Americans in Namibia

Over the past few days, we have visited the American Embassy twice.  We've met with the programs director of USAID, the development arm of the international action of the American Government. They give money to communities and organizations to support educational, environmental, economic, health and human rights initiatives all over the world, and through PEPFAR (Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or something like that) donate tons of money to community health centers and the prevention of the spread of HIV.  Ms. Washington, the woman we met with, was super chill and down to Earth, and very willing to help us.  Since they work a lot with Peace Corps, the have resources all over the country to use and collaborate with, so it's awesome that WorldTeach is reaching out to the American Embassy.

Today, we met with the American Cultural Center and Library, and learned more about grants and scholarships that send students from Namibia to American Universities. They have book donations all over the country, and are excited to be connected with us.  WorldTeach is amazing because we are directly employed by the Namibian Ministry of Education.  This means that we are directly supporting the Ministry, so no one can really say we are just here to push an American agenda or something.  One thing we haven't really worked on doing is collaborating with Namibian and foreign organizations with similar missions.  So it will be nice to branch out and work together with other organizations.  We are also meeting with the Namibian Library tomorrow, and apparently they will mail books out to any school that requests them, which is awesome!

Two other things:
1. We head to our site at ~6 am on Thursday!

2. Mom, you were right.  I am getting the Yellow Fever vaccine tomorrow, so that I can go to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe! Then, for Easter, we are going to try and go to Victoria Falls from every which way!

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

  

After we left Panduka, we drove through Havana, a neighborhood of Windhoek.  This was really powerful.  Right next to downtown Windhoek, with its first world mall, air conditioning and tall buildings, there are miles of tin huts with no electricity or running water. Some families need to walk miles for a pump.  But everyone we saw was smiling and welcoming.  Just so excited to see us, even though we weren't even really stopping the van. Dusty, hot, poor and happy.  The juxtaposition of the two cultures and incomes was shocking.

 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.

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!