Irene Harvley-Felder grew up
in Sanford and graduated from Elon University in 2005 with a
degree in English/Creative Writing. After graduation she
worked briefly as a copy editor for The Education Center in
Greensboro before joining the Peace Corps. She arrived in
Namibia in November 2005, completed training in the town of
Omaruru, and was sworn in as a Volunteer in January 2006. She
is currently teaching at a primary school called
Baumgartsbrunn, which is located 45km south of Windhoek. She
will complete her Peace Corps Service in December of 2007.
Irene can be contacted at: irenefelder@gmail.com
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Don't Ask
At least once a day, my whole house hums, a deep
bass moaning that starts in the floors and moves up the
walls, and you can feel it if you're sitting down, like
the rumbling of a plane about to take off. Something about
the electrical wiring is amiss. I guess. Either that, or
I'm eventually going to explode? Whatever. If I've
learned anything here, it's that sometimes you just
shouldn't ask questions.
Five Plus Five Is Eleven
On Monday, I taught a class of 42
sixth graders that 61 rounded to the nearest Tens place is
50. I watched as they diligently copied it in their exercise
books. I must say, I felt pleased with myself, pleased with
them, pleased with that particular brand of magic that makes
them at least appear to be attentive. Not until I had
assigned practice problems, walked around to "help"
the slower ones, and chosen five eager learners to write
their answers on the board did I realize that I'm a total
idiot. Like they don't have it hard enough, here I am to
teach them how best to get the wrong answer.
That's How We Roll
Athletics has, thankfully, come and gone. And let
me just say, for the record, I'm glad I never have to do
THAT again. Athletics is like a communist version of field
day. Everyone is required to participate. The whole school is
divided into teams, including the teachers: we had Red Team,
Blue Team, and Yellow Team. I was assigned to the Red Team,
and everybody in the team had to participate in at least 2
events. We're talking Track and Field here. Picture first
graders trying to throw a shot-put. Picture Miss running down
the dirt road at 3 p.m. in the blazing African sun,
accompanied by 75 barefoot, mildly dehydrated kids. Imagine
one of the other teachers yelling at the kids, 
"SAY! I don't
want to hear any of this 'I'm too little'
what-what. There is no 'too little' anymore, my boy!
Everyone must run!" As if Mao himself descended upon
Namibia some years ago and said, "And These Are The
Rules For Athletics. Let It Be So." I do have to say,
all the work and the sunburn and the choking on dust from any
cars that drove by was worth it just to see grade 6 Richard
soaring over the high jump bar as though his feet had wings,
nowhere close to knocking it down, at our school first, then
again in Windhoek, coming first against all the city schools.
Those other kids can have their matching track suits, their
bag lunches, their school buses and tennis shoes. We sit 25
to the back of Mr. Mberirua's bakkie with our
industrial-sized pot of noodles and our leathery bare feet
because that's how we roll.
What Do White People Taste Like?
My classroom is on the far side of the dining hall from the
other classrooms, so the kids have to walk farther to get to
me. What I like to do is stand outside on my stoop and yell
at them to run because I know the word
for run in Khoekhoe (but I can't spell it here because
it starts with a click) and it makes them laugh. Also,
it's standard for kids to line up outside their
classrooms in two rows (boys and girls separate, of course)
and wait to be invited inside by the teacher. I used to think
this was a dumb waste of time, but I've grown to enjoy
inane formalities. Anyway, I was doing that last week,
yelling at the stragglers to run while the ones who had
already arrived stood laughing, when I felt something
strange. I looked down and Melvin, grade 6, was licking my
arm. "Melvin," I said. He stopped
licking my arm.
"Yes Miss?"
"Melvin, did you lick my arm?"
"Yes Miss." He looks up at me and grins.
What could I say? I said, "Well. Okay. Girls, come
inside." And the girls came inside like always, and like
always Verona said, "Girls, come inside," doing her
high-pitched imitation of me that I ignore because she's
at least practicing her English, and it's good for the
kids to hear everything twice. Also I think she has Terrets.
Maybe he thought I would taste like vanilla?
Not By The Hairs On My Chinny Chin
Chin
Every time she sees me, Magreth in grade 5 smiles and says
"Miss must borrow me her hairs." She means the
hairs on my head, but English is a ridiculous language in
which both "hair" and "hairs" are plural
forms of
"hair," so when she says it I immediately think of
arm hairs and chin hairs and the like. She says she wants to
plait my hairs into hers because her hairs are "not
nice."
Miss, Must I Click?
Magreth is also in my computer
class. Before this year, she had never touched a computer in
her life. She and Mondelika sit there chirping, "Miss,
must I click?" Navigating the mouse is sort of like that
game where you try to pick the body parts out of the sick guy
without touching the sides, and if you do a buzzer buzzes and
you lose. There is intense concentration. And when the arrow
is finally positioned over something clickable, there is
gritting of teeth, chewing of lips, grunting, and mashing on
the mouse button with superhuman force. One must just ignore
Miss when she says the mouse is already dead, there's no
need to kill it more. Everyone knows that all buttons work
best when you mash the hell out of them. This theory also
applies to Enter keys, space bars, and back spaces. Also, the
Shift key makes the best capital letters when you bear down
on it with the entire weight of your body. But oh, the joy of
seeing their eyes widen with shock and amazement when they
learn to change the size, the font, and yes, even the color
of their carefully typed names. Oh, the hand-clapping, the
pointing, the cries of "Ai-III" and
"Et-SAY!" and "Look Miss, they did come
blue!"
Miss, It Is Energy
Girls Club continues. Three weeks ago, I made sugar cookie
dough and rolled it flat, and each girl cut out small cookies
to bake and decorate. I made 5 different colors of frosting
and bought sprinkles, raisins, peanuts, and colored chocolate
candies, and they decorated their cookies with enough sugary
things to keep them awake for an entire week. (A girl licks
her fingers, slips them into her shirt pocket where she has
poured brown sugar, then licks the sugar from her fingers.
She dips her hand in again and offers it to me: "Miss,
it is energy!") Two weeks ago, the visiting Germans went
on a walk with the girls club around the school. I thought
they would let the girls take pictures, but they ended up
just taking pictures of the girls. But it was still fun
because they love posing for pictures. ("Miss, catch me
one photo!") I got to see parts of the school grounds I
had never explored before. Cathleen and Tikeline showed me
the sticky sap on the acacia trees at the far end of the
soccer field that the baboons like to eat. Apparently, the
girls also like to eat it. I don't know why though,
because when I tasted it, it tasted like earwax. Behind the
dam, we saw what looked from a distance like a deflated
netball, but close-up it turned out to be the carcass of a
newly-slain calf, head still intact, big cow eyes still
staring, but the rest of it stripped of flesh down to its
skeleton. The girls found it amusing. Miss wanted to barf.
The girls found that amusing, too. Later, they sang and
danced for theGermans, and the Germans were so inspired they
decided to make a short music video with the girls.
Pimp My Donkey Cart
I've heard other volunteers
joke about making a new show for MTV involving donkey carts,
but last Saturday it became apparent that the real money is
in Namibia: Making the Video. I mean, nobody was dangling
from a bungee cord in front of a green screen or anything,
but everything else was on par with J-Lo: location scouting
(shoots in the library, outside the clinic, on the
playground, in the cow pasture, inside one of the old
classrooms that's missing a wall), dancing on the desks
in my classroom, a chain-smoking German director, and a guest
spot by Melvin, grade 5, who appeared rollingan old tire
across the pasture with two sticks. The music video was for
the popular Namibian artist Stanley, who sings in Khoekhoe,
so in each different locale, the girls were taped dancing to
the same song, and then the Germans edited it all together.
(Sorry, I don't speak film language.) We watched it last
Wednesday and let me tell you, it was hilarious. It opens
with Miss standing in front of her class saying, "Good
morning class. Who is everyone's favorite singer?"
And all the hands shoot up and everyone shouts,
"Stanley!" And then everyone jumps up on the desks
and starts dancing. Just like one of my real classes.
The Weather Report
Overnight, it seems, the winds have changed. It's cool
in the mornings now and again in the evenings. If only it
would stay cool at midday, things would be perfect. Most of
the kids don't have sweaters (or, for that matter,
shoes), so they huddle in patches of sunlight in the
mornings, pressing themselves against the few white-washed
walls that hold the new sun's heat best. They dance to
stay warm. The blow on their hands. They get by. The magic
that brought the torrential rains of last year has been
spent, leaving us drier than dry, a few measly rain showers
each week if we're lucky, and a whole lot of clouds
making empty promises as they break apart and fade into the
hot blue sky. Still, the soil also knows how to get by, and
things are greener now than they were in early January. The
rolling hills of the Khomas Hochland seem almost lush with
their leafy trees and bushes. (A bit of trivia:
"Khomas" means Cow, and "Hochland" means
Highlands.) In the evenings, as always, the light is at its
most beautiful, casting the distant Omitaka mountains in
shades of darkening violet against the horizon, not so very
different from the blues of the Appalachians. Last night, I
rode with the Germans in their nice car to a high spot some
30 kilometers from the school to drink beers and watch the
sun set. On the way, we passed three cows, a group of
baboons, and a man carrying a bundle of something on his
back, walking from nowhere to nowhere.
(NOTE: The contents of these
e-mails are mine personally and do not reflect the opinions,
policies, or positions of any institution or individual
mentioned, including the U.S. Government, U.S. Peace Corps,
the Government of Namibia, or its citizens. - Irene
Harvley-Felder)
