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!

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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!