One problem a large number of Namibian teachers have is speaking way over the heads of their learners. In order to acquire teaching qualifications a Namibian will have to complete some form of tertiary education, and in order to be accepted into an institution after grade 12 a learner must be excellent, compared to the rest of their class. To give you an idea, I assisted a few grade 12 teachers compile their pass/fail reports, and a generous estimation of how many learners scored high enough on their August examinations to meet the University of Namibia’s entry requirements would be 10%. When working, teachers address their classes as if they were talking with someone of their level of education even though they have had at least four more years of it than their learners (and with younger learners, far many more years) at serious and well-funded institutions (UNAM in the capital has a few more resources than does your average bush school).
It doesn’t help that the style of education here is not conducive to learners speaking up, speaking out, or really speaking at all. It is typical for a teacher to write the next batch of information from the syllabus on the chalkboard, which is called a summary, and the day’s lesson will be simply requiring the learners to copy it into their notebooks. Teachers can arrive late to class if they have already written the day’s summary, a teacher might not attend class if the summary is already up, and some teachers give the summary to a learner and have that child write it on the board for them. If a teacher speaks it is usually to repeat the words aloud and to occasionally ask, “Are we together?” which is Namlish that translates to “Do you understand?” Even primary school learners have already mastered the art of nodding and saying yes in unison so that the teacher will continue.
And so it happens that learners who do not know right from left, cannot identify an adjective or convert verbs into the past tense will come to me during study time with their science summaries and ask, “Mr. Brent, what is ‘sublimation’?” or with their social studies summaries and ask, “Mr. Brent help me ‘monarchy’?”
Earlier in the year our Circuit’s Inspector of Education, a legitimately eloquent man with a resonating voice, visited our school to give a motivational talk to the learners. It is a shame that almost none of his speech was comprehended. He led into one portion with, “All of us wish to leave a legacy…” I nodded at the thought, but grimaced slightly at the vocabulary. That day my English 11 class had a few free minutes at the end of the lesson, so one of my learners raised his hand and asked, “Sir, what is a legacy?” I had the learners walk outside and line up in the sand. Then I told them to stomp their feet into the ground, take a step back, and look at their footprints. I told them that a legacy is how you change something, it is what you leave behind after you go, it is like a footprint.
As the school-year is now in its final term, I find that I am thinking more and more about whether what I have brought to Oshikunde will last. When I teach in different classrooms I see what is left of the posters that I contributed to the walls. All of the HIV/AIDS Awareness posters my Grade 11 and 12s made have been torn down. My hand-written “CAPITAL and lowercase” alphabets are swinging slightly in the breeze and displaying pencil and chalk-drawn graffiti. The ROYGBIV colors poster for my grade 8 class has simply disappeared. When I see these, my lessons are momentarily interrupted as I press my lips tightly, inhale, and grunt before relocating my train of thought. I’m happy I’ve been able to carve out an area of the school blocks in the library over which I have complete control. Possessing the key and being present at all times when learners are inside allows me to ensure that the materials within are used and treated properly.
And use it we do! I teach twelve computer classes a week, and every day Monday through Thursday the library is almost full to capacity during both afternoon and evening study sessions. Monday afternoons I take one of the lower primary grades (1-4) for a short reading lesson and then story-time (I just can’t help myself), Tuesdays grades 5-7 rotate which learners are allowed to come in and take JUST 1 BOOK (to prevent complete mayhem) and read quietly for thirty minutes before I allow board games, Wednesdays are sports days outside, Thursdays grades 8-10 are allowed free rein, and each of these days in the evening two of the eight hostel classes are given priority in admission. Despite this maximization of our new resources, I worry about what will happen next year. There simply are too few teachers at Oshikunde. None of the teachers possess all three of the needed criteria of initiative, skill, and time to ensure that the library remains open next year. There are teachers I consider knowledgeable and responsible enough to entrust the media center to, but these teachers are already too busy to take on something else in addition to their regular work.
Another disturbing reality is the inability of Oshikunde to keep staff. Two teachers have left the school this year as well as both of our Heads of Department, and only one of the vacancies, the grade 7 post, was filled. Even worse, the now transferred HODs were the two strongest staff members that the school possessed. Namibia has begun awarding teachers a “bush allowance”, which is additional payment given on a scale to teachers depending on the amenities present at their school, to encourage teachers to take positions at disadvantaged schools. You would think that Oshikunde, which lacks dependable power and running water, would be in the group of schools whose teachers receive this payout (and every teacher here thought it would), but somebody in some office somewhere flubbed it up leaving Oshikunde off the list.
The truth is, even if the school remains exactly the same after I leave at the end of the year, and especially if it keeps bleeding staff members, the library and its shelves and posters and networked computers, will be used as much as they were last year when everything was in boxes behind locked doors. I have written letters to my organization, WorldTeach, as well as to the Regional Director of Education requesting a volunteer to follow me, and I enlisted my principal to do the same. At this point, that really is all I can do, and I now must face the troubling question of whether my year’s work was worth anything at all.
At first I’m down, but when I take just a moment to consider the answer I realize how absurd the question is. So what if posters decay? Classes still had months during which they could gaze at them and learn, and if learners made them they still benefited from the activity and the pride in seeing their work prominently pasted on the otherwise barren walls. Plus, the loss of a poster doesn’t erase the impact of a year’s worth of lessons. And what about the pictures printed, cds burned, CVs typed? One of my personal gauges of success is how few times I can wear a tie in my life, I shave once a week, and to cope with the heat I come to work with my sleeves already rolled up, but it isn’t too ridiculous to think that I might have been a model of responsibility and professionalism which could help some of these kids in the future. And the media center? Two terms of dictionaries, magazines, newspapers, easy readers, textbooks, Microsoft Word, Children’s Encarta software and more, what is worth the effort if that isn’t? Even if the media center is not reliably used for years to come, it has been used.
Your legacy is those things that are carried away from you in the heads and hearts of people you meet. Every action, good and ill, regardless of how minor or how seemingly temporary has the potential to roll on into the world unendingly. I don’t finish everyday here in the positive. Even so, I sure as hell try, and I go to sleep tired. I think I can be satisfied with that.
Still, I really hope we get a volunteer next year.
September 30, 2010
September 23, 2010
The Meaning of the Bush
One term that I now frequently use in Africa is “the bush”. I’ve noticed that I use it freely in my blog posts without ever having explained what it is. I intend to correct that now.
Before coming to Africa I had heard the word, but had very little idea what it meant or how to envision it. Indeed, even after I first arrived the word seem used by everyone so indiscriminately that I still couldn’t pin it down. When learners are suspended from the hostel they are forced to go sleep “in the bush”. Schools are supposed to lock their gates because it is dangerous “in the bush” at night. At its vaguest the term “bush” refers to any area beyond development, almost any area on the other side of a fence, regardless of the plant and wildlife present. If you are off the road you are in the bush. If you are past the tar road or on a gravel road you are in the bush.
My curiosity compelled me one afternoon during the term 2 holiday to slip through our school’s back fence for some exploring and first hand research.
When used with precision, at least in Namibia, the word bush means the environment of sparsely populated, medium-sized trees and sand sprinkled with low grass and plants that dominates the country’s northern regions. The bush is not the jungle. Even at its thickest the bush is still marginally less dense than “the woods” of the United States. The trees are shorter and not as thick. Many are also more mushroom-shaped, often with a dome of green resting above a thin frame as opposed to the fuller, more circular toppings or conical shapes of trees I know from home. The space between trees allows for easy passage, and there are numerous natural clearings, allowing you to see several layers of trees deep. The bush is also dry and severe. Most plants have large thorns. After the rains the bush temporarily owns some deep greens, but the predominant colors are faded green and the varying light browns of the soil, bark, and sun-worn grasses.
There aren’t too many animals in the bush. You can encounter chickens, donkeys, cattle, or pigs, but these are all the possessions of community farmers that round them up every day. There definitely are wild animals such as snakes and birds or (depending on where you are) warthogs and even giraffes, and there are plenty of bugs in the evening. But if you take a peek into the bush at a random time during the day, it will probably appear devoid of mobile life.
On an afternoon not too long ago I was in a truck hitching a ride back to my school. The driver spoke to me rapidly in Oshiwambo and made some gestures toward the bush that I didn’t understand in the slightest. I nodded my head and said, “Ewa” which means “OK”, because that’s what I do when I realize there is no hope of effective communication, and the man turned off the paved road onto a trail of deep sand between the trees. We drove for a while, at least one kilometer, getting stuck only once in the sand before we reached a ramshackle “gate” of some logs piled on top of each other. A boy in the truck hopped out and chucked the logs out of our way to allow us through. Beyond the gate was an enormous clearing with several traditional homesteads (fences made of long, vertical, wooden poles surrounding a handful of small huts or rooms). This place tucked in the bush and accessible by a path indistinguishable from almost all other areas between trees was the residence of his extended family – brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and more, and he had come to give them a gigantic sack of mahangu seeds for them to use for planting their next crop.
One feature of the bush landscape that fascinates me is the regular eruption of termite towers from the earth. They often appear in rows almost equidistant from the road and equidistant from each other. They are usually gray, but sometimes are reddish. Constructed by thousands of little bugs and held together by a secreted sticky substance the towers start out wide at their base and grow narrower as they extend upward, sometimes eight or ten feet high, or higher. According to one guide, these towers incredibly are only ventilation shafts for series of underground tunnels that can expand into areas of 40 square kilometers around. One afternoon I wanted to better know of what exactly they were made, so I latched my fingers onto a little nub and broke it off. The piece came loose more easily than I expected, and I could crumble it in my fingers. I was slightly concerned that a phalanx of furious soldier insects would burst out looking for a fight, but I had apparently caused no disturbance. The tower, like the bush, can be seen easily and superficially understood from a distance. They both also conceal much more than can be observed with casual glances. If you hit the right spot at the right time it’s possible that you may be overwhelmed, but for the most part there is not much there.
Before coming to Africa I had heard the word, but had very little idea what it meant or how to envision it. Indeed, even after I first arrived the word seem used by everyone so indiscriminately that I still couldn’t pin it down. When learners are suspended from the hostel they are forced to go sleep “in the bush”. Schools are supposed to lock their gates because it is dangerous “in the bush” at night. At its vaguest the term “bush” refers to any area beyond development, almost any area on the other side of a fence, regardless of the plant and wildlife present. If you are off the road you are in the bush. If you are past the tar road or on a gravel road you are in the bush.
My curiosity compelled me one afternoon during the term 2 holiday to slip through our school’s back fence for some exploring and first hand research.
When used with precision, at least in Namibia, the word bush means the environment of sparsely populated, medium-sized trees and sand sprinkled with low grass and plants that dominates the country’s northern regions. The bush is not the jungle. Even at its thickest the bush is still marginally less dense than “the woods” of the United States. The trees are shorter and not as thick. Many are also more mushroom-shaped, often with a dome of green resting above a thin frame as opposed to the fuller, more circular toppings or conical shapes of trees I know from home. The space between trees allows for easy passage, and there are numerous natural clearings, allowing you to see several layers of trees deep. The bush is also dry and severe. Most plants have large thorns. After the rains the bush temporarily owns some deep greens, but the predominant colors are faded green and the varying light browns of the soil, bark, and sun-worn grasses.
There aren’t too many animals in the bush. You can encounter chickens, donkeys, cattle, or pigs, but these are all the possessions of community farmers that round them up every day. There definitely are wild animals such as snakes and birds or (depending on where you are) warthogs and even giraffes, and there are plenty of bugs in the evening. But if you take a peek into the bush at a random time during the day, it will probably appear devoid of mobile life.
On an afternoon not too long ago I was in a truck hitching a ride back to my school. The driver spoke to me rapidly in Oshiwambo and made some gestures toward the bush that I didn’t understand in the slightest. I nodded my head and said, “Ewa” which means “OK”, because that’s what I do when I realize there is no hope of effective communication, and the man turned off the paved road onto a trail of deep sand between the trees. We drove for a while, at least one kilometer, getting stuck only once in the sand before we reached a ramshackle “gate” of some logs piled on top of each other. A boy in the truck hopped out and chucked the logs out of our way to allow us through. Beyond the gate was an enormous clearing with several traditional homesteads (fences made of long, vertical, wooden poles surrounding a handful of small huts or rooms). This place tucked in the bush and accessible by a path indistinguishable from almost all other areas between trees was the residence of his extended family – brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and more, and he had come to give them a gigantic sack of mahangu seeds for them to use for planting their next crop.
One feature of the bush landscape that fascinates me is the regular eruption of termite towers from the earth. They often appear in rows almost equidistant from the road and equidistant from each other. They are usually gray, but sometimes are reddish. Constructed by thousands of little bugs and held together by a secreted sticky substance the towers start out wide at their base and grow narrower as they extend upward, sometimes eight or ten feet high, or higher. According to one guide, these towers incredibly are only ventilation shafts for series of underground tunnels that can expand into areas of 40 square kilometers around. One afternoon I wanted to better know of what exactly they were made, so I latched my fingers onto a little nub and broke it off. The piece came loose more easily than I expected, and I could crumble it in my fingers. I was slightly concerned that a phalanx of furious soldier insects would burst out looking for a fight, but I had apparently caused no disturbance. The tower, like the bush, can be seen easily and superficially understood from a distance. They both also conceal much more than can be observed with casual glances. If you hit the right spot at the right time it’s possible that you may be overwhelmed, but for the most part there is not much there.
September 16, 2010
At Home in Oshikunde
Before my sickness in term 2 and after a particularly excellent day, I climbed into bed, and after remarking the naturalness of this action I thought to myself that I was at home. I had after all been living in that room, working in those chairs, and sleeping in that bed for half of a year. I had a refrigerator from which I could pull fresh milk and a cupboard from which I could take cereal for a “late night” snack, and I had a light switch I could flick to officially bring the day to a close. “Oshikunde eumbo pifay!” or “Oshikunde home now!” would be my broken but bubbly Oshikwanyama reply to the friendly greeters in town who recognized me asking, “How is Oshikunde?”
This was a beautiful but brief phase. Illness, work, time, and the inevitable recognition that Oshikunde contained none of my family members or close friends tempered my affection and reduced my label for the place to my “abode”. Sadly, I typically am so busy at school that I no longer have the opportunities to allow the place to seep in through my senses like before. Only in term 1 did I have time to gaze at the sky and contemplate how far I could see, or go for a walk without a destination, or grin while I listened to the foolish sounds of learners staying up irresponsibly late, or make faces at the children who live nearby without placing a time limit on our play in my mind. Also, my desire to spend time with my friends, and admittedly, considerations for my own sanity, compel me to place Oshikunde behind me most weekends. At the lowest point of the second term my school was merely where I stayed to crank out 120 hour stretches of alternating work and sleep, arriving with only the amount of supplies needed, and abandoning at knock off on Fridays.
Over the second term holiday I was able to recapture some of the wonder that Oshikunde had once held. Ample sleep sessions, naps, regular exercise, and all day reads restored me. At night, with the school - a pocket in the bush 3 kilometers from the road - completely uninhabited except for myself, I could sit with a book in my adequately lit room, look out the window into unadulterated darkness enveloping me, and marvel at the sensation that something supernatural might lay beyond the barrier, or perhaps even pure nothingness.
Because I like to share my residence with other volunteers, I try to persuade them to visit me on occasion, and the few “Oshikunde weekends” I have hosted have been carried out with varying levels of success. The first time anyone stopped by my school the water tap which was supposedly fixed a few days prior had already ceased to function. When my house first held a large group for the evening we sat with the front and back doors open to generate a breeze but with the light out to prevent attracting bugs inside. When a friend stayed over to help me install computers he picked up one of my water buckets without knowing that the metal handle was broken and a good ten liters fell to the floor. Just this last weekend when one of my guests tried to manually fill the toilet, the water uselessly drained straight through the bowl because she didn’t know that the flush handle needed to be pressed upward firmly to seal it. Not long after that Kyle grabbed the handle to shut the bathroom door behind him and it came out of the wood in his hand.
Although I have made the exact same mistakes, and I had been aware of all of my house’s loose doorknobs, broken handles, and finicky flushers for about 8 months, I failed to inform my friends of their presence because it just didn’t occur to me to do so. I have grown so familiar with my house’s kinks that I forgot they were abnormal, and maybe even forgot they existed. When I pick up the red bucket I just grasp it by the edge rather than the metal bar. When I close the bathroom door I just put my hand on the door itself instead of the handle. An upward flick of the flusher automatically follows the removal of the bowl’s lid, and the shutting of any door and the pressing of my cardboard bug guards against the gap between the door and the floor with my foot is one complete motion. Witnessing my patchwork house come apart at the seams at the hands of inexperienced residents brought to my attention how well I know my place, and how snugly I fit into it. I couldn’t help grin at the sounds of a metal doorknob crash or a bucket splash. I’ve heard them all before. And it made me curious, if anyone follows me at Oshikunde, will they have the same routines? Will they be comfortable on my bed despite the broken beam? Will I find it strange to eat off of a plate instead of out of my one bowl? How long will I remember the now muscle-memorized sequence of movements I use to successfully bath with a tin cup and a plastic basin? Will the electrical tape stains on the walls from my failed mosquito screen ever come off? Just how long my imprint on the place will remain and how long its imprint will last in me I can’t know. But I know that while my niche in Oshikunde is not and will never be my home, for the moment it is definitely mine.
This was a beautiful but brief phase. Illness, work, time, and the inevitable recognition that Oshikunde contained none of my family members or close friends tempered my affection and reduced my label for the place to my “abode”. Sadly, I typically am so busy at school that I no longer have the opportunities to allow the place to seep in through my senses like before. Only in term 1 did I have time to gaze at the sky and contemplate how far I could see, or go for a walk without a destination, or grin while I listened to the foolish sounds of learners staying up irresponsibly late, or make faces at the children who live nearby without placing a time limit on our play in my mind. Also, my desire to spend time with my friends, and admittedly, considerations for my own sanity, compel me to place Oshikunde behind me most weekends. At the lowest point of the second term my school was merely where I stayed to crank out 120 hour stretches of alternating work and sleep, arriving with only the amount of supplies needed, and abandoning at knock off on Fridays.
Over the second term holiday I was able to recapture some of the wonder that Oshikunde had once held. Ample sleep sessions, naps, regular exercise, and all day reads restored me. At night, with the school - a pocket in the bush 3 kilometers from the road - completely uninhabited except for myself, I could sit with a book in my adequately lit room, look out the window into unadulterated darkness enveloping me, and marvel at the sensation that something supernatural might lay beyond the barrier, or perhaps even pure nothingness.
Because I like to share my residence with other volunteers, I try to persuade them to visit me on occasion, and the few “Oshikunde weekends” I have hosted have been carried out with varying levels of success. The first time anyone stopped by my school the water tap which was supposedly fixed a few days prior had already ceased to function. When my house first held a large group for the evening we sat with the front and back doors open to generate a breeze but with the light out to prevent attracting bugs inside. When a friend stayed over to help me install computers he picked up one of my water buckets without knowing that the metal handle was broken and a good ten liters fell to the floor. Just this last weekend when one of my guests tried to manually fill the toilet, the water uselessly drained straight through the bowl because she didn’t know that the flush handle needed to be pressed upward firmly to seal it. Not long after that Kyle grabbed the handle to shut the bathroom door behind him and it came out of the wood in his hand.
Although I have made the exact same mistakes, and I had been aware of all of my house’s loose doorknobs, broken handles, and finicky flushers for about 8 months, I failed to inform my friends of their presence because it just didn’t occur to me to do so. I have grown so familiar with my house’s kinks that I forgot they were abnormal, and maybe even forgot they existed. When I pick up the red bucket I just grasp it by the edge rather than the metal bar. When I close the bathroom door I just put my hand on the door itself instead of the handle. An upward flick of the flusher automatically follows the removal of the bowl’s lid, and the shutting of any door and the pressing of my cardboard bug guards against the gap between the door and the floor with my foot is one complete motion. Witnessing my patchwork house come apart at the seams at the hands of inexperienced residents brought to my attention how well I know my place, and how snugly I fit into it. I couldn’t help grin at the sounds of a metal doorknob crash or a bucket splash. I’ve heard them all before. And it made me curious, if anyone follows me at Oshikunde, will they have the same routines? Will they be comfortable on my bed despite the broken beam? Will I find it strange to eat off of a plate instead of out of my one bowl? How long will I remember the now muscle-memorized sequence of movements I use to successfully bath with a tin cup and a plastic basin? Will the electrical tape stains on the walls from my failed mosquito screen ever come off? Just how long my imprint on the place will remain and how long its imprint will last in me I can’t know. But I know that while my niche in Oshikunde is not and will never be my home, for the moment it is definitely mine.
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