Back to School

In the marathon of my Peace Corps service (it will be 26 months in December) I am entering the 20^{th month of this challenge. During this last stretch I'll either get caught by the bear or find my second wind and fly to the finish. I optimistically expect the latter in part because of the month of vacation that just concluded. The only way to summarize the holiday is to say that nothing went as expected but I had a good time with all of the changes in plans. After a couple intermediate stops I caught a bus to Cape Town where I spent a week that included Table Mountain, Robben Island, the surrounding wine growing region, and the beaches and museums in the city. Back to Namibia the plan was to do a 6 day hike through Fish River canyon but with water levels too low and hikers complaining of stomach problems from the stagnant pools along the way we cancelled the hike. Instead of Fish River I found my way to Luderitz for a few days during which I learned that the school holiday had been extended by a week. With an extra week and payday coming soon I hitched back to Keetsmanshoop and up to Windhoek to make new plans. During that stretch I hitched over 1100 km for N$60 riding in the back of 3 different bakkies, one semi-truck and finally a nice new Toyota sedan that maintained speeds in excess of 180km/hr for 500 km. More changes were inevitable but the delay of our quarterly paycheck was a setback. Regardless I hitched to Outjo and with one other PCV started walking down the dirt road to Otavi trying to get to a farm 35km outside of town. The interesting feature on the farm (besides Grandma Ruth) is a cave that leads down to a pristine underground lake. We walked a few kilometers before a farmer picked us up and dropped us at the gate of the farm. After a bunch of nonsense we wrote our own waiver form and climbed down into the cave and swam around for a while in the clean and surprisingly warm water. By noon it was time to start walking back towards town and hope for a lift. This time we walked 90 minutes with no traffic until a trucker with a huge load of charcoal came barreling down the road. Hitching on backroads gets people to stop more out of disbelief than altruism but either way we had a ride all the way back to Otjiwarongo cutting out one leg of our journey. Still no paycheck but more arrangements had already been made for a 3 day hike on the waterberg plateau so once three more guys arrived we arranged a car to drive us out to the plateau and braved a couple cold nights to have the privilege of walking on the plateau and climbing on rocks that will eventually fall off the side of the plateau like the others you see already at the bottom. Finally I got two more hikes in the back of bakkies to make it back home and try to get back in school mode.}

So back to school I realize that the first week is difficult for many reasons. The first couple days nothing happens; there are meetings where nice things are said that will never be implemented, and some unexpected change. This term the teachers decided to shift the grade 8-10 classes according to their performance on the first term exams. In one sense I am pleased with this situation as an extension of my triage theory of education in Namibia but it is a big change for the learners and I am still not sure how well this experiment will work. On the positive side my register class remained as is because my kids are the only ones that take accounting so for the schedule they have to remain together. Another good aspect is that the best of the grade 10 are together in one class. If last years' results are an example about half of the best class will pass and the entirety of the other two classes will fail. Hopefully by having all the best learners together more than half of the good class will be able to pass. Somehow I am still optimistic that a handful of the middle class will achieve as well, partially because they have had to face their underperformance and will put forth a greater effort from here on out. The obvious concern though is that lowest class, which has a disproportional number of older boys, will become a scourge to the whole school. My biggest concern is that the kids in the middle class will quit even though they are in the range of possibility to pass if they apply themselves. I've given my best speeches to the middle class and am still trying to find a way to make them feel better about the situation and still believe in their potential. The other difficulty though is that my method of teaching is now obsolete. I used to gauge my pace on the middle group of each class but now I will be able to be more thorough and cover more depth with the best class and I have to slow down and let the bottom class proceed at the pace of understanding because frankly the exam means little for these kids. Now it happens that I have problems with all the classes. The slower kids behavior is expected to be a problem but with the best learners together my soaring expectations have been dashed everyday this week.

The exciting thing that is coming soon is that the 15 best learners in grade 10 earned a trip to the nearby military base for a pleasure flight on an airplane. It's a great experience for them but the informative bit is when you check who the 15 are and where they went to school before this year. About half are repeating grade 10 this year, one is our only Angolan student and four more have only attended Coblenz for grade 9 and 10. It's a bleak picture for the 80 odd learners in each primary grade. Its hard to say exactly what happens to those kids but they don't make it to the top of the class at their own school. I should be able to accompany the kids (more teachers will go than learners, what did they do to deserve the reward?) to take what will likely be priceless photos of excitement mixed with terror.