Disability Workshops

I have been to a few interesting disability events in the past week. Yesterday I went to the opening of the first ever event held by the Ministry of Health and Social Services for people with visual impairments. This was a very basic workshop for about 25 people with visual impairments on legal issues, but all the media were present. One of the parts of the workshop that the organizers and attendees were most pleased about was that they had materials available in Braille. The workshop shifted between Oshiwambo, English, and Afrikaans – with some parts translated, and other parts not. While the workshop was excellent, it also illustrated just how little has been done for people with visual impairments in the past. Another workshop that I attended last week was part of the African Girls Scholarship Program of USAID, conducted by an African organization - FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists). This program provides scholarships to primary school girls to pay for their school fees, and trains teachers to support the girls’ education. This particular workshop was for the teachers of girls with disabilities. Teachers from all over the nation came to this workshop, and it was interesting to see the differences between the urban and rural concerns. The leaders of the workshop, while excellent trainers, had no disability background themselves, so I ran the afternoon session for them. The teachers were quite motivated to help girls with disabilities attend schools, and I left feeling inspired.

Strike was over before it began...

The strike was very effective here at UNAM. In one day, the staff got their demands met, and school is back in session. Although classes started officially two weeks ago, many students are still trying to register for classes and in many classes less than half of the students are attending. I'm just co-teaching courses this first semester, so I am not having to deal with the hassles of new students joining class every day for the first three weeks of school.

I now have an office, with electricity, furniture, a telephone and an internet hookup (still waiting on a computer, which may never come). It took a very clever Oshiwambo speaking person on the faculty here to yell at the right person for this to happen.

Happy Birthday Alice!

Alice had her 8th birthday last week-end. We had a small birthday party our house on Saturday afternoon. She had 5 friends from school and a neighbor over. They all had an excellent time. On Sunday we celebrated her birthday by driving north about an hour to the Gross Barmen Hot Springs “Resort”, a natural spring resort, for a dip in the mineral pools. The drive was beautiful, and looked completely different after the rains. Lots of green and wildflowers, and some of the dry river beds were even a bit muddy. While this national park was certainly not updated and was a little bit dingy, we were surprised by how deserted the place was. On a beautiful sunny day (it didn't start raining until late afternoon), there were only about 5 groups in the entire place. The resort has a huge outdoor mineral pool, and a large indoor hot pool, with a fountain, a big rickety playground, and a nice restaurant. We look forward to coming back here when it is colder in the winter!

Over the week-end Bill and I went to an adults-only dance sponsored by the International School over the week-end as well. This was not quite like any event we’d been too – a cross between a high school prom and an African disco. Not quite like the events at St. Anthony Park Elementary!

Other news: Maxine came in 3rd place in the entire school (k-13) in the “write the school song” contest. The winner was a secondary student.

Ruby and her class did a performance on Chinese New Years at the school assembly. She sang a song and got to hold up a fish, which she tells us, represents health and wealth. Unfortunately, she now has the stomach flu.

Strike

I finally have an office, but there is now power in it, so I still can’t really work in there. They are hoping that power will be on by the end of this week, before classes start on Monday. But now there is another obstacle. The university just voted yesterday to go on a general STRIKE, starting on Friday. The faculty and staff were promised raises a number of years ago through a negotiated contract, but they haven’t actually received the raises spelled out in that contract for the past several years. With inflation so high here, this is a big problem. So, even if I did get my office on Friday, I can’t actually go in now until the strike is over. People are predicting it will only last a few days, but you never know. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get settled here!

The university campus is located at what used to be the campus of one of the old South African Teacher Training Colleges, when Namibia was still ruled by South Africa and called South West Africa. South Africa instituted its apartheid based educational system in South West Africa, from primary school through college. So this very large campus, where UNAM now is, was only used by 200 white students training to be teachers up through 1990. UNAM was founded in 1992, and the campus is now home to 10,000 students that come from all over southern Africa! My office is going to be in one of the old piano rehearsal rooms, not too far from the offices of the rest of my department.

RAIN

The rains have finally come! It started raining on Thursday, and has been raining on and off ever since (today is monday). We are all happy to be wearing long pants and sweatshirts, and it is cool at night - in the 50s. While Windhoek hasn’t had a long rain like this for two years, it has been raining too much in the northern regions. There has been flooding near the Angolan border, and many of the regions are experiencing an efundja, or a seasonal flood, of the oshanas, which are seasonal wetlands. There is nothing like that in Windhoek, though it all is suddenly remarkably green and plants are flowering. Everyone is talking about the rain.

Classes begin... slowly

I have taught my first classes this week, and am enjoying the students very much. While UNAM hasn’t officially started yet for most students, the students in their 4th year (seniors) had a week of classes this week to prepare them for their work in the field. The 4th year students do a yearlong internship in community agencies. They spend 3 weeks working in their agency, and then come to campus for one week of courses (they take 5 courses all year long also). They work a total of 108 days in their agencies. (They have a HEAVY load). They also do a substantial thesis based on original research.

I also did a workshop for their supervisors who came to campus for one day, and got to meet people from the various government ministries (e.g. Ministry of Health and Social Services, Ministry of Gender and Children, Ministry of Youth) and some non-governmental organizations.

In my first lecture I put a map of Namibia up on the board and had the students come put a dot on the map where they were from, and then made sure I understood the pronunciation of their names (I couldn’t). In the 4th year class, which is quite small, there are students from all over Namibia (only 4 are from the capital city – they are also from the coast, the north, and the Caprivi strip), and one student each from Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Tanzania and Swaziland.

The students generally call me “Prof”. You have to have a PhD to be called “Prof” – there is only one other in my department. The rest are called “Mrs.” When I told them that my students in the USA generally called me Liz, they were shocked!
I won’t meet the other students for a few more weeks.

... still waiting for an office, phone, etc.

Swapokmund & Walvis Bay

This past weekend we went to the coast with one of the other Fulbright families – Janet, and her two sons Ross and Luke – all in our big van. The drive from Windhoek to the coast makes you realize just how sparsely populated Namibia is. We passed through 4 small towns in our 4 hour drive, and much of it was described in the guidebook as a “vast nothingness”. The guidebook was pretty accurate. On our drive we did pass through areas that have granite and marble mining, and really interesting rock formations. Then, after almost 400 kilometers, you make a sudden decent are enter the beach town, Swapokmund. It’s a little bit disconcerting, because Swapokmund seems somewhat like a German resort-town, with lovely architecture and nice cafes. It seems like it’s just plunked there on the coast in Southern Africa, which you can only get to after miles and miles of vast nothingness. For those of you Hollywood fans, this is the town where Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had their baby. This attention by the paparazzi did not seem to make Swapokmund THAT popular, as it was virtually empty all week-end, and this is still the middle of the summer.

We stayed in a “resort” about 10 kilometers down the coast in an area called Long Beach. This is about halfway between Swapokmund and the port town, Walvis Bay. The drive itself on the road from Swapokmund to our resort was fascinating. We got to see a fairly recent shipwreck. Just north of Swapokmund is the Skeleton Coast, which is called that because of all the shipwrecks. But we were surprised to see one right near our resort. It was wrecked there in 2006, and they will just leave it to the elements.




On the otherside of the road, are the high desert sand dunes. The desert comes right to the ocean in this part of Namibia. It is beautiful. We climbed up to the top of a really high dune, which was exhausting. But it was very fun to slide down them! The sand was really, really hot.


Climbing Up the Dune


On Top of the Dune


Sliding Down the Dune

The resort had a huge playground (very unsafe, so the kids loved it), and a HUGE pool with a waterslide (no rules!). The next day a number of local folks came to play on the waterslide, but we were by ourselves at night with no other guests. We splurged on this place – our self-catering apartment cost about $55 US a night.



Over the week-end, we went to the local aquarium and saw flocks of flamingos in the lagoon in Walvis Bay. We also went to a local craft market, saw the beautiful wild parakeets, and played in the ocean. Maxine and Alice were happy to see the Lighthouse which we’d seen before we came on the Amazing Race TV show. We had a lovely dinner at the yacht club in Walvis Bay (which was nothing like a yacht club I’d ever seen before – just a ramshackle building with a few rusty boats in the yard).


Bill and Ruby overlooking the craft market by the Swapok lighthouse.


Donkey cart in Walvis Bay


But our highlight was our Sunday morning tour with Tommy’s Living Desert Tours.
Tommy is a guide who knows everything about the desert. We got in two land rovers, and drove on fixed routes through the desert. We’d be driving along, and Tommy would suddenly stop, jump out of the car, dig a hole in the sand, and find a lizard. Sometimes he can tell by the tracks where small animals would be (he calls them the “Bushman’s newspaper”), and sometimes by a slight discoloration in the sand. We found a bunch of different kinds of lizards, a side winder (as Tommy says, “don’t worry, it’s venom is only fatal for children”), a scorpion, chameleons, and lots of insects. It was fun and fascinating for everyone. We also got to run up and down the desert dunes, and take a very wild ride at the end which was as much fun as a roller coaster (though certainly not as safe!).


Ready to get on the landrover.


Alice with Tommy. She has a lizard biting her finger!!


Tommy is putting a huge chamelon in Ruby's hands!


Alice and Ross are the two black dots on top of the sand dune in this photo.


Tommy isn't afraid of snakes. Here he is with a sidewinder he caught.


Maxine during our wild sand dune ride.


All of us at the end of the tour.

We could have stayed on the coast for a lot longer, but had to get back to school and work. We’ll be back.