Help Kids in Namibia Escape Poverty – But not Poor Fashion Choices – Through Education

In 2007 in northern Namibia, I coached Canisianum (Kuh-knee-see-ann-um) High School’s first-ever debate squad. The team was full of crazy personalities, such as Inamutila Kahipi, whose name meant “I am not afraid.” Inamutila lived up to his name but never took himself too seriously. For example, when I first met him at the Valentine’s Day dance, he arrived wearing a full-length leather coat over a white t-shirt and sported a single glove, like a hip-hop Namibian Michael Jackson.

His opposite was Miriam, the team co-captain. She prepared for debates with a ferocity and thoroughness that could only mean she was headed for a career in law. The team did well, winning both local and regional competitions. Miriam and Inamutila were selected to represent our region in the national competitions, which was a big feather in Canisianum’s cap.


Through the debates, I met students from all around northern Namibia. Our competitors made me realize what a special school Canisianum was. Whereas our students used English to inform, persuade and inspire, students from competing schools still struggled to piece together coherent sentences. While my students researched debate topics in the student-run library, students at other schools lacked basic reference materials like encyclopedias and textbooks.

That split is still evident today on the national exams. Canisianum’s pass rate in 2009 was over 95%; neighboring schools were well below 50%. These exams are required to advance to college. As a result, poor grades usually mean the end of a student’s academic career and the beginning of a life of subsistence farming. In contrast, attending Canisianum markedly improves a young child’s chances of success due to its rigorous teaching, high standards and unique management structure.

Unfortunately, many of the eager students in the region cannot afford to pay Canisianum’s fees of about US$100 per year. Just think about that: in America, you’re lucky if $100 pays for books and school supplies for a semester. In Namibia, it gets a student a top-notch education for a year, and a very good chance at qualifying for one of Namibia’s three universities. With your help, more Namibian children can have this chance.

Think about donating now to help give kids like those in the picture a quality education. A $100 donation pays for an entire year of school for a poor child, but even $25 makes a difference. All donations are tax-deductible!

The goal is to raise $5,000 to establish a permanent scholarship endowment at the school, and we’re already 1/3 of the way there! When I return to Namibia this September I’ll be setting up the scholarship in coordination with the school and the US-based nonprofit, WorldTeach. Donations can be made online via WorldTeach/PayPal or via mail by sending a check to:

WorldTeach
c/o Center for International Development
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy St., Box 122
Cambridge, MA 02138.

Your donation should be made out to "WorldTeach." Please make sure to write “Namibia-Canisianum Scholarship,” in the memo field, and thanks.

If you have any questions about this scholarship endowment or Canisianum RCHS, please write me at joshua.kaufmann.72@gmail.com. If you would like to learn more about Canisianum, many stories on this blog, Outapi Odyssey focus on school life.

Teacher Talk: Classes in Namibia

One important difference between school organization here and back home lies in the classes. In the U.S., most high school classes last approximately 40-50 minutes, with a short period between classes for students to move to their next room. Occasionally, some schools use a ‘block scheduling,’ which allows double periods for many classes, especially science classes that require a lab. Many teachers have their own rooms, but not all. Most students take English, Math, history, a science class, a foreign language, gym, lunch, and some type of elective.

In Namibia the classes are 40 minutes long, but there the similarity ends. Learners sit in the same class, in the same seats, all day long. Classes are designated with the grade, adding a letter for each different class in the same grade: 8A, 8B, 9A, 9B, etc. All the students in one class take all the same subjects together; learners who struggle in math but excel in English cannot take remedial math and advanced English. My school has made some provision, however, for additional classes for learners who want to push themselves.

More confusing is the wide array of subjects students take. At my school, learners in grades 8-10 take nine ‘promotional’ subjects: Oshindonga, English, Maths, Life Science, Physical Science, Geography, History, Agriculture, and Business Management. Additionally, learners also take once-a-week non promotional classes in Religious and Moral Education, Computer Skills, Life Skills, and Physical Training. That’s right, the learners have ONE PERIOD PER WEEK OF GYM. Now to some of you that might sound great, but young 14-year olds need to burn off energy more than once a week!

Back home at my old school, student schedules usually remained unchanged from day to day, from week to week. Period 1 was Math with Mr. Factor, period 2 was English with Miss Sym A. Lee, and period 3 was chemistry with Dr. Mole. Here, each class’s schedule changes from day to day. The schedule is so confusing that only in the third time have I begun to get my schedule memorized. On Monday, period 1 could be English, but on Tuesday it’s math, on Wednesday it’s history, etc. Moreover, some classes meet seven times per week, some five, some three, and the non romotionals meet just once.

Although this system seems ludicrously complicated, it does have its advantages. Let’s say that I taught the same topic to both 9A and 9B, but with 9B we didn’t finish because goats invaded the classroom and we spent some time kicking them out. Back home, I would have to cover that material the next day before I could move on. Here, I can go back to 9B during the afternoon study period and finish the lesson, because that same group of learners are still together. Also, teachers will occasionally ‘trade’ or ‘sell’ periods to other teachers who need extra time to finish a topic or give a test. The flexibility is actually quite nice. If I notice that many of my learners are struggling before a test, I simply teach an extra lesson to the class during the afternoon study time.

The rigorous nature of the schedule does not mean, however, that it is rigorously followed. Principals will often call teachers out of their class for meetings. Our principal, Mr. Kalipi, has occasionally called a staff meeting in the middle of the school day, leaving all the classes without teachers. Just this week, he called a meeting during our last period to discuss how we would make up the periods that were to be lost due to a field trip on Friday. I kept thinking, “How will we make up the periods that we have lost by sitting in this meeting?”

A glaring difference is in the amount of time that learners are left unsupervised. Back in NYC, our administrators drilled into us that we could NEVER leave a classroom unsupervised. “What if,” they said, “one learner stabs another with a pencil during the 60 seconds you are out of the room? Then YOU will be responsible for the lawsuit.” As a result, if I desperately needed to go to the bathroom, I had to flag down a passing teacher to watch my class while I ran to the can.

Here, the learners are frequently left to fend for themselves. There are no such things as substitute teachers here. If a teacher is sick, at a workshop, or merely sleeping in the staffroom, the class will simply remain without a teacher. When the principal calls a staff meeting during the day, the learners sit in their classes. If I need to use the toilet or make a photocopy during class, than I just do it. And you know what? When I come back in the room, they’re all fine. Oh sure, they might be talking to each other instead of reading, but not one kid has gouged another’s head out with a pencil yet.

It’s futile to talk about which system is ‘better’ or which one is ‘right.’ However, it is helpful to see that there are advantages and disadvantages to both, and to recognize that there really is no one ‘right’ way of educating.

Walking around the Mission

If you don’t mind the conceit, I’m going to take you on a little walking tour of the mission today, courtesy of Google Earth and my camera. It turns out Google Earth has some pretty decent satellite pictures of Namibia. Before I had even come here, I checked out Outapi, and I knew where the main roads and the hospital were before I got here. The last time I had a good internet connection (Cape Town), I was able to download this satellite imagery of my home, the Anamulenge mission. Let’s take a little look. I’ve saved the file at a fairly large resolution, so if you hold down the CTRL button and click on it, it should open in another window and be a bit easier to see.


A – This is main entrance to the mission grounds. There’s a gate for cars to drive through on a gravel road. Just above and to the left of the ‘A’ is a watering hole used by local livestock, and children sometimes fish in it too. At this time of year it still has some water, but it is drying up rapidly.

B – The mission’s church. From the air, it looks like a cross. It’s actually a rather pretty building, though I’ve only been in it half a dozen times. The church is the only two-story structure on the mission and thus a good landmark. Although the kids go to church 10 times each week, I have never been pressured to go. Sometimes they will ask me, “Why aren’t you going to Church?” I politely respond, “Because I’m not Christian,” which shocks them. Although they have read about other religions in their religious studies class, many have never met someone who is not Christian.



C – This is the computer lab for the mission, which is sadly underutilized. If our internet service ever starts working again, I’ll probably be posting this entry from this little white building.

D – This is the main hall, where all the parent meetings and large assemblies take place. On regular days, however, it is used by the girl’s hostel as a recreation area. They have a TV/DVD/VCR inside, so the girls get to watch movies on the weekend if they have any. The boys aren’t so lucky; they have a TV but no DVD or VCR. Just the other day I was talking with some of the boys in my room about movies, and they noted how unfair it was that the girls have a DVD player. I responded, “You know, if each boy put in just N$5, you could buy a DVD player.”
Samson responded, “Yes, Mister Josh, but it would cause too many problems. There would be too many arguments about what video to play.”
“So, you’d rather stare at the walls than find a way to share the DVD player?” I countered.
“Yes.”
What more could I say?


E – This area is the girls’ hostel compound. It gets locked every night to keep the girls in and the boys out. The bluish building that looks like an “H” from above is where the Ovambo nuns live.

F – This compound is for the Indian sisters on the mission. The ‘L’ shaped building is their home. They have a small, lush garden in the shade of their house and a few tall trees. The other small building is used to prepare food for the Indian priest. In the picture, I’m standing with the sisters and Johanna, one of the cooks, in front of the sisters’ house.



G – This is the main dining hall.

H – Here’s main school area. The two buildings with red roofs house four classrooms, the staffroom, the secretary’s office and the principal’s office. It seems Google Earth doesn’t update its satellite imagery very frequently, because there are two new classroom blocks, dedicated in early 2006, which do not appear in the photo. These are the library and the classrooms for grades 11 & 12.




I – This small building holds grades 9A, 9B, and 8B. I think the kids like being far away from the principal.

J – The Priest, Father Joe, lives here. He has a pretty nice pad. He’s got loads of room and a large 30+inch television hooked up to a satellite dish. The first time I visited him, he invited me in, gave me some nice wine from a box, and we watched CNN. I think he’s kind of lonely sometimes, because he can’t really ‘hang out’ and watch sports with the nuns. He also let me stay overnight in his house at the beginning of the year so that I could stay up all night and watched the Bears get their butts kicked in the Superbowl—live.

K – This is the boys’ hostel compound, which is also where I live. There are about 80 boys who share two large hostel rooms and a small shower block. Fortunately, I do have my own shower!

L – This little house, technically within the boys’ hostel compound, is where Robin and Nicola live. It has almost all of the comforts of home: a couch, a kitchen, three bedrooms, a brai pit that Robin built, and a bathroom. Ok, so they haven’t had hot water for three months, but otherwise it’s a nice place and it’s where I was supposed to live. However, the clergy who run the mission kept saying that it would be ‘too crowded’ for three people to live in three separate bedrooms. What they meant, of course, is that they didn’t want a man living with two women. At the beginning of the year, I seriously considered a “Three’s Company” approach to the problem, pretending to be gay so that I could live there. Fortunately, Robin talked me out of it.

M – Behind the mission is a cemetery. When my Dad was here, we took a slow walk through the cemetery and I was surprised to see how many headstones were from very young people. Although there are some in the cemetery who died in their eighties, most people were under 50 when they died. This is unfortunately a recent phenomenon. AIDS has hit southern Africa so hard that despite advances in nutrition and basic health care, the life expectancy has dropped to below 50 years. More frustrating, no one acknowledges deaths from AIDS. Although going to funerals is a common occurrence here in Namibia, I have never heard anyone say, "She died because she had HIV." There is such a strong taboo against the illness here that people will simply say that someone ‘got sick’ and then leave it at that. It’s frustrating! If only some HIV-positive Namibians would come forward, the disease would start to lose its pseudo-invisible status. Then, people here might start taking safe sex or abstinence much more seriously.


Well, that’s the end of my tour of the mission grounds. Ending with the cemetery was a bit of a bummer, so perhaps we should continue walking north. Just 300 metres past the cemetery is a small collection of shebeens called Ohamutsi, and we can relax there with a cold Tafel or Windhoek Lager. Let’s go!

Teacher Talk 1

Two of my best friends back in NYC, Ronnie & Leslie, are a couple. Leslie works in an office for a mysterious Asian man named Fred. Ronnie is a teacher in the Bronx. When we three got together back home for drinks or more likely for food, Ronnie and I would start often discussing our schools, our students, the idiocy of Department of Education, etc. Hours might pass without us noticing that the rest of the dinner party was thoroughly uninterested. Leslie politely termed this practice “Teacher Talk” and ruled, quite correctly, that it should take place in very limited amounts when non-teachers are present. With that warning, I’m going to begin the first of several Teacher Talk installments about school life in Namibia. I'll start off with the physical school itself, which may only be interesting to us teachers. I won't feel hurt if you decide to have another piece of garlic bread and read a blog about, say, Big Brother Africa 2 (which aired this Sunday).

Schools in Namibia look nearly identical, as if the same architect designed one school and then that design was copied for hundreds more. The schools generally consist of several long, narrow one-story buildings. Each building consists usually of 2-4 classrooms. In addition to the classrooms, there is usually one separate building that contains the principal’s office (sometimes, but not always, with electricity), a staff room for the teachers which is piled high with exercise books to mark, and a library. Outside the staff room at our school, we have several indigenous 'chalk' trees whose trunks are covered with dust from our erasers.


Each classroom has many windows on each side. At my school the windows are in good condition, but at some government schools many of the panes are broken. On the inside, most classrooms are terribly plain. Teachers rarely have their own classroom here in Namibia, so there is little motivation for them to decorate it with posters, displays of schoolwork, etc. White walls remain unadorned, and a large chalk board hangs at the front of the room. Desks are always arranged in rows; in overcrowded classrooms, sometimes learners must share desks and even chairs.

At some short distance from the school there is a toilet block consisting of a row of aerated pit latrines. If it is a hostel school, long, low hostel blocks will lie a short distance from the classrooms as well. Usually, one or two dilapidated looking buildings stand off to the side where the school custodian keeps his tools, provides a home for broken desks, extra wooden doors, etc. There is usually at least one good shade tree for outdoor assemblies, and some schools may have small agriculture projects going on their grounds – a few scraggly bushes being grown, two rows of mahangu, etc. The grounds are enclosed in a low fence.


Just outside the official grounds there is the ubiquitous soccer field and perhaps a netball court, both signified by goals standing opposite each other across a dusty field. Some schools have real soccer goal posts made of metal, but many just have two poles, across which a wire with aluminum cans has been strung.

Canisianum, being a fancy-pants semi-private school, has a few things that are beyond the norm. Our school secretary has her own, albeit small, office space. Our library is the size of regular classroom, not a closet. We have laboratory that all the science classes share, and we have a sadly under-utilized computer lab. We also have a main hall that is large enough for the entire school to gather in, which is very handy for assemblies, parent meetings, etc.

Compared to other schools in Namibia, mine is medium in size. We have 362 learners—they’re not called students here, though I don’t know why—spanning grades 8-12. There is a staff of 18: one principal, a school secretary, a custodian, and fifteen teachers. Our teaching staff is remarkably diverse, and that diversity has helped create a hard-working culture in the school: of our fifteen teachers, eight are Owambos (the majority tribe in Namibia and in my region), two are Caprivian (a much smaller tribe), there’s me, and then there are four nuns from India. Nearly half the staff are not from this area, and we all bring different perspectives and subject knowledge to the school.

Thanks to the higher school fees at this school, and to the generosity of the Archbishop in Windhoek, the school is exceedingly well-equipped in terms of supplies and technology. For example, my English students were each issued three books per student: a textbook, a reading book (either short stories or a novel), and the fantastic Cambridge Learners Dictionary. At many schools, two, three or even five children must share one textbook, and in the worst cases the only textbook is for the teacher to use. Funds for books are clearly not allocated evenly in the Namibian school system.

Our technology here is also quite good. We have workign electricity in every classroom, and occasionally I bring in a tape player or my laptop to play an listening passage for the kids. We also have both a photocopier and a Risograph, or Riso for short. The Riso is a machine for making large batches of copies, kind of like the old ditto machines, except that the ink isn’t blue and one isn’t inclined to whiff the ink fumes. These are better ratios than at my school in NYC, where a staff of over 200 teachers shared about four copiers and four Risos.

We have a computer lab donated to the school by the Archbishop, and three modern computers in the library, laboratory, and secretary’s office. I’m quite proud of the computer in the library, because at the beginning of the year, we had nothing there. For the first four three months of the school year, a brand-new computer sat in the principal’s office. It was used only by the school secretary to play gospel DVDs. I wrote a letter to the principal explaining how a computer could be effectively used in the library. Just hours later, the library staff rushed up to tell me that we had the principal’s computer!

Of course, all the technology in the world won't help if teachers aren't good and students aren't motivated. Fortunately at my school, both sides of the equation are working fulltime. The school isn't good because of the technology, but the extra tech sure helps.

If this short article has been anything like the ‘Teacher Talk’ that Ronnie and I have rudely engaged in, then by now I have bored away everyone who isn’t a teacher. What can I say? You were warned!! Later installments will focus on discipline, school organization, meetings, and more. If there are any questions you have in particular about the schools here, please post them on the blog or send me an email and I’ll try to get the answers up there for y

Would tomorrow's dinner please come to my office IMMEDIATELY?

At my old school in New York, our principal overused the P.A. system, calling out any staff member who was late for a meeting. Mr. Duch, the principal, didn't care if he interrupted classes five times a day, and you could always tell how pissed off he was by how he used the word immediately. If he didn’t use immediately at all, he was in a good mood. Sometimes he intentionally said the word softly, as in “Mr. Jones come down to the principal’s office immediately.” Then, you knew he was angry but trying to keep his temper. Most frequently, however, he would attack the beginning of the word in rage: “Mr. Jones, come down to the principal’s office IMMEDIATELY. Usually these announcements were merely annoying, but occasionally they were in the middle of Regents exams, which was unconscionable.

After yesterday, however, I realize that Mr. Duch can’t compete with a bunch of incompetent men trying to kill six bulls. While the students sat for their April exams, the mission where our school is housed was busy with preparations for a priest's ordination. The mission staff and our students had been busy for several weeks preparing: students in the hostel were made to weed and cut the grasses, a large banner went up, and the nuns and some of the more devout children had been practicing songs since February. On Friday, however, things took a more surreal turn.

Several local headmen donated bulls for the post-ordination feast, and when I got to school on Friday morning, these bulls were wandering around the mission grounds. Halfway through the morning’s three hour exam, a group of men began to try to slaughter the bulls. These guys were terrible bull-slaughterers. I first realized that something was amiss when I heard a shot, followed by the noise of a bull running past the staff room door. I ducked out to see what was going on. To my left, a bull was lumbering past the staff room and turning into the compound where most of the classes are held. Following him were six men. One man had a small rifle, but it was not of a sufficient caliber to bring down a bull. The other five men carried sticks and stones to throw towards at the bulls.


The technique for slaughtering the bull was terribly inefficient and cruel. The men with sticks tried to corner the bull, which usually meant they ran after the bull for a good 20-30 minutes at a crack, occasionally hitting him in the flank with a stick. If they finally did corner an animal, the man with the gun would advance as close as possible, shoot, and the run like hell. Because the gun was too weak or the man's aim too poor, shooting the bull only wounded it. Then angry bull would charge around the mission, sometimes through the through the classroom compound. One particular bull, a large black one, had been shot several times in the face and was pretty angry about the whole situation. I can't blame him. The men chased this particular bull around the mission and the school grounds for a couple of hours.

The Indian nuns and I looked on, somewhere between shocked, and disgusted. The Ovambos, both young and old, enjoyed the spectacle. The men chasing the bulls seemed to think it was some sort of a game. The students watched avidly from the windows of their classrooms, and a few brave ones stepped outside to see what was going on. Whenever a bull ran by their classroom, the children would all scream and run inside, smiling and chattering. Now, mind you, this was in the middle of an exam! I’m glad it wasn’t my test they were taking.

I finally watched the men bring one of the bulls down. They had shot it several times, and when it tried to turn away, several men pelted it in the head and face with large stones. It faltered, swaying unsteadily on its legs as if drunk, but did not fall down. Then one of the men ran behind and grabbed its tail, and the poor creature tried to run more time, dragging the man behind it. But by now the bull was so weak it could not run quickly, and when the other men caught up with it they stoned and shot it to death.

The interruptions to class were bad enough, and far worse than anything my old principal could do. But what I still can’t understand is the wanton cruelty in slaughtering the animals. Had they merely tied up the bull first, they could have been done in minutes rather than hours. There was no reason for these bulls to be chased around the mission for an hour or two, injured and frightened. There was no reason why the men could not have secured a better gun. There was no reason for the men to enjoy this cruelty. The poor bulls were competing in a game they could not win.

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.