Namibian Moments - Year 1, Term 3
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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Favouritism
It's easy as a teacher, especially as a new teacher, to take favourites in class. I know that I sometimes fall into that, but being aware of it, I'm making a concerted effort to fight against my own patterns. There are learners who are simply easier to communicate with, due to fluency and personality, and they come to dominate your class work if you're not careful.
Starting about halfway through term 2, I started becoming very careful about this. I've noticed the payoffs in this. Learners respond to attention. By focussing on learners who I don't really know, I find that not only them specifically, but those around them, become more attentive and more communicative.
I had this driven home just this afternoon, report card day, the last day of school for 2008. One of my learners, Cecilia, has been incredibly quiet in class, and had slid under my radar for the first two terms completely.
It was only by accident that I had learned that she excels in science and math. Knowing that, when we had come across anything scientific in readings, I would try to engage her with check questions. Usually I just got an embarrassed stare. She's uncomfortable with her pronunciation and doesn't want to speak in front of the others.
But today she made a point of showing me her report card. She was very proud of it and in her excitement, spoke well. Mainly, she wanted to show me what I already knew - she had passed English. This was a breakthrough for her.
This whole exchange took maybe 30 seconds, but it made my day, and hopefully made hers too. It's for things like this that you teach. (December 3, 2008)
Snake!
This is one of those things that I'm not sure that I should write because
my mom will freak when she reads it... so mom, close your eyes... OK there
was a rather big snake in the tree right outside my bedroom window last
week. And it looked like it was looking to get in.
I've seen small snakes around here before. There are these little black and silver ground snakes that flee from me whenever I see them. I've seen more of them dead than alive.
But this was a grey-green tree snake, more than a metre long, and although no one has definitively been able to identify it, the consensus is that it was venomous. Yes, I'm using the past tense. It took five of us, but we killed it, bashed its skull flat.
Me being me, i took a picture of the snake before I called for help. This picture has been my saving grace, as one of the later arrivals at the scene has since been telling people in a local pub that i was screaming like a hysterical girl when I saw the snake (he wouldn't know, given how late he arrived). But my ability to show the picture i took before he arrived deflates his tale.
Oh, and this whole thing happened only hours before i was hosting a weekend-long goodbye party for 8 other WorldTeach volunteers. (December 3, 2008)
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Culturally Insensitive Andy Griffith Moments
So I was having an "Andy Griffith Show" moment with my Head of Department the other day. We were walking down the dusty road talking and I was kicking along a large nut. Finally he says to me "You know, in my village it's considered disrespectful to kick those nuts... especially along a road." (November 26, 2008)
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Your Pick of Breed
Only in Namibia would a bank have a contest where you
can win a free bull if you take out a loan. (November 20, 2008)
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The Times They Are A Changin'
Speaking of bulls. I just had a full-circle moment. When we first arrived in the north and were practice teaching in Eengadjo, I was startled (and scared) when I walked out of the hostel one morning and came face to face-and-horns with a large bull. Well, walking home from the store tonight, there's a plot of land that has a fenced corner, and coming around the corner, head-on with me, was a whole herd of cattle. There was no way to avoid them, but after a year of it, you get used to being this close to animals that big, and frankly, there was nothing unusual about the situation to them. So I stood there and let 20-odd armed ungulates mosey on by. In January, I'd have been panicked. (November 27, 2008)
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What's in a Name?
There's a hotel in Ondangwa that's a bit of a landmark. But depending on which direction you come to it, its name is either Protea Hotel, Pandua Hotel or Cresta Hotel. If you're in a taxi, it's best to save confusion by saying "Chatters" which is the restaurant in the hotel and apparently only has one name. (November 18, 2008)
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Walking with Rhinos
This
weekend was the "End of Service" conference
for the current batch of WorldTeach volunteers. We held it in Otjiwarongo,
a town about 500
km from where I'm placed. Otjiwarongo is a great area to visit as a tourist
for a lot of reasons. One, the Cheetah Conservation
Fund is nearby, as is
AfriCat (I'm still waiting to visit there) and also the Waterberg Plateau
national park, home to both black and white rhinos. A few of us came down
early for the conference and spent an afternoon/evening on a tour of Waterberg.
It was amazing. We saw three white rhinos (a very rare and endangered breed)
and three black rhinos.To the right is a picture of one of the white rhinos.
In total now, I've seen 12 rhinos in the wild in Africa and another 3-4 in
captive
game parks. But this was the closest I've
gotten to wild rhinos. The white rhino is very docile. When we spotted them
(two adults a young but not too small one), our guide took us out of the
vehicle and we walked toward them. We closed about half the distance before
the guide decided we shouldn't get closer, lest we scare them off (white
rhinos run away -- usually). So we backed
off and returned to our vehicle. The rhinos ran away
as soon
as we started our vehicle. According to our guide, the more the rhinos run,
the angrier they get, the more likely they are to turn and charge, so we
didn't pursue them in our vehicle. Later in the trip, we saw sables, elands
and the black rhinos (and the ubiquitous giraffe). (October 27, 2008)
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Malaria Blues
Apparently I have malaria. I've been lethargic for the past week or so, but so has everyone else I've talked with - it's been incredibly hot here recently. At these temperatures, afternoons are meant for sleeping, not thinking. But this morning I woke up with a fever and incredibly strong dizziness. Even walking to the bathroom was very difficult and led to a strong attack of nausea. Had to wait in the doctor's office for three hours before he showed up (It opened at 7:30, he got there at 10:30), but it took him all of five minutes to diagnose my symptoms as malaria (with a positive blood test to boot). So I have to take 14 pills for three days each and sleep lots. Supposedly I'll get better. (October 27, 2008)
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Gecko in the House
So I'm bed ridden right now because of the malaria, and have no energy for anything. I go into the kitchen to get my pills, and lo and behold, there's a little gecko on my kitchen wall. I don't mind them, they're less offensive than spiders, but apparently they crap everywhere. i have no idea how to get rid of it. Anyway, I'm too tired. (October 27, 2008)
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Wind storms
I've been told that Namibia can't get tornadoes, in spite of being so flat. Apparently a tornado needs a mixture of hot and cold fronts, and the weather doesn't get cold enough here to make the correct balance. That said, we do get whirlwinds. They look like little tornadoes, and are made of wind and dust swirling around. I got caught in one while buying petrol in Tsumeb, a town south of here, a few months ago. It didn't really hurt, and wasn't strong enough to anything more than crack some small branches and pelt you with leaves and sand. This past weekend I went back to Etosha National Park, and our group got to see a number of these whirlwinds (I'm not sure that that's the correct name, but it's what I'm using). Once, we watched one move through a herd of zebra. The zebra tried to walk out of it, but mostly just stood there and took it. Last night driving home from Ondangwa (50 km south) there was a fierce windstorm, leading to snow-like whiteouts and any number of whirlwinds. (October 14, 2008)
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How (not) to appreciate your teachers
Last Sunday was Teachers' Day. Of course, because it was a Sunday it didn't get recognized. Our regional director decided that he wanted to make a big deal out of Teachers' Day and that the way to do so was to hold a meeting with our teachers on this Saturday. Yes sir, there's no better way to show your teachers that you appreciate all of their hard work than by making them come in on a day off. I don't know what happened. I didn't attend. I had plans. (October 12, 2008)
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Choose your level of (dis)comfort
WorldTeach, Peace Corp and VSO all operate extensively in Namibia. It's interesting to compare the lifestyles lived by the three groups. Generally, Peace Corps seem to arrive with the least cash on hand, and VSOs seem the richest. This plays out in their vacation travel arrangements and the choices that they make. Peace Corps also have more rules that the rest of us, like not being allowed to rent a car or travel at night. However, their training is also quite extensive. Comparatively, VSO's training seems lacklustre. WorldTeach is in all these things somewhere in the middle.
But what's been most interesting to see is the difference in placements between the three groups. Recently I've gotten to see some of the VSO placements. Their apartments come completely furnished (sofas, TVs!) and tend to be in larger urban centres (larger being relative to Namibian standards). One that I saw had a swimming pool, another had a Roman bath (the raised corner bath that you walk up steps to sit down in) in a country that regularly has droughts. WorldTeach insists that its volunteers have running water and electricity. We also get nominal furniture - a bed, a closet, a stove and fridge. Some of us have hot water. I know one Peace Corps volunteer who has lived without electricity for almost 2 years now. Even his school has no power.
So, choose your level of discomfort. (October 7, 2008)
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The qualities you want in a co-worker
I've been dealing with some crap lately from my co-workers. The problem arises form the fact that I teach night classes to the senior learners. These classes give the kids access to computers that they wouldn't otherwise get. The problem? Teachers have decided that if the computers are accessible at this time then it should be them and not the learners who get priority to access them. The computers would not be accessible at all if I wasn't teaching, they would be locked away. There are only 15 computers and the seniors (300+ of them) get no formal computer training before they graduate. The teachers, on the other hand, have access to these computers five days a week, from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm (or later). One of these teachers even has access to his own computer in his own office 24/7. But he felt the need to interrupt my class and try to commandeer a computer so that he could write a letter.
It's really got me re-evaluting who are the teachers I would want to be friends with here. The egotistical "me first" isn't completely surprising but it makes me angry. A few of these teachers are the ones who were first to be my friends. Now I think it was just to see what they could get out of my friendship (the one who has his own computer but insists on using the school's is a particular example. Within a month of my arriving he wanted me to buy textbooks for his class. We don't talk much). It's funny how the teachers who are more self-sufficient and not particularly interested in being friends are turning out to be the more mature, consistent ones that i find myself gravitating towards.
Just last week an international report came out ranking corruption in the various countries of the world, and Namibia's place had fallen four spots, making it more corrupt than before. I've only once seen a police officer try to take a bribe, and that officer was dealt with immediately by the Anti-Corruption Commission. But I think that this is the more pervasive form of corruption: I'm going to interfere in what you're doing unless there's something in it for me. It makes everything totally disfunctional. It's really starting to get to me. (October 6, 2008)
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And then they're gone
One thing about this lifestyle is that you say goodbye a lot. People come, do their thing and go - sometimes according to plan, sometimes not. The goodbyes this year started early in the second term when Josh left earlier than we'd hoped. He was followed by British Lucy, Julia, Dutch Lucy and Lily. Recently Maggie and Ant have both left. Soon the majority of the Peace Corps and WorldTeach volunteers will be leaving. (October 4, 2008)
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Who are you?
With about 130 learners in my English classes, i have had a difficult time getting to know all their names, It doesn't help that some of them I simply can't pronounce: Hamupembe Ndamononghenda for one; Shinedima Ndesheetelwa for another. Fortunately, both of these girls eventually told me that they prefer to be called by shortened versions of their names: Ndamona and Ndeshi respectively.
At the beginning of term 2, I was starting to get confident that I knew at least the faces if not the names of all of my learners. But there was a "new girl" in one of my classes. I swear I'd never seen her before. But my class captain looked at the attendance list and stated that everyone was present and there were no new learners. Eventually I figured out her name (Ndamona) and checked my records. Sure enough, she had written every test I'd given, including apparently having presented her oral exam to me. I still had no idea who she was. I know now that she is a very shy, quiet girl.
Yesterday, when i walked into class, she had the whole class's attention as she was telling a funny anecdote of some kind (only partially in English). When she saw me, she panicked and the talk ended with buried faces and lots of suppressed giggles. I realized that that's the first time that I've seen her voluntarily speak. (October 2, 2008)
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Colourful birds
I
know I've said it before, but there are many colourful birds in Africa. Blue
is a common colour. There is one bird that I really want to get a
picture of when it's flying. On the ground, it's black like a crow or starling,
but when it flies - all of it's wing feathers and underbelly is the most
metallic blue. Incredible. There's a woodpecker-esque bird hanging around
my yard with a beak far too long for his head and a counter-weighting tuft
of feathers that he can spread out. He's a rust colour. Then there's the
yellow finch that keeps coming by to collect pieces for a nest somewhere
secret. But I think that this is the most beautiful bird I've seen here
yet. It's bigger than a sparrow, but maybe not as big as a robin. I saw
it in Kruger, sitting on a branch beside the road, minding its own business.
(October 1, 2008)
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Clouds!
There were clouds when I woke up this morning. We haven't had clouds in the north since late March/early April -- about six months without a cloud. I know that during the rainy season, one of my colleagues had said that I'd welcome clouds when they finally came back, that blue sky could get oppressive. Gotta agree with that now. And just last week one of my coworkers was saying that he thought we'd get a few light showers in the next week or two. Maybe he's right. It might make a nice change from the weather, but it might also lead to a boom in mosquitoes. (September 30, 2008)
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TV Licenses
I saw an ad in the weekend edition of the Namibian. It's time for all people to renew their TV licenses. Yes, if you own a TV you have to have license. I know this isn't unusual in countries such as Britain, but I was surprised to see it here. Frankly, managing such a system (in Britain they have TV police, who drive around in vans scanning for unregistered TVs) takes a lot of time for little pay off. The cost of a TV license is N$400 per year. As part of the ad there was also an apology for how long it was going to take to issue said licenses given the demand. I also just saw a sign in a store saying that to buy one of their TVs, you had to show your TV license! Hopefully if I end up buying one second hand I won't need to show a license. (September 30, 2008)
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Swakopmund on TV
I'd written earlier about how Swakopmund doesn't feel like it's in Africa. it doesn't even feel real. It seems to be this little bubble that exists out of time and place. Well I'm not the only one who thinks so. The Brits are remaking their iconic TV series The Prisoner and have decided to use Swakopmund for all the exteriors. (September 29, 2008)
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Coaching Volleyball
In the beginning of the year, at the beginning of my placement, they were divvying up the various teams and committees and it had been decided by someone that I would be the coach of the girls' volleyball team. They didn't tell me, they announced it (among other things) at a staff meeting. I laughed so hard I started coughing. I told them that I couldn't do it and that they'd need to find someone else. Unfortunately, we were discussing school athletics this week, and apparently we didn't have girls' volleyball team this year after all. Now I kind of regret not doing it. If just being there would have been sufficient maybe I could have done that much. (September 29, 2008)
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Talking to taxi drivers
You meet the most interesting people in taxis, often they're the drivers.
When I was leaving Canada, my airport shuttle driver and I had a long talk. He was a retired restauranteur who did this job a few days a week to "get out of the house." We talked about many things, including Africa and he mentioned that his daughter is a nurse with Doctors without Borders. He also told me that she was leaving on a mission for Darfur in June, and that he was accompanying the team as their chef. Apparently his daughter had been raving about his cooking, and they'd approached him about it. He had a lot of interesting details about the logistics of taking ll of your cooking supplies that far away, and meal planning for that environment. It was a fun way to pass the time.
In Cape Town, on my last day I got a cab whose driver was a retired hotelier - again bored and doing this for fun. It was also an interesting talk, as much about the changing face of South African politics as tourism.
I know I've mentioned elsewhere about my discussion with a Korean cabbie about how mild winters are these days.
Unfortunately I haven't had these same kinds of conversations in Namibian cabs. Usually the conversation starts and ends with them asking me if I've heard of Gazza or The Dogg (local artists), then blasting my ears with their music for the rest of the ride. (Sept 28, 2008)
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Bread
I'd forgotten about this but in Korea, there are so many different kinds of bread, that finding something as simple as "white bread" can be challenging. There's white milk bread and white egg bread and white butter bread (with chunks of margarine in it, not pleasant at all). I have the somewhat opposite problem here in Namibia. All bread is baked locally, and even "white bread" is closer to what we'd call whole wheat. Sometimes I miss the starch. (September 26, 2008)
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But really, sir...
I have a learner who insists that dragons are real. I can't seem to shake him of this belief. One of the reasons that he believes that they are real is because they were in the movie Lord of the Rings. But he understands that the three-trunked elephants aren't real. However, he also thinks that King Kong is real. I don't have the resources, mainly bandwidth, to show him that it's made with computers. (September 25, 2008)
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A high rate of attrition
At the beginning of the school year, we had 840 learners, now we have 803. I know one's in jail, and one died from cholera during the rainy season, but I don't know what's happened to the other 35. That's a 4.5% rate of attrition in 8 months. I don't know if that's high or not. It seems high. (September 24, 2008)
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Thebo M-bye-bye
Thebo Mbeki has been ousted as president of South Africa. I'm not sure what ramifications it will have here. He's seen as a hero, and his role in bringing some kind of resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis has been widely hailed by Namibia's government and ministers.
In other circles, I know he's been seen as ineffectual and borderline incompetent (he has stated that scientists are lying when they claim that HIV and AIDS are related). Mbeki had been the chief mediator in Zimbabwe for years, unable to prevent a failed (read: stolen) election, riots, politically-motivated beatings and Zimbabwe's astronomical inflation (officially 11 million% - unofficially 40 million%) all while losing the trust of his own people and party in South Africa. Even though Mugabe and Tsangverai (sp?) finally signed a power-sharing agreement, it wouldn't have been needed if the elections had been fair and clean, if Mugabe hadn't walked all over Mbeki's "oversight."
But his heir-apparent, Joseph Zuma, is no better and possibly worse. This man has been charged with raping a young girl - he claims it was consensual. The girl is now HIV-positive. The man claims that she didn't get it from him and he didn't get it from her because he showered after sex.
I don't know what the future holds for South Africa, hopefully Mbeki's departure from power will be as smooth and painless as his ascent, when Mandela resigned. Mbeki might have been no Nelson Mandela, but he generally kept the peace in South Africa, a country that still has too many fresh scars. (September 24, 2008)
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Hi Aron
Just a shout out to Hamukwaya Aron, a former Ponhofi learner who is now studying computers in Russia. He sent me an e-mail to say that he's enjoyed reading the site - and spotted a picture of his cousin on it. (September 24, 2008)
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The Changing Face of Oshikango
Oshikango is a town not far from me, 10 km north and right on the Angolan border. It has been going through some of the fastest growth I think I've ever seen a town go through. They've added a number of huge complexes to the southern end of the town, many of which appear to be warehouse/China shop combinations.
I should explain China shops. They aren't full of bone china or crystal dinnerware. They're full of cheap clothing, electronics, trinkets and household items, all made in China and usually sold by Chinese proprietors (Hence the capital "C" in China shop). Oddly enough, pirated software and movies -- something China is famous for -- are not apparent in the shops.
Not only is Oshikango getting bigger, it's getting diversified. There have always been Chinese faces there, although not in the numbers I'm seeing now. But recently there's also been an explosion in the white population there. Previously, I would only see white faces in "Portugal Wholesale," a grocery store that caters to Angolans. Now, they're everywhere.
I'm not sure that this is a good thing. Many of them seem to be "straight off the boat" -- sunburnt cherry red arms and faces, out-of-season clothing (although I get guilty of that one too), traveling alone with big bags, seemingly oblivious to those around them. They just seem so ripe for crime.
And Oshikango doesn't have a good reputation to begin with. This is the town that my fellow teachers (Namibians) wouldn't allow me to travel to alone when I first arrived. This is the town where we interrupted a group who were trying to break into my coworker's car. This is the town that regularly gets mentioned in the newspaper as being "rough and lawless." This is also the town where transport trucks and cattle vie for control of the only paved road. Anything smaller has to fend for itself.
Oshikango (along with Windhoek) is one place where I make sure that my car doors are locked as I drive through town. I make sure my passenger-side window is up high. I always pay a kid to watch my car whenever I go into a store. (September 23, 2008)
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Hot, hot, hot
It's September 22, the second official day of Spring. At 5:30 p.m., the temperature outside my door is 100F/38c. Even the Namibians are complaining about the heat. (September 22, 2008)
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Here we go again
For the fifth time in just over two terms, they've changed my teaching schedule. For my non-promotionals, I've reacquired Phys. Ed. and they've taken away most of my Life Skills classes. (September 10, 2008)
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Hating the Intercape
There aren't always a lot of travel options here. One of the "better" is a South African bus company called Intercape. They travel all over southern Africa. I recently had the joy of traveling with them from Windhoek to Cape Town. I'll avoid them if possible in the future.
First they screwed up my ticket. Then they made me waste a day running around Windhoek because they incorrectly told me that I had to visit their office with my credit card 24 hours before departure or I wouldn't be allowed to board the bus. That was incorrect it turned out. I needed to have my credit card when i boarded the bus, nothing more. But that's OK, they don't know where their Windhoek office is anyway. It's in Windhoek South, not the downtown as they think. They were off by about 3 km.
Then the bus was 2.5 hours late, and it was the wrong kind of bus. For our 20 hour trip, we're supposed to get a "sleepliner" which has very good reclining seats - more leg room and comfort. Instead, they sent a Mainliner - without a working toilet. So we had to stop at every town from Windhoek to the South African border.
Then they made us wait at the border for another hour until a sleepliner finally showed up (at dawn). By this time, the children traveling with their parents were ready for a fun and exciting day of playing in their seats and running up and down the aisles.
We arrived 4 hours late - our mid-afternoon arrival now a dusk arrival. No apologies. Nothing. No way in hell I was getting on one of their buses for the return journey. I bit the bullet and flew home. (Sept 2, 2008)
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Learning continues
We have a Grade 10 learner who is now in prison. I don't know for what. Well, he still has the right to write all of his exams, so we have to send a teacher to the prison to administer his Grade 10 oral exam (the prison will administer his other exams). (Sept 2, 2008)
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An old land, but a young country
Namibia has been occupied for longer than any other place that I've lived. People have lived here in one form or another since there was a species that could be called "people." But the country itself is young, and as such, it suffers from that young country syndrome -- too much paperwork.
Young countries don't have faith in their institutions, so the people within use an abundance of paperwork to both make sure that something happens to to ensure that their own butts are covered.
Here's an example to illustrate my point: All of the teachers at my school must monitor exams. This is part of our job description, and it is called invigilating. We can't get out of it, and we don't get paid for it. But, this past semester, some bureaucrat decided that there was no paperwork acknowledging this arrangement. So, each and every teacher had to fill out five forms to apply to be invigilators. Remember, we have to invigilate whether we want to or not, so we couldn't not apply. And the Ministry can't say "No". But we had to apply anyway. Five pieces of paper per teacher. At least one of these pieces needs to be "approved" by a bureaucrat (who can't "disapprove") and be sent back to each of us. Furthermore, each teacher had to list on their own forms every classroom or building that could conceivably be used as a testing room. Apparently the government doesn't know what is at each school, and in our case, needs 32 people to confirm that there are in fact classrooms at the school.
Another example, our pay cheques arrived recently, as they always do with a payroll form that we each have to sign to receive our cheques and that the amount on it was the same as what's on the form. This time, there was also a form requesting that we all write in how much we get paid. Perhaps they should have just photocopied the payroll form that was in the same envelope, or read that form when we send it back. (Sept 2, 2008)
Year 2, Term 3
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