T-minus 6 months and counting

I've never been one for following the rules or been very good at maneuvering through bureaucracy. Policies and procedures? I get that they're important. I get it. I just don't always like it.

The Namibian school system is laden with bureaucracy and full of policies and procedures put in place to try to improve the school system, therefore improving the lives of the learners.

It's difficult to come into the school system not having grown up in it, full of American ideas and not understanding the importance of some of these policies and procedures. The implications of not following some of these rules, regulations, and norms can be far reaching and seemingly ever ending.

One such norm is the marking of the learners' workbooks. Upon starting at the beginning of last year, I only marked the books when I gave the learners an assignment that I needed to mark for a recorded grade. Other teachers mark the books weekly, or even daily; I just didn't see the need. All assignments, marked by me or not, were always gone over in class, and the learners were responsible for marking and making corrections.

The parents of several learners who failed either maths or english last year came back and said that their learners failed because I didn't mark their workbooks, that their learners didn't know that they weren't doing well because I wasn't marking their books. It wasn't good enough for me to respond that they were responsible for marking and making corrections. And apparently the fact that they were getting 10-20 percent correct on their tests (which I always sent home to be signed by the parent/guardian) wasn't indication enough to them that their learner was failing.

And so this issue continues to come up. At the morning staff meetings, after the bible is read, religious texts are interpreted and prayers are said, of course, the issue continues to come up. And of course my “lack of administration” is always talked about abstractly, I'm never directly accused of wrongdoing, but... I don't need to be to know exactly what's being referenced.

But the term is mostly over. The upper primary learners wrote exams this week and the lower primary... did whatever lower primary does. I mostly wrote the grade 5 end-of-term exam, along with my grade 5 english teacher counterpart, and think it was a damn good exam. This term we taught about the desert for the whole term (under the cross-curricular theme of environment) (and by we, I mean Ms. Kandetu taught and I helped with the lesson planning). In other subjects they studied the solar system, ecosystems, population information, etc etc etc.... So all the topics on the english exam corresponded to something they'd learned about in other subjects. All that being said, the average score on the English exam was somewhere between 10 and 15 out of 30 marks. Sigh. 10/30 is passing, at least.

I came to the big city of Windhoek yesterday for a VAC meeting this morning (VAC is Volunteer Advisory Committee). VAC is a group of elected volunteers that represent the different geographic regions in Namibia as well as the different sectors (health/education/small enterprise development) and the different intake groups. Three times a year we meet with senior staff to discuss the issues that volunteers all over Namibia are experiencing. We come the day before the meeting to hold a premeeting, to make sure everyone is on the same page about the agenda topics. One of the groups before us had the great idea to make it a tradition to drink a bottle of whiskey during the premeeting; the meeting opens with whiskey and doesn't end until the bottle is kicked. Needless to say, VAC is a good time, always.

Because of various reasons that I don't feel like explaining, VAC has had a significant turnover and only 3 of us were at the last VAC meeting, and all the other members are newbies from groups 31 and 32. It's always nice to meet new PCVs. I hadn't met 3 of my roommates before I arrived yesterday, but had a really nice conversation with one of them this morning before the meeting about school, teaching, the Nam school system, etc etc.

VAC meetings consist of PCV reps and Senior Staff: this includes the Country Director, 4 APCDs (Associate Peace Corps Directors) for the different regions/sectors, the safety and security officer, the administrative officer, the IT specialist, and the Medical Officers. Before today, the longest meeting I'd been in was 3 hours. Today's was 5. Five hours. Phew.

Group 33 swore in yesterday. Except for the Group 28 and 29ers who extended their service, Group 30 has been in country the longest. We're the old heads! So crazy. 

This morning in the shower I realized that 6 months from yesterday will be my last day as an official PCV; 6 months from today, I'll officially be an RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer). More than three quarters of my service is gone. Done. Over. Whoa.