Okalongo

On Sunday morning, at approximately 8 am, I began the journey to my permanent home in Namibia. The ride to the North was extremely entertaining and properly introduced me to “Africa time.” Here, being late is perfectly acceptable. If you are on time, you are a bit weird and if you are early, then you are absurd. Namibians go with the flow and time is no concern to them. That being said, our driver was supposed to arrive at 7, but instead showed up at 8. We began the 10 hour drive when my 2 fellow WorldTeach volunteers and I soon encountered another aspect of Namibian culture: hitchhiking. Hitchhiking is the mode of transportation in Namibia; everyone, old or young, does it to get from point A to point B. Well, our driver picked up 2 hitchhikers along the way. He did not say anything to us. He just pulled over and picked them up. Our driver also had his own agenda. We stopped multiple times and he went school supply shopping for his son while we waited in the scalding van. No big deal, just go with the flow. Our 10 hour ride soon turned into a 13 hour ride. I was supposed to arrive at my site about 5/6 pm before the sun went down. Nope, I arrived at 830/9 pm when it was dark preventing me from checking out my new site.
I am now at my site in Okalongo, Namibia, at Haudano Secondary School. I was under the impression that I was going to have 3 to 4 roommates who would also be Namibian teachers. Upon my arrival, I found out that I would be living by myself. It was a scary realization seeing that I did not have any supplies of my own i.e. no cooking or kitchen supplies. Another surprise was that I was placed at a hostel school meaning that I am living at a boarding school. There are 600 students on campus with about 500 living in the dorms. Bells go off constantly letting them know where they are supposed to be. Two alarms go off in the morning: one at 430 am when the learners wake up and then a final warning bell at 6 am that they are supposed to start heading for their classrooms. These bells make me jump out of my bed every morning. Anyways, so when I arrived their was a team of 10 people doing last minute preparations on my dorm. I did not have a refrigerator or working stove for the first night, but now do. The curtains on my window are not long enough and on the first night I had learners peering their heads through the spaces trying to look at me. My apartment was filled with dust and sand. I am still trying to clean it. It just never seems to be clean. I do have a back porch which I am obsessed with. It is a perfect place to look at the stars at night.
As for Okalongo, the town is pretty big. Every step you take is another shebeen, which is an informal bar. Compared to Hannah and Kaylan’s towns’ (the two volunteers I rode up with), Okalongo is a huge city. There is even a gas station and a restaurant! Haudano Secondary School is a very nice school. We have had some flooding issues with the all of the rain we have been having, but the campus is maintained and well taken care of.
Monday morning, I woke up at 530 am to be at a staff meeting at 615 am. Afterwards we moved to the gymnasium for assembly. The entire school sang the Namibian national anthem and I almost cried it was so beautiful. I have vowed myself to learn it by the end of the term so I can sing along. The Principal had me stand in front of the entire school and introduce myself. The learners all started cheering and whooping. One learner stood up and threw his hands in the air. I introduced myself. There was a small pause and then the entire school busted out laughing. They did not understand a word that I said. Everyone got a good laugh on my account. I could not help but laugh. Then the Principal explained to the school while I was there and kind of scolded them and told them I spoke proper English. He said by the end of the year, they were no longer allowed to speak Namlish and that they were to sound like me. He told them to listen to everything I said and to mimic my speak. I was in awe by the end of assembly. The assembly ended up being 4 hours long. (!) I was given a shock when I found out I would be teaching two periods of gym class. Haha that will be entertaining. The gym teacher came up to me later in the day and asked me to be the netball coach? I got out of that though because I told him I did not know what netball was.
I sat in the teacher’s lounge Monday because Namibian schools are notorious for being disorganized. The class schedules were not figured out and students were in the wrong grade levels completely. Malakia, the school’s Head of Sciences took me into Oshataki, the biggest city near me, to get my tax id. I got a nice and much needed surprise when I saw Bernie at the Ministry of Finance. I had to pick up a lot of supplies in Oshakati because the apartment was completely empty. My apartment looks a little more homey now that I have some of my things unpacked.
Every morning I wake up at 545 am and have a staff meeting at 640 am. Classes start at 7 am and the school is on a rotating 7 day schedule, rather than a 5 day school schedule. Tuesday (yesterday) I was introduced to some of my classes, but by the afternoon I was stuck with one class because the rotation system stopped working. I have not been teaching because we do not get books until next week. I was asked to go to a newspaper/debate meeting after school. I said yes and told the coordinator that I was only going to watch. After the meeting, I was told that I was to attend meetings Monday through Thursday and that I would be a co- coordinator. Therefore, apparently now I am a part of the newspaper and debate team. It is quite unexpected but I have quickly learned to go with the flow.
Today, I have an English department meeting. This seems like a normal statement, but it is not. When you have a department meeting, you must prepare mentally for days. The meeting could be up to 5 hours long because of “Africa time.” People show up late and it rarely starts on time. Teachers tend to not give their opinions directly and will beat around the bush until some one else expresses what they want to. Will let you know how it turns out in the next post.
The hardest part of being here is the nighttime. It gets very quiet and almost lonely at night. I was expecting to have roommates so I have been adjusting to living by myself. Every morning when I walk out my door I immediately feel better. I do not know what is, but being outside is soothing. The air is so fresh and the sunrises are breath- taking. Adjustment is going to be a process, but I am enjoying every minute, the ups and the downs... Peace

Going "Wild"

As per usual, I’ve had a very interesting past couple of days. In my curriculum in college, we always discussed the negatives of safaris in Africa. The first question people ask you when you say you are going to Africa is, “Are you going to see the animals?” In all reality, in the cities and the villages, there are no free roaming animals, at least not the majestic beasts people think of when they think of Africa. Africa, as a continent, is much more than lions, zebras, and elephants. Often times, people visit Africa to go on a safari to see these animals in their natural habitats and are afterwards shown the more regale aspects of the continent like nice hotels, five course meals, and a waitstaff. These tourists never truly see the “real” Africa. That being said, I had mixed feelings about our group trip to Etosha National Park on Sunday. Etosha is a Namibian Game Reserve which houses 114 mammal species among its birds and reptiles. Soon upon our arrival, we saw a group of gigantic giraffes. I do have to admit, seeing the giraffes in the wild, right out your window, is a once in a lifetime feeling. They were extremely tall and their patterns were unreal. We all freaked out when we saw the first giraffe, but soon found out that the giraffes are very commonplace in the park. They were very natural to us by the time of our departure. The next animals we saw were the zebras! I have a soft spot for zebras, so seeing them was really cool. Every depiction of the zebra print I often see is black and white, but really all the zebras I saw were black and a faint gray. They looked even better in person and in packs. When a normal tourist goes to these types of parks, it’s either a hit or a miss to see a lion or an elephant. Well, we must have been a lucky group because we saw both! First, we saw the lion, which honestly I think was my favorite animal to see. He was stalking solo and through my binoculars (yes, Im a dork and brought binoculars) you could see the definition of his muscles. It kind of gave me the chills. Mind you, I should have warned you about this earlier, but these animals are not afraid of humans. All the animals, especially the elephants, are notorious for coming right up to cars. We had to be very quiet and not attract attention to ourselves. In the case of the elephants, they tend to sit on peoples’ cars and crush them. Kind of scary.
The next part of the adventure makes me chuckle thinking about... Springboks are a type of deer found in Southern Africa. They are the national animal of South Africa and while I was in South Africa I ate springbok. It was very good and tasty. Well, we witnessed the birth of a baby springbok. We drove past it and our driver Camberona (who is crazy, but in a good way) told us the baby was dead. So we drove away and everyone in the van was upset, because the mother was visibly pushing to get the baby out and we thought it was a defeated effort. Welp Camberona was wrong. We drove around for a bit and when we came back, the baby Springbok was born. Here is the kicker of the story, we watched the entire scene to the soundtrack of “Circle of Life” from the Lion King. If my college professors only saw me now, they would kill me. The entire situation is very stereotypical, but whatever. It was kind of funny, I could not stop laughing. Needless to say mother and baby springbok were alive and healthy. When we drove away after Camberona got impatient, baby springbok was taking it’s first steps of life. Just as we were about to leave the park, we finally saw an elephant!! The best way to follow an elephant trail is to follow the large mounds of dung that are on the paths. We had people sticking their heads out the window to smell it and see if the poo was fresh. We found him in an open field by himself, meaning he must be a male, because males are kicked out of the pack. The animal was indescribably majestic. Elephants are beasts of an animal. I am very happy that I got to see one in the end. Therefore, although I probably disgraced my degree and my college professors, I felt that seeing the animals was a must. Now I’ve gotten it out of my system and do not need to do it again. I do not think I would have gone out of my way to go on a mini safari myself, but it was all part of my orientation experience. I do admit, it was pretty amazing :)

Tsumeb

Goie More! That means “Good morning” in Afrikaans. I have recently realized that my last blog post got cut off. I apologize. New Years ended up being a great Namibian New Years celebration. We engorged ourselves with three different types of meat and then toasted the new year with South African red wine and champagne. We all had a grand old time. On Monday we left Windhoek for a city north of us called Tsumeb. We have been here ever since and having started our teaching practicums. We have been paired up with another member in the group and we have been team teaching a small number of students. My partner ended up being Bernie (not planned) and we’ve been getting into the rhythm of teaching. I am grateful we got to do these teaching practicums before we were sent to our year long schools, but I’ve been hit with some hard realities. I will be teaching 8th through 12th grade eventually in my village of Okalongo so Bernie and I were given students around this class range. We soon realized that the learners English was extremely behind what we anticipated. A 12th grade boy did not how to do fractions and a 7th grade boy did not know the English alphabet. Many schools have zero to few resources like text books or even chairs and tables. A lot of the students miss weeks of school at time because they have household responsibilities, like herding the cows. School seems to not be a priority in some situations. One of my goals here is to stress the importance of education. All of these situations are going to make teaching here that much more difficult and test my abilities as a teacher. Our last day of teaching reminded me of the rewards of teaching though. We handed out certificates of completion to the students and they all had huge smiles on their faces. Just to see them light up in the classroom when we taught them how to play charades was an awesome feeling. Sidenote: One thing I’ve fallen in love with here is the African sky. The stars are indescribable and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Because I am in the Southern Hemisphere I see different stars then all of you at home. They are gorgeous and so interesting looking. They literally light up the night sky. I am sure they will be even more amazing when I get to my village and they are not affected by the city lights. Ill check in again soon!