Almost 6 month anniversary!

I don't know if I'll be able to post before our real anniversary but that's right. February 21st marks my 6 month anniversary with Namibia. If this was any other relationship I could probably expect chocolates, flowers, maybe a nice dinner, but since this is Peace Corps I can probably expect to to be brutalized with either ungodly heat or a massive downpour, overrun by dung beetles and flying biting ants in my charming TRC room and to eat some delicious (?) nam food. Ah, true love. Well we only have another year and 10 months together (not that I'm counting) so I better enjoy it while I can.

Teaching has settled into something like a routine. I've gotten used to asking my learners to do something, like use rounding to solve complex problems, and then realizing they can't because they don't know their times tables or how to do long division. Or asking them to write a paragraph and realizing they don't know how to write a simple sentence. Even so we're ploughing through somehow.

Housing remains a problem. I have a beautiful traditional hut almost all built...but the ministry has to finish the last few components, such as the concrete floor, the door and the windows (somehow important nay?). Unfortunately, it appears Caprivi is broke. Broke ass broke. The ministry of works has no more money. Til April. How does this happen? Inefficiency and improper spending I'm guessing. Mawe. So I've been living in a spare office in the TRC which, as you can probably imagine, is less than ideal.

Well, I wish I had some better stories, but I just got done with a 6 hour time tabling workshop and my brain is pretty fried. The workshop was just explaining how to use a program to electronically generate timetables rather than the traditional method, to sit down wtih a piece of posterboard and last year's schedule and just change the names if teachers are doing different subjects. That's how we did it at my school and my schedule had to be changed twice the first week. It turns out the electronic program is really easy if you've ever used a computer before. If you're like the majority of the namibians who attended today it's about on the same level as rocket science. I was assisting the man sitting next to me when Scott, the Australian VSO who was running the session started explaining something and the guy next to me was obviously not paying attention. So when he turned to ask me a question about what had just been explained I asked, in the same tone of voice I use with my learners "Were you listening to Scott's instructions." "No, not so much," was the response I got. Ah tatata... i'm beginning to think the learners aren't quite at fault...

So anyway a better update is soon to come, hopefully. With pictures! Even though I always promise those...