One Step Over the Borderline

And by that I mean several kilometers over the Red Line.

For the past week of Orientation, we’ve been at Omungwelume, a village in the North of Namibia. To get there, we had to drive 8 hours and pass over the Red Line, which separates the Northern livestock (primarily cattle, I believe) from the Southern livestock, raised for exported beef. The separation is supposed to keep disease out of the whole gaggle of cattle in the South. From what I could see, though, it separates a lot more than cattle. Almost immediately after we crossed it, villages and homesteads of concrete and corrugated metal sheets started replacing the game ranches and B&B’s found throughout our drive through the south. Hand painted advertisements on the sides of small one room bars replaced the billboards. And so on. Some white Namibians have a less than chummy way of referring to the area past the Red Line. Let’s call it small town Africa. And, for the record, the people who live in Omungwelume are lovely and hospitable…and also make a mean fat cake (St. Lawrence peeps, think dessert fat bag).

Luckily, this type of scenery is what I was expecting from the get-go (unlike the lovely Windhoek with hot water, malls, and internet), so instead of peeing my pants at the stark change in lifestyle, I was almost relieved that my expectations weren’t so far off base. I mean I guess if you want to be particular, peeing your pants would be a relief too. But whatever, man.

So, we were there for four days doing our teaching practicum, i.e. teaching whatever kids showed up that morning, ranging in age from 6 months to 19 years. I team-taught with another volunteer, Erika. We had to come up with our own lesson plans and whatnot, so it was a definite learning experience, but our last day of class seemed to go really well. We did a geography activity where the learners (the Namibian word for students) had to piece together the countries of Africa like a puzzle.

Look at my little learners go.

By the end of the week, the painfully shy learners we had met on Monday were able to answer questions and ask for help without too much problem, and were quite a bit more boisterous, which was ultimately a good thing. I think.

Unfortunately, though, I learned that I will have to deal with more than a language barrier at my host school. It’s culturally accepted that young children should be more seen and less heard than say…an American child. So getting them to speak loudly, or speak at all, is difficult. Answering with whatever they think the teacher wants to hear is fairly common; so, getting them to express their own opinion is rough. To get them thinking critically? Even harder. And for someone that has only had 3 weeks of teaching practice, it’s a slightly daunting task.

That said, our trip up north got me really excited to get to my placement next week. So excited that on the ride home, as we were driving through mountains and towns and African things, I turned up the volume on Flag Wavin’ by K’naan on the ol’ iPod. I’m apparently going through my euphoric stage of cultural adjustment (there is actually a chart) because I was so amped that I stuck my arm out of the window of the van to catch the breeze. It was majestic. And then it wasn’t because a bug the size of my eyeball shot itself into my arm at about 50 mph, leaving its guts and a welt on my arm. I couldn’t find anything to wipe my arm off with, so I wiped the bug guts on the side of the window. I’m sorry, Namibia.