Last Post in Rundu
Comments(2)This is my last day at Rundu College. I wore my meme dress to class yesterday. I got a lot of hoots. It is a traditional dress for Oshivambo (although I’ve heard it’s only a recent thing). I also have a head dress but I was too chicken to wear it.
Now that the moment is here, I’m feeling even a little sick about leaving. Now I am VERY EXCITED to come home, but I’ve been so immersed in things here at the college and after today, the problems and work will still be there, but I won’t be able to do anything about it. And these people that have taken good care of me here will still be here, and I won’t be able to do anything about that either.
My plans after coming home are more than what I ever expected and I am truly blessed with what life and God have set up for me, but that doesn’t take away the fears that come with entering into something new. I have a bit of an edge of other people who “reenter” in that I don’t expect life to be the same—that’s what many people who work overseas struggle with the most. Life isn’t the same. Because they are different and life back home is different in their absence. So coming home isn’t so much a relief, a “Whew! That’s done” as it is a “Uh, ok, what’s next?”—which is a good thing.
Here are the last of my Rundu pictures for my blog. It’s a primary school that I visited several times observing student teachers. They are an “outer ring suburb” of Rundu so-to-speak. Only 10 minutes outside town, they have pit toilets and sometimes no running water. The teachers there have impressed me.
I will be heading out to Etosha Park with some missionaires for two days and then onto Windhoek. On Tuesday night I fly out to London, arrive at 4:30 AM, take off from Gatwick to Detriot at 1:30 PM, arrive at 5:30 PM (but it’s a 7-8 hour flight. Weird) and finally from Detriot to Minneapolis. I am home about 24 hours later though really it is 36 hours later.
Thanks for reading. And thanks for you comments.
Saying Goodbye to Augustine
Leave a CommentThese pictures are sad. I’ve never had a student die. We had over 50 students and 5 lecturers drive to the north (8 hours by bus) to be at her funeral. It was very moving to see her classmates grab shovels with her brothers and pour the dirt onto her coffin. She is one of 12 siblings. Both of her parents are dead. There are now only 4 brothers left. They are pictured below.
A joke I will never get to tell anywhere nor will it be funny anywhere else.
Comments(2)
While I was creating a slide show for my screen saver
I just love this picture.
I think this girl is just striking
Cultural story: My office mate asked me once, “What love potions do you have in the US?” She meant it seriously. There are some village potions that you give your husband so he stays in love with you. I told her typically cable and sex do the trick in my country.
16 days and counting…
I have been busy! Unfortunately, I am prone to uber focus on work and the tendency to veg out at night to DVDs of Boston Legal. Since the week in Windhoek, I have had to finish my action research curriculum and prepare students for writing their reports. My friend Caroline also left Rundu to tour Namibia with her sisters, and I will only see her briefly in Etosha before I leave.
I just read a book The Art of Coming Home by Craig Storti, a Peace Corp volunteer. He talks about the lack of talk about “reentry” and how it can be. I suppose I can be thankful about the stress that waits for me—moving home, saying goodbye, moving again, and starting a close relationship with a guy I hope to marry after I have been in a long distance relationship with him. All good things, mind you, but WHOA! One of the points about “reentry” is that you expect it to feel like home right away and it doesn’t. I’m already having the weird feelings of being excited about going home and feeling sad about leaving at the same time.
I don’t feel like writing much. I’d rather show you pictures. And a few short stories.
What do you do when you have nothing to do in Rundu? You take a holiday a your friend’s auntie’s house in the village? And you find large spectacles and laugh for an hour as each of you tries them on.
Dropping In
I haven’t written for a week or two, and it has been very busy. No pictures ready to post yet.
Last week I helped plan the memorial service for my student, Augustine. 50 students travelled by bus to go to the funeral 6 hours away in Oshakati. I also went–the whole event was 6.5 hours long. Once you got over the sheer length of it, it was lovely. The students and the brothers and other male relatives of Augustine did the actual burying of her body in the coffin. It made me think funerals in the US are so sterile–we don’t do the dirty work. I also thought how much more real it makes death seem when you are the one putting the dirt on your loved one’s body.
From there I have come to Windhoek for the IFESH fundraiser event. It is crazy and stressful and tense and there seems to be little organization. I will be glad when it is done. I have described to people to be a root canal of a week.
29 days left. Amazing.
I’ve let my fans down…
I know, I know, I should have blogged a lot sooner. I’m down to 37 days!
A lot has been going on, and I’ve been back and forth across the country which has distracted me from blogging with all of you. Here’s the quick lowdown, because I am tired and I want to go to bed:
1) The month of May and half of June I’ve been visiting schools in the area, as you’ve seen from my pictures.
2) June 16-20 I was in Windhoek helping the IFESH office with a fundraiser event that we are planning. We don’t know what we are doing.
3) Friday, June 20, I was stuck in an overnight bus for an extra 6 hours because we broke down twice. It sucks as much as it sounds it sucks.
4) Saturday, June 21, four hours after I got home, I went to Divundu with Tetu, Tetu’s cousin JJ, Caroline and her friend Florence to camp at Popo Fall and visit an animal reserve. We did see a monkey tree and a hippo from a distance, but no elephants.
5) I came back to Rundu College to see the end of a 6 day strike. I also came back to find out that morning, June 23, that there had been a van accident with a lecturer driving about 10 students to the schools for student teaching. She was passing a taxi, the taxi went into her lane, she swerved and her tire went off the tar road and they went rolling. Five were hospitalized and about 5 were discharged by the afternoon. Six of the students were my students from last term.
6) I’ve had to throw together an English Proficiency Workshop for lecturers and have gotten closer to finishing my action research curriculum while helping with the fundraiser from 700 km away.
7) Now the terrible news–my student Augustine was hurt the worst with a broken pelvis and arm and massive internal injuries. She died Friday night. I visited her twice in the hospital and she was barely conscious with all the meds she was on. Wednesday night was quiet during visiting hours but I sat with her while she slept and I prayed. She is an orphan with an uncle that came from Divundu, two hours away. I don’t know how much more family she has, but there is something in me that aches because I went to visit a little orphan girl in the hospital before she died. Something else in me catches my breath when I think that her life is over and she won’t get to experience anything else here. It’s so sad.
I was also given some lovely bits of hope this week–I had 20 lecturers at an all staff meeting about an evaluation rubric Mary and I made with Mr. Misika to help create consistent marking of student reports and give the students a better indication of what we’re looking for in their reports. I also helped with a Rundu Clean Up campaign and watched about 12 kids from the neighborhood pick up rubbish on the road to Rundu Beach. That was exciting to see.
I’m hoping to go to Augustine’s funeral this week. I have to head to Windhoek again by next weekend. 37 days…and a lot to do…
I’m also officially announcing…I’m moving to Washington DC by the end of September. More to come on that…
I can’t wait to see your faces and hear you talk without a time delay. And eat corn chips.
Cultural Reminders
Thanks to Mom, check out www.nationmaster.com. I just found out the US uses up 25% of all the oil up in the entire world. The next country is China, which is only 10%. Now, the US is only 5th in terms of usage per person: the top four are Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar. Namibia doesn’t show up on the top 63 countries.
Here are some other things that throw me into some cultural dissonance:
I visited a school last week that was shut down this week by the Ministry of Health–the toilets in the school building and hostel don’t work. I had several colleagues stand around while they watched the learner and teachers file out of the building. The toilets are supposed to be fixed by Monday.
Another school I visited 23 km out of town don’t have any toilets–even the teacher need to take a dump in the bushes around the school. That school–Ncgaca (a click word I can pronounce 30% of the time)–is pictured below. Erastus, the student teacher, has over 60 Grade 5 agricultural students.
As I was waiting outside a classroom in a settlement just outside of town, I spotted a chicken walking around the school yard.
Caroline told me the town council of Katima was reprimanded by her company for spending their money on a Volvo for the mayor of the town rather than the development project they are working on.
She also told me that her company could not hire local construction companies for her project because 1) many don’t have fax machines, 2) many don’t check their mail regularly and missed the deadlines for tender submissions, and 3) their submissions for the contract lacked details such as cost for the project, CVs for the managers of the project, and documentation for required permits, etc. This is why they will hire contractors from Windhoek, i.e. likely white-owned companies who will come in and leave.
Yesterday there was a gathering for the opening of a building for the orphans project. They had a HUGE dinner for the 400 or so people that were there. It turns out that the cooks were there for almost 24 cooking for this gathering. Now, here’s the dissonance–David, a missionary, went with several people yesterday to get the cow for the meat for the celebration. He watched it get its head hacked off, its body cut in half, he helped throw it in the truck, and drag it to a freezer. Then it sat out while they hacked in up and cooked it, and then it sat for probably about half a day before they served it with the macaroni and potato salad, chicken and rice that also sat out for half a day.
Here’s the thing–rules are so PERVASIVE in the US. I can’t get over it. They do have regulation laws here just like they do in the US, but it just seems that every inch of the US is monitored you just CAN’T have chickens and no electricity in the schools or meat sitting out for a day. There is also plenty of corruption in the US, but does it shut down or stall projects like it does here? It seems to me that although corruption happens in the US, they also seem to get caught and prosecuted more than they do here. Those things just aren’t ignored or tolerated once people hear about them.
I have 59 days left. And a LOT to do. I will also be going to Windhoek in a week for a week to help with the fundraiser we are trying to have. That is another thing that I shake my head at. But I won’t go into that right now. Take care…and see you soon.
Right Now
Right now at Rundu College of Education I am going to a different primary school around Rundu everyday to watch the student teachers teach. It is a radical experience for me, and I think I would have missed a lot in coming here if I didn’t get to do this.
This, for example, is the staff room of Ndama Primary School, just on the outskirts of Rundu. Ndama is an informal settlement, but it is only a 10 minute walk from town. Note NO furniture. There are 4 broken chairs and a desk. People, this is where the STAFF are supposed to go for breaks or planning sessions.
Here is the class of my student Hellaria who got a DISTINCTION from me (that’s an A). She used drama in math very well and was very organized. 
There is sand everywhere because…well, outside, there is sand everywhere. I was waiting at Sauyema Primary School outside a classroom and I saw a chicken walking around the school grounds. If there are posters on the wall, they are old and water damaged. One school had a torn office door–imagine a door ripped in half. I look a lot at the learners’ shoes. Most of them have shoes with soles but I’ve also seen ripped up sneakers and broken flip flops. And several of the schools have no electricity or–get this–no running water.
It is sinking in to me that I will come home in 6 weeks and there is no way in hell I will ever see a school without at least the capacity for water and electricity. I’m visiting a student teacher tomorrow who has…67 learners. Is that even legal in the US anymore? Farm animals on school grounds are not.
The mix of seeing these schools, the price of gas and food, the violence in Zimbabwe and South Africa (local news for me) and Irresistible Revolution by Shane Clairborne has made me think more and more about what materialism is really about. It’s not even that much about having a lot of things. There is a book here in Rundu College’s library published in 1991: Rich World Poor World by Nance Fyson. It’s a great kid’s book adults should read. Page 56 talks about energy. In 1991 1 American uses as much commercial energy as:
2 Germans or Australians
3 Swiss or Japanese
6 Yugoslavs
9 Mexicans or Cubans
16 Chinese
19 Malaysians
33 Indians or Indonesians
109 Sri Lankans
438 Malians
1072 Nelapese
“Poorer countries, with 3/4 of the world’s people, use only 15% of the world’s commercial energy (including 25% of the world’s oil).”
I think Germany is as close to comparing apples with apples with the US and we still used TWICE as much energy as a regular German. I think materialism is much more than owning stuff–it’s using so much that you’re using up more stuff than all the world combined–metal, coal, wood, oil, food, cotton, coffee, sugar and making more pollution and trash than all the world combined. I find that very sobering. Especially when a school here in Rundu can’t even grow a f*cking garden because they don’t have access to water.
Can anyone find if these statistics are similar today? I would be much obliged.
Big Conversation
I need to talk about a conversation I had with an American I know in Windhoek. My thoughts will not be PC, but I want to be able to talk about this stuff. She is African American, very smart and ambitious—no doubt she will do amazing things with her life. She is the sort of woman I want to learn from. Having worked now 7 years in the education of “multicultural students”—Somali, Hispanic, African American, Hmong, Tibetan, African Immigrants from Kenya and Ethiopia, Mexican—I still have not gotten comfortable with the idea that I’m a “white” working with kids of color. And maybe I shouldn’t. For a long time I felt like I should somehow connect with them culturally—that I would be more fit for my job if I listened to the same music as them, had some sort of family history like they did, spoke a second language at home. And it wasn’t just because they were teens but teens “of color.”
Now after working awhile, I just realized that I like girls who play acoustic guitar and modern dance, I love buying clothes at REI, my grandmother was forced as a teen into the German army during World War 2, my uncle died in Vietnam, and my family lives in the Chicago suburbs and will likely always will. And that’s my story, cultural but not “color”ful. And surprisingly, I seemed to do my work well, and the kids loved me, and I loved them. I cried when I left Upward Bound and I’m even getting teary eyed now and I think of my kids. I continue to check on them through email.
So back to this conversation. Somehow, out of all sorts of issues and causes, I am drawn to injustice having to do with racism—institutional racism—giving access to people who are poor and having been treated unfairly. I have no desire to ever work in a school with all white kids who grew up their entire lives in the small corner of the US—even though they deserve love and a good education too. But I still feel like a “white” with “white culture” which makes it hard for me to connect with other people who also work with similar interests in similar fields as me who seem more…legitimate for lack of a better word. Like this American. Particularly, African Americans or Africans who are outspoken and emotionally charged about past and current injustice—and rightly so I think in many respects.
Now this American was having a conversation with another person about his religious views at a lunch table, and sitting next to them, I felt that I could make some comments. While she appreciated one comment I had made, I tried to qualify missionary work here in Africa while making another comment. She responded in a way that I feel she responds to many people in conversations like this—I felt her tone was attacking, condemning and judgmental. Later I confronted her about it, which ended poorly on both our parts and now our relationship is very strained.
Nelson Mandela was a very smart guy. He approached race tensions in South Africa preaching of reconciliation—a messy and probably impossible endeavor, especially given current events. But it seems to me to be the only way out of a situation like apartheid. There is justified and real anger from oppressed or the generations coming from oppression, and I believe that oppression continues today with the economic and educational imbalance. Missionaries did strip culture away from people and colonialism removed huge amounts of wealth and power away from entire cultures of people. How do things go that far? Is reconciliation even possible?
But what I can’t seem to get to—and this is what makes me feel illegitmate—is this all or nothing. I can’t say ALL missionaries are bad. ALL missionaries destroyed culture. ALL white culture is oppressive and the same. There has got to be a way that we can both come back. In thinking about Upward Bound, I started to think that we need to stop thinking of culture as a static thing since it is not and always move toward a new culture that can embrace everyone in places like South Africa and the US. I want to be able to have a conversation about that without offending another person, probably a person of color, who I am standing alongside and in a bumbling and imperfect way, am trying to figure things out to a gracious and reconciled justice. Maybe that’s not possible. Maybe I am too white. Maybe my feelings were just hurt and I overreacted. I will say that I have a few friends at home—and I think you know who you are—with whom I have had conversations like this. At times they have been heated, but always with love, and I hope I have always extended to them the space and grace to muddle through their own figurings as they have given me, no matter how stupid or biased they thought my views were.
I have 72 days left. I hardly think I will figure this out before then, and I don’t quite know how to resolve this relationship. I hate leaving relationships this way, but it is also likely that I won’t see her before I leave. I also wonder if I’ll read this later and hate myself for posting it to my 3 adoring fans who read this blog J. I guess thanks for listening.
