Ain't Nobody Messin' With My Click

Remember when I posted last month about the trials and tribulations of teaching Afrikaans classes when you don’t speak the language? This week has seen Lily’s Encounter With Native Language Classes Round II. Caitlin has been away on a science workshop with another teacher and 2 students, so I was holding the fort for this week. Unfortunately for me, this particular teacher teaches mostly Khoekhoegowab. It’s the native language of southern Namibia’s Nama people, and it features 4 different clicks. It’s absolutely mind-boggling. It’s unlike any language I’ve ever heard, but I’m both confused and fascinated at how even the youngest ones drop these clicking noises into the middle of sentences effortlessly. My Afrikaans is improving, but Khoekhoe is a completely different animal. I can hear the difference in the clicks, and I think I know what they look like written (one is an exclamation mark, one is a slash, one is a hashtag and one looks like a telegraph pole), but it’s so difficult to get them right. I’m aiming to learn how to say “Let’s go to dance” by August: not because I want to dance with anyone, but because it’s the ultimate sentence in Khoekhoe with all 4 clicks. Bring it on.

Lots has been happening since I last posted about school work. With a second teacher absent a week past on Friday, I got the opportunity to become a primary school English teacher for the day. Patience is not a virtue I am blessed with, but one that is required in saint-like quantities, particularly for the youngest classes. I do feel for the Grade 5s, as it’s their first year of schooling taught entirely in English, and it’s clear that some of them struggle so much more than others. You have to explain the task to the whole class 3 or 4 different ways, and then you’ll test whether they understand (often not) and then explain at least twice again, and then you’ll explain to a good few of them individually. At this point, you also realise that the answers are actually underlined for them in the comprehension, so they have a 1 in 3 chance of getting the answer right to start with. You get the idea – it’s exhausting, but highly rewarding watching them slowly get closer to the answer. What we’re also finding is that with the tougher classes, it’s easier to teach if you can identify with the characteristics of each class. The Grade 7s, for example, are completely wild, and so giving them a performance period in Arts is like opening a can of worms to the nth degree; however, if you put all your dignity aside and get them to teach you the dances to their songs, the chaos suddenly becomes a little more organised. They found it hilarious that we joined in, and I’m not sure whether they were laughing at us or with us, but I really don’t care – it was great fun, and giving their enthusiasm some focus is far more successful than trying to screech at them for 40 minutes. We spent all of last week teaching our classes “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, and we now can’t move in school without hearing “a-weeeeeeeeeee-un-bamba-wayyyy” from somewhere. I’ve also started using the word “must” in my lessons one heck of a lot, as if there’s one word these students understand, it’s “must”. “Miss, you must come to Agriculture” (I don’t teach Agriculture, and certainly don’t want to spend my free time there). “Miss, you must borrow me a pencil” (my attempts to teach them word “lend” are failing thus far). “Miss, we must sing” (a particularly frequent request). So, if you tell them that they “must” do anything in class, it tends to produce a little bit more work.  That’s the theory, anyway.

The library is also making real progress – despite how daunted we were in the beginning, we still didn’t appreciate how much work it would take to sort the library properly, and so our target of early March was a bit ambitious. However, all of the books are now separated into fiction/non-fiction, classified, labelled, organized and shelved. I’m hoping that we can open to students next week and start lending books the week afterwards. Still work to be done, but we want it to be open and working as early as possible, and there’s no reason why we can’t finish our tasks while things are up and running. Once that happens, the blog will be the first to know – I’ve been taking pictures along the way!

PS. Undoubtedly the highlight of this week was Caitlin’s return from the science workshop yesterday. Not only because I was glad to see her, but because she brought me some guava juice and a Kit Kat from Rosh Pinah. Absolute star.

The Hills Are Alive!

There’s been a little more Internet drama recently and not a lot of free time, which is a lethal combination in terms of blogging regularly. Lots to share though, starting with last weekend. On Saturday, Pia, Jenita, Caitlin and I set off to climb the mountain at Berseba, which is about an hour’s drive from Tses. In the morning sun, it got hotter and hotter as we walked, but the views from the top were simply stunning. We did have a rather tense descent to start with, where we realised that going down the rocks without a path is significantly harder than it was climbing up, and ended up having to just sit down and slide over the baking hot boulders. With blistered palms, dusty bums and many expletives along the way, we finally made it down and were rewarded with a cool drink and an excellent morning’s walking. On both Friday and Saturday night, we camped out on mattresses in the hostel’s courtyard under the stars. With vast expanses of land and zero light pollution, the stars here are unlike any I’ve ever seen. All in all, last weekend gave us the chance to take in the alien but incredible scenery that makes Karas so completely different from home.

The view from half way up the mountain

Caitlin and I before the walk

Our, ahem, graceful descent. And Jenita doing the Mobot. Not entirely sure what's going on in this photo.

Last week, we also had an excellent time with an influx of more volunteers. An elderly German couple were making their annual visit to Tses, and so have been staying in the hostel’s guest house. They didn’t speak any English and have wildly inaccurate measures of Amarula, but they were fascinating people and made excellent company , with their philosophy of “the moon is the drinking sun”. He is a retired plumber in his 80s who has spent many years coming to various places in Namibia and voluntarily fixing their plumbing systems, and now brings his partner. We also had 4 US Peace Corps volunteers here running a business workshop for the village council’s youth group. It was absolutely knackering, but it was great fun having people over every night, staying up well past our 9.30pm bedtimes with music, good conversation and Mayank’s phenomenal Indian food.  The weekends ahead are also looking promising – as well as our planned Easter trip to Swakopmund, we are off to Fish River Canyon this weekend with Pia’s visitors from Germany, and the weekend afterwards, our Desk Officer is taking us to visit the other PT volunteers in Luderitz.

Believe it or not, school is still as busy as ever in and amongst all of our adventures – there’s so much to say that I’ll post again shortly with all of our tales from the classroom!

Easy as A, B,C

I’m braving the elements to write today. We’re desperate for rain here  (to such an extent that the pupils had to say an extra rain prayer in Monday’s assembly ) and finally, the usually clear skies are looking promisingly dark. And thundery. And lightning-y. However, there’s more important news – today, we started English classes for adults.

Running English classes for the Nowak staff and the community was mentioned in the application form that they sent to Project Trust, and with 5 volunteers here in Tses, it seems crazy not to take the opportunity to begin. And so start we did. At 4pm this afternoon, we had a small group in a classroom, all set and ready to start lessons. Things got a bit bizarre when we went from letter writing and group ice breakers to them asking for the definitions of “phlegmatic”, “vernacular” and asking me to sing Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Our newest recruits seem enthusiastic, and are particularly keen to learn more about business letters and forms. It’s early days, but I’m hoping that classes will be quite informal, and should be good fun. Hopefully once word spreads, we will have a few more faces, but in the 48 hours since we first mentioned the idea to anyone else, a class of 8 is not a bad start by any means.

The platform for putting the plan into action was the youth group of the village council. Sachi is heavily involved in the group, and all 5 of us now go along to meetings. Getting volunteers to use their experience and status to start new things is great; helping the community to take the initiative to do it themselves is even better. So far, one lady has started a children’s football team, one is looking into starting a girls’ club for young teenagers, and we have 4 Peace Corps volunteers coming on Monday to run a week-long workshop for locals looking to start their own businesses. Opportunities for young adults here are few and far between, so although the combination of African time and committees sometimes results in one heck of a lot of confusion, having the momentum to encourage and motivate activity is invaluable for this tiny community.

Life at school continues to keep me on my toes in the best way possible. We’ve set and marked our first proper assessment exercises, and I also gave lines to half of an entire class. I’m pretty sure they now think I’m, quite literally, the Wicked Witch of the West, but hey – that’s what happens when you don’t do your homework twice for Miss Mortimer’s class. In other school news, we may or may not be going to the school athletics on the weekend, the library is coming along nicely, and we’re helping with a science project on the Orange River that the school’s been asked to join in with. Add to this the fact that we’ve discovered a place in Keetmanshoop that serves burgers for less than N$40 AND has a free pool for customers, Namibia continues to make me one very, very happy volunteer.

Cooking Doesn't Get Tougher Than This

It's the beginning of another week here in Tses. Things are going really well out here, and I'm loving it. On gap years like this, you're supposed to learn lots of important life lessons, like how to work hard, how to manage a house and money, and generally how to be a self-sufficient human being. All of this is true, and independent living is proving to be very successful, but I also find that I'm also learning lots of little curious things about life in Namibia.

• Cheese is very, very expensive. A standard block of standard cheese costs N$50, and when the rest of your grocery bill for 2 weeks comes to less than N$350, it's definitely time to cut back on the cheese toasties.
• Topper biscuits, on the other hand, are super cheap at only N$5.50, and are my saviours in biscuit form. Namibians don't really do cakes and treats in the same way that we do in the UK, which is largely a good thing as our diet is much healthier, but I'm quite convinced that I owe my sanity to these little sugary, crumbly marvels.
• My hair does not like Namibia. I don't know whether it's the heat, or the water, or the absence of my beloved John Freida shampoo, but it falls out like crazy here.
• If you write at a particular angle on the school boards, the chalk makes the most horrendous screeching noise I've ever heard.
• Travelling during the holidays will be amazing. We're beginning to plan trips to Victoria Falls, Etosha National Park and Sossusvlei in April and May, and maybe spending the Easter weekend in Swakopmund.
• The only thing our students find more entertaining than white people are semi-sunburnt white people. That way, they get to poke and prod at the pink bits AND still marvel at the pallor of my legs. Faaaaantastic.
• The ancient Black Eyed Peas poster in my room, kindly pasted on the wall by a previous inhabitant of the house, stubbornly refuses to come off. Thus, my walls now feature pictures of my friends, family, and will.i.am circa 2005. Nice.

I must also issue a public apology to my mother. Mum, I'm sorry, but........we only have margarine, not real butter. And the milk is UHT. Please forgive my crimes against proper dairy produce and know that I really, really miss Lurpak. Particularly Lurpak that's been made into cakes. It has, however, been a rather interesting weekend food-wise.

I mentioned experimenting with chocolate ice cream last time. On Thursday, it hadn't quite finished freezing, so it was more like very, very cold custard. By Friday night, it was more like chocolate-custard flavoured Slush Puppie. Take your pick.

I think my chapati-making skills leave a lot to be desired, and houmous might not be the most authentic of Namibian lunches, but it tastes fine!

Before Skyping my Dad on Saturday morning, I had my first go at making and trying maize porridge. When I got back, Sachi had made streusel cake. I wonder which I found more appetising....?

No prizes for guessing - old habits die hard, eh?

Pandemonium, Priests and Pancakes

After 10 days, it feels about time to update you all on everything that's going on here before anything even more bonkers happens. Last week's task of covering classes without much being left for them resulted in a hectic week for us both. Although it takes some effort, it is perfectly possible to make up, teach and mark a week's worth of English lessons, and doing so taught me a lot about both my students' and my own capabilities : however, doing the same for Afrikaans lessons is considerably more difficult to do, given that my Afrikaans only extends to greeting people for the appropriate time of day. I got them to teach me bits and pieces (much to their amusement) and do some written work, which seemed to keep them busy and interested enough to make it until the return of relative normality this week.We're back to our Arts and BIS lessons, which they still seem to be really enjoying - I hate to sound so surprised, as enthusiasm for the subject is paramount for potentially challenging classes, but I really didn't expect a library class that's currently without a library to prompt the kind of response that it has done so far. Result! With a few hours of our time each afternoon, the library is getting a little bit less messy every day, and we're aiming to have it finished and open in the next few weeks.

Last time I blogged, I seemed to be under the impression that weekends here were quiet. This weekend, I learnt that in the unlikely event of a new priest being ordained at the local church, this could not be further from the truth. We had people coming from all over Namibia to attend the ordination service on Saturday morning and church on Sunday, and this otherwise tiny community went into overdrive. Church services in Africa are totally mind-boggling, particularly these important ones; I stood (the place was packed out, and 10 minutes early was still not enough to nab a seat) for 3 hours through a service according to unfamiliar customs and in a language that I don't understand, trying very hard to look like I wasn't completely lost. The music is incredible, in the truest sense of the word, and it seems to be all about singing, dancing, cheering, shrieking, waving, clapping, more singing - the most active service I'm ever likely to see. Currently, church is also (and dare I say, most) important socially - as newcomers, we see and are seen by the community, and when our presence is noted, it makes a good impression. Plus, I got a free lunch at the end of it, so for all that it was long, it was fairly enjoyable and most definitely worth going to.

We didn't quite manage pancakes on Tuesday as per tradition, so although I'm sure the original point of Shrove Tuesday is that you don't go stuffing yourself with sweet, fluffy, pancake-y goodness on the first day of Lent, it just sort of happened that way. I care not - they were simply phenomenal.Whoever sent Sachi that box of American pumpkin pancake mix, you are a star. What Caitlin and Sachi don't know is that since it is Valentine's Day and also my turn to cook tonight's dinner, I'm going to experiment with making ice cream as a treat. We'll see how it turns out - watch this space!

Happy Birthday To You!

Last weekend, I blogged about our adventures in Windhoek. Southern weekends couldn't be more different. The domestic goddess was unleashed on the house, so the place has been cleaned and all washing done - washing by hand is certainly time consuming, and never again shall I complain about our own dysfunctional washing machine at home. The challenge here is that because we're on hostel property, there are always kids around. Always. Even on afternoons and weekends, they still come over to ask for water/to play with my hair/why I'm STILL so white, if they spot us. Other than the occasional interruption, weekends here are exceptionally quiet, the likes of which I don't think I've ever known. Getting to sit in an armchair with a book all weekend was simply blissful. This week looks set to be a whirlwind of all things bonkers, as 3 members of staff are away, we've started a new timetable and we're going to be left with each of the absent teachers' classes. Chaos doesn't even begin to cover it.

Many of you may know that it was my 18th birthday yesterday. Most people will spend their 18th birthdays busy with lots of presents, extra-special food and most probably a wild night out that exploits one's newfound ability to buy alcohol legally to the maximum. Not so in Tses. Oddly enough, there are two nightclubs here, but you wouldn't want to be in either of them, so instead it was a quiet night in with Caitlin and the other volunteers here (Sachi, Pia and Jenita). Simple, but simply lovely. I had cards from my two housemates, and Pia and Jenita came over later with the cake below, a gesture that was most unexpected but very much touching. An unusual birthday, but one I'll never forget.

It Ain't Half Hot, Mum

First blog post from Tses! Currently using the staff room computer to blog, as we have not yet managed to figure out how we can get this dial-up Internet connection to work on our laptops. Hopefully we'll make some progress on that front soon.

In this tiny village on the side of the highway in southern Namibia, we have become experts in being thrown in at the deep end. Tuesday was our first day of teaching, and without warning or any opportunity to plan, we found ourselves with a class plonked in front of us four times, expecting to be taught. It didn't help that when we tried to ask the very first class what they knew about their subject, we were met with blank looks. We persevered, however, and found that a few starter games and drama exercises more than fit the bill for a 40 minute lesson. A particular favourite is a game taught to us on Project Trust's training week back in December. For that, Heloise Allan, you are a hero - we are forever indebted to you for unintentionally providing us with starter games for an entire week's worth of first lessons.

At the moment, we're teaching arts and BIS (essentially a library class) to the upper primary school. We have 6 classes and each with have 3 lessons a week in total with us. The school are currently redoing the timetable to find the best use of our time here, and with two teachers absent next week, the opportunities to teach more are quickly arising. Setting up the school library will keep us more than busy, and the teaching's great. I think the learners are not quite used to our wacky games and mannerisms, answering "Yes, Miss" to absolutely every question, but they seem to enjoy our lesson - we even had applause yesterday! They also take great amusement in how white we are. They are forever asking us why we are so pale, or why we are always so hot, or reminding us to take shelter from the sun. Quite endearing, but justified - it is so, so hot.

School runs between 7am and 1pm, and teachers usually come back at 3pm for extra-curriculars or extra work, but today we finish one lesson early and so are off to Keetmanshoop with Mrs Kruse. It's really hard to take pictures here without being ambushed by the kids, but below are some shots of the school.