Goodbyes...

Recently we have had to say "Goodbye" to three of the team from Rehoboth: Steph (from Canada) and Cathi and Alli (from USA). "Goodbyes" are always hard but little did we realise that we would be saying our own "Goodbyes" just a few weeks later.

After just over five weeks back in the UK, everyone felt that as Katie was making such good progress, Ruth should return to be with us in Namibia. However less than a week after Ruth's return we heard the news that Katie was back in hospital. It is difficult to put in to words how we are feeling right now - whilst we are convinced that we are right in coming home we also feel that God has used us in Rehoboth and that the work is unfinished. We have formed deep relationships with people in such a short space of time and are sad to think we might not see them again.

Before we returned we had the opportunity to spend three nights in Etosha National Park. It wasn't the best time to visit as the rainy season had started. This meant the animals no longer had to stay close to the water holes but we all enjoyed seeing many different birds and animals:

The Rehoboth team were involved in running a summer holiday club at one of the state orphanages in Windhoek during the week in which we left Namibia and Ruth was able to help for the first two days of this:

Before we left the team went out for a farewell meal together in Windhoek:

I am planning to return to Namibia in January to finish off some computer work I have started at the theological seminary (NETS) and also to try to hand over what I have done at the school in such a way that it can be sustained after I have left.

Please continue to pray for us as we go through this transition. We need to decide what our next steps will be - we are convinced that I will not return to teaching full time in the UK. If possible I would like to find a job where I can combine an IT support role with teaching mathematics. Ruth hopes that she might be able to find a role outside of the home for a few hours each week.

We want to thank all of you who have supported us prayerfully and practically (this is probably the only way that we can thank those who have supported us anonymously!) If any of you want to continue supporting the work of AIM in Namibia after the end of January we will send the funds to Mick & Suzanne Rineer.

When it rains...

We had a very impressive storm tonight - it was amazing to see how quickly the ground turned from being a dust bowl to being completely flooded. The photo below is taken from our front door looking across the yard to the girl's hostel. There isn't the drainage system so although the house has gutters and downpipes they discharge straight on to the ground a small distance from the house. Thankfully the floor of the house is a couple of feet higher!

E3L or English as a third language...

I have been busy marking the exam papers today. I can really see the impact of the fact that for many of our learners English is their third language. Khoekhoegowab or Nama is their mother tongue, then they learn Afrikaans at primary school, and in grade 4 they start to learn English - which is the official language of Namibia. It was hard enough for my learners in the UK to learn all the names of the quadrilaterals but in your third language... it wasn't surprising to see that one learner when asked to name a shape forgot that I has said a parallelogram was LIKE a squashed rectangle and wrote "squashed rectangle" as their answer!
Evenings have been busy this week with last minute revision classes - the photo below shows some of the grade 8 girls earlier this week.

Store in a cool dry place...

I made some soup this week (it is alright we haven't been living just on soup!) the instructions on the packet amused me "Store in a cool dry place" Well dry we can certainly do here in Namibia but cool! The temperatures are getting steadily hotter as we approach summer - mornings and evenings are definately the best times of the day!

We realised we hadn't posted pictures of the girls in their school uniforms - it has been wonderful to see how they have settled at Ruimte Primary School. Courtney heard this week that she is being promoted to grade 5 in January.

Thanksgiving & Powercuts

I became a traitor yesterday when as a team we celebrated Thanksgiving, I'm still not quite sure I understand exactly the history of the day but it was a good excuse to eat too much and enjoy a relaxed time together as a team. The team has been added to again with the arrival of Bernie from Ireland.

Just as we wound up the celebrations we had a complete blackout (again) taking folks home with no streetlights was quite an interesting experience!

Powercuts are quite a feature of the rainy season but it does make for a frustrating experience as the UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) that is supposed to keep our main server going doesn't and so even a short outage takes several minutes to recover from.

This week will be the third week with Ruth back in the UK - it certainly made my birthday this week different from any other I have celebrated and it is the longest time we have been apart in our 27 years of marriage.

I received an email on my birthday from a colleague from Tile Hill Wood - my old school in the UK she took over my tutor group. It was good to hear that they are still the great bunch of kids that they were and that they have been following this blog too - so Hi 8B!

The girls are getting impatient to go back to our flat - I've been quite encouraged at how they have managed without TV here. BUT they do pester to watch movies on the laptop!

Hair Braiding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__31m9Z-bPg

Rehoboth High School (RHS)

I have settled in to school well - the learners at the moment are suffering from lack of consistent lessons. To explain: we are coming to the end of the academic year here - with it being southern hemisphere the summer is in December/January - and the Grade 10's and Grade12's (our Y11 & 13) are doing their external exams. This means that teachers have to supervise the exams and in addition some teachers are called away to Windhoek to mark the papers, thus leaving some classes without teachers. Whilst their behaviour is amazingly good, they do end up getting more and more boisterous as the day goes on and they have more and more lessons with little or no supervision.
The computers are now in good shape - the virus protection is at last updating each day and currently I think we are virus free. In my computer room I have 20 student computers connected to a main server. The learners had a nasty shock this week as they weren't aware that I could see all of their screens on my screen - it makes it easy to spot who is playing games and take appropriate action! I'm Mr Bad Guy at the moment as I have also removed their access to the Internet - they are now only allowed on if it is appropriate for them to do so! There was an announcement this morning that 20 staff (out of 30) needed to be trained to Level 1 of the International Computer Driving License (ICDL) by April next year - I think I know what I might be asked to do next!
The one area that I struggle with most is the timing of the school day - you have to go by the bell not by your watch and this makes any attempt at doing a plenary a hit and mostly miss affair. Assembly day (Weds) is the worst as we sometimes have two lessons rather than three before the first break, then sometimes we squeeze in the remaining lessons or we miss out one of the lessons - the question is which one?
Everyone is much more physical here, and I'm going to have a shock when I come back to the hands off culture in the UK. This week I had two girls touch my arms - they are fascinated by the difference between their smooth skin and my hairy skin! When I asked them whether they would be uncomfortable if I was to pat their heads they both said not at all, and they were quite shocked when I said that it had made me feel uncomfortable. They are physical with each other too - often arriving to the lesson with cuts and bruises from fights. How should I put it? The sanctions are physical too, I have told all of my classes that I will not being using corporal punishment (- I just use my tongue instead!) and in return for my respect I expect them to show me respect! I discovered recently that when you send a learner out of your class you risk not seeing them again as they disappear off to the toilets so that they won't get punished by other teachers - it makes sending them out to speak to them quietly a bit difficult - they are not used to the idea that they might be let back in to the class after they have been spoken to. I guess in time they will get used to my way of doing things.
At the end of the school day the learners "pray"/chant "Now that school is over, Father hear our prayers, Take us safely homewards, In thy loving care, Amen" Normally at this point they would then stampede for the door, however they are now beginning to get used to my routine of me dismissing them a row at a time. I noticed the other day that another teacher who had seen my routines do the same thing - what have I done?!

Oanob Dam

Last Saturday we decided to make the most of the weekend together and went up to a reservoir just 7km away from Rehoboth. The area has been turned in to a resort and as well as swimming in the lake and a pool, we also saw some giraffe and zebra just after we arrived. It was a lovely day and the girls loved the swimming pool and slide.

And then there were three...

It seems ages since I last updated the blog and a lot has happened. The big news is that on Tuesday this week, Ruth went back to the UK to visit Katie and to look after her for a while. So there are just the three Rowells in Rehoboth currently. Thankfully the team here is being very supportive, yesterday both Jaydon & Courtney went straight from school to Kristen & Mackenzie's home and right now Courtney is there again whilst Jaydon has gone to her teacher's home. Jaydon's teacher's daughter was 21 this week and so Jaydon is helping to celebrate! The teacher's daughter also has special needs and goes in to Jaydon's class most days, and has now got to know Jaydon well.
My school have also been very supportive and I just go straight there after dropping the kids off at their school. We have now got a lady, Katrina, who comes in twice a week to do our washing, ironing and cleaning - the only problem is that she doesn't speak any English!
We don't know how long Ruth will stay in England for, so we are just living a day at the time and trying to leave the future in our heavenly father's hands.

Farm school fun day...

On Saturday we went to the farm school where Catherine, another AIMer from the UK, is teaching. It was a 45 minute drive and most of that was on sand/gravel roads. It was just like you sometimes you see on TV - the car speeding down this dirt track leaving a huge cloud of dust behind! The rural part of Namibia is much more like the Africa you imagine with small ramshackle buildings often made out of corrugated iron. The school has about 70 children and is literally in the middle of nowhere serving a number of local children and about 20 that live in a hostel next to the school. The views from the classrooms were spectacular. The school was holding a fun day to try to raise money complete with bouncy castle and horse rides: and of course the mandatory braai!

Around 2pm we were taken to see the school emblem a tree that grows out of a rock.

We climbed up to see it and to get inspiring views of the countryside.

Ruth said it reminded her of the verse about the shadow of a great rock in a weary land as we looked down on the dry river bed which will apparently run with water once the rains come.

We went from there to another rock where the local children had a natural slide - made from a very smooth and steep rock. The school secretary, who was quite a character, gave us a demonstration by sitting on a piece of plastic and sliding down - much to our consternation! From there we called in on a girl who had given birth just a few days earlier. During the week she had been taken, whilst in labour, to Rehoboth with Catherine and the other teachers, at the end of the school day!

Soon be summer!

Another week has flown by and amazingly we have had cloudy skys for the last two days. There is talk of the rains arriving early this year - I don't know whether or not that is just wishful thinking. It is amazing to think that we haven't had any rain since we arrived as we hear of the weather back in the UK. We seem to have got acclimatised to the heat as I now regularly wear a coat until after the third lesson in the morning and shiver when it drops to just over 20C in the evening. The heat is very dry so a lot less tiring than when it is humid. Everything dries quickly - [WARNING schoolboy joke follows] including ones nose; as it said in a cartoon in The Namibian (newspaper) last week:
Q: "Why do gorillas have big noses?"

A: "Because they have big fingers!"

This week we had the leavers assembly for the Grade 12's (and to a lesser extent the Grade 10's) - it lasted two hours again, but this time we missed out the last two periods of the day. There was a combination of singing, dance, speeches and presents for the Grade 12 teachers. On Friday the principal's voice came over the tannoy and announced that there was a surprise in the staffroom for all staff at first break (9:05am). When I arrived there was "breakfast" which consisted of rice, lamb curry and grated carrot (they do this a lot here - it is mixed with pineapple, I think, as it is really sweet) it was very tasty just a bit early in the day! The meal had been provided by the head boy and girl and a couple of others in appreciation of their teachers! I've had a few Grade 10 learners this week ask for extra maths lessons - what a difference to the attitude of so many pupils in the UK. Grade 10 is a huge thing here in Namibia - if you fail to get a certain number of passes you aren't able to continue education and are very unlikely to get a job.

Lebenschule

Last Thursday we were invited to a Braai at Lebenschule - we took a salad which surprisingly all went - they say that if you are a vegetarian when you arrive in Rehoboth you won't be for long and for the meat eating locals chicken and fish are regarded as vegetables. Lebenschule continues to be quite a challenge for Ruth - since Wednesday last week the number of children coming has risen from seven to 20+. Many of them would really benefit from one on one but there is neither space nor staff for that. Most of the children arrive in a combi (minbus) anytime between 8:15 and 9:15 and then the driver goes back for a second load, taking at least one member of staff(!) with him. There isn't really any routine although generally they eat when they first arrive, if the porridge is ready. On a good day the first lot get fed, cleaned up, and settled with an activity before the second lot arrive. After second breakfast the rough idea is that those that are wheelchair bound (not that they have wheelchairs they just get carried!) and those who are the most handicapped/disabled go in to the outside shelter and the others stay inside and do some sort of planned activity. A little physio takes place outside and the more difficult children are contained and encouraged to play in the sand. If Ruth has any energy left after that then they try to do some action songs etc. Language is a real problem, quite a few of the kids can't talk, so just make noises, those that can, only speak their mother tongue, so either Afrikaans or Nama. Kathy has a fair amount of English, the 2 usual volunteers have a few words between them and Steph (a girl from Canada, AIM) and Ruth have about 6 words of Afrikaans each!!! They have to rely on tone of voice a lot but they're not sure the kids who are severly autistic or brain damaged even notice. Most days it is not quite as negative as this sounds, but there are huge challenges and inevitably lack of money is one of the big ones. Lebenschule does not receive any official funding and so the staff are all volunteers and resources are meagre.

Orientation - Wow that's different!

From Saturday last week we have spent time with 10 other rookie missionaries doing our orientation. This time round it was especially geared to Namibia rather than Africa as a whole.During the week we had sessions on cross-cultural ministry, the history of Namibia, security, living out our faith and mentoring. In addition to this we had chance to watch two very moving films: "Cry Freedom" - the story of Steve Beko and "Beat the drum" a fictional but accurate portrayal of the problem of AIDS in sub-saharan Africa. We had an email from Ruth's brother this week where he talked about sermons being available on the internet but then said "...not that I suppose you’ll get a lot of time for listening to sermons when you’re trying to live one!" which I thought summed up what us being here is all about.

On Wednesday we all went to one of the "New Start" clinics and went through the experience of being tested for HIV including the pre-test and post-test counselling. In the film "Beat the drum" there was a scene where the boss was encouraging his workers to be tested telling them that it would make no difference if they tested positive - sadly this isn't the experience of many here in Namibia where a positive test can mean being cut off from family, friends and employment.

The Namibian who took the session on the history of Namibia had actually been part of the student uprising. During a tour of significant sights in Windhoek he showed us the fence he had jumped over when fleeing from the South African army who had arrived to break up a demonstration at the High School. We first went to the "Old Location" from where the non-whites were forcibly evicted, and saw the grave of the first martyrs in the fight for independence. The blacks and coloureds (as they are referred to here in Namibia) were moved to a part of Windhoek called Katatura (the name means We won't stay here) and much of the housing that was provided remains to this day. The area is expanding as more and more people from the villages move to Windhoek to try, largely unsucessfully, to find work - the so called urbanization of Africa. The newer settlements have tin shack type housing, a shared water pipe to collect water from and shared toilets. In one such settlement we visited a church made in a similar style with beer bottle tops used as washers on the nails that held the corrugated steel sheets to the timber framework. Each Sunday a congregation of about 300 gather to worship in a building that couldn't have been much bigger than an area half the size of our home church, LFSBC. One can only imagine what it must be like in the heat of the Namibian summer.

One of the things that is so characteristic of Africa is the huge contrasts between rich and poor and the way that it is side by side - we visited what used to be the "whites only" graveyard and compared it to the blacks/coloureds graveyard only ashort distance away. One in immaculate condition with grass and trees and tarmac roads separating the different parts, the other bleak and dusty with untended graves, many with nothing but a simple stone number to mark them.

Is it any wonder then that the whites are still held in such suspicion by many of the Namibians?

More on Alex...

I blogged about Alex in August: http://rowells-in-rehoboth.blogspot.com/2008/08/alex.html The amazing news this week was that there is now a very real hope that Alex will be placed with the Rineers for them to foster (and possibly adopt). There are still some hurdles to overcome before this can happen so please pray that these would be overcome quickly. Alex has been with the Rineers this weekend but gets really upset when Mick or Suzanne leave. This afternoon Ruth and I will go with the Rineers to the funeral of Alex's father. Alex's father, a German, died about 10 weeks ago, but no one from his family wanted to have anything to do with his burial, so the Rineers have organised it themselves. Mick will take the funeral; we are praying that he will be helped as he didn't know Alex's father at all. We hope Alex's mum will be there and that she will still be convinced that Alex should be placed with the Rineers. Tonight Alex will have to go back to the children's home, this won't be easy for anyone.

Skype

This probably belongs in the other blog on Volunteering Redtape - but I just wanted to say how cool Skype is. Skype is a voice over the internet service (VOIP). If you have a microphone and speakers and an internet connection it means you can talk to another Skype user for nothing. With SkypeOut you can use Skype to talk to landlines and mobiles at a rate far cheaper than the international rates and usually the voice quality is excellent. For example it costs less than 2p/minute to phone the UK and whats even better it means I can call 0800 numbers in the UK free too!!!

So if you are suitably equipped, get yourselves a Skype account, and then our account is rowellpdr, or just search for Paul Rowell - so far there are only three of us and only one in Coventry!

Our new home

We are back in Windhoek for a week's orientation. My principal and the staff at RHS have been so anxious to make us feel welcome. We were planning to get a shared taxi back to Windhoek but he wouldn't hear of it and arranged for a couple of the teachers to give us lifts. Ruth and the children were caught in one of the dust storms we had this week. Just at that moment Mr Titus, the principal drove past, did a rapid U-turn and directed them to get in his car so that he could take them home! The following day I was called to his office and he told me he had arranged for his wife to pick Ruth and the children up from school at 12:50pm each day this week.

We had the deputy director of education visit the school on Tuesday and Wednesday this week and as a result school finished early on Friday. I guess it is a bit like the head boy or girl asking for an afternoon off at speech day! The assembly on Wednesday morning lasted for an hour - the learners stood in rows (mostly in silence) outside in the cool of the morning. That morning the temperature had dropped to 5C and even though I was wearing a fleece I eventually had to move in to sunshine to warm up. The strange thing was that even though the timetable has 10 minutes allocated for the assembly we still had 8 periods that day - it seems as though the only bell you can rely on being the same time each day is home time. The joke here is that all the others are on African time but the end of the day is by the clock.

We had a bit of a disaster with the computers this week when the main server started to play up. I've spent hours trying to get to the bottom of it - it hasn't helped that the virus definitions haven't been updated since June and many of the PC's have viruses. Teaching has been going well - it is such a joy to have learners that listen and do as they are asked straight away. I ran a revision session for Grade 10 (Year 11) on Thursday afternoon and although there was an atmosphere of resentment amongst some of the learners that they had to do this compulsory extra class, once I got started and they realised that they were going to be taught this changed so that by the end, when they were supposed to have a break before the next session, a group wanted to carry on during their break!

I will try to get permission to take some photographs of my classroom with the learners especially the Grade 9 class with 39 learners!

We are gradually getting things sorted in our flat. We now have a fridge with shelves, a cooker that is wired in to the proper 60A socket rather than the 15A ordinary plug socket, a hoover and curtains in all the rooms apart from the kitchen! We are still trying to find the bits we need for the shower and the school have promised to put the rail up for the shower curtain. Ruth and I have still got two single beds pushed together but we were offered a double bed by someone here in Windhoek; we just need to work out how to get it back to Rehoboth. In our garage we have a large ride on lawnmower (for the only grass in Rehoboth - the rugby field) Mr Titus did suggest we could use that to take the girls to and from school!

The photographs below are rather flattering, one day we'll photograph the hole in the side of the bath etc...

One end of the kitchen:


View of the living are from the front door which opens directly on to this space:


The bathroom, I think Courtney may have a future as an estate agent as she has managed to take a photograph that leaves out the less desirable parts of the bathroom!


Courtney's room - the sunlight through the curtains gives the room a pink glow!