Winter Blahs

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!

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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!