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.