Integration by parts

(I wrote this post about 2 months ago, and finally loaded the photos.. sorry for any lag time that becomes evident in the text!)

by which I mean, piecewise community integration. Yes I did giggle when typing the title for this post.

I realized today how ridiculous my life would have seemed to me when I arrived a year and a half ago. And yes, I saw Tses for the first time in August 2012, so it has been basically a year and a half that I’ve been in this place!

Here are a few examples.

Most mornings this term, I get up and run or workout, come back, leave my door unlocked, and go shower. When I come out to make my coffee, there are between 1-5 kids seated in my living room. Finishing homework, sitting and talking, or sleeping in my chairs. While I’m drinking my morning coffee and trying to finish waking up myself, I usually help them with their last few homework problems, ask them questions about school, or do more real-life-y things like tend to their bumps and bruises and arguments. We’re legitimately a family (of our own kind) now.

The other huge change I’ve noticed lately, outside of school, has to do with sports. I’m officially the “sport teacher” at St. Therese now, as my counterpart from last year passed away earlier this year. At the moment, I’m only actively coaching track and field (one hour of practice four times per week) and boys’ soccer (not officially started yet, but every weekend or two we have a match with a team from one of the locations in Tses). IT’S THE COOLEST.

Last year, I was really frustrated during sports. Things are really unorganized so I would get grumpy about waiting around for things to happen… and then when the kids finally showed up for practice, I would struggle to get them to follow my directions. I’m not sure if I didn’t have the authority in their eyes or if I didn’t have the legitimacy, since they didn’t know or trust my training methods yet. Either way, that’s changed. The kids see me training for our marathon every day, and they have experienced my coaching for a year. Now, when I tell them how to improve their form in track, give them workouts, or coach them in soccer, they usually listen! It’s incredible. They’ve started even getting angry if I miss a practice or if I work with another event group for too many days before attending to them. It’s such a great feeling, too. We had our first track meet last Saturday and they performed exceedingly well. I am truly so proud of their hard work, and also so proud of the way we have come to work together to be a real team.

I’m sure you can tell I’m kind of floating on air right now. Things aren’t perfect nor will they ever be… but my place in my community is pretty solid and that makes all the difference.

Change is in the air!

The new Catholic Brothers at our school are doing some interesting things. They are very strict and very … corporal with their punishment. And very liberal with their corporal punishment. But they are trying things that haven’t been done before at our school, which is really cool.

One of the brothers is working with the Religious and Moral Education classes. Every learner has this class once a week, and they are supposed to learn about a variety of different religions and moral codes. The brother has decided to skip out on the other religions, since we are a Catholic school. Do I agree? Definitely not. But, he is spending the time instead talking with the kids about moral behaviour. Things like self-discipline, self-control. Which I definitely agree with! This week, the kids had homework asking “Name 5 reasons that violence is so high in Namibia” and “Suggest 5 solutions to decrease violence in Namibia.” This is really cool, and I love that the kids are being encouraged to think about it!

However, my take on these issues is totally different from theirs. If you ask me, it would be things like culture, because kids are raised with hitting and violence from a young age. A lack of understanding of how to discuss and solve problems peacefully. Maybe we could try mediation programs. Or training for parents and teachers on how to raise kids with rewards and nonviolent punishments. My kids give different answers though! They tell me that violence is caused by unfaithful partners, high teen pregnancy rates, and HIV. The solutions? birth control, being faithful to the people you love, stay in school. Which aren’t necessarily wrong, but I honestly think that they have just been told these things so often that they now have go-to solutions for every problem in Namibia.

Having Brothers working at our school is a big change from last year, and really interesting for me personally because I was not raised super religiously! (or religiously at all…) Although I definitely don’t like the fact that religion is brought into EVERY aspect of life now, I find myself aligning with the brothers more often than not. They are doing their best to bring our kids around to be honest and hard working. Even if I don’t necessarily agree with how they go about doing this, we can already see changes in our learners. They have become a little more serious with their work at school; though it’s not everyone, some of them are truly improving since last year, and I am hopeful that this will, however slowly, turn our school around!

One of those weeks...

This is going to be one of my least insightful posts ever. But to those who are used to more communication from me, this is what's been up in the last few weeks!

-Coaching two sports simultaneously has its disadvantages. It means lots of kids and lots of kids' baggage. One of my learners' fathers died and he was informed during rugby practice about two weeks ago, which made for a few more feelings than we normally have at practice..

-Coaching two sports also involves lots of injuries and caring for kids. (Maybe this means I'm doing things I shouldn't be as a coach...) We had the zonal rugby trials last week, one kid got a cleat to the knee and one kid broke a collarbone. Not to worry, he has already refused to wear the sling he was given. (I don't know how but he claims to not be in pain and I can't make him put the dang thing on. Oops.) The next day we started the regional track meet, where in addition to the usual bumps and pulled muscles and blisters, there was a technical problem with the high jump mat which led to a serious concussion. It might have been the most vocal I was the same weekend, when I had to yell at the medics not to lay the kid flat on his back because of the concussion. They didn't listen. So he lost the ability to see, and then to talk. Scary! But now he's fine and just in a neck brace and will return to school next week.

-Exams start tomorrow at school, so we are busy preparing. And the learners are busy cramming. We have two study periods at school every day (it's a new thing this year), from 3:30-5 and 7-8:30. I've been coming every time to assist with maths and physics as needed. It's kind of like my own little "Math Lab" (for the Grinnellians) that I host in my classroom! It's fun but a lot of work to address 250 kids' problems on 3 different grade levels.

-One of the new Catholic brothers at our school and I are trying to revamp the maths program. Part of what this means is that we keep kids who have failed a test (50% is considered passing) after school the next day to rewrite. But it took 3 tries to get everyone to stay, so I've had lots of detention to attend to. Yesterday was the most fun, one of my kids was angry to be held so she tried to fight me. Luckily it was not one of my 6' tall boys but someone who I could actually defend myself against!

-This has less impact on me personally, but for those of you who have seen the news, we lost a member of our PC family recently. http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=10548&page_type=story_detail&category_id=1 Ashley Earl was a great volunteer and had an amazing personality. I loved the chances I had to meet up and talk with her in Windhoek and we are devastated about her loss.

As you can imagine, I'm definitely looking forward to the long weekend ahead. Namibian independence day is on Friday so we will have off from school that day.

That's all for now, folks, hope all is well where you are.

Aggression, the sincerest form of ... anger?

“And then, Miss, I stab him” is just not what you want to hear from a child.

In the last 24 hours:

I broke up three fist fights in my class. One was between a boy and a girl over who stole whose pen. One was between two boys because someone stole someone’s chair, so the fists came out. The other was between two (by the way, HUGE!) grade 9 boys who were fighting over god knows what. One gave the other a resounding (seriously, I have never heard one this loud) slap across the face, the other grabbed a pen to stab him. At this point the boy with the pen moved and allowed me to grab him and pull him out. They are currently very angry with me because they are sitting detention. “but Miss, why? I already wrote a report for the principal…”

AND

I had one boy stab another in the face with a broken bottle at soccer practice. I can’t even imagine the lawsuits I’d have in the States right now. Anyway, after coaching our boys’ soccer team, they ran over to a nearby house to get water before heading home. I figured they were fine and was paying attention to the rugby team. Then I heard “Miss, they are fighting!” Since this is a daily occurrence, I didn’t give it much heed but watched from a distance. When I saw one boy start swinging aggressively I headed over to the scene, but since one of the boys had already borrowed my shoes and I was wearing another kid’s flip-flops (approximately twice too big for me), going was slow. By the time I arrived, one of my rugby boys had separated a boy with a broken bottleneck, there was blood everywhere and the other kid had a huge gash in his face. It took another 2 minutes to get them calm enough to walk back to school without shoving or swearing each other, and the boy with the cut was taken immediately to the clinic for stitches. When I asked the stabber (normally a really good kid!) what happened, he told me: “We were fighting over who could drink water first. I ask [another boy] to drink but that boy took the bottle in front of me. I was mad and I asked for it back. He swore my mother. I told him stop. He swore my mother and father so I push him. He push me so I push him back. Then Miss he used his head to hit my nose. Then there was everywhere blood and I was angry. I pick up that bottle and told the other boys ‘stop him before I do something serious,’ but Miss they just laugh. Then he push me again. So I broke the bottle and told him stop. He swore my mother and then, Miss, I stab him.”

Just another day around here.

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)