Namibia weblog 2005A normal boring dayRosanne writes: "6 a.m. alarm clock. Fan is making a nice droning noise. I twist myself out of the cavernous folds of the mosquito net and pull on running shoes and a big pink skirt. Unlocking all the doors is a nuisance. I have to pull several unwanted sets of car keys off the hook behind the door to get at the house keys and I wonder, again, how I would keep my cool to do this in a fire. The air is exquisitely cool just before dawn. I gulp huge breaths of it and trot off through our sandy garden and into the sandy neighbourhood. No one is around. There are little mountains of worm casts on the sandy road, and some cow pats and the usual million multi sized sandy footprints. I turn the corner and four small brown pigs join me frisking about until they are seduced by some exotic meal smelt out in a bush. Two school kids in their crisp white shirts amble by, not in much of a hurry. There is a growing rumble of cars leaving houses and heading off. The sky is blotchy and purple pink and there are bits of cloud streaking. Maybe it will rain today. 6.30 shower. Breakfast of mango and toast. Make a tomato and basil salad for lunch. Unplug the phone and lock it away. Lock all the cupboards. Hide the soap. Hide the radio, Wonder what I have left out. Turn off the fans and we lock up and get into the University minibus which has arrived. 7.30. All of Ongwadiva is on the road. Taxis are nose to tail. A big crowd is waiting at the corner for more minibuses. Outside the mini market the night guard is being relieved by the day security team, who are climbing in and out of trucks with a bristling array of weaponry, mostly shotguns and rifles. Some women are unpacking great bowls of fried dumplings and fish for sale under a little umbrella in the shade of the marula tree. A considerable herd of goats decided to cross the road in full confrontation with the serious traffic. There is a lot of honking and the goats change their mind. We join the queue at the traffic light and I watch the pick up truck in front with eleven men in blue overalls squeezed in on their way to a building site. Another open truck is stuffed with women and children in assorted colours and fancy hairstyles or turbans. Sleek Mercedes driven by fashionable black women in sunglasses. Ropey old taxis with velour curtains at the back. The man with the bicycle which has a fan attached to the handlebars worked by the pedal system. We are all nose to tail. The rain in the night has filled the sand or gravel streets with huge puddles and people are wading through them or washing in them. Some of the fields are flooded and enormous white lilies are blooming through the long grass and around the occasional wrecked car chassis. 7.50 Arrive at the University of Namibia Northern Campus and greet everyone I see very carefully indeed, taking time to ask about families, weather, the night and how the sleep was. Hurriedly plug in my laptop, hoping to download some emails from anyone I know and love. 8.15 I go to my chart positioned outside our office, titled COUNTDOWN OF DAYS and look at yesterday’s THINGS ACHIEVED for day 14. Four entries.
8.30 The first of the students start trailing in, hoping to secure a place on our course. I rush to do my email reading. Michael is online, so I give up and go instead to give a brief introduction to the gathered students around the doorway about the purpose of the course. I talk very clearly and slowly and hope to make it clear that we are not doing exam retakes, that the course is a five year degree course, that minimum grades are required, that places are few. They surge forward for application forms. The first seven have failed their maths or English and I have to explain they don’t qualify. Three are pleading and begging and I am firm with two and lose my mean resolution and say the third can apply but has no chance. 11.00 I battle with the air conditioner, pushing all the buttons in an attempt to get it working. I have drunk a litre of water and spoken to what feels like a hundred students. It also seems that I have lost seven pens in the process of getting students to fill out forms. Each application form goes to one of the four of us, each processing a different region. We scurry into each others’ offices to muster support for a rejection, or plea for an acceptance. To look into someone’s eyes and hear their tale of no teacher, terrible illness, and then tell them they have no chance of a place is painful. 1.00 Despite the crowd outside the door, I shut them out and we eat our lunch. I get to read the few emails, chuckling, delighted at the scraps of news. I sneak out of the office to see the Africa I believe is outside. The sun is white hot and I have to shut my eyes. The heat drills into me instantly, it’s a mixture of bliss and shock. I sit in the shade on a bench and watch a lizard by a rose bush. There is defiant grass in this little courtyard and a constant spray of water. People are drifting by towards the little café to buy mashed yam and fried fish. 2.00 I try to get hold of the estates guy to see if he has got the requisition forms off to the main office, or got them back, or got anywhere with our urgent need for shelves, cupboards or the ingenious mobile laboratory units we have designed. I track him down in a corridor and he gives me an apologetic shrug. I explain that our students will be here in two weeks and he says he will try to get something done. 2.30 I continue in my round of gently pressuring assorted people to do the essential things they have not yet done. I have no successes to record on my THINGS ACHIEVED list. 3.30 The little team of exhausted colleagues on this project gather to gossip and offer moral support. We laugh and try to invent achievements for the list. 3.40 The Dean of Studies, comes in to report he has been unable to get through to the department responsible for placing our staffing advert, now six weeks late. I am spurred into action and get through straight away only to hear some story about people being away and too much work and typesetters overworked. It will be in next week, for sure. 4.15 Pack up and go home in a cheery minibus of colleagues. 4.45 Enigmatic note on the table at home. The water has been cut off. Our maid has left a watering can in the loo and a collection of full pans in the kitchen. Michael and I have a splash around in the paddling pool to cool off and wonder if our bill had been paid by UNAM (it hadn’t). 5.00 Slump into a hot and brief sleep and then gear up to go into the town again to join the international collection of volunteers playing volleyball. All work forgotten in a haze of physical energy, cool beers, pizza in the candlelit garden, and chatter." more to follow...
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