Namibian Chaos

Nothing happens fast in Namibia.

Meetings are long. Speeches are endless. And leaving “now” means “see you in a few hours.”

Nothing happens fast, except one thing:

Moving out.

The Matron called me at 4:30 this afternoon.

Sit down she says. And follows with:

You need to have everything moved out of your flat before you leave for Windhoek tomorrow morning.

At 6 a.m.

Um.

Good luck.

It was like being told—the day my luggage failed to appear—that I had just two hours to buy everything I’d need for the next two years in a country I’d only just arrived in.

What?!

Renovations—the ones that have been posted at the hospital gate since the day I first came back in late November—are finally getting started.

New and improved.

Coming soon.

And it’s all starting?

With me.

Fifteen months. That’s the estimated time for project completion. But because this is construction—construction in Africa no less, I have a feeling I’ll be finished with service well before they’re finished with improvements.

I was told to pack my bags and leave them in a room the size of my bedroom. A room that will presumably become mine upon return. One with no outlets, no light. Nowhere to cook or store food. With no burglar bars, or even a key to the door.

Instead?

I took my things to Jessica’s.

She thought she was just dropping off her sewing kit and then celebrating her birthday. She ended up schlepping my possessions halfway across town with a driver name Sapho in what I’m pretty sure is the hospital morgue truck.

“It’s all fine,” she said. “Namibian chaos loses again. We know it will attack, but we’re ever prepared.”

Or at least we’re getting good at being prepared.

So come 6 a.m. tomorrow, I’ll take the remainder of my things to her place. Head to Windhoek for Camp Glow, then spend a week in Botswana before heading back to the capital for more Peace Corps training.

Then I’ll return to Khorixas.

Only thing is, for now, I’m just not sure where.

Sports-4-All

Here are a few shots from this weekend's Sports-4-All


Pinkie in her pink hat (okay--so maybe it's red...)


Tonje pretending to be a lion during the jungle game


Field of Dreams...


The older kids post-game


Thomas and friends


Even the little ones got in on the action


That's me peeking over. And Kennedy, the Youth Leads all star, is standing up in the back

Little Victories ...

Tuesdays in Khorixas mean Youth Leads—an after school program that uses sports to teach about self-esteem, health, fair play and leadership. It’s another way—one that doesn’t rely on Ministry tools like The Bird of Love (see previous post)—to deliver life skill messages.

Our hour-long sessions start with a silly game. Usually one that involves learners—most in grades 5 through 7—sitting in a “somehow” circle for play. These lead into an often disjointed (but always entertaining) discussion about sportsmanship, teamwork, problem solving and role models.

Afterwards we take to the field for soccer, netball, or some other new game, and put the day’s lessons to work at play.

Some people argue that sports aren’t a valid vehicle for real education. Schools in the states are scaling back recess and cutting budgets for athletics. Sure. Youth Leads teaches life skills under the guise of play. But, like sports, it also trains young people to be disciplined. To be leaders in their class. To be leaders in their school.

Older students learn a wide variety of games, and at the end of nine weeks, run their own field day for younger classmates. It may not be the serious charts and graphs of health class or life science. But at least here we can be sure the kids are learning.

How?

When another PCV visited last week, our learners were eager to explain Fruit Salad and Leader of the Band—two games that previously opened meetings. And when Tonje, the SCORE volunteer, missed a session, it took little prompting on our part to get students to volunteer information and rules for the games we’d played in her absence.

But the best proof came this weekend.

Tonje and I spend Saturday mornings in the Dungerhoek (squatter camp) at the edge of Khorixas doing Sports-4-All. It’s informal. A drop-in activity that starts when the balls hit the ground, and ends when we decide it’s time to collect them. Older kids organize pick-up games of soccer while Tonje and I entertain younger kids with slightly more advanced versions of Duck-Duck-Goose.

Last weekend, while older boys sported their ball handling skills on the field, Kennedy, one of the youngest members of Youth Leads and easily the smallest learner in grade 5, gathered the smaller kids for a game of Battle Ship (like tag, but with teams). Tonje and I stood by while tiny faces with big eyes and open ears listed to Kennedy explain the rules of play in Damara. Staying safe. Getting tagged out. He divided learners into teams, and when one of the girls volunteered to be “it,” Kennedy stood on the sidelines, waiting to be sure rules were followed. Waiting to be sure they all understood.

Maybe it's not much—Kennedy getting out there and organizing play. But it’s definitely something. It’s more than reciting the ABCs of HIV prevention or what it takes to make The Bird of Love fly.

It’s more, because for the first time, I saw the littlest learner in grade 5 with a handful of classmates looking up to—and learning—from him.

Lessons Learned

Something in the name Life Skills implies one must live it to actually learn it. There are books and teaching tools, lecture notes and exercises. All attempt to explain time management and decision making, leadership and relationships. Yet the best education—at least in this subject—often comes from experience.

Experience and example.

Jessica and I spend afternoons with Grade 7 learners discussing safe sex and HIV. Their questions about love and relationships continue to amaze me—almost as much as the inability to define either one of these things accurately. Whether a language barrier or just a cultural difference, I can’t be sure. But things it seems I’ve always known, though don’t actually remember learning, aren’t so common knowledge here.

Like what a good relationship looks like.

I’d say: Two people who care about each other. They can be open and honest with one another. They respect each other and carry their weight in the partnership.
My learners would say: When the girl does her job and the man does not beat her.

Or how you can tell if someone loves you.

I’d say: Small gestures that show a person knows about his or her partner. They say kind words and are considerate of feelings. They show appreciation and aren’t afraid to say, “I love you.”
My learners would say: They buy you gifts!

With answers so far from what I know is truly right, it can be hard to explain just what makes their responses so incredibly wrong.

Our Grade 7 Learners

Last week I tried to explain to our group of Grade 7s why a drunk guy yelling, “Hey lady! I love you!” isn’t really love. And why a boyfriend who runs around with other girls doesn’t make a very good boyfriend at all. I couldn’t help but wish I remembered not just what I’d been taught in Guidance class and Topics for Teens, but the way I’d been taught it, too.

The thing is, when it comes to life lessons, a lot of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned from examples set by others. I leaned about love and relationships from watching my parents. I learned about leadership from watching my teachers. And I learned about communication and compassion from watching my friends.

In a community where domestic violence is commonplace, school beatings occur daily and drunk teachers make a spectacle at intramural sporting events, good examples are tough to find.

So when we talked about love, instead of asking kids to tell me about their parents’ relationships (which are often non-existent anyway), I deferred to the Ministry of Health’s (somewhat cheesy) suggested teaching tool: The Bird of Love. Sure, one week later the kids were still able to recite that The Bird of Love, which they’d expertly copied with bright colored crayons on old scraps of paper, was only able to fly with wings of mutual trust and mutual respect. And they could tell me that it was only able to chart its course with a tail of equality. (Seriously…)

But I couldn’t help but wonder if the message had been missed. Trust, respect and gender equality are only far away ideas to many of these students who have yet to see them at work in their own lives.

Learners in Khorixas—and across all of Namibia—can recite lots of things in perfect unison. Like the causes of HIV and the ways to prevent transmission. Yet the infection rate still hovers above 20 percent. Students are taught how to properly use a condom well before they’re able to get erections, and certainly well before they should even be thinking about sex. But more girls get pregnant and drop out of school in Grade 8 than any other, providing there’s a serious disconnect between the lessons that are taught and those that are learned.