Vacation

55 hours on the road in four days is a bit exhausting. Its worth it to go rafting on the Zambezi and relax by Lake Malawi. I'm afraid for winter in America.

I'm Still Alive

Still in Namibia, and still alive. That's about all there is to say.
Final examinations have begun so its all invigilating (proctoring) and
marking (grading) from here on out. Tomorrow is my class party where
we will braii an entire sheep, some sausages, make fruit salad, carrot
salad, potato salad and three chocolate cakes plus sodas. All for
about $5 a kid.

Oh yeah, its really hot here.

The beginning of the end

In some ways its wrong to talk about the end when its two months away. However, my grade 10 classes are finished so the end feels very near. I spent four consecutive late nights helping kids study before their exam this Monday and I'm still tired. More importantly the exam wasn't too difficult so the kids are feeling good about the result. But the days I have left with them are dwindling fast...

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.

There and Back

The second term finished a long time ago and I spent two weeks in the USA. Thats about it. Exam results were poor as usual, but that's not interesting. The last week of school I was busy with damage control, talking to as many kids as possible and doing my best to convince them to keep studying even though the latest examination makes it look like they may as well do anything besides studying. It was a little bit difficult to leave, mostly as foreshadowing to the real goodbyes that are imminent.

 

A mere 35 hours of travel took me from Namibia to Tulsa where I dove into a plateful of pulled pork at a little bbq restaurant close to campus. The week before the wedding was a relaxing time of research on the internet and at the TU library and then after friends got off work spending time with them. The wedding went well and then I flew to Midland to spend some time with Jenna and Lydia. The time went fast but it was good.

 

Two days of flying followed by two 12 hour bus rides was a bit exhausting but I am finally back in Namibia. There was really no excitement on either stretch of travel. The Delta flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta is about the worst in the whole world, bad sound, poor visibility on movies, lights that didn't work for the entire night but magically worked again in the morning. One night in Jo'burg was fine and then the taxi that took me to the bus station spent the 45 minute drive telling me about how his car had been stolen the night before.

 

Back in Namibia, Peace Corps close of service conference starts in a few hours but the big news when I got back was the my principal's husband passed away while I was gone. The funeral already happened but now its a big unknown to see what the school will be like when I get there next week. He was a man of enormous influence and from what I've heard the funeral was enormous and extremely long.

Updates

Just when I thought nothing singular was ever going to happen the whole can of worms exploded in a few days. Let's start with last Friday, I show up for the usual worthless morning staff meeting that eats up the first 20 minutes of the school day and I find out that there is a group of six Americans visiting for the weekend. As it turned out I hardly saw anything of them but a couple hours of 'normal' conversation was refreshing. Less than an hour later though Friday took a turn for the worse. All the teachers were recalled to the office to receive news that one of our colleagues, a grade 5 and 6 teacher had just died. He was older and he had been sick for several weeks but still the day was spoiled. We decided the kids should stay in their register classes for the rest of the day and the teachers set off to break the news to their classes. When the kids stay in their classes the teachers go outside and talk to each other unless they are forced inside the class to yell at the kids for talking. I gathered some supplies and set my class to making cards for their former teacher. The group of Americans were eager to spend some time with the kids so they joined the card making for a couple hours and I got to explain some of my views on Namibia and its educational system to two uniquely interested people. Looking back I realize that I will never speak with anyone else about Namibia who is quite so attentive, but that's ok I got to pontificate for an hour or so. The other surprise from Friday was that I got my flight from Windhoek to Jo'burg purchased for 75% of what I expected to pay although its still expensive for a 2 hour flight. I did have to contend with an overly friendly bank teller who asked me to come back and visit him and then called the school today to confirm that the transfer of funds went ok.

The rest of the weekend was quiet but Monday brought fresh drama. After school one of my learners came to my house to borrow money, I have become more sympathetic in these situations so I found some money and sent her to the shop with the pretext of buying me some flour and a coke. Library time came so I left home and had to send my house key with this learner so that she could put the flour and coke inside. It seemed to take a bit longer than expected for her to return but kids are only partly reliable so I didn't think anything of it. Then I got home. Over the weekend I started reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of Sherlock Holmes so my mind was already in the mode of observation and deduction when things in my kitchen were clearly amiss. I perused the area and found butter and peanut butter on my drying cloth and door, bread crumbs on the counter, the bread not in its usual place and not wrapped up in my usual manner, the butter lid partly off and my bag of bbq fritos disturbed. Clearly something more than set a bag down on the counter and leave had happened so I called for the girl to hear the story. She stammered out several nervous lies, but good enough ones that I wasn't ready to make a full accusation. Conveniently another girl was with her at the time and since the first offered the idea of confirmation I called for the second girl. I made sure that they couldn't confer and as expected the stories didn't match up. Still I didn't have the clear evidence that I needed to make a confident accusation. I had counted the bread and two slices were missing (I had bought the loaf on Friday so it was easy to remember how much I had eaten) and I found a knife that I had used for lunch but it was left in a different place and it was dirty up to the handle with peanut butter. I called for the first girl again to see if she would retell the same story again and mostly give her a chance to come clean. After she left I realized I had overlooked the most obvious and most convincing evidence. The crust of the bread was gone. I never eat the crust so that the end piece won't dry out (the air is unbelievably dry in the winter) so I knew that I had been robbed and lied to. On Tuesday I pronounced my judgment, letting the girls know that I expected to see them this weekend so that they could clean my house. The whole event is mostly annoying because they did only take two slices of bread but the trust is still broken. Somehow I am getting a pretty good deal though because I will have them clean the whole house and two slices of bread is a bargain for that amount of labor.

Friday the 20^{th – Payday this month for teachers coincided with the beginning of the funeral so we had lengthy debates about teachers going to town on Friday instead of being present here. Then we had a longer debate over how the kids should participate in funeral so by the time we headed towards classes we were 45 minutes late. Not that it mattered because no one taught today. Examinations start on Monday and no one has taught for the last two days. We arranged the kids and had the choir singing to escort the hearse from the road to the homestead and sent the kids back to school. Then the teachers went on towards the funeral which today involved a lot of sitting and eating meat. While I was there they also brought in the second cow to be slaughtered so that there would be enough meat for today and tomorrow. So it's a sad day, but as it would happen I am sad for a different reason. Learners getting pregnant is a reality in Namibia. Last month the President of Namibia admonished teachers and other adult men for impregnating learners. The President of the country. This is a real issue and even though its happened before at this school it still really bothers me. This time it's a girl who is one of the top in grade 10. She was absolutely going to pass the examination this year and now she is home for the next three months and if she has the baby and recovers in time she will return to write the examinations. If you do the arithmetic she's been pregnant all year, it had to happen during the Christmas holiday. I can't say anything else but that this is a tragedy in the highest degree. And its frustrating, this girl was not easy to teach but she was doing well. All the effort to help her is simply wasted. Don't think I'm completely despondent, there are still 96 grade 10 kids and with a little luck some of those will actually benefit from my teaching.}

Writing this has made me more depressed so I have to continue with anything to shake this off. Since no one taught today I returned a test to the grade 9 classes and then went back to my class and taught the ones that hadn't run away how to make a good paper airplane. Some lost interest quickly but several continue to play with them and tweak them to adjust the flight. At least something good happened today.

The weekend has passed and the examination is in full swing. The funeral on Saturday was long but otherwise carried a familiar tone. I was ready at 7am, things got started around 8am and once we had been to the cemetery it was passed 2pm. Seven hours in the sun left me with a thorough sunburn on my face. The graveside service also looked familiar, complete with a tent to provide shade for the older ladies. The main difference was that before anyone had left the hole was almost entirely filled in. Some people said some words, those close to the deceased tossed in a handful of soil then slowly dispersed around the cemetery. During that time a few were engaged in cleaning around other graves and some of the men took turns with the spades to fill in the hole. I took a short stroll around the cemetery was surprised to see many headstones testify to lives as long as 80 or 90 years. The usual was about 60 making my late colleague one of the youngest (I was wrong in my earlier estimate, he was only 48 but just looked older).

 

Sunday 29 July – This weekend was an outweekend so most of the kids went home on Friday. We had the usual fiasco where the principal sets a time when the kids are allowed to leave, then the teachers take off before that time and a couple teachers, some kids and myself are left sitting around waiting until the appropriate time. It is an exercise in futility but at least my conscious is clean. Saturday I told the kids that if they came and studied in the library in the afternoon they could come after dinner to watch a movie. More than 25 kids studied over an hour and then we watched Terminator 3. Enough action to entertain them and since the group was smaller and select I stopped the movie a couple times to explain that Arnold was a machine from the future so maybe they understood a bit of the plot. A successful day. Once the Friday fiasco started I told the grade 10 kids that since its impossible to work now they should come after dinner on Sunday once they have returned from the outweekend so that we can go over some Physical Science (their exam is on Tuesday). I got my laundry done, finished a book, made some bean burritos and headed towards the library for what I expected to be three hours of tutoring. When I stepped outside I could hear obnoxiously loud music coming from the hall. Contrary to anything that could be considered good judgment and concert group is performing in hall tonight. It would seem that we could still study in the library except that the hall is less than 20 meters away. The music is so loud that I haven't bothered to turn on my new Red Hot Chili Pepper's cd in an attempt to drown out the concert music (I don't want to say anything specific about this style of music but I promise to bring some back with so that you can judge for yourself).

The thing I realized tonight is that in circumstances like these I don't get angry anymore, I drop my head in resignation; not with despair but with sadness. Can you imagine being a parent, driving your child back to school in the middle of their examination period and hearing all that noise when kids should be studying for their examinations? I would just turn around. Do whatever it takes to get my kids to a real school. This is not a real school. I shouldn't say something so direct in a public forum like this but it's the only way to describe what happens here. This is not a school. From time to time kids learn a few things, mostly by accident. I used to be angry because of the absurdity of this situation. Now I'm just sad because I think of many of these kids like they are my children, or at least my younger brothers and sisters. They deserve better. One of our grade 8 learners should not have been out with guys in the location who got her drunk and raped her repeatedly. I am savoring the time I have left with these kids. At the same time I am nauseated by the ineptitude of the adults. My consolation is that some of the kids will move on to real schools for grade 11 and begin to awake from the myopia they are in now.

Another Examination

This week we've been staying in school for an extra hour until 2pm to make up for the four day weekend we took at the beginning of the month. For the most part I've been pleased with the change, each period is an extra ten minutes long which helps. Really though when you take the 20 minutes that we lose with school starting late, the ten minutes late back from the first break and five minutes extra on the second break, we are breaking even. Somehow it happens that several teachers are always unaccounted for by the last period though. But we only have one more week until end of term exams that will take almost a month (read: waste almost a month). My grade 10 classes are dreadfully behind but next term I will rectify that. At least I am optimistic about how the grade 9 kids will score on this exam. As I write that I realize that my optimism isn't grounded in reality, nearly everyone failed the last test that wasn't particularly difficult, but optimism is a coping mechanism. I did set the exam for the whole cluster (district) for grade 9 so the wording of questions should be familiar and the content came straight from my lessons. Realistically I do expect about 6 kids could make an A, but even if they fall a bit short my subject should look quite good this term for the grade 9. Last term the grade 9 had 2 of their 9 exams developed by the cluster and as a school we averaged less than 30% on both subjects. I fear the whole school is in for a shock from grade 8-10 with all the subjects coming from the cluster level. I doubt I can get my average above 50% but my standouts will excel.

And tell Uncle Ken to check the mail in about two weeks.