School, school, school

Hello my dear,

time flew by quickly last week. Monday in school was quite boring because most of the time I had nothing to do. But on Tuesday, Katharina, my roommate, joined me in my project and it was really nice not to be alone. She usually works in a kindergarten for the hearing impaired and we are the only ones who work alone in our project. Everyone else works in pairs. On Tuesday, she was with me in 'my' class and observed the chaos 😉 in the morning, the Ministry of Health was at school and gave a lecture on Hepatitis E and Cholera, as these diseases have broken out again in Windhoek. That's why we try to use bottled drinking water most of the time and avoid tap water, even though it should actually be fine. On Wednesday, we were in the primary school area together, which was new for me. We spent half of the day in a first grade class each, and the second half in a third grade class. It was very nice to see something different, and as Katharina had already told me, it's much easier to communicate with younger children because they don't have such a large vocabulary yet and you can actually learn together with them. In Namibia, children usually go to preschool at the age of 5 and to primary school at the age of 7. However, they sometimes stay longer depending on their progress. In my first grade class, for example, the children were up to 9 years old. Generally, the children in the upper grades are of different ages. The teachers sometimes talk about 25-year-old tenth graders.

Even though I had similar little to do in primary school as usual, I might ask if I can stay there until the holidays for the next two weeks.

On Thursday, we were with the older students. Katharina was in a 10th grade class and I was in an 8th grade class. After school, we went to the hostel with the children so that Katharina could see how they live there. After school (school ends at 13:10), there is lunch and the children have 'sleeping time' until 3 pm. During this time, the children are even locked in their living complexes, which shocked me. We were allowed to go back to the children after 3 pm. They have learning and playtime until 5 pm, dinner at 6 pm, more study time until 8 pm, and then it's bedtime. Unfortunately, the children don't have a really good life there. We played basketball with them in the midday heat and then went home shortly after 4 pm.

Afterwards, I finally sat down with Lena and talked to her about my situation in school. Even though I clearly expressed that I'm not happy with my project, nothing will change for now. I still feel useless, I'm not needed by the teachers or the children, and I'm very bored. After one week, Katharina also said that she has a similar impression.

Lena offered again to go to the principal with me, and she also explained to me again that I need to be more explicit with the teachers about wanting work. Black people are not used to assigning work to white people, as they usually have a subordinate role. In my opinion, that won't help either, but we'll see. Of course, Lena also said that if the project is absolutely not working, then we will find something else for me. The question is just whether "something else" is better.. but we'll see in the near future. I have holidays in two weeks.

Today we were back in the 7th grade. Since it's "home weekend" this weekend, we were able to go home at 12 pm, which made us very happy. This afternoon, we were at a playground that was built by Wadadee. We were allowed to paint two concrete tubes and let our creativity run wild 😉 Laura and I gave our all 👍🏼👍🏼 Later, I went to the gym and tonight we're having a game night. Otherwise, not much is planned for the weekend. Since the Norwegians are on a trip again, we have the house to ourselves and can enjoy the peace and quiet.

Wishing you a nice weekend 💛

P.S. I forgot to tell you what I did besides school 😉 one day, we went shopping (successfully😍) and otherwise I was just doing sports and salsa dancing. So nothing really special happened.