Driving

Namibia!
This feeling has been catching me by surprise lately: walking back to the staffroom after class, in the supermarket, and now, as I drive the Oshakati-Outapi road; euphoria hums sweetly through my veins.

The scenery rushes by as the car hurtles along at 130km. Palm trees, whoosh! Termite mounds, whoosh! Oshanas, donkeys, goats, cattle, cuca shops, whoosh! The long road twists and curves across the unchanging, flat landscape. An old woman in traditional dress sits on the ground beside the road. She appears unperturbed by the cars that speed past. She wears dark sunglasses and sits staring down the road in the direction from which I have just come. I imagine her to be content to just sit, lost in her own thoughts. Then the second is over and I hurtle past her. Indapo nawa, meme!

The windscreen wiper breaks and I keep going. I wait for the raindrops to obscure my vision and force me to pull over. The raindrops build up on the windscreen, but suddenly they are gone. I don't remember seeing them disappear. I hope that I will not need the windscreen wipers anymore.

I see a dog in the distance. Don't you dare run out onto the road, dog! But the dog appears determined in its course, as I am in mine. I think that I can outpace it in my car. Dog, stop running! I swerve, narrowly missing the dog as I am forced into the other lane. That was bloody close. But that is the end of my reaction to the incident and I continue my journey without any real break in pace.

Why are the cars coming towards me now driving in my lane? They must be overtaking another car. This game is a test of my nerves. I will stay my course. But this car is not pulling over again. Instead it swerves off the road and stops. In the distance, a donkey keels over on the other side of the road. Something is wrong with that donkey. I feel sadness at the sight of a donkey keeling over. I draw closer in my vehicle. I glance at the donkey, which has now uprighted itself and is walking among the other donkeys. Its intestines are hanging out of its right side.

I start crying as I drive past. Doesn't that donkey know that it will soon die? Donkey, this could have as easily been me as you. It wasn't your fault, donkey, yet now you will die, even as you try to continue along your way with the other donkeys at the side of the road. Although I did not see the car hitting the donkey, I can see it clearly. Immense sadness overwhelms me as the donkey tries to continue grazing with the other donkeys. Perhaps the donkey does not feel anything. But what if the donkey glances back and notices that its guts are trailing along beside him?

I can't shake my bitterness at the unfairness of it all. One moment living, the next you are hanging onto your life by your innards, and realise that you will soon die. A sharp memory surfaces in my mind: I am finishing a run when I see two children crouching low in the grass ahead of me. They are a boy and a girl who look to be between the ages of 8 and 10. I reach the children and see that they are bending over a goat. They have just killed the goat and blood oozes from the fresh wound that runs across its neck. The children giggle as I pass them. I wonder if they are laughing at the shocked expression on my face.

My sadness and bitterness taint the rest of the journey. I reach the road to Oluvango and I see that it is in terrible condition. The land has flooded on either side of the dirt road, which is now ridden with hundreds of potholes that I cannot avoid. The roof light inside the car shatters as I pass over and into a particularly long patch of potholes that shake the car too roughly. I just want to get home. A deep groove in the road catches me by surprise and the car collides with a nasty deep thunk. I turn off the dirt road onto the village trail that leads to Pete's house. I shift quickly between second and first gears and back to second again as I maneuver through the deep puddles. A mantra is stuck in my head: please don't stall in the mud, please don't stall in the mud.

Pete opens the gate and I am happy that I am not the one to dip my flipflopped feet into the muddy pools. Home safely in Namibia. I start to cry again as I remember the donkey.

Last weekend we went with some other WorldTeach folks to a get-together at a VSO couple's house. It was really fun to meet some of the other volunteers in the greater area. The volunteers we met hailed from the Netherlands, US, England and France.

This week I am attending a 3-day workshop in a town a bit further than Oshakati. However, today I found out that it is not a workshop at all but instead is really just some teachers getting together to make the Grade 12 English exam for August. I don't even teach Grade 12...and for this I was told to take 3 days off teaching (it's funny how I no longer desire to miss school now that I'm a teacher)! Let me just say once again that there are no substitute teachers and I have no textbooks for my kids. Oh well.

Also, I discovered about 6 spider 'cocoons' in my room this week. Only I didn't know what they were until Pete disturbed one by accident and tons of baby spiders came crawling out!! The adult spiders in my room are BIG fellas. I'm secretly hoping that a lot of these baby spiders will not make it to adulthood.

Some of the other teachers at my school.

Photos of my new 'do to follow in a couple of days. It's SHORT now...above my shoulders short! I'm still not used to my new look, but I am also still feeling the buzz from cutting it off and may cut it even shorter next weekend (above my ears?)!


Last week I asked all of my students to write lifelines for their past, present and future. It was really a shock to learn that so many of my students have lost one or both parents. This is so common in fact that the principal asked the class teachers just the other day to pass around a sheet of paper with the words "mother" and "father" written on the top. The students then had to put a tick or a cross underneath.

Death and sickness are very common here. Funerals are mostly held on Saturdays, and many of the other teachers and students go to funerals at the weekend. Some of my students are absent for weeks at a time. Whenever I ask where they are I am just told that they have gone to the hospital. One boy came back yesterday and after saying how pleased I was that he was feeling better and back in class, I asked him if he had had malaria. He said no, but didn't elaborate on his sickness.

Recently my younger students have also been writing diary entries. What different lives they lead to the 13 year olds I know in Ireland and America. They wake up at 5am in the morning, make tea for their family, go to work in the fields cultivating mahangu until 7.30am, and then walk whatever distance they must to get to school (many of the younger students do not live in the hostel). After school they head home to work in the fields again, after which some must go back out in the evening to round up their cattle and/or donkeys to bring back to the kraal.

I am also always amazed by the fact that it is common to see very young children walking around by themselves. I know that the dangers for children are different here, but dangers still exist. I guess that most families here in rural Namibia do not have the same luxuries that we have back home to put in place measures to safeguard their children. It's also very clear that children are crucial to the rural workforce.

I cut my hair!!

Some of my students headed into Outapi on a Saturday morning. Immediately the saying, "all dressed up with nowhere to go," pops into my head. I really need to take a picture of Outapi, the nearest town to me, as there is not much there at all. I really wonder what they do there...hang out at the petrol station??

This is a traditional kraal that Pete lives besides. The girls jogging with Pete in the photo below are two of his students and they also live on this kraal. Every morning they are up at 5am to work in the field surrounding the kraal. They must also return to the field to work after school. Their younger brother, Johannes, was one of the first people to ever come running with us (I guess he spread the word)!

Mahangu is growing in the field. I think the harvest will be May/June.

Some jogging photos from Namibia!

The trails are really beautiful as the sun begins to set.

After taking a picture of Pete beside this large termite mound beside his school, he noticed, on closer inspection, a shed snake skin hanging out of one of the holes in the mound! 'Nuff said - we quickly moved away.

Here is also a photo of the dead snake that I stumbled upon one day in Pete's village. I think that it is some variety of (non-venemous) grasssnake.

Well, Ted has asked about the snake situation out here. Funnily enough, I was also quite interested in the snake situation myself during pre-departure preparations! As such, I emailed some past volunteers to get the low down. I was pretty dismayed to learn that black mambas, spitting cobras and puff adders were to be among my new neighbours here at the Mission. Aiiyy! I swiftly entered what became known as my "snake phase" of pre-departure preparations - a gripping phobia that I would die from some snake's venom while in Northern Namibia!

However, now that I'm actually here, all of this has become more of a "c'est la vie" attitude. Yes, dangerous snakes are spotted and (sometimes) killed from time to time on the Mission grounds, but I have yet to come across a live one myself. That being said, however, last week I did come across a dead snake (not sure what kind, will look it up in a book later) in the middle of a trail in Pete's village, and also spotted a shed snake skin hanging out of a termite mound (photos of both to follow later!). I do get a little nervous when I go running, but in reality the snakes will mostly likely be more scared of me and will not seek an encounter. Although, I figure that black mambas are so badass that they're not really scared of anything. Well, at least the sparse vegetation is an advantage in this situation - hopefully I'll spot a long black snake before it spots me!

And finally, I can’t say it enough times – the sky here is really beautiful.

A couple of grinning fools in Namibia!

This is a picture of a baobab tree in the middle of a field near the mission grounds. These trees are huge and remind me of the Ents in Lord of the Rings.

This is a photo of a mural at our friend Kate’s school. I have decided to put it in tandem with this billboard advertisement because I find the messages that these images convey disturbing and amusing in similar ways! Please note that if you look carefully at the girl in the big boots in the mural, her skirt doesn’t actually manage to cover much of anything, and she has some surprisingly muscular legs!

Here are some photos from our trip last weekend up to Oshikango to visit two friends of ours, Laura and Inbal. Oshikango is right on the border with Angola, and the next time we visit they have promised us a nice walk into Angola! The Catholic mission where they are teaching was actually bombed during the SWAPO campaign in the 1980s and the school only reopened two years ago. The first photo is the work of a Namibian-Angolan artist called John Ndevasia Muafangejo. His work was displayed haphazardly in one of the buildings on the mission. I found his work, and life story, really interesting. The next photo shows some of their students taking a dip and washing their clothes

Well, it has been quite the week. The main highlights of the past week were, and I apologise if this is too much information for some, food poisoning and the “runny tummy”! The “runny tummy”, as Pete put it, is an evocative yet euphemistic expression. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?

I am very, very happy it’s the weekend. I’m sure my students are happy as well – I was unfortunately a tad on the crabby side this week as a result of the above mentioned “highlights”.

What else about the week (surely other things have happened aside from numerous trips to the bathroom)? Well, I had to call off my drama club meeting this week because the principal told me that he would like me to create some kind of culture club with another teacher. I am hoping this will all come together soon so that we can start HIV/AIDS sessions with the students and hopefully still put on a play at the end of term. The girls’ soccer practice was about the same as last week’s – some half-hearted effort with the running and skill drills, and then full-out enthusiasm for the soccer match at the end! By the way, the African Nations Cup is currently ongoing, and I believe that the final is between Cote d’Ivoire and Egypt. Unfortunately Namibia never even qualified!

This week, my dear friend Lisa wrote me an email that I found very astute. By the way, Lisa is a math teacher with New York Teaching Fellows, and I hope she doesn't mind if I share some of her comments:

-- "Teaching is tough, but teachers are tough too."
-- "They have a lot going on in their lives...I think we all want to make a huge impact on our kids, but they have so many other impressions already made and simultaneously being made that we cannot put their shortcomings on ourselves."


P.S. Photos to follow tomorrow.

So my very lovely weekend with friends was unfortunately rounded off with a bout of food poisoning on Sunday night! However, less than 24 hours later I was feeling a million times better and today I am back teaching.

Music: There is a CD player in the car, but unfortunately neither Pete nor I thought to bring any CDs along with us! However, our friend Kate very kindly burned me the Garden State soundtrack as well as some songs by the Postal Service for my birthday. So, if you ever want to imagine me driving along the dirt roads out here, you can also imagine the Garden State CD playing in the background (except when it's too bumpy and the CD skips)! That, or some Namibian radio station, which more likely than not will be playing the hit song of the summer over here, "Baby Don't Go" by the Namibian artist The Dogg! Funny how there seems to be a successful formula for pop songs the world over - a catchy riff plus simple and repetitive lyrics. Using the word "baby" a lot also seems to work.

Books: I haven't been reading as much as I thought I would, but so far I have managed to read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, and Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. I am currently in the middle of a collection of modern African short stories and Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian.

And finally, how could I not round up my blog post for this week without a photo of me doing my washing?!

Here are some photos from the first practice of the girls' soccer club!

These are some photos from the farewell ceremony for a departing primary school principal that I attended yesterday. It was really interesting and fun to see some of the ceremonial traditions up here. The older woman in the blue dress is holding a horse's tail that she would wave about at particularly exciting moments. The beautiful pots and cups were for the traditional drinks that were served later on.

Just a couple of animal photos from the week. The donkeys are acting crazy right now because it's mating season! This particular donkey was having a ball rolling in the mud at my school.

The other photo is of two cows that were tied up and squashed into the back of a pickup truck. I was getting petrol when the truck pulled up beside me. Not something that you see everyday...

For no particular reason other than that I’m probably still just getting used to teaching and life here in general, I was incredibly exhausted this week (I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to the weekend so much!). My week was a little bit busier for a few reasons as well: I now supervise evening study for 4 hours a week (I hate being in a policing role!), I went to a teachers’ workshop for 6 hours, I started the girls’ soccer club, and I went to a primary school principal’s farewell ceremony.

As for the teaching…well, the teaching itself is generally fine once I have made my lesson plans! The double periods are rough though, as it’s hard to make a lesson plan that will fill 80 minutes. Some of the older students are also getting a bit cheeky…probably not surprising given that one of my 11th grade classes has 36 boys and only 4 girls. This class now has 40 students because 8 new students were added to my two 11th grade classes this week (so I am now teaching almost 150 kids!). Every year the Namibian government has huge difficulties finding enough places for all of the students nationwide. So even though it is late in the term, the government informed my school last week that we had to take these new students. Every time I walk into these two classes, I wonder how I can keep this many 16-20 year olds interested in what I am teaching, and hopefully learning as well. The problem is compounded by the fact that we don’t have any textbooks.

After having bought 3 soccer balls last weekend, I did start the girls’ soccer club this week, as well as sort out the members of the drama club, which officially starts next week (if anyone has any good ideas for plays, they would be most welcome. I am particularly interested in HIV/AIDS themed plays). I feel a little bad as I have to restrict both of these clubs to grades 11 and 10 for the moment, as the numbers would be too large otherwise. As it turns out, I still had 30 girls turn out for the soccer, which is great! I started off by doing some running and drills with the girls, but quickly realised that they just wanted to get out and kick the ball around! Fair enough, I don’t know when they get a chance to do this otherwise.

A lesson that I’m trying to come away with after the week is getting used to things cropping up at the last minute. For example, on Tuesday morning I was about to leave the staffroom to go teach a class, when I was stopped by a teacher who informed me that I had to leave right that minute to go attend a teachers’ workshop for 6 hours! Just like that I was expected to leave my 5 classes for the day with no supervision or work to do (there are of course no substitute teachers here). And to make matters worse, the workshop ended up being 2 hours late in starting!

The same thing happened again on Friday. I had just finished teaching the last class of the day and had gone into the staffroom to pick up my books and head out for the weekend when I was told by a teacher that I had to go attend a farewell ceremony for the principal of the primary school “right now”! You may think that I would have been happy to go attend a ceremony, but I guess that I was a little miffed that I wasn’t given any advance notice, and it was a precious Friday afternoon (the week was finally over!). Furthermore, the ceremony ended up lasting for over 3 hours! But complaints aside over the lack of advance warning, I was later glad to have attended the ceremony as I had the opportunity to see some of Northern Namibia’s ceremonial traditions. See the photos above for more detail.

All of this is also probably a good lesson in defining my concept of time and “free time” in particular. What do I have to do in my free time that is so important anyway? I suppose that the only reason I remain somewhat fiercely protective over my free time is because I want to spend it with Pete. But I think that this conflict over time will be resolved as we both become busier and slowly have to relinquish our concept of “free time” and adjust more fully to our new lifestyles here.

Anyways, the teaching week is over, and I am happy it is the weekend! I feel more accepted by my students and colleagues after 3 weeks of teaching here, but I am also still not quite settled in yet. This weekend we and a couple of the other volunteers are heading up to the Angolan border to spend the night with some friends of ours. Hope you all have a great weekend!