Learning a Language is Good for your Stomach

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

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

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

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

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

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!