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!

Correction: Early Mornings

Ruth was anxious to point out that whilst school starts at 6:50 our alarm goes off at 5:30am!

Many Positives but Internet Blues

The school's Internet connection is painfully slow so until we get a better connection updates might be a lot less frequent!

Loads of positives to report:

We have moved in to our new home and it is great, three bedrooms and a large living area.

We are being made to feel very welcome by everyone.

We have made an offer on a car which has been accepted. We are hoping we might be able to bring it back to Rehoboth after orientation. We rapidly realised that living here without a car was just not going to be very practical, so our ideal of managing without one went out the window!

The girls had their first day at school today and have come home positive. Jaydon is in a special needs class with a teacher who has a real heart for special needs as she has a 21 year old daughter with special needs. The fact that they have a budgie in the classroom has helped Jaydon! Courtney has been quite nervous about school, but for the moment I think has enjoyed being the centre of attention.

My first complete day of teaching has gone very well - the children are still children but there isn't the in your face type of challenge that has become the norm in the UK. I think they really appreciate being taught again as their teacher has just had an operation.

We will be going back to Windhoek for a week, on Friday, for orientation and then it will be back to Rehoboth in earnest.

Yesterday we went shopping - we were trying to find a shower attachment for the flat. Lets put it this way - I can now see why many of the residents of Rehoboth go to Windhoek to shop!

It is really starting to get hot here, but thankfully the nights are still cool. It is over 30 degrees in the shade and a lot hotter in the sun! Although there is no air conditioning the classrooms aren't unbearably hot - they really design them to take full advantage of the shade. At the moment around 1-2pm there are dust storms which aren't fun if you get caught in one. Everyone looks forward to the rains - sometime in December. I've been annoying Ruth by commenting that the sky is blue every morning but now that the clocks have changed and we are getting up for school at 6:50am it is dark so she no longer has to suffer!

Still just visiting...

On Thursday we visited Rehoboth again. I spent the morning in Rehoboth High School (RHS) whilst Ruth went to look at a primary school and Lebensschule (the project for mentally and physically handicapped children).

The news on our home is better and we are more hopeful that we will be able to move to Rehoboth this weekend which will be a real answer to prayer. (BTW -this could mean that our blog updates are less frequent.)

My timetable (watch this space!) is made up of 10 periods of Maths, 10 periods of Computers and 12 periods of Business Studies(!!) each week. I hoped that I would get to observe some lessons but the Head of Department (HOD) for Computers (and much more) had had problems installing software the previous day so... Talking of fixing computers I have spent quite a bit of this week at NETS (Namibia Evangelical Theological Seminary) sorting out various IT problems. Viruses are a huge problem over here so that is usually the first thing I sort.

Back to Thursday, Ruth visited Ruimte Primary School where the principal was very friendly and welcoming AND they have a small special needs class that might be suitable for Jaydon. Ruth has an appointment at 7am Monday morning to see the principal with J&C's birth certificates and to confirm that the school can take foreigners.

Ruth and the girls then visited Lebensschule for about 3 hours. Ruth came away feeling rather daunted by the challenges. There is a need to develop more consistent structure and routine but as always there are limited resources and communication problems as the local lady volunteers have almost no English. Ruth would value prayers that she might know how involved to get in this project.

Hope Family Services

On Wednesday this week we visited another project that AIM are involved in here in Windhoek. It is a combination of a feeding project and a school. There are 450+ children registered at Hope Family Services many of whom have dropped out of or have never been to school. About 70 are known to be HIV+, but there are probably many more who just haven't been tested.

The children were very affectionate, and wanting attention, holding our hands stroking my arms and fascinated with Courtney's hair!

For many of the children this is the only way they get anything to eat...

The idea behind the schooling is that because children who are above a certain age are not allowed to go in to grade 1 they need to be fast tracked so they can enter government schools.

Web Album

I've no idea why certain photos when clicked allow you to see a high resolution picture but here is a pointer to the album where they are all kept!
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/rowells.in.rehoboth/FromRehobothToRehoboth

Hope Orphanage

Today we went with Suzanne to visit an orphanage in a shanty town just beyond Katutura, Windhoek. There were three homes on the same site one each for boys and girls and another for babies. I've no idea how old this little baby was but she was already putting on weight from when she had arrived. Although officially the statistic for AIDS in Namibia is approaching 25% in places like this it is much higher.