Major flooding, wrapping up Term 1, and over 30 pictures are after the text!

Rain, rain, and more rain. Water? Water? Still no water.

In my last post I mentioned the summer, from about January to April, is the rainy season. From what I could tell at the beginning was that things were pretty normal. It rained the entire first week I was in the North, but from there, rained a few times a week with a few weeks getting no rain. At times it had been wet even changing the way I walked to school, but seemingly normal until a few weeks ago. Since then the entire North and some of the Northeast of Namibia has experienced severe flooding. Schools have closed, both crops and roads have been damaged, and some people have been forced from there homes. In Omungwelume the paved road to Oshakati has been washed away, cutting all traffic, and the water from the tap has been off since Wednesday 23 March.

Recently water has been brought in by NamWater and is located where I live at Eengejo Secondary school, a hostel school where my roommate Bernie teaches 11^th and 12^th graders, and at the police station. I had heard the clinic also had some water reserved earlier in the week. We had saved 1/3 of the bottles left here by the previous volunteer after throwing most of them out thinking it was an outrageous amount of water, but ran out last Sunday before the water came Tuesday. In the meantime we had collected water for dishes etc. and showered from roof runoff.

It was somewhat of a joke at first and we enjoyed using the roof for a while. It was by far the longest period the water had been off. It goes off more regularly than I blog but is typically back within a few hours or at most a day By Sunday we were checking it hourly and the water ran out saying, “When we finished such and such it will be back on,” only to laugh when it was still not on after a walk or cooking or whatever. Since then it was a bit scary, but water coming was a huge relief.

Over the last few days we have adapted to hauling our water and buying our third washtub for a new sink (2 are used for laundry and we didn't want to mix cloths with greasy dish residue). So far I've never been to get water when there hasn't been a small line and steady stream of people. The first day water was available there was a constant flow of people through the town fetching water.*

*Didn't think of it before, but some kids fetch water every week. I have had them present “My Weekend” in class twice. One pretty informally as an activity on Monday and the other for their a grade in their Continuous Assessment (CA) portfolio. Anyway, they always say, “Then I fetched water and washed my school uniform.”

To say the least it has been an interesting time. We are always told how important water is for us to live physically which is true, but I have now realized how water is important to live period. It is necessary in every aspect of our life from cooking and cleaning to using the toilet. Anyway, things are good now with a strategy and routine with the water. We have it pretty good compared to many people in the area.

Here are some links to the local newspapers and a little international coverage of the floods. They are in order starting from March 25th. New Era and The Namibian are two national newspapers. I prefer The Namibian but was surprised to see New Era might have a better website. I'm a little disappointed there are not more pictures. The printed papers have published a lot more than are shown on the website.

Also, for reference, I live in Omungwelume located in Ohangwena region. I am about 15 to 20 miles north of Oshakati, the nearest large town which is located in the Oshana region.

New Era - March 25 - 2011 floods the worst ever

ISP - March 25 - Heaviest Ever Floods in Northern Namibia

The Namibian - March 30 - Big Rescue

The Namibian - March 30 - Flood disaster declared

New Era - March 30 - Oshakati could soon be cut off

New Era - March 30 - Massive destruction in the north

BBC - March 30 - Namibia's President Pohamba declares floods emergency

The Namibia - March 31 - Worst flood-hit Oshana appeals

EWN - Floods close hundreds of schools in Namibia

The Namibian - April 1 - Islands

So, like I said, others are way more affected by the floods than I am. My school has not closed but the primary school next door is closed. We are cut off from Oshakati, but still have plenty of food and most businesses are still well stocked. In fact we have been a little spoiled being pretty close to Oshakati where there is much more available due to pretty nice South African based supermarkets. Some volunteers aren't able to go there as often and do the majority of their shopping in smaller towns.

What's bad or will be are the long term effects. Like I said, it's more of an inconvenience for us, but many are and will be suffering throughout the year. We will have to see how they play out but many people are displaced and harvests are expected to be low directly impacting a large number of the populations food supply. We will just have to see.

Besides the flooding things are going well. We are actually wrapping up the 1^st term at school and I am looking forward to the break. The last few weeks have been eventful but a little frustrating. It seems that just when I was in the flow and things were coming together, the end of the term came and brought many additional commitments and conflicts that have interrupted having the library fully functional and keeping good momentum with the English club. We have had to miss a few meetings and won't meet again until next term.

School here is a lot different than in the United States in many ways. The most drastic difference is having a national Ministry of Education which overseas the entire education system. The system is implemented at many levels (Regional, Circuit, Cluster, School), but is controlled by the ministry and designed by the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED).

Part of the way they keep results consistent nationally is through the Continuous Assessment (CA), a series of broad required activities that fall into categories, Listening & Speaking, Reading & Writing, Literature, and Continuous Writing. The other is testing, although the testing is done a bit differently than I have ever seen.

What they do is devote each term's last 2 – 3 weeks to testing. Each promotional subject (those which count toward moving to the next grade) has a test or tests that are written in a very specific way with specific requirements laid out in the national syllabus. In grades 8, 9, and 10 the CA counts for ½ of the grade and the test counts for the other ½. For example, English as a Second Language for grades 8 and 9 has 3 tests, Reading & Writing, Compositions, and Listening, which are worth 100 points total. The CA is also worth 100 points. They will take test each test on the 4^th, 5^th, and 18^th respectively.

What's different is how the tests are set or written. April tests are written at the Cluster or Circuit level *, August tests are written at the Regional level, and November tests are national exams. I really like the way the exams move from Cluster to Region to National because it helps balance local differences while having a national standard that you hope to achieve.

*I had the pleasure of writing our Cluster's exams, something I kinda enjoyed but don't want to do again. Here are links to my tests although I'm not sure how they look in GoogleDocs. Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3 - Teacher's Text, Paper 3 - Answer Booklet.

I believe as you move to grades 10, 11, and 12 the national exam is the only thing that determines if you move onto the next level. If you fail at grade 10, depending on your score, you must retake the grade (allowed once), retake the subject failed, or will not be promoted and will end formal schooling. Historically, although it varies year to year, about 50% of students don't move on to grade 11.

So, it's an interesting and busy time. I barely got all my Continuous Assessment in after not really understanding what was going on with it and worked many hours on my tests. I finished my last day of teaching on Friday and am catching up on some grading and recording of grades this weekend. During testing we start school at 8 as usual but will dismiss the learners at 11 and I think we stay until 1. I hope to work hard on the marking at school and have free time, but we'll see how that goes. More often than not I am helping other teachers with computers whether it be formatting and designing documents, fixing computers, or just helping print. We'll see but, regardless, it is crazy to have the first term in the bag. I am hoping to improve next term, mostly in regard to planning, but am looking forward to my break where I can reflect and, at times, not even think about school.

For break, after our Mid-Service Training through WorldTeach, me and 2 other volunteers are going to backpack down to southern Namibia where we hope to complete the 5 day backpacking trail through Fish River Canyon. So far we have made a reservation to enter the trail, a requirement after someone was injured a few years ago, but are playing the rest of the three weeks by ear.. What we don't know is if it will open on time, May 1. With the heavy rain and floods here we don't know if the water will be too high there. The trail isn't open before May 1 because of flash floods. Regardless, we have other plans including seeing Luderitz, a German colonial town, and Sossusvlei, an area in the Namib desert surrounded by large, red sand dunes reaching up to 325m.

Below are a bunch of pictures I took last week. They show our morning assembly that happens Monday and Friday, a few pictures of the school, my classes, P.E. (girls play netball and boys soccer), my principal (Mr. George Nanghanda), and finally pictures from flooding (Most are taken right around my house except for where the cars are going through water. The picture of people far away is girls collecting water off the roof. I took the picture of the swimmers from my back yard. For the first few weeks, maybe even a month, that pond didn't exist.)

As always, questions and comments are welcome. Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures.