Daily Life

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.