
So, it has been a while that I have written for 2 major reasons.
One, is that I have been very busy once the lecturers returned and school began last week. There have been meetings, rescheduled meetings, planning, replanning, and meeting my students. Getting school started at RCE is kind of like starting an old motor in Minnesota in February. It turns, it stops, it turns and seems to get going, then it stops again. Since the lecturers have returned, we have run out of ink on the only copier at the college, gotten the ink but ran out of paper, and now we have the paper but ran out of ink again. I myself spent $50 (US mind you) getting copies of papers for my class—I consider it a donation as a part of my volunteer service. But since the students only have 1 text book if that, it seems crazy to me that we can’t give them handouts of information. How else are they supposed to learn it? Telepathy? Osmosis by standing near the library?
The other reason is seeping out of my first reason—I’ve been very homesick. The weather has been changing a lot here too—it rained about all day everyday in torrential downpours for about 2 weeks—and although it has cooled off a great deal, I was getting a bit sick and seeing pictures of friends and talking with people about the goings ons in Minnesota and Chicago just made me wish I was there. This is also where the work starts getting hard. I’m encouraging people to organize at the college and I need to collaborate, not lead, since that is what I’m requested to do, and I find that I was to be the boss so bad I’d break my head of department’s leg if I knew it would get me the job. Last week I had a 6 hour meeting where the entire group was only there for the last 1 and ½ hours of it, and most of that time I spent convincing them that they had the ability to lead the lecturers with topics to teach the students for their action research projects. Let me give you a little taste of what our college students are working on:
Why the Project is Successful and Unsuccessful
“I can say my project has been successful simply because my lesson which I presented for my topic were interesting and enjoyable. I made sure to make use of the proper terms during my lessons that I have presented, so that it improves the learners understanding. I also learned that learners can only make use of this terms if they are encouraged and given the proper guidance on it. That I support the ideas of one of the psychologist Nigel Collins when he said, “Such terms or skills need to be more meaningful and effective that it should be able to make learners have the ability to work and understand things.” He further stressed by saying such skills need to be demonstrated by learners thus it opens their way to enhance in the learning process. Learners make use of such skills and even apply them in different tasks given to them. However, learners do not always success in applying such knowledge for one purpose to other tasks for which they are useful. With such approaches the wider range of such skills are made more apparent as they become more competence when it is demonstrated in given settings to prescribed standard. The teachers should be more active at such a premium so that learners should be able to apply the knowledge and adapt those circumstances to emerge the most valued use of those technical terms to improve their understanding.”
Now imagine 260 students doing research with those kind of results and writing it in that manner. That is what I’m supposed to help with this term. I have a great description of using a washing machine with vague and confusing language that you can’t even tell what it is. But I realized I can’t use that as an example because I don’t think any of these students have ever used a washing machine. No joke.
I had another interesting cultural experience a few weeks ago when I came back. Stop reading if you are faint of heart or embarrassed about S–: I went to the New Start HIV Counseling Clinic in town. Another part of my volunteer service is to put together the social service resources available in Rundu into a directory for the next volunteer in the hopes of doing more networking.
They get up to 25 people a day, mostly women, because men think they are too manly to find out if they contracted a life-threatening disease from sexual activity. I asked the counselor why, and he said he didn’t know other than the culture thing. He said it is likely they will start a clinic just for men. Good idea.
I am not afraid to announce that I am HIV negative and will likely remain that way for a long, long time. While I was there, I asked if I could be tested and go through the counseling since I wanted to know the experience and I have never been tested. I also had almost no chance of getting HIV, but you never know. I’ve heard the counseling can be brutal—they grill you about all sort of sexual activity you might have done—but I had a relatively good experience. They ask you questions so that you reveal things as you want to. For example, he asks if I can tell him the ways to contract HIV, and then he asks if I can recall ever engaging in those kinds of activities. Rather smart and nonthreatening I think.
Then once you get the results of your test, if you are negative they walk you through choices of how to remain HIV negative—including putting a condom on a wooden penis (I told you to stop reading if you get embarrassed). It seems very imposing, even extreme to need to do such a thing, but considering they are dealing with HIV as an epidemic here with a large number of uneducated people engaging in sexual activity within a small population, it seems to be absolutely necessary. And it also seems that I had a lot to learn about how those little things work. Now I am prepared. If anyone of you need advice, you can call me at 264-081-214-6678 ☺
Through them they have all sorts of contacts with other service organizations, and one of the counselors is a chairperson for Church Alliance for Vulnerable Children and Orphans. I was able to ask her about what happens when an orphan doesn’t have a birth certificate or death certificate for his or her parents—one of the barriers to getting national aid. A child in a village loses her only parent, and the family buries the parent before they can bring the body to town for the coroner to confirm the death and write up a certificate. It also costs money that they do not have. But then the child likely has no identification, no birth certificate and no death certificate for the parent. You can’t receive aid, you can’t even get into school or get a bank account. It’s a major issue here.
Next week I will be going to Walvis Bay for a conference to develop professional workshops for the lecturers. The woman in charge from our school is a go-getter, but she was already frustrated this week because a colleague that was going with us said these workshops are boring, nothing ever gets done, and she will just have fun. Please pray for me!
