Monday, August 16, 2010

The Last Days in Katutura

So this will be my final blog post from Namibia for this year. Hopefully, with alot of luck, I will be here again next summer (their winter), at the BNC, and researching my thesis! I spent this morning in the Craft Centre, the big craft shop in town, and soon will be heading out to my next to last day of work. These past 9 weeks have flown by, but they have been so incredible, educational, and eye opening. I have seen things here that you would never see in the US, but are normal for the people living here. Tomorrow is my last day teaching, and my last day at the center. I spent the weekend hanging out with the kids: Saturday I went to "Mommy and Me" soccer for girls, then hung out with the kids at the BNC that afternoon for several hours, playing 4-square and getting my hair done. Sunday I went with 2 other volunteers to the center of Windhoek, to Zoo Park, where we played soccer, ate cake, and played cards, just having fun with the older kids who we don't get to see as often as the younger ones (due to boarding schools, exams, and the fact that the kids in grades 8 and above go to a different program). So it was a lot of fun. Now I am just getting ready to start packing tomorrow night, and getting ready to head back to a first world country where I drive on the other side of the road, where I am in the racial majority, and where I have to get ready to go back to school. Although, to end the Namibia posts, I must say, gong back to school this year is something that I have been looking forward to for a VERY long time! Look for my next posts...from ATHENS!!!!!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The BNC, my Home for the Summer

So as you probably know, I've been volunteering at the Bernhard Nordkamp Center in Katutura, Namibia. Katutura is a 'suburb' of Windhoek, the capital city. I say suburb in quotes because it is basically a part of the city, but it is the place where the apartheid government sent all of the black Namibians who lived in Windhoek to separate them from the white Namibians and the Germans. Its an interesting place to live because it is considered to be the most dangerous part of Windhoek, but most of the violence occurs between people who know each other. I walk to work every day with the other people living in the house who are also volunteering there, and we stick out like sore thumbs walking down the street. We are literally the only white people in Katutura, so we get lots of honking, comments, and people saying hi to us, as if we are something extraordinary. And most of the people living in Katutura probably do not see white people walking very often, as the white population of Windhoek mostly remains in Klein Windhoek and the city center. There are also 3 main groups of people who live in Katutura, the Damara, Herero, and Otjiwambo. 99% of the kids at the BNC are Damara, and 2 are Otjiwambo. Damara is a fascinating language becuase it consists of words intermixed with clicks of the tongue. There are 4 mains clicks, and 1 that most people don't even know about because it hasn't really been used since the 1950's or so, and is only in about 3 words. So far, the only thing I can saw in Damara is "I'm good", and "I love you". But I can't write them at all. Clicks are written as an exclamation point, so "I love you" would be written (as it sounds, I don't actually know the real spelling) as "!Nam tsi da". So interesting!! So, as I've written before, I was doing a lot of remedial work at the BNC, tutoring kids who needed extra help, etc. But then on Monday of this week, 5 volunteers, the ones who lived with me, and who were the grade 1-3 teachers, went home. So, that left us in a bit of a predicament because suddenly we needed a bunch of teachers! Anna and Clarissa, the two girls who moved into the house last week and stay until just before I leave, took over grade 2, and Simon (a volunteer from Germany), and Katy (US) took over grade 3. That left Timna (Toronto, Canada), and myself to take over grade 1, with Marybeth teaching grade 4, and Meluma (Namibia) teaching math to grades 5 and 6 while Jim (US) teaching them English. So, we have no one left to do remedial work, but I think it will be ok, because several of the kids who were on the list don't actually need help anymore, since they have caught up with the rest of their classes!! Such good news! Me and the other remedial volunteers worked really hard to get them back to the levels they needed to be on, and I'm glad all the work paid off for some of the kids! So now I am teaching the youngest kids, grade 1. There are 15 kids in the class, and they are all adorable! Some of them are hard workers who want to do well, and others (mostly the boys) are crazy and run around all the time!! Monday, which was our first day, we had quite a but of behavior problems, mostly them testing us to see how we would deal with their behavior. So yesterday, the first thing we did was talk about the classroom rules, since they seemed to have forgotten the ones they made up with their previous teachers. We also are continuing something Amy and Katie (the previous teachers) had started. The Star of the Day is the person who is best behaved, works hard, and listens when other people are talking. Each day before class we have a short conversation about what the Star of the Day should look like (behavior-wise), and then they will have that in their minds during class. Yesterday we ended up doing the 'most improved' person for Star of the Day, and it went to a little boy named Deacon who is normally one of the worst behaved kids, but was really good yesterday. He had never gotten it before, and sometimes would get really upset when he didn't get Star of the Day, so he was super excited to get it! Although it did make another behavior child upset that he didn't get it, but maybe today will be his day to be good! We are also hoping that him having gotten Star of the Day will make him behave a little better from now on since he knows that he does have the potential to be Star of the Day. The grade ones are supposed to be learning basic addition and subtraction, so thats what we have been doing for math. English is basic sentences and spelling, but one thing I have noticed both through teaching them and doing remedial work is that a lot of the kids have trouble with the alphabet and don't actually know the names of the letters, they jsut know the sounds. So I think Timna and I will start doing some work on learning the alphabet better and learning the names of the letters! Other than that, work at the BNC is going great, and I'm really enjoying it! The kids are super friendly, and get really excited whenever we show up!
Now, I only have 2 weeks left in Namibia, exactly 2 weeks from today, and probably even this exact time, I will be driving to the airport getting ready to fly home. These next few weeks will be crazy, as I get home on August 19th, and leave for Athens on August 29th! I will be contuing to blog from Athens, mostly about what I'm studying, as well as my travels throughout Europe, and hopefully Egypt! Stay tuned for more blogging this week!!

And Some More Pictures...







I'll blog tonight about the BNC, and what I've been doing there this week, as well as what I'll be doing for the rest of my time here, which is exactly 2 more weeks! Crazy how fast time goes!!

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

More American Weekend Pictures





The Last Weekend With My Fellow Americans

So this past weekend was so full of fun and things, that I barely slept!! It was the last weekend with the five American girls who were also living at the Wadadee Student House, and they also volunteered with me at the BNC. They were really cool, and we all got to be really good friends! So Saturday morning started our fun. We went to the local (well, 45 mins away), Living Bushmen Museum, which is run by a group of Bushmen who live near Windhoek. It was an amazing experience as they were really excited to share their culture with us, and to show us what they do. We chose the craft program, where we got to see a fire made, arrows made, make jewelry ourselves, and shoot a bow and arrow! It was tons of fun!! My arrow shooting skills are not very good, but it ws interesting to use a bow made out of a stick and some string (well, actually string made out of tendons from a kudu), rahter than what we use in the US in archery clubs and stuff. When we made jewelry, we all got to make bracelets, and keep them. The beads were made out of ostrich eggshell, and seeds that the women had gathered. It was fascinating to see how everything that they used was natural, and came from their habitats, and not from stores. After an eventful and fun filled 2 hours at the Living Museum, we headed out of Windhoek in the opposite direction to go to the Amani Lodge, the highest inhabited place in Namibia. The view from there was gorgeous, all the mountains around Windhoek are there, and you can see a little bit of the city. Amani Lodge is a large cat rescue center, and hotel. But rather than hotel rooms, there are only bungalows, a small restaurant, and acres and acres of land where the cats live. One of the coolest things that you get to do when you are at this center is pet cheetahs, a 7 month old and a 13 year old! Oh, and you also get to pet a warthog!! The cheetahs were awesome, so pretty, nad very soft. They are also the only large cats who purr, like housecats, only about 100 times louder!! After playing with the cheetahs for about 30 minutes, we headed down to a safari truck and drove away from the lodge to see the leopard and lions! The leopard was gorgeous, and the way it moved was incredible. It almost looked like a housecat when it jumped and climbed, but was so much more graceful and sleek looking. The lions were really cool too, even though I had seen them in Etosha. The male at the lodge is larger than the ones we saw in Etosha, and it has a bigger mane. We also heard and saw the lions do a mating call, whcihw as pretty hilarious! After seeing all the animals we headed back to the lodge and saw the sun set over the mountains, which was spectacular to watch!
Sunday morning, we went to a birthday breakfast for Katie (a girl in the house), and ate at this hotel in Klein Windhoek that overlooks the city. The view from there was also amazing, and totally worth waking up early for! The food was also amazing, it was a giant buffet breakfast with freshly squeezed juices, good coffee, and piles of good food! After breakfast we went potjie (poikie) shopping. I've written about potjie's before, its a traditiaonal Southern African stew cooked in a three legged cast iron pot over a fire. We have been making it with chicken, but it can be made with almost any kind of meat, and its delicious! That evening, after laying in the sun for the afternoon, Shaun cooked the potjie, and some of our friends came over and celebrated Katie's birthday, as well as said goodbye to the girls, as they all left yesterday, some for Seattle and some for Egypt. So that concluded the weekend, but it was amazing, and I got a bunch of really cool pictures!!