good thing week 1 was one 3 days...

Day 2
Thursday, 27 May, 2010

What a difference a day can make! More kids were at school, though several were still missing. But at least…

The morning started with an equally painful staff briefing. It lasted longer than necessary, had only negative comments and blame directed at teachers and learners. I had become somehow used to this start to my day, but I lost that shell I had before my long holiday. I was angry, upset and not ready anymore to teach.

Toward the end of the meeting, my HOD told us that all upper primary teachers had to submit their preparations now now so he could check them. Hah. I went to his office with nothing and told him I hadn’t written my preparation but was still planning to teach. “How is that even possible?” I’m giving back their exam and we’re going through it problem by problem. “But you still have to write your preparations.” OK.

I refrained from telling him that I set this exam myself, made the answer script myself and marked all 50 exams for it myself. So I was pretty confident that I knew enough to be able to make corrections with the learners.

Even though I had a plan to teach, I still wasn’t mentally prepared, or physically, to spend all day in front of kids. I walked into 7B and was a little shocked, didn’t really know how to start. Greet. Oh right. Greet them. Easy. Return the exam. OK, getting better. Get them to laugh.

And I’m back.

It took 30 seconds and I was ready to spend all day with kids again.

Everything flowed from there. Questions. Comments. Jokes. Laughter. Remembering what we learned last term. No problem

Finish teaching. Sore feet. Aching back. This is going to take some time to get my stamina back up to spend all day on my feet on a concrete floor with about 25 kids at a time. But it’ll be fun again.

The afternoon was spent cleaning - a great coping mechanism for boredom or just taking up time and forgetting about the stresses of living here and working here. I have a clean kitchen, clean clothes and a somewhat cleaner yard. Still plenty to do this weekend!

Is this for real?!
Friday, 28 May, 2010

Good thing this week was only 3 days long. I wouldn’t have lasted any more. I have a long way to go to build up the stamina to put up with everything and be able to teach all day everyday again.

I guess I really did forget just how frustrating everything is. I knew there were guests coming today from Germany with a donation of Thimbukushu textbooks - a really good thing. I guess I’d just forgotten how disorganized everything leading up to that single event is.

The staff room was opened 20 minutes late, the briefing started 40 minutes late. In the briefing, we were told that we were not going to have classes until after break - after the visit - that we had to prepare for the visitors. I was prepared to teach for 80 minutes. At assembly, the learners were told the same thing - there were no morning classes, but it wasn’t a school holiday. Right.

I tried to get my class to clean up the papers outside our classroom, but as soon as I released them to do that, and to supervise them, other kids came to buy pens and by the time I got outside, 2 minutes later, there was no one from my class in sight anymore. So much for trying to be organized even if no one else is.

We waited around for what seemed like unnecessary amounts of time. Who knows.

The guests came, the kids danced and sang, speeches of thanks were made, it was fine.

I had just forgotten how these things go, and how nothing gets done on the day of the event. Welcome back to school. 127 more days.

Afternoons at least are redeeming. After a glorious nap with Ziggy, I spent at least an hour on the phone with Kaitlin rehashing our respective ups and downs of the past few days. It was great to get perspective and advice, and also to offer some.

Toward the end of our conversation, Nicky showed up. I told Kaitlin I was going to hang out with my only friend, and she knew who was there. Nicky played a couple games of pinball, we went to a nearby home to get manure so I can make another (small) garden, we sat outside and talked about today’s event - after I figured out how to define ‘event’ - she told me that it’s not OK for people to come and take pictures the way they did, it’s different from me taking pictures at school or even at Nicky’s house because I go there a lot, but they can’t come just once and take pictures. And then she said, “Tuyende kughura maghumi.” Let’s go buy oranges. We’d had some the other day, and I’d never made it back to buy more. She knew I wanted more. Maybe she knew I’d give her one, or maybe she just wanted to go do something. Our walk was pretty quiet, just enjoying the ease that our friendship is. We passed a few girls from the hostel going the other way, and I pointed to the ground and said, “Wiki.” Sweets. Someone had dropped a lollipop.

Nicky smiled that smile I love.

We got our oranges and we found the girls we’d thought had dropped the lollipop. Nicky gave it back. I walked her part way home and then turned around so I’d get home before dark. I heard kids calling out to me, “Madam” or “Mukuwa” depending on our relationship. I love walking around the village at dusk when everyone is outside preparing dinner and the kids all see me as a person instead of their teacher.

Nicky
Friday, 28 May, 2010

I wish there was some way to make you understand how amazing this girl is, without any qualities that stick out as being spectacular.

When I didn’t have a close friend in the village, life was hard. Unbearable really. I’d come home at the end of the school day and not leave my house, but always think that I should, know that I should seek out someone’s company. Nicky and I weren’t good friends until late November, and not sisters until late December.

She understood that I didn’t know much about surviving in a Namibian village. She came to help me wash my clothes when she knew I was going to do it, or if she was passing and saw that I was doing it. She would laugh at my attempts, but now I know and can do it alone or with Nicky without her laughing.

She helped me with my garden, which was a miserable failure, but she helped nonetheless. She let me work, but would always step in to help, whereas other people won’t let me do anything for myself.

Silences with her aren’t awkward. We can walk around the village and not say anything, or we can walk around the village and talk about the most mundane things for hours. We can lay outside my house on the stoop and laugh about nothing.

But what gets me the most is that she’s 13 and from a different world from me. She can’t picture the house I grew up in. She wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff I have shoved hidden in my closet (though she probably has a better idea than I do having seen how much stuff I have here). She couldn’t imagine me driving a car. And those are just things I do. She has no idea what it’s like to spend so much time inside. To drive only on tarred roads. To go to grocery stores on a weekly basis. To see so many white people. To have a supportive and loving family. To live so separately from everyone else, even neighbors and distant relatives.

We grew up (she’s still growing up) in worlds that couldn’t be more different. But somehow it’s fine. And that’s what makes it so exciting and why I can’t get over it and write about her everyday. There are other learners I’ll miss, learners I was excited to see on Wednesday, learners I’ll visit at their homes in the coming weeks. But no one compares to Nicky for me.

Yesterday I got a package from my mom - photos and a pair of Teva sandals, like the ones she brought me in December. I’d promised to give Nicky mine in December when I go, but I gave her the new (but used) pair yesterday. I interrupted her pinball game to show her the photos of when Miles was just a day old. She looked at them - really looked - not how other “friends” would and asked of one of them, “Sophia?” She knows my family and has never met anyone other than my mom.

When I walked her home yesterday, we were wearing the same kind of shoes, leaving the same footprints. When I turned around to come home again, I didn’t see my usual Chaco footprints next to her bare feet. I saw two sets of Teva footprints.

I told Kaitlin today about my gift of my hair to Nicky. Her reaction was, “That’s love.” I told Nicky that when we were together getting manure. Nicky’s mom had already told her the same thing.

Kayoka
Saturday, 29 May, 2010

Taking another go at making a garden. This one will only have lettuce and basil - those were the only 2 things I REALLY enjoyed from last year’s attempt. I was dripping sweat by 9am after digging my (small) garden plot. So far, it looks much better than last year’s, and nothing’s even seeded yet!

I’d promised Nicky I’d come for lunch to enjoy again the mahangu we pounded together on Tuesday, so at 11:30 I went to her house. On the way, I found some people walking away from her home, and one of the men decided to greet me. Fine, not so unusual to be greeted. I’ve seen him before, no big deal. He started blabbering away in Afrikaans. I started walking slowly away, nodding and smiling and offering the required “Oh”s and “Mmm”s when necessary. On another path nearby, some women were passing and one yelled over to him, “Mdadi gha kuyuva Afrikaans!” She doesn’t hear Afrikaans! A look of surprise accompanied by my laughter, followed by, “Ghuna yuva Thimbukushu vene?” You only hear Thimbukushu? Ghii. Yes. He proceeded to translate everything he’d said into Thimbukushu - something about his older sibling who is at school. Apparently I don’t hear much in Thimbukushu.

Many kids were there, and very few adults. There were some men building a cooking structure - poles and corrugated zinc held down by rocks - and more adults outside the homestead in the usual drinking place. I did the same thing I usually do at Nicky’s - hung out with Nicky, Kunyima and Mukoya while lunch was made, today by Nicky. We all ate together, with Joline too, mahangu porridge with some spinachy relish and shi - red seeds that are soaked in water and the fruit part is removed and turns into a kind of paste. All delicious! Mostly the porridge though. (Remember when I couldn’t stand it? Now I seek it out!)

Nicky and Kunyima went to the river to bathe, and I spent some time talking to Kayoka. I asked him more about camp GLOW. I wanted to HUG him for the things he said! He told me that when he met the first volunteer, he was nervous because he was so big, but later on he made everyone feel free. He told me that if Camp GLOW could be a school, “Oh, that would be good!” He told me that he never thought he could get in front of everyone and sing or do a drama (skit) but he did because everyone made you feel so free. He told me that everything in Kavango region is backwards - particularly education. He told me about his current math teacher and how she doesn’t like it when kids ask questions and that I should be teaching grade 8 instead of her (where I encourage questions to clear up confusion and help them learn, she asks, “Where were you the first time I explained it?). He told me about the blindfold course they did and that when he was giving directions, his partner didn’t touch the rope at all. He told me that he wants to start a club but no one is serious here so it wouldn’t be fun. He told me about his friends Ndjemena and Tunapu who drink too much and they don’t seek advice from me the way he does so they won’t change. He told me that kids can change the school by reporting when teachers misbehave but instead they just play and love it when teachers don’t teach. He told me that it’s like being in a house, and when you’re trying to pull the door open, in the village, someone is pulling from the outside so you can’t get out, but at GLOW, there was someone outside pushing so you can get out. He expressed concern for when I leave and there isn’t another volunteer here (I worry for many kids for that day). I told him that he’s already opened that door with the help of Mark, Mary and myself - that there are many people who want him to make it, to succeed, so now all he has to keep doing is to continue pulling for himself.

Can’t I bring him home with Nicky? They’re friends. They can adjust together! And he already has a birth certificate!