The garden yesterday - January 28th 2011

Bougainvillea

From the house looking down the garden - trees for shade!

Climbing plants on the back fence

This is the weed with red and green leaves

Photographs in the garden of Boma House

The garden

Let me tell you about the garden at the house.  Remember I told you that the house had once been very grand when it was first built?  It also had a lovely garden with beautiful trees that has been left to go to ruin just the same as the house.

The soil is mostly sand, quite fine, with a grey soil sub-base.  However, the rain is so heavy when it comes that it has leached the soil so that nothing much grows on the ground.  Other houses round us have only a sand yard with one or two trees planted, but we actually have some grass too at the bottom of the garden.  It isn’t cut so you couldn’t describe it as a lawn, it’s just grass and it’s growing.

If you dare to explore the garden firstly, put on extra insect repellent as the undergrowth is full of hungry biting insects – not mosquitoes but the bites are itchy.  Tread carefully and watch all the time where you are putting your feet as there are snakes about and all of them are poisonous, especially the black mamba!

There is a somewhat dilapidated metal link fence surrounding the garden and this is overgrown the whole length with delicious and exotic climbers like ipomoea (morning glory) and black-eyed susan.  

Right behind the bottom fence is a stretch of open land, quite overgrown and then the banks of the Zambezi River – so we are very close to one of the most famous rivers in the whole of Africa.  The river flows west to east (left to right as you look at it).  It is wide and swift as it moves.  It looks very deep indeed and the surface is smooth without ripples, just large swirls.  I think it looks quite menacing and I wouldn’t be sure what lives in it – hippos and crocodiles I’ve been told!  On the opposite bank you can see Zambia , which rises in very low wooded hill away from the river itself.

Back to the garden!  There is the biggest cactus I have ever seen with many prickly branches reaching upwards.  I’ve taken pictures of it but it just doesn’t look as impressive as in real life.  There is a sandy terrace outside the back doors and what were steps leading down to a circular garden and cement built barbeque (derelict now).  There is a very strange weed growing next to this barbeque which has red and green leaves.  The red is very bright red.

There are many very tall trees and all of them are festooned in trailing bougainvillea in different shades of pink.  Then there is a very, very tall tree which must have bright red flowers which you can’t see from the ground but you notice red blossom underneath the tree, look up to see where it has come from and still can’t see the flowers.  There are large aloes with sharp points hosting a strange and very clever plant trailing through it.  The flower of this plant (and I don’t know its name) has dark purple and cream markings with a deep purple cup for a centre.  When the flower dies and the seeds form, the seed pod is a little hanging basket which waits until the seeds dry and fall out, very, very clever.

There are ants building small ‘dens’ everywhere like mini volcanoes, wasps in ground holes, pale yellow swallow-tail butterflies and the best bird of all, an African Paradise Flycatcher, which was hunting insects in the overhanging eaves of the house today.  This bird has a dark head and breast, bright light-blue bill and eye ring and a chestnut back and tail.  The tail was extraordinarily long, which is its breeding plumage (to attract the females).  We also have several types of lizard and huge millipedes, very black, fast moving and about 20 cm long.  I like them though, as it is fascinating how their legs move in waves along the edge of their body.

 So it’s an interesting garden which is no longer loved or tended and I know it will return to the wild as no-one seems to care about our house at all.  It can get very hot when the sun is out; you can’t sit out for long and you always have to be on your guard and on the lookout for what might come along next!

Tuesday: The Caprivi Regional Educational Conference 2011 Day 1

Today was the launch of the Education Conference 2011 - the main theme being ‘The will to Change – Reclaiming Academic Excellence’ with a sub-theme of Inclusive Education. 

“Education is the cornerstone of power”

The objectives being:

1. To set strategies to reclaim academic excellence

2. To lobby and advocate for the support of learners with special needs and create awareness of Education Sector Policy on Inclusive Education

Today there were many dignitaries and speeches, songs and some dancing!

 The conference was held at the training college which has now been re-branded as an annex to Namibia University (UNAM) and is along the D8 main tar road just out of town towards to Botswana border.

The Conference began at 8.15 with remarks, two anthems (National and Regional) and a traditional song, a bible reading and address and a prayer.  The Regional Governor spoke and the Regional Director of Education spoke.

By lunch at 1pm we were already over an hour behind the programme so two events had to be pushed into the afternoon.  We were supposed to have two sessions of 'breakaway' presentation and discussion groups lasting 30 minutes but since the one I attended lasted an hour and a quarter, the second series of breakout sessions was missed altogether! 

It had been a really hot day until after lunch (about 31 degrees I think) and then it poured down on the tin roof of the sports hall where we were gathered and the speaker was just about drowned out by the noise and had to shout into her microphone!

We heard all about school self evaluation, inspection, SDP and AAIDs (both are types of improvement plans) etc etc; held a review of the last conference motions from 2007 and whether they had been achieved (not certain); national standards and then the national policy on Inclusion Policy. 

We watched a DVD made by ‘Katima Movie Co.’ on how schools in the region are currently managing children with special needs and disabilities in mainstream schools - this was good but was over an hour long and also had to be cut.  In fact the traditional dancers were told to stop their performance as time was running short and that was in the morning!

We are really stiff and tired for sitting so long.  However, it seems that the Principals, Board Chairs etc thought highly of the event, the reasons being that for them this was a real special occasion, they were fed and watered three times and they felt valued to be out of school receiving information and 'training'.  For them it was a huge happening.  So for us only two more days of that!!  Interesting.

This is Africa: political (SWAPO) and tribal (many chiefs there too) but a real willingness to move forwards with little resource to back up the central education agenda.

Mubiza!

I would like to introduce you to Mubiza Primary School in Caprivi.  The school is fairly small with seven classes, infant and junior, Grade 1 to Grade 7.  Grade 1 to Grade 4 learners have class teaching whereas Grades 5 -7 have subject teaching.  In Grades 1 – 3 every lesson is taught in mother tongue (Silozi) and in all other grades the teaching language is English.

You would like the school.  The buildings are grey ‘bricks’ and the windows and doors are green.  There is a small garden in front of each room with evergreen hedges all around them.  The caretaker is busy weeding these gardens after the ‘summer’ holiday; she said she would like to plant some flowers so I bought her cosmos, cornflower and Californian poppy seeds in the supermarket this morning. 

I bought a football as well because there is no sports equipment in the school at all!

Four buildings (admin offices) and three class blocks are built around this garden courtyard.  There are trees around too.  Behind one of the class blocks are the old mud classrooms and the shady tree where

The lessons used to take place until fairly recently.

There is a story behind this ……………….

In the USA there is a volunteer association called the Peace Corps, rather like VSO.  Usually young people take a year or two out of college before they start work and volunteer as teachers or other aid workers.  Mubiza had a Peace Corps volunteer two years ago and he had the class under the tree!  He loved the school so much that when he went home to the states his family and various relatives collected enough money to build a whole new classroom block – so no more teaching under the tree.

I don’t know how he managed it but there are also about eight computers in the middle classroom waiting to be connected.  I met two young Namibian people, both 22 years old,  working in the room as they have trained in ICT and are waiting for their certificates to come.  They will not be paid and there does not seem to be any hope of a job for them either.  The computers are for the community and the young people are waiting for an appointment with the Chair of the School Board and the Principal to ask if they can help out.

The Principal of the school is called Mrs Dorothy Ntema.  She wore a fantastic dress and head dress to school on Thursday and she has a mango tree at her house!  She only became principal of the school last Tuesday as she was transferred from another school on the first day of term.  Her previous school had been a combined school (primary and lower secondary) so now to be head of a primary school is seen as a demotion.  I think we will get on together and she says I am a gift!

The children come from nearby villages and when we drive down the (very straight) to school at 6.20am in the mornings they are all walking or running down the road towards the school like ribbons of blue and grey.  One boy cycles with his brother on the cross bar of his bike and must travel at least ten miles to and from school.

Some of the villages are visible from the road but most are well hidden in the bush.  The huts are round structures made from stout poles and the walls in-filled with mud, like wattle and daub.  They are then thatched; reeds are abundant in the low lying marshes.  There are no hills here only miles and miles of low lying areas.  Local people tell us that these will all flood before the end of February as the ground becomes more and more waterlogged in the rainy season.  I find this difficult to believe at the moment as everywhere looks so beautiful and abundant.

Several huts are grouped together in a compound which is then surrounded by more stout, bigger poles.  I think this must be to keep the huts safe from animals – there are elephants about and crocodiles and hippos in the river.

So the children have a very rural life.  Crops are grown and the fields are ploughed with iron ploughs pulled by three or four oxen.  Farmers keep cows and goats and grow maize, water melons and cucumbers.  There are even chickens in the school playground.

Next week the agriculture lessons are due to start so I will be very interested in writing about that aspect of school life.

And for any children reading this ...... how would you like a beach for your playground?  Every school we have seen so far has a beach to play on; a beach for a football pitch and a beach for a netball court!!

Katima environs and school on a dull day

Katima - arrival

Monday

Quite a lot to catch up on ...  The journey up here was much better than you would expect for an 18 hour trip on a coach! (two hour delay).  I slept from about 9.30pm to about 6am with an hour awake in between - I had two seats to myself so I could really stretch out - jolly lucky.  The delay was due to problems with the gears but patched up on the way.  Not lucky enough to see elephants but I saw a number of giraffe (don't know the collective noun for giraffe?).

Viviene (VSO two year volunteer met us at the bus stop in town when we eventually arrived and managed to pack everything in the car (don't know how) and we tumbled out at Boma House about a mile from the centre.

So my digs are an old colonial bungalow in the white side of town where white South Africans used to live when they governed Namibia before independence.  So a grand residence in its day but completely wrecked and being eaten alive by termites now (spot the missing woodwork / frames).  It would have been a beautiful house with a good sized garden all around.   We are all down one side of the bungalow and V had an en-suite room on the other side (she has inherited this as the longest serving volunteer in the house).  There are burglar bars on all the windows and doors and we have to lock ourselves in and out of our rooms even.

The decoration and furniture are really run down and lots of items are broken - however this is to be our home for three months so we made the best of it so on Saturday we bought a mop, brush, cleaning products, cloths, food etc, etc.  It took a long time and all I have in my room is a bed (plus mosquito net), huge desk and bedside table.  The wardrobe is built in between the walls.  A very interesting house feature is that there is a 'stoop' or open corridor virtually all around the house, like an enclosed veranda and the roof comes all the way out to cover this.  There are no windows to the stoop, but openings covered in wire mesh to stop the insects (and then more burglar bars).  The mesh is damaged in places and everywhere is very dusty as sand blows in.  The stoop is about six feet wide and creates a lovely space with outside air.  The rooms, including the bedrooms face the stoop with windows (and burglar bars).  The floor is just grey polished concrete which I quite like.  The windows are all Critall with opening doors exactly like Victoria Road.  Several of these have been soldered shut.

We went shopping again on Sunday morning and bought bed covers and I had to buy curtains for my room as beyond the stoop and a narrow stretch of garden my room overlooks a school!  I chose white shower curtains which are exactly the right width and lie flat against the window with the plastic rings attached to ..................  the burglar bars!  However the filtered light is just right and it makes the room look quite bright.  I probably have the brightest light bulb which is lucky.  I found a metal trunk in the store room and covered it with a sheet from the store cupboard to make a low table, finished the last of a large bottle of water and went into the garden to pick, amongst other greenery, some bougainvillaea which is hanging in great strands form very tall trees in the garden (which has some grass but is mostly sand).  We have hung small branch ends of the pink flowers from random nails in the walls to make the rooms look better. 

We have a washing machine!!  It has been on just about every day as we try to get things better.  The mosquito nets have had to be treated with some foul smelling liquid but this smell disappears when the net dries.

There is more to the story but that's enough for now except to say that the school placements for Elli and I have broken down and new ones have to be found.  Julia's school is OK and we visited today but her house is not ready so she is staying with us and travelling when she starts.  Next week we are to attend a three-day education conference in Katima (so again no school even if we have one by then, as all the principals have to attend the conference).  Tomorrow we can't go anywhere so we have planned skipping and Pilates and my free Telegraph fitness DVD in the stoop followed by lunch here then a stroll down to the 'lodge' bird watching on the banks of the Zambezi and a swim in their pool. 

This is Africa!

Coach travel!

Well here goes - we are off on the Intercape Coach at 6.30pm this evening for a 16 hour trip to the Caprivi region.  If I had more time I would love to insert a map of the journey and link to Googlemap to show you exactly where I am going (there is much to learn about this blogging).

Take a look at the map of Namibia and search for the Caprivi strip you will be suprised where it is and the shape of this part of Namibia.  Ask yourself why the region is shaped like that.

There should be a good tarmac road all the way but with more potholes in the far north.  Once past Rundu in the far north, there is a long straight stretch of road right through a National Park towards Katima Mulilo.  Here we may see our first elephants (a previous bus was damaged by elephants!).  People who have been recently say the rains this year have been very serious and that the rivers are at their highest ever level.  Many roads are flooded (I have an umbrella!).

I have a dongle working on my laptop so should be able to keep in touch but perhaps not until after the weekend.  My new house is called Boma House and I can't wait to see it.

Schools start again on Monday after the Christmas break and everyone is expecting a slow start so we'll see.

Yesterday were were taken on a drive to observe the different sides to Windhoek - a leftover form the apartheid arrangements when black and white people lived separate lives and lived in separate districts of the city.

Black people were poor and white people (mostly from German origin) were much more wealthy.  There was an in-between race called 'coloured' (this is a name we would not use now).  The houses ranged from mansions with thatched roofs and swimming pools to shacks put together with tin and bits of wood.  There were many new shiny tin houses which probably only had one room and and would have been very very hot in the Namibian summer temperatures.

Unemployment is about 50% of the adult population.

On the way back I saw my first red bird!  It was vivid with some black.  The wildlife is very exciting and there will be more to come!

Training - clouds building

Hot again today and the clouds are building - it would be dramatic to watch some heavy rain - the scent from hot pavements would be amazing!  The pathways are compacted pink quartz!

More training today - first a meeting with the Ministry of Education in their offices very close to VSO office.  It is good to be able to walk to these local places and a chance to see colonies of ants excavating and building domes of brown bobbles as their homes (I have remembered not to poke my fingers down the entrance though).

An interesting half an hour session where the Government education structure was explained including how government office is de-centralising to the regions and the structure is then replicated.  There is a handbook for Principals (the same book for primary and secondary schools) including a section on how to keep your filing and files in order.  The other important initiative is that schools have been given a set of performance measures that includes the basics of clean buildings / provision of desks etc.  Schools are expected to conduct self-evaluation and inspectors do work with schools.  There is minimal development training for Headteachers.

I feel I have more background information for in order to prepare for working in the schools.

The second training session was about National and Personal Security which included information about previous wars with bordering countries, insurgence and political / historical information.  The country is very safe and peaceful now but was the last African country to reach independence in 1990.  Independence Day is 21st March so we will be here to celebrate that event.

Now about the yellow bird ..  it may have been a yellow canary - very common all over Namibia but I was sure there were black markings on the bird I saw - about the size of a large sparrow.  Other possibilities are the southern masked weaver (now my firm favourite) or the lesser masked weaver.  Less likely is the golden bishop.

I hope you will all be looking up these birds too!