Namibia weblog 2005

28th October 2005

What a strange feeling: one year passed, another to go, and so much done and a void ahead.

This time last year we were alarmed and bewildered newcomers, wondering how we could ever start and deliver a course at the University with just nine working weeks to do it in. And now our students are almost ready to take their final exam, having been subjected to a battery of assessments and many different modules. Last week we gave them the entry test as a repeat to see how much progress they had made and we were delighted: 47 showing significant improvement, a few on the same line and perversely a couple who fared worse this time round. Difficult of course to really see the progress by tests, we can see for ourselves every day how their confidence has soared, they can now make eye contact and answer questions and get into a real discussion, they can write and research and reference a report, make effective study notes, make presentations and so on…and that is just the English. Michael and his science team have unraveled countless misconceptions and prepared them to be undergraduates.

Now we wait with bated breath to see if the next thing really does happen…will they go on to the Main Campus into the first year of their degree course in a chosen but mostly scientific field? They have all applied for assorted loans and bursaries, but have heard nothing yet. So for them it is a perilous tightrope, will they get through the exams? Will they get on they course they want? Will they get funding next year? I am more confident than they are about the first two, but share their terror of the funding. They are all absolutely penniless, and many are orphans being given small handouts by relatives whose duty is to share and support. Discussions about food and hygiene shame me…many have no running water available and only eat their mealie pap porridge just once a day. (and I am eating breakfast, lunch and dinner)

...anybody out there want to contribute to a Hardship Fund? Some of you are already sponsoring a student who is living on the edge…..? (email me on rhodin@unam.na)

And so now we are almost ready to start the whole cycle again. This time we will start with a more confident approach, knowing that we have some teachers in place, who have already benefited from Michael’s input. We will also be able to use the mobile laboratory units we had made, and so some of the early work will be hands-on stuff in the labs (for many of them, for the first time) We can review and reconsider the work schemes and make improvements all round. We can start thinking about how to plan for our exit, leaving strategies in place for the smooth running of the course.

So, we have every reason to be pretty satisfied with that much. I think our too hasty start left us too little time to get to grips with the cultural difficulties we have experienced; we have had problems with being too dynamic and assertive and pushing for things to happen….not the African way. And we haven’t been adequately respectful of those in authority. Maybe this year will allow us a chance to repair some of our initial mistakes and take things in a slower more African way. As part of a general upheaval we were suddenly told we were moving house. We had mixed feelings. After all, we had got the other scruffy heap into more or less how we wanted it and there were mosquito netting panels on all the windows and doors (mostly put there by us). But we are now at what is known in the volunteer community as the party house. We are in a huge and quite dilapidated bungalow with two linked enormous reception rooms with black marble tiled floors and gaudy plastic chandeliers. This is very far from the stick hut with a thatched roof we were originally expecting. We still have three bedrooms, but of a palatial size and two bathrooms and three loos. We moved more than just our rucksacks of belongings because the first house had equipment left by successive volunteers and it all came with us. We are well forked and plated.

I was a bit dismayed by the formidable cockroach population and by how all the cupboards were hanging off their hinges and despite there being four doors to the extensive patio space there was only one door with a key. A quick session with a carpenter solved that and we now have a shaded and very nice sitting out area with pots containing my basil and banana and mango and oleander and succulents and canna lilies.

I battle still with the cockroaches. Michael is being too Buddhist in his approach, but I like jumping on them and hearing them pop.

My beloved Zulu dance teacher was turned out of her house and spent a few panic-stricken days trying to distribute all her furniture around town. So we relieved her of a large dining table and eight chairs and assorted pots and sofas and a mobile air conditioning unit and one of her drums….. so if thirty people need to come to dinner, for a party, to dance….we are the place.

I have been out greeting the neighbours and their dogs. We have five houses all reaching onto us and they obviously think that this is a chronic madhouse and we are eager to reassure them that we are mild and quiet old people with a serious job and lots of dignity. But whenever we go off for a bike ride, wearing loony helmets, now regulation, my bike seizes up and tangles its chain and I lurch off and the neighbours gather to have a look and a laugh. Fortunately no one is really up when I go off for my feeble morning run at 6am.

The area is part expensive bungalows for the new middle class, part shanty shacks of corrugated iron and gaudy paintwork, part wasteland of scrub and sand. There is a large space with two goal posts near us and I like the manly howl of footballers as it gets to be dusk. Huge red sun sets over spindly figures ….

The last two weeks have tested our pioneering spirit. The water supply which comes to the towns in an open canal from Angola has been switched off while they clean and repair the canal. Officially we were to have water from 4 am to 7 am and then again in the evening, but no. So catching a shower has been a lively business but we managed to set the alarm for a 5am shower and fill the paddling pool. So we both managed small swims and invited quite a lot of our adjacent volunteers in for water too. Our friend who is in a wheelchair most of the time was struggling with carrying bottles and we devised a watering can shower method.

More to follow...

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