Hello,
I have a mailing address here, now. It is:
Jon Isom
C/O Berseba ECS
Private Bag 2040
Keetmanshoop
Namibia
Any packages sent before the end of February should go to: Please underestimate their value (I may have to pay duty on them) but insure them for something (they are a lot less likely to dissapear):
Jon Isom
C/O US Peace Corps
P/Bag 6862
Ausspannplatz
Windhoek, Namibia
I have had a nice time in Keetmanshoop this weekend. I was doing some shopping and seeing a friend before going to Windhoek to see the orthopedic specialist. It will be nice to hear what this person has to say about my shoulder. It seems to me to be improving, so I hope that he says I look good and sends me back.
The beginning of school has been a real cultural experience. Many of the teachers don't seem highly motivated, and it is common to fart around in meetings for a few hours while the students wait outside for classes. This is in contrast to the fact that the students usually show up 15-30 minutes early for school, and are excited about learning things. The general math knowledge of my students isn't as awful as some places in Namibia. Many of the students have memorized the times table, and do long multiplication and division. It will still be a challenge to get the grade 10 students to pass the exam, because the test covers knowledge from grades 8-10 and few really understand the grade 8 and 9 stuff. It shouldn't be as bad getting the 8 and 9th grades caught up, although we'll have our work cut out. The students seem eager to learn though, and discipline problems haven't been too significant. I feel like I'm building a pretty good rapport with my class.
It appears that I will only have internet access about once a month for the near future, on shopping days in town. If the internet happens to be down when I come to town, it might even be every other month. This isn't great, but I do have a computer at my school, so I should be able to type some blog entries and emails ahead of time so things don't get lost. Below is an example of such a thing:
(I typed this on 1/18) I am sunburnt as I type. Yesterday I took another hike to the nearby volcano / mountain. This time I walked for almost 10 hours—I summited the mountain as well as walking all the way down to the floor on the inside. I followed a hiking trail out that went through the community campground, and it is pretty spectacular. The trail winds along the side of the mountain and there are tall cliff walls and colored rocks and all that jazz. The trip was just what I needed. I’m not supposed to be exercising until I see the orthopedic specialist in Windhoek on 1/26 about my shoulder, so I’ve been going a little nuts. It felt good to be tired, hot, and far from home and know exactly what I was going to be doing for the foreseeable future. Being on top of a mountain with a pretty good 270 degree view (it wasn’t 360 because it is a volcano with a rim) didn’t suck either. I had a nice conversation with the volunteers from the community who were working at the reception desk for the community campground at the mountain. We talked for almost an hour in KKG, which was really nice. I still have a long way to go to describe myself as fluent, but I’m able to communicate a lot of simple thoughts, and paraphrase some complicated ones.
Kiwan and I are living in a house located on the grounds of one of the dorms where students live during school. The place that is to be our permanent residence wasn’t ready when we arrived—something about negotiations with the ministry regarding fixing it up. The place where we’re staying is nice. It is made of concrete block with a tin roof, and has running water and electricity when the town does (we’re at about 75% of the time right now). It has two bedrooms, a decent sized bathroom with a shower, a living room, and a small kitchen. We don’t have a refrigerator now, but do have a borrowed hot plate that boils water in about 45 minutes. We were encouraged not to buy a bunch of stuff in the north that we would have to cart down here, so we’ve been surviving on simple food. I’ve been eating (mostly) maize meal porridge with occasional oatmeal, and peanut butter and jelly. There is a store in town where one can buy bread, eggs, rice, instant soup, cokes, and basic toiletries. Things there run about 50% more than at the supermarket, which doesn’t seem awful considering that town is 100 km away and this is a small place.
It is something of an adventure buying food here in !au tsawises. Aggressive panhandling is commonplace and it becomes especially prevalent when one is carrying food. People often provide detailed descriptions of their hunger, and I feel really awkward turning them down. Some are often drunk or eating as they ask, and it is not as difficult to turn them down as the people who really do look hungry.
Poverty is around. There aren’t really jobs here. People either work for the government (in the municipal office, at the schools, or on construction crews), are subsistence cattle ranchers, or live off someone who does. Reactions to this run the gamut. Some people seem really happy, friendly, and content. Others are angry—some at the government (which is dominated by another ethnic group than the community here comes from), some, it seems, at me, and some are just angry in general. Many others don’t seem to conceive of anything different. They live simply and eat when there’s food and don’t when there isn’t.
The students at the school where I’m working did really well last year on their exams. Approximately 41% (of those who didn’t drop out) carried a D average on English and their best five other subjects, which is enough to pass. This is up from a low of around 10% as recently as three years ago. Much of the change was attributed to the principal, who apparently canned some teachers who were misbehaving and generally made the trains run on time. He left for another job a few days after I arrived, so it will be interesting to see if we can maintain or improve on the current level of results.
The school is pretty nice. It was started during apartheid as a place where blacks could receive a quality education. I believe it was started by community members with funding from the Lutheran church. There are nice classrooms, decent furniture, and even a well-stocked but unused library. I don’t know what the situation is with regard to school books, but I expect it is on the order of 1 book for the teacher per subject.
The acting principal is a former volunteer from Nigeria. She and her husband stayed on here as teachers after their volunteer service ended. They are both nice people and easy to get along with. They have an amusing habit of finishing each other’s sentences and/or restating each other’s statements. They are nice people, to be sure.
I’m learning to shut up a lot. People aren’t, as yet, very receptive to suggestions that I have, and they’re just considered annoying. For example, when the Principal was moving I suggested that he line the sides of his truck with mattresses, so that the furniture wouldn’t bounce against it. They did it and loaded some things, then decided to unload everything while they moved the mattresses to the bottom of the truck, which is where they usually put them. All of the furniture looked pretty wobbly sitting there on the mattresses, and I will be surprised if his mirrors are still in one piece after banging together, but everyone felt better about doing things their way. Similarly, there was discussion in the organizational meetings at school about doubling the number of students that we register. The government will only pay for one teacher per 35 learners, and at a small school like ours (around 100 learners) it makes it difficult to cover all of the subjects. More students would improve this, but I mentioned that it would be impossible for us to cover all the classes if we had multiple sections in each grade. Talk continued of doing it, until a couple of days later when we were looking at how many periods we each needed to teach and someone mentioned that we would need to add hours to the school day if we added a bunch of new learners.
As you can see, the student teacher ratio policy can lead to a real chicken and egg problem.
