New Apartment

Reconnect is a part of Peace Corps training where after six weeks at site a group (in my case group 32) meets at a designated location and discusses aspects of their first six weeks on the job. The discussion includes Namibian culture, social norms, education practices, language training, HIV forum, and general Peace Corps policy guidelines. The lectures themselves were not particularly interesting but it was good to see everyone from my group again and trade stories from our various sites. In my group there are three people located in the south, about seven or eight in central and roughly 30 people in the northern part of the country. I happen to be one of the three in the south so I don’t often see people from my group. The reason for so many volunteers being in the north is because during apartheid that’s where the Ovambo people were forced to live. There are other tribes in the north but the “red line” was specifically to keep the Ovambo in the north and the “coloureds” and “Afrikaners” in the south.

For Peace Corps reasons I cannot tell you the town we met in or the hotel we met at, but I will try to describe it. Just outside of the city we turned down a dusty dirt road. The three kilometer ride was uncomfortable and slow. The faster the driver hit rocks and pot holes, the harder we would be thrown around inside the combie (van). After a steep climb we arrived at a hotel on the top of a mountain. The view was breath taking. Looking north from the lobby a mountain range sprang forth for 15 or so kilometers. From the top of our mountain, near our bedrooms, to the west were a few mountains followed by a 30-40 kilometer valley and then another mountain range. The sunset from outside my bedroom was spectacular. To the east lay a road slicing through the mountain range we were on, and several more mountains. The south was first sprawling city slums that turns into suburbia, then transforming into a metropolitan downtown. The mountains have turned green with plant life due to the recent rains and underground tributaries reminding me of Central America. On a few occasions we were privileged enough to watch a few lightning storms rage in the mountains to the north.

I am now back in Rehoboth and moved into my new two bedroom flat (apartment). I have been busy this week preparing to live in it for the next two years. I posted a video of the place on facebook for people to view. Ironically it is much nicer than the dorms I have been staying in for the last five years. December 18th I will start my holiday travels. It seems almost the entire country shuts down for the month of December. We have all been given two weeks of free vacation for domestic travel and I have decided to take advantage of it by going to Swakopmund, Heinte’s Bay, the Skeleton Coast, and maybe Luderuitz. These are all coastal areas and I miss the beach. Due to the accommodations I will not be taking my computer with me because I will be living in a tent, either with other volunteers or with my host family, but still in a tent. For security reasons I am leaving most of my valuables with other people or in my place.

Reconnect

This week was pretty slow. The school year ended this past Thursday for the learners but the teachers are still working on marking final exams and preparing the schedule for next year. I was delivered a package that is actually for another Peace Corps volunteer, I’m told this is fairly common in you’re in an urban area like I am. On Saturday I hiked up a hill with Ricky and Barbara. My dog followed us, I’m not sure why dogs here love me so much but they definitely follow me everywhere. The town looks completely different now that it’s been raining a bit. The trees are green and there are actual grasses instead of just sand. I forgot to mention that last weekend our group met a Polish man who biking from Cape Town back to Europe. He had already gone through Asia, made his way to Australia, biked Australia, and sailed from Australia to Cape Town. He had some great pictures of his journey.

On Thanksgiving I talked with my parents via skype. It was really good to hear their voices though I didn’t get to see them. Sunday I leave for Reconnect which is more Peace Corps training. I will meet up with all of the people from my group and discuss different aspects of teaching and Namibian culture, as well as share our experiences for the first six weeks. I am not bringing my laptop and will be out of contact for those two weeks.

Thanksgiving

I called my dad this week for his birthday and had a nice talk with my parents for about ten minutes. It also rained nearly every day past week. I miss the rain a bit but it also gets annoying when you don’t have a car and have to either bike or walk everywhere you go. Also the power goes out for a few hours when it rains. I managed go to a barber and get a haircut similar to how it was in the states instead of just shaving my head like I have been. This is a big deal because we had one guy in Okahandja get a haircut that turned into a disaster and he had to shave his head. It turned out well and I even got a free shave out of it.

I invigilated (proctored) a test this week and taught some sixth grade math. I noticed the learners I was teaching could multiply and add pretty well but had serious problems with division and subtraction. I will test these skills my first week next year to see about remediation. The learners were hesitant with me at first but quickly warmed up to me. It was nice. I also marked (graded) exams for the science classes this week. It was slow but I used to grade for a professor so it’s nothing new.

This past Friday Caitlin and I got a combie (van) ride down to Keetmansoop for “Thanksgiving.” They aren’t many volunteers in the south, and those who are there are very spread out, so we don’t get together very often. It was nice to meet people I had been texting with since coming to Namibia. It was a nice enough ride down but there is a whole lot of nothing in the south. We could see several kilometers of nothing but brown plants and sand on both sides of the van. But we made it down to Keetmansoop and ate lots of food, it was amazing.

PS if you were wondering, Movember is when you go the month of November without shaving your mustache.

Movember

This proved to be an interesting week with most of the teachers in Windhoek grading tests the teachers mostly reviewed material with the learners or the learners started exams. Once exams started there was less for me to do than usual so I played the piano every day for several hours and helped out writing memos (answer keys) and marking (grading) exams. Luckily Mr. Bock came back on Wednesday so I had my buddy back to talk about music. He is impressed with how much better I have gotten at piano. On Thursday I bought a bike and biked over to Mr. Bock’s house for “band practice.” He has a dream of getting paid to play shows, coffee houses and hotels mostly, whereas I mostly just like having someone around to jam with. It would be awesome to play shows eventually though.
On Monday a group of young adults from Cape Town came to our school to dance to Christian music and perform dramatic skits for grades 7-9. These were people from Europe and Africa, though the group was out of Cape Town. I had an interesting discussion with some colleagues about whether or not it is wise to have the learners distracted right before exams when they should be studying. Most agreed that the dance group was a bad idea but no one knew whose idea it was for them to come.
I realized how incredibly out of shape I am when I rode my bike to the Oanob dam and nearly died of exhaustion on the way up the first hill. I biked about 16km round trip in an hour and a half going up and down hills on an uneven gravel road. I will get back in shape eventually.
It rained this week for the second time since I’ve been in Africa. I miss the rain. I enjoy reading and listening to the rain, it’s very calming. This week I didn’t have any credit on my 3G (internet works similar to a go phone) so I couldn’t post this over the weekend. Next weekend I will be in Keetmansoop for “Thanksgiving”. We can’t all get together on Thanksgiving Day so most of the volunteers in the south are getting together the weekend before to hangout. It should be fun.

November 7th

This week four of the teachers were in Windhoek for marking (grading) tests from all over Namibia. In tenth grade the learners take a standardized test (similar to FCAT) and if they pass they continue to high school. If they fail they stay in tenth grade or some drop out. Consequently the standardized test is tied into funding, thus making a problem similar to Florida where the schools that do well get more money and attract better teachers whereas the schools that do poorly get less money and continue to do poorly. Schools are allowed to regulate who is in tenth grade. This means that out of the four classes of 9th graders I will get only one tenth grade class of thirty learners. The oldest learner in 9th grade is 20 and the youngest is 14. Anyhow the teachers mark tests from all over the country in Windhoek. With so many teachers gone, the ones who have remained are not teaching so much as they are monitoring six hours of study hall. This gives me very little to do during the day. The learners start taking end of the year exams this week too, which will give me plenty of time for reading and piano.

I’ve decided on Monday I’m going to go to the library and see if I can get someone to tutor me in Afrikaans. I understand Afrikaans pretty well but I have difficulty speaking it. Most of the teachers at my school are more interested in teaching me KKG than Afrikaans and no one at my house is interested in helping me out.

I went to Rehoboth spa with Ricky, Sara from Kalkran, and Sara’s afterschool project Kayec. It wasn’t a spa as much as a pool but it is where everyone around my age hangs out on Saturdays apparently. So I may be hanging out there more often.

Happy Halloween

Ricky, one of the other volunteers in Rehoboth, taught Pieter Geingob (one of the teachers at my school) a little bit of Spanish. Pieter now always greets me in Spanish and I have taught him a little bit more. One day while I was in his class he greeted me in Spanish and I replied in Spanish. One of the learners overhead this exchange and asked me “How do you say ‘tree’ in your mother tongue?” I was really confused by this question. She had to ask it two more times before it was clear that she wanted to know how to say tree in Spanish. Here English is only spoken at school or official functions and everyone speaks at least one other language. At my school their mother tongue is KKG and they all speak Afrikaans and English as second languages. It was really interesting because the learner believes that English is only spoken in schools and is not people’s mother tongue.

Starting November 12th the schools begin exams, and if there was little productive work for me to do these past two weeks, there will be nothing for me to do until November 29th when I go to reconnect. I spend most of my time playing piano and studying Afrikaans. It is a surprisingly difficult language when you’re starting to be conversational in the language. Also this week I started exercising more to try and keep from losing muscle mass. Caitlin and Barbara came into town this week. We hung out at Ricky’s apartment and just watched movies and traded funny stories from site.

Some people have asked about food so here is general diet. At 4am I get up to use the internet, around 6am I have a cup of tea with milk and sugar. At 830am I have a sandwich, usually butter and meat paste, I have a second sandwich around 10am. I eat lunch at 1pm and it’s usually some type of meat and carb, rice or more sandwiches with butter on the bread. I eat dinner around 7pm and it’s usually rice or pasta, meat, bread with butter, cool drink (soda or juice) and maybe a small dessert made of carrot slices mayonnaise and sugar. I eat all the food given and often get additional food but that is the typical diet for most people in Rehoboth.

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.