Tales of Village Life

This week has been pretty quiet (apart from inside the actual classroom of course). So I thought I’d tell a few unrelated stories from the past month I never got around to sending out. At the beginning of September a large box arrived from my sister Ashli. Inside were six balls—four soccer, one volleyball, and one basketball. I was excited for two reasons: I knew the kids would enjoy them and I had some leverage to induce good behavior. The first afternoon they earned it, I let the boys take out one ball and the girls take out another. Naturally, the girls played quite happily with their ball for the rest of the day. But about half an hour after I’d given the boys’ ball out, there was a knock at my door. Suppressing the nagging feeling in my stomach, I opened up to see that my hunch had been correct. A crowd of about fifteen boys stood on my stoop, holding up what had been a beautiful, perfect blue ball thirty-minutes ago. I was furious. Utterly furious. “What happened? Who did it? What is the matter with you?” All of these phrases spluttered out of my mouth one after another. I’m pretty sure the boys had no idea what I was saying, but they knew I was angry. They know my angry face very well.

Then, somehow, they communicated that they had a way to fix the ball. I was completely skeptical, but thought I had little to lose, so I asked them what they needed. They already had some of the tools—glue and tire rubber (good for whacking kids and repairing punctured soccer balls, a wonder product indeed). They wanted me to deflate the ball entirely. Then, Amram—one of the older seventh grade boys who can barely sit still for five minutes in my classes—borrowed a knife and patiently cut a circle around the top. I watched curiously, despite my fury, as he pulled the rubber-inside of the soccer ball out of its shell. Then we pumped it up a bit so they could find the hole. He applied glue, the patch, and then we waited for fifteen agonizing minutes. The boys huddled in a circle in my yard, around Amram, waiting for the miracle. We deflated the ball again, put it back inside the blue shell, and pumped it up. There was a roar of delight. Amram was a hero. The boys took off to the field as if the ball was new. I went back inside, shaking my head with exasperation but with a small (tiny) smile on my face.

The month of September also brought about the second break in of the school. The first happened in August when a drunk man climbed the barb wire fence and went into the girls hostel. I shudder every time I think how badly this could have ended. The man simply went to sleep in the room next to one of the girls. Scary I know, but given the circumstances it could have been much worse. No one knew he was there until his cell phone went off in the middle of the night. This woke up all the girls who started shrieking. When no one came to their aid, they threw rocks on mine and Ms. Ikorua’s house, which did the trick. But before we could get there, the man jumped out the window and escaped. Later the next morning, a group of my ‘darling’ seventh grade boys decided to play detective and track the man down by following the footprints he left in the sand. Needless to say this resulted in nothing except them missing class.

The second break in was another drunk man. Again, no one was hurt, but already uneasy after the first time, I was really scared for the girls now. I talked to several of the teachers and Ms. Kahaanga suggesting bars on the windows, a school security guard, something, anything. Not every story is going to end with a close call. I was shrugged off time and again. The teachers seemed to acknowledge the situation was dangerous, but for some reason my suggestions seemed preposterous to them. The police would handle it, I was told. Right—the way they handle the water situation.

The next day, however, I was walking home from school and noticed about thirty students staring open-mouthed, craning their necks from the school grounds into my yard (which borders Ms. Kahaanga’s yard).

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What are you all looking at?”

“They caught the man,” Naftaline told me. “The one who came into the hostel.” “Where is he?” I asked, my head swiveling around.

“He’s in Ms. Kahaanga’s house,” she said.

“What? Why?”

Shrugs.

I was utterly bewildered. Was she going to whip him too? I walked around to my yard and peered nosily across the fence into her open doorway. There seemed to be a lot of people inside, but I couldn’t tell what was going on. A month later, despite questions, I’m not sure what happened, or how Ms. Kahaanga distributed justice. I still worry about the girls, but the other teachers seem to have moved on, believing the Queen to have settled the predicament once and for all.

(Hostel boarders, Sonia and Mercia)

Speaking of Queen Kahaanga, she went on a punctuality tirade about two weeks ago. Meaning that any students arriving late to school or to afternoon study were to be sent to her office to be whipped. Most times, the kids would get caught coming late to assembly (gathering where they sing in the mornings before classes start). Other times they would come into class late. Their peers, smelling blood, would cry out, “Latecomer! Latecomer!” to make sure the entrance did not go unnoticed. The teachers were then supposed to order the students to the office. I couldn’t bring myself to, and shut the class up by asking the tattlers if they wanted to go instead.

That Tuesday, Tjizakuje and her friend Monica (from grade 6) were late to study. Ms. K must have seen them come through the gate from her office because a few minutes after Tjizakuje had come into the classroom, she was called out to stand in line with the other latecomers. On her way out, she took her English textbook. I never want to see the beatings so I sat at my desk, waiting for it to be over, but then the class began to laugh. A couple of them were staring out the window at the others and they were laughing—with amusement, not the usual relieved triumph. I walked over to see what they were laughing at. And there was Tjizakuje, standing in line with everyone else, reading. As the line shortened and her punishment grew nearer, she never took her eyes off her book. It was as if the words would protect her from the pain. Or maybe she wanted to show the principal she wasn’t afraid. Or maybe she just liked the story too much to let a little whipping interrupt her. All I know is I love that kid more and more every day.

Friday is a teacher holiday here so no school! Hurray! The kids have been monsters this week. And last week too. My friend Rachel is coming down from the north today to visit for the long weekend. A four-day week and company. Here in Namibia, that’s what we volunteers call a blessing.