I can’t believe I only have 4.5 months left of service! Time really has flown. It doesn’t seem that I was here for almost as long as I was in Tucson. They said this year would fly by and it has!
I recently acquired a stove from the ministry—a delightful addition to my life. I have enjoyed baking numerous cookies and cakes (and eating them all!). ANYTHING I make tastes better than the store-bought biscuits available here. I can’t believe I survived without good chocolate chip cookies for a year and a half! Its also nice that I will be able to gorge myself with sweet things here for a while, get fat, then get thin again when I tire of it, and be back to my normal weight when I get home to eat more!
Girl’s club has been a hit. We’ve done self esteem, body parts, menstruation, pregnancy, birth control and condom use, boyfriends, and will be moving onto a long segment on careers. It’s the first secondary project I really enjoy and it’s quite clear the girls do too. I will definitely miss them when I leave!
Teaching is so easy for me now, it’s boring. Lately, I did a poster competition which was a huge success. I also had 7th grade make comic strips about a problem and a solution to that problem. The results were HILARIOUS—probably unintentionally. Otherwise, teaching is rather humdrum.
Winter is here “in full swing” as we like to say. It honestly doesn’t seem that bad this year. It fully has to do with attitude.
Last year, my attitude was winter should not come into my house. I.e. I can accept that I cannot regulate the temperature in the class or outside but I cannot accept that I cannot regulate the temperature INSIDE. That made me very bitter upon discovering that the heater used up a ridiculous amount of electricity so I couldn’t use it and it was super cold inside as well. Ultimately I ended up relinquishing that idea and accepting the cold, but staying in bed as long as I could and living in my winter jacket and hat.
This year it hasn’t been so bad because I’ve adopted Namibian’s policy of “life is suffering, get the hell over it and stop whining!” Again once you accept that there are things you cannot change, that you have NO agency over, then you can become happier. I never thought I could be fully happy in winter, but this winter is different. That doesn’t mean that I don’t try and mitigate the cold however I can—using the heater sparingly, putting on three pairs of socks, reading in bed instead of in the chair—but because I accept the cold, it’s tolerable.
My birthday is coming up this weekend!
I will be getting a replacement volunteer in October! For a while I was kind of jealous. Where was my PC mentor? Where was someone to explain to me the dynamics of the school and community? But now, I'm excited to have some company in the village next term. And to have someone to continue my work and help the children improve.
Just when I had given up integration, what happens? I get invited to a 50th anniversary party AND to a neighbouring community's school. The party was EXRAVAGANT--they must have killed a family of goats and there were 6-8 cakes. Although Namibian food is not my favorite (big hunk o fatty meat and too-much mayo salad), I eat because it is a way of breaking down those racial walls. When Namibian blacks in the south see me, they tiptoe around me because I am white. The burden of apartheid colors the way they see me (i.e. scary white woman who might fly off the handle at any little thing and is way too good for our food). Eating their food, greeting, hitchhiking, riding in the back of the bakkie, telling people I don't speak Afrikaans are all small, small ways I like to think I am helping to overcome that divide. This is also the reason why it is much easier to hang out with kids than with the adults. The kids never experienced the oppression of apartheid, and most have yet to realise the burden of race/class. They saw me as a white lady who speaks funny when I came, but now they just see Ms. Leo.
The other day a security guard I know in Windhoek was talking with one of the teachers. He described me to the teacher as "the small one" not as I had anticipated "the white one." That's gotta be progress.
Deep Stuff.
I used to think PC was all about the WORK: language-learning, integrating, cultural exchange, blablabla. And it is. Certainly if the work wasn’t rewarding I wouldn’t be here. But it is also NOT. For myself, it has really been about seeing myself more clearly.
Problems I’ve been interrogating lately: fatalism vs. free will (preliminary findings indicate only the presence of fate), birth of the artist (self-nomination is key), elements of Post-PC makeover (manicure and pedicure are MUSTS, but what LOOK do I want to cultivate?), ties between economy and religion (Are poor people fatalists just because they HAVE no choices? Are rich people atheists or agnostic because they CAN be? If I change class status do I also change religions? Class and religion seem to always go hand in hand, but to what extent does economy determine religion and vice versa?). Still thinking about those.
And finally, Some Learner Wisdom: Some More Funny Answers
Use the word “harvest” in a sentence.
I harvest many soccer balls.
How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?
On Valentine’s day we dressing in white and red clothes. I give my best friend a titty bear and something else. And she give me also glasses and playthings and shoes . . . If we finish we shake hands and weapons.
-Rolina
What happened the last time you went to the farm for the holidays?
My grandfather give me a pig when I go to the farm. When I see my pig I just smile and smile. When I sleep, I dream about my pig.
