A Happy Patch of Namlife

While the last update I posted here wasn’t the most upbeat, happy post, it was as realistic a view of my life as I could give you.

The good news is that this post will be significantly rosier.

Autumn is arriving in Gobabis. It’s always a toss up for me, trying to decide if I love autumn or spring more. Regardless, the coming of cooler weather is quite welcome, although I’m sure I’ll be taking that back when it’s near freezing, my house doesn’t have heat, and I’m riding my bike to school in the morning in the dark AND the cold. The other day I walked outside and the air smelled like autumn. It filled me with joy.

The week before last (the week following my last post) was a complete 180 from how things had been going. Some contributing factors were:
• Miscellaneous funny happenings in my classroom. 
• The fact that I’m tricking my grade 6s into reading a book book, but they don’t know it’s a book because I’m giving it to them chapter by chapter. More about that later.
• Last Friday I got a lift to school, which means that I wasn’t sweaty and gross before classes even started, and meant that I could actually dress nicely and do my hair. My learners went wild. Best comment of the day? “Miss, your legs are so fat.” (Like they’d never seen my legs before…) My response: “Thank you.” This comment was closely followed by “Miss, you just look so beautiful” and I knew that the comment about my legs being fat was actually a high compliment. Go figure.
• On that same day, one of my learners asked if I relax my hair. I suppose they’ve probably always wanted to ask a white person that, but of course have never had the opportunity to do so.

As you’ll remember from past posts, Thursday tends to be…. a difficult day in my classroom. For no solid reason (aside from the excitement of the coming Friday) my learners can’t seem to get it together. Once I realized that it was a pattern, I started trying to anticipate the problems, which wasn’t super successful. Until 2 Thursdays ago. I took a different approach, and I split the double period at the end of the day into a Maths period and an English period, and planned to work them during Maths, and do something I knew they’d enjoy during English. And it was hugely successful.

On this particular Thursday, I’d decided to wear my contacts for the first time since school started in January. Gobabis tends to be too dry and dusty to wear contacts (especially riding my bike to and from school, where dust in the eye could be quite dangerous). The first people to notice were the grade 7s; I explained that I was wearing my glasses inside my eyes, on my eyeballs. I walked around the room and showed them the little circle that’s visible with contacts, and they were captivated. Captivated as they were, they still didn’t get the whole concept, so I took one contact out. They were enraptured. I walked around with the lens on my hand, and showed them one eye with the lens, and the other eye without the lens (mostly because somehow they’d never noticed my eyes were blue behind my glasses?), and then I put the lens back in in front of them. They were ENRAPTURED. I got the same response from Grade 6 later that day (at the beginning of the double period I mentioned above). I’ve actually never had every single learner’s undivided attention before that moment (except maybe my first day at school, when I was still a novelty and they were still curious about me).


The week before last, one of my behavior problem’s mother came into school, because this learner often dodges after break, if he comes to school at all, and this is often unbeknownst to his mother. He is one of a couple learners in my class who I know comes from a very violent home environment (this was confirmed when his mother and father/mom’s boyfriend got into a physical altercation in the principal’s office); while it’s true that I want my classroom to be a peaceful place for all my learners, it’s especially true for these 3. The principal mentioned this learner at a morning staff meeting, using him as an example of how we can’t judge the learners at face value, how we always have to consider what’s going on in the background, too. Of course, this is something I already knew and took into consideration, but I was happy to hear my principal make that connection and relay that to the other teachers, most of who don’t think too much about it.

Two notable events came from this initial recognition that the home environment (and particularly those that are violent) plays a huge role in the classroom behavior of the learners. The first occurred when I went into the principal’s office to have a chat, and the conversation rolled around to this topic. I told him that there are 3 boys in the class who come from very violent homes and whose behavior reflects it, and so I have been working to make my classroom a safe place for them to be. (This is a… foreign concept for lots of Namibians.) Because my classroom is a safe place for my learners to be (i.e., I’m not beating them), if the other teachers are beating them in my classroom, and they’re getting beat at home, there’s no difference between being at school and being at home. I then told him that, particularly for these learners who need a safe place to go away from home, I’d like to work with the other teachers to come up with a discipline plan that doesn’t involve beating them in my classroom. His reaction was so favorable that I almost couldn’t believe it. We’ll see how things play out from there.

The other notable thing that came out of the principal’s acknowledgement of the need to look beyond classroom (mis)behavior was a conversation with the teacher at my school who is the most consistent corporal punisher. We happened to be in the staff room at the same time, and he referenced the fact that we have to consider what’s going on at home, and I took the opportunity to make a snide remark about how that’s why I don’t beat ANY of my learners. Then I smiled and walked away. Maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it was. And one day I’ll be able to have a real conversation about how the learners otherwise like him, and how if he didn’t beat them, he’d be highly revered. But… baby steps.

One of my behavior problems was absent Monday and Tuesday last week, and on Tuesday one of his friends told me that it was because he was in jail. Since my learners like to lie about a lot of stuff, I didn’t realize believe it. Turns out it was true. The shitty thing is that he’s actually a clever kid who runs with the wrong people. I know, classic story. He came back to school on Wednesday and wrote an affidavit stating that he’s been with a group of people who broke into a store and stole money, that he hadn’t been one who physically broke in, but that he’d benefitted financially from it. Overall, a sad case.

I have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Grade 6. It’s been… amazing. The whole concept was something I just stumbled across through doing exercises out of one of the Namibian English books, which has a unit on chocolate. It’s provided a wealth of vocabulary, it’s easy to come up with activities for the learners to do, and it’s FUN. And, as callous as it may be, my learners can relate to Charlie Bucket, who lives in a 2 room house with his parents and 4 grandparents, who is so poor that he eats cabbage everyday, etc etc etc.

Last week was good too, exams started and so I was kept busy writing exams, trying to prepare my learners for them, and invigilating exams on Thursday. Trying to calculate end of term marks for my learners has been a challenge, because what’s required in the syllabus and required for end of term marks doesn’t always match up logically for me. Whatever the case, I have to have it all done soon soon, because this coming week is the last week of term!
Rachel GR, from group 27, keeps/kept(?) the Dear Namibia blog, a comical narrative of her service. I often have Dear…. moments in my head. One I have daily is: Dear Namibian Drivers, PLEASE leave more than a foot of clearance when you pass me, especially when there are no other cars on the road. Riding my bike to school is definitely an occupation hazard some mornings.

Another thing I always intend to mention and always forget to is the ice cream vendor man. Maybe one day I can take a picture without it seeming offensive… He’s a man that rides around on an adult tricycle selling ice cream; he comically wears a bicycle helmet (even though he’s riding a tricycle). I suppose, given what I just wrote about Namibians’ disregard for those on bikes, it makes sense to wear a helmet, but it still makes me smile every time I see him.

Group 31 swore in 2 days ago. It’s CRAZY that they’ve been here for 2 months already. Group 30 is nearing 8 months in country and 6 months as PCVs. I had the pleasure of riding from Windhoek to Gobabis with the new health volunteer who will be working with the Catholic AIDS action in Epako (but who, after 2 months of homestay in Epako, will be living in town and commuting to Epako everyday). It was nice to hear about the new group, talk about his hopes, and give him the information (at least some of it) that I wish someone had told me. It’ll be nice to have another volunteer in town, too!

Next Sunday (one work from today), we’ll converge in Windhoek for our ‘rereconnect,’ otherwise known by Peace Corps as Project Design Management (PDM) and male engagement (ME) with Namibian counterparts, and after those sessions end, counterparts will go home and we’ll have a few days of in-service training with just PCVs and PC staff. I’m excited to get to work with Ben in the capacity of a workshop. So far I feel like I haven’t been super useful to him, especially working against the constraints of school.

I’d been indecisive about what to do with the 2.5 weeks of holiday remaining after PDM/ME/IST until this weekend. I knew that I wanted to try to climb (thanks again to Mark Webb, Julie Little and Kaitlin Weideman for getting my rack and rope to Namibia), but aside from that, I had no idea. Thanks to Brad Rollans for making up my mind. We’re going to rent a truck and drive up the skeleton coast from Swakopmund, a trip that should be worth the rental fees and gas money. Following that trip, a few of us are going to hike Waterberg, and perhaps get some climbing in, although the climbing is TBD, as I’m not sure what’s available there, and also not sure what’s permitted. All in all, it should promise to be a good holiday. :)


As always, thanks for reading. I hope you’re well, wherever you are.