During the first term of the school year one of the school’s classrooms was used as a boys’ dormitory. Sometime during March the school was informed that technicians from Windhoek would arrive by the end of the month to set up the school’s computer lab using the computers being held in storage. The boys were asked to leave their room and move into tents on the ground, but the technicians never came. My HOD (head of department) Vilo and I decided that it was time to see if we couldn’t plug the machines in ourselves, but the Principal asked us to wait because he had just been told that technicians would be coming sometime before the end of the term in April. They never came.
So for approximately two months a classroom from which learners were evicted sat empty and unused; it bugged me. During the examinations, when learners stopped coming to school regularly, and lessons basically ceased, I decided to busy myself with converting the empty room into something productive. After acquiring keys to unlock storerooms I had learners help me carry boxes of books (fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, books on tape, that had been collecting dust for years - plural) across the school blocks into the new library. Other teachers and I unscrewed shelves that stood bare in different offices and placed them next to the library walls instead. Each night I loved going to the library to sit at my computer alphabetizing and cataloguing all of our books while playing hip-hop music at just slightly above a reasonable volume. The light in the room must have given away my habits because I was once asked by another teacher, “What time do you wake up and what time do you go to sleep?”
Included in the pile of things rotting in storage were 11 unassembled computer desks. I enlisted Vilo’s help to spend a few good hours lifting and hammering pieces of wood, and by the end of the night the library was outfitted with some pretty sharp looking workspaces. That night just so happened to be the most rewarding, and best night’s work I had ever performed.
At the start of term 2 I adorned the shelves with signs and the walls with posters, printed a library contract, and in the first few weeks of the term I took classes into the library one by one to receive a library orientation (“Fiction means False”, “be nice to the books because they are your friends”, etc). As classes learned how to use their new resources the library opened in the afternoon and in the evening with different classes having different scheduled times for them to use it.
Some things that the learners did in the library were quite frustrating, but I had to keep reminding myself that these kids had no idea what to do because they had never been in a library in their whole lives. For example, when I originally shelved our magazines I divided them into piles based on subject matter. Then within categories I had magazines alphabetical by title, and then within titles I had them in chronological order. It took maybe two nights before I realized that just keeping like magazines in a pile together was sufficient. The kids’ disorganization was partly due to an immature messiness and also partly due to the fact that many of them didn’t even recognize that the piles were organized in the first place.
As the library found its rhythm I decided it was time to start opening computer boxes – and time to stop asking permission to do so. Plugging in the computers wasn’t exactly difficult, certain cords can only fit in certain holes, but I hadn’t the foggiest how to connect them as a network or to manage a server. A Peace Corps volunteer I had befriended who lived in a town nearby was nice enough to pop in one day and set-up a mini-network for me with the school’s server and three client computers, and she gave me a crash course on how to be the server administrator myself. Another WorldTeach volunteer from town was also willing to come by a few weekends later to spend an evening with me listening to hip-hop music at nowhere near a reasonable volume, hooking up the rest of our computers, and zip-tying all of the cords together (a crucial step). That so happened to just surpass my night with Vilo to become the best night of work I have ever completed.
So Oshikunde now has a full-fledged media center, and the kids have become so accustomed to it that I can sit at my desk typing this blog while they read and only have to utter the occasional “Quiet please”. Computer lessons at first were exhausting, running around making sure no one broke anything and repeating myself over and over again. To give you an idea, in lesson one it took every class a full forty minutes to simply turn on and then turn off their computers. But just this afternoon I had a full computer lab with learners doing everything from flipping through encyclopedia software to playing mouse practice games and using typing training programs while we all listened to a local Kwaito (a Namibian form of up-tempo hip-hop) musician at a reasonable volume.
In conclusion, which is a way you should never conclude an essay, I just wanted to mention some other pieces of the library. The library has more substance than just desks, computers, shelves, and books. It also has all sorts of educational posters (world map, dinosaurs, marine life, my skeleton, etc). It also has cuts of traditional Owambo cloth patterns that protect the machines from dust after hours. It has a clock above the blackboard (something quite foreign to your average Owambo). It has a CD-case full of local and international music, speakers, and headphones. It has board game box sets complete with chess, checkers, and what has proven to be the crowd favorite, snakes and ladders. All of these items were purchased using funds that were donated by my faithful readers, and I have only spent about half of what was raised. So on behalf of everyone at Oshikunde I wanted to say thank you.
One night my principal observed as learners lined up outside the library door waiting for it to open and then filed in quietly, took out books and began to read and study. I could not have been more proud of the “libulali” that you helped me build.
WT Namibia in the press!
WorldTeach Namibia Summer volunteer, Meredith Baker, was recently featured in an article in the Queens Courier newspaper. Here, Meredith writes about her experiences so far in this new and exciting country. Keep up the good work, Meredith!
It did not take WorldTeach Namibia volunteer, Kyle O’Neill, very long to notice the lack of resources in his school’s library. Realizing he could not afford to buy more books for the school, he decided to write home about the severe shortage of reading material. This sparked the interest of his cousins in the United States who developed a program they call “Long Distance Library.” Rather than buying books, they are encouraging people to write their own stories or adaptations of fairy tales to be sent to Kyle’s school in Onekwaya, Namibia. Check out their brochureand website for more information!
WorldTeach Namibia has submitted its 1Goal: Education for All video. It features children from Babylon, an informal settlement in Windhoek, Namibia.
Namibia Field Director, Jocie Jungers, compiled this video of her students at Dr. Kleopas Dumeni Combined School showing off their fantastic dance skills.
2005 Namibia WorldTeach Five-year reunion, by Elisa Mandell
This spring the 2005 Namibia WorldTeach group gathered in Boston for our five-year reunion. Five years – it’s hard to believe that much time has passed since we were all together, finding our way in a new country! With a majority of the group living in Boston right now it was easiest for all of us to meet there, and people came from Portland, Seattle, Chicago and the New York area for the occasion. We reminisced over shots of beer at a local beerfest, we talked and laughed over several meals at people’s homes, we walked all over Boston, and of course we had the obligatory dance party which is a mainstay for the 2005 Namibia group – complete with kwaito and Namibian rap.
It was an absolutely wonderful weekend. There were several things that struck me as just incredibly special, and a true reflection of how meaningful the experience was that we all had together in Namibia five years ago.
First of all, it almost felt like no time had passed. As a group we picked up right where we left off, and all of us were just so thrilled to see each other and have a chance to catch up on each others’ lives. I suspect some of this had to do with the bond we developed through a year of intense ups and downs together – learning how to be teachers, adjusting to the norms of our villages, fitting into new communities as foreigners. We spent hours over the course of the reunion weekend learning about each others’ lives in new cities, grad school, careers, houses, boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands (!), and travels since our time in Namibia. And yet somehow it didn’t feel like five years had passed. It’s crazy to realize that in the past six months or so, members of our group had been to Antarctica, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nepal, Korea, Vietnam, Patagonia and of course Namibia. We clearly had a lot to catch up on!
Second, the laughter was *still* omnipresent! Now this is just a fact of our WorldTeach group – we laughed together from the beginning and I guarantee we’ll laugh together til the end. That’s probably part of what kept us sane throughout our year of service. It was such a treat to realize we could still make each other laugh until our abs are sore.
Third, it was still so clear how much our experiences in Namibia have affected each of us – through our views of the world, our career paths, our taste in music, and our travel. It is a bond that we all share, and I think it has contributed to keeping this group in touch over five years and will continue to keep us connected going forward. During the reunion we told stories about our learners in Namibia, the connections we still have with Namibian friends and colleagues, trips that some were able to take to visit our Namibian homes recently, and the memories that will stay with us forever.
Towards the end of the weekend we had a group brunch and we ate, played games and talked for hours and I felt like I never wanted to leave. We ended the weekend suggesting we do this again in a year – five more years was clearly too long to wait!
For me personally, this group is a community I value so, so highly. We started a journey together in 2005 that was a tremendous learning experience for each of us. Some of us learned to eat goat head and enjoy it, others figured out how to survive a year without access to a shower regularly, others taught kids to read, write, multiply and divide, others fell in love with someone from another culture, and all of us integrated into Namibian communities and households and by doing so, made Namibia our home, and an integral part of who we are. It is so incredibly comforting to me to know that I continue to have a community here in the U.S. who knows that world and knows that life which – while 10,000 miles away – is so much a part of who I am today.
WorldTeach alum Elisa Mandell participated in the 2005 year-long Namibia placement. Today, she is a special policy officer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, proving her passion for non-profit work is still alive.
Alexis Miesen was a WorldTeach Namibia year-long volunteer in 1998. Since returning to the United States, she has developed a unique way to keep her passion for service alive. Alexis and friend Jennie Dundas have opened Blue Marble Ice Cream, an eco-conscious, all-organic company that is doing more than just that. Alongside their New York City based business, they have started a non-profit which has helped to open an ice cream shop in Butare, Rwanda. To learn more about their company and its mission, check out the recent Time magazine news article below.
UNAIDS has commended Namibia on its recent decision to lift travel restrictions that had previously been placed on people living with HIV and other contagious diseases. Namibia is now looking to move past these previously discriminatory practices and combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic head on.
During the first term of the school year one of the school’s classrooms was used as a boys’ dormitory. Sometime during March the school was informed that technicians from 
So for approximately two months a classroom from which learners were evicted sat empty and unused; it bugged me. During the examinations, when learners stopped coming to school regularly, and lessons basically ceased, I decided to busy myself with converting the empty room into something productive. After acquiring keys to unlock storerooms I had learners help me carry boxes of books (fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, books on tape, that had been collecting dust for years - plural) across the school blocks into the new library. Other teachers and I unscrewed shelves that stood bare in different offices and placed them next to the library walls instead. Each night I loved going to the library to sit at my computer alphabetizing and cataloguing all of our books while playing hip-hop music at just slightly above a reasonable volume. The light in the room must have given away my habits because I was once asked by another teacher, “What time do you wake up and what time do you go to sleep?”
Some things that the learners did in the library were quite frustrating, but I had to keep reminding myself that these kids had no idea what to do because they had never been in a library in their whole lives. For example, when I originally shelved our magazines I divided them into piles based on subject matter. Then within categories I had magazines alphabetical by title, and then within titles I had them in chronological order. It took maybe two nights before I realized that just keeping like magazines in a pile together was sufficient. The kids’ disorganization was partly due to an immature messiness and also partly due to the fact that many of them didn’t even recognize that the piles were organized in the first place. 
So Oshikunde now has a full-fledged media center, and the kids have become so accustomed to it that I can sit at my desk typing this blog while they read and only have to utter the occasional “Quiet please”. Computer lessons at first were exhausting, running around making sure no one broke anything and repeating myself over and over again. To give you an idea, in lesson one it took every class a full forty minutes to simply turn on and then turn off their computers. But just this afternoon I had a full computer lab with learners doing everything from flipping through encyclopedia software to playing mouse practice games and using typing training programs while we all listened to a local Kwaito (a Namibian form of up-tempo hip-hop) musician at a reasonable volume.
This spring the 2005 Namibia WorldTeach group gathered in 
forever.
