The world is my classroom -- a mud hut is theirs

Part of my ever-evolving job description here in Mubiza is to assist with teaching life-skills classes both in school and as part of the JFFLS after-school program that I’m working on. Grif and I decided to team teach life-skills for grades 5-7. Each class meets forty minutes once a week, which isn’t very much time to cover the list of topics that we need to teach during the school year! Especially when the grade 5 learners hardly understand a word we say. Grade 5 is the first year taught exclusively in English; up until that point, classes are taught in a mixture of mother-tongue (Silozi) with English lessons given to prepare them for the switch. Even still, you will find that most Caprivian teachers will revert back into Silozi even with the higher grades – an option that Grif and I don’t have. There are times when it would be helpful in order for them to know what’s going on to briefly give an instruction in Silozi before switching back into English, yet I guess they will just have to adapt to our “English-only” teaching style.

Classes did not start until a couple weeks into the term, due to the schedule not being ready and the principle’s continued absenteeism. In the end, Grif and the other new male teacher were instructed to draw up the time-table for the entire school, even though they are the new teachers with no experience ever having done it. I should mention that there’s a host of much more qualified female teachers that could have done this, except for the fact that, oh yeah, they’re women in a male-dominant culture. Quite frustrating! Even now, a month and a half into the school term, notebooks have arrived, so learners are not able to complete any work or take notes, which is a very ingrained system here due to rote copying/memorization being the primary method of teaching.

The school is made up of three cement block building and two mud huts used for additional classrooms. Grif exclusively teaches in the mud huts (teachers rotate classrooms while each grade stays in their classroom), one of which is currently flooded with 45+ broken desks crammed inside. It’s the most squalid learning environment I have ever seen and more than slightly overwhelming to step inside to face 42 grade 5 learners, who haven’t eaten breakfast and then be expected to teach them.

Haven't we been friends for ages?

There are some friendships that start fast, with one person doing most of the initiating and just jumping into the friendship like you’ve been fast friends forever, even though you just met. Usually, I’m the one caught pleasantly off guard when this happens. Yesterday, I was in Katima trying to get a million and one things accomplished, things were taking longer than I expected (like usual) and I kept running into people that led to getting further behind schedule. A woman who works for the Ministry of Fisheries (yes, there is a ministry dedicated to raising fish here in Namibia) had been in Mubiza the previous day and Griffin had passed along my contact information to her, saying that I would have lots of questions for her (a kind way of saying that I haven’t the slightest clue how one raises tilapia). She called me up out of the blue and said that when I had a minute later in the day to give her a ring and she would pick me up so we could meet for a bit. Since I was behind schedule, I didn’t call her back until close to 4:30 and asked if we could meet next week since I just wanted to get back to the village (I had been hoping to get back by 2 to work in the garden for the afternoon). She seemed genuinely disappointed and told me that she going back to Rundu (where she is based) and wouldn’t be back for at least a month. She then added that she was hoping to have Griffin and I over for a braii that very evening! Even though she had never met me, she seemed really nice and so I said sure. Afterall, I’m learning to be flexible. So, 10 minutes later she drives up and we load my groceries and hardware supplies into the boot and proceed to complete several errands – picking up her daughter who was shopping for food, dropping her off at home where several Afrikkaner girls were waiting, picking up cakes and then driving back to the village so I could drop off my bags and pick up a surprised Griffin. She seemed so apologetic that we might have plans for the evening. Little did she know that once the sunsets, our activities diminish to playing games like “who’s candle will burn out first” or reading out-loud to each other. Why ever would we turn down a braii and helping with a slumber party for a group of 10 year old girls? It was nice to relax and enjoy an evening filled with new friends, good food and even live-entertainment! It’s not every Friday night that one gets to be a judge of a talent show. This encounter came right when I was feeling the effects of having to start yet again building a new social network in a new place. A good jumpstart and reminder that we aren’t alone here. Even though we are still new in town, Grif and I always run into people that know us in Katima. Usually our hikes in and out of town come from folks who have seen us on television (a lingering perk of the swearing in ceremony being televised

Re: blog update

Happy New Year's! I love waking up on New Year's morning with the
knowledge that it is a new beginning, a fresh start of another year.
It seems pregnant with possibility, replenishing my optimism. After
much hullabaloo, I have figured out how to hook up my phone to use the
internet, so I now have access to email and as one can deduce from new
blog updates, a way to update you all on my life here in Namibia. I've
put the two group emails up on this site to catch up on training thus
far.

I just finished a month-long home-stay that was part of our community
based training. I was with a wonderful family, who lived in the town
part of Grootfontein and had two kids (with more relatives coming over
the holidays). They were encouraging of my language skills and wanted
to teach me how to do everything, from handwashing my clothes to
cooking buhobe, hard porridge. Even still, I find it stressful being a
guest in someone's house. By far it was the best homestay experience I
have had, far smoother than France or Senegal. I think this was
partially due to the fact that my family all spoke English fluently
(or Namlish, as we say here), so there was less of a communication
barrier.

Grootfontein is an urban city, but we found it necessary to readjust
our expectations of what a city is here in Namibia. There was not a
lot going on in Grootfontein, even though it had a military base,
prison, a few grocery stores, tons of shabeens (bars) and three
locations. There is a big divide leftover from apartheid between town
and the locations. When I refer to the "location" it is the equivalent
as talking about townships in South Africa, or the communities where
black Africans were forced to live during the apartheid regime. The
economic inequality is still pretty much divided along racial lines,
leaving the living arrangements still intacted. We were surprised at
how this affected our training. Those of us in town felt very isolated
from the rest of the trainees who lived in the black and coloured
locations. And when we put on a community health workshop as part of
our technical training, it was difficult for us to reach out to those
that did not live in the location, since families living in town or
even the coloured location would not be willing to go to the location.
Racism and tribalism are very ingrained here, even amongst the
numerous black ethnic groups. My host family only hung out with fellow
Caprivians and tried to distance themselves as much as possible from
those living in the location. I have yet to know what language to
greet people in because I do not want to offend anyone by greeting in
the wrong language, so usually I stick to English unless I know for
sure that they speak my target language. (on a side note, there is
less baggage with speaking Afrikaans to Namibians, despite the fact
that it was the language of oppression under apartheid. This is a big
difference from South Africa. I had been weary of learning Afrikaans
and was surprised to find this difference. Most Namibians that I've
talked to about this hold very little ill-feeling towards Afrikaners
and seem to have moved forward since Independance).

We continued with technical training sessions during CBT, in addition
to four hours of language instruction each day. Some days we traveled
to Tsumeb (about 45 minutes from Grootfontein) to have joint sessions
with the other group of health trainees. These sessions mainly focused
on statistics and did not provide a lot of strategies for behavior
change or actual stuff that would be useful to our jobs, so it was
frustrating at a time to sit through hour after hour of how AIDS is a
problem in Namibia without a lot of emphasis on ways to reduce
transmission and spread in our work in our communities. Even still, we
were able to practice facilitating workshops, which proved to be the
most useful part of training. I led sessions on healthy
decision-making, risk-taking and nutrition/hygiene. Despite having
very little time to prepare and resources to put together our
sessions, they went quite well. I was afraid that the information I
had was too basic and was afraid of coming across as condescending
when talking about the food groups and hand-washing, but the
participants really ate it up and offered a lot of positive feedback.
We did a lot of interactive activities, role-playing and games to make
it as engaging as possible. Namibians love attending workshops since
it provides something to do, free food, and most importantly
certificates.

A big difference between Senegal and Namibia that I have noticed is
how much more of a problem alcoholism is here in Namibia compared to
in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country. Yes, in Dakar, the
capital, there were lots of clubs, bars, and people drank, but it was
not near the extent and amount consumed here. The shabeens (bars) are
full by 7 am and stay full all day/night. Even our host siblings (as
young as 2!) drank beer by the glass-full and would cry until they got
more. The concept that alcoholism is a disease is not recognized here,
and the government is just beginning to initiate programs to raise
awareness, recognizing that alcohol is one of the main drivers of
fueling the AIDS epidemic here.