Rainy season is really supposed to be picking up around this time of year, but Mother Nature seems to be holding off so far. Maybe not for long. Although it has not rained much over the past few months many say this year will yield plentiful rains for all of northern Namibia.
But actually, this entry is not about Namibian weather at all. Rather, it’s about some of the recent events in my life and the many experiences that will be coming my way in the next two months.
Not much has occurred in the past few weeks (hence no blog post), but I have a feeling things are going to get interesting fairly soon. Teaching has become just like a normal job now that I am (generally) not considered the oshilumbu and now seen as just another teacher by most of the students. Home is generally good, but certainly not like the US. And some random events have kept me busy, but not as busy as I’ll be come March and April…
The first five weeks of the school year are complete and the days are really flying by now. The first week or two went kind of slowly as I was feeling out the learners trying to see how much they know, what pace I should teach at, and if they could actually understand me. After much careful examination I think I have a good idea about how to approach the task of teaching these kids and they are also beginning to become acquainted with how I do things so the lessons are going much more smoothly. Math in both 8th and 9th grade have really been a pleasant surprise. I am going through the material fairly quickly and it seems as if the kids understand most of what we have done so far in both classes. Physical science is the complete opposite. They know very little, we are going slower than we should be going, and the kids are very rambunctious (I yell at them every day for at least a few minutes). BIS provides a fun break from promotional classes. The kids have enjoyed most of the fun activities I have prepared for them so far and once the computer lab is back in action (more on that later), I’m sure they will be even more enthusiastic about this class.
Outside of school, everything in Ohalushu is nawa. Let me just redact some of the statements I made about home in the last post. When I was writing the entry, I was recovering from an awful illness and all I could think about was how rough the last few days had been. Sure the puppy barks a lot and the kids like to play around and yell at each other but puppies bark and little kids play. That’s just what they do. Life at the homestead really is good in general and the comments I made in the last post were almost entirely illness-induced. One other note about home: I still don’t have a refrigerator in my room. Surprisingly, living sans refrigeration has presented very little problems for me and I don’t think it would be an issue if I went the rest of my service here in Namibia without a refrigerator.
Beyond school and home, a few events/noteworthy thoughts have come up recently:
First off, I have officially been living in Africa for 6 months now. Not sure how big of an accomplishment that is, but judging by all of the Facebook updates I saw from fellow Group 32 PCVs here in Namibia, it holds some kind of significance. Plus, the new group is now in country, meaning we are no longer Freshmen.
I wrote in the past about the computer lab and its ups and downs. They continue to this day… The current project I am working on is setting up the server with Windows Server 2003 and then I will deploy Windows XP Embedded images to each of the thin clients. This has involved a lot of reading and even more time downloading things. Hopefully the conversion will be beneficial to the kids as Windows is much more frequently used throughout the world than Edubuntu and the skills they learn within the Windows XP framework should be better suited to how they might operate a computer in their future endeavors.
We recently had an athletics competition for the cluster (nearby group of schools). The event was held near Ongha and took the entire Saturday. Events included: running, running, and more running. The kids ran 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m, and 3km, and 5km races and there were many heats for each age group and each race. Two kids represented our school and they both did remarkably well, moving on to the next competition. If they move on this weekend, they will go to Oshakati and represent the Region. And if they continue, it’s on to Windhoek. The winners from Windhoek then go to Johannesburg, South Africa. Although our kids will likely not make it to South Africa and end up International athletes, it was nice to see them having fun and not worrying about plowing the mahangu or sitting in class all day enduring a relentless onslaught of facts and figures being force-fed to them in their second or third language.
My hair has not been cut in 5 months. I must say, it is pretty weird having a lot of hair and there are both benefits and detriments to owning some lengthy locks. The positives: not having to cut my hair every few weeks is freaking awesome, being respected by people in the community just because I have many white hairs (a sign of wisdom to the Owambos), and some people think my afro-esque hair looks cool. The negatives: long hair doesn’t allow for adequate release of head heat (a big problem in the sweltering African summer), some people (including meme) here in Namibia think that guys should have a shaved head and that my having hair makes me girlish.
Okay, enough of what has already happened and onto what’s in store for the next few weeks:
So my APCD (basically Peace Corps boss who helps make sure everything is going well at my site) is going to be visiting my village, school, and homestead sometime this coming week. The visit is just to check up on things early on in the school year to make sure there are no major problems that the PCV was not aware of. I expect the visit to go fairly smoothly. My APCD will meet with my principal, then with me, and then with my family to talk about how things are going thus far. It’ll be nice to have her give me some feedback about how I’m doing, but I am kind of anxious about the visit as I hope I am on schedule in terms of doing all that I should be doing here. We only have 2 years and the time goes quicker than one might expect. Without proper planning and organization, PCVs can quickly lose track of their primary goals and end up accomplishing fairly little in their time at site. That’s what I am trying to avoid and hopefully I am doing well so far. I guess we’ll see next week…
On Friday I am headed to Windhoek (oh yeah! the big city – or should I say only city) to attend a benefit concert headlined by UB40. The event was scheduled for December but was cancelled and ticket holders were not given a refund. Fortunately, the event was rescheduled and it should be even better than expected because the once several hour event is now an all-weekend event with many other bands and our tickets get us access to all of the festivities for the whole weekend. Several other PCVs are going and we are bound to have a really good time. It’s always nice getting out of the village for a little while to meet up with friends in town, but Windhoek is another story; that’s like a once- or twice-a-year kind of thing!
In early March I will be attending a workshop in Ondangwa about food security. The workshop will (among other things) teach my fellow colleagues, my counterpart (another math teacher at my school), and I “key Permaculture and Bio-Intensive Gardening techniques to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS and help families & PLWHA to increase their food and nutritional security in Namibia.” After attending the workshop, we will bring our skills back to the village and set up a demonstration garden in the community to help introduce the concept to families in Ohalushu ways to improve their diets to best combat the effects of HIV/AIDS. I know very little about gardening, but if I ever were to spend several days learning about gardening and missing school for it, this would be the reason.
And the events don’t stop… The following week includes Namibia’s Independence Day (school holiday = long weekend = PCVs having a good ole time). The extended weekend coupled with some friends’ birthdays should ensure that this weekend will be a blast. I’ve heard Benny’s (waterpark in Ongwediva – yes you read correctly, the one and only waterpark in Namibia is only like 20km away from me) is the place to be and I think there will be many oilumbu paying the N$20 entrance fee over Independence weekend.
In mid-April I will be attending yet another workshop. This one will be held in Windhoek and will be all about creating feasible secondary projects in our communities. I have decided that one of the first and easiest to implement secondary projects is making the computer lab at school a resource that anyone in the community can benefit from. Computers are generally not something people have access to in the village (many elders have never even seen a computer) and I want to utilise to the fullest extent the resources we have at the school to allow as many people as possible to become acquainted with the new-age technology. This will certainly require some planning and the PDM workshop should be the perfect platform for discussing with my colleagues and PC staff what is the best way to move forward with the project.
Soon after the PDM workshop, the first term of the school year will come to a close. The end of the term will likely be hectic. Just coming back from the workshop in Windhoek with like a week of school remaining will be difficult, but hopefully I can prepare the kids for the end of term examinations and they will all do well. Marking will also be crazy during this time as all of the teachers will be spending copious hours filling in grade sheets and making sure all of the administrative paperwork is in order.
After that, it’s vacation time… I’m not 100% sure, but I should be going to Victoria Falls and/or Zanzibar for roughly two weeks in late April and early May. Should be nuts!
So although not much has happened in the past few weeks, you can see how the rest of the term looks to be rather eventful with something going on seemingly every week for the next two months or so.
Haha, a few minutes ago I began to hear thunder from afar. Now it’s pouring and for the first time ever my tin roof is actually leaking water due to the intensity of the rain. I guess the storm has officially begun…
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