Lucky Star Barefoot Marathon

The marathon was awesome! Held on October 20, the Lucky Star Marathon runs from Walvis Bay to Swakopmund along Namibia’s coastline. The marathon is sponsored by the Walvis Bay-based Lucky Star fishing company, who make pilchards. Pilchards are my favorite type of canned fish here, kind of like giant sardines in a spicy tomato sauce which goes great with oshifima. I know am the proud owner of a Lucky Star t-shirt.

The marathon itself was run under ideal conditions. Because Namibia’s coast is cooled by the Benguela current, a cold-water current that comes from Antarctica, it is usually cool and misty. Marathon day was no exception, with overcast skies and temperatures around 50 or 60 farenheit at the start. My friends Chase & Erin drove me to the start—well, almost. Their car died about 3k from the beginning, and a nice race worker took us the rest of the way.

The race began on time – no mean feat in Namibia. At the start, I was running with two 23-year old Peace Corps volunteers, Paul and Adam. Within the first 500 meters, they sprinted ahead of me, fueled by youth and enthusiasm. As I watched them turn a corner away from me in the distance, I thought to myself, “I’ll catch up to you guys.”


The first few k’s wandered around the affluent town of Walvis Bay, which was controlled by Britain and then South Africa. When Namibia gained independence in 1990, South Africa retained control of Walvis for another four years before finally ceding control back to Namibia. Walvis is the only significant port in Namibia, and goods which come into Walvis are shipped to Botswana, Zambia, Congo and Zimbabwe. In fact, after the marathon I met Frans, a trucker who is friends with another volunteer. He drives frozen chickens from Walvis Bay to Lumumbashe in the Congo. Hopefully, I can convince him to take me with him on one of his trips.

After Walvis, the race headed straight up a good coastal road, with large sand dunes on my right and the cold Atlantic Ocean to my left. I stuck pretty steadfastly to my pace of 9 minutes per mile. There were more people than I expected on the running route, because the race was also being run as a 4-person relay for school kids. So, every 6.5 miles, there was a big group of kids waiting for the runners from their school to come in. These kids were amazing: many were running on the tar road barefoot, in flip-flops, or merely with an ace bandage wrapped around the ball of each foot. Over 50 schools from around the country participated, including several teams which were brought by WorldTeach and Peace Corps volunteers. It was a smart, interesting way to get kids hooked on running.

As the miles pounded on, I continued to feel good. Around mile 18, I caught up with Paul, one of the 23-year old Peace Corps guys who had sprinted ahead of me. We chatted for a bit, then I ran on ahead. Seven miles later, I caught up with Adam as well. With just over a mile to go, I sprinted to a 3:55 finish, a personal record, and the satisfaction of running faster than the 20-year olds. Overall, I had what will probably my top-place finish in my life: 36th place! Of course, only 79 people finished, but I still like to think I came in 36th.

Float Like a Butterfly, Clomp Like a Donkey

One of my absolute favorite things about Namibia is running. It might seem odd to love running in a place with little water and temperatures that routinely get over 100 degrees farenheit. However, running here is my haven, my challenge, and my way to explore rural Namibia.

When I first got to Namibia, I was getting back to running after foot surgery six months earlier. My first runs were fairly tentative – 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there. But pretty quickly, my Peace Corps friend Robin and I started running together a couple of times a week after work. We always ran on a gravel road that headed away from the mission, and if we timed our runs correctly, we could sometimes catch a sunset on return trip. Those runs were also a welcome chance to process all the cultural adjustments that I was going through with a more experienced volunteer.

As I became more confident both in my running ability and in my navigation skills, I began to head off the gravel road onto the sand and dirt tracks that crisscross the landscape here. There are no maps of these tracks, but more often than not, following one eventually led to a small village. During these ‘exploration’ runs, I found four villages that don’t appear on any map: Ohamutsi, Oshipala, Okangombe, and Oshiputu. The locals know where all these villages are, of course, but to me each one was an exciting discovery.

When winter came, I got more serious about training for the Swakopmund Marathon, which I will run tomorrow, October 20 (wish me luck!). Grudgingly, I dragged my butt out of bed at 5:30 each morning to run, because there was never enough daylight to run after school. These morning runs became my favorite time of the week. Each morning, I left my room in dim light of dawn. The sky began to turn colors during the run, from pale bluish to a glowing stereoscope of oranges and reds. Then it faded nearly to white, and finally the sun rose, a giant fiery ball hanging on the horizon.

I’ve had many running companions during the year in Namibia. On one of my first morning runs the hostel dog, Lolly, came to the mission gate and asked to come with me. Lolly and I have become good friends, despite the bite she gave me during my first week here! She’s young and in pretty decent shape, so I thought she might be able to do 8k or so. However, after just about 3k, I turned around and she was nowhere to be seen. Oh shit, I thought, I’ve lost the hostel dog. What are the kids and the staff going to say? Panicked, I aborted my run and spent the rest of my time zigzagging back to the mission shouting her name. She knew her way around, however. When I got back she was there, waiting for me and wagging her tail.

On many runs, children and occasionally adults run along with me for a kilometer or two. In the morning, groups of young children on their way to school often join me. Despite their long grey slacks, button-down white shirts and dress shoes, those little buggers can keep up with me for over a mile! On these runs, I feel a little like Muhammad Ali. When he trained for his “Rumble in the Jungle” with George Foreman in Congo in the 1970s, local kids swarmed around him during his runs. I don't have a swarm around me, but last week I had a respectable group of ten tykes running with me for 40 minutes. Unlike Ali, however, I don't "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." Let's just say that I'm a bit less graceful.

During evening runs, occasionally an old meme (an older woman) in traditional dress and head scarf runs alongside me for 25 meters or so, which her friends always think is a hilarious joke. Meme Relax, who I greet when I run through her village, shouts at me, “Hurry, hurry!” But my most faithful running companion is Gotard, who works in the hostel and loves running. He has shown me many new running routes. Two weekends ago, for my final long run before the marathon, he took me to a rural Angola border post which was just 12k or so away. Gotard has caught the running bug, and he plans to race in a half-marathon in Oshakati next weekend.

When I’m alone, of course, I have a lot of time to think on my runs. One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is trying to raise funds to start a scholarship fund at Canisianum. Our school is excellent: while the passing rates on the national exams hover around 30% nationwide, the passing rate at Canisianum is 99%. Unfortunately, not every learner who is strong academically can afford a school like Canisianum. I’m thinking of using the marathon (well, perhaps the ‘post-marathon’) as a fundraiser to establish a scholarship fund. A year’s tuition at my school is approximately US$100. If I could raise US$5,000, interest on the principle alone could fund five learners every year in perpetuity.

I’m curious to hear what you think of this idea – particularly if you have any experience with establishing scholarship funds or foundations. What sort of safeguards can you build to make sure the money goes to learners who need it most? How are such funds set up and managed? Would you – dear reader – be willing to part with $50 or $100 to allow more kids access to quality education?

Well, that’s it for running here in Namibia. Wish me luck on the race tomorrow!

The Funny Side of Fighting AIDS

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa is terrible. Most countries in the South African Development Community have infection rates ranging from 15-25% of the population; Namibia’s rate is just under 20%. Despite the seriousness of the problem, a half-page job advertisement in last week’s newspaper made me laugh, and I give to you here, almost in its entirety:

Ministry of Health and Social Sciences

Namibia Global Fund Programme
The Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS), as the Principle Receipient (PR) of the Global Fund Grants, continues implementing the planned HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis activities. Given the existing staffing levels of the Programme Management Team, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure the smooth implementation of some aspects of the HIV/AIDS programme activities. It is against this background that the Directorate of Special Programmes (DSP), is looking for suitable qualified and experienced candidates for the following position:

Condom Logistic Officer

Duties and Responsibilities:
• Monitor condom stock levels countrywide by exploiting reports from the end-users distribution points;
• Promptly respond to logistic need whenever it arises;
• Identify causes of any shortage in condoms and report to the Condom Logistic Manager;
• Check condom stocks at all facilities in order to have an accurate starting point for quantities to distribute according to the population needs;
• Create, maintain and manage data of end-users distribution points for condoms;
• Promote condom use at any contact with end-users and monitor any increase in demand induced by that promotional activity;
• Anticipate any shortage of condoms at the end-user level;
• Compile annual plan and report and forward to the condom logistic manager on matters of condoms;
• Liaise with stakeholders for information and collaboration on condoms; and
• Submit reports on distribution of condoms activities.

The contract is valid until 31 March 2009, with the possibility of renewal. To start as soon as possible. All applications to be submitted: Global Fund, etc.

As you can see, America is not the only country where job titles become grossly overinflated! Come on, this job is for a glorified condom delivery person! Worse yet, there is also a Condom Logistics Manager to whom the Condom Logistics Officer will report. How many people work in the Directorate of Condoms?

The ad states that the Ministry of Health receives funding for this programme from western donors. I would bet that the Ministry has just received a large infusion of cash and, not wanting to lose the money, has created a make-work position. Although the job notice itself is amusing, it calls into question the effectiveness of aid given to poor countries. Does the money help to solve the problem, or does it merely give someone in Africa an easy job with a good salary?

Teacher Talk: Classes in Namibia

One important difference between school organization here and back home lies in the classes. In the U.S., most high school classes last approximately 40-50 minutes, with a short period between classes for students to move to their next room. Occasionally, some schools use a ‘block scheduling,’ which allows double periods for many classes, especially science classes that require a lab. Many teachers have their own rooms, but not all. Most students take English, Math, history, a science class, a foreign language, gym, lunch, and some type of elective.

In Namibia the classes are 40 minutes long, but there the similarity ends. Learners sit in the same class, in the same seats, all day long. Classes are designated with the grade, adding a letter for each different class in the same grade: 8A, 8B, 9A, 9B, etc. All the students in one class take all the same subjects together; learners who struggle in math but excel in English cannot take remedial math and advanced English. My school has made some provision, however, for additional classes for learners who want to push themselves.

More confusing is the wide array of subjects students take. At my school, learners in grades 8-10 take nine ‘promotional’ subjects: Oshindonga, English, Maths, Life Science, Physical Science, Geography, History, Agriculture, and Business Management. Additionally, learners also take once-a-week non promotional classes in Religious and Moral Education, Computer Skills, Life Skills, and Physical Training. That’s right, the learners have ONE PERIOD PER WEEK OF GYM. Now to some of you that might sound great, but young 14-year olds need to burn off energy more than once a week!

Back home at my old school, student schedules usually remained unchanged from day to day, from week to week. Period 1 was Math with Mr. Factor, period 2 was English with Miss Sym A. Lee, and period 3 was chemistry with Dr. Mole. Here, each class’s schedule changes from day to day. The schedule is so confusing that only in the third time have I begun to get my schedule memorized. On Monday, period 1 could be English, but on Tuesday it’s math, on Wednesday it’s history, etc. Moreover, some classes meet seven times per week, some five, some three, and the non romotionals meet just once.

Although this system seems ludicrously complicated, it does have its advantages. Let’s say that I taught the same topic to both 9A and 9B, but with 9B we didn’t finish because goats invaded the classroom and we spent some time kicking them out. Back home, I would have to cover that material the next day before I could move on. Here, I can go back to 9B during the afternoon study period and finish the lesson, because that same group of learners are still together. Also, teachers will occasionally ‘trade’ or ‘sell’ periods to other teachers who need extra time to finish a topic or give a test. The flexibility is actually quite nice. If I notice that many of my learners are struggling before a test, I simply teach an extra lesson to the class during the afternoon study time.

The rigorous nature of the schedule does not mean, however, that it is rigorously followed. Principals will often call teachers out of their class for meetings. Our principal, Mr. Kalipi, has occasionally called a staff meeting in the middle of the school day, leaving all the classes without teachers. Just this week, he called a meeting during our last period to discuss how we would make up the periods that were to be lost due to a field trip on Friday. I kept thinking, “How will we make up the periods that we have lost by sitting in this meeting?”

A glaring difference is in the amount of time that learners are left unsupervised. Back in NYC, our administrators drilled into us that we could NEVER leave a classroom unsupervised. “What if,” they said, “one learner stabs another with a pencil during the 60 seconds you are out of the room? Then YOU will be responsible for the lawsuit.” As a result, if I desperately needed to go to the bathroom, I had to flag down a passing teacher to watch my class while I ran to the can.

Here, the learners are frequently left to fend for themselves. There are no such things as substitute teachers here. If a teacher is sick, at a workshop, or merely sleeping in the staffroom, the class will simply remain without a teacher. When the principal calls a staff meeting during the day, the learners sit in their classes. If I need to use the toilet or make a photocopy during class, than I just do it. And you know what? When I come back in the room, they’re all fine. Oh sure, they might be talking to each other instead of reading, but not one kid has gouged another’s head out with a pencil yet.

It’s futile to talk about which system is ‘better’ or which one is ‘right.’ However, it is helpful to see that there are advantages and disadvantages to both, and to recognize that there really is no one ‘right’ way of educating.

Dunes, Wildlife, and Himbas

My father’s 11-day visit at the end of August was an adventure of wildlife, dangerous roads, stark scenery, and traditional lifestyles. In just nine days we saw the southern desert, the coast, a great wildlife park, and some remote Himba villages.

The trip started rather ominously, as we went through four rental cars in the first three days. The first two cars never even made it out of the capital, Windhoek. One car flashed a warning light as I drove to the airport, and the second had an air-conditioner which blew only sand and hot air. After those problems, the rental car company upgraded us brand-new Renault Magane that was so fancy it didn’t even have a key to turn for the ignition—just a button to press and the engine purred to life. Unfortunately, the Magane did not have a very long life expectancy. On the third day of the trip, I hit a sandy patch on a gravel road and the car fishtailed. I was able to slow down, but not before we went over some rocks which took out one tire, the bumper, and radiator. Oops. The fourth car, thankfully, made it the rest of the trip.

Besides talking to Europcar a lot, during the first two days we traveled to the Namib, the world’s oldest desert. It varies from rocky fields to scrubland to towering dunes, and has an impressive collection of flora and fauna that have adapted to live in the environment. For example, the western edge of the desert is frequently blanketed in mist coming off the ocean. Some beetles stand up in the mist and absorb the water directly into their bodies. My father was particularly captivated by a place called Dead Vlei, an area where an ephemeral river formerly flowed and thus trees grew. After the river changed course, all the trees died but still remain standing. One night in the desert we stayed at a ritzy lodge that had an enormous buffet dinner and a watering hole just 50 metres from the outdoor dining area. While we ate our oryx steak, we watched live oryx at the water hole. Very strange!




After a quick but uninteresting visit to Swakopmund, a westernized city on the coast, we headed straight to Etosha National Park, the jewel of Namibia’s park system. Etosha is a huge park, slightly smaller than the state of Vermont. In the center of the park is a huge pan, which is a shallow depression that in years of good rain will have a thin covering of water. By the time we got there, all the water had dried up so the animals congregated around the many watering holes throughout the park. At one point we parked near the edge of the pan, where a watering hole lay 150 meters away. From there, we could see perhaps 250 different animals: zebra, springbok, oryx, and blue wildebeest (also known as gnus), not to mention multitudes of birds. At night, we stayed in a compound that had a nightlit watering hole, where we saw a huge herd of elephants playing in the water, and even the elusive black rhino.

At Etosha, I successfully introduced my father to camping. Dad had trouble at first because there had been a bad camping experience when he was a kid that he had suppressed for 45 years. After a sleepless night of reliving that experience and getting through it, he slept like a baby. It helped that I broke out the classic Namibian camping barbecue over a wood fire: boerwoers and brochen (a curly sausage and a fresh bun); potatoes, onions, and feta cheese roasted together in tinfoil; and a couple of bottles of cold Tafel lager.



Our last ‘tourist’ destination was the dusty city of Opuwo. The city’s name means, ‘Finished,’ because it is the place where the Himba tribes finally decided to stop trekking. The Himba are probably the most traditional tribe that remains viable in Namibia. They have been able to maintain their culture because their territory is of little economic interest to outsiders and because their leaders consciously chose to avoid a western lifestyle. To this day, they are very suspicious of western institutions like schools. On average, Himbas only send one in six children to school.



While we were in Opuwo, we hired a guide to take us out to a Himba village, and it was one of the most interesting parts of the trip. As you can see in the pictures, they look markedly different from other Namibians. They still dress mostly in animal hides, both sexes wear jewelry and hairstyles that denote different stages of life, and the women go topless while covering their bodies in a reddish paste that serves as a sunblock. When we visited the village, in the middle of the Namibian winter, there were only women and children there. All the men were out with the cattle, roaming the countryside for weeks at a time in search of grazing and water.

Through our interpreter, at first we greeted the wife of the headman. Then the women and children sat in a circle and asked us a bunch of questions. My favorite was when they asked my father where his wife was. He told them he had no wife because he was divorced. Immediately, they suggested some suitable partners for him! Afterwards we went into one woman’s hut, which was made from a wood frame covered with mud. Inside it was surprisingly large, perhaps 16 feet in diameter and tall enough for me to stand straight in the center. She showed us how they make the red paste with which they cover their bodies. After grinding an ochre rock on a large stone, they mix it with some stinky milkfat and just rub it on the skin. It looks pretty, but it sure doesn’t smell that way.

What’s interesting about the Himba is that they have consciously chosen their way of life. Prior to the colonial era, the Ovahimba and Ovaherero peoples were basically from the same tribe. When white missionaries moved into their area, the two groups split. The Ovaherero leader chose to align himself with missionaries, and the Ovaherero adopted modern clothing, schooling, and technology. In contrast, the Ovahimba chief eschewed close contact with the missionaries and other colonizers. The Ovahimba today still practice traditional ancestor worship and have very little contact with modern technology, although the government has tried to bring them into the 20th century. They remind me of the Mennonites or the Amish in America, people who have consciously chosen not to adopt a modern lifestyle.



The final three days, my father visited my home on the mission and attended my classes. He was impressed, as I frequently am, at the intelligence and warm reception from the kids. He spent one period with each of my classes, answering their questions about America, his job, etc. At one point, kids from a class that I don’t teach wanted to talk to him, and he held court underneath a tree to a group of 40 or 50 learners. I came in at the end of it when he was comparing the German genocide of the Herero in 1903 to the Holocaust forty years later—well, at least they were learning something!

I think my father did pretty well for his first ever trip abroad, dealing with strange accents, money, and camping. He was very willing to try new things, like the pieces of cow stomach that teachers here often eat for lunch. Although it took me months to try one, Dad dug right in and seemed to like it. Me, there's one one of the four stomachs which I find palatable.

It was also nice to see my mission through the eyes of someone who knows me from back home. Dad could appreciate all the things I love about this place: the quiet sandy roads that I run on and from which I see all manner of beautiful sunsets and sunrises; the genuinely appreciative, eager, and intelligent learners; the challenge and satisfaction of trying to speak Oshiwambo. Hopefully you get to experience a little of that too in the chair your are sitting in right now.

Falling for Vic Falls

For my two-week August holiday this year, I traveled over 3,000 miles by land and touched on three different countries! The first week, I met up with a bunch of fellow WorldTeach volunteers to visit Victoria Falls in Zambia. I’ve tracked the entire trip on the map below. The red line is the trip to Zambia, the green is the one back to Windhoek, and the very squiggly blue line is the route my father and I traveled through Namibia.


The travel to Livingstone in Zambia, though it took 24 hours, was not bad at all. From my town I hiked into Oshakati, then took a taxi to the next big town of Ondangwa. From there, I caught a ride with a kindly old man who spoke almost no English. He owned a bunch of stores that made wooden furniture, and after about an hour and a half, he proudly dropped me off at one of his stores. From there I paid for a minibus to take me to Tsumeb where I met up with several other volunteers to wait for the bus to Vic Falls.

Tsumeb was one of the more surreal cities that I’ve been to in Namibia. Like many cities in the south, it has a number of affluent white residents who have developed the town along fairly western lines. In the part of town where we waited for the bus (which was only 3 hours late), all the roads were paved, with trees on either side. Small but cute houses with driveways lined the side streets, and cars zoomed up and down the road. I saw more white people in those three hours of waiting than I would in a month or two up north. All in all, it had the feeling of a small, quiet, American suburb.

The overnight bus ride was crowded but uneventful, and when I woke up we were nearing the Zambian border. The landscape was similar to Namibia’s north, but now there were some rolling hills and much more greenery. This section of the country, unlike everywhere else, receives substantial rainfall and has one river, the Kavango, running through it. From the border, we drove a scant couple of hours to Livingstone, which is the gateway to the Falls on the Zambian side.

In Livingstone, we stayed at the Jolly Boys hostel. It was a perfect hostel, designed by people who had spent a lot of time on the road. It was built around a covered, open-air courtyard that had a recessed seating area of comfy couches and futons. Near the futons were a small shop and internet café. In the yard, a small pool lay next to a friendly bar. Although there were loads of activities to do, you could have a nice time just relaxing as well.

The first day, we took a day trip to Botswana’s Chobe National Park. At 6am, a group of 25 or so hostellers clambered into a rickety double-decker bus that looked as old as I am. After an hours’ drive, we approached the border crossing into Botswana. 18-wheel trucks lined the road for a reason that soon became obvious. To get to Botswana from Zambia we had to cross the Zambezi river, but there was no bridge. Instead, two motorized ferrys went back and forth all day. Each ferry could accommodate a large number of people, ONE car, and ONE truck. Our guide told us that at this time of year, when the river was low, the ferry crossing took only 10 minutes. As a result, truck drivers could get their turn on the ferry after waiting “only” one or two days. During the rainy seasons, truckers might wait four or five days to cross. Still, the guide told us, it was better than the alternative: taking the bridge across the river into Zimbabwe, where petrol shortages and runaway inflation made freight hauling fraught with difficulties.



We debarked from our ancient bus, walked onto the ferry, and then were picked up by a different guide on the other side. Once in Botswana, we took a half-day game drive through the national park, followed by an afternoon game-and-lunch cruise on the Zambezi river. Between the two, we saw loads of beautiful wild animals: elephants, roan antelope, kudu, lichwe antelope, crocodiles, water buffalo, and hippopotami. The best part was the game cruise on a pontoon boat. We ate a leisurely meal of chicken and salad, while our driver took us right to the edge of a marshy island in the middle of the river. From there, we were less than 30 feet from water buffalo and hippos. Later, we came across a small herd of elephant crossing from the mainland to the island. One little baby elephant wasn’t tall enough to walk across, so he wrapped his trunk around his mama’s tail and she pulled him across. It was so cute!



The next day, I indulged in my aviaphile tendencies by purchasing a 15-minute microlight flight over Victoria Falls. I was more excited by trying a microlight that I was at seeing the falls, but it turned out the view was more fun than the ride itself. From the air we could see the broad swath of the Zambezi leading the very wide falls (I forgot exactly how long, but over a kilometer). My pilot/guide also pointed out how the water was starting to cut the next Victoria Falls. At the right side of the waterfall, the force of the water over the rock etched a fissure in the rock, just upstream of the current falls. In time, this fissure will grow into a new waterfall. When that happens, water will then cascade over the newer falls, a couple hundred meters upstream, and the old falls will just be a chasm the water flows through.


That day I also had fun running with a military escort. On the advice of the hostel, I ran out by the airport and then beyond, down a dirt track. I was enjoying the greenery when a Zambian military chaplain drove by in a pickup truck. He warned me that there might be buffalo or elephants roaming about, and then he drove curiously slowly behind me until I ran the back to the main road. Thanks, Father.

That same night, we went for a dinner/booze cruise on the Zambezi, whose highlights were meeting a bunch of Indian peacekeepers, an American volleyball coach, and learning about Zimbabwe. On our cruise there were three soldiers on holiday from their work in the Congo, where they serve as U.N. Peacekeepers on the border with Rwanda. Vivek, Avek, and Munish were extraordinarily nice guys, very articulate and interesting. Back in the states, many people frown on U.N. Peacekeepers, and my impression is that many military personnel would not want to be part of a peace-keeping mission. In contrast, Munish saw his duties in a very positive light. He said that his unit was assigned to Congo as a reward for its excellent anti-terrorism work in Kashmir. Some reward I thought to myself, but he was very proud of it. Recently I have read that fighting near the border flared up again, and I hope that those three are ok.


Our bartender, Tyson, told us a lot about life in Zimbabwe just across the river. The country is imploding right now because of the misguided policies of Robert Mugabe, its president since 1980. He has crushed the opposition with intimidation and beatings. Electricity is only available a few hours each day now. He began a program of land reform which took the land out of the hands of white farmers and redistributed it to black subsistence farmers. As a result, the agricultural output of Zimbabwe has plummeted. Where it was once called the “breadbasket of southern Africa,” now it has to import grain to feed its own people.

Inflation is a massive problem. The rate of inflation is nearly 10,000% per year and rising, similar to the skyrocketing inflation seen in Weimar Germany after the first world war. I heard the story of a businessman who went for a trip to Zimbabwe with two suitcases: one for his clothes, and the other for his money. Tyson showed us some Zimbabwean currency which had an expiration date!! The money had been issued on August 1, 2006 and it expired July 31, 2007.

As a result of all these problems, The Economist has estimated that roughly 3m of its 12m people have fled the country. South Africa in particular is a favored destination, because of its strong economy, but all the surrounding countries have migrants because of Zimbabwe’s collapse. Some of these are poor workers, but many are well-educated people who would love to go back if only the country could sort things out. My doctor and my pharmacist here are both from Zimbabwe. In fact, one of my colleagues once drew for me an acrostic during a meeting:

ZIMBABWE =
Zero
Income
Because
All
Brainy
Workers
Emigrated

As sad as the situation is, the surrounding countries are also now happy that someone else is in far worse condition than they. A bit of African schaudenfreude.




The last day in Vic Falls, I went to see the falls themselves with Steffi, a volleyball coach from the U.S. We hiked down a canopied trail that led to the river below the falls, and watched crazy people bungee jump off a bridge. Then we hiked around to see the falls up close, seeing rainbows, double-rainbows, and triple-rainbows in the spray of the falls. Finally, we found an ‘illegal’ tour guide to take us rock-hopping across the Zambezi river just above the falls. After a half hour's walk, we came to the “Angel’s Armchair.” This pool of water was surrounded by tall rocks just at the edge of the falls. We could safely jump in and swim around, just meters from the mighty falls. It was an excellent and exhilarating way to wrap up my trip to Vic Falls.

Walking around the Mission

If you don’t mind the conceit, I’m going to take you on a little walking tour of the mission today, courtesy of Google Earth and my camera. It turns out Google Earth has some pretty decent satellite pictures of Namibia. Before I had even come here, I checked out Outapi, and I knew where the main roads and the hospital were before I got here. The last time I had a good internet connection (Cape Town), I was able to download this satellite imagery of my home, the Anamulenge mission. Let’s take a little look. I’ve saved the file at a fairly large resolution, so if you hold down the CTRL button and click on it, it should open in another window and be a bit easier to see.


A – This is main entrance to the mission grounds. There’s a gate for cars to drive through on a gravel road. Just above and to the left of the ‘A’ is a watering hole used by local livestock, and children sometimes fish in it too. At this time of year it still has some water, but it is drying up rapidly.

B – The mission’s church. From the air, it looks like a cross. It’s actually a rather pretty building, though I’ve only been in it half a dozen times. The church is the only two-story structure on the mission and thus a good landmark. Although the kids go to church 10 times each week, I have never been pressured to go. Sometimes they will ask me, “Why aren’t you going to Church?” I politely respond, “Because I’m not Christian,” which shocks them. Although they have read about other religions in their religious studies class, many have never met someone who is not Christian.



C – This is the computer lab for the mission, which is sadly underutilized. If our internet service ever starts working again, I’ll probably be posting this entry from this little white building.

D – This is the main hall, where all the parent meetings and large assemblies take place. On regular days, however, it is used by the girl’s hostel as a recreation area. They have a TV/DVD/VCR inside, so the girls get to watch movies on the weekend if they have any. The boys aren’t so lucky; they have a TV but no DVD or VCR. Just the other day I was talking with some of the boys in my room about movies, and they noted how unfair it was that the girls have a DVD player. I responded, “You know, if each boy put in just N$5, you could buy a DVD player.”
Samson responded, “Yes, Mister Josh, but it would cause too many problems. There would be too many arguments about what video to play.”
“So, you’d rather stare at the walls than find a way to share the DVD player?” I countered.
“Yes.”
What more could I say?


E – This area is the girls’ hostel compound. It gets locked every night to keep the girls in and the boys out. The bluish building that looks like an “H” from above is where the Ovambo nuns live.

F – This compound is for the Indian sisters on the mission. The ‘L’ shaped building is their home. They have a small, lush garden in the shade of their house and a few tall trees. The other small building is used to prepare food for the Indian priest. In the picture, I’m standing with the sisters and Johanna, one of the cooks, in front of the sisters’ house.



G – This is the main dining hall.

H – Here’s main school area. The two buildings with red roofs house four classrooms, the staffroom, the secretary’s office and the principal’s office. It seems Google Earth doesn’t update its satellite imagery very frequently, because there are two new classroom blocks, dedicated in early 2006, which do not appear in the photo. These are the library and the classrooms for grades 11 & 12.




I – This small building holds grades 9A, 9B, and 8B. I think the kids like being far away from the principal.

J – The Priest, Father Joe, lives here. He has a pretty nice pad. He’s got loads of room and a large 30+inch television hooked up to a satellite dish. The first time I visited him, he invited me in, gave me some nice wine from a box, and we watched CNN. I think he’s kind of lonely sometimes, because he can’t really ‘hang out’ and watch sports with the nuns. He also let me stay overnight in his house at the beginning of the year so that I could stay up all night and watched the Bears get their butts kicked in the Superbowl—live.

K – This is the boys’ hostel compound, which is also where I live. There are about 80 boys who share two large hostel rooms and a small shower block. Fortunately, I do have my own shower!

L – This little house, technically within the boys’ hostel compound, is where Robin and Nicola live. It has almost all of the comforts of home: a couch, a kitchen, three bedrooms, a brai pit that Robin built, and a bathroom. Ok, so they haven’t had hot water for three months, but otherwise it’s a nice place and it’s where I was supposed to live. However, the clergy who run the mission kept saying that it would be ‘too crowded’ for three people to live in three separate bedrooms. What they meant, of course, is that they didn’t want a man living with two women. At the beginning of the year, I seriously considered a “Three’s Company” approach to the problem, pretending to be gay so that I could live there. Fortunately, Robin talked me out of it.

M – Behind the mission is a cemetery. When my Dad was here, we took a slow walk through the cemetery and I was surprised to see how many headstones were from very young people. Although there are some in the cemetery who died in their eighties, most people were under 50 when they died. This is unfortunately a recent phenomenon. AIDS has hit southern Africa so hard that despite advances in nutrition and basic health care, the life expectancy has dropped to below 50 years. More frustrating, no one acknowledges deaths from AIDS. Although going to funerals is a common occurrence here in Namibia, I have never heard anyone say, "She died because she had HIV." There is such a strong taboo against the illness here that people will simply say that someone ‘got sick’ and then leave it at that. It’s frustrating! If only some HIV-positive Namibians would come forward, the disease would start to lose its pseudo-invisible status. Then, people here might start taking safe sex or abstinence much more seriously.


Well, that’s the end of my tour of the mission grounds. Ending with the cemetery was a bit of a bummer, so perhaps we should continue walking north. Just 300 metres past the cemetery is a small collection of shebeens called Ohamutsi, and we can relax there with a cold Tafel or Windhoek Lager. Let’s go!

Teacher Talk 1

Two of my best friends back in NYC, Ronnie & Leslie, are a couple. Leslie works in an office for a mysterious Asian man named Fred. Ronnie is a teacher in the Bronx. When we three got together back home for drinks or more likely for food, Ronnie and I would start often discussing our schools, our students, the idiocy of Department of Education, etc. Hours might pass without us noticing that the rest of the dinner party was thoroughly uninterested. Leslie politely termed this practice “Teacher Talk” and ruled, quite correctly, that it should take place in very limited amounts when non-teachers are present. With that warning, I’m going to begin the first of several Teacher Talk installments about school life in Namibia. I'll start off with the physical school itself, which may only be interesting to us teachers. I won't feel hurt if you decide to have another piece of garlic bread and read a blog about, say, Big Brother Africa 2 (which aired this Sunday).

Schools in Namibia look nearly identical, as if the same architect designed one school and then that design was copied for hundreds more. The schools generally consist of several long, narrow one-story buildings. Each building consists usually of 2-4 classrooms. In addition to the classrooms, there is usually one separate building that contains the principal’s office (sometimes, but not always, with electricity), a staff room for the teachers which is piled high with exercise books to mark, and a library. Outside the staff room at our school, we have several indigenous 'chalk' trees whose trunks are covered with dust from our erasers.


Each classroom has many windows on each side. At my school the windows are in good condition, but at some government schools many of the panes are broken. On the inside, most classrooms are terribly plain. Teachers rarely have their own classroom here in Namibia, so there is little motivation for them to decorate it with posters, displays of schoolwork, etc. White walls remain unadorned, and a large chalk board hangs at the front of the room. Desks are always arranged in rows; in overcrowded classrooms, sometimes learners must share desks and even chairs.

At some short distance from the school there is a toilet block consisting of a row of aerated pit latrines. If it is a hostel school, long, low hostel blocks will lie a short distance from the classrooms as well. Usually, one or two dilapidated looking buildings stand off to the side where the school custodian keeps his tools, provides a home for broken desks, extra wooden doors, etc. There is usually at least one good shade tree for outdoor assemblies, and some schools may have small agriculture projects going on their grounds – a few scraggly bushes being grown, two rows of mahangu, etc. The grounds are enclosed in a low fence.


Just outside the official grounds there is the ubiquitous soccer field and perhaps a netball court, both signified by goals standing opposite each other across a dusty field. Some schools have real soccer goal posts made of metal, but many just have two poles, across which a wire with aluminum cans has been strung.

Canisianum, being a fancy-pants semi-private school, has a few things that are beyond the norm. Our school secretary has her own, albeit small, office space. Our library is the size of regular classroom, not a closet. We have laboratory that all the science classes share, and we have a sadly under-utilized computer lab. We also have a main hall that is large enough for the entire school to gather in, which is very handy for assemblies, parent meetings, etc.

Compared to other schools in Namibia, mine is medium in size. We have 362 learners—they’re not called students here, though I don’t know why—spanning grades 8-12. There is a staff of 18: one principal, a school secretary, a custodian, and fifteen teachers. Our teaching staff is remarkably diverse, and that diversity has helped create a hard-working culture in the school: of our fifteen teachers, eight are Owambos (the majority tribe in Namibia and in my region), two are Caprivian (a much smaller tribe), there’s me, and then there are four nuns from India. Nearly half the staff are not from this area, and we all bring different perspectives and subject knowledge to the school.

Thanks to the higher school fees at this school, and to the generosity of the Archbishop in Windhoek, the school is exceedingly well-equipped in terms of supplies and technology. For example, my English students were each issued three books per student: a textbook, a reading book (either short stories or a novel), and the fantastic Cambridge Learners Dictionary. At many schools, two, three or even five children must share one textbook, and in the worst cases the only textbook is for the teacher to use. Funds for books are clearly not allocated evenly in the Namibian school system.

Our technology here is also quite good. We have workign electricity in every classroom, and occasionally I bring in a tape player or my laptop to play an listening passage for the kids. We also have both a photocopier and a Risograph, or Riso for short. The Riso is a machine for making large batches of copies, kind of like the old ditto machines, except that the ink isn’t blue and one isn’t inclined to whiff the ink fumes. These are better ratios than at my school in NYC, where a staff of over 200 teachers shared about four copiers and four Risos.

We have a computer lab donated to the school by the Archbishop, and three modern computers in the library, laboratory, and secretary’s office. I’m quite proud of the computer in the library, because at the beginning of the year, we had nothing there. For the first four three months of the school year, a brand-new computer sat in the principal’s office. It was used only by the school secretary to play gospel DVDs. I wrote a letter to the principal explaining how a computer could be effectively used in the library. Just hours later, the library staff rushed up to tell me that we had the principal’s computer!

Of course, all the technology in the world won't help if teachers aren't good and students aren't motivated. Fortunately at my school, both sides of the equation are working fulltime. The school isn't good because of the technology, but the extra tech sure helps.

If this short article has been anything like the ‘Teacher Talk’ that Ronnie and I have rudely engaged in, then by now I have bored away everyone who isn’t a teacher. What can I say? You were warned!! Later installments will focus on discipline, school organization, meetings, and more. If there are any questions you have in particular about the schools here, please post them on the blog or send me an email and I’ll try to get the answers up there for y

Huck Finn on the African Queen

I spent this weekend alongside the Kunene River, a broad, slow-moving river that forms the peaceful border between Namibia and Angola for about 150 miles, from Ruacana Falls to the Atlantic Ocean. For two nights I camped alongside the river with my friend Vicky, a Scottish volunteer who is working at a pretty high level in the Ministry of Education.

The journey to the campground was beautiful and exciting. We drove out to a campground that lay on a rough gravel road, perhaps an hour’s drive past the falls. Dry, rocky mountains covered with scrub and small bushes lay off to our left, while a thin strip of green followed the course of the river to our right. We passed perhaps two settlements in this hour, despite driving alongside the only source of water for hundreds of miles. Outside the narrow strip of green, beautiful but inhospitable scrubland stretched everywere.


This part of Namibia, called the Kaokoveld, is one of the least inhabited regions on the earth. It is roughly 20,000 square miles, with a population of not more than 30,000 humans – a population density of roughly 1.5 people per square mile. Even that figure is misleading, however, as a good 10,000 people live in the region’s main city of Opuwo. To provide some basis for comparison, the population density of the United States overall is about 80 people per square mile, Mexico is 130 per square mile, and a large urban city like London is just over 10,000 per square mile!

Our campground, the Kunene River Lodge, is a little oasis on the river covered in tall trees, grass, and sporting lemon trees. The owners are a middle-aged British couple who first came to Namibia when their daughter was serving here as a volunteer. They fell in love with the country during their visit, and bought the lodge from its previous owners. They also give a ‘volunteer’ discount, which I was happy to take advantage of!


The next day, Vicky and I decided to rent a canoe and paddle down the river. We were driven upriver perhaps 6 kilometers and then launched into the river in our little rubber canoe. The lush green riverbanks contrasted sharply with the surrounding orange-coloured rock. Cattle peacefully browsed both sides of the river bank. The river carried us slowly, lazily under the warm sun of midday. Stretched out on the canoe, dangling my feet in the water, I felt like Huck Finn drifting down the Mississippi on his raft.


We pulled off to the river bank for a lunch of waterlogged crackers, cheese, and fruit. Later, we discovered a small island in the river, separated from the mainland by just a few metres of shallow water. Pulling the canoe on land to investigate, we discovered that we shared this very lush island with only a small group of cattle, and no humans. Probably the island is covered with water during times of high water levels. When the river is low, however, it would be a great place to hide out, just like Jackson’s island in Huckleberry Finn.



Pushing off from the island, we immediately stumbled into another allusion. The channel between the island and the mainland became increasingly narrow and overgrown with giant fronds. We paddled, pushed, and ducked branches, searching for a way back to the main part of the river, just like Bogey and Becall in The African Queen. After much effort, we finally emerged from the overgrowth and headed to the center of the river to enjoy a well-earned rest. At the end of the day, after four or five hours of hard canoeing, we pulled up the canoe to the lodge and posed for one final picture: African Canoe Gothic.


The rest of the trip was pleasant but uneventful, although our campsite was visited by a troop of monkeys in the morning when we were packing up. These monkeys knew their way around campsites, scavenging for leftovers. The owners’ tiny dog decided it was her job to chase off the monkeys, which she did both energetically and fruitlessly, as the monkeys were eating all the fruit. Finally we packed up the car and headed back down the gravel road, saying a fond farewell to the Kunene river.

Good Debate, Bad Debate

Greetings all! Sorry for the poor correspondence in the past few weeks, but I’ve just been really busy with school. As much as June went by slowly, July has been flying by terribly fast.

When I last wrote, my debate team was heading off to the Circuit debate. They won it handily, and four of my six debaters advanced to the regional competition. Let me explain. Competitions in Namibia are a little weird, both for sport and debate. The competitions pit different teams against one another, but the winning team does not advance to the next round of competition. Instead, during the course of the competition, the judges select the best individuals, who then form a team to go to the next level.

For example, last month I took my grade 8-10 students to the cluster debate, a cluster being the smallest administrative unit in the Namibian school system. Here, five different schools debated under a large shade tree at a nearby school. Four of my learners were selected to represent the cluster. Two weeks ago went to the circuit competition, which took place in a large hall at David Sheehama Senior Secondary School. This is the competition I was rushing off to in a previous post. At the circuit competition, one of my grade 8-10 learners was selected to represent the circuit, and all of my grade 11-12 students were also selected.



That brings us to this week. Over the weekend, I spent three draining days at our Omusati Regional Debate Championships, which is a name loftier than its reality. In many ways, I think the championship represents what is both frustrating and great about this country. While the organization and planning of the competition were seriously flawed, dedicated teachers and talented students persevered.

On the frustrating side, planning here is an unknown art. We received notice of this competition on Tuesday, but the competition was to start on Friday! The notice included an agenda that read something like this:

Omusati Regional Debating Championship, July 27-29

July 27
8:30 National Anthem
9:00 Welcoming Speech by B. Shilongo
9:30 Keynote Address by E. Ameya
19:55 Speech by Regional Inspect
10:00 Speech by B. Kavehama
10:30 Vote of thanks

July 28
8:00 Adjudicators meeting
9:30 Preliminary Round
10:30 Semi Final Round
11:30 Final round.
12:00 Award ceremony

Now, there are a few inconsistencies in this program. Half an hour to sing the National Anthem? Does the debate start at 8:30 in the morning or the evening? Although the championship was scheduled for three days, the award ceremony, which ends the competition, is at 12:00 on Saturday. As a result, I planned Sunday to be my laundry day. Alas, the laundry never happened. As I write this on Monday morning, I’m typing in my only remaining clean pair of underwear. I’ve been avoiding this pair for awhile. It’s a set of boxer briefs somehow deformed by my poor washing skills so that one leg is twice the length of the other.

On Friday, the lack of planning was grossly apparent. Two of the four speakers failed to materialize. Instead the organizer, Ms. Shipiki, held a draw of teams. When the draw was finished, one team was short two opponents, while almost every other team had at least one slot when it was supposed to debate two teams at the same time. Once I realized the problem, I offered to fix the pairings, and was promptly accused of trying to cheat! As my father cynically says, “No good deed goes unpunished.”


Despite the ridiculous planning, there was much good in the tournament too. Approximately 14 English teachers sacrificed their entire weekend to help conduct the competition. Ms. Shipiki, the chief organizer, was constantly on the move. She was there early and stayed late, printing certificates and organizing (albeit inefficiently) the proceedings, even though her aunt had died Saturday morning.

The rest of the teachers put in long hours too. These teachers do not fit the stereotype of a ‘lazy African’ in any way. They put in overtime in a way that no unionized NYC teacher would. We each spent 24 hours working on the debates from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Back home, few teachers would do that without the carrot of overtime pay, at a rate of $37/hr!
Moreover, the kids held some great debates. Some of these kids could hold their own against my former students, even though none speak English as a first language. In fact, a few kids spoke such excellent English that they may be more fluent than their English teachers. Students were articulate, passionate, and well-informed. In debate they practiced not only English, but the argumentation and logical reasoning that are critical to a functioning democracy.


When all the arguments, objections, and “points of information” were settled, my circuit walked away with the Regional trophy, won by two of my students and a student from a neighboring school. The regional team, which will travel to the tourist destination of Swakopmund in August, is composed of nine students, including two from my school. Woo-hoo!

Gated Community

The mission where I live is, in many senses, a gated community in Namibia. Seriously. It’s not easy to get in here at night, as I have found out when trying to sneak back in ‘after hours,’ and people here are very fond of locking up everything behind closed doors.

I first realized just how ‘gated’ this place is when I came back from a brai (barbecue) the second week of school. We had been out rather late and I arrived back at the mission around 10:30, half an hour after the kids’ bedtime. My friend Jona dropped me off on the gravel road that was the entrance to the mission. The gate for the road was locked up, so I had to climb it to get onto the mission grounds. No big deal; the gate is only four feet high and it has been climbed so many times that the footholds are obvious.

After jumping the front gate, I walked in the dark to the boys hostel, which is enclosed in an 8-foot tall mesh fence. Both the boys and the girls hostel areas have tall fences around them, and they are locked at night, presumably to prevent boys and girls from sneaking out at night to fornicate. Anyway, I had to climb this fence too. Once I was perched at the top and ready to jump down, one of the hostel dogs woke up and sat herself right on my landing point. We stared at each other for a good ten minutes until she got bored and walked away, giving me a chance to jump down. The next day, I made sure to get a key for the boys’ compound!

The obsession with security and keys is, unfortunately, probably quite well founded. Two volunteers I know have had their houses broken into, and there has been a spate of computer thefts from government offices around the country. Even on the mission, Robin and Nicola noticed one boy, whom they invited into their home to listen to music, stealing small items like soap and lotion. As a result, there are keys for everything, and any room with something valuable in it has both a metal door with a regular lock and a door made of thick steel bars which is secured with a padlock. The mission has a security guard at night as well, armed with a bow and arrow. In the early evenings, I usually see him in the boys’ hall, watching television. In the early mornings when I go running, sometimes I see him huddled over a small fire in the center of the mission. I always wave so he knows I’m a teacher, not a thief.

The problem with the keys is that there is usually just one key for any given room, even though many people need to use it legitimately. The room where I keep my food, for example, is locked and the key hangs on a wall near my bedroom door. That room also stores snacks for the disabled children’s home, so sometimes Gotard takes the key to feed the kids and forgets to put it back. I end up wandering around looking for Gotard when I want to eat, and he apologizes profusely for forgetting to return the key. I myself have walked away with it on several occasions too! Likewise, learners are frequently sent to track down keys for the laboratory, computer lab, secretary’s office, library, etc.

Living in such a community has advantages and disadvantages. I feel very safe here at the mission (knock wood). Nothing has been stolen (again, knock wood). Now, after getting to know the students, I feel comfortable inviting some of them into my room even though there is a wide array of tasty goodies to steal (iPod, computer, camera, flashlight, etc.). On the other hand, there is a sense that I’m not living in the ‘real’ Namibia. The kids at the mission are mostly all middle-class, and free from serious want. What would it be like, I wonder, to live in a poorer community, where my food, my blankets, and my clothes would be more coveted by learners? What would it be like to have to worry about security a bit? It’s not that I want to have those concerns, but I would like to know what it’s like to live in a typical Namibian community, not a gated one.

Winter Blahs

The last few weeks have been a drag, and I haven’t been enjoying myself very much for awhile. First, I’ve been working really hard. Even though I’m only teaching three classes, I’ve taken on some extra responsibilities, like running the debate club, doing extra classes for some of my most struggling learners, and creating a database for the library to track books. Between this extra work and the onset of shorter hours during winter, I’ve been stuck at the mission for long stretches at a time. From the end of May until three weeks ago, I didn’t leave Outapi once. According to one of my Peace Corps acquaintances here, that sets a record!

Then, I got sick about three weeks ago. Not some sort of weird African sick; rather, the very typical winter sick that happens every year in the U.S.: a sinus infection. I did have the lovely addition of a hacking cough, probably due to the dust that flies around Ovamboland in the winter, but mostly it was just sinuses. After trying two different courses of antibiotics, I hope that I finally have the thing kicked. We’ll see.

Finally, I’m feeling a bit down here these days, living on the mission in a bubble of western values and lifestyle. I have some good friends among the volunteers living in Ovamboland, including Robin & Nicola, and I get along well with most of the nuns who work at the school. But I don’t feel like I’ve made many inroads with the teachers. I’ll join a few of them once in awhile for drinks after work, but with there are none that I could call close friends. Part of the problem is that, when the school day is done, I am stuck on the mission, working in the library or running evening study, while the other teachers go home and have lives. *sigh*. Perhaps, as my very wise mother said, it is just a case of the ‘winter blues’ that come every February back home.

Alright, enough moaning. There have been some good things in the last few weeks too. Our Junior Secondary (grades 8-10) debate team kicked some butt at their first debate. They defeated the three other teams handily, and two of the three debaters were chosen to represent our cluster, which is a local grouping of about 10 schools, at our circuit level debates, which happen later today. If they do well at the circuit debate, they will compete at the regional level, and possibly even the national level.

Another success came from one of my favorite students, Liina Shimakeleni. She is one of my chief librarians and a smart, honest, motivated kid with a sense of wonder that hasn’t been destroyed by teenage angst. For example, in May I took my whole library group to Oshikati to visit the University of Namibia library. We were on the second floor of the library, taking a tour, when the UNAM librarian pointed to a set of sliding metal doors with no handles. Above the doors were the symbols “B 1 2.” The librarian asked if anyone had every seen an elevator before, and less than half raised their hands. Lina exclaimed, “I have only read about them. An elevator! It’s like an airplane inside a building!!” That’s pretty typical of her personality.

Anyway, she had been working for a couple of months on a project about solar energy for a contest sponsored by Shell – the irony didn’t escape me, but she was very serious about it. It was really a science project, but I helped her take pictures of solar panels and write a proper bibliography. I also—much to my surprise—helped her type the paper. She, like all the other kids here, types i n c r e d i b l y s l o w. Five or ten words per minute was her maximum. The day before it was due, she had typed perhaps one of her ten handwritten pages. She looked at me piteously and with a very embarrassed and shy look, wondered if I might type two of the pages for her. I looked at her – she was realizing that her hard work of two months might go down the drain because she couldn’t get it typed fast enough – and I just told her to give me the rest of the report. I typed it in about an hour, and it would have taken her five or seven hours. Seriously.

The next day she and her partner on the project, Wilka, cut several classes so they could send the project via “Nam Courier,” Later, during evening study, they came to see me in the library. They had wrapped in paper a candy bar of the “P.S.” series. They say, on the cover, “P.S. I Love You” or “P.S. I’m Sorry.” This one was “P.S. Thank you.” It was so sweet of them, that I’m glad they walked quickly away so they didn’t see the moistness in my eyes.

Anyway, the result of this work was that they were the only students from our school – and one of only two groups from Ovamboland, to be selected as finalists in the competition. They won an all-expenses paid trip to Windhoek, the capital, to participate in a workshop and compete for the finalist prize. Good for them, but I’m kinda pissed at our principal now. Even though I was the teacher who worked with them on the project, he decided to take them down to Windhoek himself. He wanted assistance with the driving, so he took the hostel father with him. It’s got me mad enough that I want to cut a day of classes next week in protest.

We’ve got the second debate in about an hour and a half, so now I have to go. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

-----

P.S. Things have turned up! It's warming up, I saw a play this weekend, and next weekend I'm going to Windhoek. All in all, I've got my fingers crossed that the winter blahs are over!

The Morality Plays of HIV Week

In many conservative environments, festivals and performances have developed in which the normal social mores are overturned for a few hours or days. For example, in the middle ages commoners were forbidden by the church to practice the Seven Deadly Sins. Instead, they enjoyed them vicariously by watching their reenactment on the stage in ‘morality’ plays. In some societies, holidays exist where men dress like women and women like men. The festival of Mardi Gras, which marks the beginning of the solemn Lenten season, is characterized in New Orleans by thousands of women flashing their tits to get cheap, plastic beads. And so it was at Canisianum, during the morality plays of HIV/AIDS awareness week.

This past Friday, we had a three-plus hour assembly for HIV/AIDS Week! All 262 children crowded into the main hall, which has a raised stage at one end and long rows of benches for the audience. Towards the back, some students stood or crowded onto a few tables. Teachers were seated on the stage. The Indian nuns and priests were seated in the audience, though most of them snuck out as soon as they could.

At the beginning of the week, Ms. Shanghala (who had a baby two months ago, and looks amazing already) had invited students and classes to prepare something for the assembly. There are very few outlets for creativity at Canisianum: students have no art, music, or drama classes, and few teachers assign projects which engage the students’ creative sides. Once, the principal even chased away a musician who wanted to teach the children and get some of them involved in a band he was creating. Our principal claimed that music would ruin the students. Thus, the HIV/AIDS assembly was a rare chance for students to be creative.

The assembly itself was very much a variety show. Several entire classes performed songs, individual students read speeches and poems, one student danced and another one rapped about HIV. One group of serious-looking “AIDS Soldiers” re-enacted a funeral. At the end of the funeral, they chanted a song to remind students of the ABCs of AIDS prevention: “Abstain, Be Faithful, and Condomise [sic].” When they chanted their verse regarding condoms, the older students cheered loudly. Father Joe made a large “thumbs-down” gesture. The students responded with a hearty thumbs-up.



The highlights of the show were two original dramas performed by students. One, created by grade nine learners, focused on the problem of “Sugar Daddies.” These are older men, often teachers, who give female students food, clothing, and other gifts in exchange for sex. In the drama, two young learners, seduced by sugar daddies with nice cars, spent the night with them when the vehicles mysteriously ran out of gas. Oddly, the girls put up no resistance at all to the older men’s advances. It was no surprise that the girls became pregnant and HIV positive. Upon hearing the news, the girls' mothers threw their arms akimbo over their heads and screamed in Oshiwambo, while the principal gave them a stern lecture. Marius Shangula, one of my learners, imitated our principal to wild screams, mimicking his overflowing belly, frequent hitching up of pants, and bowlegged walk.

The older students presented a far racier drama, set on the campus of fictional "Sodom & Gomorrah" university. The story followed the adventures of a group of students during their first few months at university. There were three ‘naughty’ boys and three equally 'naughty' girls, counterbalanced by two nice girls and one boy. The girls, bewigged, sassy, and sporting tight-fitting clothes with high heels, were a far cry from their normal look.

The bulk of the drama revolved around each of the naughty boys seducing a naughty girl, then hiding behind a large wardrobe on the stage where the couple groaned and shouted in mock ecstasy. Each time a couple went behind the wardrobe, the crowd went wild. During the story, the six naughty boys and girls each formed a couple, so we there were three 'behind the wardrobe' moments. If that wasn't enough, then each couple broke up and hooked up with someone else. In all, six different times couples hid behind the wardrobe, and each time the crowd screamed, clapped, and hooted.

The seductions, sex, and some mocking of the ‘nice’ students took perhaps 25 minutes, leaving only a few moments for the predictable, moralistic ending. All six of the naughty students got HIV, which rapidly progressed to AIDS, and then they all died – within the space of about three minutes. The ‘moral’ at the end was so quick and abrupt that it was comical rather than instructive. The lasting impression was not of the negative effects of casual sex, but of the fun of chasing girls and having sex.


Just like the morality plays of the middle ages, these cloistered students live vicariously through the actors on stage. In their regular lives, students are not allowed to grow out their hair, nor to have boyfriends or girlfriends (though it happens, of course). They have few outlets for creativity, for art, for storytelling. So when HIV/AIDS Awareness Week gave them an opportunity, they leapt at the chance to creatively enact their wildest fantasies. I don’t blame them – if I were in this environment, I would do the same.

It makes me wonder. Wouldn’t it be better if they had a couple periods a week of music, art, dance or drama, rather than 18 periods each week of science? Wouldn’t it be better to acknowledge their desires, not deny them? Wouldn’t it better to teach them how to date responsibly, rather than simply to forbid them? I think those changes would make a much more positive impact on their lives than a salacious, once-a-year AIDS assembly.