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.
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