End of the Term SheNAMigans

Ay, it is nearing the end of the school year this side, and these learners are intent on driving me insane officially. How so you may ask? Run-through of what has been happening in my classroom over the past few weeks:

At least one learner shared her nantjies with me!

• I’m not sure if they’re in season now or what, but there is an Owambo fruit called nantjies – hard to describe, but they’re small and round, have shells like peanuts that you have to crack with your teeth, then there’s a tiny bit of fruit, which surrounds a solid size of a seed. I don’t get the appeal of this food because it’s a lot of work for very little actual edible content. Maybe the kids came to a similar realization, but they found another use for the seeds – throwing them at each other in the middle of class! I got hit with one the other day while writing on the chalkboard, and it did not yield a happy reaction. These seed wars cause a great many fights, since often girls get targeted who are actually trying to work, and getting hit in the back of the head doesn’t feel so nice. And then my classroom floor is covered in these strange black seeds. 

• Spitballs. This is the standard go-to. All the pens here can be taken apart, and are taken apart quite often. Who needs to use the plastic part of the pen to grip when you can forgo doing work and spit wads of paper at people’s heads with it instead?! This has died down a little bit because my ears are fine-tuned to spot where the blowing sounds come from, and the learners don’t get their cases back if I catch them. Now they just make the spitballs and throw them… slow progress. 
• Over break time every day a couple teachers and a lot of kids sell sweets/chips. Curses be upon whoever started selling lollipops with sticks that are whistles! Of course all the kids save the whistles, and the boys proceed to start whistling in the middle of class then hide them when I try and find the culprits. After a while I got good enough at catching people and grabbing the sticks from them before they were hidden. So then, naturally, the same kids figured out they could cause me to be equally annoyed if they just whistled normally, no tools necessary.
• The other day three of my naughtiest learners – who I purposefully have sitting far from each other in my classroom – started playing the most bizarre game ever. One of my rules is to ask permission to leave your seat, but obviously for the naughty ones my rules don’t matter, because getting up is a crucial part of this game. From what I understand, whenever one of them spoke in Afrikaans, another one would get up, walk purposefully across the classroom [yes, this is in the middle of class while I’m trying to teach] and, with force, smack the boy in the back of the head. Three times this happened before I marched them out of my classroom. 

2012 DIPLOMA CEREMONY!

learners line up with their diplomas

Last weekend was the end of year ceremony for the learners with the highest marks in their classes. You had to have a 75 or above in one or more of your classes to be able to attend. One of the HODs announced learners in order of their marks, starting with those with 75 and continuing in ascending order to the one with the highest mark in the class. For grades 5-7, this process occurred for each of the subjects that you have to pass in order to move on to the next grade: english, math, natural science, social studies, home ecology [girls], design and technology [boys], and afrikaans. Then at the end the top three learners overall in each grade with their percentage for the year received prizes, and finally the top learner in lower primary, and the top learner in upper primary were announced to a room full of cheers! I was on cake duty for much of this evening, and we cut a massive amount of cake - each learner gets a plate, and so do each of their parents. Either the cake is getting better and better, or I have been in Namibia for a long time now, because last year I don't remember it being very good, but this time it was great!!

probably about 1/3 of the cake we cut.

Anyway, let’s just say that the children are not the only ones looking forward to the end of the term/year. Because after the term ends I’m going back to AMERICA for the December holiday!!!!!!! Unbelievably excited, countdown has begun, 6 weeks to go!