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!