i had accepted, pretty much without question, that i was going to show up as a volunteer and want to jump in with my american ideas. i expected to need to rein in my feelings about how things were going to work and learn how they actually worked here and how to do the right thing here without making everybody angry by telling them they should do things my way. i'm being wordy, but that's pretty much what i expected. i decided this last week to pitch that, to a certain extent.

things haven't been going well at my school. we begin expelling my best mathematics student, and will probably expel three more. their offense was substantial -- they ransacked another classroom, destroyed schoolbooks and notebooks belonging to other students, then tried to pin the blame on some other students. they were unrepentant, and continue to be disrespectful to teachers, so clearly they need to be disciplined.

still, i don't blame them much. the best students in our school have been getting in to a lot of trouble. i think it is because they are bored. many days i've walked into classrooms with the notes i wrote on the chalkboard the previous day still there. teachers haven't been going into the classes, except sometimes to drop in and discipline students. most days "teaching" has constituted giving students assignments to copy out of their textbooks into their notebooks. dumb. so, i think the big problem is that the smart kids are bored. i've been trying to be a good example, showing up to class on time and doing what i say i'm going to do. but it really hasn't made that much difference. so, finally, i decided that i was either going to end up one of the seventy some percent of volunteers here who don't make it through two years or try to fix some things at the school. when the teachers were together in a meeting, i explained how i thought the school wasn't working (and really the dorm and community as well) and that i thought us teachers really needed to try to maintain discipline as much as possible, and that it began with being in the classroom when scheduled. they were pretty receptive, and mostly agreed. i'm not sure if it will change what they're doing, but i'm certainly hopeful. the principal is definitely behind me, but she is really not coping well with her responsibilities, and threatens to walk off the job almost every day. the other teachers have been pretty amazed by how naughty the students are, but i'm trying to convince them that we don't need to go nuts, just to start consistently expecting the students to do what they're supposed to do.

so, life hasn't been relaxing, and i don't know that i can expect it to get better, but i feel a lot better for trying to lead us out of this mess rather than suck it up and deal with it.

life in the dorm is pretty chaotic also -- the people who are supposed to supervise usually hide in their rooms and the kids are running wild. also there, kids are doing worse and worse things and once they finally do something bad enough they're being expelled. i have a meeting scheduled tomorrow between the teachers at my school, the primary school, and the hostel staff to see if we can come up with a plan for fixing some of the problems. it's going to be difficult to keep it from degenerating into a finger-pointing session, but i plan to eat as much dirt as i need to try and get things working. i hope that somehow we will come out of it with a plan for teachers from the schools (who the students generally respect because we can enforce things we tell the students to do) to take turns supervising there, at least until we can get things under control there.

it doesn't all suck (i know i'm whining). the only exam my students have taken has been grade 8 physical science, and i have an unheard of percentage of students getting as and bs. they are excited, and fired up to study for the mathematics test. this is a great thing. even better, science is becoming a part of their vocabulary -- even the bad students. students do dumb stuff like drop their pen, then explain that its potential energy was converted to kinetic energy then sound (they still don't really believe me that it gets warmer). they eat bread and explain to me that they are getting chemical energy to use as food, and that bread isn't very dense. dorky stuff, things that would necessitate ostracism in a 'cool' place, but it makes me feel great.

it's still a beautiful place to live. i spent a few hours yesterday by the side of the road a few miles outside of town waiting to hitch-hike. it was a windy day (we let school out early because the wind was so strong, and i couldn't wear a hat because it was blowing off), and dust devils were all over. i went to sleep in the dirt and enjoyed the wind massage, then woke up as the only car to drive by in four hours was passing. jumped up and stuck out my thumb, and they stopped and i was on my way.

the running is good too. i've been doing some track workouts (i'm still slow) and many days just hit the road to cruise for a while.

kristin is back from south africa. she says they fixed her (although her condition changed often enough before she went that i don't know i really trust it yet). we're relaxing in town this weekend--eating pizza, drinking beer, and pretty much living it up. being with her really keeps me going.

i feel like i'm pretending to be way more grown up that i am. i wonder what i'll act like when i come home. i'm always thinking about what effects the things i do will have and trying to be a good person and do the right thing and encourage others to do the same. of course it isn't all pretending, but i hope i can strike a good balance after this of being able to have fun and be dumb while still doing the right thing. i don't know how better to explain this, but i guess i really shouldn't worry about being able to be dumb and have fun -- it's got to be like riding a bicycle.

ok, crazy cultural difference moment. i was at a 25th birthday party last weekend on a farm, and left when things started getting ugly (remember, peace corps jon drinks responsible). apparently soon after i left someone killed someone else over us$15. get this. they loaded the corpse into the back of a truck and continued with the party. the next day they came back to the village and drove around town with the news, then in the afternoon (after it had warmed up) took the body to the police. when asked about it, other people explained to me that it was a great party, except for a minor difficulty. holy frijoles.

that's pretty much it. i miss the people that read this a lot. take care.

hey. i'm back in town, real quick like, to participate in a shady business dealing. my part of it isn't shady.

nothing much is new since friday, but the other volunteers are saying that y'all can get calling cards from callingcard.com for $10 that will let you call me for 126 minutes. it might be a little less because i have a cell phone, but if the difference is dramatic you could call and i could arrange to have you call back on a land line.

we have a day off from school so that the students in the dorm can go visit their families. i cleaned the house up real nice, like, and did some running. i have lessons roughed out for the next two weeks (until we stop learning and start taking exams), but will try and complete them in detail tonight. after now, most of the hard thinking is done and i'll just be grading work and helping students review. things get crazy at the school because many teachers won't go in the classrooms and the students get wound up. i'm going to see if i can keep the students expecting to work when i'm around and be a little more productive than the end of last term.

yep, that's really all. during the whole time i've typed this i haven't made it in to yahoo mail, so if i should say anything else after reading the new email i'll come back and post again.

you ought to be able to look at some namibia pictures with this link. many thanks to marc digby for scanning and uploading them. if you want higher resolution scans for some reason, ask marc. if you don't have his address, ask me for it.

http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=52qv49rj.3bwugz47&x=0&y=-fbqh3h

i'd be interested in what you think. i don't remember exactly what pictures are included, because i mailed the negatives in february or something, but i expect you'll be surprised by the relative luxury i live in. the rich people in namibia live pretty well, and the poor people really scrape.

life's ok. i had a cold and the flu for a while and missed running and feeling good. it's mostly better, i cough productively occasionally, but the rest is alright. i only missed a day of school, though, so it wasn't that bad.

school is pretty good. i've had some really good science classes where students have gotten excited about understanding things (grade 8 we're talking about density and buoyancy and grade 9 about the periodic table and chemical reactions). there continue to be crazy, unbelievable, ridiculous happenings on a regular basis, but i'm closer to the 'wow, i can't believe this, alright time to ignore it' frame of mind than the overly concerned one i slipped in to. i know that even in this country most schools aren't as crazy as mine, but i hope it means that it is even more important to have someone like me who goes to class on time and tries to be fair to and respectful of the students.

so, i'm getting by pretty well. my girlfriend is in south africa where they're trying to fix up her health a little bit. i miss her and hope she comes back soon, but she's not a kind of sick you die quickly from so don't be too worried.

my kkg is coming along again. for a while i've slacked on expanding my vocabulary, and just kind of putzed along at my intermediate level. i'm trying to push ahead again, because people are getting tired of the same old jokes.

i don't know what to say about my life in town. during my overly concerned frame of mind days, i was holing up at home a lot, and it felt like all i could do to go to school and teach my classes and come home. i'm going out more, but still feel lonely -- my interactions with people are mostly very superficial and i would really like to have better friends. i had always assumed that these bonds would build themselves as i worked together with people on stuff. with, ya know, boundless enthusiasm and determination. i'm still hoping that will turn up, but i've been bitten a few times by the "want some help?" "sure. let me know how it turns out. [while running away]" "ok, you're welcome." sequence of events, and so i need to keep trying to find people who want to work together with me on whatever. i have to believe that those people and projects are out there.

i really love hitch-hiking. you can walk to the edge of town and sit and see forever. it is pretty much always peaceful, and it feels like something of a miracle when you get a ride. i think it is pretty safe. i've hopped out of a crazy ride or two, but most people are nice folks on their way to somewhere. and, by definition if they're picking up hitch-hikers, they are somewhat friendly and/or lonely. it gives me a good chance to be on my best behavior and (this is the hardest) try to be interesting instead of droning on about school and classes and all that teacher talk.

there was a picture of the namibian waterski championships in the paper. if you have a boat and a rope and something flat, please, please, please, put your feet on the flat thing and hold the rope and tell the boat to go. do it for me.

keep wishing gretchen luck. she's due in a week and a half.

enough. i miss you. thanks for writing. take care.

so i have free internet time, but there's a long line
for the compouter. no blog entry yet, so i'll steal
from emails.

went to a nice 4th of july picnic today (actually the
3rd) at the school all the american businesspeople's
kids go to. it was nice to talk to some americans. i'm
in windhoek (the capital city) because my girlfriend
is sick and they're going to send her to south africa
to poke around a little. it's pretty indeterminate how
long she'll be gone, so we're spending a last weekend
together before she goes. it isn't anything she's
likely to die from, but she's had bad stomach trouble
for a long time and is ready to get it fixed.

got to town hitch-hiking and it was great. rides were:
with a) a group of old
women in the back of a truck that couldn't go over 30
due to sloppy steering on the way to a funeral (they
said things like "we don't usually go to towns, if we
want something, we give someone a goat and they buy it
for us"). b) some guy who was slightly drunk and
turned off the road to town and down a farm road. i
jumped out of the back of his truck when he stopped to
open a gate. c) in a brand new, empty bus that was
being delivered. i basically ended up at the door of
the place i was hitch-hiking to, 500km away, for us$5
and less than 20 minutes of waiting. the thing about
good experiences is that you have to give them a chance
to happen.

things are ok here. my classes are good--the students
are easy to really like. the teachers at my school do
things that are incomprehensible to me, but have been
treating me with more respect since i got really mad
and told them they needed to treat me with more
respect. life in the village is up and down -- i found
out last week that the husband of a family i've spent
a lot of time with beats his wife and kids, and have
been kind of holed up in horror. i can't imagine
living in a village with no police to call with some
guy who sometimes goes apeshit for no reason and beats
you. it's an awful thing to think about.

i'm really pretty fine. things are ok. my students are
learning and sometimes it makes them excited, which is
what i hope for as a teacher. i'm not real confident on
how much i'll be a part of and like my community, in general,
the culture gap is huge and in some ways i don't know how
to cross it in a way that is acceptable to me. for example,
the criticism that i receive most from the other teachers
is that i'm too nice to the students.

alright, then. cross your fingers, next time i type on here
i might be an uncle jon. gretchen's due on the 27th.