The One-Year Mark

Well, Peace Corps Namibia Group 36 has officially been at site for over a year! I thought we’d never make it.

I can say that it’s been an adventure. I’ve done many new things (eaten donkey, gone to a wedding, led a youth group…taught a class) but in many ways, it’s not so different from home. I’ve built up my family and friends, and I definitely feel like I belong to my community here.

I had a crazy moment last week, though: Thursday night was our annual academic achievement awards ceremony. It was the first event I was here for last year, too. In this evening, we award learners with certificates for outstanding academic achievements, improvements, and other things (sports, behaviour, commitment). I remember last year being horribly bored watching the ceremony, and also feeling bad for not being able to help control the kids from the audience (where I was standing to take photos).

Our pastor giving the Keynote Address

This year was different. The 3 hour ceremony honestly felt like nothing. I felt like a proud parent, smiling all the time and mouthing directions and taking billions of photos of my kids. (Sorry Mom for rolling my eyes when you “played the piano” with me in my performances and stuff…)

Some of our top academic achievers

More importantly, I feel more successful as a teacher now. To start with, I was actually able to help keep the kids in the audience under control when they needed to be. But further – and this is my crowning victory of the last month or so – I have discovered that I am one of the teachers now.

The only awards I, personally, handed out - to the "Sportsmen" and "sportswomen" who are good leaders, athletes, and teammates.

I helped choose the new prefects, I helped choose learners for the awards, I helped make the awards. And my input was taken on different issues. I have been trying pretty hard to follow Peace Corp’s policy on only intervening when your help is asked for, but I felt like there was a glaring problem with our Awards Ceremony programme. You see, in the 49 years of my school’s history, only Head Boys have given a speech at it.

But we have a Head Boy and a Head Girl. And let me just tell you, the Head Girl this year is way more competent, and a much better speaker, than the Head Boy. So for the first time since I’ve been working here, I straight-up argued with my colleagues for hours until they let me add a Head Girl speech to the agenda.

Our new Head Girl for the 2014 school year giving her speech!

I know one speech won’t change gender relations; it’s not even a drop in the bucket. But at least we’re trying, right? There is so much male superiority happening in this place, and that extends to the learners. Hopefully if we can continue to make changes, even small changes like this one, to the way we interact at school, we will be able to help some of these girls grow up to be self-confident and capable individuals!

Our Role

As Peace Corps Volunteers, we have three specific goals set forth by the Peace Corps. These are, vaguely:

to improve Namibians’ understanding of Americans,

to improve Americans’ understanding of Namibians,

to assist with development in Namibia in whatever way we can.

As a teaching volunteer, I have another set of goals. These include things like improving learners’ marks, improving teachers’ capacities for teaching effectively, improving management at the school and improving English and critical thinking skills among both learners and teachers. There are more, but you get the idea.

So, teaching volunteers are placed at schools where there is perceived to be a need. Schools where learners consistently underperform. The thought is that at these schools, learners probably are not getting the support they deserve from teaching staff, and teaching staff are probably not doing their jobs as far as showing up to school every day, teaching effectively, communicating ideas in English. It’s our job as volunteers to come in and do whatever we can to improve the situation, set a good example as a teacher, etc.

But what do I do when these common problems are not the problems faced by my school? It’s something that I’ve been struggling with, and I would absolutely love advice from anyone reading this!!!

Many other volunteers complain regularly about teachers who miss weeks of school at a time, or teachers who sit and do nothing rather than teaching at the front of the classroom. Teachers who don’t speak English well and therefore are not well equipped to help the learners pass their exams. Here’s the thing though—my community doesn’t suffer from these problems. My teachers, in fact, are a pretty amazing set of individuals. They care a TON about the learners, they come to school every day, they TEACH in school every day, and their English is actually very good.

Yet, I had a 15% pass rate on my recent end-of-term exams, among my grade 8 and 9 learners. These learners attend school every day, and most of them have at least 2 hours of mandatory study time every day. We taught every day during the term and reviewed before the exam. The struggle at our school right now is: why and how is teaching occurring, but learning is not happening?

Now, I know I’m a teaching volunteer, so my primary position is in the classroom. But if the reason I was sent here was to improve the pass rate of my learners, we need to figure this out. From talking to teachers, learners, community leaders, and church leaders, the best I can figure out: it’s a cultural problem, not a school problem. The culture in my region is not a culture that values education highly. The Nama people were herders, suffered under the German genocide in the early 20^th century, and after that faced apartheid. Most of the adults haven’t completed formal education past grade 5 or grade 8, and many of them honestly don’t see the need, since they subsistence farm for a living. Many kids don’t have frequent parental supervision, and parents definitely aren’t checking if they have finished their homework or if they are passing their classes. Many of them aren’t even checking if their children have eaten 3 meals in a day.

We recently hosted a “parent meeting” – we have one at the beginning of every term in order to try to keep a supportive school environment. 14 parents attended, and I have about 210 learners. This is the kind of support we are commonly receiving from the community.

My philosophy so far has been that probably I can make more of a difference by working with the community rather than spending all of my time in the classroom. Working with the young people here to stay busy and motivated (and be good role models for the kids and good future parents), working with parents, working with the community leaders. But I don’t know. How do you work within this kind of community and expect to make any kind of difference?

August in photos

Mom came to visit, I saw some places in the north. Enjoy!

Etosha national park:

Real family and host family meet up in Okahandja:

Steph's village outside of Rundu:

Grandpa, this one’s for you.

I don’t know much about farming, but I am always a little interested in it because of the family farm! Not that my kids believe me when I say there are farms in America, but still.

Namibia’s currently facing a huge, horrible drought. Last year, there was pretty much no rain in my village and everywhere in the country experienced significantly less rainfall than normal.

Over our August holiday, I got the chance to see some of the north of Namibia, where things are generally greener and farming is a much bigger deal. They can also actually raise cattle because there’s enough water and food. But all I heard from anyone in the north was how dry it is right now, and how worried everyone is about having enough food and livestock to make it through the year. If the rainy season is not good this year, it will be a big problem. Luckily, at least in towns and in some villages, the government is providing drought relief in the form of supplementary food—but it isn’t enough for most families, and we don’t know how long it will continue.

When I was coming home, I got a lift with a farmer from the middle part of the country. He had a few more details for me. He said that last year he had about 150 head of cattle. Cattle are better to raise if you can afford it, because they are harder to steal and big enough that jackals cannot pick them off of the herd in the night. Well, this farmer had about 10mm of rain in 2012 instead of the ~200 he needs to keep his cattle on his land. He sold a bunch, so he is down to 76 with an additional 36 calves. He is waiting for the calves to make 200kg so he can sell them too, because there just isn’t enough food and water.

The problem with this was that farmers all over Namibia had to sell livestock early this year, so prices were horrible and most of them lost money. Now they are trying to make it up in a poor economy (not that I know much about economics, but the dollar keeps gaining on the Nam dollar) and in a climate that is not helping them out!

In a country where farming, and subsistence farming at that, is a primary source of livelihood for much of the population, things like droughts hit really hard. And since everybody here has accepted climate change and knows it will continue to worsen, you have to wonder how they will manage to stay afloat?

sorry it's been so long since the last posts, guys! More to come soon about my recent holiday travels and our school here =)