Orphans in Shamangorwa and the Realities our Students Face

Due to the large amount of AIDS in the Kavango region many children have been left orphaned. Our school of roughly 400 students had a bit more than 150 orphans. An orphan in the village in Africa means something entirely different then one in Windhoek, Europe, the U.S or anywhere else in the world. Here, because of poverty, orphans must take care of themselves. The government gives them some assistance, 200 Namibian dollars per month as long as you are under 18. Many of our grade twelve and grade eleven learners are over 18 and must find ways to pay school fees, attend school, and feed themselves without any assistance. These learners live by themselves. Many miss days of school so they can work and feed themselves. A few anecdotes; near school there is a 7^th grader and a 4^th grader who live by themselves in a house that they built themselves. They get food from the good graces of people who are willing to help them and from the measly stipend that the government gives them. Another story, there is an orphaned learner from Angola in grade seven who crosses the river every day to come to school. He does not eat for the entire day as there is no food available for students. At the end of the day he walks 3km back to the river crossing, gets on his canoe and crosses the river and goes back home. Another reality that students face are the distances that they are forced to walk to attend school. A significant number walk 15 km, 1 way! This makes 30 km per day simply to go to school. Walking. The learners that live these distances actually don’t attend school until they are strong enough to make this daily trek. Performing well in school becomes impossible for these children, how is a 15 year old supposed to walk 30 km in a day, get home and attend to familial duties (pounding mahangu, farming, cleaning) and still find time to do homework? Learners have told me that they start walking at four in the morning just to make it on time to school at seven. Children only go to school when they are strong enough to make the walk. So you see kids that are 14 in fourth and fifth grade classes. If they don’t attend our school there is nowhere else that they can learn. Thankfully, we are currently working on a water project to bring clean water to our school. Following the completion of that project we will work to build a student hostel. This will turn our school into a boarding school allowing students to live on school grounds. In addition we once we have a hostel we will receive extra money from the government so we can feed our students. This will allow students to live at school and not have to suffer through olympian distances to attend their classes. I will leave you with one final story. We have a twelfth grader who is twenty years old. He is past the age to receive aid from the government. He lives by himself and has no food. He told me that if it is a good week he will eat once a day, if it is not, once every two days. His mother is dead and his father lives in Windhoek. His father does not care about him. Exam fees at the grade twelve level are 500 dollars. This student asked his father for the money but his reply was, “Sorry I have other things I need to buy.” This man has not given his son a single thing his entire life. The student cannot receive help from anybody else in his family, they are all drunkards. The student tries his hardest at school but he is hungry, he cannot focus when his body is constantly craving energy. He is not even able to attend school most days because he is working, fixing people’s houses, repairing fences, and any kind of odd job he can find just to put the bare minimum of food in his stomach. How is this student supposed to make it in this world? Every conceivable odd is against him yet still he tries and does the best he can in his studies, banking on the hope that one day he will be able to lift himself up from the oppression of poverty.                   

Kavango Evacuation

1                 I had been at site about 2 weeks and had gotten used to the electricity dropping as well as the cell phone network. That’s why I didn’t think it was particularly strange when the electricity and network were down for two days and it was expected that it would be down for another 3-4 days. We heard that there was a large electrical plant in Grootfontein that supplied the electricity to the region and that people had broken into the plant and stolen copper bolts that held the electrical towers up. When it rains in Kavango it really pours and as this is the start of the rainy season the electrical towers hadn’t been tested against wind or rain since the bolts had been taken. The showers started and eleven towers were knocked out effectively extinguishing all electricity in the region. The water also runs through electrical power so in Rundu there was no more running water. Food in the supermarkets started to get old and there was a mad dash to buy all the food before it got old. People living in town were also forced to walk down to the Kavango river to get their water. This is a town of around 80,000 people so the river banks also became very crowded. With our cell phone network down Peace Corps actually had no idea what was going on in the Kavango area.

 The newspapers in Windhoek left the report that electricity was out to the 7^th page of the newspaper. Mind you electricity dropping in the Kavango would be equivalent to all the electricity dropping in the entire west coast of the U.S. Peace Corps only found out about 2 or 3 days in when a volunteer was able to get a text out. So the afternoon that I was moving into my new house two Peace Corps cars drove into my village unannounced. I was in my room with all my stuff strewn about when I hear my friends Tim and Lindsey calling my outside. I get up confused and look outside and I see them with 6 other volunteers I hadn’t met yet. They greet me then they start screaming “village invasion!” Then they tell me that the entire Kavango region was being evacuated and that we needed to go to Rundu and stay at a lodge where there was power and water. I was convinced for about 5 minutes that they were joking until the head security guy for Peace Corps sauntered up and confirmed it for me. So I invite everyone into my completely messy house while Joey the security coordinator gives me a list and tells me I need to pack everything in it as fast as I can. I get everything packed and we head out while my counterparts looked on confused. We go through Rundu which looked like a zombie apocalypse had just gone through it into the middle of the bush where there was a riverside lodge. We then hang out there for two nights. It was a great time, there was beer, good food, and I was able to meet all the volunteers from the previous groups. For a moment Peace Corps was going to send us to Tsumeb, one of the nicest towns in Namibia, to hang out for a few more days until the electricity, water, and network came back but on the second night the power came back and we were shipped back to our towns and villages. Weird, fun, and an ambiguous experience but that is exactly the way of Peace Corps.     

First HIV/AIDS Lesson

1                 Today I taught my first lesson about HIV/AIDS. I have been told that the students here are very knowledgeable on the subject since they have the information drilled into them since a young age. Still a few questions came up which I found very interesting because it showed how much myth there is surrounding HIV/AIDS. The questions: I have been told that if you wear two condoms you will be more protected from STDS because if one breaks you still have the other one, is this true? Sir, there is a Nigerian preacher who had AIDS but after praying to god, and god cured him from AIDS, can this happen to us to? If I take a very nice shower after I have sex with a person that is HIV positive, will I be able to clean it away?

The Night with the Free Pizza

1                            The day after training was concluded the principals of the Kavango volunteers came down to Okahanjda to pick us up and take us to our permanent sites. We were supposed to leave at 8 in the morning but since the Ministry of Education car took so long to leave Windhoek (for reasons unbeknownst to us) we ended up leaving at 11:30. Even so our driver and principles didn’t seem overly concerned with the length of the travel (We had around 7 hours ahead of us). So we had several luxuriously long stops for food and bathroom breaks (We happened to run into Namibia’s first and only Paralympics gold medal winner at a supermarket). We arrived at Rundu at 7:00 p.m. From there our principles split up with their volunteers. Two volunteers had to stay in Rundu because their site was not prepared yet. I left with my principle in his car to my village of Shamangorwa. In Shamangorwa there is no market or place to buy food. Naturally I asked my principle if we could stop at a grocery store in Rundu so I could buy my two week supply of food. “Sorry Andre they are closed” he said. So we stopped at a gas station and I brought bread, pasta, and some powdered spice. That night I made myself a dinner of Doritos chip sandwich (literally crushed pieces of Doritos in between two slices of bread).  I figured this would have to hold me till the next weekend. I arrived at my mud hut and went straight to bed.

 The next morning I met a couple teachers and they mentioned that they were going to make their way to Rundu. I hopped into my counterpart’s car as he drove us from our dirt road onto the tar road. Usually when you are hitchhiking in Namibia you expect to wait close to an hour by the road but this time as soon as my counterpart and myself stepped out of the first truck another truck stopped right away and picked us up. I haven’t been that lucky since. We climbed onto the back of the pickup truck and commenced the hour and a half drive to Rundu. We got there without any problem and I bought my groceries, met up with the volunteer I was replacing, and checked out the Peace Corps office. I decided that I would spend the night in Rundu with Tim and Lindsey who were staying at the Bavaria Lodge. Lodges are the equivalent of hotels here, you get your room, free breakfast, and a pool.

Around mid afternoon we decided to go to the pool with another volunteer, Ryan, who had been living in Kavango for about a year. We each got a beer at the bar and sat down by the pool. We all headed back to the bar for a second round and a bald man in his early 30’s struck up a conversation with us asking us what we were doing in Namibia and Rundu. We each explained our stories and he explained his (he was a business man who was stopping in Rundu for a night before hopping on a plane to Windhoek). The man was charismatic and engaging so our conversation with him lasted for quite a while. We figured, cool we had made ourselves a new Namibian friend. His English was very good and he explained that he worked in England for a bit and was well traveled. He then proceeded to buy us all beers. At this point I started getting suspicious. I wasn’t used to people buying me beer and this guy was buying for our group of four. We kept talking and he bought us another round as he ordered a wine for himself. Later on Ryan asked him if he wanted to join us for dinner at another lodge which served very good pizza. He took a taxi there while we walked. We arrived at the restaurant and we didn’t see him there so we figured he wasn’t actually coming. We then ordered two large expensive (at least on our volunteer salary) pizzas for our group. Five minutes later he finds us and sits with us and orders another large pizza. Again the alarms go off in my head and I start thinking that this guy is going to run away when it is time to pay for the meal. But I figure I’m just being overly suspicious since I am new to the country. So we relax and enjoy our perfectly seasoned Mexican, Hawaiian, and Meaty pizzas. Namibia does not have a lot of western food and the only American food chain we recognize is KFC. No McDonald’s, no Starbucks. Usually the only western meal you ate was what you cooked for yourself. Also western style food was more expensive so our pizza dinner was a rare occasion. My mouth is watering as I remember those three pizzas.

 Conversation was flowing nicely and once again the man was proving to be very friendly. Only thing Tim and I noticed was that he was taking a larger portion of the Mexican pizza (the best one) then the rest of us. Being half starved volunteers (joke) we took a bit of an offense to that but didn't say anything.  When time to order the check came I watched him but he didn’t make any move to leave. I will admit I half expected him to dine and dash on us. Instead he got the check and offered to pay for the entire meal. All of our mouths dropped. Ryan had just finished explaining how he only visited this restaurant once every 3 months since it was so expensive especially with our Peace Corps salaries. At that point I realized how awesome and gracious the guy was. He joined us on the half an hour walk back to the lodge and when we got there he bought Tim and I a bottle of wine. Again our mouths dropped and we tried to poor him some but he wouldn’t have it. He said he had already had enough alcohol for the night (again very surprising coming from a Namibian as moderation when it comes to drinking is very uncommon) so Tim and I drank this entire bottle of nice South African wine by ourselves. We saw him again in the morning as we were having breakfast and he wished us look and thanked us for our service in Namibia. We then exchanged emails and told him that it would be a pleasure to meet him again.

Goats in the Staff Room

We are going to have a good bye party at my village for the volunteer I am a replacing and a welcoming party for myself. One teacher was tasked to go into town to buy soft drinks so he bought around 200 cans. He took a bus back and loaded the cool drinks into the storage ‘cart’ that was hitched to the back of the bus. When he reached our village he realized that someone had stolen his backpack with his money and ID and half of the cool drinks. At the Friday staff meeting the teachers then proceeded to make fun of him and tried to have him replace the drinks with his own money.

Later in the day at the teacher’s lounge one teacher brought in two students and sat them down in front of the entire room and all the teaches. A negotiation between the students and the teachers then commenced as the teachers were trying to get a good price on two goats that the two students where selling. Mind you, this was happening during school hours in the staff room. The students were tough negotiators and the price was eventually set at 300 Nam dollars per goat (Around 38 American dollars). As this was occurring a group of students were walking back and forth from the river to the school (a 15 minute walk) carrying 25 liter jugs of water which we would use to cook the meals for the party. When Saturday came I walked with two other teachers to where the goat was tied up. The goat sensed that something was wrong and began bucking and thrashing as we tried to take him to where we would slaughter him. At one point we were dragging the goat through the dirt to the tree where we would hang him up in. One of the teachers tied a rope around the goat’s back legs, threw the rope around the branch of the tree and pulled the goat up so he was hanging upside down. We then tied a sort of knot around the goat’s neck, bending it in a strange, almost 90 degree angle making it impossible for the goat to keep thrashing. The next step was to cut off the goat’s testicles and penis. While it was still alive. I grabbed the front legs, Mr. Rumeta grabbed the head, and Mr Mukena did the cutting. The reason for this was that if you killed a goat without cutting off its crown jewels it would secrete some stinky liquid and make the rest of the slaughter more difficult. So its meat and potatoes were cut with a lot of struggling and crying from the goat. Following the castration Mr. Mukena took the knife to the goat’s neck and sliced it open and let all the blood flow to the ground. Oh and we kept the cojones as we would be barbecuing them to. 

The actual killing of the goat was more pleasant then killing a chicken which we had done during Pre Service Training. Once you cut its neck it was pretty quick to die compared to the chicken which struggled a lot. Once it died we began to skin him. Then we cut of its legs. Then its head. At this point it barely looked like a goat anymore. Just some strange headless piece of meat hanging from a tree. This is where the nasty part came; we cut a hole through the soft skin below the ribs and first removed the liver, then the kidneys, and then the stomach and intestines and put it all in a bucket to be thrown away later. When that part was done it became a simple job of hacking off the pieces of meat until where there had been a goat on the tree was nothing left. Next a few students brought a huge leg of a cow and we did the same process of carving out the meat and cutting through bone but with a machete. The result was around 50 kg of meat and a great brai.