My first week at site and the first of adventures with Mbili Mbili

Welcome to Muyako Combined School!

On Sunday I finally arrived at the site which I will be serving the next 2 years! I felt an overwhelming feeling of excitement and nerves as we hauled through the deep sand into Muyako village and pulled up to Muyako Combined School. As we reached my hut, I was greeted by a pack of grade 10 learners ready to assist me with my accommodations and moving in.

Our teacher housing on school property

My home for the next 2 years

My kitchen area

My hut is much bigger than I expected it to be and includes my bed, wardrobe, a desk and chair, a gas stove, refrigerator and even some extra space for when I decide to start doing yoga. My electricity comes through an outlet extended from the school and although I don’t have plumbing, I am able to get water from a tap that is about 70 meters away. I’ve learned very quickly that 70 meters is actually quite a distance when carrying a 25 liter jerry can full of water, but I’m hoping it gets easier as I start building those muscles!

The school tap that's currently leaking during a drought...

My bathing area

I have a pit latrine in a building behind my house. I was lucky enough to have a fancy one that looks like a toilet, rather than just a giant hole in the ground. It’s basically a not as smelly version of a port-a-potty. My bathing area consist of a circular area of reeds where I am able to bucket bathe. The cold baths are very refreshing in this insane heat (average of 104 degrees everyday), but I may need to begin heating water for bathing come winter around April.  I’ve been able to adjust pretty well to my new environment thus far, and I’m learning new things about myself such as exactly how much water I use in a day and that I can peacefully coexist with giant spiders living on my walls. It takes me much longer to do even the most minute tasks, but I am enjoying learning to live more simply. Other than missing air conditioning, the hut life isn’t bad at all. 

 Now onto the more exciting thing:

Meet Mbili Mibili

As you may remember my homestay family had puppies, and I decided to adopt the runt of the litter to take with me to site. I named my little girl Mbili Mbili, one of my favorite words in Silozi, which means pepper (pronounced Mbeelee Mbeelee). She is an interesting character to say the least and at 9 weeks old, is a feisty little ball of energy. Like a typical puppy, she loves attention and always wants to be by my side. Because she is still very small, the big dogs will attack her if she is left alone outside so I tried to keep her inside my hut during my first day at school. She immediately started crying, and after an hour I had to go retrieve her to get her to stop. She then proceeded to follow me around the school the entire day as my little shadow.

 

Wherever I go she follows me; whether I’m going to a class, the library (my new small office), the latrine, or my bathing area, and waits outside for me. The learners absolutely love Mbili Mbili and she has quickly become the school celebrity. I can’t tell if they are more excited to have a new volunteer or that the volunteer has a puppy. Mbili Mbili is especially helpful in getting to know the younger pre-primary and grade 1s who haven’t learned English yet. They speak Silozi with me as they come by to visit with the puppy. My only problem now is that the learners keep coming by my house after school to ask to play with the puppy, so I’ve had to put in place some restrictions.

Having a companion has definitely helped make my transition easier, although I’m pretty sure dog training has been the biggest challenge I’ve faced so far at site.

Hanging out in her new bed

Greeting the learners in the library

Following me around the school grounds

I’m very excited to continue learning more and more about my community over the next few months before I officially begin teaching in January. The Muyako school and the surrounding village has been very welcoming far and I am very excited to begin building relationships and share my experience with you all. Ni ya kulata Muyako (I am going to love Muyako).

 

 The previous volunteer left this behind on my wall (I love Muyako)

CBT

Its amazing to me that I’ve been in Namibia for almost 2 months now. It honestly feels like the time has passed so quickly and I can’t believe my time in training is almost finished. My 3 weeks at community based training (CBT) in Rundu definitely prepared me to be a Namibian teacher and helped me to better understand the culture of the North. The purpose of CBT is to give us experience working in Namibian schools so that we have the technical training and practice we need before going to our final site. We were placed in towns with our language groups so that we would have an opportunity to learn a little more about the culture in our regions and practice speaking our language. Unfortunately for us, Rundu isn’t exactly in our language region because Zambezi is too far away, so we had to settle for the nearest town outside in the Kavango region. During the first week we observed classes, the second week we co-taught with Namibian teachers, and the last week we taught classes by ourselves. If my site is anything like the time we spent in Rundu, I know it’s going to be an amazing two years.

The front of Sarasungu CS

The school: We spent CBT working at Sarasungu Combined school, which has about 2000 learners (they don't say "students" here) from grades 1-10. I observed classes in Math, English, Science, Geography and Agriculture and taught mostly Natural Science. Each school has a specific uniform that learners are required to wear and the average class size is about 50 learners for my school. The staff and children were extremely welcoming, and of course had many strange questions about myself and about America.

Here are some of my favorites:

•  How many kids do you have? (Most guessed that I had 3)
• Are you 35/ 42/ 84 years old? (At least they don’t think I’m a teenager)
• Are you married to Chris Brown? (Everyone is obsessed with Chris Brown)
• How many elephants do you have in America? (Trying to explain zoos was a rough time…)
• Is Justin Bieber your cousin?
• Do you speak Afrikaans? (Apparently they think it is also spoken in America)
• Do kids go to school in America?
• Do Americans watch DSTV? (Satellite tv is big here)
• Do we have goats at home?
• Why don’t people eat meat? (Vegetarians are a very foreign concept)
• What does the entire country look like? (This was a difficult one too)
• Why did I want to leave New York to come to Namibia? (Florida, New York= same thing)

My grade 4B class

Despite the lack of resources in the classroom (missing or broken tables, no textbooks, and really only a chalkboard and some chalk) and the language barrier, working at Sarasungu was an incredible experience. I was given an amazing opportunity to be creative and think outside the box to teach lessons in an engaging way, rather than just lecturing and giving notes to the kids. The biggest challenge by far is getting the learners to critically think and answer questions beyond just memorization which is a common way of teaching in Namibia. The staff treated us like family and were incredibly helpful in orienting us to teaching. On our last day of classes, the teachers ended school after tea break and threw us a party with a barbecue, drinks and music. Obviously the concept of ending school early, and having a party on school grounds with alcohol is a very strange concept in the U.S. but here it’s pretty normal. We definitely ended things on a great note.

Learning about the Skeletal System with grade 4

As for Rundu itself:

Our sunset view

One of the greatest things about Rundu is that the Kavango River runs along separating Namibia and Angola (we were very far North of Okahandja). Which means one very important thing: there’s a beach! One of my favorite things was getting to walk down to the river after classes and swim. It definitely felt like a taste of home to be near water again which I was very grateful for. I am very lucky to be moving to the small part of Namibia that has access to fresh water.

Family and friends at the Wedding

The homestay family I stayed with while at CBT had a wedding the second weekend we were there. Although the wedding itself was very similar to American style weddings, the biggest difference was that we had 40 guests staying at our home the entire week before. My cousins and siblings taught me all their favorite dances and how to dance Zambezi style. Namibians love to dance and I realized that whether you are 3 years old or 90 you can still shake your booty to any song (the old ladies: called kukus definitely have better dance moves than me).

There is so much more that I wish I could explain about my experience, but I figured pictures would be easier than writing 5 more blog posts. Enjoy!

Spending time with the learners at HIV awareness day

The wedding was very crowded but fun

The kukus were always matching and only spoke to me in Silozi

After school river hangouts

Some of my grade 8 learners at HIV awareness day