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