the routine

Something I’ve learned in one year: pay attention to the day of the month. Teachers are paid on the 20th, other gov’t employees are paid the last Friday of the month. Peace Corps volunteers are paid every three months but only if a male baboon is spotted by the country director before the first harvest moon.
Right now we’re sort of at the end of the cycle – everyone is staying put in the village. I was the only one in the kombi to Grootfontein this morning. Great Fountain was more of a ghost town than normal. It was eerie.
Even the newspaper recognizes pay day’s special carnival atmosphere. A story might run, “Anticipating a repeat of last End of Month Weekend Windhoek police have reminded residents not to discharge their firearms as this poses various safety concerns and is generally disruptive.” End of Month weekend has the same connotation that Halloween does in the states.
Tonight the pensioners in the village get paid at 5pm. There’s been an assembly outside my place for about 11 hours now – it’s like a Herero tailgate. Tates and memes are lounging (men in lawn chairs from the China shop, women perched in the back of pickups in full-on traditional garb). Meat is being braai’d. Kids are running around beating each other with sticks. There’s even the make-shift mini-mart that operates out of the back of an old Southwest African Army troop transport. (It has a olive colored tent that extends off the side like a hotdog vendor in the states – under the tent you can buy xxl 2Pac and R. Kelly shirts as well as maize meal and Tafel lager.)
Not only are the elderly here but a class of “hangers-on” – people who want to get in on that sweet pension action. Otherwise the money finds its way to the unscrupulous vendor with the enticing wares. The guy in the truck follows the pension people around, setting up shop in order to take full advantage of the monetary windfall/immobility of his customers. There’s another wandering salesman here in Namibia who commutes the 300km between Omaruru and Grootfontein selling ice cream. I’m not sure why he picked that route but I’ve considered getting a hike from him and his yellow van with hand-painted Mickey Mouse.
Since I had nothing better to do (and why you shouldn’t do stuff on that rationale) I took a taxi to the local air strip this morning. That was my intent at least. There was some kind of cultural misunderstanding – but I didn’t realize this until the commander saluted the cab and we entered the army base. I spoke some Otjiherero to the guy in charge of the landing strip (he was the one wearing a mesh camo wife-beater) who directed us elsewhere. We ended up going back to town to find “the guy in charge of the airport.” This turned out to mean disturbing a man who was literally eating a bowl of porridge when I walked in. I tried to explain what it was exactly that I wanted and why I was in his living room. This was not the guy, nor did he know who I should talk to. Felt bad for bothering him but he wasn’t particularly surprised that I had somehow gotten my way into his house. Still don’t know who I’m supposed to talk to about the airport. Peri nawa.

recycling

otjituuo's trash gets burned once a month. empty detergent boxes,beer bottles, sardine cans, discarded braids of synthetic hair it all gets torched . i've gotten over the mental prick you feel when you throw away a Coke bottle. it's also a habit to hold on to things. i have a shelf of empty bottles that are awaiting uses. if i don't scrounge it myself i makes sure it gets cleaned and left apart from the rest of the garbage. after i kept seeing familiar ex-products in the possession of learners (there's someone else in the village who buys laughing cow cheese?). it's funny, even my old valentine's cards turn up in kids notebooks. this caused me to realize i had parted with things that would be prized by the kids. i'm very cognizant of anything that i toss now. afterall, my learners put their scribble books into empty 3kg bags of macaroni and pop holes in discarded motor oil containers to make water bottles.
certainly the most artistic (and ingenious) is the wire car. these sculptures are usually a little over a foot in length. the kids use cut-up cans for wheels and the thick, ever-present wire that is used for fences, wash lines, holding up the satellite dish on the boys hostel. the cars themselves are often extremely intricate (there is the wire bakkie, the wire sedan, the wire tractor trailer). the best part is the working axles which are made with a discarded spool of thread. then that is connected to a long piece of wire which serves as a lead. this is the steering column. once the wire steering wheel is attached you have yourself a car. the car's motive force is foot power like on the flintstones. there isn't a more poignant image of africa than seeing out-of-school boys in their twenties with their head down "driving" around otjituuo.
recently the kids have started making paper sunglasses out of scrap paper that they find in the various dust bins around school. it's funny because they are completely taken by fads. just like rote learning they love to copy. it's like when i taught some of the kids how to put their middle finger through their hands and make it wiggle suddenly that was the cool thing to do. there was also the time during model school when one of the other teachers taught the kids how to make fart sounds with their armpits. other past fads include home-made tattoos ("Cool boy") made with Bic pens, pictures of prize-winning bulls drawn on the back of t-shirts, cutting all but one little tuft of hair which is twirled to a point, pasting on fake hair to make scrawny moustaches, drawn-on sideburns, etc.... I recently found some kids playing with my floss. I might have to go ahead and burn that before it goes in the bin next time, just so it doesn't become a fad.

donations, etc.

as the festive season comes around i've put a button on the site that lets you make donations (on the right panel). the money goes to me and then to the school. the most feasible way i could think of was to use paypal -- you have to sign up with them first if you want to give me money. the reality of donations here is that money is infinitely more useful than sending goods. books donated via m-bags from the us would be only exception to this rule. you can buy nearly everything in namibia that you can get back home. our neighbor south africa is america lite. here is a list of some of the things that i need funds for the school, listed in order of necessity:

100 china shop matresses (cost N$ 80 ~ US$12 each)
50 china shop blankets (cost N$150 ~ US$20 each)
1 new television set (cost N$3000 ~ US$400)
wood for tables/desks (cost N$750 ~ US$100)
100 lbs gravel (cost N$1000 ~ US$125)
2 basketball hoops (cost N$1000 ~ US$125)
assorted balls (cost N$1500 ~ US$200)

we have written to the ministry of education to try and obtain bed frames which would make the situation a little better but for right now there are many kids who have to sleep on the floor without any kind of bedding. of course none of this is sustainable but you'd be sure that the money went to people who really need it.

omuti: otjiherero for traditional medicine

The official newspaper of Namibia, New Era, ran an article yesterday entitled “Dispel the Belief that Disabled People Are that Way Because of Witchcraft.” People, especially in the rural areas, are quick to ascribe witchcraft as the culprit for anything. Why did you fail your Grade 10 exams? Someone is out to get you. Crops failed. Might be a hex. Even HIV is linked to witchcraft. From the classifieds:

“Traditional Dr. Aki Treat
Chronic diseases, Remove badluck,
business attraction, men, women,
Love, Marriage, Work problems,
witchcraft protection.”

Outside Otjituuo’s one and only shop there’s a big poster advertising a healer, a certain Dr. Mulatiwa. Until recently I hadn’t heard of any omuti being practiced locally. It seemed like when I would ask people about it they would claim it happened elsewhere. Last week I walked into the staff room to do some copying. The room is normally occupied by a roving half-naked toddler. Instead there was a meeting going on. It seemed some parents as well as community members were there – listening to some Grade 7 girls who were animatedly speaking in Otjiherero. I cynically believed it was a case of rape at the hostel – an all too-frequent event. I asked the secretary what was going on.
Apparently a woman had been coming by the hostel at night harassing these girls. The story went that the woman had been told by a witchdoctor that if she gave poisoned meat to a certain Grade 7 learner she would gain powers. That was the extent of the story that I gathered. Now the girls were refusing to stay at the hostel because of the danger of the woman returning. Even though I couldn’t understand the Otjiherero in the room something struck me as odd – something about the girls who were involved which made me wonder.
This was only the beginning. Over the course of the week the problems with the learners became worse. Other kids reported seeing things at night and were not comfortable. Kids were falling asleep in class because they hadn’t slept the night before. I asked Uandara what the school was doing about it.
He said that there was nothing they could do. The parents of the girl who had originally brought the claims were working on a remote farm and said his children shouldn’t have to stay at the hostel if they didn’t want to. Now more kids were leaving the hostel after school because of the “witchings.” Several of the girls from Grade 7 were not even attending school anymore.
Like I said, I had felt something was amiss from the very start. There was a certain incoherence in the way that the school was dealing with the situation. It was all the staff could talk about and classes were cancelled on the first day of the outbreak. But there was something awry. The girls’ stories, when cross-examined, didn’t match up. Then the girls started to turn on each other. One would deny that she said she had seen the woman, while the other girl would claim the opposite.
It soon became clear the whole thing wasn’t so phenomenal as witchcraft. There had been a conflict within the community regarding kids who were taken to a certain cultural festival. It took a few days for this to leak out. This had encouraged jealousy and that had caused the woman to come looking for one of the girls. It was more envy than anything else. Then when the “victims” left the hostel they started really enjoying living at their parents’ home with no supervision. Whether the woman tried to give anyone poisoned meat remains shady. To me it was something out of the Salem witch trials. The first girl’s allegations fed the fears of others. This week everyone was mostly back in school and the witchcraft allegations have receded as we get ready for exams. I for one wouldn’t be opposed to approaching Dr. Mulatiwa to see if he has something for protecting against mass hysteria.

wooot --- wooooooot!!

Somehow every child in Otjituuo has a whistle. I asked Mrs. Kalunduka what was going on:
"Who the hell gave the kids whistles?"
"The anti-corruption commission." She told me as though that were a logical source of cheap noise-makers in a remote village. In order to "blow the whistle on corruption" there are about 300 whistles floating around the school.

There is a near-constant whistling from 5:30am when the kids get up till at least 9:45pm when the last kid finally falls asleep with whistle braced in mouth. You never know if you might wake up and need to alert everyone in the block. I asked that the whistles stay at home, since they have also been appearing in class pretty regularly. When Chancelevia dropped Michel's ruler she reverted to blowing the whistle to express her displeasure. The kids have developed into disciplinarians. There were several blistering reports when Sharon and Kavepukua showed up 40 minutes late for school today.

There is something almost plaintive in the whistling. In the past 48 hours, as the dull trill has settled into my subconscious, I've come to recognize the different emotions that the monotone instrument can express. There is the "call-to-arms whistle," a frantic series of staccato blasts, often comprising an entire chorus of whistlers, which might accompany the 7am bell for school, the 9am bell for break, and the 1pm break at the end of the school day. These usually connote excitement, and the instruments are often played while on the run.

There is also the "lonesome call whistle" which might occur during the dead of the kids' mandatory afternoon rest time. This is often confused with the "I've got nothing better to do than whistle whistle" which might occur, as it just did while writing this, for no particular reason except out of the ability of the piece of molded plastic to make a loud noise. I have grown to despise the "guerrilla whistle" which consists of a child surreptiously approaching my house, offering a brief but prominant whistle then dashing off. There is also the "whistle that precedes shriek whistle," "whistle breathing," and the "test to make sure whistle is working whistle."

I rushed out this afternoon after hearing an unfamiliar series of whistles. From what I could tell it started out as a small gathering, some friendly whistle banter which then devolved into a series of frantic blasts and then a distinct "muffled whistle." As the children will never voluntarily stifle their whistles, I knew something had gone wrong.
I rushed outside to adjudicate. Ratjiukua was lying facedown in the sand. He was completely motionless and looked like he had been taken out by a mob hit. It was actually pitiful.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Karupingenua, she beat him."
"Why?" I was incredulous, Ratjiukua is one of the most genial kids at the school.
"She take the whistle."

42.2km

I ran the Swakopmund marathon last weekend. It was sponsored by Etosha Fishing There was however no celebratory post-race dumping of canned fish over your head like the winning coach at the Super Bowl. That turned out to be a rumor. You did get a complimentary can of Lucky Star pilchards when you paid your N$40 entry fee. My time was 3:33:24; pretty good for the first time. The point was to beat George W. Bush’s time. I am also faster than Oprah and P. Diddy. The race was pretty uneventful – the course is between the coastal towns of Walvis Bay and Swakopmund. There are dunes on the right side and the Atlantic Ocean on the left. It looks a lot like a Microsoft Windows screensaver. During the race we disturbed some flamingoes around 7am in Walvis (pronounced “WAL-VISH”). You also pass Langstrand, which is where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had their baby. Prior to 1994 the race would have been an international one: Walvis Bay wasn’t ceded to Namibia with independence. For three years, WB waited it out on the sidelines; remaining, Hong Kong-like, a lone South African city in the middle of Namibia.
Along the way there were many rest stops. I think it might be a local thing, but I wasn’t familiar with Coke-Cola as an energy drink. Although I thought it was a bit funny around 24km I didn’t argue if the race usher offered me the brown liquid, I spilled most of it anyways. One guy started throwing up right in front of me but I’m not sure if it was the fact he was drinking carbonated drinks and trying to run a marathon. I got angry only once. That was when a whole contingent of elderly South African men who were doing a half-marathon wouldn’t let me pass. Worse than that their spouses kept pulling up and snapping photos from their Volvo X70s. I could tell they were proud of themselves when they temporarily pulled ahead of me. I wouldn’t let that stand. When they were taking a bathroom break I went ahead and they didn’t catch up. No more Afrikaaner soccer moms.
There were all kinds of people with running outfits, belts laden with water bottles and special sunglasses. The kids were mostly running in China shop boxer shorts. I managed to smuggle my iPod onto the course. One of the other volunteers ran afoul of the race organizers after deciding to remove his shirt for the last 10km. There was also a simultaneous relay race going on with local schools. It was something else to see these kids running without shoes. Disheartening that they kept passing me though. I remember seeing the ringers at the beginning of the race. You could tell by their full-body suits with the Visa sign.
After the race it was mutually decided among the Peace Corps contingent to smoke a pack of cigarettes “to celebrate.” After breakfast I went to sleep for five hours.