A year and counting of village life

It’s crazy to realize that I’ve been in Namibia and more specifically Iilyateko over a year now.  All I can say is it has been quite a year, to sum up my experience would require me to write a novel.  I’ll spare you all the boredom of reading my novel because it wouldn’t necessarily be a thrilling read.  The changes I’ve made and the things I’ve learned haven’t come suddenly but have been a steady progression since I landed in Namibia.  I don’t know when it actually happened but Namibia finally feels like home.  I spent much of my first year always on edge, the silliest thing would make me cry from the word omakaloni (macaroni in Oshiwambo), to the question how was your day, to my grade 5 learners who didn’t understand the words “sit down, and stop beating each other”.  I have more or less found my groove here in Iilyateko, I run a few days a week (and it’s become the norm to see more donkeys, goats, and cattle than people or cars; the only people I see are the small boys collecting their animals), I have my weekend cleaning ritual (hand washing clothes, sweeping the massive amounts of sand that find its ways into my room, mopping the house, and continuing my never ending battle against the cockroaches and spiders that would like to share my room), making relatively frequent trips to Outapi or Tsandi (I have a stock pile of food, unlike the beginning when I literally had to buy bread at the cuca shops because I didn’t have anything to eat in my room) and hanging out with both Namibian and American friends.

Teaching has also become much easier in the recent months as well.  I think it is partially because with limited resources I have come to the conclusion that I am limited on what I can do and also I’ve realized that for these kids just to pass and be promoted to the next grade (which they need to be because many of them have failed multiple grade previously and are my age in grade 8 or 9), I need to teach more so to the test.  I am really excited for next year though because I know what I need and want to do with these kids.  In the beginning of this year I was so clueless on what to do with them and when they asked questions like what is the title of this assignment I would make up something there and then because I hadn’t thought about it before.  I am hoping that I will be allowed to have my own class, and classroom next year!  It would make things a little bit more stable as well, not having to run from class to class, not being able to have a seating chart, not dropping things or forgetting things as I run to class.  A few projects I am excited about for next year is I recently was approved for a grant to start a movie theatre at my school, so we will have that up and running Friday afternoons and it will hopefully provide an opportunity for the school to make a little bit of money.  Also I am hoping to organize a spelling bee with my HoD (like an assistant principal), I give the learners weekly spelling tests and some of them get really into these spelling and vocabulary tests.  If things go well hopefully we will be able to build an additional library block at school too.  The problem is of course money, but right now I have the patron of the school helping me to write some grants and letters to businesses and he has taken our initial plans to an engineering/building firm in Windhoek to be drafted into something more official.  I also really, really want to start a girl’s club at my school because so often my female learners have so much potential but when it comes to talking in front of a group they shut down.  Next year I will begin a pen pal program with a previous volunteers school in America, so that should be exciting.  The kids always talk about wanting American pen friends to give them things.  I then have to clarify that a pen friend is called a pen pal and your pen pal may or may not give you something tangible, but the purpose is to make a friend and to learn about a different culture.  It should be interesting because these kids with their internet, televisions, Wii, etc. have quite a different life than my learners who collect fire wood, collect their animals and pound Mahangu.  And the final thing I want to do is to paint the world map on the side of the school.  The learners struggle with geography a lot and just understanding things like where other African countries are to understanding the United States is not both North and South America.  Needless to say I am really, really excited about the upcoming year.