Sunday, January 13, 2013
Cooking in Namibia 102
So Jenn ROCKED OUT some Mexican food tonight. We made a taco bar with rice, beans and ground beef with chili peppers and pari pari spice. Jenn made a tomato, chili and onion salad and queso dip (to Kristin's extreme delight), and Mariella and Wendy mashed up a guacamole. Since tortilla chips are hard to come by here, we made chips out of the tortillas we bought, by frying them in some sunflower oil. Overall, it was a super delicious Tex-Mex home made meal. Omnomnom comfort food!
Single Quarter Market and Panduka
This morning we explored Windhoek more; it was unbelievable. Our first stop was the Single Quarter Market. It is an open air market, with some three walled and roofed shops, as well. They sell traditional Ovambo and Herero dresses, millet, meat (being cut on site), fat cakes (fried dough) and these traditional fried mupane worms. I wasn't quite brave enough to stomach the worms, but some of the other teachers did! Braver souls than I! We did have some traditional cooked up beef, which was delicious, and some nuts that tasted like figs. 
After the market, we went to a craft co-op called Panduka. This place was absolutely amazing. First thing that I think made is so great for me, was that it was on a lake. I didn't really realize how much I had missed water, but it had this profound effect on my mood. I just felt so relaxed there. It made me really, really happy about having a school near a river up in Divundu. 
Second of all, this co-op does everything! They have a bunch of crafting buildings, blow their own glass beads and embroider everything you can imagine. I will definitely have to go back there before I leave so that I can get souvenirs. They also have a TB clinic, a child care center, and a tea house that serves pie. Yum. Everything there was so delicately beautiful. They also build sustainably. For example, they were building walls out of old bottles and cement. Super cool!  |
| Picture taken from Google |
The rest of our day was full of sessions on washing laundry, teaching with audio/visual aids, testing and assessments, and working within the bureaucratic system. The morning was distinctly more exciting than the afternoon.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Living in Northern Namibia 101
11/1/2013
Last night,
we went to the homestead of Brett’s girlfriend’s (Angelina) family outside of
Oshekati. Many families live on
homesteads, which are basically farms.
Other families living in town have small plots to grow millet (muhangu)
and beans, mangos or squash in their yard.
Everyone works very hard to make the farm function. At Angelina’s homestead, they have a lot of
land that they cultivate, harvest and shell using tractors, and then they pound
the muhango into flour by hand with large wooden poles in holes in the ground
inside a hut. Then they send the course flour to a machine to be finely
pounded. Smaller, less well off families
do all of this by hand, from hoeing the land to the final pounding. Within the homestead walls, there are many
huts and buildings. Basically, each hut is a room in a house. There is a kitchen hut, bedrooms, a shower
hut, and living spaces, as well as storage huts. All around the outside of these buildings, food
plants grow to feed the family. We saw
hot peppers ripening, squash, sweet potato, corn and sorghum. In the evenings, small boys drive the cattle
into pens closer to the stead, after they have been grazing all over. The land is communal, and over feeding is
kept in check by the farmers, who have a very good, deep knowledge of their
land. Pigs live in a small clay
structure just outside the homestead; chickens have a coop; dogs have a lean to
for shade just outside the front door.
Angelina’s homestead and family are very wholesome and picturesque. Everyone works hard to make the farm work
effectively.
For dinner,
we had Oshivambo chicken (slaughtered that morning), which was boiled with
onions, tomatoes, spices and marula oil into a sort of stew. Hands were washed;
grace was said. To eat the stew, we pinched off pieces of muhangu porridge
patties, and dipped the porridge into the oil and vegetables. We ripped the chicken and ate with our
hands. Kristin really enjoyed this, and
she made a big mess!
Overall, it
made me feel a little bit like the farming families I know in the States. Chickens sound like chickens. Cattle sound like cattle. Corn grows.
Seasons pass. People are welcomed.
Family is loved. Work is done.
Work is begun again.
Teaching at Eengadjo
8/1/2013
We have been
here for two days-teaching, cooking, meeting teachers, meeting learners, and
finding bugs. The learners think deeply
about life goals and worldly differences. I am impressed by the students’
ability to vocalize and critique opinions about Americans and Namibians.
Students are
often stopping by our house for a visit and cool drink (soda). Yesterday, my group was cooking dinner and a
student stood in the corner of the kitchen watching us cook. She was almost
silent for almost an hour. Namibian
children are raised to be seen and not heard, and this plays out at school as
well.
Our speed of
teaching is much slower and more patient, and the students are receptive to
speaking in class when they are given examples, time and encouragement. I feel
that slowing down in my teaching is going to be valuable, but I also need to
balance that pacing with my generally SUPER EXCITED teaching personality.
Figuring out how not to feel as though I am rushed will be beneficial in the
classroom, handling “Africa Time” and general relaxing.
Students
here often get by through rote memorization and copying, so critical and higher
order thinking in science is often difficult for them. Yesterday, we were
teaching about mixtures. One student said that ethanol was a mixture. She knew it is made of different things, but
when asked to go further, said it was oil and salt, and was pretty clearly
making up her answer.
Tomorrow, we
are talking about the parts of an experiment.
Yesterday, one boy said he knew science was about performing
experiments. My teaching partner, Ted,
and I are hopeful that they will be familiar with experimental designs, and can
identify parts that are missing from experimental procedures written out. We also are going to perform an experiment
with controls, constants, independent and dependent variables, and making hypotheses. I am curious how much choice they have had in
their experiments in the past.
UPDATE,
9/1/2013: Students’ experience with designing experiments was impressive, but
with lots of room for growth. They know what a hypothesis is, but had a
difficult time determining independent versus dependent variables. We talked about using a hypothesis to
identify the variables, and that seemed to help somewhat. I think we should have focused on constants
rather than controls more, and that may have made it easier. Tomorrow, we are writing/planning an
experiment and identifying variables. Then we are putting candy into coke so
that students can make a reaction.
Students
also work well in groups with roles. We
had leaders, writers, readers and spokespeople. I was really impressed with how
quickly they applied spokesperson asking another group before asking the
teacher if the group had a question.
UPDATE
10/1/2013: The follow up went well! However, the coke didn’t react. The
learners were good sports about it.
Living in the North-Eengedjo, a Hostel School
7/1/2013
Eengedjo has
a lot of bugs! Since the first night, though, we are getting better at handling
2” beetles in the sink, and cooking dinner by cande light at Ted and Jessie’s
apartment.
When we
arrived, everyone was taken aback by the messiness of their apartment—the stove
is just now looking clean, thanks to hours of work scrubbing and soaking by
Jamie. But we all worked together to
help Jessie and Ted to make their home feel/be home-y.
We have been
teaching every morning, and in the afternoon, we talk about teaching theory.
Yesterday, two of the learners, Rauna and Endwing came and sat in on our
lessons. They were very sweet. Rauna wants to be an agriculture teacher! We
were able to engage in lots of conversation about what that entails here. They study business, cattle breeds and
sowing/harvesting (no floral arranging, though). Since most families live on subsistence
farming, it all seemed very applicable.
We see cows,
pigs, goats, and donkeys all over town, since land here is all communal. This makes me miss Rosie. I haven’t made any deep connections with
livestock yet, but babies have been coming to school with older siblings, so we
get to play! We had a huge circle of learners and teachers passing a soccer
ball around, and that helped everyone relax a lot.
It has been
very hot and buggy here so far, so I just washed and hung some dresses during
our lunch break. It is now POURING rain,
and thundering and lightning. While beautiful, cooling and refreshing… really?!
Crappy timing! On the plus side, it is so much cooler now! I might even bust
out a long-sleeved shirt. It’s like 70
degrees F. Brrrrr!
An
additional amazing thing today: It is MANGO SEASON! Some learners returned to
school this afternoon to sell them for N$4 (less that US $1)! And. They. Were.
Delicious. Note the past tense. They were gone FAST! Omnomnom! Welcome to
Africa!
Cooking in Namibia 101
7/1/2013
First, I will say that cooking for 18 people in a kitchen
designed to cook for 4 requires cooking in batches. Our group, Wendy, Mariella, Jenn and I, made
chili, rice and roasted veggies on a stove with one small pot, one large pot, a
small frying pan and an oven that fits one pan.
Things that are different in Namibia, part 1:
#1 The
tomato puree is awkwardly sweet/acidic/awkward. Steer clear.
#2 This
can be solved with lots of chili and pari-pari spice.
#3
Pari-pari spice is used to spice all sorts of meats, and is really hot and
super delicious.
#4 Meats are cooked over wood fires
and braiis (barbeques) that often turn into all night parties.
We cooked the chili using dried beans, soaking and boiling
them (beans are totally available in the can—but we decided to go old
school). We found red speckled beans,
and they grew to be excellent chili beans. Sautéed onions, garlic and pepper
for the vegetarians, then made more
onions, pepper and garlic with the meat. Once the sautéing was finished, we
added the beans and start spicing! Go crazy! Chili and garlic spice mix and
pari-pari. Add canned, diced tomatoes (ok, we got lazy), and tomato puree. Salt, pepper, chili-garlic, pari-pari. Boil,
then let simmer. Serve over a gallon and a half of rice. We had tons of rice
left! Oops!
Ingredients:
½ kg red
speckled beans
4 green peppers
3 onions
4 cloves of
garlic
½ kg minced beef
3 cans diced
tomatoes
2 cans tomato
puree
½ Tbsp salt
~3 Tbsp
chili-garlic mixed spice
~2 Tbsp pari-pari
-7 cups dried
rice (way too much!)
We also
added 4 round spaghetti squash to the chili because they didn’t fit with the
roasted veggies.
For the
veggies, we got:
4 butternut squash
5-6 potatoes (chopped, country
style aka however you want)
2-3 onions (also chopped,
country style)
~4 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Salt
Since we had
room for one pan, we softened the squashes (butternut and spaghetti) in 2
batches. Once they were scoopable, we
scooped out the inside and added the squash to the potatoes, onion and garlic.
Schmear with oil and sprinkle with salt. Again, two shifts for this one!
Roasted on 2 (1 is the hottest, 5 the coolest) for about 40 minutes. Could have
gone longer, but dinner was ready!
We’re
heading to Angelina’s (a teacher at a school near Eengedjo) family’s homestead
on Thursday, so expect Cooking in Namibia 102 and Namibian Family Living 101
soon!
Heading North
6/1/2013
Well I was going to blog last night, but I got really caught
up with helping Brett, my field director, and his girlfriend Angelina make
salads for our braai, which got started a little earlier than I
anticipated. A few Tafels later, and it
was 2:30am, and I had to be up at 7 for an eight hour car ride up North. (this
morning was rough!) There is a breaking news story at the end, but you have to
read all of my babble before I get to the good part!
Training has been going really well so far. We’ve talked about the practicalities of
teaching, such as lesson planning, classroom management, and handling large
class sizes with multiple levels of English ability. Some of this is super
repetitive for me, but it’s nice to be able to help teach and support the
others in our group. We’ve also been
talking a lot about Namibian culture and how culture shock sets in and is
recovered, as well as how to cope with culture shock and loneliness. The last
main chunk of our training so far has been language learning. Nicholas, our Rukwangali instructor was very
helpful and patient with me, since our sessions were usually around 4:00. I get really hyper/spastic around 4:00
(preceded by intense sassiness from 2-4). Apparently, many taxi drivers, bar
tenders, men in general propose marriage to women a lot, so I asked him how he
would propose to someone. He got really
awkward (not in a deeply uncomfortable culturally awkward way, just a cute “I’m
teaching a woman who is older than me this stuff… how awkward” blushing way),
but he taught us, and also how to say no!
We are on our way up North to Eengedjo Secondary School for a week of practical training in front of students who are volunteering to be in our classes. The drive is spectacular! You look out the window, and there is just nothing for miles and miles, except 10-20 ft tall brush, and termite hills taller than me (insert joke here about how Rachel is short, Mike Mayer). We’ll be teaching one 45 minute lesson each day this week. I am partnered with Ted, who is actually placed at Eengadjo for the year, and we have a science themed week of plans. We’re looking at what happens when things mix together, and then running an experiment with controls, an independent variable (type of candy) and dependent variable (how high the geyser goes when that candy is put in Coke).
It will be really helpful to be at a Namibian school,
teaching Namibian students, who are really different from American students,
and are used to classes structured very differently than I structure my own
classrooms. We’re partnered with the Namibian government to help bring a more
student-centered approach to education to the schools here, but most of the
teachers use a very teacher-centered approach, where the children are expected
to be silent, not ask questions and memorize facts, not to make connections or
think critically about the world. I am
hoping that I can break my students out of their shells somewhat, and help them
develop more concrete reasons to go school beyond “because I have to.” More to come on this later, but I’m realizing
how important fostering connections between all subjects in school and facets
of life is to me, and I want to make that a bigger part of my life’s
trajectory.
BREAKING NEWS: I will be meeting the President of
Namibia! Since my school is the first of
the Vision 2030 Schools, he is coming to the inauguration in late January,
early February. Namibia is such a small
country that people all know each other, which is cool-government isn’t this
like totally distant entity. The
leadership are tangible people. When the
whole country has only 2,000,000 people, it’s hard not to know someone involved
in national politics at some level. And
I get to meet the President!! I’ll need to buy a new dress!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)