Projects, Projects, and more projects… Tses is growing!

I’ve been very busy over the last few weeks, with a whole host of different projects. Although I’ve been busy at the school with my teaching and planning, athletics, after school clubs and classes, etc., it’s actually the work with the community that I’ve been loving the most lately.

1. Tses Youth Group. A few years ago, Tses had 2 different youth groups, which met about once a month and focused on different things. In talking with a pastor /village councilor (advisor for the local government), we decided that the need for, and interested in, a local youth group probably merited the recreation of one.

So once a week, for about two hours, I meet with the youth of Tses! (here, “youth” means vaguely 20-30 year olds.) It’s so cool – when they’re really given a chance to speak out and act on their ideas, there are people staying here who have some really great thoughts about the future and ideas to improve the social conditions of Tses. Already, we have worked on forming a community English group (to improve English skills), a business group (more later), a local Girls’ club (there are really high incidences of rape and other abuse here, and especially as Tses grows with the big glass factory coming in, we want to work to empower our young girls before these kinds of things can happen to them), and a kids’ soccer league. It’s SO COOL to see these people having ideas of what they want to have happen, and act on them! I’ll try to get some pictures later, but seriously it’s really incredible to watch them do their thing. It’s also great that there are some other volunteers staying in Tses from the UK and Germany. They’re all younger (just out of high school), but they’re really enthusiastic and are really very willing to help me out with running all of these projects when I run out of free time to coordinate them! It’s pretty fantastic! The British volunteers are taking over the English classes, and the German volunteers will start working on the Girls club with a woman from the church and one of the youth.

2. Tses Entrepreneurial Development Group. Out of the youth group, there was a huge interest in business development (especially since Tses will soon grow into a town)! We want to get started before people from “outside” come and take all of the business/job opportunities. So a group of ~30 youth (and a few elders) have gotten together to try to start their own small businesses.

3. Business Workshop. I pretty quickly got out of my league, so next week FOUR other (business) Peace Corps volunteers are going to come run a workshop for me! I’m really excited to see them, plus really excited that my community will get the chance to think together about business plans, getting their businesses registered with the government, and so on. This means we’ve had lots of meetings and have been doing lots of fundraising to try to make it happen!

That’s about it. My life in a nutshell. I don’t have any pictures of these things yet, so I’m adding some pictures of my classroom and stuff, just for fun…

see those big white sheets at the back? best idea ever. they're Sticker Charts, which my mom used when we were little as positive reinforcement for good behavior during the day... works the same with grade 8 and 9 kids when you give them a sticker for good behavior or for doign their homework! Victory!

some of the girls one afternoon

Tses Glass, coming soon to a village… right here!

This post will probably be hugely boring for most of you, feel free to not read it… But for those in Namibia / curious about the development:

The official launching of Tses Glass Pty Ltd happened a few weeks ago! The president of Namibia was supposed to come but didn’t, but lots of other important from around here (council, traditional authorities, Berseba constituency head, various ministers, etc.) made it!

One of the main speakers for the event, plus a translator 

Tses Glass is officially happening. The feasibility studies are still being finished up over the next months, so I’m a bit confused. But it seems fair to say it’s happening, since they officially launched the company?

As one man said, “You look at Tses right now and there is nothing.” But they announced again the prediction of 47,000 jobs created in Tses itself, 160,000 created in all of Namibia, and the Tses population jumping from 2,000 to 200,000 within only a decade (or maybe 2). It’s hard to believe that within a few years, assuming all goes as planned, the people who are here now will make up only 1/100 of the people who are living in the city.

There’s also a claim that the new factory will eventually be responsible for 20% of the Namibian GDP. Anyone else wanna call bull?

Currently, glass is imported into this region from South Africa, India, and China. Supposedly Tses Glass should supply the entire region and world with all kinds of glass. There will be 3 factories (commercial/residential flat glass, containers, and tableware), and they’re being compared to a German factory that uses 1000 TONS of raw materials every day!

So yes, I’m a little skeptical. The claims seem pretty big. On the other hand, a lot of positives are already coming out of the project. There have been regular calls for the Tses community to jump on opportunities before they are stolen from “outsiders” – starting businesses, creating groups, getting things moving. The youth group I work with has been trying really hard to start small businesses (which they hope will grow when all of this stuff starts to happen)! In general, just having something this huge to talk about seems to be having huge effects on community mobilization, in lots of aspects of life. Pretty cool.

A local dance being performed before the event opened

my kids are FAST!

Ok, not the most exciting news, African kids are supposed to be fast. =) But I've been working with our athletics learners (those competing in track and field) for a few weeks (our track season is really short!) and we went to our first competition yesterday. There are only 3 meets here - Zonal, Regional, and National.

some of my athletes halfway through the meet

I have to say - what an incredibly long and frustrating day – but also what a cool day and a cool way to spend time with my kids! I left Tses before sunup and came home after sundown… and as a result am incredibly burned! The meet was supposed to end at 1pm and instead ended around 7. We experienced a lot of delays brought about by a whole host of unnecessary reasons, but it turned out all right!

I brought 25 learners, the best from my school, to the Zone competition, where we competed against schools from 5 other villages. The best from our zone form a new team, which goes to regionals next weekend.

my team!

Despite all the problems, the day was super cool. My kids aren’t always used to being successful at things, but they’re good at running! My kids did SO WELL. I think most of them will end up going to Regionals in Keetmans because they placed first or second in their age group in their events! Many of them placed in more than one event, and I even had one girl who had never long-jumped before at practice who came in second!

Yeah, so this girl had never long jumped before. She was 2nd. 

The kids were so excited and so proud that they did so well, and it’s nice that there is something they can be really proud of their school for. It was really the first time I’d heard them say with pride that they were from St. Therese, or the first time they’d been praised for it rather than scolded for our poor academic performances. Plus, more time bonding with my kids is usually pretty fun! They can be really sweet and helpful – definitely tried to take care of me today. Gave me a towel to cover my shoulders when I started turning bright red, etc. I think it’s also true though that we have a different relationship than they do with most other adults. They realize I care about them and recognize that I trust them with their own responsibilities. 

Now back to Tses – lots of work today before a big week coming up. I'll try to explain soon...

We're back to school again...

(yes, I did just sing that to the tune of "on the road again")

I’ve started teaching forreals! My last week has been really hectic, so I’ll just try to give you a rundown of what’s been going on here in Tses! As always, I would absolutely LOVE any advice or ideas that you all have. I’m making up an awful lot of things as I go…

Last week, inspectors from the Ministry of Education were at our school to sit in on some classes and meet with teachers about how we can do our jobs better. (I actually didn’t get to meet with an inspector because I’m a volunteer and there’s no science/maths subject advisor right now, but all the other teachers had lots of meetings!) It’s great that they come and great that they are being so proactive when they view our school as so problematic, but there are two big problems with this.

1)    we still have learners registering for school, so our class lists aren’t even complete yet. Most teachers definitely weren’t ready to teach yet, so things are a bit of a hot mess right now.

2)    the inspectors are trying to find problems at the secondary school. This is great. But I’m seeing more and more that things just don’t start here. I have many grade 8 learners in my classes who really can’t read or write (English or otherwise), can’t carry out the 4 basic operations in math (+ - / *), etc. It’s nearly impossible to start at the level they need during class, and although I talked with the principal and other teachers about doing some remedial work with them, there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Nonetheless, the week was interesting as we ran around trying to get everything done!

Starting last week, I also started most of my extra stuff after school (besides sports). I held a club meeting after school one day (for a boys/girls club that wants to focus on “teenage” problems like pregnancy, alcoholism, and peer pressure), and had kids after school a few days to talk, work on homework, and try to catch some of them up on the basics. I’ve also had meetings with other teachers and the principal to try to plan ahead – possible science labs (my school didn’t do labs in the past but we’re trying to start), working together on lesson planning and ideas for class, extracurricular ideas. You know.

Starting this week, hopefully we will be able to start working with sports at the school! We usually have some combination of soccer, netball, volleyball, and athletics (track). It looks like I might be the official “sport” teacher this year since our old one left at the end of last year. If anyone knows anything about coaching, netball, or really anything at all, I’d love to hear it! I’m really excited though, the girls here really haven’t had sports in the past and we’re going to see about stating a girls’ soccer team this year. Many of the girls are really excited and ask me every day about the team!

Finally, I’ve been doing some work with the Village Council in Tses. The biggest news in town is that Tses Glass is supposed to be coming within the next 6 months! We’ll see if that actually happens, but the national/company documents ay they expect this glass industry to bring over 40,000 jobs to Tses and a few hundred thousand to Namibia. I’d love to hear opinions on that, if anyone has any. I can’t imagine fitting that many people around here, it will definitely change the entire south of Namibia. Not to mention the fact that the environmental impacts of bringing in that much industry in a very short amount of time have to be appalling. (Apparently the draw for Siemens glass, from Germany, is that there are lots of sand dunes around here, which have a very high silicon content. And the dunes here, apparently, aren’t protected like those out in the Namib so they’re allowed to dig them all up. Which is the intention. I have a lot of mixed feelings on this, obviously…)

9/46 is a good pass rate, right?

Thursday was the first day of school for the teachers, and one of the things that happened was a long speech by my principal. She’s really a terrific lady, and I respect her so much. She’s motivating and motivated and really cares a lot about her learners and her teachers.

One of the things that she talked about the first day of school was from a meeting of all the principals from the region last week. Our region’s results on exams last year were not, shall we say, all they could have been, so part of the principals’ meeting was discussing possible causes and various problems existing at schools around Karas. They discussed the decline of parental involvement and how learners don't have positive role-models around, and how the teachers aren't doing their jobs in that area. Well, yeah. But there's so much more to it than that.

How can you even start to address the cause of learner misbehavior or lack of motivation in school? The learners at hostel schools don't simply not have positive role-models in their parents, they really don't have parents at all most of the time. Sometimes from the age of 6, depending on when they start school.

And yes, teachers need to be better role-models than some of them are. But sometimes the teachers are trying really hard, but the ratio of 9 teachers to 250 learners (at my school) is just too much.

We talk about all of the problems with learners and misbehavior and not studying (only 9 of our 46 grade 10s passed last year…), and it's easy to blame that on the teachers. But I was talking to another teacher who says we can't take all the blame, it's the learners' fault. But can you blame a 15 year old for misbehaving in class? Probably not completely, it's gotta be more than just the individual (especially if you look at it as a cohesive problem among lots of kids). But then who do you blame? The parents? Sure, sometimes. The teachers? Probably.

But more than that, I really think a lot of it is just the community and the culture in which they're growing up. And how do you fight that? If the entire community believes school's not as important as other things (farming, working with your hands), what will you do? And if everyone in the community sees drinking every night as acceptable behavior, how do you expect the kids to learn different? Should they even learn different, or are we superimposing values from other parts of the country or other parts of the world on a culture that doesn't necessarily care about those values? And even more, who are we to blame the teachers or parents when it would take the whole community to create any sort of significant change?

Anyway, that’s what’s been occupying my mind for the last few days. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Gobabeb and Grinnell!! (weeks 3-4 of holiday)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone! Hope yours were splendid.

The end of my holiday was spent at the Gobabeb Research and Training Centre with lots of Grinnellians!!! It was really awesome (and really disconcerting) to see people from Grinnell again. I’m definitely preparing myself to be re-culture-shocked when I get back to site after spending so long with people from home.

The research station itself is right in between the gravel plains (desert. nothing but desert. sand and gravel and nothing.) and the dunes (reddish sand for as long as you can see), where the Kuiseb river divides them. Apparently the river is actually the reason for the divide, since dunes are constantly moving and shifting, but they can’t cross the river. So the gravel plains are left on the other side.

watching the sunset from the top of a dune by Gobabeb

From Gobabeb, we drove out (don’t worry, Dan or whoever is reading this, I didn’t do any of the driving) to a bunch of really cool sites! I’m going to mess up the names of all of them so I’m not even going to try, but there are a bunch of cool silt and rock formations from when the river came through. It’s so cool to see some of the rocks just come up out of nowhere in the middle of plains! We did a bunch of exploring, though, and it was really really awesome to get to hear the history/geology/science of some of the places with the Grinnell students. I miss science around here sometimes!

science!

Dad, this one's mostly for you.

It was also pretty great to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s with Noah and Anna and the class from Grinnell. Familiar faces, you know.

Now (the beginning of Jan) I'm back in Tses gearing up for the new school year. Teachers start on the 10th, learners on the 15th. I'm slowly seeing my learners trickle back into Tses from their various summer destinations - usually visiting the farm with families or working in town somewhere. A few of them made it out to the coast or somewhere as a vacation destination with their parents, but not many I don't think. 

I'm definitely looking forward to starting up a new year with my own classes, rather than taking over in the middle of the school year. We'll see how things go! As always, if anyone has any brilliant teaching advice (or really, any advice at all) I'd love to hear it. I'm sure classroom management and keeping the kids interested will continue to be pretty much my biggest struggle heading into this term. 

Anyway, that's all I got for now. Hope everyone everywhere had a wonderful winter/summer/Christmas/WHATEVER holiday, here's to a great 2013!

Naukluft and Sossusvlei (week 2 of December travels!)

It’s incredible what a physically diverse country Namibia is! From up north-ish with Steve, I traveled south to the Naukluft Mountains and Sossusvlei/Sesriem in the central-west part of the country.

Matt, Ian, Laurel, Marie and I spent a few nights camping at Naukluft. It’s an absolutely BEAUTIFUL place. Getting there was a bit rough (we got a VERY flat tire, which sucks anyways, but at night in the dark on gravel roads and driving a stick, we were all a little stressed!), but once we were there it was fantastic. We saw tons of animals, from baboons to oryx and zebra, and some of the baboons were really fearless in terms of coming into the campsite while we were there!

don't worry, Ian was just sleeping there...

It was wonderful to be in the mountains and to see actual streams of water again. It got pretty hot during the day, but I did some bouldering up in the mountains and go for a 17k hike one day with Marie and Laurel!

We also stayed in Sesriem for a few nights that week. It was crazy to drive from the mountains into the desert with its incredibly huge sand dunes. Anyway, it’s funny how fancy some of the campsites and lodges here can be – Sossusvlei is a really popular tourist destination so there were lots of Westerners and lots of amenities! We hiked a few of the more popular dunes while we were around the park, including Big Daddy, the tallest dune in the world! (that may or may not be accurate, since dunes are hard to measure, but we’re going with it.) 

from the top!