A final reflection

It’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve left Namibia and only now has my body and brain reached the correct balance of relaxation and deep thought in order to reflect on the changes I’ve seen in the last 60 days.  It took a three hour bus ride to find that sweet spot, and I’m afraid the halcyon moment may be fleeting so I’m going to write while the thoughts are flowing.  

Everyone is asking (and will probably continue asking once I’m back in America), “What did you learn?”  The answer is not simple, nor can I say I “learned a lot.”  It was life – two years of life, two years of experience.  Even if I’d stayed at home, I could’ve learned just as much.  About different things, of course, but it’s still learning.  They say life is what you make of it…and so is learning. 

I learned some serious things and some less serious things, so let me lay them out for you.

SERIOUS THINGS

Being a celebrity sucks.  They warn you about this when you have your entrance interview.  And you really think you can deal with it.  And you really want to be in Peace Corps so you say you can.  But after months of someone watching your every move – washing your laundry, cooking your food, walking to school, reading in your room, going to the toilet…you reconsider your answer.  It’s much harder than it seems, and way less fun.  In my opinion, a good test for wannabe-PCVs would be 3 weeks in a glass house in the middle of Times Square.  If you can handle all the gawking, you can probably handle village life.  Or we should just send teenyboppers that want to be pop stars to a remote village for 6 weeks.  If, after that, they still want to be famous, then they should be sent for therapy immediately.  

Facebook gives you goggles.  For awhile, using the internet, especially Facebook, was difficult for me.  All I saw were people’s happy moments – new jobs, new homes, engagements, marriages, kids.  And when people would talk to me, they’d be jealous of my amazing experience or my vacation to Victoria Falls.  Or they’d say that living without electricity and water must be so hard and they could never do what I’m doing.  And finally I realized, no one’s life is ever as awesome or as happy or as difficult as you think it is.  Wherever you are, it’s just life – there are ups and downs, people and places change and we adjust.  And the grass is always greener on the other side.

We are what we know.  When my family came to visit the village, they wondered why we had a gas stove but still cooked most food on a fire outside.  I found the answer hard to explain – just because.  Because it’s tradition, because there are still enough trees, because sitting around the fire has an important social aspect, even if it’s inefficient, unhealthy and environmentally unsustainable.  You might also ask, how can students be satisfied with sharing textbooks and sitting on half a broken chair?  Because they don’t know any different.  We are a product of our realities, so if you don’t know that sharing a textbook isn’t normal, then it’ll never really bother you.  There’s probably some new gadget in America that everybody’s using and can’t live without, but I’m not bothered by it, because I don’t even know it exists.  

Does Namibia need us?  Perhaps the most difficult part of working in Namibia has been seeing the Genie coefficient in action (that is, income disparity).  While I know I had a positive effect on some kids’ lives and I wouldn’t take back the experience, it was difficult to teach in a tin shack or run a library out of the multi-purpose room when I knew that there were unused classrooms at other schools, or that some schools had computer labs that collected dust.  Even worse, I’d hear about (and occasionally attended) poorly run workshops where teachers missed school days but were still paid their salary, plus “per diem” (even though lodging and meals were provided) and learned very little information, often skipping sessions or missing entire days, especially at the end week.  As you go up the chain, the waste seems to deepen – more workshops, more per diem, more trips to the capital, even last minute flights.  While there were exceptions, it seemed to become more about enriching oneself and one’s family than enriching the lives of children with quality education.  

Spending time in bigger cities, especially Windhoek, made the disparity seem even worse.  When you can shop at a shiny mall, work out at the Virgin Active gym and buy Gruyere or Roquefort cheese, all within 200 meters of each other, you begin to question a country’s neediness.  Of course, this happens all over world – the juxtaposition of sickening wealth and equally sickening abject poverty is common.  But there’s not just one ritzy part of Windhoek.  Namibia, in fact, is a middle income country, one of the wealthier in Africa.  It has abundant natural resources and a fairly well educated population.  The government has money, sometimes left unspent, sometimes wasted, but often not reaching the people that need it most.  

Could a teacher from Namibia move to a Spanish-speaking inner city neighborhood in America and be an effective educator while helping implement programs to aid development in the community?  Probably not.  But what about a Spanish-speaking teacher who grew up in that neighborhood?  Much more likely.  There are many young people in Namibia that, with a bit of training and support, could make big changes in their communities.  If they wanted to.  Motivation is key.  

LESS SERIOUS THINGS

Pee is smelly.  Ever used a chamber pot?  Squatting over a basin probably doesn’t seem ideal, but it’s better than stumbling outside in the middle of the night.  The convenience of having a toilet right next to my bed is something I’ll miss.  Through this experience, I mistakenly found out that if you leave your chamber pot in your room while you’re at school (particularly on a hot day), it’s pretty smelly once you get back.  

Free exfoliant.  At first I was horrified when my soap fell on the ground and got covered in sand.  And as I washed, the little buggers continued to work themselves further into the tender bar.  As time went on, however, I came to realize that sandy soap was a free, natural exfoliant.  Move over loofas, Neutrogena, spas with hot rocks and mud masks…Namibian sand soap comin’ through.  

Traveling is a lot of work.  (Yes, parents, I know you already know this.)  Three weeks in, my vacation, while interesting, has been anything but relaxing.  I really don’t know how these people who backpack for an entire year do it.  After some time (days? months? years?) I’ll get restless again, but right now, I’m ready to come home.