April's Almost Gone??

Whew it’s been a while. April has been a bit hectic, so I’ll update you on the goings-on in Luda. Over Easter Weekend we had about 15 volunteers here for the Crayfish Festival, which was a blast. I realized that I am one of two volunteers in the south of Nam that has not read the Game of Thrones series, so that is now on my immediate to-do list, if I want to be involved in the heated conversations and repeated inferences to that world. In addition to the large blocks of time spent discussing that series/show, we were able to get some eating in. The festival was held at the Waterfront, with lots of booths selling crayfish, and others selling traditional Namibian food and braii meat.  It was awesome to see so many people in town – normally it seems as if no one is in the town [people stay in the location mostly], and on this weekend I saw at least half of my learners on the waterfront! Then after a few days of relaxation it was off to Omaruru!

On Monday a few of us from Luderitz started heading up to this town for a gardening workshop. As it was the first time I was leaving Luderitz in four months, I was pretty much thrilled to see green things at all, but this town had so many cool plants and trees! And now after this gardening workshop I will never look at them the same way. The person doing the training had been in the Peace Corps as an Agriculture Volunteer twenty or so years ago, and his training was extremely interesting, I feel like I learned so much. Hopefully I will be able to get a garden going, though there are a fair amount of obstacles that would lie in my way in Luderitz [intense wind, no rain, soil = sand + rock, no green]. However, there are people here who maintain gardens, so next term I will make an effort to talk to all the people who have cool plants in front of their houses and maybe we can make it work! Also in Omaruru I got to see a bunch of 34 friends and have a mini-reunion. One of them, Alex, had her birthday on our last day there, so to celebrate we went and toured/had a mini-wine tasting at the small vineyard just outside of town. Our tour finished just as we watched a standard gorgeous African sunset, ending an amazing week. Of course, as travelling goes in the south, another typical trying to get home story to add to the saga – waiting 6 and a half hours to get a lift to Luderitz… didn’t even try to hike, was totally willing to pay, there was just no one going there at all. I think this country has really helped me become verrrrry patient. Oh, and I should note that the combi driver blasted for three of the three and a half hours Phil Collins Greatest Hits, only to be followed by even BETTER Celine. And then we almost hit a springbok, guess it got confused by the car in the road when it started to run towards instead of away from us. These antelope, ahhhtata.

Upon returning to Luds, exams had already begun at DPS. Things got a little frantic with the marking, but finally it all was finished. There is SO much paperwork and formalities involved in marking and the end of term, but as of today it is over! Tomorrow I’m outta this town! I think spending some time away will definitely help me love and appreciate this place! The odds are it will be another month until this blog gets updated – that is unless I magically get internet in the bush. Some of the family is about to be here and we’ll be off on an epic adventure! On a different note, I can’t believe it’s been a year since I graduated college… wow that time really flew by!

When I Let the Kids Go Wild... On Purpose!

I decided to let the kids do some singing during our last period friday class. This is 6A [used to be the worst class, turned one of the best after some real talk with the principal]. They too love "Waving Flag!" The video is super shaky, sorry about that, my camera has had a rough 7 months!

The End is Near [Of Term 1, That Is]!!!

Hey people!

April 1^st is tomorrow, and all I can say is Praise the Lord!!! There is a light at the end of this tunnel, and I can see it quite clearly now! April brings the crayfish festival, FINALLY getting out of town for the first time in almost 4 months, seeing other volunteer friends, and the end of the term, closely followed by May, which brings my family and an African adventure!

Last weekend we had teambuilding with the staff at my school, which was pretty entertaining – sidenote: I probably gained 8 pounds within 36 hours. I had forgotten how much Namibians love meat. AKA my breakfast on Saturday was enough to feed a small family, it consisted of [and I kid you not] a russian, three large pieces of bacon, two hard boiled eggs, two butter sandwiches, and a fully dressed and substantially-sized hamburger. Did I eat it all? You bet I did. This was also all before 9 am, and unsurprisingly, I did not eat for the rest of the day. Anyway back to it, I think teambuilding was really helpful with getting to spend time with the other teachers and staff outside of a work context, and I had a lot of fun.  I had to face my fear of dancing in the middle of a circle of naturally talented dancers, but I did my best to break it down… 7 hours of blasting namjams and dance partying ways isn’t that bad eh?

Proof that I did, indeed, dance in front of 30 other teachers. Luckily I had a department head to look silly with me!

In the morning the events that transpired were interesting. We were told to set up a tent, so about half the staff went out to set it up. First off, I was confused because this was at 7 am, aka the time we were supposed to be leaving for our field trip. I tried to voice this, but was told that we would be kicked out of the bungalow at 10 so we needed the tent up – but why is it necessary if we’re not even going to be here the rest of the day??! Logic: 0, Teambuilding: 1. Now, this tent was MASSIVE. Like could have a raging party under it. Also, there was one, just one, hammer to get all the stakes into the ground. Thus proceeded one of the more frustrating hours of my life, as we tried to get the tent up before the wind got too strong and blew it away, some random Afrikaners came and said it was their land we were on, we paused while that dispute was settled, then recommenced with the work, and finally it was done. After said hearty breakfast, we abandoned the tent that had taken so long to put up, only to get in the buses to leave for our trip. As the driver started the car, we got the news that our permits for the Sperrgebeit hadn’t been signed, so we couldn’t go anymore. We headed into the tent, where we decided to call it a day on teambuilding, and took the tent down. !!!!!!!!!!!!! those exclamation marks are all that can express my emotions, no words. But hey, everyone still had a good time.

Anyway, school-wise I’m just finishing up my CASS marks, but this week I also finally got the library to a pretty good ending point for the term. With maybe two more days of work it will be ready for use [as in I will have finished arranging everything on shelves and logging all of the books into a computer!], so we’ll be training library prefects during the first week of Term Two! I’m so excited, and I know the kids are as well to finally have this library opened. I wish I had taken before and after pictures. Hopefully over break I’ll get some neon colored posters with which I’ll set up labels for the different sections and other fun decorations. After that I’ll show the finished product. On this note, a massive shipment of school-related items was just donated and unveiled at the high school by the US Embassy. Love you America, and I truly appreciate the sweet swivel chair I can now sit on in the computer lab!!! I got to go with my principal to sort through/handpick books from an enormous box for our library, and I am extremely happy with our haul. We now have a lot more age-appropriate books, including a solid collection of Dr. Seuss! Many of the books we have on our shelves are wonderful, but really beyond the vocabulary and reading level of the learners. Either way, the kids are not picky and are thrilled to have their hands on any kind of reading material, so our library-opening day will surely be mayhem!

Other than that, I’ve discussed having a world map project with my principal, and he’s on board! I feel strongly about this project, since the world map in my classroom pretty much blows my learners’ minds. Literally groups of them will just come in during the break and stare at it. I’ve tried to involve talking about cultures/stories from other parts of the world in my lessons, and they get really excited about seeing where the other countries are. I’ve been fairly shocked at how little some of the kids know about the world outside of this remote little town [and geography, as in, I asked a kid to come up and find India, she didn’t know, so I told her it was in Asia… so she went to Brazil]. Anyway I think it would be really nice for all 900 learners to have access to a world map, and peace corps volunteers worldwide are pretty involved in the world map project, so I’ve decided to try and tackle it as well! I just have to figure out how/where to get funding for the paint and get a couple other teachers on board with me, and then it’s a go! Really crossing my fingers that this project can get started next term, so we’ll see!

Final update, today was Big Walk, an event at Diaz PS just for fun, when the learners pay 5 dollars, then we walk from the school to the point just before reaching Agate Beach. Then once we’ve returned they get a sandwich, cool drink, and chips. The walk was nice, albeit long – about 2 and a half hours. It was cool though because we walked through Area 7, which is one of the informal settlements that about half of my learners come from. There is one road that cars can use to pass through this area, and on either side are rows of shacks that extend for a while. Some of the kids pointed out where they lived to me, and I got to chat with one of the sweetest Grade 6s almost the whole walk! Our walk ended at the start of the massive sand dunes, which reminded me that oh yeah, I live in Africa!

A few of my grade 6 boys, I took this a little late but they all had their arms around each other. so cute!!

I started to play some music for the kids from my phone on the way back, and they asked for some Namibian music once they’d had their fill of Bieber and ‘Call Me Maybe’ [but seriously how awesome is that song?!] On that note, here is another namjam that I have recently become very obsessed with. This song is super popular right now. In Namibia there are two main rappers, and apparently they don’t like each other/get along, so you support either one or another [or so it seems after hearing from the kids]. Their names are Gazza and The Dogg. This is Gazza, “Seelima,” it has such a catchy beat! Ondiku hole means ‘I love you’ in Oshiwambo; that’s what he’s saying over and over. Hope the link works: Seelima!

My Neighbor!

Ok I wrote this little bit a longgg time ago and never posted it but I think it will be a good intro to my neighbor! So: I live in this strange little area of houses right behind a nice hotel on the outskirts of town. They’re literally nestled between cliffs on the back and the ocean on the front. It creates a bit of an isolated feel since there aren’t that many houses, no one ever seems to be in the houses, and the cliffs and ocean are both extremely imposing. That, added to the fact that this is actually the first time I’ve ever lived by myself [way to start out!], and that the wind rattles every part of my house, has left me creeped out on occasion now that I’m all alone. Anyway, because no one is ever around, I have to find ways to entertain myself. So, the other day while I was cleaning my kitchen thoroughly, I started singing quite loudly to my country mix on my ipod to keep myself company. I was singing so loudly in fact, that I didn’t hear my neighbor calling my name the first few times from my front door. First, how does everyone know my name?!?!

Second, now this guy probably thinks I’m crazy because he heard my not-so-dulcet tones singing to Taylor Swift – if it had been a windy day like standard Luderitz weather no one would have noticed. He is super nice nonetheless, and I found out he’s from SA and has a daughter my age [who is also a teacher], and works with the crayfish company in association with SeaFlower, a fish factory in Luda. I also found out he lives right behind me, and after our visit concluded and he walked back I could hear him quite clearly speaking to someone in his front yard… meaning he also heard all of my prior singing the past hour. Shoot. 

So that was the way I met Douglas, and since our initial meeting, we’ve become like family! As I mentioned, he literally lives about 20 feet from my house behind me. This is his first time in a way long time living alone, since his wife and daughter are both back in Capetown. He also didn’t know anyone when he got here, so I started going over to his house for dinner about once a week, and have been trying some lekker fish each time! I also introduced him to improvised Mexican food yum. I have learned SO much about the crayfish industry now, and have gotten to visit the factory with him a couple of times. Little tidbit: apparently a lot of the crayfish fishermen catch here get sent to Southeast Asia.

Crayfish tanks at the factory!

Yummmm crayfish!

Anyway, Douglas happens to leave for work at the same time I do, and the factories are in the same direction as the location, so now I get driven to work too! This is SO nice to not show up to work covered in sweat from my trek! This weekend Douglas made a tasty breakfast for us and then we went out to Diaz Point for the first time. I finally saw seals, and a huge group of them at that! They were feeding in the water. Next time I head out there I’ll definitely take pictures. Following that, we saw one of the people who does repairs for the factory catching crayfish on his own, so we got him to give us some, and had a feast in the afternoon! It’s so nice to have my own little family here, with my host mom and sisters, and now I totally have a South African dad, I’m so lucky!! I’m going to be so sad when he goes home to Capetown for a few months in May since crayfish season is ending!

March Madness

[this post was written last week oops!]

First off, Happy St Patrick’s Day! It is a holiday that I don’t think anyone has heard of here. Today I tried my first crayfish and it was delicious! I’m sure I can take some great pictures of them at the crayfish festival over Easter weekend.

Things are kind of chugging along at school. I have to say I’ve been kind of at a low point recently with work. Thankfully, my APCD came for a site visit [on my birthday of all days!] and after talking with him I was glad with what he proposed and think that Term Two will be a lot better. The main problem is that I’ve been way stressed lately with a really packed schedule and SO much marking to do, all of which has to be done at the school because it’s too heavy to take on my 40 minute journey home. That added to select kids being surprisingly mean to me has not been nice. But we’re being proactive and the schedule thing will get fixed next term [fingers crossed] and I’m moving classrooms next week to the room right next to the office, which will hopefully curb the behavior of the naughty ones.

Although some things have been unpleasant lately, I can’t leave out the little things that have been brightening my day:

-       4 out of 5 days this week I received apples, all from different learners. It was so cute and made me feel like such a teacher! Also some of the kids have started saying ‘thank you for teaching me’ when they leave my classroom, which makes me so happy! Anddd I just marked some essays where the kids had to describe what their class would be if they were the teacher, and a lot of them said they would teach like Miss Nowlin, whooo!

-       2 normally very badly behaved kids have dramatically changed their behavior recently. One of them I think has changed because he got in trouble with someone, but the other has changed because he now comes to my reading club after school two days a week! He’s actually trying now!

-       I think I’ve mentioned that my big project right now is getting the library set up and functioning. This past week we’ve been electing prefects to help run it, and it was so exciting to see that almost all the kids wanted this responsibility. They would really thrive on leadership groups/after-school programs, so hopefully next term I can work on that.

-       On my birthday I got 10 cards from my learners. So sweet! Also, let me introduce you to the newest addition to my life here in luda – her name is lulu and she is maybe 4-5 months old. She’s so friendly and cuddles with me when she’s not bouncing off the walls [literally] with energy. 

  Also, I had a huge revelation yesterday. We were celebrating Megan’s birthday after our Shelter House meeting, and one of the committee members started imitating an American accent. The weird voice he made is EXACTLY what the kids have been doing to me! All along I knew they were making fun of me, but had no idea they were making fun of my accent – it doesn’t sound anything like an American accent in my opinion! It’s really nasal and high-pitched/fast/mumbling, hard to do it justice when writing about it. Now I know what they’re doing! 

P.S. It is raining right now in Luderitz. HUGE DEAL. The last time I saw rain was in early December when I was at Reconnect in Windhoek. It's awesome!!!

Sandboarding!

I finally got the sandboarding video to load! Only 3 months late :) this is me zooming 80k down the dune and wiping out in the end!

Two Weddings and a Funeral

Well I went to the weddings back in October and have had this written for forever, but better late than never ne?! When I was on my way to site visit, I had the chance to go to an Owambo wedding in Windhoek. It was certainly interesting, for the cool cultural things that I saw, and mostly because it represented what I find fascinating about Nam – that traditional and modern exist alongside each other at all times. The night before the wedding was a traditional Owambo ceremony, and I caught the end of it, when the bride-to-be sat in the middle of her family room as friends and families came up to her while everyone sang. The last person to come up to her was her grandfather, which apparently was a really big deal because he left his farm to come see her. It was cool!

The next day we actually went to someone else’s wedding, also Owambo, but the ceremony was pretty modern. Apparently before the wedding begins the bridal party spends time together, so they all showed up late, and had to scramble for seats in the way too small church, leaving me feeling all kinds of awkward because I somehow ended up in the same row as the bride’s parents […?] and I don’t think many of her close friends made it inside the church. Ah well. The wedding was pretty standard as far as I can tell, half in Afrikaans (which I’d only been learning for 2 weeks, so I didn’t understand anything), half in Oshiwambo. The interesting part though came when the minister decided to speak in English [hooray!] and give a 20 minute speech about domestic violence. He incorporated it alongside the idea that the marriage vows of ‘obeying’ your spouse do not mean violence is allowed or to be tolerated. He went on to talk about how God doesn’t expect the wife to endure violence and adultery. Although I would never think to hear about this topic during a wedding, it was so cool to see how engaging and passionate the minister and then the oshiwambo translator were about this. In this society, cheating is so common, and I’ve already talked about the high prevalence of domestic violence. It was really awesome to hear the minister include the expectations of monogamy and equality into his sermon, especially because ministers are so influential in such a religious country.

After that wedding, even though we missed the actual ceremony, we went to the reception for Bride #1 from the night before. It was a reception with swag [apparently she is the niece of Namibia’s first President!]. I followed my Principal’s wife around, as the men were sitting off together, and we went to check out the food in the kitchen. I was a little taken aback when I walked in and almost stepped on a cow… skinless, chilling on the floor. I just stared at it for a while, and realized the only portion with skin was the head, which I noticed from an ear poking out from a trashbag covering. Then I saw a massive bucket of potato salad with flies swarming around it. One of the women mentioned to me that once when they had a bucket that size, the women didn’t have a spoon to stir it, so someone just used her arm, and reached down so her entire arm was in the salad stirring. This was the point at which I decided I was going to try and stay away from eating at future wedding receptions, or else fear some stomach issues. [Ed. note: at this point in my service, new me will definitely and without a doubt eat free and delicious food at a wedding reception. What was I thinking!?]

            Anyway, fast forward to the present. Last week in our daily teacher meeting my principal told us that one of the young male teachers at my school was going to be absent from school for the next two days, as his child had died. As far as I know his son’s death was unexpected, he was only a few days to perhaps a week old. Later during the day I found out that classes were being cut short and all the teachers would be attending the funeral.  We all headed over to the hospital, and stood outside singing as some people went to view the baby. The minister read some prayers [all of this was in oshiwambo], and then we all stood by as the coffin was placed in the bakkie. The coffin was so small, I have never seen anything like it. We then all followed a slow car procession to the cemetery that is right next to my host family’s neighborhood. As we walked to the back of the cemetery, I noticed something that fundamentally gave me a reality check. As we went further into the cemetery [which I assume is relatively new to Luderitz from the recent dates on the tombstones], I realized that the graves on the right side of me were different than those on the left. Once we reached our spot for the funeral I understood why. There is a whole section of the cemetery that is for children, specifically babies. Their graves do not have tombstones, and naturally are much, much smaller. Sometimes living in Luderitz gives me a bit of an illusion that my life is not that different than life in America. Moments like this one serve to remind me that I don’t live in America, I live in a developing country, a country where maternal healthcare is not up to standards. Anyway, that aside, the service began, again everything was in Oshiwambo so I, along with half the teachers who also didn’t speak the language, stood in support as several other teachers led in the hymns. The minister gave a sermon, after which they lowered the baby’s coffin into the grave. After this, my colleague placed the first shovelful of sand into the grave. He then stood next to it and watched as all of the males in attendance each took turns shoveling sand to fill the grave, while the women sang owambo hymns. After the grave had been filled the men all went to the back of the cemetery’s plot and collected rocks. All of the children’s graves have a rectangular piling of rocks on top of the grave in place of a tombstone, with a wooden cross at the front that has a plaque with the child’s name and dates of birth/death. The men arranged this, and after another short sermon the service was over.  Definitely some interesting cultural experiences.