24 December, 2005
I know it has been awhile, but I haven’t had access to the internet for almost a month. The reason being is that I at my CBT (community based training). That’s the section of training where we finally crawl out of our pocket of isolation at the rest camp and actually go out and start meeting, working and living with Namibians. It was a really unique, fascinating, fun and occasionally frustrating experience. I’ll try my best to give you a decent synopsis of it.
Our group, consisting of 58 volunteers was split up into 5 subgroups based on our volunteer job type (education or health) and our language groups (afrikaans, otjiherero, otjiowambo or Khoi Khoi). I was placed in a small Herero village called Otjimbingwe with eleven other education volunteers. It was one of the more rural placements and as a result I did not have any internet access. There are also no paved roads anywhere, but I felt that was a good thing because the ground is made up of sand. It’s the soft, clean pale yellow colored sand that you would expect to find at a nice beach. It gives the place a very relaxing, laid back atmosphere. The plant life of the area is not very diverse. This is probably due to the fact that Otjimbingwe is very hot and dry most of the year and any vegetation is constantly under attack from free grazing donkies or cows. There is one dominant plant type which makes up about 90% of the flora. It’s a type of acacia tree that has small, green leaves and a dangerous network of one-inch thick, white thorns. It grows out of the ground in a very jagged fashion, expanding more outward, rather then upward, sort of like a bush. The combination of these trees, set against the yellow background of the sand gives the area a very Savannah like, “African” feeling, which I think all the volunteers enjoyed. In addition there are also some small mountain ranges rising up to the North and South. Well, the term mountain may be a bit of an overstatement. The “mountains” are actually foothills that can easily be hiked up in an hour. But they have a nice, brown color and when the sun is setting or rising, they look pink. All in all I was very pleased with the asthetic beauty that Otjimbingwe has to offer. The village layout is also very interesting, though it is definitly not as pretty as the setting around it.
Most of the houses are either white, cement, western style houses, which are provided for government employees (teachers, police officers, nurses or government officials), or self-made shanties consisting mostly of corrugated scrap metal. Seeing that metal shanties was at first sort of unsettling for me because it gave me the impression of the impression that the town was in extreme poverty, but as I found out while I was there, the style and quality of a person’s house doesn’t neseccarily reflect their health or economic status in an accurate way. I’ll go into this in more detail later on.
There are two stores, both about the size of a gas station quickie mart. Neither of them offer a very diverse selection of goods. It’s mostly just cooking essentials such as: potatoes, flour, milk, canned fruits, bread and meat. There is a police station, which is just a garage like building with a couple of wooden desks and an on duty officer. There’s a clinic, a primary school (grades 1-7) and an upper secondard school (grades 8-10). There are also four different kokishops (nightclubs), which are by far the most widely visited places in Otjimbingwe. These bars are more or less large empty cement buildings, with no furntiture, a stereo and a bartender in back. The drinking selection is more or less limited to three Namibian beers: Windhoek lager, Castle lager and Tafel. Castle and Tafel both taste similar to Busweiser and Windhoek, my favorite of the three tastes sort of like an amber beer. Alcoholism is definitly a widely practiced and very visible characteristic of the village. Broken bottles and shattered glass pieces are sprinkled everywhere and a handful of drunks wander the streets each day. I still haven’t figured out how these people, who are clearly unemployed can afford to support their drinking habit. There is a social security program available, but I don’t think there is any other monetary assistance provided by the government. The only logical justification I’ve heard is that Namibian people typically have a lot of family obligations. If someone in the family has a job, they may be expected to support their parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, ext. So a teacher’s salary may be used to support the drinking habits of three relatives. It’s a sad situation and I’m still sturggling to decide wether or not I will decide to drink alcohol when I get to my final site.
Within Otjimbingwe very few people travel by car. The most popular method of transport is donkey cart. This proved to be a source of comedy for me and other volunteers on many different occassions. It was not uncommon to see out of control carts, run away donkies and on one occassion a run away donkey cart. One morning, on my walk to school my Jay and I walked accross an empty cart slowly being pulled across town by three donkies. A few seconds later two teenage boys came running down the road chasing after them. Apon seeing that someone was pursuing them. Eventually they reclaimed their vehicle and headed back to their destination. On another day, one man thought that it would be benifical to hook a horse up to his cart alongside two donkies. This proved to be an error. When the cart started moving the horse decided that it wanted to run away from the donkies. This was okay with the donkies, they were also trying to run away from the horse. The end result was a cart that moved in a zig zag pattern, with a driver that had very little control over his animals and had to put a lot of effort into staying seated in the cart everytime that it took another zag.
The community itself is very diverse and historical. There are two different tribes of Namibians within the village. The first are the Herero people. They are a bantu speaking tribe that originally migrated from central Africa and rely mostly on cattle herding as a form of food and income. The other group of people are called Damara. They are khoi khoi speaking, which means that they have “clicks” in their voices when they talk. They also mainly raise cattle. Both of them dress in western style clothing most of the time, and without hearing someone speak, it’s impossible to tell which tribe they’re with. Both groups have tribal elders whose duties include deciding how land should be used, and acting as a judge for local conflicts or griviences. Most of the time they co exsist peacefully, but apparently there has been political issues between the two groups over land distribution in the past. The population is primarily damara, and they hold a lot of the well respected jobs. Some of the herero’s are a little bitter about this because Otjimbingwe has historical signficance to the Herero people.
In 1905 the Herero’s illustrated a revolt against their German oppressors. In retaliation the Germans went on a genocidal rampage, wiping out over half of the Herero population in a two year span. The numbers I’ve heard range from 100,000 to 800,000 Herero’s killed. One of the worst places hit was Otjimbingwe. There is a small prison built into a dry riverbed just outside of town. The German’s used to lock Herero’s up just before the rainy season, and then when the rains would come, everyone in the jail would drown. There is also a church near the center of town. In 1905 a group of Herero people were forced into it and the doors were locked behind them. German riflemen then stood at every window and shot and killed every man, woman and child. Both of these facts, as well as many other are common knowledge to just about every Herero person. As a result they feel that they have a stronger claim to the land then the Damara.
In Otjimbingwe every volunteer was assigned to a host family. The household I was assigned to was that of Mr. P (I’m not allowed to use actual names, so I’ll just refer to him as Mr. P). He is a batchelor and a fourth grade teacher at the primary school. When we first arrived in the village all the host families gathered to meet us. It was a big event and the tribal heads each said a few words. Unfortunatly my host father was not able to attend. He was in Karibab, a neighboring town, for a conference. In his place, his four daughters came to greet me. There names were Victoria, Malenica, Kamesa and Stella and their ages were: 15, 16, 17 and 18. Actually only Malencia and Stella were his daughters. The other two were cousins. I was informed by Stella that Tate (otjiherero for father) would not be back for three days and that they would take care of me. I didn’t mind, they all seemed pleasant and well manered and they had a nice house with electricity, running water and a television set. The house was in a very good location, about a two minute walk from Da-Palm Junior Secondary School, which is where we did our technical training throughout our stay.
Our technical training was to put on a model school, involving 150 actual Namibian students from grades 6-12 for three weeks. The learners (what students are called in Namibia) had all just finished their schooling for the year and were on summer vacation. They decided to come to the school for one or more of the following reasons: 1)They recieved a snack and a cold juice everyday and a certificate at the end 2) They were interested in who these strange, pale foriegners were 3) Their parents forced them to 4) They had nothing better to do 5) They were good students and wanted to learn. All in all most of the learners ended up being very intelligent, fun and generally well mannered kids that were fun to work with. Everyone really enjoyed the experience. There was no set ciriculum that we had to follow other then that we all had to teach at least a few classes in the subject that we will be teaching once we start teaching at our final sites. For me that subject is Physical Science, however I also got forced into teaching math. I taught both of these subjects to the 10th, 11th and 12th graders. In science I started out with the basic makeup of the atom and moved from that into electricity. In math I team taught with another volunteer named Matt who will be teaching Math at his final site. We started of with Scientific notation and then went into ratios, rates and probability.
Physical science was a challenge because we didn’t have much for resources. I was forced to be creative in my demonstrations, using rocks as electrons and taking the batteries from my flashlight to make an electrical circuit. However I think it generally went pretty well. I was very comfortable in fron to the class and generally acted very energetic and goofy, which entertained the learners. The whole experience makes me very excited to get to my final site and begin teaching. It also has shown me how much time and energy goes into classroom manegment and lesson preperation. My typical weekday consisted of model school from 7:20-11:20, post-school discussion and analysis from 11:30-12:30, language training from 2-5 followed by a few hours of lesson planning and language homework at night. All this and we were working in temperatures that reached the 100s in the afternoon. We were exhausted all the time! But it was still fun.
Switching back to my host family experience, my host dad did not show up on the day he was supposed to, but rather the next morning at about 5 am. This was unfortunate because I, along with all the other volunteers had to leave at six that morning to go back to the rest camp at get immunizations. So I met my father for about five minutes before I had to run and catch my ride. When I returned back that evening I found that the household was once again without a parent. I was informed by my host sisters that he had gone out of town again. This time the reason was because he had to go back to his home town to get married! Apparently there is a herero tradition where when an a woman’s uncle dies, she needs to get married.
This is because the family is structured in such a way that a woman’s uncle usually acts as more of a father figure then the actual father. I don’t exactly understand that dynamics of this. Once the uncle dies the woman needs to get married because she needs a man to look after her now that her dominant male caretaker has died. Mr. P happened to be dating this woman when her uncle died, and as a result he gets to marry her. This works out well for him because it omits him from having to go through the costly traditional procedure of asking a family for permission to marry their daughter and then paying for the wedding.
All of the children were as shocked as I was to hear the news, and I don’t think any of them were happy. The woman that he was about to marry was not their mother and apparently she didn’t treat any of them very well. Most of the girls were very quiet and introvertant that evening.
A few days later my host father returned with his new bride. I didn’t get to see her much because tradition says that she has to keep a low profile for the first few days after marriage. I should take a moment to mention that Herero is a very male dominated culture and that woman are required to keep a low profile, often times having to sit on the ground and sometimes only speaking when being spoken to. The new wife stayed mostly in the bedroom on the first day, only occasionally poking her head out. From what little time I did spend with her, I got the impression that she was a very friendly, easy-going woman, however I didn’t get much of a chance to meet her because Mr. P informed me that him and his new bride would soon be departing again. Apparently they had to go on a tour circuit to visit both of their relatives to introduce the new family member. He told me that he’d be back in about two weeks. I told this to my language instructor and the next day I was moved to a new household. Apparently a twenty-three yearold American volunteer living with four teenage girls is not considered an acceptable situation for the peace corps.
My new host family was extremely different. I had a mother and a father, a 24-yearold brother and 15, 7 and 1 yearold sisters. The household was on the opposite side of town, meaning I now had a twenty minute walk to school and it also had no running water or electricity. The stove and fridge were gas powered, and there was a local tap about 150 yards away from which we had to fetch water every day. I loved it! The mother didn’t speak english very well, which forced me to practice my otjiherero more. Despite our langauge barrier we managed to get along very well. The seven yearold was very interested in me and any game that I might have in my bag: dice, chess board or deck of cards. She didn’t really know how to play any of them but was eager to try. I’m out of steam at the moment, but I promise I’ll write more later. I’m currently back at the rest camp with the rest of the volunteers and we’re spending Christmas eve and Christmas here. It’s really relaxing and we’re all enjoying the time off. I hope that you’re all enjoying your holiday season and I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to keep in contact as much. Merry Christmas,
Chris
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