Recalibrating Expectations

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.