I am grateful for...

I thought of trying to structure this post around the grateful game. For those who have never played, the game goes like this: people take turns saying things they are grateful for. When we play here, the woman that usually starts the game has a few extra rules she enforces strictly: no back-handed gratefuls, or don’t say something that is more negative than positive, and it has to be something you are really, truly grateful for, so don’t say something along the lines of being grateful for oxygen or something. So, in the spirit of the game and the extra rules, please read further.

Today I’m moving from Outjo back to Okahandja where we have training and I’m pretty sad about it. Not tears-streaming-down-my-face sad, but just sorry to leave. I’ve really come to love it here in Outjo. Even things that were difficult at first (mostly, figuring out how to navigate my host family) have become just normal parts of my life here. After two months in Namibia, I had finally gone from the numbness created by being unable to process all the changes happening around me, to a relatively functioning human being once more. While here in Outjo, I woke up at 4:30 AM every day with no complaints and a smile on my face for my 40 minute walk to work. And I loved it. I taught a class of 40 with no lesson plan on my first week, and I loved it. I learned how to make lesson plans and execute them effectively. I learned when the planned lesson is not working and how to change pace on the spot. I (hitch)hiked for the first time. 

I was a minor celebrity around campus, with kids from grades I had never taught greeting me every day. I made the best Irish stew I’ve ever cooked for my host family (and they ate it). I went to Etosha, the largest game preserve in the world. I got really good at braiding my hair in the morning. I figured out how to unlock the two doors and gate to get out of the house every morning. I had real coffee. I practiced Damara with people I didn’t know. My kids would greet me in town. I met half the town. I managed to live on hardly any money. I made friends. I found out one of the guys on my program is related to me (or that we have a recent common ancestor). I stargazed using the map my friend gave me. I saw a ton of bats flying around and listen to them echolocating every night. I finally found a place in my host family. I painted my host mom a picture and she loved it. 

The list goes on. 

For the past four or so years I was in school, I have been constantly stressed about a number of things. It eventually became so constant that I didn’t even realize I was stressed anymore until now. While there is obviously still a lot of pressure being here, I just don’t feel it the same way I did back in Minnesota. I don’t want to get too deep here, but I really want to emphasize how good a decision joining Peace Corps was for me. Even though I’m the one who is supposed to be the teacher, I’ve been learning so much from everyone around me, Americans and Namibians, young and old. I am so overwhelmingly grateful for the experiences I’ve had so far and I can’t wait to see where this journey will take me. 

I’ll briefly wrap up with an explanation of the photos scattered in this post, since there are a lot of them. I took all of these my last day. Most are of my students in the 5^th and 7^th grades. 7^th grade was by far my favorite class. Those kids are so awesome and I hope for the best for all of them. One is of the woman who sells us fat cakes every day. One of the good things about Okahandja is my access to fat cakes with disappear, so I hopefully I can go back to losing weight! Some are of the San kids from the cultural club. One of them was one of the orneriest kids we had to deal with, but we all loved him anyways because while he was a little brat, he was really smart and would usually try pretty hard. He’s also a fantastic dancer! We were thrilled he found an outlet for all of his energy! There’s one of me and one of the other Minas at school. Mina is a very common name in these parts. There’s one of me and our co-teacher Mrs. Kabajani as well. 

I guess I’ll sign off for now! In Okahandja I will not have reliable access to internet again, so I may not be posting pictures for a few weeks. On Monday I will try to briefly post about where I’ll be moving to (we find out site placement at last!) and on the 15^th is our swearing in ceremony. The 16^th is when we will move to our permanent sites. Hopefully by then I’ll have figured out a way to obtain semi-regular access to working internet so I can post some pictures! 

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. 

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: