Sundowners

Sundowners are one of our (‘us’ being the Tses volunteers) favourite ways to spend the evening. On days when I don’t have evening study to supervise/help out at, it’s really great to take a long walk out to the sand dunes and drink a beer with the other volunteers.

The thing we realized, though, is that the kids never get to do this. Especially the hostel kids don’t get the time out of the blocks, and the kids who are from Tses don’t really see the point or don’t have someone to go with.

So one of the new German volunteers, Carolin, who is here for just a few months to help out at the school, and I decided it was time to remedy this. It’s easier now that we are two at St. Therese. We took a group of about 30 learners from the athletics (track) team out of evening study one night as a ‘teambuilding’ activity, and took them to the dunes for a sundowner.

It was absolutely incredible to see them playing, scuffling around, enjoying themselves with no worries for a change! Even if it was only for one night, we all really enjoyed ourselves. (And were thoroughly exhausted afterwards.)

Our "Reading culture" - help please?!

I'm looking for donations!!

Thanks to some generous assistance, mostly from Catherine’s Northwest School and my mom (you are awesome!!!), I brought back a bunch of new books with me when I returned to Tses this year.

It's nice to see kids studying - but even cooler when they are practicing their English skills for fun!

For those of you who know me, when I was little I used to spend inordinate amounts of time reading. I would go through hundreds of books during summer vacation, curled up in my mom’s chair or sprawled on the stairs. Now, it has made me so happy to be able to give my kids great books to read!

Although the school has a library, it is mostly old reject books from the US or UK. They aren’t “nice” reading books and the kids just aren’t interested. Now, armed with an arsenal of Ramona, Goosebumps, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Roald Dahl etc., I have actually gotten a bunch of kids interested in reading! I see them with my books not only during ‘study’ time, when they have finished their homework – but also sitting around in their own free time. Seriously, it makes me feel so great.

Once these girls got their hands on my Ramona series, I didn't see it again for a week.

BUT! I have a request from the kids for MORE. I don’t have a lot of difficult books (difficult is about the Ramona level for them) because I brought back mostly books for my remedial English classes. Now that I see that the better readers are also getting into my books, I don’t have enough for them! They are begging for more Ramona, specifically, and other “nice” books. Medium level, funny and interesting stories. I actually think those Beverly Cleary books are better for being old, because there isn’t as much cultural stuff that doesn’t make sense to them.

If anyone has extra books of that level lying around, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to get some more donations for my kids. Even if you can afford to ship an envelope with 2 books we would be incredibly grateful.

Thanks in advance for your support!!!

Don't blame the victim

“Never blame the victim” is a line I have heard many times – in Peace Corps sensitivity trainings, in high school and college when learning to deal with emotional issues of friends, when acquaintances deal with mugging or robbery, and in pretty much every reading that addresses victim advocacy.

It’s a hard thing to learn and a rule that I have been working really, really hard to follow here in Tses. In this kind of community, where Peace Corps volunteers are placed, there are inevitably a lot of victims. Those who are misjudged based on diseases like HIV; those who fall prey to gender based violence; those who are abused in other ways by a huge variety of people. Yet, at least for me, sometimes it is a struggle not to blame the victim, at least a little bit.

Why did you go out late at night in a dangerous neighborhood? Why were you wearing such a provocative outfit? Why were you there in that club?

So this week, when we had a really serious accusation of abuse brought up at our school, I worked REALLY hard to keep my mouth shut, and not blame the victim.

We had a grade 8 girl come to afternoon study with a neck so stiff she couldn’t turn her head and had tears running down her face for almost an hour. Obviously I, as well as another teacher, pounced on the situation and after several grueling interviews with her and several friends, thought we had the story. There is a grade 9 boy in our school (who’s behaviour is atrocious, by the way) who is her uncle – his father is her grandfather, although they are only separated by a few years. She said that he had abused her since they were young, but she had been schooling in another town until this year so it was never a big problem. Since she had moved back in with her grandfather, the boy apparently attacked her several times, and on this particular day beat her violently because she wanted to sleep with someone else. He apparently also confiscated her phone until they “did the sex.”

Now, from what I could see, this girl was pretty aggressive herself. She was always swearing at other learners and definitely wore provocative things when not in uniform. But ok, don’t blame the victim. Women should be able to wear what makes them happy without a threat of abuse. Don’t blame the victim. So when the other teachers also started making plans, I was on board. Let’s get her out of there, we can’t trust the family because the grandfather will always side with his son (he is well known in our community for always siding with the son, even when the son is wrong). Let’s act.

Sometimes we don't value kids enough in this society, and parents lose track of what is really important.

This deteriorated into major family drama, and a few days later the whole family got together in the staff room of our school so that we could help moderate the conversation. Don’t blame the victim. Yet do you know what came out of it, once everyone was together?

The girl has been provoking the boy – pulling down and snapping her underwear in front of him, among other things. He has tried to protect her in several cases, and apparently that one day, beat her only after following her to a boy’s house (where he knew she wasn’t allowed to be) and trying to bring her home.

Who knows who’s right or who’s wrong at this point – seems like a weird family drama and we have at least removed the girl so that she can live in the school hostel away from any potential danger.

But how, the hell, do you not blame the victim, when the victim is doing things like this?! Some of the teachers got extraordinarily angry because “she was nothing but a big liar,” which I also don’t totally believe. But at the end of the day, shouldn’t you also go with some gut instinct to question some of these crazy stories? And although in the beginning I was reluctant to talk with the girl about her behaviour (because no victim should be forced to feel like what happened to them was their fault), should she not be instructed somehow that these things are not appropriate and will no doubt lead to other ridiculous incidents?!?!? What do you do??

baby steps

Well, I’m into my third full school year here at St. Therese. I can now say I am one of the oldest teachers still at our school, and there have definitely been a lot of changes just since I arrived in 2012. They’re not huge and impressive, but I am so excited about them.

-St. Therese has expanded from a Junior Secondary School to a full Secondary School! We opened grade 11 this year, and those kids will move to grade 12 next year. It is a sign of confidence from the Ministry because we have to achieve a certain pass rate in grade 10 (last year was 40%) in order to open the higher grades.

-Teachers, generally, are motivated and working hard. This year it seems like a lot of them came with cool and good ideas, and I am excited to work more with them.

-We have opened the science laboratory! It is a project I’ve been working on, slowly, for the last 2 years with another science teacher. We pushed the Science Fair for the kids last year to start getting the school and learners used to the idea of promoting science, and this year we are finally doing labs during classes. I am kind of working as a lab assistant for the year to make sure everything goes smoothly, but that teacher and I spent a lot of time over the last few months cleaning out ALL of the junk from the lab and packing all of the equipment/supplies properly. Now we are just trying to fill in the gaps (our microscopes are probably 40 years old) and stuff like that.

Here's how the lab used to look:

And how it looks now:

      

-The kids ask me questions! For the last two years, I have spent all of my class time trying to hammer into them, “ask questions if you don’t understand.” Some of them finally seem to have picked up on it! I hear them asking other teachers more than ever in the past, and many of the learners I had every day last year still come to me frequently for help. I think it helps that I’m usually still at study, because I am one of the only teachers that is always available to them.

Not like things are now perfect in Tses/at St. Therese. But whether it is my own perspective or not, things seem to really have improved since I came and I am just so proud of everyone here.

New Year, New Job

Just a quick update on my life in Tses this year! Since I am now an “Extended” Peace Corps Volunteer, my project changes slightly. So far, here’s what it looks like I’m doing day-to-day.

-Working with small groups of learners on a remedial English curriculum (pulling them out of class and starting back at what appears to be an American grade 2-3 level)

-Working in the science laboratory with learners and teachers (It has not been open in decades!!!! We have already done two labs this year!!!!)

-Working with admin. at school to develop new tools and streamline .. everything

-Sports with the kids (currently training track and field/athletics, trying to get the rugby/soccer programs up and going as well)

-Helping out with extracurriculars including afternoon and evening study, a girls’ group, etc.

-Working with staff to develop their skills – science lab, computers/Excel, English, etc.

-Subbing in classes when teachers are absent (I spent one week basically subbing for our other maths teacher, which was cool because I got a chance to explain things to the kids in a second way so they had a better shot at understanding – and then got to move forward with her curriculum so they don’t get behind so early in the year)

-Working with some of the new teachers one-on-one to develop their skills and help them get settled into the school and Ministry organization

I’m so excited about this year. It seems like most of the teachers are really motivated and excited to do stuff (which is a change!!) and the vibe at school is really good so far.

Just a note – sorry to all if I’m bad about updating my blog this term. I’m currently taking an online course (Environmental Economics) as well as adjusting to a new workload and trying to stay on top of everything here in Tses! So far the term has been totally hectic…

Our Rights... and Responsibilities

Well, it’s my last week in the States after about a month of leave/holiday. And although the number of people asking me to compare Namibia with the US has now slowed to a trickle, I think I finally have part of an answer.

The age of the countries is something that I frequently highlight. While the US is over 200 years old, Namibia is barely 20. I’m older than Namibia.

But, part of what this means is that most citizens in Namibia have a profound respect for their country, its independence, and the freedoms they are afforded. It’s hard to untangle whether it is the small population or the newness of the state, but either way Namibians tend, much more than the majority of Americans, to stand up for what they believe in. They fight for what they think is right and voice their opinions; yet at the same time, most still clearly have an appreciation for what they do have.

Last week I went with my friend Hannah to the Valley Forge National Park in PA for a run. We were struck by the following quote that was displayed in the big arch:

“Let us believe with an abiding faith that to them union will seem as dear and liberty as sweet and progress as glorious as they were to our fathers and are to you and me and that the institutions which have made us happy preserved by the virtue of our children shall bless the remotest generation of the time to come.”

Maybe it’s just that I’m seeing a weird cross-section of the US while I’m here, or the absurd comparison of two totally different countries and regions of the world. But that instruction seems to be, pretty much, exactly what we’re NOT doing here in America. In my school in Tses, we constantly compare 'rights' with 'responsibilities'. We tell the learners that in order to deserve and maintain your rights, you have to hold up your end of the deal, too. Are we doing that as Americans?

I don’t know how you value the things you have when you’ve always had them. We in the US are blessed to have preserved rights like ‘union’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘progress’ (generally) our whole lives. But it seems to me that we don’t value them anymore. We don’t fight for the pure form of democracy that was the foundation of our country. We don’t fight to retain it, nor to preserve equality and freedom at all costs, the way our forefathers might have anticipated. In fact, seeing as our country was founded on these very things (to which we no longer assign much value), no wonder it sometimes seems like the US is starting to fray at the edges. The only reason for the formation of our country was, in fact, freedom. Our ancestors departed from basically every other country in order to come someplace “free.” If “free” is no longer the goal, then what holds our country together? In these tumultuous times (don’t even try to tell me that Ferguson et al. haven’t brought some instability into our consideration of equal rights), how can we afford NOT to stand up and fight for equality and freedom for all?

Coming Home

Well, after 2 years, 4 months and 20 days out of the country, I got back home to the US on Saturday morning. It is at the same time totally normal, and exceptionally mindblowing, to be here.

Why yes, my first meal back DID include Watsonville strawberries! And yes, I did take a picture of it…

There are people everywhere, I swear my plane from Joburg to Atlanta could have held half my village. (My feet also didn’t reach the floor, which probably made me more grumpy about that experience than I could have been…) I barely exchanged 3 words with my neighbor, which seemed different, since in Namibia it would be impossible to sit next to someone for 16 hours and not get to know them.

But, people are also generally nicer than I remember! I always categorize Africans as being friendly and helpful, while Americans are in too much of a rush, etc. But everyone in the airport was kind, jumping out of their way to let the passengers about to miss their connections through. When I was baffled by the new passport-checking, customs machines in Atlanta (yes, there are MACHINES at customs instead of real people, and yes, I couldn’t figure out how to use them) there was immediately a really nice guy who came to help me. And he only laughed a little at my despair. And, although it turned out I had the wrong number in my phone (!), my neighbor on the flight to Tampa (who happened to be the PILOT from the Joburg flight! small world) let me borrow his phone to try to call Aunt Pamela to let her know our plane had landed. We also found an exceptionally kind and helpful guy at the AT&T store who did his best to help me figure out how to make it work in both the US and Namibia, and got it set up in just a few minutes.

There is too much traffic. I can’t remember seeing so many traffic lights, ever, and I have to say that I am so grateful to my family (thanks Aunt Pamela!) for taking care of me and driving me places! Between the traffic itself, and the cars on the ‘wrong side’ of the road, and the HUGE highways, I don’t think I’d survive on my own.

Running on the beach in Tampa

So far, in the last 2 days, we have gone to the beach, some shops, Quaker meeting (really awesome!), gone birdwatching, and done some projects at the house. It is busier than Namibian life, even though we are on holiday. But most importantly, I have enjoyed spending time with my family and am so excited that more of them will be coming in to FL in just a few days, and then that I will see the other side of the family in about a week! If anything, I think that Namibia, and being away from home for 2 years, has taught me that it is about the people =)