First week

This week I started working at Vooruitsig (pronounced: for-ate-seg) Junior Secondary School. At the school they teach grades from preschool up to tenth grade. I’ve been working with the grade 9 math and science teachers mostly. Over the past week the students have become accustomed to my presence in their class and around the school. The importance of the learners becoming use to me cannot be understated; both as an American and a white person the learners have many misconceptions about both. It is easy to see how the Apartheid has affected many of the people in the school. I haven’t been teaching classes and most of the learners are either writing exams (taking exams) or preparing to write exams over the next few weeks. School ends the first week of December so there is very little for me to do. I spent a significant amount of time talking with my vice principal Mr. Bock (Phillip) about music. He too is a guitarist. I showed him my guitar books and let him borrow two of them. He also used to play rugby professionally and if Namibia had been an independent country he could have played for the national team. We have decided that we will get together and jam out sometime. He also showed the upright piano no one uses, that is locked away in a storage closet and mostly forgotten. I started playing around on it a little and everyone seemed pretty impressed. I now bring in my guitar books and play simple chords with my left hand and the melody with my right. I’m not very good but I haven’t played in at least 10 years and I’m definitely getting better. I also spend a lot of time with Mr. Tsumaseb, (don’t pronounce the “T”) a younger teacher who use to be very active in fundraising and community involvement until several disagreements with his supervisors discouraged him. After speaking with him I have a few ideas for secondary projects that we can work on together, like bake sales, vending machines, and other community involvement ideas. By working closely with a Namibian my projects will hopefully continue even after I leave.

This week myself, Caitlin, and Ricky walked the seven kilometers to the entrance of Lake Oanob to look at the animals. We saw a lot of zebras, springboks, ostriches, and one thing that looked like an odd cross between a donkey and a zebra. I’m not sure if a zebra and a donkey or horse can have a child, but it definitely looked liked a hybrid of the two. There will be pictures to come at some point.