my wallet was just swiped. The driver assured us that my wallet was long gone, but since I had no other recourse I asked him to take me back to the hike point.
A considerably smaller crowd than before greeted me. I wasted no time. “Where is my wallet?” A diminutive guy with tufts of facial hair took me aside. He told me that he knew who had my wallet but would not tell me in the open because he risked bodily harm if the perpetrators learned who ratted them out. “These guys are thieves,” he said, “they are across the street there. I will take you to them if you ride in my bus to Swakopmund.” Deal. We began walking. In the middle of the road I realized that he was no longer beside me. I approached a large group of men standing, doing nothing in particular, and my eyes landed on my wallet in the left hand of one of the men in the front row. “That is my wallet. I want it back.” I could have been more tactful. Try again. “I am not accusing anyone of anything, you have something of mine, I just want it back.” A little more diplomatic, but it was difficult to keep my tone from overflowing with accusation. A strange negotiation ensued during which one large man insisted he had not stolen but found my wallet…what would I do to reward him? Like a smartass I told him that I had nothing to give him because he had my wallet. Finally, after some progress was gained I made a big show of asking the crowd, “Is this the man who found my wallet? This man right here is the one that found my wallet?” “Yes, he is the one.”
The wallet, with everything inside, exchanged hands (for one moment the thought shot through my mind to just take off running in the opposite direction), and I handed the man N$100 for returning my property to me - a small price to pay for me and a nice 10 minutes of work for him. “Are you still going to Swakopmund?" he asked, "Here come into my bus.” I lied and told him that I had decided against traveling.
I rendezvoused with the man who directed me to my wallet, thanked him profusely, and his friend drove me and the other three in our regular traveling crew safely to Swakopmund. The next Monday on my return journey to Oshikunde I briefly encountered the small man at another hike point in Ondangwa. I shook his hand and thanked him again. “Can you help me a few dollars for a cool drink?” he asked. I figured I owed it to him, and I also understood that the two of us are not exactly friends.
One friend of mine, after hearing a rattling at her front door lock one night not too long ago, was approached by a man holding a knife above shoulder-level with the blade pointing downward. She is pretty badass and had the wherewithal to chuck her cell phone at him and use her body to barricade herself in her bathroom until he left with her laptop, camera, phone, and approximately $2000 of learners’ money for a field trip that her school had compelled her to unwillingly keep in her house.
After returning home from her Easter Holiday, another teacher also found evidence at her home of an attempted break in. All of the facts are not in, but she was a bit freaked out upon her arrival.
While on my journey to Swakopmund, a developed coastal city, for my Easter Break, I had my own collision with Namibia’s thief element. My friend Julia and I pulled up in a taxi to the “hike point” in Ondangwa where one catches a direct bus to Swakopmund. Old hats at hiking, now three months into our service, we calmly climbed out of our car - I might have even been texting on my phone – and we smacked into one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever witnessed.
A mob of I don’t know how many Namibian taxi drivers and taxi recruiters shouting “Oshilumbu!” (White person!), “This way!”, “Come with me!” pressed against us like preteen girls pushing against the stage at a Donny Osmond concert. My first inclination was to flex my educator muscles, treat these citizens like children, and admonish them that if they all insist on acting so unreasonably, then none of them will get a fare. Then I noticed that their combined weight was uncomfortably preventing us from even getting past our opened car doors and began to get irritated. Then I caught a glimpse of men snatching our bags from the taxi’s trunk and making off with them. I forced my way through the crowd, wrestled my luggage from a rather uncooperative man, and spun 180 to see Julia locked in a similar struggle nearer the heart of the mass of people. In an attempt to help I shouldered into the crowd, placed my hand on the man grabbing her backpack’s chest, looked him in the face, and repeatedly and sternly told him to let go. How ridiculously futile this effort was can be shown by the fact that the man was simultaneously being strangled by the bare hands of someone standing directly behind him and he still had not relinquished. We finally pried ourselves from the mob, dived back into the taxi, and asked the driver to drive somewhere else. When we stopped at a grocery store to take some breaths and regroup, I reached for my wallet and stuck my hand into an empty pocket.
My wallet not only contained the several hundred dollars I had recently withdrawn for the weekend’s journey, but also my debit cards to both my American and Namibian bank accounts, my credit card, my driver’s license, my health-care card, and my WorldTeach ID card. And a piece of paper with my Namibian PIN was in my wallet because I had yet to commit it to memory. There also happened to be a branch of Standard Bank (my Namibian bank), directly across the street from the gas station where my wallet was just swiped. The driver assured us that my wallet was long gone, but since I had no other recourse I asked him to take me back to the hike point.
A considerably smaller crowd than before greeted me. I wasted no time. “Where is my wallet?” A diminutive guy with tufts of facial hair took me aside. He told me that he knew who had my wallet but would not tell me in the open because he risked bodily harm if the perpetrators learned who ratted them out. “These guys are thieves,” he said, “they are across the street there. I will take you to them if you ride in my bus to Swakopmund.” Deal. We began walking. In the middle of the road I realized that he was no longer beside me. I approached a large group of men standing, doing nothing in particular, and my eyes landed on my wallet in the left hand of one of the men in the front row. “That is my wallet. I want it back.” I could have been more tactful. Try again. “I am not accusing anyone of anything, you have something of mine, I just want it back.” A little more diplomatic, but it was difficult to keep my tone from overflowing with accusation. A strange negotiation ensued during which one large man insisted he had not stolen but found my wallet…what would I do to reward him? Like a smartass I told him that I had nothing to give him because he had my wallet. Finally, after some progress was gained I made a big show of asking the crowd, “Is this the man who found my wallet? This man right here is the one that found my wallet?” “Yes, he is the one.”
The wallet, with everything inside, exchanged hands (for one moment the thought shot through my mind to just take off running in the opposite direction), and I handed the man N$100 for returning my property to me - a small price to pay for me and a nice 10 minutes of work for him. “Are you still going to Swakopmund?" he asked, "Here come into my bus.” I lied and told him that I had decided against traveling.
I rendezvoused with the man who directed me to my wallet, thanked him profusely, and his friend drove me and the other three in our regular traveling crew safely to Swakopmund. The next Monday on my return journey to Oshikunde I briefly encountered the small man at another hike point in Ondangwa. I shook his hand and thanked him again. “Can you help me a few dollars for a cool drink?” he asked. I figured I owed it to him, and I also understood that the two of us are not exactly friends.
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