Color, tires, screws, lessons, and antibiotics

I know it's been a while since we started working, and finally I have some time to write again. Four full school weeks have already passed, and although I spent one (the last one to be exact) in bed with tonsillitis, our tasks here have changed more than once.

But let's start from the beginning: on the first day, Oskar and I leave the house at half past six, after I had already gotten up at 5:15 am. Exactly five minutes before seven, we sit in the teachers' room at Elim Primary School, waiting for the teacher's meeting to start. After a short motivational and admonishing speech by the principal, Oskar and I join the stream of teachers to attend the assembly. Here, the children are reminded to always be careful, as a little girl was recently abducted and killed in Windhoek. The children take this part of the speech without being particularly shocked, and then we move on to singing the national anthem and the school anthem, followed by some Christian songs. The children go to their classrooms with the teachers, and Oskar and I stand somewhat lost in the schoolyard, wondering what to do next. Until we meet Miss Harris, who is responsible for the volunteers and gives us a project. A new playground is to be built in the newly built waiting area, and we have tires available as materials. She would like a plan, and then we can start building. In addition, we are supposed to paint and make a newly built table for the first graders colorful. We decide to create a plan for the playground and go home earlier to be able to plan there. I have to say that I was quite happy about this first day, as I was worried beforehand that I would have to immediately decide on a class and a subject to teach, but the principal told us that we can take as much time as we need.

The next day and the rest of the week, Oskar and I beautify the table for the first graders. I skipped one day in the first week because I was not feeling well. My stomach couldn't handle something, and I was actually waiting for this reaction :)

In the next week, we started teaching. I teach in the first grades and Oskar teaches math and sports in the seventh grade. Since some teachers admired our (or rather Oskar's, because after my sick day, almost no one remembered me) artistic skills, we were also tasked with beautifying the preschool with cartoons. So we spent the next two weeks going to class until 10:00 am and then painting. We also met Miss Mouton during these weeks, who is in charge of the school garden and the library, and we also started harvesting beets and onions in the garden. During these works, we were supported by students who were supposed to have PE (physical education) class. But PE here means that the children can do whatever they want as long as they move. As it quickly turned out, the help of the children is quite uncoordinated and rather chaotic. That the children here are just as lively as in Germany had already caught my attention several times in class, but more on that later.

Last week, the so-called Readathon week took place throughout the country, where reading was encouraged and the benefits of reading were presented. Miss Mouton commissioned us the week before to write a puppet theater that can be performed for classes 0 to 3. Unfortunately, I was sick leave from Monday, so I couldn't participate in this interesting week and missed a reading, a play, our puppet theater, and the costume day on Friday, where the children dress up as their favorite character with self-made costumes. This year, the teachers had the theme of school uniform, and I would have loved to spend a day in a uniform, something that probably everyone who grows up without a school uniform has thought about. Too bad the tonsillitis came just before that week.

This week, refreshed and without medication, I am helping Oskar screw the first tires together, which are supposed to form some seating groups on the playground. Oskar already started working on this last week, with the support of Peter, a worker whom the school could only afford for one week. At the moment, we are busy making a film of the school to eventually collect donations for the playground. Since Friday is "Teachers' Day" and all schools are closed, we will go on the so-called "Train Trip" tomorrow, Thursday (please don't forget to roll the R's!). We don't really know what exactly will happen there or where we are going, but since everything here happens more or less spontaneously, we are just going to be surprised.