Namibian Moments - Year 1, Term 1
I would call this "You know you're in Africa when..." but I want you, the reader, to start making a distinction between what is "African" and what is Namibian. For too long people have grouped all Africans together as one and the same. So let's start now by distinguishing that this is not about Africa, but about Namibia, a place in Africa, and the people I meet here. So this page will contain short pieces about events and people that have impacted my stay in Namibia.
Year 2, Term 3
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Singing
Years ago I was introduced to African choral singing in a movie, The Power of One. The movie was Ok but flawed. It completely mis-used Morgan Freeman, a crime in my mind. But that's not what I'm writing about. The singing in it, specifically the songs Southland Concerto and Senzenina, have stayed with me. I just checked and they're both still on my iPod. (here's an odd fact, Senzenina is also sung in the fade-out of Peter Gabriel's song Biko.)
So my second Saturday in The North was a hot, muggy day punctuated with the odd shower. I got home in the late afternoon and pretty much just crashed - no energy at all. I woke up around 6 p.m. to the sound of choral singing. A lot of it was in the call-and-answer style of Senzenina, and none of it was in English.
Walking toward the classroom where the singing was originating, I found that many students were being drawn that way also. Most joined in, entering the dark room and adding their voices. Me, I stood outside and listened. Occasionally I shooed away a noisy student who appeared to want to disrupt the singing.
As it was winding down, I left and found a couple of other teachers who told me that this was usual for a Saturday and I would probably hear this again next week. Although done in the local tongue and using local traditions, the songs were apparently part of a Christian youth group. (jan 27)
UPDATE: Students now come and tell me when choir practice is so I can come listen. (Feb 4)
UPDATE: It turns out that we have the novel The Power of One in our library. I'll have to read it. (Feb 7)
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Assemblies and Athletics
I've only taught here for 6 days and already I'm finding some things that drive me crazy. So far it isn't the students. Of the 21 periods I'm supposed to have taught so far, 7 have been out-and-out cancelled and one was truncated down to 10 minutes (from 45). Now the truncated one was because the weekly morning assembly was delayed by rain, so that's understandable if not acceptable. Of the other 7, two were cancelled because of an annual assembly about health and safety, so that's understandable.
But five of my lessons have been nullified because the students had to partake in "athletics." There is no organized Phys. Ed. for the students to take, so every once in a while, classes are cancelled and the students (called "learners" in this system) are dragged en masse to stand in the boiling hot sun and be cajoled into participating in what we would call Track and Field.
After four days of this, all told perhaps 30 students had participated, meaning that some 800+ students spent four class-time afternoons standing or sitting in the sun. Because only a third of the students actually live at the school, all such activities have to occur during class time. (jan 27)
UPDATE: There are organized Phys. Ed. classes for the students. (Feb 27)
UPDATE: I'm teaching one (see below). (May 29)
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Shopping for coat hangers
So 5 white coat hangers cost N$8. Ten white coat hangers cost N$18, or N$9 per 5 hangers. It's cheaper to buy two packages of 5 than one package of 10. (N$7 = US$1 approximately) (jan 28)
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Sleeping
Either it's not as hot here as I had feared or I've gotten acclimatized much quicker than I expected. Either way, I find I sleep a lot here. Understand that I have no radio or TV; no internet, no real phone (a pre-paid cellphone that goes through money at an amazing rate means cryptic text messages are the norm, not conversations). So I usually go to bed around 9:00 p.m. (my alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m.). Before coming here, I had read that volunteers found that they slept a lot. I didn't understand then but now I do. (jan 28)
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When to eat?
I have to check into the Teacher's Room by 7:15 each morning, no matter when my first class is (first period starts at 7:45, and periods are 45 minutes long). So breakfast is around 6:30. Teachers are supposed to be in class or in the Teacher's Room until 3:00 p.m. That's eight and a half hours between breakfast and lunch. So what happens is that teachers find ways to sneak away and eat. Rather than set a reasonable time for lunch, the school turns a blind eye to these absences.(jan 28)
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Partridges, or whatever they are
There are birds here that are about the size of a turkey,
can't fly well and look like the birds that were used in the credits of the
TV show
the Partridge Family. I'll try to get photos of them one day, because they
are really weird looking, almost two-dimensional, they're so flat when
you see
them head on. (jan 28)
UPDATE: Obviously I got a photo. Here's a good side view. They have the most annoying call. It sounds something like a squeaky hinge being opened and closed. This one was right outside my window calling out to warn others of some approaching danger. It shut up and ran away when I came out with the camera, but eventually i got a few good shots of it. (feb 8)
UPDATE: I've been told that these are Helmeted Guinea Fowl (thanks Ver) (feb 17)
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Signing in
I'm on my seventh day of teaching at Ponhofi when one of the student teachers shows me a book. it has all of the teachers' names in it. Apparently I've been supposed to be signing in each morning and signing out each afternoon. No one told me. Oh well. I wonder if I'll still get paid. (January 29)
UPDATE: I still keep forgetting to sign in. (May 13)
UPDATE: I still keep forgetting to sign in. (August 9, 2008)
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Blue lizard photos!
I
finally got pictures of the elusive blue lizard that hangs around our house.
Here's one of them. He's probably about
8 inches long, maybe longer, that tail can be deceptive. I've seen another
in the area, he has a similar head colouring, but his tail goes purple-red
instead of blue like this one. (Feb 1)
UPDATE: A student at the school tried to catch one and got a nasty bite on his wrist for his efforts. (feb 26)
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Being seen
I like my students, for the most part. There's one or two that could use some discipline, but hey, they're teenagers (and more so like back home than Korea). But sometimes it's nice to be anonymous. That doesn't happen here (much more so than in Korea). When you're the only white person for at least 5 km (the next volunteer south of me is about 5 km away. Oshikango, 10 km north, often has white people, Afrikaaners or Angolans, there.), you get noticed.
When the classes are having a soccer tournament, even if I'm only there for 5 minutes, the next day everyone knows that I was there, and assumes that I saw it all.
It's a strange and unwanted form of popularity, but I can use it to break down barriers with the students. They talk more about things when they think that I've been a part of ithem, and I'm not trying to trick them - I do go to these things, just not for the full four annoyingly-disorganized hours that they often take. The danger comes when the students start feeling that they can push you. I had one student come up to me (I don't recognise him) and tell me that I was going to teach him to drive. (Feb 1)
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Whump!
I was in the computer lab Sunday afternoon (one of the perques of sharing a house with the computer teacher), when there was a loud Whump! It was powerful enough to be felt as much as heard. I went outside and found that everyone on campus was drifting toward the north end. Whenever I asked people what it was, they said "a bomb". There was no smoke and no obvious sign of panic. I asked if it was local and one of the students said that it was Angolan. It wasn't until yesterday that I learned what it was. The Angolan police often bomb their own border (10 km north of me) to deter illegal activity. (Feb 5)
UPDATE:Not too often. I still haven't heard a repeat of it. (August 14, 2008)
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On your own two feet
I've noticed this twice now. When someone falls down, the first reaction of the locals is to run away quickly. I'm not sure if this is a learned reaction toward illlness or toward violence. During morning assembly, in the middle of singing the national anthem, a student passed out and everyone ran away. Today after last class, a student became disoriented and fell down - everyone ran away. Eventually a teacher came over to help, but nobody would touch him. (Feb 6)
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Oh, the horror!
As part of a grammar identification exercise, I ripped a newspaper into pieces and gave each student a piece of an article from which they were supposed to located subject/verb combinations. The students were horrified that I ripped the paper. After class, some of them rescued the remainder and passed it around to be read. Since they want to read, and promoting "reading for pleasure" is part of my syllabus, I'm trying to work out a method for getting a few newspaper subscriptions for the students somehow. The problem is there're too many students. (Feb 7)
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Traveling in Proportion
This past weekend was my birthday. As a treat, I went to Windhoek, the capital city to rest, relax and buy some essentials that you just can't get up in the North (Tzatziki sauce! But seriously, a clock radio... hot mitts...a good cutting board).
You know that Confucian saying about a journey of a thousands miles starting with one step? Yeah, well a journey from Ohangwena to Windhoek starts with walking 1 kilometre through wet sand. Then you take a car 60 km to the airport. Then, if you're lucky and the airline hasn't randomly cancelled your ticket, you fly about a thousand kilometres.
The return trip does the same steps in reverse. It had an odd feel of unreality, going from journeying by airplane to journeying on foot within about 2 hours. The plane can get you so close, the car that much closer, but the last segment has to be done on foot. (Feb 17)
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Distance in Proportion
During this same trip, I met a woman who was new to the country and traveling a long distance by local bus ("combie") by herself. Her trip would end up taking about 11-12 hours, and she would be going about 20 km less than I had when I flew. She wanted to fly that leg too, but couldn't get a seat - not because the plane was full, but because no one at the airline answered the phone.
Anyway, given our parallel journeys, the women at the hostel in Windhoek asked me to keep tabs on our new girl. After-all, our final destinations are only about 90 km apart. I've done what I could, keeping in touch through text messages and made sure that she's comfortable with her surroundings and has a plan for when she arrives.
But I can't exactly go and meet her combie, as the hostel workers wished. After dark, 90 km is a very far distance to travel in the North when you don't have a car. Never mind the 1 km through wet sand, mentioned above, trying to get a taxi at that time of day is hard. They only travel when they have at least 4 passengers. Who knows how long I'd have to wait for a taxi.
Even once I'd gotten a taxi, I'd have to redo the process 50 km down the road when I'd have to switch from the Oshikango-Ondangwa route to the Ondangwa-Oshakati route. (feb 17)
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Traveling at night
I met a friend in Oshakati for dinner the other day. Time got away from us and it was dark before I started my journey home. Getting from Oshakati to Ondangwa was not easy - initially, none of the taxis would make that journey. Eventually one came along and a whole group of us ended up piling in. When he dropped me off at the hike-point for Oshikango, there was nobody there. No taxis, no people, no lights (the driver actually dropped me at the 24 hour gas station beside it, and said that he'd probably be back in an hour or two and see if I was still there). Usually at this hike-point, taxi drivers and their agents are fighting to get you into their cabs. Nothing. No one.
One kind man offered to take me as far up the road as he was going, but that was only 10 km and might have turned out to be worse than staying put. Eventually, two combies arrived at the gas station and started unloading.They had shared the route up from Windhoek but were now parting ways - one for Oshakati, one for Oshikango. The Oshikango one happened to have room for me, so I eventually got home. All told, it took about two and a half hours, about twice as long as usual, but I was lucky to be able to do it at all. (Feb 21)
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Starry, starry night
I've been in this country, what, nine weeks? Finally... finally, we got a clear night sky. It's amazing, seing the Milky Way in its full glory, seeing the Magellenic Clouds with your bare eyes. When I mentioned this to my flatmate, he was non-comittal. If you really want to see stars, he tells me, wait until the dry season. There's too much moisture in the air right now. I can't wait. (Mar 5)
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Crappy cellphone
I miss my Korean cellphone. It was good, a bit expensive, but good (except for that whole "mp3 player" that didn't play mp3s problem - you had to pay for an extra service that converted mp3s into a proprietary format). My cell phone here sucks, to put it mildly. For example, the only time that you can change the volume is during a conversation (it took me a long time to figure that one out). Now, when I'm talking to someone, I have the phone at my ear, not in front of me.... this phone also sometimes doesn't send SMS messages. It doesn't tell you that it didn't send them, it still moves them to your "sent" list. It just doesn't actually do the work, and you have no indication.
BUT, this damn little phone has one big thing going for it. It has a built-in flashlight. You have no idea how dark it gets here. On moonless nights, it's too dark to walk outside (the uneven ground, a mix of sand and stones, ensures stumbling.). Not having to remember to carry a flashlight is so nice. I would have been caught without a light so many times. (Mar 5)
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Loathing taxis
Taxis here are cheap. They also don't function the way you'd expect. They're more like buses - stopping to take on and let out people anywhere along or near their route. The advantage is that they're very cheap. Going from my town to the big town 10 km north costs less than Cdn$1. Prices are fixed.
Most taxi drivers are honest, and patient. It's nice to be patient with them too. But I've been told to always ask the price to a destination before getting on board. Otherwise, the driver could try to demand any price he wants. Many taxi drivers actually get a hurt expression when you ask them how much - they know that you're implicitly accusing them of being dishonest. So I've gotten out of the practice.
Then, last Sunday, a taxi driver tried to make me pay N$17 for a N$10 ride. I refused, and he got mad. Meanwhile, the taxi is full of other passengers who are waiting for him to take them on to their destinations. So picture him and me standing in the middle of an intersection, arguing. I know from the reactions of the other passengers that they at first thought it was funny, but were getting mad at him toward the end. I put it to them that he wouldn't charge them N$17 for the ride, and that N$10 was the right price. A few agreed (there were five others in the cab(!)).
I never did pay him that extra N$7, but he was yelling at me when he got back into the cab and I watched to make sure he didn't try to come after me with the car. Who knows what'll happen if we cross paths again. (Mar 6)
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Prime Minister Schwarzenegger
So many people here don't know that Canada is a country. They continually confuse it with California. No, I've had to tell them many times, Arnold Schwarzenegger (spelling?) is not the leader of Canada. Yes, we have our own money - and our own government.
Invariably, if they do know that Canada is a country, they believe that it is part of South America, because everything north of Mexico is "America".
I've seen this with townsfolk, teachers and students. (Mar 16)
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Flood follow-up 1
I wrote earlier about the flooding here. This is a follow up. As of yesterday, the road into Ohangwena had a passable bridge for pedestrians, much better than the bridge that soldiers built for the residents of Engela. As of today, a third of our new bridge has been washed away and people are wading across the river again.
The local townspeople who have pickups are carrying as many people across as they can, and I managed to hitch rides both ways both yesterday (before our foot bridge was finished) and today (after our foot bridge was destroyed).
The ride back across the river today was particularly interesting.
Pickup trucks with high framing around their backs are called backies, and you can see a picture of one in my article about Africa Time. The backie that I got a ride in coming home today was not only crammed full of people, but there was also a bull lying down in the back (with people standing on his horns to keep him down!). As odd as that may sound to you as you read it, I wasn't completely surprised to see it happen. These are the types of events that constitute "normal" around here. You just get used to them.
I can't see anywhere above where I mentioned this, but one time taking a taxi from Ondangwa to Ohangwena, one of the other passengers stored his (live) goat in the car's trunk... (Mar 16)
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Flood follow-up 2
In one of the pictures about the flooding here, there is a picture of the road into Engela hospital and in the background, you can see a makeshift bridge. That bridge has become very political, as it wasn't built by Namibians. It was built by a group of Pakistani businessmen who own a plastics shop near the road.
There's been a bit of a storm (political, that is) over why it took foreigners to help the people of Engela and not the government. (Mar 19)
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Flood follow-up 3
When they tried the third time to build us a walking bridge, what they did was make two big sand islands, bagged all around, and then used upside down concrete U's to make channels for the water to flow through inbetween these islands. There were three of these channels, each as wide as two or three sets of concrete blocks. At different times, all three have collapsed, but lately, the last one, closest to the school, has completely washed away, and the town residents have yet again been slogging it through the dirty water of the river.
Well, today, March 29, a group of workers -- NOT government employees -- showed up and started building a better bridge system. This one would connect the two islands with a steel structure big enough to allow one car at a time to pass. I saw a couple of supervisors out there today, and I think it's the Pakistani businessmen stepping in again. (Mar 29)
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Drive my car
I'm not sure how long I'll be here (or even if "here" is Namibia or Africa) - maybe a year, maybe two, who knows. But one thing that I've done to hopefully make my stay more enjoyable is I've bought a car.
The
main advantage, beyond the simple freedom of travel (which is a big issue
here), is that I can now grocery shop where I like
(90 km from home) when I like. The ShopRite in Oshakati often has items not
widely available (if ever) elsewhere in the north: chicken breasts, bean
sprouts, real cheese, bacon and even pancake mix. And with a small cooler
in my trunk I can carry home perishables and know they'll still be edible.
It was a long process, and the paperwork isn't finished yet.
One oddity of driving in Namibia is that as a foreigner, I have to carry my passport whenever I'm driving. My driver's license is valid in Namibia, but I also have to be able to prove that I'm in the country legally at each and every police check point (there are permanent points and mobile ones). Now, I was told that instead of your passport, you can carry a photocopy that has been notarized by the Namibian police.
It's a good idea to keep your passport somewhere safe, especially in Namibia. Crime isn't rampant here, not like other countries, but daylight robberies of foreigners happen frequently, especially in Windhoek.
The check point on the highway near my school has gotten pretty good about knowing who I am and waving me through (usually). But this one day, there were immigration officers there as well as police (my road leads straight to Angola and there is a lot of illegal activity on the border).
The immigration officer refused to accept my photocopies as valid. She threatened to arrest me. You see, the Namibian government doesn't recognize documents notarized by the Namibian police as being acceptable copies. So why get a notarized copy? So that if my passport is stolen, the Canadian government will have an easier time replacing it, I was informed. If the Namibian government doesn't recognize the validity of the Namibian police's notarization, why would a foreign government I asked?
No answer, just an evil look and a repeat of the threat of being arrested. But in the end, she let me go.
A little further down the road, there's a mobile checkpoint. Same thing all over again. (Apr 4)
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Exam schedules
We're finishing the first term now, and I'm getting to enjoy the experience that is final exams. So many things to say...
No one told me that I'm supposed to have a one-on-one interview with each student, worth 10% of their term mark, until there were only two days left in the exams. I have 137 students, at a supposed 15 minutes each... that's 34 and a quarter hours of talking in two days. Suffice to say none of the exams were that long, and my voice is gone completely.
So this is how the exam schedule works: the learners have to be in class starting at 7:30 am, but usually don't start writing until 11:30 am. so for 4 hours they sit in a hot classroom, slowly losing energy, focus and concentration. Then, and only then, do they write an exam! Want to improve learners' grades? Have the exams at 7:30! Or 8:00...
So the learners have to be in the classrooms from 7:30, well guess what - so do the teachers. We have nothing better to do with our time than sit for 4 hours each morning with a bunch of students and do nothing. (I actually used this time to conduct my oral exams). Most teachers don't bother showing up. (April 13)
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Life Skills
As well as three Grade 11 English classes, I teach six Grade 11 Life Skills classes. Again and again it's been driven home to me that Life Skills are important, especially for learners who aren't academically strong enough to make it into the next level of education.
With Life Skills (and all classes), we have to keep a record of "Continuous Assessment" - basically, test them over the term and have scores to use to compile a grade. There is no final exam in Life Skills. After compiling my grades lists, I asked who to give them to. I was told not to, the grade won't be included on the report card.
Oh yes, continuous assessment needs to be done of my English classes also, but those marks do not in any way contribute to their grade, only the final does. (April 15)
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Flood Pictures updated
I've added a small update to my "Lord, Here Comes the Flood" article. I've added a picture of the inside of one of the tents that some learners are living in. (April 15)
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Life at Ponhofi updated
I've also added a couple of photos to my "Life at Ponhofi" article. I've added a picture of the outside of the classroom blocks and a picture of the inside of one of my classes. (April 15).
Year 2, Term 3
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