Climate change’s all around us, who would a Thunk?

It’s been a while.

You can assume generally that if you haven’t heard much from me that is just a sign that everything is going well in Namibia, which indeed it is!

So I am now in my 3rd term of teaching which is crazy because besides for the fact I am not scared shitless of what is going to happen in class, it still feels like I just began this job. The time has gone so quickly which is great, but on the flip side I feel like I haven’t accomplished much. For example we’ve only had 3 full weeks of school and I’ve missed 1.5 of them for doctors appointments (not to worry they are just my one year check-ups, and I got my teeth cleaned!!!) and then I was called to Oshikuku for a workshop to review the performance of last year’s grade 7 learners at my school. It was not a surprise to me, but my region was ranked number 12 out of 13 for English. The beginning was also a tad crazy because I was helping out with grade 10 because one of our English teachers left, though they will begin writing their national exams tomorrow so I will be relieved from this additional responsibility.

One thing that I have taken note of this term is that it’s interesting to be in a place that is so skeptical of science in general and yet they certainly believe in climate change. People in my part of Namibia rely on the weather and rains for their livelihood and they now are frustrated because they don’t know when the rains will come. For example I think the first rains my village had last year were in November, which wasn’t normal because they said it normally rains for the first time in September. This year we are still awaiting the summer’s first rains. The other day the sky resembled what it looks like during rainy season where literally half of it was gray and filled with clouds while half what blue, however no rain materialized. I suppose it’s a good sign that we have clouds because during winter there is literally not a single cloud or wisp of a cloud in the sky. I wish that people in the United States who continue to deny that our climate is changing would just listen to the people here who live with the consequences of climate change every day, while Americans are sitting in their air-conditioned homes and offices. Though I wouldn’t place the entire blame for this shift on the western world because as I jog through my village and the surrounding villages I have noticed in many places there are more tree stumps than actual trees. Last year my host family’s mahangu (millet) crop was destroyed by the massive floods and this year I keep hearing that the floods are expected to be worse. I suppose only time will tell.

While I was in Windhoek it was cool because I also had the chance to visit my learners at the National Science Fair. It was interesting to go, for one it was held at a primary school, which is 20x’s as nice as my school, the teachers and learners were in shock that this school was just a primary school because they had a gorgeous auditorium, soccer stadium, and many computers. (For you Americans the school doesn’t really come close to comparing to the school’s that I’ve attended, I am going to be in disbelief at how new and clean everything is in America when I return; I think, if I remember correctly.) Then the other thing that was interesting was the range of projects. There were learners who had mounted each of their papers on 3 different colours of paper and then laminated everything and had Styrofoam objects hanging over the top of the board, while my learners had a board we covered with a piece of fabric and then they pinned coloured pieces of paper to the board. We did have cookie, cake and ingredient samples too. I felt bad because the group next to mine were wearing matching bakers hats and aprons, their project was similar to ours were they used various ingredients for baking different foods. To my surprise my learners did come home with silver medals! For all the times I wanted to pull out my hair, it actually paid off! My learners were funny too, because when I showed up to surprise them, one of the first things they told me was “Miss there are so many iilumbu (white people) here.” I just had to laugh and reminded them that there are indeed a lot of white people in Southern and Central Namibia.