CBT in Outjo

Today marks the beginning of my last weekend in Outjo, so I figured I should give some details about my life here! Last time I updated I talked mostly about irregularities in my schedule, so today I will talk about the excitement of my daily life. Usually, I worry that these sorts of posts are a little dull, but I love my day to day life so much, I really want to talk about it.

As I mentioned last time, I get up around 4:30 every morning so I can be ready to leave at 6:00 and be at school by 6:40. When I leave the house each morning, it’s still dark and the stars are still shining overhead. I usually don’t see anyone until I get out of my neighborhood and into town. As long as there’s not a ton of people, I try to greet everyone I pass, which is a bit thing here. None of us have quite figured out the procedure for when to greet and when not to, so we usually try to greet as often as possible. People seem to really like that. With adults, I always great them in Khoekhoegowab, students I always greet in English since I’m supposed to be an English teacher. When you greet someone in Khoekhoe, it usually goes like this (for mornings):

Me: Moro moro!

Them: Moro moro!! Matisa?
Me: !Gâi ge a! Aitsama mî re?
Them: !Gâi ge a!

And at some point they have started smiling a lot because a white person is bothering to learn their language. Knowing local language earns you huge brownie points, which is probably part of the reason that Peace Corps is so popular here compared to other volunteer organizations. Lately a lot of people have been asking me “Mapa du ra ī?” or “Mapa du ra hâ?” The first means “Where are you going?” the second means “Where are you staying?” I usually get the first one, for which I know to respond either “Maarseen skoli //kha,” or “dorb //kha”. Occasionally I get the second, which once I accidentally responded “Maarseen skoli //kha,” which means “to Maarseen School,” instead of “dorp !nâ” which is “in town.” Sadly, I haven’t been getting a lot of language practice besides that. Everyone here speaks English very well, except the occasional white person, who then usually speaks German (of which I have enough of a basic understanding to speak to them in German). Naturally, I speak Japanese with the Japanese volunteers.

At school, I usually teach one or two classes a day. If I co-teach, I might get four or five. Before we had worked out a solid plan for teaching, I could end up teaching surprise classes, but this week we made clear outlines so all the 5^th and 6^th grade English classes would be taught by volunteers. For our last week I will only be teaching 5^th grade English, which is awesome because we are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and they kids LOVE it. We usually read a chapter or two a day and then use words from the text to build their vocabulary. We are trying to implement a Word Wall in the room, where vocab words are posted alphabetically for students to see throughout the day. This is a great learning and teaching tool because it not only lets students constantly have access to words, but it also allows for a lot of activities for us to do. For example, last week Andrew and I led a game called Guess My Word Wall Word. First, Andrew and I each picked a word for students to guess. Then they would ask us questions like “is it a verb/noun/adj?” “How big is it?” “What color is it?” and so on and so on. Sometimes the kids get a little out of hand. There is one of the 5^th grade classes that every teacher agrees is the worst class. There are almost 40 learners, most of whom have strong personalities. They are all really smart, though, which makes it even more frustrating. On Fridays, however, everyone is a little rowdy. I taught last period on Friday this week and it was horrible. I’ve never had so much trouble keeping control of a class, and it wasn’t even the naughty one!

I’ll end with a little bit about my school. As you may notice from the pictures, my school is really green. As far as low income schools go here, mine is really amazing. It was built because there were so many young kids roaming about the Location with nowhere to go. The school is run incredibly well, something else we have found is really rare for schools that we will be working at. A lot of the staff really care about the kids. A lot of money went into making the school environment beautiful in an attempt to make students more interested in coming. We have a nice garden and pretty green buildings because of that. The first grade classrooms are covered in learning material to engage the children where many schools have bare walls. One of the kindergarten teachers spends her own money and petitions organizations in the community to donate resources to the school. Still, students are extremely poor. They can’t afford their own books and pens, so the school provides for them. Some of them can’t eat at home, so they also can get food after school. A lot of the kids, we found out, are not Damara (the dominant ethnic population in town) but San (more commonly known as Bushmen). The San people are one of two groups that still live semi-nomadic lives, the other being the Ovahimba. The students at my school are mostly recently settled San people. I haven’t gotten to talk to them about it and probably won’t, but the teachers say that one reason for the low performance or general problems at school is because a lot of the parents don’t value education. Though the staff and teachers are definitely not without problems, I really appreciate how much some of them do care. 

CBT and Getting in the Classroom!!

It has been a whole month since we arrived in Namibia.  Thus far, I could say I am adjusting pretty well. I lived with a host family for almost three weeks in Okahandja, which was really nice. Our family ranged from five to eight people on any given day as family members moved in and out of our house. Permanent members are my host mom and dad and my host brother. A week ago we moved, however, to our CBT. The way that our group 42 is undergoing CBT (Community Based Training) is slightly different from the way they have done it in the past. Now, we all move to a new site based on our language groups and undergo language as well as technical training. Seven of us moved to Outjo last weekend to begin this training. Ideally, we live with a family that speaks our language, Khoekhoegowab (KKG) or Damara-Nama. There have been some complications for me on this front as my KKG speaking family members have either been out of town the whole time (in the case of my host parents) or are around 10 years old and will not talk to me in English or KKG. The two people in the house who do speak to me do not speak KKG. One is my host sister, who speaks English, Otjiherero, and Afrikaans, the other is her two year old son who only speaks Otijiherero! My parents returned yesterday and a few other members of the family came over. We had a total of ten people in our house and it was a bit overwhelming!

Since coming to Outjo, we have also finally started working in a school. Our group was divided into two groups, four at the primary school, three at the secondary school. One member of the primary school group ended up deciding to ET (Early Termination) Sunday night, so only three of us started school on Monday. Though those teaching at the secondary school have been having a tough time, the three of us at the primary school are living it up. We get along well with our colleagues, who seem to like us. The student adore us and we have a lot of fun interacting with them. Our school is amazingly well organized, which is something I’m learning is quite special. For most of the week we have been observing classrooms at our schools. This has resulted in some amazing learning experiences, some positive, some negative. A few of the teachers are just amazing teachers. It’s been a real treat to watch their classes. Some of them are less interested in their students, and some seem to downright hate them. I sat through a class where the teacher did nothing but scream at the students, calling them stupid and all sorts of things. I was a horrible moment in my week. The next day we switched sides and we went to observe classes at the secondary school. It was very unwelcoming and there were multiple classrooms where teachers hadn’t shown up all week. I ended up in one of those classrooms and sort of filled in as the teacher. I had a good time with the students and got almost everyone to participate in one way or another.

The next day, we were back at primary school, except we weren’t. I got to school at my usual time only to have the principal pull me aside and ask if the three of us would attend a conference for novice teachers. I said it sounded like something we would benefit from since only one member of our group was an experienced teacher. I told the others about it when they arrived and we quickly came to realize that she meant for us to LEAD the workshop, not merely attend. In an hour we threw together a presentation and some activities on how to asses and incorporate different learning styles and ways of expression into our lessons as well as implement word walls to create a classroom environment that encourages reading across subjects. The teacher member of our group was amazing in organizing everything, but me and the other non-teacher helped out quite a bit and at the end of the day, everyone in the workshop was feeling inspired and like they learned something (including us!). Though ridiculously stressful, I felt so accomplished and inspired by the end. The teachers that attended were from rural areas and talked about some of the challenges but also rewards of teaching. Their concern for their students was powerful. It made me so eager to start teaching!

Now, let me tell you a bit about how my day goes here. I wake up at 4:40AM most mornings and get ready for work. At 6:00AM I begin my 2km walk to school in the dark. The moon and stars have been beautiful walking companions. I get to school around 6:40, just in time to greet people and be ready for the staff meeting at 6:50. School starts at 7:00 and ends at 12:00. We have an hour break for lunch, though we usually combine that with debrief, and then language lessons for an hour. Some days we get out by 2:00PM, others it’s closer to 4:00PM. Then I walk 2km back to town. I usually spend some time with the other volunteers after work and then head home around 5:00/6:00. Dinner is at 7:00 or 8:00. Sometimes I cook, sometimes I just help, others I do nothing. I usually try to get in bed around 9:00, but some nights I just have too much to do to make that a reality. Then I get up and do it all again! This week I’m going to push to get home earlier some nights so I can spend more time with my family.

Oh! I forgot one of the most exciting parts of my week! There are two Japanese volunteers in my town. One of them even teaches at my school. We had coffee earlier this week and will go again next week. It was such a relief to be able to speak Japanese again!! They also gave me the contact details for a Japanese volunteer in the other town where we will finish training.

Let me just say, while this week (or even this month) has been far from easy, I have had so many wonderful experiences. I know I’m not even an official volunteer yet, but I still can’t help but think that joining Peace Corps was the best decision for me. I hope that I can keep up this attitude in the future!

Red Flag Day

I know this is only my second Namibian post, but it’s going to touch on some heavier topics, like racism, colonialism, and genocide. Even though I’ve been here for such a short time, I’ve come to realize very quickly how Namibia’s history still very much affects the lives of people here and how it’s going to affect my being here as well. So in an attempt to communicate this importance to you folks back home, I’m going to try to regularly blog about events in Namibian history as I become more aware of them. 

I typed most of this post weeks ago after the weekend of August 14^th. That weekend was a huge celebration for the Ovaherero people here in Namibia. This year marked the 111^th year since the ending of the German genocide of the Herero and it was commemorated on Red Flag Day. People dress in the clothing of the Ovaherero, which has been a pretty hot topic among the other trainees and non-Namibian Peace Corps Staff. The men wear outfits reflecting German military uniforms from occupation while the women wear Victorian style dresses. One of our trainers said the reason for the women’s dress was because during the colonial times, Ovaherero women working in German households were commonly raped, so the German women would give them dresses fluffed by a bunch of petticoats as a deterrent to assault. I had read about the clothing online before coming here, but no one had explained it with this story, so I feel like it’s something important to get out there. Stories like this one make a lot of the volunteers and other staff wonder why the Ovaherero as a culture continue to wear these clothes, but I feel like it’s not something we have any right to have a say in. However, I think we should be aware of the history around the clothing.

This year, there was quite a kerfuffle at the festivities. So much so that we actually were asked by our local trainers to abstain from Saturday’s festivities. In Namibia there is an ethnic group called the Herero, which is divided into many different groups or tribes or clans or what you will. The Himba people who are probably the most well documented group by foreigners are members of this group, as are the Ovaherero. The Ovaherero have many different chiefs, but since the late 1800s there has also been a Paramount Chief who has more power and is chosen by the Paramount Chief before him. The first Paramount Chief was Hosea Kutako, who the Namibian airport is named after. For the past three years, the purpose of a Paramount Chief has been called into question and a lot of people want to go back to only having a group of chiefs on the same level. There have been many court cases about this apparently, and this year on Red Flag Day another group of Ovaherero said that the Paramount Chief and his supporters couldn’t use their land for the festivities. In the end, they had the festivities, just in another area right next to the problematic one. I also heard through the less reliable trainee rumor mill that part of the controversy was over changing the dress, but the trainer I talked to about the event didn’t make a comment about that. However, some people did arrive at the festivities Sunday morning in what we all figured was a more “traditional” style of dress.

For the festivities on Sunday, we went to the cemetery near the hostel where we’re staying. They were commemorating the death of the last chief and some other key community members. The reception to our group was mixed. The racial makeup of our group in general is overwhelmingly white, so naturally the smaller group that went was also mostly white. I found out from the trainer who went with us afterwards that a lot of people came up to him and made comments. They asked him why he brought so many Germans and mentioned economic compensation for the wrongs committed. Even after explained that we were Americans and Peace Corps Volunteers, there was still some animosity felt towards the group by those individuals despite Peace Corps overwhelming positive reputation in Namibia (which I’ll talk about in a later post). However, as I said, I only found out about this after the fact when I asked my trainer to review this post. To our faces, everyone there was super kind and really welcomed us into the festivities, especially towards the end when a lot of people began to clear off. Once all the Herero who wanted to venerate the graves had finished, they allowed us foreigners in to pay our respects as well. To me, at least, this was a huge honor and I was so grateful for the kindness showed to us by the members of the Ovaherero community despite our obviously problematic presence.  

I thought to end this post I should say a little about the Herero genocide that this event is commemorating. According to the above mentioned trainer, the town of Okahandja is where a lot of key events took place. The church next to our compound is where a massacre took place. The Germans locked a bunch of Ovaherero people inside, told them to close their eyes, and then shot them all. The church now stands as a memorial. I have walked past it every single day and never known its horrible and tragic history. According to this article my friend Anna Shilongo linked me to, the genocide started when the Germans claimed new territory for farmland in Namibia. The Herero’s living there not in immediate employment by the Germans were told to leave or else. When they didn’t, they were killed on site or rounded up into concentration camps. The article says there were 80,000 Herero in Namibia before the genocide, and after only 15,000. Even now most of the land suitable for farming is owned by a small minority of Whites while many of the displaced Herero and other groups have little or even no land. This land issue is still a huge problem in Namibia today and up for quite a lot of political debate.

To end on a happier note, here’s a picture of some goats I saw on the way to school one morning: