Another weekend in Namibia

Back at school and some interesting things have been happening. Of course the school itself is still highly dysfunctional but we found a new low and some other intrigue. The term started on a low note with the principal gone, still grieving the loss of her husband. Her absence contributes to the general chaos that reigns daily. The second week of school brought the big news. One of our teachers resigned after attempting to sexually assault a grade 8 girl. The school board was prepared to let him stay at the school and be reassigned at the end of the year (unbelievable) but the parent involved is a principal at another school so he demanded the case be sent to a higher authority (but not the police) hence the snap resignation. Hopefully he will never teach again, I've ranted enough about this individual to convince most that he is unfit to be around children. We'll see what happens but he's gone and that is a good thing for our school.

 

This past weekend was the grade 10 farewell party so the week was lost academically with kids going to buy clothes or lamenting their lack of funds to buy something new. Friday night at 7pm I walked over to the hall to see how it looked and what do you know, there are tables and chairs (from the classrooms) but no decorations. This is our equivalent to prom, the grade 9 kids are supposed to serve the food and decorate the place but they had done nothing. And whichever teacher got them started to get the tables and chairs left off with the task far from completed. I happened to have a supply of balloons and a dozen kids to inflate them and stick them around the tables and on the walls to give the place a little color. Still the effort was weak. The evening was quite boring, speeches until the food came out at 11:15. They had enough plates (thanks Grandma K) but were short of forks so some ate their chicken, cole slaw and beets with their hands… in their nice clothes. My main role was as photographer as usual and before my battery died I took 267 photos. I have great photos of the Gail Devers nails but only on one hand, the clumsy walking on four inch stilettos and tags left on the exterior of new suits. The best photo was from earlier that afternoon when half a dozen girls were washing their hair outside my front door because the water had been out for the previous 40 hours and the washroom in the dorm was too crowded.

 

Saturday morning we were scheduled to depart for Tsumeb (a town 90 miles to our north) to spend the day there. No other plans had been made so I was already skeptical. Then I woke up to hear the lorry (big cattle truck with 95 kids in the back) already leaving. I thought maybe I had been left and would be able to get some more sleep (it was still before 6:30, many of the kids never went to sleep) but knowing how things work around here I still got myself ready. Sure enough 30 minutes later another car full of teachers comes honking at my place ready to drive so I jumped in and we were off. Until we came up to the big truck broke down outside of Grootfontein. I got the good end of the deal since while they took the part that needed repair into town I got to go to the Internet café and get some breakfast. A couple hours and we were on our way again. We arrived in Tsumeb in the car and the lorry was not around, they had driven on to Lake Oshikoto and not bothered to tell us. We caught up and the kids got to spend some time around the lake. This is not a normal lake though. It is part of the enormous underground lake system in the area but the roof of this lake collapsed long ago. Divers have been down 100 meters and not yet found the bottom. Its an interesting site and they have some animals (eland, ostrich, crocodile, etc) caged up that you see and take pictures beside. By 2pm the kids are bored, hungry and sleepy so we drive back to Tsumeb to organize lunch. The adults that had gone ahead by more than 30 minutes had achieved nothing but in Tsumeb all we did was sit around in the grass for 2 hours so it didn't matter. Once again I was fortunate because I had bought the newspaper earlier so I spent my time reading about the most recent find in a series of dismembered corpses around Namibia. Eventually everyone was terribly bored again and we drove towards the caravan park ostensibly to find a swimming pool but we actually drove all the way to Grootfontein and just parked on the edge of town.

 

Some time later (about 6pm) a group of kids comes running back towards the lorry screaming with a story about having found a dead baby. After the usual moments hesitation when you realize you are about to get involved in something serious I got the girl that made the discovery to take me there to make sure it wasn't a joke before we called the police. I could smell the rotting flesh from more than 10 meters away. It was coming from a black plastic sack with something inside that was tightly wrapped in a blanket. Reasonable size and shape, must be another Namibian baby dumped. This also happens with shocking frequency. We summoned the police and by the fourth vehicle they had gloves to open the blanket and found that this was actually the lower legs that went with the head and arms found nearby on Monday. Then we waited and waited some more. About three hours later I went down to the station with the girl that made the initial discovery so that we could give a statement about how we found it and by nearly midnight we were ready to drive back to Coblenz. In the meantime the other hundred people were just waiting for us.