hi all,
i'm back in town again. we had a long weekend from school for easter, and i went to visit the girlfriend. i'm killing time now while i wait for a ride home.
i hitch-hiked again today. usually i try to line up rides with people i know, but it doesn't always work out. today the girlfriend and i put me on a bus, and we drove a little ways and i started talking to the girl sitting next to me. turns out the bus was going to oranjemund and rosh pinah--mining towns in the extreme south west of namibia. rode the bus to the main road and waited about 5 minutes until some guy in a goverment passenger van (they call them 'combies' and they sit about 14 people when loaded up) stopped and picked me up. turns out he was on the way back to keetmans and the ride was on uncle sam (nujoma) -- our president. i had a seat in the sun, and slept like a baby.
last week was rough. our school doesn't have a principal, and so sometimes i end up steering the school more than i would ever ask to. i try to sit down and shut up and let the teachers do their namibian thing, but some times something needs to be done and i do it. this time it was expelling students for fighting--one boy who has been trouble for a while stabbed another boy with a knife he'd brought to school for calling him a rat. the other teachers mostly ignored it, and wanted to let the student come back because he's already
registered to take his grade 10 exams and it will look bad for our school if he gets incompletes. i argued that the important thing for our school's image was not to tolerate students bringing weapons to school and using them. the teachers agreed and i got 'vice president in charge of writing the expulsion letter and calling the students' parents in to tell them.' we wrangled for a long time, and the mothers who are teachers ended up saying that we should let the students back in if they demonstrate a change of attitude to us. i didn't
(and don't) expect it to happen and agreed. wrote the letter and the boys' grandmothers came without them. we sent for the boys, and someone found them at the bar. the boys come to school drunk and it turns out that the kind of demonstration of change of attitude we're looking for is the correct answer to 'are you going to keep being bad or are you going to be serious and a good student?' the @$*&#%*&%#^&@%^ thing is that we couldn't even get that. if you've never sat there and watched a grandmother cry and beg her son to eat a little itty bit of dirt so he can keep going to school and watched the son not have it in him, i would skip it. it was rough. then one of the boys announced that he was going to kill himself. it was rough.
there was other stuff. the teachers also wanted to kick out one of my best, hardest-working students because he got stabbed very near his eye with a pen. the other students gang up on him because he's from another tribe, and so i don't know who to believe about how it all started, but they definitely didn't sound like they intended to be fair to him and so i went to bat on
that. all of this stuff happened and i just felt really, really low on the thing that people have that gets them out of bed in the morning. it isn't like i was watching injustice happen and had no control over it. it was just seeing people suffering and people making bad decisions instead of good ones and worrying about eyes and bad people hurting good people for stupid reasons. so i'm feeling about an inch from bawling and really, really tired and i went to my classes to collect their homework and send them home and they hadn't seen a teacher all day and it was the last day before a break and they were wound up. i should've just let them go but i tried to collect their homework and they wouldn't be quiet so i could ask (for 10 minutes or so) and i ended up yelling at them. i even went as far as yelling at a little girl who walked to the front of the class to ask me not to yell at them. so when i'm thinking about what kind of person i am, i'll have that.
it isn't all rough days. i'm still thrilled that my children are learning stuff from me. even my grade 10 class, which didn't start off able to work with me, is learning stuff and feeling better about themselves for it. it has been raining really nicely this year, and some nights i go to the dorm and take the kids for a run. sometimes it is in the rain and creek beds will flood a little bit and we'll splash around and laugh and the sun will go down and we'll end up racing
home. i'm occasionally staying in sight with the fast kids, which is nice because they're 10 years old and barefoot.
things with the girlfriend are also real good. she's been sick and had a lot of time to wonder if and how she'll be able to put up with the things that are weird (if not wrong) about me, but we really get along well and are making good decisions and planning to do good things together.
i also helped in the construction of a !gupu oms (spherical home) that a friend of mine was building for her brother's wedding. it was me and the grandmothers, and they really loved that i wanted to learn how to make their traditional home. after the wedding i talked the friend into letting me sleep in it for a night, and it was nice. the floor is made from a sand/manure mixture
and the walls are a woven grass, so it smelled just like a barn. a lot of bugs live in the grass, so even when it wasn't raining it sounded a little bit like it was. the difference between my night's sleep and traditional africans' is probably that she put a nice bed (much nicer than mine) in there and a mosquito net. she also rigged up an electric light, which i didn't use so
much. then in the evening i sat around the cooking fire with some of her kids and used just about every word that i know in our language. it was a good night.
that's how things are. i'm taking the good with the bad and doing my best to do the right thing and do some good and stay together. thanks a bunch for your letters and emails--they are much appreciated.
here are the answers to some questions you've asked me that everyone is probably interested in:
"-- I'm surprized that none of your writing has to do with AIDS. From what I read, I thought it would be the dominant theme. "
heads are in the sand about aids. everybody knows the abcs of protecting ourselves from aids ("be Abstinent," "Be Faithful (to a non-infected partner who is faithful to you)," or "use a Condom") and the bodily fluids that can transmit aids and what aids does, but many people say things like "we don't like condoms," "african people like sex," "america will cure aids and send
us the cure," etc. and stand a high likelihood of getting HIV. if you count farmers in the countryside around it, our village has about 2000 people and we usually bury 2 or 3 people a week and many of them are young or very young. more than half of the students at the primary school are classified as orphans because at least one of their parents is dead. it doesn't help that people don't get tested for hiv and so even though it is easy to guess that the young people dying are aids casualties, if you ask directly you're told "no, they were just sick." it is also true that, for a lot of girls, the only way they will have luxuries any time soon is by selling sex, and it is darn common for girls to have older boyfriends who are promiscuous and whatever. these girls will also sometimes have boyfriends their age, so it spreads. kids also like to joke that they're hiv positive and see what i do. i expect that people will continue to die of aids in africa for a long time. still, the message does get through to some people -- usually people who kind of have their lives together in the first place. i'm still doing some good for these people.
"do the kids ever learn algebra? you're talking about teaching them long division."
10th grade math. There's a syllabus, based on the Oxford GCSE (general certificate for secondary education?) system. Rather than a year of algebra,
year of geometry, year of 'math for life', that we do they do a little of each every year. At the end of 10th grade, they take an exam that decides if they can go on to 11th and 12th grade. They have to pass the exam with at least a D average in their best 6 (of 9) subjects. The exam is all story problems, although some of them come with a figure. The algebra problems go up to writing and solving a simple linear equation, the geometry ones go up to figuring out some angles if you know that XYZ is an isosceles triangle inscribed
in a circle type of thing. There are also ratio and rate problems (on one of my homework problems, mr. digby was making sausage and 1.8 kg of venison and 0.2 kg of bacon was needed to make 2 sausages--the students had to figure out how much sausage you could make with 1 kg of bacon or how much venison you needed for 5 sausages... that type of thing) and some other shit. I think the test is about as hard as the ACT, but you only need 30% on it to earn points towards passing and 50% on it so that it keeps your average high enough to pass. My job is something like trying to help students with little math background to get a 350 on the SAT.
The minimal math background happens because there's a shortage of people who know how to teach math, and a lot of the less skilled teachers just have the students copy (and memorize) their textbooks. The math textbooks are useless. Here's an example of the chapter of factoring:
FACTORING
The factors of 18 are 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 18.
[cartoon]
Dufus: "Do you understand factoring?"
Dorkus: "No. I'm going to ask the teacher for help."
Homework Problems
.
.
.
A lot of them picked up long division really quickly, but had never really been asked to learn it before. They're used to just writing random numbers on their
homework, turning it in, and getting it back marked correct.
I don't think it will be too much of a problem with the majority (some don't read or speak english, and it will be tough going with them) of my 8th and 9th grade students. It may not go so well with the 10th grade, because we only have this year and because they and I haven't really hit it off. They feel insulted that I'm making them multiply and divide when they're in 10th
grade, even though they don't know how to do it. They want to just punch the first two numbers that they see into their calculators, and write down whatever it says. The ones who don't have calculators are expecting to fail. I think I'm going to work with them on algebra next, to try and side step the calculator issue by working on something that mostly doesn't use
numbers.
---i will answer more questions later. take care ---
i'm back in town again. we had a long weekend from school for easter, and i went to visit the girlfriend. i'm killing time now while i wait for a ride home.
i hitch-hiked again today. usually i try to line up rides with people i know, but it doesn't always work out. today the girlfriend and i put me on a bus, and we drove a little ways and i started talking to the girl sitting next to me. turns out the bus was going to oranjemund and rosh pinah--mining towns in the extreme south west of namibia. rode the bus to the main road and waited about 5 minutes until some guy in a goverment passenger van (they call them 'combies' and they sit about 14 people when loaded up) stopped and picked me up. turns out he was on the way back to keetmans and the ride was on uncle sam (nujoma) -- our president. i had a seat in the sun, and slept like a baby.
last week was rough. our school doesn't have a principal, and so sometimes i end up steering the school more than i would ever ask to. i try to sit down and shut up and let the teachers do their namibian thing, but some times something needs to be done and i do it. this time it was expelling students for fighting--one boy who has been trouble for a while stabbed another boy with a knife he'd brought to school for calling him a rat. the other teachers mostly ignored it, and wanted to let the student come back because he's already
registered to take his grade 10 exams and it will look bad for our school if he gets incompletes. i argued that the important thing for our school's image was not to tolerate students bringing weapons to school and using them. the teachers agreed and i got 'vice president in charge of writing the expulsion letter and calling the students' parents in to tell them.' we wrangled for a long time, and the mothers who are teachers ended up saying that we should let the students back in if they demonstrate a change of attitude to us. i didn't
(and don't) expect it to happen and agreed. wrote the letter and the boys' grandmothers came without them. we sent for the boys, and someone found them at the bar. the boys come to school drunk and it turns out that the kind of demonstration of change of attitude we're looking for is the correct answer to 'are you going to keep being bad or are you going to be serious and a good student?' the @$*&#%*&%#^&@%^ thing is that we couldn't even get that. if you've never sat there and watched a grandmother cry and beg her son to eat a little itty bit of dirt so he can keep going to school and watched the son not have it in him, i would skip it. it was rough. then one of the boys announced that he was going to kill himself. it was rough.
there was other stuff. the teachers also wanted to kick out one of my best, hardest-working students because he got stabbed very near his eye with a pen. the other students gang up on him because he's from another tribe, and so i don't know who to believe about how it all started, but they definitely didn't sound like they intended to be fair to him and so i went to bat on
that. all of this stuff happened and i just felt really, really low on the thing that people have that gets them out of bed in the morning. it isn't like i was watching injustice happen and had no control over it. it was just seeing people suffering and people making bad decisions instead of good ones and worrying about eyes and bad people hurting good people for stupid reasons. so i'm feeling about an inch from bawling and really, really tired and i went to my classes to collect their homework and send them home and they hadn't seen a teacher all day and it was the last day before a break and they were wound up. i should've just let them go but i tried to collect their homework and they wouldn't be quiet so i could ask (for 10 minutes or so) and i ended up yelling at them. i even went as far as yelling at a little girl who walked to the front of the class to ask me not to yell at them. so when i'm thinking about what kind of person i am, i'll have that.
it isn't all rough days. i'm still thrilled that my children are learning stuff from me. even my grade 10 class, which didn't start off able to work with me, is learning stuff and feeling better about themselves for it. it has been raining really nicely this year, and some nights i go to the dorm and take the kids for a run. sometimes it is in the rain and creek beds will flood a little bit and we'll splash around and laugh and the sun will go down and we'll end up racing
home. i'm occasionally staying in sight with the fast kids, which is nice because they're 10 years old and barefoot.
things with the girlfriend are also real good. she's been sick and had a lot of time to wonder if and how she'll be able to put up with the things that are weird (if not wrong) about me, but we really get along well and are making good decisions and planning to do good things together.
i also helped in the construction of a !gupu oms (spherical home) that a friend of mine was building for her brother's wedding. it was me and the grandmothers, and they really loved that i wanted to learn how to make their traditional home. after the wedding i talked the friend into letting me sleep in it for a night, and it was nice. the floor is made from a sand/manure mixture
and the walls are a woven grass, so it smelled just like a barn. a lot of bugs live in the grass, so even when it wasn't raining it sounded a little bit like it was. the difference between my night's sleep and traditional africans' is probably that she put a nice bed (much nicer than mine) in there and a mosquito net. she also rigged up an electric light, which i didn't use so
much. then in the evening i sat around the cooking fire with some of her kids and used just about every word that i know in our language. it was a good night.
that's how things are. i'm taking the good with the bad and doing my best to do the right thing and do some good and stay together. thanks a bunch for your letters and emails--they are much appreciated.
here are the answers to some questions you've asked me that everyone is probably interested in:
"-- I'm surprized that none of your writing has to do with AIDS. From what I read, I thought it would be the dominant theme. "
heads are in the sand about aids. everybody knows the abcs of protecting ourselves from aids ("be Abstinent," "Be Faithful (to a non-infected partner who is faithful to you)," or "use a Condom") and the bodily fluids that can transmit aids and what aids does, but many people say things like "we don't like condoms," "african people like sex," "america will cure aids and send
us the cure," etc. and stand a high likelihood of getting HIV. if you count farmers in the countryside around it, our village has about 2000 people and we usually bury 2 or 3 people a week and many of them are young or very young. more than half of the students at the primary school are classified as orphans because at least one of their parents is dead. it doesn't help that people don't get tested for hiv and so even though it is easy to guess that the young people dying are aids casualties, if you ask directly you're told "no, they were just sick." it is also true that, for a lot of girls, the only way they will have luxuries any time soon is by selling sex, and it is darn common for girls to have older boyfriends who are promiscuous and whatever. these girls will also sometimes have boyfriends their age, so it spreads. kids also like to joke that they're hiv positive and see what i do. i expect that people will continue to die of aids in africa for a long time. still, the message does get through to some people -- usually people who kind of have their lives together in the first place. i'm still doing some good for these people.
"do the kids ever learn algebra? you're talking about teaching them long division."
10th grade math. There's a syllabus, based on the Oxford GCSE (general certificate for secondary education?) system. Rather than a year of algebra,
year of geometry, year of 'math for life', that we do they do a little of each every year. At the end of 10th grade, they take an exam that decides if they can go on to 11th and 12th grade. They have to pass the exam with at least a D average in their best 6 (of 9) subjects. The exam is all story problems, although some of them come with a figure. The algebra problems go up to writing and solving a simple linear equation, the geometry ones go up to figuring out some angles if you know that XYZ is an isosceles triangle inscribed
in a circle type of thing. There are also ratio and rate problems (on one of my homework problems, mr. digby was making sausage and 1.8 kg of venison and 0.2 kg of bacon was needed to make 2 sausages--the students had to figure out how much sausage you could make with 1 kg of bacon or how much venison you needed for 5 sausages... that type of thing) and some other shit. I think the test is about as hard as the ACT, but you only need 30% on it to earn points towards passing and 50% on it so that it keeps your average high enough to pass. My job is something like trying to help students with little math background to get a 350 on the SAT.
The minimal math background happens because there's a shortage of people who know how to teach math, and a lot of the less skilled teachers just have the students copy (and memorize) their textbooks. The math textbooks are useless. Here's an example of the chapter of factoring:
FACTORING
The factors of 18 are 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 18.
[cartoon]
Dufus: "Do you understand factoring?"
Dorkus: "No. I'm going to ask the teacher for help."
Homework Problems
.
.
.
A lot of them picked up long division really quickly, but had never really been asked to learn it before. They're used to just writing random numbers on their
homework, turning it in, and getting it back marked correct.
I don't think it will be too much of a problem with the majority (some don't read or speak english, and it will be tough going with them) of my 8th and 9th grade students. It may not go so well with the 10th grade, because we only have this year and because they and I haven't really hit it off. They feel insulted that I'm making them multiply and divide when they're in 10th
grade, even though they don't know how to do it. They want to just punch the first two numbers that they see into their calculators, and write down whatever it says. The ones who don't have calculators are expecting to fail. I think I'm going to work with them on algebra next, to try and side step the calculator issue by working on something that mostly doesn't use
numbers.
---i will answer more questions later. take care ---
