D town

Hello all,

Life in Namibia is good. The last week of training was long and tedious, but useful. Khoekhoe is so-so, sometimes the most difficult language ever and sometimes so easy it is funny. Or sometimes I think it is a made up language (I.e. mapa xu du ra ha ta ha (where are you from)).
The most exciting part of training thus far was when we found out our permanent site. The trainers drew a huge map and then put us on our spot where we were in the country. My site will hereby be known as D-town and is within an hour from Windhoek, the capital. On Sunday our supervisors came to pick us up in Okahandja and take us to our permanent sites.
D-town is pretty much what I expected, but a little overwhelming to be confronted with all at once. I was there for a week and witnessed the following things:
1. Teachers who were super-nice to me, cooking my meals and letting me stay in their house, but a few minutes later beating students with belts, whips, sticks, or just pinching or punching them.
2. Child abuse--two 1st graders came to school with black eyes and huge scatches on their face. Apparently they had gone to eat sap off the tree because they were hungry and their drunk uncle beat them for that.
3. Weird buearacacy. We had to stay at school til 1 each day for the kids to review for the exams. Instead they proceeded to throw chairs and beat each other. Why did we keep them?
4. Inequality--There are three white people in the town (one family) and they own all the land, the store, most peoples jobs, a ranch for german tourists to come and shoot wild animals, and a car. The black people besides the government employees live in shacks (you know, the ones you’ve visualized when thinking about Africa--cardboard and tin houses) on land that isn’t theirs. And nobody even second-guesses it.
5. Unemployment--there are few jobs and they can’t do anything with the land because its not theirs. So they do what they can to entertain themselves, drink to oblivion, have sex, and watch the funny white lady.
6. High death rates from AIDS and other diseases.
7. Total lack of services (electricity, trash, latrines, water).
8. High failing rates. You have to have under 30% to fail, and most kids fail.

Despite all this, the town is in a beautiful area of Namibia by a major game park. On the drive there we saw tons of warthogs, kudu, springboks etc. which was neat. The people have over all been quite friendly. It will be hard to be lonely because if I just walk in the squatter camp I attract about 20 kids who proceed to follow me. The students are so cute and actually quite obedient when you give them things to do and give them praise.

Anyhow, I really do feel like I can do some good here, if only because I represent a different future and a different point of view than these kids are used to. Basically they have been told their whole lives that they are “naughty” failures deserving of a beating, plus they are black, which must mean that they are stupid, worthless, and doomed to failure (obviously I’m being sarcastic, but whites here definitely have that idea.)
I gotta hand it to the US--we definitely know right from wrong and make sure the kids know it too--here that’s not the case.There are just so many problems to deal with (bad education, child abuse, coporal punishment, corruption, inequality, racism, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, AIDS and all its implications including orphans, young children as head of household, etc., beauracracy, unemployment, lack of services, lack of clothing and shoes for the kids, no government assistance, rape, pedophiles, domestic violence, etc etc.) I don’t even know where to start. I’m starting to realize why we had a session on coping--because our realm of responsibility is large in the US, but here the impact we can make is quite small. As much as I’d like to personally tackle these issues, it is really the responsibility of the government, the police, the health workers, or the Namibians to deal with them.

Anyhow, I will be teaching 6th and 7th grade English as well as some other periods, most likely life skills, or science b/c I refuse to teach math, although it is apparently the easiest. The Teachers are so eager to have less periods, so whatever I do they will be happy. There are 300 learners at my school and about 700 in the town. Most are Damara speaking (so that Khoekhoe will come in handy). Two of the teachers are herero which means that all the teachers converse with each other in Afrikaans or English--this is going to be seriously complicated b/c I would have to learn two languages. Sucky. Although Afrikaans is pretty easy.

My ideas so far: start a health and environmental club and do fun projects, make English fun and improve the quality of education, survive two years here.

Oh yeah, on my first night in Windhoek I was mugged. Some guys came up behind me as I was returning from the store with my supervisors sister, and cut my purse strap. I lost my wallet, cellphone, and a little cash. But they found it, so I got my liscense and ATM card back (In Namibia they are called BOB cards). I bought a new one.