A typical day

Finds us waking to Chris' cellphone alarm at 6:00am...on Mondays, Chris needs to be at school at 6:25 for morning devotion and I have to be at school for 7:45 for assembly Monday & Fridays. We crawl out of our mosquito net & stumble around in our concrete house getting ready. Our house is fairly large for Namibia---2 bedrooms (only 1 bed), a toilet room, a shower room, a kitchen with a few cupboards and a small counter top oven & stovetop, and a "living area" which houses a bookshelf and our patio furniture table & chairs. We also have a mini-fridge...we've been promised a real fridge and a real oven & stove (the other volunteers had these things but they were removed)...but we'll let you know if that EVER happens.

Anyway, too early to eat for me, I usually start my day with some yoga, a little bit of prep work for school, and feed our two dogs, which are always super hyper at 6:30am for some reason.

Eventually I trundle off to school...a whole 12min walk, usually with the dogs tripping me as I go. Since its the rainy season, sometimes its pouring, and other times large murky puddles await me to walk through and around. Children from the Primary & my school (Junior secondary) are always around to greet me and to walk with me...occaisionally so are other teachers and memes (women).

I enter our staff room with my stuff...all teachers here have all their class stuff in the staffroom, which is invariably a clutter of tables stacked with papers, books and chalk. I have heard supposedly true rumours from the principal that some of the spaces haven't been cleaned in a long time...and last year they found a scorpion in one!

Then its off to dodge puddles and Bingo to my classes...on Monday that means 7 classes and one break of 30min plus one spare (40min).
After class, study begins for 2hours and kids usually work quietly at their desks...or sometimes play Netball or tend to their agriculture class maize crops. I've started trying to get a library program running, so last week study period meant tours of the library and interviews of potential assistants. Thursdays in study I teach the staff how to use computers (but that is a separate story).

Then I run home, die on the bed for a bit, mark, plan & perhaps wander around the village for a bit or run (another interesting story to come).

On days we go to Oshakati, this is a special adventure which usually is not an easy feat...maybe one day (yes we saw progress this weekend) the road will be paved all the way, but right now 11km or so are not. Trouble is, they are leveling it, so they put rocks on the road to avoid traffic...and cars drive in the ditch...Problem is, the ditches are full of water and so you must drive around the rocks or move them and use the road. Last Saturday was definitely the worst day...the slurry of mud-sand almost stopped our little 2WD a couple of times, and definitely caked over our headlights and splattered the windshield. Exciting, but scary, usually meaning we're hot and sweaty by the time we reach Oshakati...maybe by April this will no longer be an issue (no rain, more pavement), but perhaps it won't be a problem for future volunteers.

Back at home our evening usually means enjoying the gorgeous colourful sunsets, listening to the kids sing & finish their 7-9pm study session, watching the goats get led home, and finishing our prep. Lights out usually sometime just after 9pm so we can manage to do it all again tomorrow.