VICTORY!

Yes, I mean victory. Seriously. I won the teaching game. At least for this month.

Seeing as I’m not a teacher, my teaching methods have been slowly developing and evolving over time. (I guess that would maybe happen anyway.. yeah.)

This term, I’ve been focusing on 1) trying hard and 2) following directions. Since I am teaching a mostly-new batch of grade 8 learners from various primary schools, it’s taken a bit of time to get everyone on the same page. But I think I won.

At the beginning of the term, as always, about a quarter to a third of the kids would do any given homework assignment. They always forgot to bring their books and pens to class and were generally unprepared. I know there’s the argument that “the ones who care will do their work,” but it is really difficult to conduct maths class when half of them can’t take notes or do written work for one reason or another!

So, like I did last year, we’ve been combining positive rewards and negative punishments. Every day I tick off whether they did their homework (not necessarily correctly… just attempted). If my learners do their homework every day for a week, they get a prize (a pencil, some stickers, a few sweets, whatever). Then, I told them my philosophy. If you mess up one time, that’s just a mistake… you might not get a sweet, but you also shouldn’t get punished for one mistake. But if you don’t do your homework two or more times in a week, that’s a problem, and you should be punished. The last time I held detention, they sat for two and a half hours, wrote “Homework is given to help me learn. I will do my homework next time.” 200 times. Then they did their homework for the next day. Then they all told me, “Miss, I will do my homework every day now. I hate your detention. I will never come again.” Touché, kids.

Last week, more than half of my learners got the 5-days-of-homework prize, and only 4 of them sat detention. Today, 107/110 learners did their homework on time! The other teachers have started asking me what my secret is, because they’re still struggling to get the kids to do their work. I’m just so incredibly proud when I can attribute it to my NOT-CORPORAL-PUNISHMENT classroom management!

This is totally irrelevant. But IT RAINED LAST WEEK in Tses! Obviously all of my kids went outside and had a huge sand/mud battle. It was wonderful. 

We Are Family!

I know I’ve discussed it before, but hostel life is ridiculous.

Any time I’m at home, I’ve taken to having 10-20 random kids in my house. From 6am until 7pm, basically. A far cry from my somewhat-introverted tendencies in the States! But here’s the thing. Right now, we have 144 learners in our hostel. This means 144 children who, by American standards, ought to have at least one, and probably two, parents caring for them. But at any given time there are only two hostel supervisors, and they can’t even be expected to be “on” ALL the time.

That means 72 kids for one parent. Kids who have homework questions, bumps and bruises, relationship problems, miss-this-girl-stole-my-pen, etc. Not only that, but kids who have needs. Uniforms, toiletries, pens and pencils, money for school events like dances.  

I don’t know what the “answer” is to a problem like this, because there is no clear solution. It is still crazy to me that parents of 13 year olds (or 6 year olds, in the case of primary schools!) can send their kids off to school without school supplies, without pocket money for buying toiletries or even a treat every now and then, etc. For me though, it’s just been an opportunity for a growing experience! I’d never imagined that I would accept having a dozen kids running around my house, touching my stuff, etc. But they need parents, and they need family. I’m happy that now I have such a bigger family – there are at least 10 kids who brag that I am their “mother” and who sometimes help me around the house in exchange for privileges or pocket money. I’ve even grounded one of them because he was unprepared for a test, so I think we’re all learning some interesting things!

one of the least flattering photos, but some of my kids...

a few of the boys

some of my girls from last year who came to hang out and bake

Happy 2014!

..can you tell I’m terribly behind on my blog posts?

*sorry, folks, internet is horrible right now. Was planning to include lots of photos, but it’s too slow! You can check my facebook if you wanna see photos from December.*

As much as I hate turning this thing into a travel blog, half the time it seems like those are my most exciting, interesting, and educational days. So here’s a brief recap of my travels with Marie in December.

We started by traveling north and east through Namibia, and across the border into Zambia. I am still amazed at how easy it is to cross borders here – you can seriously just walk across. Probably nobody would even notice if you didn’t pay for your visa, but we didn’t try it out =) Although we have both been to Victoria Falls already, we stayed a day in Livingstone, Zambia so that we could go whitewater rafting on the Zambezi. It is seriously exhilarating – something like 25 rapids, up to a level 5 (if that means anything to anyone). I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be legal in the States since there were very few safety precautions and we were even allowed to float through some of the rapids outside of the raft! Since I was with a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers, we obviously chose the routes that were trickier and harder to manage, and flipped the raft lots of times. I didn’t have the hundreds of $ to buy the video/photos, but there were some pretty great photos of us all with our legs in the air flipping out of the raft!

From there, Marie and I bused through Zambia. We took an overnight bus to Lusaka, then a bus through the rest of Zambia and into Malawi. We overnighted in Lilongwe, and continued the next day to Nkhata Bay (on Lake Malawi). Nkhata Bay was seriously amazing. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves playing in the water, laying on the beach and even listening to/watching thunderstorms at night! We went snorkeling, boating and cliff jumping on the lake. The town was also super cute, right on the lake and we enjoyed walking around, exploring the markets and trying to prove to people that we weren’t TOTALLY “mzungu” – the local word for white person/usually meant to be a foreign tourist.

After spending a few days on the lake, we bused to Mbeya, TZ, and the next day to Lushoto, TZ. Lushoto was incredibly beautiful – green, lush, and mountainous. We hiked around, saw some incredible wildlife in a natural rainforest, and went to some really cool small-town markets.

Then on to Dar es Salaam, the (not-official-but-basically) capital of Tanzania. Dar was busy, kind of smelly and dirty, and totally unlike anyplace I’ve ever been. We stayed in the Kariakoo district, which houses the famous Kariakoo Market, one of the biggest in TZ. People sold everything there, but it was also really dirty to walk around! We ate local foods, went to the National Museum (where there was actually more about the anthropological studies done in TZ than I had expected!), shopped for kitenges (the Tanzanian version of the shitenge, a traditional cloth-wrap used for skirts or other clotehs), and generally absorbed the city.

In a few days we were done being totally overwhelmed in a city with 4 million people (most of whom seemed to be on the streets at the same time, I have never seen such traffic!) and we went on to Zanzibar. Lots of tourists and other Peace Corps volunteers from all over Africa, but also beautiful white sandy beaches, clear blue water, tidal pools with sea urchins and starfish, … Zanzibar was by far the most touristy place we went, but the strong Muslim culture (similar to that of Dar) also made an impression on us. We saw a lot of the history in Stone Town before heading to the beach.

Finally, Marie and I flew home to start of 2014 right. Thank goodness we didn’t have to bus the whole way back!

Important phrases:

Thank you: tawonga (Tonga, a Malawian language); Asante sana (Kiswahili)

I can’t eat peanuts: hawezi kula karanga (Kiswahili – super useful!)

Hello, how are you: Mambo (Kiswahili)

Off the Grid

Marie and I are leaving on Saturday for our December holiday.

We’re planning to hit up Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania. Neither of us will bring computers, and although we’re hoping we can check our email and such at the hostels where we will stay, we’re not making any promises!

So, best wishes for the holiday season. Happy New Year’s, if I don’t get anything posted on here until 2014. Have a great December! Sago ge ni !gâise Hôasoreb ûha.

No More Learners, No More Books!

 The children have left!!

an end-of-year class party

School went out for our learners on Friday. It was sad to sit on my stoop and watch all of my kids slowly straggle out from the hostel… but at the same time, it’s also a huge relief to have a bit of a break from them! I’m sure it will get lonely soon.

Now, teachers stick around for the end of year stuff – marking exams, inputting grades to the computer system, sending out end-of-year reports.

My grade 8 maths class wrote their exam two weeks ago, so all of my marking is done. Because it’s the end of the year, our exams all come from the region. It’s difficult preparing kids for an exam that you have no control over! When I calculated all of my final grades, it was pretty depressing, actually. I have a 39% pass rate for my grade 8 maths – also known as a 61% failure rate. That’s pretty depressing.

When I had calculated all of this, I went to my principal to apologize for my lack of results. Honestly, I was about to cry. But she looked at me with a huge smile and said something along the lines of: “39%! That’s excellent. Well, not really, we aim for 50%. But our school is usually close to 25% in maths, so 39% is good.”

It’s weird to think that now I will teach many of the same learners next year in grade 8 maths. Because if they fail maths (which means they don’t attain at least a 40% for the year), they fail the whole grade. Still, I’m pretty proud of what we accomplished this year! My kids’ English has improved a lot and we can communicate pretty easily now. We learned to work together as a class and they really did a lot of work towards the end. I’m hoping that next year, I can use everything I’ve learned to my advantage to have the best possible maths class for 2014!

One year, down.

It’s officially the end of my first full school year here at St. Therese JSS! I can’t believe I/we made it!

Here’s some hilights from the last month or so.

The kids write exams for the last month or so of school. That means no real classes, but lots of time spent “invigilating” – either supervising learners studying or writing exams. It also means the learners are bored pretty much all of the time.

We had a few days where the learners really did a ton of work cleaning up the school and hostel for the end of the term. It’s great what an active role they play in keeping up the physical side of the school – they cleaned classrooms, washed windows, raked the sand (I know, I don’t get it either), watered the trees and plants, picked up rubbish, cut down invasive shrubs and burned the old branches. I definitely enjoyed watching their fires!

Teachers have been busy with marking exams, but the atmosphere is a lot more relaxed when we’re not actually planning and giving lessons. I’ve tried to spend a lot of time preparing for next year – I have my plan for the year finished and my worksheets for the first term finished and sent in for copying. (If we want a lot of copies, we have to send to town for them.) I’m hoping to do a lot more learner-centered work next year. This won’t really go with the traditional style of teaching here, but I really think it will help to get the kids more invested. If anybody has ideas about this, I’d love to hear them!

Most of our local churches had their confirmation, baptism, etc. services within the last month or so. I didn’t get to see all of them, but I saw the two confirmation services where a bunch of my kids took part. It was really cool to see these services here – they are considered really important within the church cultures and it was cool to see my kids taking them so seriously.

I’ve been getting more khoekhoegowab (local click language) tutoring from one of my learners. He taught me 4 days a week for the last month or so. He’s focusing more on reading and writing than speaking and listening, which means I’m still not great at conversations… but last week he gave me a test and I wrote two full letters and a police report in khoekhoegowab! This language is insanely difficult, and it’s taking me forever to grasp just a tiny bit of it. But still, I’m pretty proud that I can say anything at this point! Tita ge nesi kaise #nisa a.

A penny saved...

Is a penny that you weren't willing to share with your friends.

The concept of "saving" is something that really does not translate well between American and Namibian cultures. It's something I don't totally understand about Namibians, something they don't understand about me, and honestly, a point of contention between traditional Namibian cultures and the current capitalistic world.

Saving, to me, is an idea that has been drilled into my head since I was tiny. One-fifth of my allowance, starting from when my entire allowance consisted of 5 pennies, had to be put into my separate "savings" piggy bank, which I was keeping as a college fund. My mom always encouraged us to save our money, "just in case." What if you want contacts when you are older? What if you want a car? What about a prom dress? It's not that my parents were being unreasonable… it's that they were trying to instill in my brother and me a sense of personal responsibility.

This habit—saving what I have in case I need it later—actually goes contrary to the common culture here in Namibia.

Here, all people—starting from a young age, just like my brother and me—are trained to share. "In Africa, we share" is probably the phrase I've heard the most often since arriving in Namibia. What does that mean? Here, we are taught to share what we have. Because in a month, you might also be out of work. What will you do then? So, if there is extra food, you don't keep it as leftovers—you share it with your neighbors, friends, or a stray dog. If there is extra money, you don't save it for a rainy day—you give it to your aunt so that she can also provide for her household. It is not at all embarrassing here to go to a friend and ask for money for something, because you know they will do the same at some point. (And if not, then you are extraordinarily lucky and ought to be sharing what you have anyway.)

As an outsider, it's easy to look down at this kind of "sharing" because, honestly, it does inspire less personal responsibility than we are encouraged to have in the States. If you don't have to plan, to save for what you want, sometimes you are less inclined to think ahead about anything. Money, babies, whatever. There's less drive to get a good job to support yourself, because you know you will always be supported somehow. Not necessarily good.

BUT. Is it all bad? Definitely not. I've walked through towns in the US and stopped someone on the street before. Not to ask "ou me one rand" (the common call of children here when they beg all white people for money), but to ask for directions. And people look at me like I'm crazy. Why should I help you if you can't take care of yourself? Here in Namibia, anyone will help you. Need directions? No problem. Anyone will take you there or if they're busy, find a small boy to show you the way. Not enough money? No problem. You can take something from the shop on credit or "on account". Not enough time? No problem. There is never a lack of friends with free time who can come help you finish your projects in a hurry.

This ideal of sharing builds community. It makes people closer and more willing to help each other. And honestly, it's when people get more money—like the teachers or the police—that they become less willing to share. Does having money make us less generous people?