Outapi Odyssey

Seals on a Boat!

2010-10-26T04:53:00.010+02:00

Along the Atlantic coastline of Namibia, two vastly different ecosystems live side by side. In the ocean, frigid currents from Antarctica create fog and nutrient-rich waters that give life to numerous fish, seals, whales and dolphins. Journey inland, by less than a mile, and you land in the midst of the vast Namib desert, which runs the length of the coastline and can stretch up to 100 miles inland. In other words, the Namib desert is a giant beach, 30-100 miles deep.

My girlfriend Carolyn and I arrived at Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, the largest towns on the coast and just 30 kilometres (about 20 miles) apart from each other. We stayed in Swakopmund, a touristy town, noted for its Germanic architecture. Walvis Bay, by contrast, is an important industrial town and houses a deep-water commercial port. The first morning, we left our shabby backpackers lodge headed to Walvis for a harbor cruise.

We cruised out of the Walvis Bay Yacht Club in a motorized catamaran that could accommodate 30-40 people. Our captain was Archie, a grizzled Namibian sailor. His first mate Jackson, who was from a town not far from where I had done my teaching. Jackson was surprised to chat with me in Oshiwambo as we tooled around the harbour!
Just a few minutes out of the dock, Jackson opened a box of fish to entice the seals. Several swam in the wake of the boat as you can see in the video below. Although these Cape Fur Seals weigh between 250-500 lbs, they can swim amazingly fast through the water. Next, one of the seals decided that he wanted a closer look at his fellow mammals on the boat. He launched himself from the water onto a small platform on the rear deck of the boat. From there, he hoisted himself up on his giant front flippers, put the flippers on the edge of the boat deck, and then clambered into the main cabin!

Three different seals came on deck during the tour, and while they were indeed looking for fish, they were also curious about the humans on the boat. They allowed us to touch and pet them, and seemed almost as interested in us as we were in them.

I felt a much greater connection to these seals than to any other type of aquatic life that I’ve seen before. Nor was I the only one. There was a young boy on our tour, who was at least 25 years younger than everyone else on board. He seemed bored, but when the seals arrived he petted them constantly and rested his head on theirs, sort of like an Eskimo kiss. This young boy might have just had his first inkling to become a marine biologist! The seals also enjoyed the attention, having evolved the intelligence and sensitivity of mammals rather than mindless instinct of mere fish.

We saw several other critters during the tour. As the boat motored through the harbor towards a small seal colony, we were flocked by small seagulls and giant pelicans who flew alongside the boat, looking for handouts. The pelicans would make great wide receivers in the NFL, able to fly alongside the boat at 20-30 knots and catch every fish thrown their way, as you can see in the video below.

Moving away from the shoreline, we passed dozens of container ships which had dropped anchor in the harbor. These ships were huge! Look at the picture that I’ve included here. You might need to click it to see the full-sized image. Do you see the small yellow thing on top of the containers on the left-hand side? That’s a full-sized school bus, though it looks no bigger than a toy! Walvis Bay is the main port, not only for Namibia but for much of southwestern Africa. When I was living here in 2007, I met a trucker who made a living on the Walvis Bay—Congo route, carrying frozen chickens to the Congo. Goods from Walvis travel on the two-lane paved roads to Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We motored across the Walvis’ large natural harbor towards Pelican Point, a sandy spit of land which houses a small seal colony. On the way, Benguela dolphins swam in front of the boat, darting back and forth in front of the twin bows of the catamaran. The dolphins were playing and rolled onto their backs as they swam, giving us a good view of their bellies. We also briefly saw two humpbacked whales breach the water, though the pictures just didn’t come out.

When we arrived at Pelican Point, we saw several large groups of seals on the beach, each with hundreds of adults and pups. According to Captain Archie, seal mums know their pups by their cry, which means that the beach was a cacophony of wailing animals. Our captain told us that because seals breed so quickly, they often outstrip the environment’s ability to feed them all. As a result, he claimed that Namibia’s annual seal culls were justified. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the seals make a bloody racket.

By then it was time to turn back towards the dock. On the way, we passed several commercial oyster farms, which from the top of the water are just 55-gallon drums floating in formation. Tied to the drums, and floating underwater, small metal cages house the oysters which feed in the nutrient-rich waters. As we watched a small boat harvest some oysters, Jackson sneakily shucked a couple of dozen fresh oysters and put out some champagne – a great way to end a great harbor tour. Driving back to Swakopmund, we looked forward to the next tour when we would see the animals that were able to thrive in the sands of the Namib desert.

How Rose Coloured are My Glasses?

2010-09-06T23:21:00.003+02:00

On my computer at work, in the budget office of Chicago Public Schools, my screensaver has a dozen of my favorite pictures from Namibia on it. A stunning Namibian sun sets over the semi-arid savanna. One of my favorite students, who taught my Oshivambo, looks up smiling from a test that he made me take. My portly principal watches a volleyball game, shading himself under a parasol while wearing a Chicago Cubs t-shirt.

I've been looking longingly at these pictures for the past two years, particularly after a snowy year in Chicago crunching out a budget with a $370m deficit. But it makes me wonder -- was my experience there as great as I remembered?

Earlier this week, I was chatting with my neighbor Katie Green, a returned Peace Corps volunteer from Cameroon. She told me that her group of volunteers recently had a reunion, and they looked at old slideshows of their years in Africa. "If Cameroon was really like the pictures we had," Katie observed, "then it was awesome. But you know, while you remember the market fondly, you forget how it was full of mud, and crappy food, and poor, desperate kids." As the years go by, it's only too easy to remember the good experiences and minimize the bad ones

Later that week while walking down the street in the midst of a hot spell, the pungent odor of summer garbage wafted by. Usually, this would remind me of why I don't like big cities. This time, however, it reminded me of a low patch of ground in Outapi where the rains collected, garbage stewed, and insects swarmed. And that whiff then reminded me of lonely hours alone in my room, a deep longing for friends and family, and stultifying heat in the summer. Were my glasses not a faint rose, but a ruby red?

I suppose I'll find out tomorrow, when I fly from Johannesburg to Windhoek. My girlfriend Carolyn and I will land mid-afternoon, after having spent two good days in Jo'burg with my friend Steve. We'll first spend a couple of days in the capital, catching up with old friends and former students. Then we'll have a week as tourists. We'll visit the coast, followed by a long hard drive to see some ancient cave paintings, and a visit to the Himba, Namibia's most remote people. Finally we'll end up back at Canisianum, where I'll visit with old students and colleagues and set up the Canisianum Scholarship fund.

I'm excited, but also nervous: Was Namibia as wonderful as I remember? Have I changed to a point where I may not fit in anymore? Nothing will remain exactly as it was several years ago, so will these changes be for the better or for the worse?

I'll find out tomorrow.

Help Kids in Namibia Escape Poverty – But not Poor Fashion Choices – Through Education

2010-08-11T00:30:00.010+02:00

In 2007 in northern Namibia, I coached Canisianum (Kuh-knee-see-ann-um) High School’s first-ever debate squad. The team was full of crazy personalities, such as Inamutila Kahipi, whose name meant “I am not afraid.” Inamutila lived up to his name but never took himself too seriously. For example, when I first met him at the Valentine’s Day dance, he arrived wearing a full-length leather coat over a white t-shirt and sported a single glove, like a hip-hop Namibian Michael Jackson.

His opposite was Miriam, the team co-captain. She prepared for debates with a ferocity and thoroughness that could only mean she was headed for a career in law. The team did well, winning both local and regional competitions. Miriam and Inamutila were selected to represent our region in the national competitions, which was a big feather in Canisianum’s cap.

Through the debates, I met students from all around northern Namibia. Our competitors made me realize what a special school Canisianum was. Whereas our students used English to inform, persuade and inspire, students from competing schools still struggled to piece together coherent sentences. While my students researched debate topics in the student-run library, students at other schools lacked basic reference materials like encyclopedias and textbooks.

That split is still evident today on the national exams. Canisianum’s pass rate in 2009 was over 95%; neighboring schools were well below 50%. These exams are required to advance to college. As a result, poor grades usually mean the end of a student’s academic career and the beginning of a life of subsistence farming. In contrast, attending Canisianum markedly improves a young child’s chances of success due to its rigorous teaching, high standards and unique management structure.

Unfortunately, many of the eager students in the region cannot afford to pay Canisianum’s fees of about US$100 per year. Just think about that: in America, you’re lucky if $100 pays for books and school supplies for a semester. In Namibia, it gets a student a top-notch education for a year, and a very good chance at qualifying for one of Namibia’s three universities. With your help, more Namibian children can have this chance.

Think about donating now to help give kids like those in the picture a quality education. A $100 donation pays for an entire year of school for a poor child, but even $25 makes a difference. All donations are tax-deductible!

The goal is to raise $5,000 to establish a permanent scholarship endowment at the school, and we’re already 1/3 of the way there! When I return to Namibia this September I’ll be setting up the scholarship in coordination with the school and the US-based nonprofit, WorldTeach. Donations can be made online via WorldTeach/PayPal or via mail by sending a check to:

WorldTeach
c/o Center for International Development
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy St., Box 122
Cambridge, MA 02138.

Your donation should be made out to "WorldTeach." Please make sure to write “Namibia-Canisianum Scholarship,” in the memo field, and thanks.

If you have any questions about this scholarship endowment or Canisianum RCHS, please write me at joshua.kaufmann.72@gmail.com. If you would like to learn more about Canisianum, many stories on this blog, Outapi Odyssey focus on school life.

The Last Word

2008-07-01T13:17:00.000+02:00

All good things come to an end, and so too with my time in Namibia. It ended, for those of you who don’t know, with more of a whimper than a bang. For several months in the beginning of 2008, I worked at the library in Outapi doing a job that wasn’t particularly necessary. Every day I saw my former students walking to Canisianum, and I missed them. I wanted to find a way to stay for another full year, perhaps teaching again. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education couldn’t find a spot for me. So, with many regrets, I decided on April 10 to come home. Just a few days later, I accepted a scholarship at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, for a one-year degree in Public Administration. Just a couple of days later, my mother fell ill and went to the hospital with a serious lung infection. I was in the capital city when this happened, and luckily had my passport with me, so I boarded a plane and headed straight home. Fortunately my mother has recovered, as much a testament to medical science as to stubbornness and strength of will.

Because of the process I described above, I didn’t really have a chance in Namibia to say my goodbyes, both to the people that I worked and lived with for 16 months but also to the experience itself. What did those 16 months in Namibia mean to me? What lessons did I learn? That’s what I’ll be trying to answer in this final culminating blog entry. This entry will be unlike previous entries, which hopefully were tasty morsels of life in Namibia liberally seasoned with policy and history and anthropology. This one will be navel-gazing, the sort of self-obsessive speculations that I tend to find dreadfully boring to read! So, please continue at your own risk!

Why did I go? For one, it was a life-long dream. In high school I learned about the Peace Corps from my friend Carrie, whose parents had met in Ethiopia in the 1960s. That summer, stoked to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, I refused to use my air conditioner because I was “in training.” However, during college I encountered a few roadblocks and some dreams faded to be replaced with new ones. With my theatre major in hand, I went first to England and then to New York, in search of greater perspectives and a life as an actor.

The dream began to resurface after I had become a teacher. Inchoately dissatisfied with teaching in New York, the pull of the developing world began to reassert itself. I looked at Peace Corps again and also at graduate programs in public policy, where graduates tended to work with exciting institutions like the World Bank, the U.N. Development Program, and the International Red Cross. Several grad school advisers recommended that I get the international experience before enrolling in a program; it made sense to see if I liked working abroad before committing to such a course of study. With no small trepidation about leaving behind family and friends, off I went to Namibia to see what the developing world was all about, and what my place in it might be.

The short answer, about what my place in it might be, is that I love working in the developing world. I love being immersed in a different culture, in trying to figure out what’s going on, in challenging myself to learn a new language. For all the frustrations and hassles or working in a developing country, it is immensely rewarding. The volunteer community became a place where I felt at home, reveling in the shared sense of purpose and an appreciation of other cultures and simpler ways of living. But I also felt very detached from my friends and my family back home.

So what lessons did I learn in going abroad? Some might be transitory lessons, and others may stay with me. Yet other lessons may remain vague for now, only to be realized at a later time. Nonetheless, this is what I think I’ve learned so far.

First, I learned to love a simpler way of life. In Namibia, there wasn’t much going on. There weren’t a lot of people. A good Friday night consisted of making dinner with a friend and then hanging out at his or her house. A good Sunday started on Saturday night, when I would put my clothes in my wash bucket to soak overnight. Then on a slow, luxurious Sunday morning, when the students were in church and I had the hostel to myself, I would hang my laundry in peace and quiet, write or read, go for a run, and then do a little work for school. By not trying to do too many things, the few things that I did became much, much more enjoyable.

This lesson might be transitory. Life moves much more quickly in America. Last night I met up with some new friends from my program – including two returned Peace Corps volunteers. We had dinner, dessert, and then a movie in just a few hours. That would have been a full weekend’s worth of excitement last year. When we did an activity on resource scarcity this week in class, one group of students pointed out that our scarcest resource right now is time. Last year in Namibia, there were many scarce resources, like telephone credit or cheese, but time was in abundance. I’d like to keep this sense of simplicity, but am not sure how to do so in America. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Along these lines, I came to appreciate living outside a city. This lesson is, I fear, the most transitory. Right now I would love to live away from a big city, on a farm somewhere near enough to a job that I don’t have to commute for ages. It’s possible, especially if I stay in education, to get a decent job in a rural area. But my friends and family are all concentrated in the U.S.’s first and second cities, New York and Chicago. My good friends sent me a birthday card last year which said that anyone who moves far from their friends is, well, just plain stupid! In many ways they were right, and yet I can’t see living in a big city anymore. What’s the advantage? I think acting on this lesson will be one of the hardest for me to do.

Another thing I learned was that I can indeed enjoy teaching. In Namibia, I taught at a good school with smart, motivated students and a dedicated and ethical administrator. It made all the difference from my time teaching in New York City. It made the work fun, and yet, I’m still reluctant to commit fully to a life working at educating our nation’s youth. The big advantage of it, as I can see, is flexibility. I could work in big communities or small ones. I could work all over the country, and could easily go abroad again. But do I want to educate 16 year-olds for the rest of my life? When I decided to return from Namibia, I certainly had the option to go back into the classroom, and even though I had a very positive classroom experience last year, I didn’t do it. If I’m not a teacher at a high school, what else will I do?

Finally, and probably most up in the air for me now, is trying to figure out what role international work will have in my life. On the one hand, I really love being abroad. It’s hard, sweaty, difficult, and nowhere else do I feel as alive. On the other hand, I don’t want to be that far from my family for that long right now. Once I’ve started a family, if I can convince them to come with me, it would be a different story. So what can I do that builds on my interests in policy and education, international work and development, but allow me to live near my family in Chicago? That’s the question for this year.

Certainly, living abroad I learnt many lessons: simplicity, appreciation of a rural life, knowledge that I need to balance my need for exploring other cultures and worlds with my need for family and friends, and some further appreciation of teaching as a career. The question becomes now how I’ll apply these lessons. Can I find a place to live in the country that’s still close enough to my family? Can I find a way to balance the thrill of living in other countries with staying connected to my family? As so often happens, these questions come down to the concept of balance – how does one organize his or her life to keep things in balance?

So, after 16 months and 45,000+ words, it’s time for me to wrap up this blog, this journey we took together. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and to give me your comments, your emails, your critiques and praises. I hope that I’ve been able to crack open a window onto another world for you, a world that I loved inhabiting. Many people have asked me if I’ll continue to blog now that I’m back in the United States. I wasn’t planning on it, especially because I’ll be in grad school this year. Most entries would go something like this, “Woke up. Studied budgeting and/or statistics and/or economics. Went to class. Did group work. Studied more. Ate. Slept.” That probably wouldn’t be a very interesting blog. But thanks for your attention over the past year and a half, and I hope to have the chance to explore another world for you sometime in the future.

Peace out.

More Tread than Brains

2008-04-03T16:04:00.001+02:00

Unfortunately, my laptop has been stolen, and with it all my pictures. As a result, in this penultimate blog entry, I’ll try to paint a picture of our adventure into the Kaokoveld, the wild, undeveloped territory of the Himbas.

It began with the four-day weekend that honors Namibian Independence. If I were a true cultural observer, I would have stayed at home and seen what Namibians do on this day. I asked what Namibians did to celebrate, and the answer was, “Not much.” As a result, I felt free to join my friend Ant and three of his friends on their adventure. Ant is a short, stocky Yorkshireman with an easy laugh and a hard accent. There’s a picture of him pretending to dive into a pool of flooded water somewhere earlier in this blog. Rose, his friend and future travel partner for his trip home, bubbles with stories and humor in an archetypal Irish fashion. Laura is a tall, blond Dutch woman whose thin lips easily break into a smile or compress into disdain. Edna, a short Canadian, is the quiet one in the group – she would rather read her book than even watch the scenery out the window.

Part of the motivation for this trip was for Ant and Laura to test out their vehicles, both 4x4’s which they claimed yearned for the unpaved road. Ant has a cherry-red Jeep Wrangler, the consumer version of the Army jeeps which plied the roads of Europe during WWII. Laura had a little Suzuki 4x4. In the past, I had always thought that people who went “Off-roading” as a leisure activity were just silly, and that it was just a wasteful motorsport. I still do, but now I’ve learned it’s a hell of a lot of fun too.

The first day’s drive was easy – just about three hours on tar roads and ‘good gravel’ to the city of Opuwo, the jumping-off point for the Himba hinterlands. We camped that night at a beautiful lodge in Opuwo, where a kidney-shaped ‘infinity’ pool overlooked the spartan, dusty mountains of the Kaokoveld. With the sun setting over these hills, a pool in front of us, a casual game of scrabble going on and a drink in hand, there seemed no better place in the world.

The next day we headed off for Epupa Falls, a waterfall on the Kunene river 75 miles north of Opuwo. Driving those miles took seven hours. The first 30 miles of the trip were on relatively decent gravel roads despite a light rain. About 10 miles out of town, we picked up a Himba man who had been walking on the road for over three hours already, and took him the next 10 miles to his destination. He was quite lucky that we picked him up; he told us that in three hours, only two other vehicles had passed by. Even by Namibian standards, we were on a very infrequently used road.

First, a few words about ‘rivers’ in Namibia. If you look at a map of Namibia, you will see that it has no rivers that run permanently through the country. There’s one, the Kunene, that divides Namibia from Angola. Another, the Orange River, divides Namibia from South Africa. That’s it. However, if you look carefully at standard road map, you will see faint, dashed blue lines all over the country. These are ephemeral rivers, which usually flow for a few days on and off during the rainy season. Some of these rivers, especially in the dryer part of the country to the south, may flow only every few decades. Because the rain is so infrequent, no bridges have been built. When it does rain, however, the roads can become impassable for hours or days. During my first year in Namibia, even during the rainy season, I never saw an ephemeral river with water in it.

After an hour we reached Okungwati, a medium-sized village with several shops and a school. It lies at the foot of a large ephemeral river, but there was nothing ephemeral about it now. A wide, sandy plain, perhaps 30 metres across, was covered by 3-6 inches of flowing water. Standing in the river was perfectly safe, but the wet, heavy sand was a car killer. To the side of the road, a huge overland vehicle listed like a sinking boat in the sandy muck. These trucks are ex-military transport used for the tourist trade, with tires four feet tall and engines strong enough to win a tug of war with elephants. When we came upon the truck, a crowd of Namibians with shovels were trying to dig it out, and two of its wheels were completely buried in the wet sand.

Now, sensible people would have seen this as a bad omen and back-tracked to dry land. Not us. Armed with the confidence that comes from naivete, we plunged ahead. Laura’s car bogged down almost immediately, but fortunately we were in a town. All the local men and boys who had been working on the truck ran over and pushed her little SUV out in just a few moments. So, no problem.

As we continued north, however, the road deteriorated. We had to climb over small rocks in the vehicles and pass through several lightly-flowing rivers. Most of them were no problem, which bred overconfidence. With just about 18 miles to the campsite, we finally hit our nemesis.

At yet another unnamed river, I drove Ant’s car through it first. Driving in first gear the whole time, never slowing down for fear of losing momentum, his little Jeep did fine. Laura’s car, however, bogged down right in the middle of river. No problem, we thought, because we had a tow rope. I backed Ant’s car up to Laura’s and he attached the tow rope. Then, with one car on damp sand trying to pull out another car on damp sand, I put the Jeep in gear and it promptly sank six inches into the muck. Both of the vehicles were stuck. We had just learned our first lesson in backcountry driving: never, never endanger your second vehicle to rescue the first.

We spent a good three hours in that river, trying to find a way to free the vehicles. This was one of those situations where the ‘A’ that you get for effort is completely useless. We jacked up the car, and the jack sank down in the mud. We dug out underneath tires to lay stones underneath the treads, and the car sank even further. We tried to dig a trench to siphon water away from the car, and quickly could see why building large canals costs thousands of lives and millions of dollars. After two hours, not a single car had come by, and I started to think of our alternatives. We had about two and half hours of daylight left. I could run to the campsite, but it was 18 miles away and I couldn’t get there before dark. We did have our tents, however, and there was water nearby to drink.

Fortunately, before we had to put any of those plans into action, the cavalry arrived. Coming over the rise of the next hill, a pickup truck laden with Namibians slowed down as it approached the river. The men piled out, and with fifteen bodies pushing, we freed both vehicles quickly. We gave the men some money and bread, and watched as they all walked across the river and let the pickup drive across with a light load. Lessons number two and three about backcountry driving: there’s safety in numbers, and lighten your load before crossing a river. After that, we made the final 18 miles to the campsite without incident.

The next day, after hiking up and around to see the waterfall, we returned down the same road. We picked up as many hitchhikers as possible to have extra manpower in case we got stuck. Before each river, all the passengers piled out of the cars. The river that had foiled us the day before proved no problem just 18 hours later. We were learning our lessons.

Halfway to Opuwo, we turned toward the east and began heading along a rutted, wet, muddy track to the Kunene River Lodge. In this normally dry section of Namibia, the desert was blooming. Flowers were everywhere, and the air was laden with humidity. Brown plains had turned lush and verdant. Occasionally, a springbok or other antelope grazed off in the distance. For an hour’s drive, green replaced brown, water replaced sand, and the hills in distance looked inviting, not menacing.

We reached a section where the road crossed a wide river, perhaps five times wider than the one we had been stuck in previously. Daunted by the size of the crossing, we took no chances. We unloaded the heavy items from the vehicle. We positioned people along the route, a few feet from where the car would go, ready to run up and push if need be. But before we tried our longest river crossing yet, in typical tourist fasion, we decided that we should document the entire event on video. Unfortunately, the video was lost when my computer was stolen. I’ll do my best to paint the pictures, however.

The first video was Ant’s version of a BBC African Safari documentary. Camera in hand, he walked the entire route that the car would take, narrating which parts were sandy and which were rocky, and describing the strategies that I would use to drive across. Then, Ant placed himself right in the middle of the river to film the car’s progress. Inside his Jeep, I took another camera and strapped it to dashboard with tape, so we could have a ‘cockpit’ view. Then, we were off.

Ant’s video shows his car starting on a hill about 10 feet above the water. My video captures the nerves in my voice as I talk to myself, prior to putting the car in gear. The car plunges into the water, and the outside camera captures the powerful arcs of water as the wheels plow through a flowing river. Inside the car, the camera rocks crazily as the car bounces from rock to rock, yet I never slow down. Outside, Ant is audibly praying “Come on, Josh. Come on, Josh!” The car slows a bit in a sandy patch, then rushes past Ant’s vantage point in the center of the river. Hitting harder ground, the Jeep begins to climb toward the opposite shore, and I keep up the speed until it is safely on solid land, 15 feet from the water. On the inside camera, I warble a nervous “Woo-hoo!,” while the whole crew cheers on the outside camera. Success! We made it!

After Laura drove her car across, a convoy of five vehicles approached to cross the river from the other direction and to burst our bubble. These were the serious off road vehicles: LandRovers with snorkels for driving through four or five feet of water, Jeeps with extra tanks of gas hanging off the sides, and Toyota trucks with clearance so high they could leap small buildings in a single bound. These guys slowed down for about ten seconds, looked at the river from the height of their big rigs, and then just drove on through. So much for walking each crossing first!

Nonetheless, after a little more gnarly driving, we finally reached the campsite along the overflowing banks of the Kunene. After two days of hard driving, none of us really felt like cooking, so we took advantage of our hosts’ dining room and a well-deserved treat.

By the end of the trip, we had covered over 500 miles on rocky, sandy, flooded roads. It was wasteful, noisy, messy, and bad for the environment. Unfortunately, it was loads of fun too. I know that I shouldn’t, but if a chance for a 4x4 trek comes my way in the future, I’m in.

I'm Famous! My 15 Minutes in the Blogosphere

2008-03-20T16:02:00.000+02:00

Today, a strange thing happened. White people came into the library where I work. And not just one, but five. Up in the north where I live, there are less than a dozen whites in a town of over 7,000 people. Seven live at the hospital, including my friend Ant, two German doctors at the hospital and their two children, and a Russian doctor and her obnoxious American husband who calls himself “Indy”, as in “Indiana Jones.” Dr. Jones he is not. More like Dr. Whine. Then there’s my neighbor Carly, an Afrikaner couple who just opened a butchery and restaurant, and one lady who works at the bank but lives far from town. With the exception of the Afrikaners and the bank lady, all of us are only here temporarily as volunteers. It’s so unusual to see white people in town that if one happens to stroll through the open market, or sit outside a bar having a drink, I too will stare at them. Who is this white person in my town, I wonder? Often it’s a volunteer from deeper in the bush, one who I’ve met at a party somewhere, so I’ll go over to say hello.

But the other day, as I looked up from work in the library, I saw five eager, rosy-cheeked college students from the U.K., minded by a Namibian guide. The students were in Namibia as part of a course they were taking on international development at their university, and their two-week visit to Namibia was the ‘experiential’ part of their course. They started asking questions about the education system and religion in Namibia, and before I knew it I was a teacher again -- explaining everything that I knew about the place to an eager audience. It was clear that I had a need to talk about it, and they wanted to learn. So, we made plans to meet up for drinks later the next evening.

As it turned out, a couple of volunteers from nearby villages were coming to stay with me overnight, and my friend Ant also came out with us. So at the bar, we were a combined total of nine white people sitting around a table. It might have felt comfortable to the five students, but to us volunteers it just felt completely weird. There’s so many white people here, we all thought. For the most part, black Namibians ignored us until the night wore on, when several drunkards came by to insinuate themselves into the conversation, as Namibians are wont to do. The five college students were a little freaked out so my friend Jocie, who knew the owner of the bar, asked for the security guys to move the interlopers on.

The highlight of the evening was when two of the students started whispering to each other while glancing at me furtively. Finally, one of them shyly asked me, “Do you write a blog?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied, surprised that someone outside my circle of friends had read it. “Have you read it?”

“Just a little bit. We found it before we left, and really just looked at the pictures of the flooding.”

Surprised as I was that they had found the blog, I was a little disappointed that they had only glanced at it. Later, however, Jocie told me that they had asked her a whole series of questions about me to determine if I was indeed the blogger they read: was I a runner? Did I visit South Africa during my time? Did I teach at a Catholic school? They had read the whole darn thing! For a day or two I walked on air, excited that people beyond my circle of friends were reading the blog and that it was useful for them. Since then, I’ve actually had several other people contact me via the blog, usually researchers or volunteers who are interested in Outapi. And each time I get such an email, a silly smile spreads across my face. So, if you’re one of those people, let me know!

What Am I Doing Here?

2008-03-15T20:50:00.000+02:00

Many people have asked me, “What exactly are you doing there this year?” I hadn’t been able to answer that question very well when I was back home in December. Although I knew that I was doing a project involving libraries in Omusati Region, my precise role had not been defined. But the The Ministry of Education, which runs libraries, had indicated that they had a project for me to develop school libraries in the region, so I figured that’s what I would be doing.

When I got here in January, it became clear that the Ministry of Education didn’t have a very clear idea of what I was doing either. They attached me to the Outapi Community Library, which is the main library for our region. This particular library occupies one room in the Youth Center, a large building with a weight room, pool table, meeting room, craft center, sewing room and computer lab.

The library itself is overstaffed: there are four people, excluding me, who work full-time in a one-room library that’s only open from 8-5, Monday to Friday. They are currently advertising for one more clerk as well. The head librarian is Gregentia Nakwalondo, a squat, quiet milquetoast of a manager who is often resistant to change and indecisive. Underneath her are the two library assistants. Meme (Miss) Emily is a tall, smart, broad shouldered woman with a sweet daughter named Steffi who attends Power Station Christian primary school. There’s no power station nearby, so I assume the name refers to the power they get from God. Meme Pea (pronounced Pay-ah) is a sweet, short, chubby woman who is quite friendly but picks up on some things a bit slowly. Finally, there is Tate (Sir) Sackaria, the cleaner. He’s a nice guy, enthusiastic about his dead easy job. Each morning he opens the windows and sweeps the library, then sits around reading books and playing with the computers until it’s time to close down. There is also an adorable three-year old named Ntipiwa who hangs around the library all day long. Her mother works in the youth center, but this little girl seems to love hanging out in the library. Sometimes I read her a story in English or Oshiwambo. She also loves playing spider solitaire on the computer, although all she knows how to do is watch the cards deal themselves out!

Meme Nakwalondo didn’t seem to have much of a plan for my work, which is unfortunately a fairly common problem here for non-teaching volunteers. Volunteers who are doing administrative, community health, or youth development roles frequently complain of not having much to do. It’s as if the various Ministries of Education, Health, and Youth all want the cachet of having a volunteer without having a specific task for them to do. My Peace Corps neighbor, Carly, is struggling with the same issue. She is also based at the youth center, but many days just sits in the library reading books. Anyway, after spending the first two or three days with no direction, I began to develop a series of workshops to train teacher-librarians in the my state, Omusati.

In Omusati alone there are 271 schools, and each one supposedly has a library. A few of these libraries are nothing more than a box of books. Most are comprised of maybe 300-500 books in a dark storeroom. Some lucky schools actually have a classroom which has been converted to a library. In almost all cases, none of these teachers had received training in how to run a library. Well, to be honest, neither had I when I was appointed the librarian at Canisianum last year. But I knew what the Dewey Decimal System was, I knew how libraries were supposed to work, and I reread many times the usefully-titled book, How to Run a School Library.

My colleague Emily and I planned eight one-day workshops in different parts of the region, with about 35 teachers invited to each workshop. Getting from Outapi to each workshop site was an ordeal. The workshops were all located between 15 and 60 miles from Outapi, but several were on gravel roads far off the main track. The Ministry allocated me a 4-wheel drive bakkie, or pickup truck, which was great. The only problem was that the starter on the truck didn’t work. At all. Each morning, the staff of the youth center had to push-start me so I could get to the workshop. If I couldn’t get it started on the first push, the men would mutter about how the oshilumbu (white person) didn’t know how to push-start a car. Each afternoon, the workshop participants push-started me so I could go home. Although I would have liked to do a little shopping on the way, once that bakkie got was running there was no way I could turn it off until I reached my destination.

The workshops themselves went very well, although it was a little scary to see how little the participants knew about libraries. I always opened each workshop by asking people to tell us their name, school, how long they had been the teacher-librarian, and what they wanted to learn from the workshop. Several times, an experienced teacher-librarian said, “Today, the one thing that I really want to know is what the difference is between fiction and non-fiction.” Seriously.

During each workshop, we created a small library in the confines of the meeting hall. We brought about 60 books with us, and taught the participants how to classify them, arrange them on the shelves, check them in and out of the library, and so on. By the end of the day, we had a mini-library in each workshop room. Judging from the workshop evaluations, I’d say it was a success.

After the workshops finished, however, I was at a bit of a loss. At first Meme Gregentia had nothing for me to do, but when I suggested that I design a database to help them keep track of their books and circulation, she thought that was a good idea. As a result, I’ve gotten in a bit over my head in programming a database for the library. I’m making progress, but it’s slower going than I hoped. I’m no database programmer and sitting in front of a computer all day is driving me crazy. While it would be nice for the library to have a database on the computer, it’s not really essential. I keep feeling that what I’m doing this term is just not very necessary.

On a final note, this is my first non-teaching job since March of 2001, and I’m finding it pretty hard to adjust. I don’t like the slow pace at the library, and to my complete surprise, I even miss students. The first weeks in particular were very hard, when I would see students from Canisianum and wish that I could be working with them. I like the lower stress levels, but it’s a bit boring too. I’m not sure if what I miss is teaching, per se, or simply feeling useful. Either way, something will have to change soon. It’s not worth being so far from friends and family to be spinning my wheels like this.

Road Rules

2008-03-10T16:15:00.000+02:00

Compared to most other countries in Africa, Namibia has an amazing road system. Why? Well, for one, there actually are roads between all the major towns. Secondly, these roads are, for most part, paved. If they’re not paved, the major towns are at least linked by what in Namibia we would call ‘good gravel’ roads, which are wide, graded gravel tracks that cars can comfortably drive along at 50mph. Compared to countries like the Congo, which is larger than Texas yet has only 200 miles of paved highway, Namibia is doing quite well.

Nonetheless, there are a few quirks about driving in Namibia. Probably the biggest one is the animals. Once you cross the ‘Red Line’, which divides the privately owned-land in the south from the communal farming areas in the north, there are animals everywhere. Literally. The single biggest danger on Namibian roads are the donkeys, cows, and goats that use the road as their personal bedroom, bathroom, and grooming area. There are no fences to keep the animals in designated pastures. As a result, they wander everywhere, and drivers are constantly weaving back and forth to avoid animals.

There is a clear hierarchy to the road-going animals. Donkeys are the kings of the road, and they will NEVER move out of the way for a car. Not even, as occasionally happens, the car runs right into them. All Namibian drivers are afraid of donkeys. Rumor has it that the donkey’s black eyes make them invisible on the road at night. Next in the hierarchy are cows, who might move off the road if a driver beeps long and loud enough. They’ll not do it quickly, however, raising their heads to look placidly at the car, consider it, and then, perhaps, decided to slow amble out of the way. Last come the goats, who like to sleep together on the roads during the rainy season because the roads remain dry. The goats are the most skittish, and drivers barely slow down when they see goats on the road. Instead, they lay into their horn and the goats usually bolt out of the way.

Usually, but not always. Last year I gave my students a creative writing assignment, and one of their options was to write about a time that their father hit a goat in the road. Almost all of the kids chose this option, so I think it probably was a pretty common experience. The stories were remarkably similar, too. Driver hits goat. Shepherd wanders over and yells at driver. Driver and shepherd argue over the value of the goat, then finally agree on a price and the driver pays off the shepherd. Driver throws goat into the bed of his pickup truck, and the family has an unplanned feast.

Animals on the road are so common that one of my students last year related a ‘modern folktale’ to explain their behavior. The story went like this: There was once a pair of dogs who wanted to go town so they could do some shopping and see the sights. They talked to their friends, the donkeys, the cows, the goats, and the chickens. The cows were interested in going, just to see what was new in town. The goats were ready to go into town and blow all their money partying. The chickens had many little chicks, and little money, but needed to go into town for supplies. The donkeys were kind of dull, but they followed everyone else’s lead.

The next morning, this motley crew headed off down the path toward town. It was a long, long walk, and after awhile a farmer in a truck came along. “Please, sir, can we ride with you into town?” Dog asked. The farmer agreed. They chatted during the trip, and farmer told the animals that we was returning the same way that evening. He offered to take them back that night. They all agreed, and him that they would pay him for both rides on the return trip.

When the animals got to town, they split up to explore. The cows slowly wandered all through the town, chewing cud and gazing at all the sights, but not spending any of their money. The dogs played with their friends in town and had a couple of beers, but they made sure to save some for the ride home. The goats, however, just got drunk and partied and spent all their cash. The chickens, who were very poor, spent all their money on food their little ones. And the donkeys were too stupid to spend any of their money.

In the evening, as arranged, the farmer picked up the group and drove them many miles back to their home. When they arrived, the cows and the donkeys, having saved their money in town, paid exactly what they owed. The chickens, who knew they didn’t have the money to pay, jumped off the truck and pretended to drop their money in the dust, and then started pecking around as if to find it. The goats, who had blown their whole wad, jumped off the back of the truck and ran away. And the dogs, who didn’t have any small bills, gave the driver a $100 note. The driver took the money but didn’t give the dogs change, because the other animals had stiffed him.

That story explains how the animals behave today. The donkeys and the cows can stand in the road, knowing that they paid the driver the amount they were supposed to. The chickens are always pecking on the ground, pretending to look for their money. The goats run away whenever a car comes near, because they are afraid the driver will ask them for payment. And the dogs will chase any car they see, because they still want to get their money back.

And that’s how it is on the roads of northern Namibia today.

Benz O'Rama

2008-03-05T14:03:00.000+02:00

When I finally got into my new apartment this year, after a homeless month sleeping on the floors of various friends, my first task was to get a set of good, heavy locks for the burglar doors. This mission led me on a quintessentially Namibian adventure.

There were no locks to be had in my town, so I had to wait until the weekend to make the 60-mile journey to Oshakati. I went to Benz, a hardware store which had a large supply of locks. It’s an odd store. It’s huge -- easily the size of a small Kmart -- but at the front a small semi-circle of wooden counters corrals the customers, keeping us out of the shelves. Only by speaking to an employee can a customer go into the shelves and look at the stock, accompanied by store personnel to make sure we don’t shoplift. After I spoke to someone and acquired my saleswoman escort, we quickly found a large display of locks. Not sure which of two locks was the right size, I asked her if I could buy them both, and then simply return one of them when I was next in town, two weeks later. She said that would be no problem. I happily paid my money, and went home to try out my new purchases.

Two weeks later, as promised, I was back in Oshakati to return the lock that I didn’t use. Approaching the counters, with my lock and my receipt in hand, I explained to a salesman that I needed to return the lock that I hadn’t used. “That’s no problem,” he said. “We can refund your money, and we only take a 15% restocking fee.”

“But when I bought these two weeks ago,” I replied, “I specifically asked the saleswoman if I could return them. She said yes, it would be no problem.”

“That’s right sir, it is no problem. We only are charging you 15% for restocking. No problem,” the salesman responded.

Trying to keep my voice dispassionate, I said, “Actually, it is a problem. I specifically asked if I could get my money back, and the saleswoman told me that I could.”

The salesman asked innocently, “Who did you speak to?” When I said I didn’t know her name, he looked around behind him, opening his arms wide to take in the entire store. “Well, where is she?” When I told him that I didn’t see her, he seemed to think that he had won the argument. But I persisted, and after five more minutes of arguing, finally the manager came over to smooth things out.

“Our policy is that we charge 15% for any items that are returned,“ the manager explained, “But I will try to help you out. How about we only charge you 10%?” When I refused, the manager dropped his offer to 8%, but then held firm there. He seemed to think that he was being extraordinarily generous to just offer that.

I had one more trick up my sleeve, but to explain requires a little digression into the state of the Namibian media. There are several country-wide newspapers. The most popular is The Namibian, an independent daily paper which criticized the South African-led government during the 1980s. At that time, it was a newspaper that Swapo, the rebel group, supported. Since then, as Swapo has come into power, the newspaper has remained stubbornly independent, and now Swapo blacklists it. Nonetheless, it is by far the most commonly read newspaper and has become the country’s ‘Newspaper of Record.’ It is just as likely to criticize as to praise the government, not caring whether the leaders are black or white. I love the Namibian.

At the end of 2007, the Namibian introduced a new section of text messages sent in by readers. It’s the same concept as writing a letter to the editor, except it has proven far more popular. People sound off about all sorts of problems. It’s not uncommon for a villager to send a text message about how his town councillor hasn’t been able to get water to the community, or from an angry parent if a child’s teacher has been lazy. One of my good friends even had her text message make it into the “SMS of the Day” section, warning Namibian women in a particular community to avoid certain unsavory men at a local bar.

So, I figured that if it was good enough for Namibians, it was certainly good enough for me. “Well, if you‘re not going to give me the full refund that your employee promised me, then I guess there‘s nothing else I can do.” I sighed, feigning a typical fatalism. Then, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “I suppose that I will just have to write an SMS to the Namibian to warn people about your business practices.” I started to compose the text message right there in the store. After I finished the first sentence or two, I showed it to the manager, and he quickly decided that he could find a way to give me the full refund after all!

Of course, the story doesn’t end quite there. After the manager Ok’ed giving me the discount, the employee who tried to process it actually gave me too much money back! It seemed the price of the lock had gone up in the past two weeks, and their system automatically refunded the current price, not the actual price. I pointed this out to the employee, and it took another consultation with the manager before the problem could be resolved.

Despite the long argument, everyone left smiling. It was, in many ways, quintessentially Namibian: embracing technology but not getting it quite right, inefficient and gracious, frustrating and rewarding. That’s Namibia.

Water, Water Everywhere

2008-02-24T16:16:00.004+02:00

As I sit in my new apartment in Outapi, enjoying a day off after two weeks of solid travel and conducting workshops, the thunder crackles. The tin roof pings with rain, and occasionally lights flicker when a good bolt of lightning threatens our electrical system. This sort of day has become common this year, during a particularly heavy rainy season in Namibia.

This year, since the skies first opened around mid January, hardly a day has gone by without rain. Sometimes it’s just a few drops, others it’s a late afternoon or evening thundershower, and occasionally we have a couple of days of rain without end. Because of the flatness of the landscape, I can see huge thunderclouds slowly advancing on Outapi, the borders of the dark cloud stretching for a few miles either side of the city. When a storm passes by, you can see the flashes and forks of its lightning as is creeps to the east. For a country with an average 300 days of sunshine per year, I don’t think we’ve had more than three days in the past 35.

Because of all the rain, the landscape is completely, utterly transformed. Normally, Namibia is a landscape of earth tones: white rocks, light brown sand, the occasional scraggly, withering tree. But this year, because of the good rains, the palette has changed completely. It's green everywhere. Fields that were just dry sand changed in a week to shallow pools with grass growing in them, and they look almost like rice paddies from southeast Asia.

The oshanas¸ large, shallow depressions in the terrain, have completely filled with water. Although the water is rarely more than waist-deep, the oshanas look like lakes, stretching sometimes a mile or two in length and nearly a mile wide. Getting anywhere can be a challenge. It’s common now to see women with their dresses bunched around their thighs, walking through what looks like a lake. Men will roll up their pant legs or just wear shorts to work. I spoke to one principal who lives in Outapi but works at a school perhaps 7 miles from here. He and his teachers were leaving for work at 6am, because walking there through the oshanas would take over two hours.

The roads in some places have become impassable. The nearest WorldTeach volunteer, Jocelyn, is at a school 10k down a gravel road. The road has washed out in at least four places, when oshanas on either side of the road linked up. Driving to town after work one day, their pickup struck stalled out in one of these sections. The water was so high that the bed of the pickup flooded, and everyone had to get out and push. Now, most of the teachers have just moved into the village because they can’t go back and forth. For a few days, even the main tar road between Outapi and Ruacana flooded!

I’ve also heard about one group of teachers who were walking back from school one afternoon through an oshana. One of them saw something floating on the water. Thinking it might be a dead cow, he wandered over to investigate. Just a moment later he shrieked, and tore off at full speed, running through the water. The others followed him, terrified, until they reached dry land. What they thought was a dead cow turned out to be a live crocodile!

Now, I think that story might be more of a ‘rural legend’ than a true story. However, I’ve asked several colleagues about it, and while none of them could confirm if this story was true or not, they all acknowledged that it could be. They say that when the rains are heavy enough in Angola, just about 15k north of us, then the Kunene river can flood its banks and the crocodiles escape into the oshana system. The oshanas, when full, actually flow like slow rivers. The oshanas link together and eventually flow into the Etosha pan if there is enough rain. This year, from what I’ve heard, there’s enough rain. I’ll be checking it out this weekend, but keeping a careful eye out for crocs!

The Sixth-Grade Slut

2008-02-05T21:08:00.000+02:00

When I arrived back in Namibia at the beginning of the year, my first job was to help conduct the teacher training for the incoming group of volunteers. There were just under 20 new volunteers, and all but two had no experience whatsoever with teaching. My task was to try to get them ready to teach in just three weeks. We began with basic pedagogy, and ended with the Grade Six Slut.

While at first this would seem to be a ridiculous job, on reflection they received far more teacher training than I ever did. Most teachers in the United States go through a formal teacher-training program, but I began teaching as an “Emergency Certified” teacher in New York City during a severe teacher shortage towards the end of the internet bubble. In those days, anyone with fiscal sensibility jumped on the internet bandwagon, and as a result schools were having a very hard time getting staff. As a result, the certification process back then involved finding a pulse and checking to see if the applicant was breathing. As I qualified on both scores, I was immediately hired.

The training process for emergency certified teachers was just as rigorous as the interview process. My supervisor, the Assistant Principal for English, came to my apartment about a week before I started. She gave me a box of books, some sample end-of-year exams, and a key. “You can teach any of these books you like,” she said. “Get the kids ready for this exam. Oh, and here’s your room key. Good luck!” That was it.

Compared to such a brief orientation, the three weeks of training for World Teach volunteers seems length! It does raise the question of how valuable and necessary teacher training is, however. In what other profession would governments hire unqualified, unlicensed people for professional positions. Can you imagine hiring someone as a doctor just because he took biology in college? What about hiring someone to build a bridge because she liked to build with lego when she was a child? It does say something about the relative worth that our society places on education.

Those concerns aside, we began our teacher training in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, with a week of classes on classroom management, writing lesson plans, educational theory, and so forth. For me, the training went much, much better than last year. The group of volunteers was very eager and attentive. I was much more confident, having already taught this curruciulum before. But the biggest reason was that I had a year’s worth of teaching in Namibia under my belt, so I could speak with some authority about issues of critical importance in schools here, like whether or not school policy allowed girls to wear hair extensions. The answer varies with each school, but for most the answer is no, because principals believe it will cause conflict between those who are rich enough to afford extensions and those cannot.

After just a week dealing with thorny educational issues like this one, the whole group traveled up to Omungwelume, a small village about 30km down a gravel road from Oshakati, the biggest city in Ovamboland. Last year, two of my closest friends, Dan Bartha and Jennica Planisek, lived there. This year, another married couple, Dan & Kathryn, are there. It’s a really nice village of perhaps 2,000 people. It’s just the right size – you don’t feel isolated, but there’s no feeling it being a city either. As an outsider, people are curious about you but you don’t have to worry much about theft or other hassles.

For the new volunteers, this was their first time in the North, what I would consider the ‘real’ Namibia. Gone were nicely paved streets, replaced instead with dusty and hot dirt roads through the town and the surrounding bush. Gone were chain stores from South Africa with wide ranges comfort foods. Instead, there are a half of a dozen cuca shops and shebeens, and two general dealers that stock basics such as flour, onions, sugar, oil, and canned goods. But in contrast to the image that many people have of Africa, the small village also sports a clinic, a post office, several schools, and a police station. Most people live in simple houses made of concrete bricks, topped with a zinc roof which is defeaning when it rains. Most of the children are healthy and have enough to eat. It’s poor, but it’s not a dysfunctional, crumbling society. It’s working quite well, in fact.

One challenge was to convince the kids in town to come to our ‘School’ for a week, because this was at the tail end of their summer break. We did have several things gong for us, however. First, there really isn’t much to do in Omungwelume, so school with a bunch of iilumbu (white people) seemed pretty interesting. Second, we gave out snacks at the break and promised a certificate at the end of the week. Namibians are mad for certificates, for reasons that I have never been able to figure out. Finally, I help in the marketing department. The first day in town, I had made friends with several kids when I went out for a run. The next day, I loaded them into our field director’s car and we drove all around the village, spreading the word. I would first explain in my halting Oshiwambo, “Okuya osikola nena! Oto li unene.” (Go to school. You are eating a lot). Then my helpers would explain, fluently, that kids should come to the school because there would be snacks and certificates.

For the new volunteers, working with real kids was invaluable, as was having a chance to see what the north was all about. Even though they were just team-teaching two hours a day, many found the work tiring, because managing 20-40 hyper kids is hard! After a week of ‘classes’, we briefly met with the King of Ndonga, one of the Ovambo tribes, and then took a well-deserved rest in Etosha National Park, Namibia’s biggest game reserve. Every visit to one of these places is different. Last year I visited visited three different game parks but never once did I see a lion. But this time, we saw a lion just ten minutes into the park! We also saw an ostrich run in front of our bus for a kilometer or so, loads of kudus, impalas, and springboks, and two adult elephants mourning a dead juvenile elephant.

After the break of Etosha, we had a few more days training in Windhoek, and I tried something new. Although the practice teaching was useful, most kids who came to our ‘school’ were younger than the kids volunteers would be teaching during the school year. Also, they were generally really good kids, and I didn’t feel the volunteers had much exposure to some of the classroom management problems that can happen. The volunteers broke into two groups, one for grades 5-7, and one for grades 8-12. In each group, volunteers had to present a lesson that was specific to their content level, while the other volunteers pretended to be students. For each lesson, I gave one of the volunteers a slip of paper detailing a behavioral problem they should have during the lesson. I tried to choose the most common classroom management problems: students coming late, being talkative, refusing to work in groups, falling asleep in class, and so on. Though I was worried the volunteers would think this exercise a bit stupid, it turned out that everyone was always waiting to see what the ‘problem’ would be each time, and that volunteers really loved playing the ‘bad’ student.

The best ‘problem’ that happened in class was in the grade 5-7 group. That group of volunteers played their roles as learners to the hilt by talking in high, squeaky voices, stealing each other’s pencils (sometimes unprompted), even pretending to pick their noses in class. One time, I pulled aside Kathryn (Dan’s wife) and Weslie, and asked them if they could ‘pretend’ to get into a fight during the next lesson. They agreed, and I awaited the next lesson eagerly.

During that lesson, I had my back turned when suddenly I heard the fifth-grade Kathryn shout at the sixth-grade Weslie, “You SLUT!! How could you? You slept with Dan!?! That’s my husband.” Kathryn lunged across the table at Weslie. Weslie picked up the first thing she saw, a glass full of Sprite, and dumped on Kathryn’s head. Katrina, the poor volunteer who was teaching at the time, was taken completely by surprise but still managed to separate them. When we all finished laughing and Katrina finished shaking, we debriefed how to handle a situation like this one in the classroom. It doesn’t happen often, but still, it’s good to know what to do when it does. Educational theory says that active learning is far more effective than passive learning, and I bet those volunteers will remember just what to do when a sixth-grade slut steals someone else’s boyfriend!

Canisianum Scholarship

2008-02-01T22:43:00.000+02:00

Give kids in Namibia a shot at a quality education -- help create the Canisianum Scholarship Endowment.

Canisianum RCHS in Northern Namibia is an excellent school, but unfortunately most families cannot afford the modest fees of US$100 a year. You can give more kids in Namibia access to a quality education by donating to the Canisianum Scholarship Endowment.

Why Canisianum?
Most schools in Namibia are struggling. Some lack resources, and many are staffed by unmotivated, substandard teachers. The passing rate for the grade 10 exams is less than 50%. Canisianum RCHS, where I have worked as a volunteer teacher, is different. The school, which is supported by both the government and the Catholic church, has adequate resources. It has an excellent teaching staff, comprised of motivated Namibians, volunteers, and nuns. As a result, Canisianum 's passing rate on the grade 10 exams was 98%, and the school was ranked 7th nationwide. For students living in the Ombalantu region, Canisianum is their best chance to get a quality education.

What Will Happen to Your Money?
The goal of this campaign is to raise enough money so that an endowment can be created to fund students at Canisianum in perpetuity. You will not be raising this money alone; Canisianum plans to raise funds in Namibia as well. Once the money has been raised, it will be invested through the charity wing of one of Namibia's largest and most reputable banks, Nedbank. A scholarship selection committee will be created at the school which will include the principal, teachers, and members of the community. This committee will select applicants based on financial need and academic merit. Students who are selected will be fully funded at the school from grade 8 through 12, provided their school work remains satisfactory. The fundraising goal set here should be enough to fund five students every year for the forseeable future.

Please think about donating now to help us give girls like those in the picture a quality education. Donate at whatever level is comfortable for you. Think about a $100 donation, which pays for an entire year of school for a poor child. All donations are tax-deductible! Please help us out today!

There are two ways you can donate. The quick & easy way to donate is on the internet. You can check out the fundraising page for this scholarship at http://www.firstgiving.com/canisianumscholarship. Click on the link or copy it to your browser. The only downside to this site is that they take 7.5% of your donation as their fee, which is kind of high.

If you want every cent to help out these kids, you can send a check to WorldTeach, the NGO through whom I am working in Namibia. They will process everything. Just write "Canisianum Scholarship" in the memo line, and mail your check to:
WorldTeach
c/o Center for International Development
Harvard University, Box 122
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
Attn: Alix

If you have any questions about this scholarship endowment or Canisianum RCHS, please write me at joshua.kaufmann.72@gmail.com. Thanks in advance for taking the time to consider how you can help more kids in Namibia get a quality education.

Josh Kaufmann

3 Months in 3 Paragraphs

2008-02-01T22:07:00.001+02:00

Hello readers! Sorry for the long absence from the blogosphere, but work and life have sort of overtaken me during the last three months. I’ll try to catch you up on things in a quick summary. As I get time and/or gumption, I'll backdate a few entries to give the gory details. In fact, I've already done one on the barefoot marathon runners of Namibia.

At the end of October and beginning of November I traveled loads, going out of town three weekends in a row for trips to Walvis Bay (14 hours each way), Otjiwarongo (6 hours each way), and Windhoek (9 hours each way). The first was for the marathon, the second for a World Teach conference, and the final trip was to judge a debate competition. After that, there was just a headlong rush to finish marking exams and to set up a computerized report card system for my school before I flew back to the U.S. at the beginning of December.

Travelling home to New York and Chicago was very strange for me. At first I had a hard time adjusting, especially when I was in New York. Even though I was home for 3½ weeks, there was simply not enough time to catch up with everyone who I wanted to spend time with, and my head still spun a bit from reverse culture shock. I realized how much I missed my friends and my family. Chicago was especially hard—I’ve been away from there for so long that I feel like I’m starting to lose connection my family. I don’t like only seeing them for short visits once or twice a year. On top of all that, I struggled with the question of whether to stay here just until June, or for one more full year.

Coming back to Namibia was no cakewalk, aided by goofups in travel planning by my NGO and then by a cancelled flight from London to Johannesburg. The trip from Chicago to Namibia ended up taking four days, when it can really be done in 24 hours. Back in Namibia, I felt a bit out of sorts but eager to start working with the new group of volunteers. For three weeks the new volunteers had ‘orientation,’ a combination of teacher training, country orientation, and language classes. The training went really well, and only a week ago I got back to Outapi to start to do some projects developing libraries in the Omusati region.

Lucky Star Barefoot Marathon

2007-10-27T22:14:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-19T16:05:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-12T15:38:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-06T15:28:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-10T14:18:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-24T15:39:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-17T14:49:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-15T22:57:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-05T14:29:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-30T22:46:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-28T14:24:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-14T22:40:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-24T20:56:00.000+02:00

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.

Damn, It's Cold Here! --- Followup

2007-06-10T20:51:00.000+02:00

I was really worried about those kids freezing because of the principal's rules. But now I realize that they simply ignore him. At the morning devotion today, about 1/4 of the kids were wearing extra hats, gloves, scarves, sweaters, and coats. So much for the principal's rules.

Speaking of which, during this year I think I finally have learned how to deal with principals. Do something that makes the school look really good, and then ignore everything they say. It seems to work for me!

Damn, It's Cold Here!

2007-06-07T21:32:00.000+02:00

I wouldn’t have thought that the words cold and Africa would ever go together, but I was wrong. I just left the library, where I was working on my Oshiwambo while ‘monitoring study hall,’ and I’m wearing jeans, a t-shirt, a sweater, a fleece jacket and a hat. Mind you, it’s only 8pm, so the weather will get colder yet through the night.

The last few days, the weather has definitely taken a turn to the cool side. The temperature hasn’t dropped below freezing, but at night it can get down as low as about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. That may not sound like much to you Chicagoans and New Yorkers who suffer through winters where temperatures regular dive to the teens. However, you have one advantage that we in Namibia do not have: heat in your homes. Here, none of the buildings on the mission have any sort of heat whatsoever. None in my dorm, none in the dining hall, and none in the classrooms. The buildings retain a little more heat than the outside air, so they are usually 5-10 degrees warmer. Still, it can be pretty freakin’ cold.

Watching people deal with the cold is interesting. My favorite nun, Sister Khotaram, wears a sleeveless black jacket over her habit, giving her a military look. Sister Francis, the slightest of the nuns, wears a jacket, gloves, and a humongous white scarf wrapped around her head. It looks like a cross between a turban and the gauze bandage that people wrap around the top of their head and their chin to hold a hot water bottle in place. This morning, I had to bang my hands together for a few minutes before I could start marking papers.

The kids have it worse than all the staff, however. The principal won’t allow them to wear anything besides their school uniform, which consists of a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a very thin sweater. The students made a formal request at assembly on Monday to be allowed to wear jackets over their uniforms, and he turned them down flat. One student, who has a note from her doctor, is allowed to wear a coat. I’m considering asking one of the doctors in town to sign notes for ALL the kids and then see what the principal does. Ha ha ha!

By the way, I know that some of my dearest friends are now thinking, “Aha! Let’s send Josh a hat/sweater/long underwear.” Thank you very much, but really it’s not necessary. They sell all the warm clothes I need here. Besides, by the time it actually arrived, it would be hot again! Thanks for the thought, however! Cheers, and enjoy the warmth of the northern hemisphere.

Nature, Nature, Nature -- Part 3 -- Addo Elephant Park

2007-05-15T20:22:00.000+02:00

The next two days we spent at Addo National Park, just north of Port Elizabeth. This was a wildlife reserve that specialized in elephants, and we saw LOTS of them. The park itself had a herd that numbered around 400 elephants. The main thing to do was game drives. On a game drive, you creep through the park in your car at about 3mph. Now, this may sound terribly boring, but it wasn't in the least, because the animals were everywhere!

We saw a turtles, ostriches, birds, zebra, and several types of antelope species. I fell in love with warthogs, who look like cute, squat dogs with tusks. There were warthogs with their babies all over the park, little squat piglings following their mamas. Now I see why warthogs are popular characters in Disney movies.

In the game area, visitors were not allowed to get out of their cars because the park has a few lions. The lions weren't there originally, but without predators, the other species were getting out of control. We didn't see a lion -- our only disappointment.

Several of the roads went near watering holes where the animals congregate. At two different spots, we just parked the car and watched for 30 or 45 minutes. During that time, we were able to see probably 50 or 75 elephants drinking, washing, and playing. At one point, a small herd on its way to the watering hole passed within five feet of my face. Amazing! With the elephants, pictures really are worth a thousand words, so here's a 6,000 word essay:

Africa, in my imagination, had always been about a countryside densely packed with very traditional cultures. With Addo, I saw a different side -- the wide open savannas that support some of the most extraordinary creatures on the planet.

Nature, Nature, Nature -- Part 2 -- Tsitsikamma

2007-05-13T20:17:00.000+02:00

The next day was a good day. After a rather disastrous attempt at braiing(grilling) the night before, we woke up early so we could hike the first part of the Otter Trail in Tsitsikamma National Forest. This trail was right along the coast. The rocks looked as if they had once lain flat, but now had been pushed upwards by plate tectonics to stand vertically. When the trail wandered just 10 meters inland, we immediately entered a jungle-like canopy of vines and trees.

During the hike three-hour hike, we discovered a huge cave, and then ate our lunch by a waterfall that emptied into shallow tidal pools. When we tried to get closer to the waterfall itself, and Lynn slipped down below a bush. It looked like she had been swallowed by the earth, and my heart lurched, but she was fine—just clumsy.

Lynn showed her clumsiness on the way back from the waterfall too. With only 1k left to go, she twisted her ankle, and then shortly thereafter fell and skinned her knee. But each time, she just picked herself up and carried on, grimacing but not complaining. Not only was she clumsy, but she was plucky too. I thought “Plumsy” would be a good nickname, but I’m not sure if Lynn was thrilled with it.

Nature, Nature, Nature -- Part 1

2007-05-09T19:56:00.000+02:00

After wine country, we headed east driving through rolling plains of farmland. When we finally joined the coastline, we could see the azure waters of the Indian ocean off to our right. The road climbed and fell on long, sloping hills, occasionally passing through patches of thick, towering old-growth forest.

We made good time on the first day, running from wine country to the coastline at Knysna (pronounced “Nīz-nə” in IPA or “Nighs-neh”). The road were straight and fast, a two-lane highway with humongous shoulders. At first, I was unnerved to see cars driving 60mph on the shoulder while a faster car overtook them on the road at 80 or 90mph. Quickly, however, I realized that the shoulder was just used as an extra lane. Sometimes, a car would overtake into oncoming traffic; the driver simply expected that the oncoming traffic would shift to the shoulder. Fortunately, they always did!

Knysna was nothing special, but the next day we hiked and drove in a beautiful, old-growth forest for an hour or two, climbing to the top of a small peak for an excellent view of the countryside. Then we continued along the coastline, eventually coming to a brother and sister pair of nature parks, called Monkeyland and World of Birds. Monkeyland was as terrible as the name suggests. It charged a huge (for Africa) entrance fee for a 45-minute walk with an unenthusiastic tour guide. The monkeys themselves were cool, but the place seemed a little seedy and they didn’t take very good care of their animals. The guide told us, for example, that one species of monkey introduced to the park a few years ago had been slain in great numbers by the other monkeys. The few remaining ones were now caged. I would think that, if they had a decent zoologist on staff, they could have avoided a monkey massacre.

The bird sanctuary was surprisingly wonderful after Monkeyland. Here, enormous metal poles had been erected so that the nets enclosing the sanctuary rose above the top of the forest canopy. Wooden bridges at different levels in the canopy criss-crossed the sanctuary, giving an Indiana Jones feel to the place. Hundreds of different of birds roamed inside. Even though I don’t like birds much, I was fascinated and snapped away with my camera, wishing that had a big telephoto lens.

Eventually we found a small, open-air restaurant which overlooked a pond full of ducks and flamingos. Fresh from our trip in wine country, we both ordered glasses of wine and a snack, and sat down for a break. Immediately, several opportunistic birds befriended us in the hopes of getting a morsel of our scones. Their talons were sharp, and they were particularly interested in anything shiny, like my eyeglasses. Before going into the park, Lynn had to remove her earrings because the birds had been known to rip them out. The little green guy who was most aggressive decided he really wanted a taste of our wine. Stupidly, I let him try, and moments later the glass shattered and fragments flew everywhere.

No Whining about Wining

2007-05-06T21:02:00.000+02:00

Just an hour’s drive from Cape Town is the Cape Wineland district, where a majority of South Africa’s wine industry is based. Lynn very much wanted to do some wine tastings. I agreed, but didn’t look forward to it much. Wine is for snobs, I thought. Me, I’m a beer drinker. I don’t even like the taste of wine.

Thank goodness Lynn wanted to go, because I fell in love with touring wineries. First of all, they were beautiful. We stayed in Franschoek, a small, touristy town nestled in a lush green valley between a craggy mountain. Everywhere we turned, there was another beautiful vista. Many of the wineries themselves were built on impressive estates, with ornate gates and immaculately manicured lawns.

Each had a distinctly different personality. Cabriere Estate, which made sparkling wine (a.k.a. Champagne), was high-class with a hint of whimsy. There we took a cellar tour, to see the bubbly aging in row after of French-made casks. Once out of the cellar, we tried the wines – which were just blah – and looked at the ginormous elephant bone which had a map of the valley carved on it.

One of my favorite wineries was Fairview Estates, which both had the best-tasting affordable wines and a great sense of whimsy. Approaching the main building, the first thing we saw was a jungle gym-like tower for goats. Inside, we got a good deal: try seven wines, plus a cheese tasting, for just US$2. This wine tasting thing was starting to look like a good deal.

We tried several wines just because we liked their names, such as “Goats Do Roam,” which is a pun on a type of wine called Côtes du Rhome, and “The Goatfather,” which pictured an old billy goat as a mafia Don. Ultimately I liked a non-punny wine, the 2005 Fairview Shiraz, and bought two bottles. I’m curious how much this wine would cost in the U.S., so if anybody sees it, please let me know. In South Africa, at the winery, it was under US$9.

One question that kept nagging at me while we toured the wine areas was, “Where are all the black people?” The town we stayed in was decidedly touristy, and although all the service staff were black or coloured, there was no way they could afford to live in town. So where did all the staff come from? Finally, I got my answer when I went out for a long run before our second day of tasting. About three miles down the main road out of Franschoek, behind a copse of trees, a small road led off to the right. Here, the houses were decidedly down-market, although they weren’t the shantytowns that we had seen in Cape Town. The population was entirely nonwhite. There was a grocery store, but I doubt it was as well stocked as the one in town. So that’s what happened to the blacks: just as in other parts of South Africa, they were shunted out of sight, to work for the whites but otherwise not to be seen or heard.

All the wineries we had toured so far were white-owned. Although they employed black workers, there were fewer black workers serving customers than there were working the fields. During the entire trip, only once did I see a black manager in a restaurant or bar. Even though South Africa now has majority rule, how will it ever correct the inequality in income and capital that are the results of apartheid? Approximately 13% of South Africa’s population is white, but they control 87% of the land and capital in the country. As long as the rule of law prevails, how will nonwhites ever come to parity with whites who hold the purse strings, farms, factories, ranches, and bank accounts?

The last winery we visited, Solms-Delta, answered this question in an interesting way. It was one of a few wineries in which the employees have become partial owners and managers of the estate. At Solms, the white owner of the estate takes 50% of the profits, and a trust to benefit the employees takes the other 50%. The trust has been used to build good accommodation for workers, to provide health care, and to pay school and university fees for workers’ children.

Out of more than 100 wineries in the region, there are perhaps half a dozen that have schemes similar to this one. It’s a promising start, but the scale is far too small to bring about a substantial shift in capital ownership from whites to nonwhites. How South Africa can achieve any sort of income parity between whites and blacks is a critical question that remains to be answered. If it allows the invisible hand of the market to lead the way, generations may pass with little change. If it takes white farms and wineries and redistributes them to poor blacks who have little knowledge of farming or capital, as Zimbabwe is doing, South Africa will no longer be an economic success story. What is the middle ground that preserves South Africa’s economy while enabling its citizens to share in its wealth?

These are all important questions for South Africa, but after three wine tastings this day, Lynn and I were in no condition to answer them!

Robben Island

2007-05-02T20:27:00.000+02:00

Robben’s Island was another ‘must see.’ It was once the prison where Nelson Mandela and many other anti-apartheid activists were jailed. Now, it has become a national monument to which tourists and school children pay homage.

After a 45-minute boat ride from Cape Town, we debarked on the island and turned right towards the main gate. When I first saw the forbidding entrance gates to the prison, they were emblazoned with a slogan that momentarily reminded me of the gates of Auchwitz. I worried that the curators of the Island would portray the political incarceration there in a similar light. As bad as apartheid was, it cannot match the 12 million souls exterminated in the Holocaust. Fortunately, the curators chose instead to emphasize the Island’s role in the struggle for majority rule in South Africa. While they mentioned the hardships and cruelty inflicted upon inmates, the focus was squarely on how the island served as an incubator for anti-apartheid thought and action.

Physically, the island is a small, flat rocky piece of land about 7½ miles from Cape Town. There are few tall trees, and very little shelter from the winds that come across Table Bay. From the southern and eastern sides of the island, Cape Town is easily visible as symbol of freedom that was just out of reach of the prisoners. There is also a large cell block complex, a quarry, and pleasant accomodation for the wardens, guards, and their families.

The Island began to be used for political prisoners in the 1960s, when nonwhites reacted against the newly instated apartheid laws. Prior to its use for political prisoners, it was a regular prison for criminals. When Mandela arrived in 1962, he shared space with the criminals, who were urged by wardens to abuse the political inmates.

Our tour guide – who had been a political prisoner on the island himself – drove us to a a large quarry used for hard labor. In the quarry was a small cave that had been used as a toilet. Unbeknownst to most of the guards, inmates also used that cave as a makeshift classroom. They taught each other everything from basic literacy to revolutionary tactics and philosophy. Our guide told us that a few illiterate guards even learned to read from the inmates!

South African authorities used a variety of techniques to try to break inmates’ spirits. Just being housed on the island, with the freedom of Cape Town in view, must have been demoralizing. In the early years, inmates were only allowed one visit and one letter per year. The authorities also tried to divide and conquer, by giving different privileges to different racial classifications. Asians and ‘coloureds’ got slightly more food than blacks, for example.

Some inmates, like Mandela, were placed in single cells. On the tour we saw his cell, which had blankets for sleeping, a table for writing, and a bucket for a toilet. It was small, but my first room in NYC was actually smaller. The cells would have been quite cold in winter as there was no heat and temperatures could plunge below freezing. Our guide told us that inmates were issued four blankets when they arrived, and normally they slept on two and under two. But when it got really cold, they had to decide whether to wrap up and sleep without padding, or whether to have a softer but colder bed.

Other inmates were housed in dormitory units. In the dorms, inmates were graded by different letters, according to how compliant they had been. ‘D’ inmates were allowed the fewest letters and visits, and received no extra rations. ‘C’ inmates received some extra rations, ‘B’ prisoners, received even more, etc. Each prisoner started as a ‘D,’ but with good behavior he could move up the ladder. The intention was to reward good behavior, but also to set the inmates against each other by creating a hierarchy that wily prisoners could exploit. However, the activists found a solution. The men in each dorm decided that all the extra rations were to be shared equally. In this way, as in many other small examples, Robben’s Island served as an incubator for the revolutionary unity.

Ultimately, seeing Robben Island was interesting in an intellectual way. Fortunately – both for me and for all of South Africa – it didn't pack the emotional punch of that prison it first reminded me of. But the island does serve as a continuing symbol of the cruelty of apartheid, of the inmates’ inspiring response to their captivity, and as a light of hope for South Africa’s future.

Cape Town!

2007-05-01T20:04:00.000+02:00

Do forgive me, but I was on vacation for the next few entries, so they will sound a little travelogue-ish. I'm no Paul Theroux (thank goodness), but hopefully you will find Cape Town, the Winelands, and Addo Elephant Park as beautiful as my friend Lynn and I did.

Cape Town itself is a beautiful, modern city which reminded me most of San Francisco. Like San Fran, it is set right on an ocean, at the beginning of the Cape Peninsula in the southwesternmost part of Africa. Like San Francisco, it is very hilly. During the time I was driving in Cape Town, I had to use the emergency break just to avoid sliding backwards on the hills. Also like San Francisco, there is a former prison in the harbor which has now been turned into a tourist attraction. Not far outside Cape Town lie gorgeous valleys full of vineyards. Finally, it is known as one of South Africa’s most liberal cities, and the home of SA’s gay community. Sound familiar, no?

Cape Town, at least the central and formerly all-white areas of it, is thoroughly modern. Car whizz by at all hours. When night falls, the city is awash in electric light. Posters advertise for coming concerts, movies, and stage plays. Internet cafes have broadband connections, and travelers sit in them with earplugs and microphones, using Skype to takl to family back home. Huge western-style malls are packed with goods. During the trip, I probably spent 12 total hours just browsing around the malls, half of that time in a Borders-like chain store called Exclusive Books. I was so happy that there were books to buy!

Then, there was food. After four months of eating mostly rice and veggies, goat, pasta with butternut, and oshifima with canned fish, the breadth of food choices overwhelmed me, and I gorged myself. In only six days, Lynn and I tried Middle-Eastern (complete with belly dancer and hookah), Italian, Portugese, pizza, Caribbean, and a traditional pub-style burger and fries. There was always a part of a Cadbury’s bar, not available in my town up north, in one of our backpacks for snacking. I think I regained about 10 of the pounds that I lost!

We also hit the major tourist highlights of Cape Town and learned about its history. First, we walked around the Bo-Kaap area, a brightly coloured neighborhood that has traditionally been home to the Cape’s Malaysian Muslim community. That’s right, Malaysian Muslims. When whites first arrived in the area, there were indigenous Khoi and San peoples already on the land, but they were nomadic pastoralists and hunter-gatherers. The population density was thus very low. As the whites began to use intensive agricultural techniques, they had to import labor from Malaysia and from the Zulu and Xhosa areas which lay far to the east. The Bo-Kaap area was where many of the Malays settled, and the minarets of several mosques rise above the primary-color palette of the houses.

Another highlight was Table Mountain. This large mountain, which has a flat, table-like top, is smack dab in the center of the city. The city surrounds the mountain on all sides, but the mountain itself is a national park festooned with hiking trails. We joined up with two Peace Corps Volunteers, Jason & Janet, and took a cab to the Kirstenbosch Botannical Garden to begin our hike. I wish that my uncle Ed could have come with us to the Garden, because he would have adored it. The grounds were huge and featured species native to southern Africa. One of the specialties of the Cape environment is called fynbos, which literally translates as “fine bush.” These are small bushes that are adapted to grow in the misty, damp, 'Mediterranean' climate of the cape.

After the gardens, we began our climb up Nurse’s Gorge, a steep valley with a trail that went straight up, including some scrambling, for well over an hour. Luckily, most of that hike we were in cool shade. When we got to the top of the gorge, we found huge rocks looking south, and sunned ourselves on them for half an hour before moving on. After a couple more hours hiking, we found ourselves at the edge of the flattop ridge that gives Table Mountain its name. From here, we looked down onto the high rise buildings and wealthy houses of central Cape Town. To the left, the outlines of the smaller hills named Lion’s Head and Lion’s Rump were visible. Robben’s Island, where Nelson Mandela spent about 20 years in prison, lay far out in Table Bay. The view was stunning, and the pictures hardly do it credit.

After five days in Cape Town, much eating, and a visit to see the play Doubt (which I highly recommend), it was time to rent a car and get out of Cape Town. We did just that, and I jumped into the right-hand drive car, drove the wrong way down the road, and headed straight for wine country!

Heading South for the Holidays

2007-04-29T20:41:00.000+02:00

At the end of the first term, we had a three week holiday from school. My friend Lynn and I planned to meet in Cape Town, South Africa. Even though she was coming from New York and I was just coming from Namibia, it took me longer to get there. First, I had to get from Outapi to Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, 500 miles away.

To begin, I took a shared taxi from Outapi to Oshakati, the major city in the north. From Oshakati it is possible to hitchhike for free, but that's more successful if you're a pretty female volunteer which, alas, I am not. The other way is to take a combi (a passenger van, usually made by VW, seating about 14-18) or small minibus (seating 20-30).

Finding a minibus or combi is easy, but getting the vehicle to leave the hike point is hard. When I arrived, about a dozen men surrounded me shouting, “Windhoek? Walvis? Tsumeb?” Each of these guys was working for a different minibus. You can haggle with these guys a little bit, but price is less important than getting a good look inside the van to see how full it is. See, the buses only leave when they are full. Once you are sitting in a combi, it might be an hour or three before it actually leaves. One friend got in a combi at 8:30am and didn’t leave until 12:30pm. Sometimes, the combi drivers even pay people to sit inside to make it look full!

In my case, I was pretty lucky. We drove around the hike point for awhile, collecting a few more passengers. One guy kept jumping out to buy things at the nearby open market. After only an hour, our driver decided it was time to go, and we were not overcrowded like usual. Then we headed south on the one tar road toward Windhoek. You can see the route on the map below.

Heading south, what I was surprised by how ‘big’ the towns of Tsumeb, Otavi, and Otjiwarongo were. When we first drove north after training, they seemed like small towns, the sort that make you slow down for two minutes when driving on a two-lane country road. Compared to the north, however, these towns were well-developed metropolitan areas with large stores, paved side streets, and irrigated crops in the surrounding countryside. Unlike the cement box houses of the north, there were a few buildings with interesting architectural elements, like curves or arches. Another thing that surprised me was how, between the towns, there was nothing. Nada. Shrubs, small trees, & fences. Once or twice, we drove for 30 or 40 minutes without passing any small villages. In the north, there are small clusters of cuca shops and houses dotting the landscape. During a 10 mile run, I can pass by four different villages.

From Windhoek, I caught a ride all the way to Cape Town with a Peace Corps friend and his colleague, Mr. Galand. Mr. Galand is a non-white South African who teaches with Jason. During our drive, he showed a characteristic African endurance of discomfort and hunger. On the second day of our drive, he drove for 12 hours straight on a packet of crackers.

The road south from Windhoek was nearly 1,000 miles straight to Cape Town. South of Windhoek, the landscape turned bleaker. Grasses and small trees gave way to sparse, scrubby bushes on a wide, flat plain. Sun-baked hills rose in the distance. The few towns were based around natural springs, because there is never enough rain to have permanent rivers. Physically, this area looked as desolate and arid as southern Utah or Nevada.

The towns were different than those in the north, because the southern part of Namibia more fully experienced the ravages of apartheid. Each city that we passed had both a “town” and a “location.” These euphemisms refer to white and non-white areas, respectively. Often, the main road divided the two. The towns were situated on the better land with more trees, and there were paved roads, many shops, and nice houses. The locations were just the opposite: few trees to provide shade from unrelenting sun, sand roads, and houses that were small boxes made from cement bricks or cobbled together with pieces of corrugated metal. Seeing the stark divisions between rich and poor in the areas affected by apartheid, I appreciated Ovamboland much more.

Once we crossed the border, the first several hundred miles of South Africa looked just Namibia: dry, mountainous, and desolate, with little human or animal habitation. Then, as we neared a perennial river in a mountain valley, suddenly there was green everywhere! Using irrigation, the Afrikaners have grown a wealth of fruits and other crops. This shock of green freshened our eyes and the air after 1000 miles of arid, scrubby pastureland. Officially, the southeastern edge of South Africa has what is called a “Mediterranean climate.” It’s not lush like a rain forest, but it has enough rainfall to create rivers and irrigate crops. As a result, citrus farming and wine cultivation are both huge industries. For me, however, just seeing all the green made me feel at ease!

Welcome, Father!

2007-04-15T19:53:00.000+02:00

Today I attended most of the priestly ordination of Father Boniface Benedictus Mwahindange (please don’t me how to pronounce that!). I didn’t really have much choice about whether I would attend or not, because the ordination happened about five feet from my door.

Last night, I went out with about 10 of my friends and colleagues for my birthday. We gathered at a local bar. After two or three large bottles of Tafel, the excellent local brew, I felt like I was speaking Oshiwambo fluently. At the very least, when newcomers arrived I was able to make the introductions in Oshiwambo. Eventually we moved to a second bar, which was one of the nicest bars I’ve been to in Namibia. It was large, well-lit, and clean. Outside of the bar itself, there was a formal outdoor seating area in the form of a poured concrete porch. Behind the bar, a nice buffet of beef, goat, oshifima, carrots and butternut squash was available. After a late dinner and a few more drinks, I headed home around 11:30 and feel into a deep sleep.

When I awoke Saturday morning with a slight hangover, I threw on my nicest clothes, a tie, my dress shoes, and stumbled out of my room, vaguely hoping that the ordination would not be too big of a deal. I was wrong. When I opened the door, I saw between 500 and 1,000 people sitting and standing in the courtyard of the boys’ hostel. Tenting had been erected to provide shade over much of the crowd. A small platform, not more than three feet from my bedroom door, had been transformed into a ceremonial altar, replete with flowers, a podium, and white draping. At least five hundred chairs from the mission, the school, and our neighboring school were arranged around the courtyard. Right in front of my door sat about 30 Catholic priests. I said a quick “Baruch ata” to myself and sat down to watch the ceremony.

This ordination was a big deal for several reasons. First, the Archbishop of Namibia was there to officiate. Secondly, the priest being ordained was from the Benedictine order, and was the first native Namibian Benedictine priest ever to be ordained. Finally, father-to-be Boniface was a local boy from the Ombalantu region. It was a case of local boy made good.

The most interesting part of the ceremony was how in many ways it resembled a wedding. At the beginning—well, only one hour into the ceremony, which technically still counts as the beginning, as the whole thing lasted five hours—the initiate was presented to the Archbishop by his proud parents. They gave him away just as in a traditional wedding. I think the Archbishop may even have asked if the parents had any objections, but because the whole thing was in Oshiwambo, I’m really just guessing here. After some singing by the nuns and girls from our school, there was a long ritual where the initiate prostrated himself completely before the Archbishop while a variety of prayers were said. The initiate may have lain there for 30 minutes or more, which emphasized the submission to God’s will. Once Father Boniface was formally ordained, the Archibishop presented him to the audience. Each of the thirty Catholic priests in attendance came up on the altar, hugged the new priest and said a few words to him. It was as if they were welcoming him into his new family, which I suppose they were. The Archibishop and the new priest then walked, arm in arm, around the crowd to much singing and celebration.

Despite my best intentions of sticking it out for the whole time, three hours of hot sun, Oshiwambo, and a mild hangover got the better of me. Anyhow, it seemed like I’d seen the good part already. Unable to go back to my room, I went over to Robin and Nicola’s house and took a nap. Fortunately, I woke up in time to catch the end and the food. There were so many people attending that food was served in four different areas of the mission; depending on a person’s importance, they were served different food in different areas. Priests and government ministers got the primo chow in the boys’ dining hall, nuns and community leaders got the next-best food in the girls’ hall, regular folks ate in the main hall, and children were served something outdoors under a tree. I was heading to food area #3 when Sister Daisy, my colleague, pulled me into nuns’ dining hall. All the salads were gone, but I did eat a piece or two of meat from the bulls which had been chased around the school the day before. I didn’t exactly enjoy it, but by the time I was done eating at least my headache had disappeared.

Would tomorrow's dinner please come to my office IMMEDIATELY?

2007-04-14T18:31:00.000+02:00

At my old school in New York, our principal overused the P.A. system, calling out any staff member who was late for a meeting. Mr. Duch, the principal, didn't care if he interrupted classes five times a day, and you could always tell how pissed off he was by how he used the word immediately. If he didn’t use immediately at all, he was in a good mood. Sometimes he intentionally said the word softly, as in “Mr. Jones come down to the principal’s office immediately.” Then, you knew he was angry but trying to keep his temper. Most frequently, however, he would attack the beginning of the word in rage: “Mr. Jones, come down to the principal’s office IMMEDIATELY. Usually these announcements were merely annoying, but occasionally they were in the middle of Regents exams, which was unconscionable.

After yesterday, however, I realize that Mr. Duch can’t compete with a bunch of incompetent men trying to kill six bulls. While the students sat for their April exams, the mission where our school is housed was busy with preparations for a priest's ordination. The mission staff and our students had been busy for several weeks preparing: students in the hostel were made to weed and cut the grasses, a large banner went up, and the nuns and some of the more devout children had been practicing songs since February. On Friday, however, things took a more surreal turn.

Several local headmen donated bulls for the post-ordination feast, and when I got to school on Friday morning, these bulls were wandering around the mission grounds. Halfway through the morning’s three hour exam, a group of men began to try to slaughter the bulls. These guys were terrible bull-slaughterers. I first realized that something was amiss when I heard a shot, followed by the noise of a bull running past the staff room door. I ducked out to see what was going on. To my left, a bull was lumbering past the staff room and turning into the compound where most of the classes are held. Following him were six men. One man had a small rifle, but it was not of a sufficient caliber to bring down a bull. The other five men carried sticks and stones to throw towards at the bulls.

The technique for slaughtering the bull was terribly inefficient and cruel. The men with sticks tried to corner the bull, which usually meant they ran after the bull for a good 20-30 minutes at a crack, occasionally hitting him in the flank with a stick. If they finally did corner an animal, the man with the gun would advance as close as possible, shoot, and the run like hell. Because the gun was too weak or the man's aim too poor, shooting the bull only wounded it. Then angry bull would charge around the mission, sometimes through the through the classroom compound. One particular bull, a large black one, had been shot several times in the face and was pretty angry about the whole situation. I can't blame him. The men chased this particular bull around the mission and the school grounds for a couple of hours.

The Indian nuns and I looked on, somewhere between shocked, and disgusted. The Ovambos, both young and old, enjoyed the spectacle. The men chasing the bulls seemed to think it was some sort of a game. The students watched avidly from the windows of their classrooms, and a few brave ones stepped outside to see what was going on. Whenever a bull ran by their classroom, the children would all scream and run inside, smiling and chattering. Now, mind you, this was in the middle of an exam! I’m glad it wasn’t my test they were taking.

I finally watched the men bring one of the bulls down. They had shot it several times, and when it tried to turn away, several men pelted it in the head and face with large stones. It faltered, swaying unsteadily on its legs as if drunk, but did not fall down. Then one of the men ran behind and grabbed its tail, and the poor creature tried to run more time, dragging the man behind it. But by now the bull was so weak it could not run quickly, and when the other men caught up with it they stoned and shot it to death.

The interruptions to class were bad enough, and far worse than anything my old principal could do. But what I still can’t understand is the wanton cruelty in slaughtering the animals. Had they merely tied up the bull first, they could have been done in minutes rather than hours. There was no reason for these bulls to be chased around the mission for an hour or two, injured and frightened. There was no reason why the men could not have secured a better gun. There was no reason for the men to enjoy this cruelty. The poor bulls were competing in a game they could not win.

Better Late Than Seder

2007-04-09T19:48:00.000+02:00

The day after I returned from the royal wedding, I hosted a small seder for my two site mates, Nicola and Robin. Because of a variety of reasons, I had not attended a Seder at the beginning of the holiday, but I was able to hold a seder on the last night of Passover. Robin and Nicola, not knowing the difference between the first night and the last night, didn’t care.

Finding the right foods for the ritual Passover meal was not easy in Ovamboland. In Windhoek, the capital, there is a Conservative synagogue and a small Jewish population. However, Windhoek is an 8 hour drive from here. I would wager there are perhaps 20 Jewish people within a 250 mile radius of Outapi, so the local markets don’t have a “Jewish foods” section. The most important food, of course, is matza, and luckily the only ingredients for matza are bread and flour. I found a recipe on the internet and made my own. According to the recipe you have no more than 17 minutes from the time the water hits the flour to the time the dough must go in the oven. I think I took a few minutes too long to knead the dough. When it came out of the oven, it tasted like boring pita bread, not matza. But it still tasted bad, and that's the important part!

Some other elements of the seder plate were also improvised. For parsley, I used lettuce. For charoset, I chopped apples, crushed peanuts, and then used yogurt to the hold them together. The whole concoction was quite tasty, and we ate it for dessert for several days. For bitter herbs, the closest thing I could find was a jar of German spicy mustard. Given our people’s history, I figure that works. For a shankbone, I went to the deep freezer and removed one of the legs of the goat we slaughtered the month before. Mogen David wasn’t available at the local bottle shop, so instead we used a cheap Namibian wine. However, the local wine is called Tassenberg – maybe it’s made by Jews! The actual meal was a stew of brisket, potatoes, carrots and onions.

Even if the food wasn’t spot on, we still retold the story. My aunt Phyllis reminded me that the story is the most important part of the holiday. My friends learned the story of Passover, of how God helped the Jews to escape slavery in Egypt. We shared my one Haggadah and passed it from person to person. We asked the four questions, described the four sons, and dipped our fingers in Tassenberg for each of the ten plagues. I sang “Dayenu” horribly out of tune, while Nicola and Robin looked on skeptically. Most of all, we reminded ourselves that Passover is not only about the Jews escaping from Pharoah thousands of years ago. Passover is about any people who are still in bondage in the world: across the globe, some people remain in slavery or indentured servitude; others are in the grip of oppressive, totalitarian regimes; and many remain in the grip of desperate poverty. We are lucky to have escaped such bondage thousands of years ago, but this holiday reminds us about those who are not so lucky.

Of course, it also reminds us that Jewish holidays can be summarized in three simple sentences: "They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat!"

Rockin' Royal Wedding

2007-04-08T17:00:00.000+02:00

I’ve been to small weddings and large weddings, but never before have I been to a wedding that resembled a rock concert. This weekend, however, while camping at Nakambale, Nicola and I had the chance to attend a traditional Ndonga wedding party.

While we were resting at the campsite after a short walk in the bush, a rotund Ovambo man came up and introduced himself to us. He explained that he was one of the best men for his friend’s wedding, which had begun yesterday about 30km away. Today, the wedding celebration was to continue at traditional homestead of the groom’s family, just 2k from the campground. The preparations at the homestead were not quite ready, so he was planned to bring the wedding party to the campsite for a short period of time. When we asked who was getting married, we found out that the groom was the nephew of the traditional king of the Ndonga people, one of about six Ovambo tribes in Namibia. This was, in fact, a royal wedding!

An hour later, a small caravan of expensive SUVs and double-cab 4x4 pickups rolled into Nakambale. Forty or more well-dressed people spewed forth from the vehicles and commandeered the four picnic tables. Nicola, the three Finnish museum students who were staying at Nakambale, and I watched from 30 meters away, unsure what protocol was when a royal wedding party crashes your campsite. Do you invite them for tea?

At first glance, it seemed like a very typical western wedding party, in western clothing, drinking coca-colas and bottled beer. We gazed from the sidelines, unsure what to do. Then four of the bridesmaids, in shimmering purple dresses, went into the campsite’s kitchen. My water bottle was in the refridgerator there, so now that I had an excuse to introduce myself. I strode into the kitchen and said hello, and they turned out be very friendly. When they realized that I had a digital camera with me, all but one wanted to show off their outfits for the camera. I was more than happy to oblige.

The women you see in the pictures were bridesmaids for the groom, not the bride. In Ndonga weddings, they explained, both the groom and the bride have their own set of bridesmaids and groomsmen. I asked if the women on both sides had to buy the same dress, or if they were different. All the bridesmaids purchased the same dress, but the color of their shoes differed depending on whether the woman represented the bride or the groom.

The people in the wedding party were clearly not in dire poverty. The bridesmaids all wore expensive dresses and shoes, and most everyone was immaculately dressed. Many of these people were educated and had decent jobs, which may be a result of the way Namibia was colonized. Rather than trying to destroy traditional leaders like the French did, the Germans, British and Afrikaners recognized traditional leaders and paid them a salary to gain their cooperation. As a result, the royalty here also achieved monetary wealth and status in a western hierarchy. The people in the wedding party represent not only traditional royalty and but also modern wealth and status. The groom for example, not only stands to inherit the throne of the Ndonga kingdom, but he also makes a good living as a professional pilot.

After talking to the bridesmaids for awhile, the groom’s mother beckoned me to her. I came over and greeted her in the very best Oshiwambo I could muster. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I think I said about three sentences beyond the standard greeting and that impressed her. I squatted to talk with her, and to my surprise found out her English was excellent. She and her husband, who was a clergyman, spent time in Iowa while he was training for the church. They lived in Dubuque, and I wonder if they went to the same seminary that my friend Matt’s parents atteded. Talk about a small world, huh? At the end of our conversation, she invited Nicola, the Finns, and me to join them at the wedding reception. How could we say no to a royal wedding?

We began to prepare for the reception. Nicola and I looked like, well, crap. We had been camping and our “nice clothes” consisted of jeans and the least stinky t-shirts we could find. The three Finns were better off. Two of them had bought traditional Ovambo dresses just a few days before. When put on these colorful though somewhat shapeless outfits, the bridesmaids oohed and aahed. We snapped a couple more pictures, and then the wedding party jumped into their pickups and SUVs and sped off down the dirt road to the groom’s mother’s farm.

Our group followed on foot with Maggie, the proprietor of the campsite. The walk in the mid-afternoon wasn’t far, just one or two kilometers. As we approached the farm, we crested a small hill and the sight looked for all the world like a summer concert at an outdoor music venue. Several large tents were set up. Cars were parked haphazardly on the grass surrounding the tents. People were streaming in from several directions. For just a moment, I felt like I was walking down the road to see a the Grateful Dead at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin.

When we got closer to the site, Maggie directed us to a field perhaps 500m from the tents. Here, the bride and groom were slowly promenading toward the tents, surrounded by wedding party. The entire party stopped frequently as a variety of groups performed traditional entertainment in front of the couple. Two different groups of dancers performed several times each. A group of four young men riding bareback on horses rode by occasionally. Older women ululated, and a few women fanned – and occasionally hit – the couple with switches made from horse tails. Walking the 500m took perhaps 90 minutes. Surrounding the couple and lining their route were hundreds of people from the community. Many were dressed traditionally but some, especially a few younger men, just showed up wearing ratty trousers and t-shirts. So that’s what party-crashing looks like Ovamboland.

After the procession, it got kind of boring for awhile. There were a lot of speeches in Oshiwambo, and a long period of time where wrapped gifts and cash were given to the couple. Nothing was opened at the time, though I could make out some power tools whose shape was visible beneath the wrapping. By now I was getting hungry and wondering how the hosts could possibly feed all these people. Just then, the groom’s mother called for me to follow her so that my group could get into the food tents.

When we finally went inside the compound we came to the tents, under which tables and chairs had been set up to seat roughly 300 people. Not everyone made it inside; the family had gatekeepers to keep some out, but I believe even those were fed something outside the compound. There were large bowls of different salads, and then chicken and beef to eat. Instead of waiters and waitresses, the bridesmaids and groomsmen rushed around serving drinks, and I filled up on Tassie, a cheap red wine, mixed with Coca-Cola. We weren’t in the best section, so we got some food but not quite enough to fill our stomachs. A band played in the background, and the conversation with my unfamiliar table companions was just as awkward as at a wedding back home.

Then, just as darkness fell around 6:30 pm, it was all over. Even though the band was still playing, only a few children remained, listening to the music. Workers began to stack the tables. Everyone seemed to know that it was time to leave, and scores of people streamed away from the farm. This time, we caught a ride back in a pickup truck. By 7:30 we were back at the tents, amazed, surprised, and exhilarated to have seen a Ndonga Royal Wedding.

A Finn Time in Nakambale

2007-04-07T16:25:00.000+02:00

My birthday week coincided with Easter, which meant a long weekend break from school. Over the holiday, I went to Nakambale with Nicola, the German volunteer who also works at my site. Nakambale, located about 140 km from Outapi, was the site of the first mission to Ovamboland, founded by a Finn named Martin Rautanen. He came to Ovamboland around 1870 and spent the rest of his life here, probably because he had never seen so much sun in his life. Rautanen built a church and a mission school, and translated the bible into Oshiwambo. Today, the church and the graveyard remain standing. The old mission house has been rebuilt and turned into a museum detailing missionary life and Ovambo culture circa 1870. There is also a small campsite and a dilapidated traditional homestead.

When we first got there, Nicola and I were just hoping that it would be open, because we weren’t able to book in advance. Luckily we met Maggie, the extremely friendly manager, who showed us around and told us we could throw our tent down anywhere. The rest of the people camping there were mostly Finns, plus a couple of old Ovambo guys who were rebuilding the homestead. There were Finnish missionary students here on holiday, and another group of Finnish museum students doing an internship in Namibia. I had only met one Finn in my life prior to this weekend, and then I met ten of them. Life sure can be Finny sometimes. (Sorry, but I can't help myself. While volunteering here for low wages, I've been punnyless).

The museum museum was pretty interesting. It was built in the old mission house where Martin lived with his wife and his five children (or six, I can’t remember now) children, of whom only three made it to adulthood. Half of the exhibits were about mission life, which looked pretty similar to a pioneer lifestyle in the U.S. in the 1800s. Most of the furniture was practical and solid, made from rough-hewn wood. The missus used an old, foot-powered Singer sewing machine, and the wagon that brought the Rautanens to Ovamboland looked similar to a pioneer era prairie schooner.

The more interesting part of the museum depicted the Ovambos in the late 1800s. Just over 100 years ago, the people in Ovamboland looked very different than they do today. Back then, they dressed in animal skins, the women wore headdresses, and neither gender covered their chests. The land was more heavily forested and full of game; as a result, hunting with bows and arrows was important. Today, many Ovambos wear trousers or jeans, with t-shirts sporting images of favorite musicians such as Gazza and The Dogg.
What surprised me in the pictures was the similarity between the Ovambos of yesterday and the Himbas of today. The Himba are a very traditional tribe of pastoral herders who live in a very dry and rocky area just west of Ovamboland. Even today the men dress in animal skins, the women wear headdresses but are bare-chested, and the families live in small huts. In short, they look today like the Ovambos of yesteryear. Why did the Ovambos modernize while the Himbas did not? Why do the Ovambos drive 4x4 Toyota pickups while the Himbas still follow their cattle? Was it just that missionaries came to Ovamboland first? Did the remote nature of Himba territory impede diffusion of Western culture? Or are there other factors at work?

Still pondering these questions, Nicola and I left the museum and wandered towards the old graveyard and church. Then, the sunset came. I sat down and let the flaming sun fill my soul. When I was a little child watching sunsets over the water in Wisconsin, their beauty made me feel a connection to a higher power. Since then, I always try to catch a sunset if possible because of their beauty and their spirituality. The spiritual feeling is not always there, but sometimes it is. This night, after a good day of exploring, I was grateful to feel it again. It was a fitting way to observe Easter and Passover.

When we woke the next morning, Nicola celebrated Easter by eating a piece of boring cake with a chunk of chocolate on it. I celebrated by running for 85 minutes. After that we took a short walk, found a bar named for my hometown team, and prepared to go home. As we started to pack up, however, we were interrupted – by a wedding!

Indian Passover in Ovamboland

2007-04-05T13:40:00.000+02:00

Several friends and family have asked, jokingly or seriously, what I was doing for Passover here. After the entry about slaughtering the goat, one person wanted to know if there was a Pascal lamb that I had my sights set upon. Although we are right now only halfway through the holiday, I can tell already it is unlike any other Passover I’ve ever had.

At first, I thought I would go to the main town in the north where a couple of Jewish Peace Corps Volunteers were gathering to have a Seder. Then, the host’s house lost electricity so we couldn’t cook, and the main organizing Jew backed out, so at the last minute I had no Seder at all. I was pretty bummed, and so I talked to my friends Robin and Nicola, who agreed to let me do a Seder at their house. But at this point it was too late to do one for the first night, so we agreed to do it a week later – still during Passover, but not on the first or second night like we are supposed to!

Next, for the first time in probably 20 years, I decided to try to observe Passover this year. I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with wanting to find a way to establish an identity here that the folks at the mission can understand. They are religious, and they understand and respect someone else who is following the codes of a religion even if it is not their own. Or perhaps it is their example of devotion that made me want to do it. Or, perhaps, the bread I had was going moldy. I don’t know.

Anyway, adhering to the Passover rules has been fairly easy, although I’m not eating products that are rabbi-certified. For breakfast I’m mostly eating Morvite, which is a sugary instant sorghum cereal. It’s kind of like Cream of Wheat except you can add cold or hot water to it, and I discovered that it tastes really good when mixed with one spoonful of peanut butter. When I eat from the hostel, the staple is oshifima porridge, which is just ground pearl millet and water, so that’s fine.

One remaining questions was whether or not the rice, fish and veggies “pot of the week” that I made is Kosher. My friend Ronnie Broudo told me on the phone that my people, Ashkenazis, don’t believe that rice is kosher for Passover. His people, the Sephardim, believe it is. Immediately I responded, “Well, I’m south of the equator now, like a lot of the Sephardic Jews, so rice is kosher for me this year.” Ronnie is used to me making up my own rules about religion, and just laughed.

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was also Maundy Thursday and the last day of school before a four-day Easter break. I didn’t have big plans for the day because most of the teachers leave for their homes on long weekends, and besides, I couldn’t have a beer with them anyway! I had resigned myself to a quiet evening so when Sister Khotaram, my favorite of the Indian nuns, invited me to a small celebration after Thurday evening’s mass, I readily accepted. Then she told me that they were celebrating Passover.

Those of you who know little about Maundy Thursday, like me, might not have realized that Maundy Thursday celebrates the Last Supper, which was a Passover meal. So I was going to be able to have a form of Seder after all, even if it was with the Indian nuns. When 9 o’clock rolled around and the Mass and Adoration had finished, I grabbed my Maxwell House Haggadah and headed over to the Indian nuns’ house.

When I arrived, Sister Annie ushered me into a modest room, perhaps 15’x20’, that had several couches and about a dozen chairs arranged against the walls in a jagged circle. I chatted with Nicola, my German neighbor who is a volunteering here as an occupational therapist, and Father Joe, one of three priests here at the mission. I showed them the Haggadah, and was a bit embarrassed by the big sticker on the front of it which said:

Buy Maxwell House Coffee
(any can or jar)
GET ONE FREE HAGGADAH
while store supplies last

So much for making me seem particularly devout! Several of the Indian sisters moved about, arranging snacks and chairs. Sister Khotaram, who is my favorite because her eyes crinkle with humor, brought in an electric fan. Sister Daisy, who is serious but pleasant, solemly turned on a lava lamp.

Finally, the rest of the guests arrived. Altogether we were about 20. Two Indian priests were there including Father Joe and his younger counterpart, Father Byjou. Five Indian nuns were there, and then perhaps eight or nine Ovambo nuns came in as well. I don’t know the Ovambo nuns as well, because only one of them, Sister Kahala, is attached to the school. She is the matron for the girl’s hostel, so I don’t see her too frequently, and she scares me a big because she usually seems very stern. The party was rounded out by the ‘foreigners’: a Philippine woman named May, Nicola, and myself.

Father Joe began a brief service, explaining tonight they were celebrating how the Jews “passed over” into Sinai from the land of slavery, and also how Jesus helped people pass into heaven. I refrained from commenting that Passover meant when God passed over the homes of the Jews while slaughtering all the other first born. Then Father Joe read a short passage from Exodus, describing God’s instructions to Moses on how to observe the holiday. I didn’t know that you could eat either a goat or a lamb for the holiday, but there it was, right in Exodus.

Then Father Joe came to the, ‘matza,’ which looked like was a piece orangey-brown flatcake. It filled up a circular plate and the middle of it a small cross lay flat. Next to the bread was a pitcher of sweet milk on which floated another cross. In his sing-song Indian accent, Father Joe explained, “We are eating this unleavenèd bread tonight to remind us of the Passover that Jesus celebrated at the Last Supper, and of the sacrifice that Jesus made the next day.” It’s the first time I’d ever celebrated a Passover for Jesus!

Next, Father Joe broke the ‘matza’ and handed out small pieces to each of the guests, mentioning to them that if they wanted to more about the Passover they could ask me, because I was Jewish. Trying to contribute, I volunteered to say the Hebrew prayer over matza before we ate it. Father Joe was delighted and all eyes turned to me. I realized at that moment what a stupid offer I had made, because I didn’t exactly remember the prayer! The one I remembered was for bread, not matza! So, with about 18 devout Catholics looking on, I improvised, “Baruch ata adonai, elohaynu melech haolam, ha motzi lechem min ha matza.” Did I even get close?

Then we ate. For all of you who don’t like matza, you need to come to an Indian Passover in Ovamboland. The nuns’ version was a flatbread made of rice powder, delicately seasoned with Indian spices and then fried. It tasted like a potato bhaji, and is by far the best form of matza I’ve had. Then we had soft drinks and fruit. We talked about food, and I showed a picture of the Seder plate to the Ovambo nuns sitting near me, explaining the symbolism of the different items.

Finally, Sister Francis, the delicate-boned Indian nun who teaches math, asked if it was indeed my birthday. I answered yes, explaining how my birthday often fell during Passover, and how I hated that as a kid because it meant that I couldn’t eat cake. The assembled crowd, both Indian and Ovambo, thought this was hilarious, and one of the sisters brought over a peach and an apple for me. Father Byjou said, “Now you will have apple-peach cake!” and then the whole group sang “Happy Birthday.” I sat there, looking at the fusion of Ovambos and Indians, seasoned with a dash of German and Philippino, and marveled at my very special Passover.

Sports Competition at Okalongo Senior Secondary School

2007-04-04T13:18:00.000+02:00

On Saturday, March 31 Canisianum competed in a tournament against 20 other senior secondary schools, and I wrangled a spot in the cab of one of the two bakkies (pickup trucks) that transported the teams there. As you can see from the pictures below, a spot inside the cab is a coveted place, reserved for elders. We drove with perhaps twenty kids in the back of each pickup for about 30 miles down a rutted, pockmarked gravel road to the smart-looking Okalongo Senior Secondary school.

The sporting tournament was an all-day event and at times felt like an outdoor carnival. A DJ/announcer set up his table and speakers facing the soccer field, and Namibian music, mostly rap and kwaito (township rap/reggae), played constantly. Kids from the school sold cool drinks, fruit, and potato chips, and an enterprising woman barbecued up some tasty pieces of goat and beef. There were also a variety of cuca shops nearby, and I suspect that many of the kids wandered away from the sports field when it wasn’t their turn to play, buying things and occasionally trying to sneak a beer.

Probably the best part of the whole day was seeing my principal, Mr. Kalipi, arrive at the tournament sporting a professional sports jersey. Take a careful look, and those of you from my home town may be in for a surprise.

In all, my school fielded three different teams: boys’ soccer, girls’ netball, and boys’ volleyball. Being an amateur volleyball player, I spent most of my time watching the volleyball team. Our team was excellent, despite being the shortest in the tournament. The reason that we are so short is that our school is private, and kids who fail a grade are kicked out. As a result, our grade eleven and grade twelve students are about 17 or 18 years old. At other schools, there are several students in their early 20s. Even though they were the shortest team in the tournament, they were by far the best organized. They almost always had three hits on the ball, and were very good at setting up smashes, even though some of the players could not even clear the net. The volleyball team won three matches the first day, and then the next day they came back and qualified for the final, which will be the weekend of the April 15.

The boys playing soccer also won their game the first day, although they did not score the winning goal. Their opponents, under only moderate pressure, tried to kick the ball to their own goalie. The ball bounced over the goalie’s head, right into the net for a score. The next day, when they came back to play the second round game, their opponents were not so helpful, and they lost a tie-breaker shootout 3-4.

The one game that I couldn’t get into was netball, a variant of basketball played by teams of six girls each. The girls aren’t allowed to run or dribble the ball, so the key to winning the game is excellent passing. As each girl caught the ball, she would whirl around, taking her one allowed step in a way that allowed her to survey the entire court to find an open teammate. Once a team managed to get the ball under the hoop, there was little competition. The girls are not allowed to jump to block shots, so it was pretty much guaranteed that, if they could get the ball downcourt, they would score. Unfortunately our girls lost by a score of 11-9.

At the end of 12 hours in the sun I was drained and exhausted, but the kids were exhilarated because both of the boys’ teams had advanced to the second round. As our overloaded bakkie came into the school gates, the players started a victory chant. It sounded like a traditional call and response song, adapted for sports use:

Leader: Aasamane!
Group: Ugh, ugh!
Leader: Aasamane!
Group: Ooh, ooh!
Leader: Canisia!
Group: Ugh, ugh!
Leader: Aasamane!
Group: Ooh, ooh!

When we debarked from the pickup, I asked one of the kids what they had been singing. “I don’t know what it means,” he answered. “It’s a song from South Africa…I think it’s in Zulu. We just heard it on TV” Once again, modern technology bumped its head into traditional culture and created something brand new.

Getting Lost(TM) at Ruacana Falls

2007-03-30T10:18:00.000+02:00

This past weekend a holiday celebrating Namibia’s independence in 1991. As a result, the school was closed from Wednesday to Sunday, and I took the opportunity to visit Ruacana Falls with some other volunteers. I invited Nicola, a German volunteer who just arrived at Anamulenge, along for the trip.

Nicola and I left the mission on Wedneday afternoon, and we ‘hiked’ to Ruacana. Although I’ve only been here three months, ‘hiking’ seems totally normal to me and it was a surprise to experience it through Nicola’s eyes. To get a hike when you are between recognized hike points, you just stand on the side of the road and dangle your hand, limp wristed, when cars pass. If someone slows down, you ask if they are going your way and then jump in. Our first hike was just for three or four kilometers into town, and we only did that because it was hot and I was carrying a lot in my backpack. The driver was willing to drive us to the falls but at a ridiculous price, so we got out and found another taxi who would take us the 100km to Ruacana.

The picture above is of our gas station, and the hike point to Ruacana. I took some weeks ago, but it is one of my favorites that I've taken in Namibia so far! Anyhow, back to the story.

In short order, we found a taxi (which merely means a four-door sedan car), and I asked the driver if he was leaving, “Now now,” meaning very soon. He assured me he was, and when I climbed in, I thought there was a chance we actually would leave soon because there were three in the back and two up front. Even so, the car was not yet full enough. The driver cruised town looking for more fares, eventually adding two more, one up front and one in back. This seemed perfectly normal to me, but Nicola kept chuckling, alternating between confused and amused glances, and I realized that even getting from A to B is a little unusual here.

After we were loaded up, the taxi zoomed off, but shortly stopped to drive across a soccer field and deliver one of the passengers at a small cuca shop, which is a cross between a general store and a bar. By the side of the soccer field, I saw one of my students, watching the game, and waved. Then we were off again, Nicola shaking her head again in wonderment. The rest of the ride was uneventful, save for some unpleasant negotiations about price when our driver dropped us off. He thought I gypped him, even though I had clearly stated what I was willing to pay. Even when I upped the amount by $5 each, he wasn’t happy. On the way out of town two days later, he was miffed and wouldn’t give me a lift. I guess I that negotiation didn’t go as well as I thought.

We spent two nights camping at a lovely campsite called Hippo Pools, which is perhaps 1 or 2 km below the waterfalls on the Kunene River. The Kunene divides Namibia from Angola, and a hydroelectric dam just above the falls provides electricity for about half of Namibia. As a result of the dam and the inconsistent rains, the falls are sometimes vigorous and sometimes quite tame. We are still in the rainy season now, so the falls were strong. There are signs at the campsite warning people that if they hear a siren, they should to high ground because the water level may rise rapidly, and I’ve read that the water level in the river will vary with time of day and amount of electricity usage.

Those technical concerns aside, the campsite was great. We had a large, flat, sandy area to set up our tents, a large circular brai pit to cook our sausages, and an easy-to-climb rocky overlook from which we watched the sunset. The views from the ledge were great. In the pictures, you can see a small island in the middle of the river, and the lovely sunset we saw from the top of the ledge. In the distance, beyond the river, is Angola.

We spent the night making a fire and getting to know many of the Peace Corps Volunteers we were camping with. Many of them were from the southern half of the Namibia, so far away that I will likely never see them again, but it was interesting to hear how there experience differed greatly from that of volunteers in the north. They also dealt with poverty, but in the south of the country the Afrikaners hold the lion’s share of the land, causing much resentment among indigenous tribes. As a result, they must frequently deal with racism, both against whites and amongst different tribal groups. In the north, which is much more monocultural, there are few concerns with race.

I also met a crazy couple from England. They had just driven to Namibia from London on a motorbike. That’s right, a motorbike. And not even a big thing like a Honda Goldwing. Nope, these two were basically on a souped-up BMW dirtbike. They told me this was their third overland trip to Africa, but it was the story of their first trip that really grabbed my attention. On that trip, they drove from London to Capetown via the Middle East and eastern Africa, taking nine months for the trip. Then they packed the bike onto a boat bound for Buenos Aires, and drove from the southernmost tip of South America up to Vancouver. Then they packed the bike on another boat bound for Australia, where they worked for awhile because they had run out of money. Then there was one final boat journey to mainland Asia, and they drove home from there. Total trip length: four years!! I have no idea how these people supported themselves for this time, but maybe they are royal scions of some sort. They were interesting, to say the least.

The next day, we hiked about 5k to Ruacana Falls along the paved road. From the overlook, there are about 500 steps to get down to the base of the falls. More than half of these steps were constantly covered in spray from the falls, so by the time we got to the base, we were already soaked. When we got the base, we left our cameras in a small covered area and scrambled for maybe 100 metres over a section of rocks. There, we found a small area where we could go in the water, protected from the current. Rainbows were everywhere, created by the mist from the falls. At one point, I could see a rainbow and both of its ends quite clearly.

There were some buildings at the base of the falls that looked like they were built for a previous, and now inactive, power station. That area looked just like it was from the set of the TV show Lost. We were surrounded by spray and green growth, and in the middle of nature’s bonanza were strange, man-made structures which looked abandoned yet possibly still functional. When a different group of volunteers arrived, we joked about how we were “The Others” and which ones of their group we might take!

Overall, the weekend was a great break from teaching, a refreshing change of scenery from sand to green, and a good chance to make new friends. The Others aren't so bad as you think!

Carnivorous Doubts

2007-03-20T08:24:00.000+02:00

Warning: The pictures in this post are graphic and may be unsuitable for children.

People in Ovamboland eat meat, and a lot of it. They eat chicken, goat, lamb, cow, pig, dog, fish, and frogs, and they don’t seem to care if they are eating flesh or bones. The only readily available meat that they don’t eat is donkey. Because most Ovambos keep animals, they do not need to go to the store to get dinner. Instead, they catch one of the chickens that is running around the homestead, or take one of goats from the kraal. They kill it, skin it, and cook it right away. When I went to visit Meme Monica (see earlier post), she honored me by killing a goat and roasting it for supper.

I began to wonder, “Could I do that? Could I kill my own meat?” If not, then I had no right to eat meat at all. Eating meat means killing animals, even if your source of meat is Jewel or Stop ‘n’ Shop. Could I do it, I wondered? Ten days ago, I had my chance to find out. My Peace Corps friend, Robin, bought a goat, and I asked if I could be present when it was slaughtered. As it turned out, I not only watched but helped.

Shikuma and Susanna, Robin’s Ovambo friends, arrived around 6pm with a medium-sized, brownish goat which cost about N$500, or US$70. Shikuma walked the goat into Robin’s yard, and we sat it down at the base of a tree while we gathered the knives and bowls we would need. Then he tied the hind legs together, and hoisted the goat upside down over a tree branch, so the blood would drain out quickly. He told us that there were two common ways to kill a goat: you could slice its throat or suffocate it. I asked which one was more humane, and he said the goat felt less pain from the cutting, so we decided to do that one.

Before we killed the goat, I asked if it was customary to say a short prayer first. That seemed logical to me, given all the praying that happens down here. They pray over everything. The kids have to go to church 10 times a week. The school week begins and ends with a prayer. When I went to a professional development workshop on debate, the we prayed. What could be more sacred than the taking of a life to give life? The Ovambos saw things differently. They roared with laughter at the idea of praying for the goat, so I said a little Jewish/Deistic prayer to myself, and then we got started.

With the goat hanging upside down from the tree, Susanna held the forelegs while I gripped the horns tightly in both hands. Shikuma took out the sharpest knife in Robin’s kitchen, which was a chef’s knife. He asked me if I was ready, counted to there, then sliced the neck. It was a clean cut, and within seconds the poor creature’s blood was draining quickly into a bowl we had placed under the tree. The little goat’s body twitched and spasmed several times, but it was all over in a minute’s time. I felt like I was on automatic pilot, holding tightly onto the horns and not feeling much of anything at the time. In fact, I felt some exhilaration that it wasn’t as bad as I had expected.

After about five minutes, when most of the blood had drained, Shikuma showed us how to skin the goat and then cut it into pieces. The killing done, this part of the work was oddly fascinating. The skinning process was pretty straightforward. He began with one long, very shallow cut down the belly, and then slowly worked the skin off as you go around the body. We held the edge of the skin in one hand and curled my other hand into a fist, working it between the flesh and the skin. That felt a little creepy – the body was still quite warm as I pulled the skin from the abdomen and back. Because many of the Ovambos use the skin to make shoes, Shikuma taught us that it was very important not to rip or cut the skin as we went.

Once the skin was off, it was time to cut off the meat and the organs. We started by hacking off the forelegs with a panga, a thick traditional knife approximately 1.5 feet long. Next we cut through the rib cage, and out popped all the innards. It was fascinating how quickly I could identify the various parts: the stomach, large and small intestines looked just like they do in biology textbooks. Shikuma taught us that in the old days, different parts of the goat were reserved for different people. For example, the neighbors got part of the chest, friends get a leg, and so forth. Now, however, those traditions are falling by the wayside.

When we were finished cutting the meat, Shikuma took the head, hooves, stomach and intestines, all parts that Robin didn’t want. We cooked up the liver and the kidneys immediately by pan-frying them with spices, tomato and onion. They were absolutely delicious, and I remember walking away feeling rather pleased that I had been able to help. Ah, I thought fondly, there are some good meat-eating days ahead of me.

The next night, my mother phoned.

I told her proudly about slaughtering the goat. She said that she could never do that, that she could never kill an animal.

“But Mom, I didn’t actually kill it. That is a different thing. I don’t know if I can do that. I only held the horns.”

Dryly, she replied, “Yes, that’s what the Germans were saying in 1945.”

Leave it to a Jewish mother to conflate eating meat with organized genocide. Nonetheless, over the next few days I kept looking at the pictures I took from that night. One in particular troubles me. It is the picture of the goat tied up to the tree and struggling. In the next picture, I’ve zoomed in on the goat’s face. He’s clearly terrified. It’s not clear whether he is merely in pain or if he knows what will happen next. But either way, the look in his eyes is hard to forget.

I’m curious to hear what readers’ thoughts are, especially because I know there are some vegetarians out there. Does this story confirm everything you feel is wrong with eating meat? What about the people here in Ovamboland, who subsist on meat because there isn’t enough rainfall to grow crops regularly? Is it ok for them, but not for those with a choice? My dear dedicated carnivores, have you ever killed your food? If so, how did you feel? If not, could you?

Ten days later, I haven’t become a vegetarian. Some days meat is completely unappetizing, but over the weekend I went to another brai and devoured several slices of beef. I’m still thinking about this whole event, and have come to no conclusions yet. Although I doubt that I'll give up meat, for now I’m really happy when the hostel serves butternut squash instead of fish or beef.

Miss Valentine's Pageant

2007-03-12T12:04:00.001+02:00

Just a few weeks ago, many of my friends in States settled in to watch the Academy Awards, a spectacle of glitz and glam. A month earlier, the students of Canisianum also produced a spectacle of glitz and glam, the Miss Valentine’s Pageant. It’s taken me awhile to write about this event, because I was at a low point when it happened, and I viewed it in the worst light, as evidence of Ovambos rejecting their culture in favor of a western style. Now, while western styles are part of the pageant, I realize there are some uniquely Namibian elements to it as well.

Beauty pageants are a big deal here, probably since the Miss World (or Universe, I don’t know which) pageant was held here shortly after independence. The Miss Valentine’s Pageant at Canisianum lasted nearly four hours for a competition involving only seven contestants. Like the Oscars, it involved a variety of costume changes, strange musical performances, and waiting around for something to happen. Most of Canisianum’s 362 students, the teachers, nuns, Father Joe, and many community members came out to watch. There were a couple of students who were talented dancers, and a rap quintet that bravely carried on even when the sound system went dead.

But like the Oscars, the highlight was the fashion. Each of the contestants appeared in at least four outfits. The first outfit seemed to be an ‘urban hip’ look, which was frighteningly similar to U.S. fashion. Then there was Canisianum’s version of lingerie competition, with many of the girls wearing their bras on stage. Next was a ‘traditional’ look, featuring one or two girls in full traditional garb but most wearing a short skirt in a traditional print. Finally, there was an evening wear section. These girls must have spent considerable cash on their outfits, at least the gowns. The evening wear looked similar to what U.S. students would wear to prom. Because I know many of you probably care more about the fashion than I do, I’ll leave space here for large pictures of some of the more interesting outfits.

Beyond the outfits, there was a very minimal talent portion of the competition. Each of the girls came up to the stage and were asked one question, such as “What is the message that is most important for the people?” Yeah, the questions didn’t make sense half of the time. One of the brightest students in the school was the emcee. Her eyes rolled everytime an idiotic question was put to the students. Regardless of the actual question, if a contestant smiled and gave a confident-sounding answer in English, she earned points. Then again, I had been here only a month, and I was still having trouble understanding what my students said. So perhaps it was my comprehension, and not the contestants’ English, that was mangled.

One of the things which I found fascinating and disheartening was the prevalence of Western fashions. One of the boys was wearing his long leather trenchcoat. I think it makes him look like one of the students from the Columbine massacre, but he loves it. He even wears it with his school uniform! In the second picture, take a look at the five ninth graders. Although they are a little smaller than ninth grade African-Americans, in other respects they look just like my students back home.

When I attended the pageant, I was strongly disappointed that things were not more ‘different’ than back home. But looking at the pictures again, I can see how proud the kids are to compete, and how over two hundred people crowded into our hall to watch the spectacle. For the most part, the kids just had a lot of fun, cheering for their friends, ogling the fashions, and enjoying the performances (including an impromptu one by their teachers). And one of my students, a ninth grader named Anna Henok, won!

In many ways the pageant is indeed western in style, but that is only one aspect of Ovambo culture. There are indeed many examples of a headlong rush to modernize in this country. Hopefully, over time, the modern influences will meld with traditional Ovambo culture to create something new and wonderful.

Hangin' with the Principal and PCVs

2007-03-07T11:26:00.000+02:00

The past week has been very full and busy, and hopefully I’ve started to find my balance a little bit better here. On Wednesday, I spent a day with Mr. Werner Kalipi, my principal, He is a tate kulu (respected male elder) who has been principal here for 20 years. He has a round face, close-cropped black hair speckled with grey, and a belly that often defeats his efforts at tucking in his shirttails. He’s a geography and Afrikaans teacher by trade who is fluent in Oshiwambo, and English as well, and is reputed to be a fierce disciplinarian. We spent the day driving all over Ovamboland, collecting signatures for government forms, running errands, and buying books for the school. Our school has a larger budget than the government schools, Mr. Kalipi bought many books for the staff that day.

It was interesting and a little uncomfortable to spend the day with him, especially because I have been feeling very mixed about my usefulness at the Canisianum, the Exeter of Ovamboland. I couldn’t tell Mr. Kalipi that, so instead, I asked him about teaching in the pre-independence days, when many Ovambo students ran away from home to fight against the South African Defence Forces. He said that he had supported the students, which surprised me. He seemed to be a man who follows rules, but in that case he definitely broke the rules by urging students to join the resistance movement in Angola.

There was one disappointing aspect of the trip with Mr. Kalipi. After a full day of running errands and shopping in Oshakati, the main town of the north, he decided it was time for lunch before we drove home. Then he got into the van and drove us to the one place I swore I would avoid up here: KFC! When he walked in, I followed as if on remote control, and walked away with a thigh and a leg, original recipe. What surprised me was that after eating that grease monster, I felt a little bloated and disgusting. My body isn't used to that much grease anymore.

***

This weekend, I traveled to a nearby town, Okahao, for a volunteer party. It was like the U.N. of volunteers: four different agencies and five different nationalities were represented. The bulk of attendees were Americans, working either through the Peace Corps or WorldTeach. Several other volunteers, from Britain and India, were there under VSO (Volunteer Service Overseas) auspices, and there was one guy from a Swiss NGO. A random Australian was also there, volunteering with one of the U.S. groups. In true Namibian fashion, we held a braii where we drank many pints of the local brew and grilled goat meat.

Talking with all the other volunteers, especially the Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), was good for me. I had been feeling a little sorry for myself, feeling that I had too ‘cushy’ a work site. I found out that some of the PCVs were in much harsher situations, but others were living in comparative luxury. For example, I met several volunteers who are teaching at schools deep in the bush. They are living with host families on homesteads, and have a long way to go to town. However, most of them have a tap for fresh water, electricity, and their own small kitchen. On the other hand, there were several who are living in situations like mine, and at least one who has a posh apartment in Oshakati, the big city in the north. So the doubts of “Should I have done Peace Corps or WorldTeach?” were in some ways alleviated. The PCVs were a neat bunch. Many of them are happy to rough it, and their idea of how to spend their time off is to go camping or hiking. One guy is growing his hair out to look like Jerry Garcia, and they generally were gregarious and very laid-back. My kind of people.

There was one Indian volunteer at the party, Reshme, who is a social worker at the Okahao hospital. She was at the party wearing a traditional sari, and made samosas. I asked her what she missed most from home. She told me that she missed her friends, and her motorcycle the most. I asked, “a motorcycle, like a Harley?” She nodded. The image of this woman in a sari on a hog kept me chuckling for several days, until another volunteer told me that she had probably meant a moped. Drats.

Connecting with all the other volunteers helped alleviate the loneliness, and also gave me some perspective on my work here. Although I may be based at a comparatively affluent school, my teaching load is light and I have time for other projects. One idea that has been bouncing around my head is to help out with other school libraries in the area, which has become one of my goals for the following week.

Daily Life

2007-02-26T12:57:00.000+02:00

I’ve had several entries in my head that I want to write, but they are both of the “look how weird things are here” variety, and I’m kind of tired of those. Perhaps you are too. Instead, as I’m starting to finally settle into living here, a routine has taken shape and that’s what I want to share.

School takes up a good portion of my day. I’m usually up around 6:30 a.m. Depending on the status of our water supply, I might take a shower. This week, the water wasn’t working so well so I skipped it until today. When I woke up today, there was a hard rain and I put out a bucket to collect the water coming off the roof, then had a bracingly crisp bucket shower. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I stand a better chance of being able to shower, because the hostel students go to church at 6:30 a.m. By 7:15, sometimes there’s enough pressure for a shower, and then I have a very Western breakfast of granola and milk. Well, at least it’s long-life milk.

School officially starts at 8:00, but teachers are supposed to be there by 7:30. For the first couple of weeks, I sat in the staff room at 7:30, often alone, occasionally fuming that no one else was there. Now I make the 60 second walk to school around 7:50. Twice a week we have to be a little early for the morning assembly, which has a prayer, a hymn, a bunch of announcements, and the singing of the school and national anthems. The school anthem cracks me up every time I hear it, because for the first three weeks I thought they were singing, “Canisium, [my school] the best education. We learn thing [sic] and prosper.” Then I just now found out the line is “We learn, think, and prosper.” Well, beam me up, Scotty. That sounds much better.

My official school day is actually not very demanding, at least not yet. The school holds classes from 8:00 to 1:40, with only a twenty minute break. Then comes lunchtime, followed by afternoon classes and/or study hall, depending on the grade. I teach three classes, two ninth different ninth-grade classes and one eleventh grade class. The class schedule is quite varied however. For example, one day I may have class 9A period one, class 9B period 3, and then class 11C for periods 6 and 7. The next day, I might teach 9B period one, 9A period 6, and 11C period 8. If that’s confusing to you, then you know why I don’t have my schedule memorized after a month of school. Because of the weird schedule and extra classes in the afternoons, I actually teach my 11th graders for four periods on Tuesdays!

Three or four days a week, I also work in the library with my newly-chosen library staff. Our library is open 12 hours weekly, during lunch time and after study hall. I’m pretty impressed with the collection for a small school in a developing country. We’ve got over 1,500 volumes for a school of nearly 400 students. The students use the library frequently, and my staff so far seems great. I have many hopes for improving both the collection and the organization, and possibly trying to develop the libraries of some of the nearby schools as well.

In the late afternoons, I often go for a run through the fields and villages (see earlier post), then get my dinner from the hostel kitchen. It’s usually oshifima with tinned fish or pasta with butternut squash or wieners and ketchup. The latter is by far my least favorite, but still it’s better than cooking on my own. I know, I can hear my friend Ronnie groan as I write this, but hey, it saves me 45 minutes of cooking while surrounded by kids, and it only costs me about US $0.45 per meal.

Once a week, I head over to the house of Robin, the Peace Corps Volunteer who lives on the mission. We’ve been trying to get me into that house, but it seems the Catholic mission has some issues with unmarried people living under the same roof. As a result, she’s got a three bedroom house to herself and I have a dorm room. Not that I’m bitter. Really!

Anyway, once a week we get together to hang out, eat, and watch tv. She works as health extension worker doing HIV/AIDS awareness, and so I get to hear her stories of driving into the bush to do outreach or helping out at the hospital. She’s a better cook than I am too, aided partly by the goat which is in her freezer. A few months back she bought a whole goat through one of her Ovambo coworkers, and is only just now finishing it off. After we eat, talk, complain, and sometimes have a beer, we settle in for a little TV, American style. We set up her laptop on the living room table and watch one episode of the old medical show, St. Elsewhere, which just came out on DVD. It’s a fantastic show, and it has some many great guest stars that it feels like watching the old episodes of Mash. In the first six episodes, we’ve seen guest appearances by Tim Robbins, Ally Sheedy, Christopher Guest, and the mother from Everybody Loves Raymond.

Twice a week I have to monitor evening study, which is one of my least favorite tasks. I come on for the 7-8 time slot, replacing one of the Indian nuns. They kids are golden for the nuns, who are scarier than I am. After study hall, a student named Sakaria teaches me Oshivambo twice a week. He’s an excellent teacher, especially for a student. He’s patient and has a good grasp of the grammatical structures of his own language. Tonight, he surprised me by giving me homework! It only took five minutes to finish, but I was touched.

The only part of life that I haven’t really figured out yet is a social life. It’s difficult to meet people who are neither teenagers nor Indian nuns, neither of whom I particularly want to have a drink with after work. So that’s what I’m working on now – figuring out how to meet people, Oshivambo-style.

Simple Pleasures

2007-02-22T12:51:00.000+02:00

The water pipe broke and I’ve had to do bucket showers all week. Plus, we had a big storm and lost electricity for a full 24 hours. I love it!!

The Slums of Outapi

2007-02-15T12:24:00.000+02:00

I had a really interesting and somewhat surreal experience with one of the development studies classes today. Development studies is an interesting subject -- only 11th and 12th graders take it at my school, and it's a combination of history, geography, economics, environmental science and urban planning. The teacher for development studies is Jona, who is also Meme Monica's nephew. He invited me along on his senior class field trip to Ohnhimbu, our local shanty town, and then to the open market and the town council. The kids had been focusing on health issues in their class discussions, so they spent time examining toilets and areas for dumping garbage.

First, the class visited Outapi’s shanty town. In Onhimbu, there are shared community toilets, some shacks made of corrugated metal, and tiny houses made of poured concrete. It certainly was poorer than in the town proper, but I’ve seen worse. People get their water from communal taps, but the water is treated and safe to drink. Few houses here have electricity, but that is also true of the homesteads out in the countryside. There is a small market near a pond of rainwater which was becoming a bit stagnant. To be honest, I liked that it didn’t look orderly and westernized, but rather was a higgledy-piggledy jumble of small vendors.

While we were walking through Onhimbu, some of the students were vocal about how terrible it was there. I asked the kids how these houses differed from their own, and they indignantly replied “Mr. K, our homes have nice yards that are swept. And we have big homes. Not small ones like these.”

“How big is your home?” I asked one student.

“My home has nine bedrooms,” she replied.

“And how many are living there?”

“Oh, we are four.”

Oh, dear. There we were, 30 private school kids in nice uniforms and their two nattily-dressed teachers, wandering through the shanty town. It’s as if I were teaching in an affluent suburb of New York City, and took my students on a tour of the grittier areas surrounding my former school in Jamaica, Queens. On the one hand, it’s good to expose fortunate students to poverty. On the other hand, it just felt strange to me. Aren’t I supposed to be helping the people who live Onhimbu, not the ones who can afford a private education? And what about those who live in the much poorer parts of Africa, with per capita incomes in the hundreds of dollars instead of the low thousands?

After spending 15 or 20 minutes wandering through Onhimbu, we went to the recently constructed open market. This outdoor market space was clean and well-organized. It also had slabs of meat sitting unrefrigerated all day long. People there also sold a locally-made moonshine called tombe which was consumed out of a communal glass. To someone who grew up with western supermarkets, the carcasses hanging all day was just as disturbing as the poverty in Onhimbu.

Finally, we arrived at the town council building, which was a newly-built, modern structure. The students spoke to an environmental health specialist who worked for the council. The kids asked hard questions about why the city ‘allowed’ Onhimbu to happen, and the representative tried to explain that the city was upgrading its facilities as quickly as possible.

I wonder if this trip was a success, educationally. If wealthier students see how others live, will they be inclined to support policies which help the poor, like minimum wage laws or public health codes? Or will they be horrified, like some of my students, and harden their resolve to become rich and successful so they need never live in a place like Onhimbu?

Recalibrating Expectations

2007-02-12T10:08:00.000+02:00

This week will mark one full month at my site, and about a month and a half in Africa. It’s not a very long time, but long enough for me to realize that Africa is not what I expected at all. Like many Americans, when I thought of “Africa,” I had a few iconic images in my mind: noble warriors wearing loincloths and bare-breasted women pictured in National Geographic; desperate, starving children and mutilated bodies, victims of famine and ethnic cleansing, pictured in Time or Newsweek; and lionesses chasing down antelope on the open savannahs, from old episodes of Wild Kingdom. Africa, above all, would be different. It would be the complete opposite of everything I had experienced in America.

I was wrong.

I have seen no noble warriors, no starving children, no lionesses nor antelope, and no evidence of Namibia’s war for independence which ended 17 years ago. I have seen a bare-breasted woman, but only twice, and only because a traditional Himba woman from about 100 miles away happened to be in our town doing some shopping. (I don’t have a picture to put on the site because I was far too embarrassed to take one. I could barely look!). There has been no violence, although two learners did get into a fight yesterday over stolen soccer shoes. While there is no ‘big game’ in my part of Namibia, there are goats, cows, and donkeys are everywhere.

At times I am very disappointed by how ‘normal’ life here seems. For example, for breakfast everyday I eat granola with 2% milk, and for lunch I usually have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. For dinner, I have been making pasta or rice and putting in a can of mixed vegetables. It’s just like home, but without the benefit of a microwave. My little dorm room reminds me of the single dorms at college, although this one has a shower and toilet in the room. The water from the taps is safe to drink, and while the pressure is quite variable, I can usually rinse off the soap before the water runs out. The electricity is on here 24/7.

Moreover, Canisianum Roman Catholic High School where I am teaching is a selective academy and it seems to be a bastion of western culture. We have a fairly strict bell schedule, and ‘African Time’ is not an excuse for lateness here. Although corporal punishment exists, it is rare. More frequently, learners are given the onerous task of ‘weeding’ if they misbehave, which means they must cut grass with a small scythe. Learners are not allowed to use their native language during the school day, and all classes are taught in English except for their Oshiwambo class. Everyone here speaks English fairly well, so there is never a need to communicate in the local language. Though I am learning some of the language, my efforts are hampered by the English speakers all around me.

The school is western in other ways as well. Many of my students are from comparatively affluent families. Although it may not sound like much, they pay nearly US$400 yearly to attend. This figure is nearly 100 times the cost of attending a government school, and equal to the per capita income of Africa's poorest nations. When I asked my students to write letters in which they introduced themselves, many of them told me about their hobbies. Some students liked to go in the fields to cultivate mahangu (the crop that becomes oshifima), but others talked about how they like to read story books, watch movies, and play with their computers. One student wrote about how he loved his Playstation, and another proudly related that her parents were so pleased with her test scores last year that they bought her a cell phone and a laptop! What?!? These sound just like the students back home. Why have I traveled 7,000 miles, and what am I doing here, if the students were just like the ones I left in Queens?

Then I read an interesting passage in Lonely Planet’s Southern Africa guide, “In South Africa and Namibia, two societies/cultures (western and African) run in parallel, although they rarely cross. As you might expect, social customs in a western situation are similar to those in Europe, Australasia and North America…in the other countries covered in this book…the society and culture is predominantly African.” Great, I thought. I should be in Malawi. Here at the school and the Anamulenge mission things feel largely western.

I have not resolved any of these frustrations yet. Lonely Planet helped me to understand why I’ve been feeling frustrated. To some extent, I now have hope that there is an indigenous culture out here if I can only find a way to access it. On the other hand, I am fitfully recalibrating my expectations and trying to find out what role I can play in this partially developed country. Should I spend my time learning the local language, in the hopes of finding something that feels more “African?” Or should I accept that I am basically living in a poor version of the Western world, and work in that context? I don’t know.

Learning a Language is Good for your Stomach

2007-01-25T10:10:00.000+02:00

In September of 2006, when I knew that I would be going to Namibia, I decided it would be a good idea to start learning one of the local languages before I left. Now, Namibia has at least ten different indigenous languages, but the most common is called Oshiwambo, which is spoken by nearly half of Namibia’s 1.8 million people. As a result, I decided to try to learn Oshiwambo.

My first step, like a dummy, was to browse the languages section of one of the worlds’ largest Barnes & Noble stores (sorry Leslie). Down the aisle I looked. There was Berlitz Guide to Italian, Easy Mandarin, Teach Yourself Polish, but nothing about Oshiwambo. Hm.

The next step was more successful. I rang up the Namibian Mission to the United Nations, explained my situation, and the secretary who answered the phone eventually agreed teach me Oshiwambo. Her name was Ester Mwale (Muh-wah-ley) and for the next two months, I spent an hour a week at the Namibian mission practicing basic greetings, counting, and learning to say that I was going to or coming from a dozen different places. When I finally got my placement in Outapi, I immediately called up Ester to tell her, and actually had a three-exchange conversation in Oshiwambo that went like this:

Me: Wa ley ley po, meme [Good morning, miss – although it was 3p.m. at this point]
Ester: Eh-yay. [Yes]
Me: Nawa? [Is it ok?]
Ester: Eh-yay. [Yes.]
Me: Ester, otandii koh Ovamboland. Otandii koh Outapi! [I’m going to Ovamboland. I’m going to Outapi]
Ester: [A combination of a shriek and a ululation].

It turns out that my site at Anamulenge mission in Outapi is where my teacher’s mother lives. As a result, I came to Namibia with a list of contacts in the capital and in Outapi. When I arrived for my first day of school, the first teacher I met was Jona Ndiloshini, who turned out to be Ester’s younger cousin. He was as amazed by the coincidence as I was, but I think Jona was even more impressed that I could count to 20 in Oshiwambo. For the next week, whenever he had a chance, he asked me to count for him. It was both flattering and felt at the same time like I was a trained seal performing tricks, but people seemed to like it.

Anyway, towards the end of the first full week of school, Jona and I drove out to the homestead of Meme Monika, his aunt and the mother of my teacher, Ester. This was my first visit to a traditional homestead. It was a large compound, with three squarish concrete buildings with beds, and several circular, thatched-reed huts that were used for cooking and other purposes. Someone may have slept there, but it was hard to tell.

The family living at the compound seemed large – there were about fifteen people there that night. I don’t remember all of them, but I did meet and talk to several. There was Solomon, a barrel-chested and smiling twenty-something who was the chef for the evening; Maria, a beautiful but shy young woman who was leaving the next day to go to university; Meme Monika herself, who caught up with her daughter on my cell phone; Ndanjey, an adorable younger sister, Meme Kooloo (Respected Ma’am) Ester, Ester’s very enthusiastic grandmother; and Tate Kooloo (Respected Sir) Peter, who was some sort of a village elder who stopped by to welcome me.

To celebrate, Meme Monika decided to have a brai, which is an adopted Afrikaans word, I think, for barbecue. Solomon, one of her sons, dragged a goat towards the back of the compound. About half an hour later he proudly showed me how he had skinned the goat, and the goat’s hide lay drying on the roof of one of the huts. Then, Solomon cooked up the goat over a small wooden fire, with a metal grille balanced on three cement blocks.

During the time it took to cook, I sat and listened to most of the family speak in Oshiwambo, and all I could do was nod. So much for my learning! We drank a fairly sour, cloudy, alcoholic juice that was a little hard to stomach, and then one of the younger children led us on a short expedition in the dark to catch frogs that had come out because of the recent rains. These suckers were huge! I held one for awhile until it squirmed and got away. They have a hard, thick, flat spine that feels like a flexible plastic ruler when you hold the frog.

When it was time to eat, we began with barbecued goat’s meat. Solomon brought out a large bowl with assorted pieces of grilled goat, and the adults sat around milk crate which served as our table and ate with our hands. My friend Jona made fun of me for not eating enough meat off of the ribs. He tried to show me how to do it, which involved tearing off the end of the bone with his teeth and then stripping off the rest of the meat. I tried, but couldn’t quite manage it.

For the second round, Solomon brought out a large bowl of osheefeema, which is a Namibian staple. It is made from mahangu, a grain which I believe is also known as sorghum. The grain is pounded and then made into a thick mixture which tastes like Cream of Wheat if you put in too much wheat and too little water. We scooped up handfuls of the osheefeema and then dipped into another bowl that had both meat and some broth in it. It was a yummy meal, and we stuffed ourselves until nearly 10:30 at night.

Jona and his brother gave me a ride home in the back of his pickup truck, and I was so stuffed that I couldn’t even think of eating breakfast the following day!

Fields and Villages

2007-01-22T10:43:00.000+02:00

The mission where I am staying is in between the town – Outapi – and a variety of small villages in the surrounding farmland. It feels like a bit in the netherworld, neither or the town nor of the bush. But it gives me a chance to explore both.

Over the weekend, I went walking into the fields surrounding the mission. First, let me explain what a ‘field’ consists of here. There are farms, and on each farm there is a small, fenced-in area where mahangu, a type of grain that which has adapted to this environment, grows. But the vast majority of land here is sandy, open grazing land. Animals roam freely across the land, and locals tell me that the animals usually find their own way back home.

In any case, I went walking through wide-open fields in which random goats, cows, and donkeys grazed. After a walk of about 45 minutes, I happened on a beautiful watering hole and some animals grazing under a huge palm tree. Next to the palm tree is a large termite mound. The land is greener than I expected, even though it may not appear that way on the pictures. On the way back I met a young boy (probably about 13 or 14, but looking about 10) and the first five or six minutes of our conversation was all in Oshiwambo!

Later in the day I went for another walk with Gotaard, one of the guys who works at the hostel taking care of the kids. He took me to his village, Hamaupti. We walked for about 30 minutes, and he pointed the well where villagers went to get their water. Then we stopped in the middle of a field and asked if we had villages like this back home. I looked around. There might have been one small homestead that I could see, but that was it. “What village?” I asked. Gotaard pointed to the area all around him, indicating that the village consisted of a large assembly of homesteads. So that’s a village here in Namibia.

We walked a little further and came upon another watering hole, this one with a half dozen young boys hanging around it. They put on a short swimming exhibition for me, and I longed to dive in too but refrained because of warnings about diseases that can be picked up in freshwater areas of Africa. The boys had fun, but it seems that the girls are not allowed to go to the swimming hole, though Gotaard did not explain why.

Finally, as we walked back towards the mission, we came upon a collection of six or seven cement-block buildings that are the commercial center of Hamaupti. One or two are residences, and the rest are bars or “cuca shops” which sell beer, soft drinks, and a variety of snacks. They don’t look like much, but they all have electricity and in this environment, a cool drink is sometimes all the entertainment I need!

The First Days of School

2007-01-19T10:38:00.000+02:00

At times, I feel like I’m teaching at an African adaptation of Hogwart’s, the boarding school for magicians Harry Potter attends. Partly that is because our students’ sport Gryffindor colors, scarlet and yellow, and partly because I am unused to any type of boarding school setting. The students are generally well-behaved, as Canisianum is one of the best schools in the country and can be very picky when choosing its students. One night this week, I sat with students outside the dormitory discussing the differences between the U.S. and Namibia. They asked me if people believed in witchcraft in the U.S., and I said no. My students told me that they weren’t supposed to believe in it, but of course they knew it could happen. I suppose calling it Hogwart’s South would be stretching the point, but it does remind me of Harry’s boarding school at times.

School began for the teachers at Canisianum Roman Catholic High School on Monday, January 15. Our principal, Mr. Kalipi, made a long speech about how our school had the best passing scores for grade 10 learners in the Omusati region, and was the seventh best in the country. We started to look at the available supplies, and it became clear that Canisianum is also relatively well-provisioned compared to other Namibian schools. All of my grade 9 learners were issued both an English textbook (a small, 5x8 paperback that is perhaps 200 pages) and only 2 of my grade 11 learners will have to share a book. For grade nine, there is also a slim volume of short stories that I will be using, again with almost enough for one per student. In comparison, a fellow volunteer is teaching at a school where there are roughly 10 students for each book, and three to four students per book is common.

Adjusting to life at a religiously-affiliated school will be difficult, after having taught for six years in the strictly secular U.S. school system. Students are required to go to prayers quite frequently here, though I haven’t exactly figured out the whole schedule yet. Moreover, Mr. Kalipi sat down with the new teachers to go review the mission statement, which begins, “The Catholic Schools in Namibia commit themselves: to witness to the Christian faith with dedicated staff living according to the Gospel values and teaching of the Church.” There are five bullet points in the statement, and only one part of one bullet point deals with intellectual development. However, the teachers seemed fairly focused on student achievement, just like back home.

Something else that is strange about the school here is the lack of organization and supervision of learners. Students arrived on Wednesday, and for the most part the teachers sat around the staff room working on administrative matters. The students just sat in their classrooms most of the day, unattended. They did the same thing on Thursday and Friday as we organized class lists and then distributed books. Back home, if a teacher left his or her class for five minutes to go the loo, a vindinctive principal could easily give that teacher an unsatisfactory rating. We won’t start teaching for real until next Monday.

First Day at the Mission

2007-01-14T10:12:00.000+02:00

I have been at my site, the Anamulenge Mission, for one full day now. Life at the mission requires an adjustment after the urban, totally westernized feel of Windhoek. In a day, we moved from the comfortable training environment into our job sites.

For myself and the 11 other volunteers in the northern portion of Namibia, known as Ovamboland, our transition started with a day-long ride in a ‘combi.’ A combi is simply a tiny van into which the Namibians cram a few more people than we would feel comfortable. Most of the ride was hot, cramped, and uneventful until we crossed the ‘red line’ which divides the northern 1/8 of the country from the bulk of Namibia. This line is a holdover from colonial days. It roughly corresponds to the malaria zone, and it marks the northern extent of white settlement. It is also divides the free-range grazing areas of the north from the commercial farms of the south, whose meat is certified for export.

At first glance, the north didn’t look like much. It consisted mostly of sparse fields, as the rains had not been good so far this year, and many goats, cows, and donkeys were grazing everywhere. We drove through Oshakati, the north’s big city, which seemed to be a collection of sandy, run-down strip malls. The roads were good however, and the biggest driving hazard was goats and cows wandering into the path of traffic.

When I finally arrived at the Anamulenge mission, it also looked grim. The mission is just about 300 metres off a small tarred road. It has the same sandy soil and sparse grass of Ovamboland, a modest two-story church, and perhaps a dozen single-story buildings and houses scattered around. My first thought, after spending 10 hot hours in a combi, was “I’m going to live here for a year?!?” A small but energetic Indian nun strode out to the combi and introduced herself as Sister Annie. She showed me to my room; the outside of my housing block is pictured, and I am currently in room 2. It’s basically a dorm room, long and narrow, but with its own bathroom and shower; I had been told to expect a house with a TV and A/C, so I was a little surprised. The first night was hard. The place was empty, without students, teachers, or the rest of the missionaries. A dog wanted to be friendly, but I held back because its scars suggested fleas or some other nasty beasts. I was hot. I wondered how I would survive a year here. The room was stuffy, but I didn’t open the windows because of the bugs. Thanks goodness that I got calls from my parents, my godmother, and Lynn that night!

When I woke up the next day, I resolved to explore the town which was two miles away. Outapi, my nearest town, is big by Namibian standards. It has two tarred roads, several markets to buy food, three banks, a post office, two gas stations, many shebeens (bars), and a hospital. Very little was open because it was Sunday, but I was able to buy a fat cake, a yummy piece of fried bread, from an outdoor vendor.

You can actually see Outapi if you go to Google Maps. You can find the town and then look at it with a satellite overlay so you can see houses and roads. The hospital is at the southern end of town, viewable on Google with a big cross. There are numerous sand streets where new government houses have been built, just north and west of the hospital. Each is a brightly painted concrete box, with a small yard and usually a fence. As you go north on the tarred road from the hospital, there are a variety of shops until the road comes to a T at another tarred road. On Google you can see a big building just north of this intersection; that is a ‘supermarket’ which sells everything from hats to noodles to bicycle parts. If you turn right at the ‘T’, and then follow the first left turn off the main road, you will be able to see the Mission. It’s just beyond the end of the tarred road.

Towards the end of the first day, though still a bit unsettled, I went running with Robin, a Peace Corps Volunteer who also lives at the mission. As usual, running set me right. We ran through open fields in the late afternoon’s sun, fading but still hot. A few animals wandered near our route as we ran through fields of grass and by small, seasonal ponds called oshanas. By the end of the run, having had some companionship and sweat, I felt ready to for the first day of school.

Practice Teaching in Rehoboth

2007-01-10T13:58:00.000+02:00

After the first week in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, and we traveled down to Rehoboth where we lived with host families and ran a practice school for four days. Rehoboth is approximately an hour south of Windhoek, and is a city of approximately 40,000. It has one main drag with a dozen or so stores, including two large grocery stores, but the rest of town is unpaved. To get to our school, we drove for 10-15 minutes through flat, sandy roads among mostly small, cement houses. In some parts of town, people live in shacks constructed from corrugated metal and whatever other materials were available.

Fortunately, my homestay was in one of the cement houses, but even in these government-built homes, life was not always comfortable. I stayed with a woman named Joyce Karrigas, her daughter Jodalynn, and her niece Elaine. Joyce had divorced her abusive husband two years prior, and because of an automobile accident, could not hold a job. The only income for the household was Elaine’s full-time job at a local supermarket, where she earned nearly $100 US a month. As a result, the family was very poor, and was unable to fix a broken pipe so our only source of water was a tap just outside the house. There was electricity, however, and a stereo blared gospel, hip-hop, and R&B constantly. At night, a small black and white television tuned to NBC (Namibian Broadcasting Company) played When You Are Mine, a soap opera from Mexico that is the obsession of Namibians. When the show comes on at 8:30 at night, other activity stops.

Interestingly, there were clear differences in status, even in the government-built homes on the sand roads. Sandra, another host mother, was in a much different situation financially. She and her husband both had jobs; she was a teacher at the school, and her husband drove a bus. Together, they may have earned as much $1,500 US monthly. They built an extension to their home, had a clean and modern kitchen with good running water, color TV with satellite, and a brand-new combi (a 15-16 VW van that is about 20% smaller than similar Chevy van in the States). Her family’s English was also better and the children seemed to have a stronger sense that the could be successful.

When we arrived at Oanab Primary School, we were surprised to see HIV/AIDS murals on the walls of a school for children under 10 years of age! There was an assembly area at the school underneath a large tree for shade, and this is where the students waited until classes began. They sat on railroad ties that had been converted into benches. Classes began when one of us rang the large bell that hung underneath the tree, and then students scattered to their classrooms, lining up outside the door for the teacher to let them in.

An unfortunate part of the Rehoboth experience was that half of our group began to experience traveller's diarrhea or more severe GI problems. I spent an entire day in bed, as did about six others who were all losing battles to diarrhea and nausea. We had been lulled into complacency by the modernity of Windhoek, and had trouble adjusting to the bacteria in the water and possibly a virus that went around. Never before in my life have I spent so much time discussing my bodily functions with people who were strangers merely two weeks earlier.

Finally after four days in Rehoboth, we left for the Harddap dam to recuperate.

Training

2007-01-02T13:31:00.000+02:00

Welcome to Outapi Odyssey, which is my record of my time as a volunteer teacher of English and math at a school in northern Namibia. I am working here as a volunteer with the nonprofit group WorldTeach, which places college graduates as teachers in developing countries.

The first official part of the WorldTeach Program takes place in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. It is a suprisingly modern-feeling city of approximately 200,000, but it has excellent infrastructure, water, electricity, and modern buildings. The whole group of approximately 20 is staying in a backpackers' hostel and we train in a shady area alongside the dormitories. The hostel is nice and the weather is actually quite pleasant -- not yet above 90, and a very dry heat at that. Evening is cool, sometimes requiring an extra layer even in the summer.

Because I have teaching experience, I was selected as a Teacher Fellow, which means that I share responsibility for some of the training. The first week of training has been pretty intense, because I'm teaching new material for the first time and feel somewhat underprepared. When the rest of the group is relaxing after training, I've been staying up late trying to prepare the next day's lesson. Of course, this is nothing new, but still. I'm looking forward to the next four days when my 'students' will now have some practice teaching sessions too. Soon, they will be feeling the stress with me.

The people in the group are very nice, though I don't feel like I've 'clicked' with anyone yet. We are nearly 20 people. There are three young couples, including two couples who got married less than six months ago. There is one more mature lady from Canada, Bonnie, who seems very nice though I don't know her much yet. Then there are a couple of late 20-somethings, Jesse, Kate, and Jocie, and then a small plethora of people just out of college. Everyone is very nice, but it's also very different of course. I'm a little lonely, and a little unsettled, and can't wait to get to my placement in two weeks so I can finally unpack.

Today we shift locations, going to Rehoboth, a smaller town an hour south of here, for praticum teaching. We also will spend a night on a farm to rest, and then a day at a dam where we can swim. New Year's, we went to a traditional Herero restaurant and were served german potato salad, green salad, rice, carrots, and many roasted goat heads which were carved in front of us. I ate some cheek, ear, and tongue. The tongue was the only thing that I really found palatable. Other than that, we are eating communally and I have not wasted away to nothing!