School has started!

School

Lindsey and I have FINALLY started teaching. I teach 7th and 8th grade math and computer class to 8th, 9th, and 10th grade. Lindsey teaches 7th and 8th grade English and art for 5th, 6th, and 7th grades.

Classrooms here are much different than the classrooms in America. We speak to them in English, but have to speak very loud and very slow, and can’t use ay contractions in our speech (like I just did when I said can’t) because they probably won't understand those. Most of them don’t understand English very well at all, so we repeat ourselves quite frequently. It is expected though, because 1. they are not used to our accent at all and 2. they are most likely only exposed to English at school when it is spoken by a teacher. We are trying to get them to practice speaking more so they gain more confidence in their ability.

We took pictures of all our students to learn their names. They don't like to smile in pictures here.

The good news is, there has already been a lot of improvement for me in math in just the last three weeks. I ask my classes so many questions and do so many examples every single day, that they have already started to get used to raising their hands and answering. Not a huge step, but at least it is a step in the right direction. I also give quizzes to them every Friday about what we have covered in the previous week, and today (I am writing this on Friday) I had a lot of the students get an A on the quiz in both 7th and 8th grade. Then again, there are a handful of students who missed every single question. That brings me to another point...

Namibia has one of the most peculiar rules in education I have ever heard of. The rule is, if you fail the same grade twice, you automatically get promoted to the next grade. Hence, there are students in 8th grade, ranging in ages from 14-22. Most of the older ones are students that have simply been passed on from grade to grade. If they fail one year, they know that whether they try as hard as they can and get an A, or if they do nothing at all and fail, it won’t matter because they still move on to the next grade. It completely kills the motivation for students who don’t do well. And it also explains how students can be 22 years old in 8th grade and be at a 3rd grade level. So for the students who don’t care at all about learning, it is like fighting an uphill battle that I’m sure teachers deal with all over the world. But I would imagine that the problem here is significantly worse than in any American school. How do you teach someone who simply doesn’t know how to learn? That is a question that I am sure most of us Peace Corps Volunteers up in the Kavango Region are pondering.

New pit latrine

The cats even struck a pose.

Construction began, and by that I mean a hole was dug in the ground, for our brand new pit latrine while we were traveling in December. It was actually finished two weeks ago. Look at it. Isn’t it a beauty? The fence of grass reeds are covered in gold and the concrete seat is sprinkled with diamonds. It is a toilet for royalty to say the least. It is connected to our homestead, so it certainly beats walking three minutes to the school’s pit latrine. The guy that made the seat out of cement and bricks made it a whopping 10 inches tall, so it is more like squatting than sitting. There is a song that was made by some other Peace Corps volunteers in another country called “poop in a hole” that you can watch here. I now feel like those words are relevant to our everyday life.

Athletic competition

Last Saturday, Mayara had an athletic competition amongst the students in the school. They were split up into 3 different teams - red, yellow, and blue.It was more or less a track and field meet with events such as 800m, 400m, 100m, long jump, and shot put (it took some serious convincing to get them to believe that it is called shot put and not short put). Lindsey helped with the yellow team, who ended up winning. - and I helped with the Blue team who came in second. Next weekend, the top finishers from Mayara will compete against the top finishers from 5 other schools in nearby villages - so that should be fun. Most of them don’t have running shoes, so they run barefoot or put layers of socks on to provide at least some level of comfort while running across sand, rocks, donkey poop, and broken beer bottles. Their feet are tough as nails though and dang... they sure can run.

Some of the girls doing laps around the soccer field.

The Namibian running gear. Bare feet, socks, and the occasional shoes

Birthday’s

A part of the culture here is, on your birthday, YOU are supposed to give other people gifts. Very cool, but quite the opposite from American culture I must say. For example, when it is your birthday, you are expected to provide a cake for your friends and buy them gifts - instead of them baking a cake for you and buying you gifts. This worked out to our advantage the other week when Lindsey baked our host mom a cake for her birthday and she bought us a bottle of wine. Apparently a common question to receive on your birthday is, “What are you going to give us for your birthday?”

Lindsey and I have both had our birthdays in Namibia, but they were both before we actually came to Mayara. It will be interesting to see how our birthdays are celebrated this year.

The Heat

So in the last blog post, I said that it had been raining everyday and is much cooler outside than before December. Well I don’t know what has happened, but the past three weeks of this “rainy” season have been bone dry and stifling hot. No clouds, no wind, just sweat. Lots and lots of sweat. One of the other teachers told us that there is a correlation to rain and the phase of the moon. When the moon is more full, it doesn't rain, but when it is in a crescent it rains. And the moon has been out for a really long time it seems. However, they also believe (like legitimately believe) that all Americans belong to the illuminati and/or are spies, and that we are best friends with every celebrity. So it is hard to know what is mere speculation on things they believe are facts, or actual facts.

What do YOU want to know?

So if you are reading this and are like, “Man, this Tim sure is a great writer and an intriguing person in general, but I really wish he would talk about ________.” , then you should either post a comment or send me an email at tim.habenicht@gmail.com and let me know what you want me to write about. So the content is in your control now!

Here are some pictures that were taken a while ago, but I thought you might all like to see them.