As COS/AVC Conferences approach....

Last week in Rundu, a fairly big town in the north, 300+ learners walked out of their school due to unsanitary and unhygienic conditions. This morning on the news it was noted that now was "not a good time" for them to walk out because of approaching examinations.  There was no mention that the conditions had improved, only that the learners are missing important exam revisions.  Sigh. 

The 26th of August is known as Heroes' Day in Namibia. It's a day in celebration of Namibia's Freedom Fighters. Read up on it here.  It's also a day of celebration for the Herero tribe.  The other day my principal (who is Afrikaner - a white Namibian) was talking about something to do with Heroes' Day, and made the off-handed comment that "their heroes isn't the same heroes as our heroes" (sic).  Another sigh. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but Yolande – the secretary at my school – is one of my favorite people here in Namibia.  Unfortunately, due to logistics and other circumstances – she lives in the location and has an infant son - we don’t get to hang out much outside of school, but at school we have a good time and have lots of positive skills transfers.  Monday morning she greeted me but showing me her hands and saying “Guess what I did this weekend!” One look at her palms made the answer sorely obvious (no pun intended? Who am I kidding, yeah it was) – they bore the clear signs of digging.  She’d been digging her garden over the weekend.  And was excited about it. After school I walked to her house with her (it’s on my way home) and took a look at the MASSIVE plot she’d dug over the weekend.  We’re well on our way to double digging her garden in the spirit of permagardening – she basically did a single dig all on her own.  We planned where we’re going to put water-catch holes and walkways and we’re going to do the double tomorrow, if all goes as planned (but again, who am I kidding? Nothing ever goes as planned). One of the other teachers lives almost next door and wants to make a garden plot behind her house, so she’s going to come and watch the double dig, so it’s like a twofer. 

Even before we went to look at the garden, I was having a good day.  I had a couple technological successes at school yesterday.  I’d been having some stupid problems with Linux that had been thorns in my side until I FINALLY figured out how to fix them this morning (thanks to Trevor from South Africa for helping me figure it out). Yolande’s laptop has been giving her problems, so we decided to wipe it clean and start from scratch.  She deleted all the partitions on her hard drive, repartitioned the hard drive to accommodate 2 operating systems (XP and Ubuntu) and 2 data partitions, and installed XP – and did all these things with very limited help/support from me. She’d been able to do all those things independently, but yesterday she put it all together.  She was proud of herself, and I was really proud of her.  It made me feel goooooooooooood. Tomorrow: Ubuntu installation.  

The Director of the Omaheke Ministry of Education was due to visit our school yesterday, so of course everything – classrooms, offices, library, grounds – was cleaned and an HIV/AIDS information corner was set up in our staff room.  One of the preprimary teachers made colorful centerpieces for the secretary’s desk and the tables in the staff room using the parts of wildflowers that remain when the petals fall off, dipped in paint. They’re delightful, really. And they remind me of something out of a Dr. Seuss book. They put a smile on my face Monday morning.

The secretary's post

Deep Roots Namibia is an organization providing scholarships to secondary school learners at risk of leaving school, for either financial, family, or other circumstances.  They pay for one year of school, exam, and hostel (boarding) fees.  This is the first year our school has nominated learners.  Each learner must write 2 essays and must include a 2 letters of recommendation in his/her application.  In the instructions to the school, Deep Roots states that if possible at least one of the letters of recommendation should be from a volunteer.  My school interpreted this as meaning that I should write a letter of recommendation for all the learners applying, even those that I’d never had in class and knew very little about.  I told them that I wouldn’t do that, that I’d be happy to write letters for the learners I’d had in class last year, but that I can’t write letter for learners I don’t know.  There was a reaction to this that implied that I was being lazy and purposefully unhelpful, when in fact I was just refusing to be dishonest.  When I talked to another PCV about this, she observed that maybe they like volunteer recommendations because they know that we will, in fact, be honest in our recommendations, and won’t write letter for learners we don’t know.  BUT, I’m excited about the 2 from last year’s Grade 6 who are applying, they are clever and I think they’ll do great things with the right kind of support.

Yesterday after school as we were walking out some of the learners were shouting and running around in a pack.  It turns out that a puff adder was found and killed near one of the Grade 1 classrooms, and one learner was running around with it on the end of a stick while the pack followed him and shouted and whooped and made a general ruckus. I found out today that when my HOD got involved in the bedlam, the snake was actually still alive.....

This morning there was a learner in the office who’s been drinking petrol (gasoline) to get high. The principal took advantage of the internet to show him before/after pictures of drug addicts (you know, the kind where in January the lady looks kind of hot, and but July she’s lost 30 pounds and has open sores on her face). I’m not really sure what to say about primary school learners drinking petrol…

Anyway, the week is half over already.  This weekend we’re hoping to head to Spitzkoppe, and next week is Group 30’s Close of Service and the PC/Namibia All-Volunteer Conference.  We're hoping to get in some climbing the weekend after, as well.  Then Close of Service medical exams....  phew, I'm going to be out of site for almost 2 weeks!

I hope wherever you are that you're well. Thanks for reading!