Advertisement
Published: March 10th 2013
Hello, my dears,
That is a very Namibian greeting. Even the kids say it all the time. "My dear, have you done your homework?" "Well, my dears, we must work harder." It's is pretty pervasive once you start noticing. But it does make things slightly less harsh. A teacher can seemingly very angrily scold a student, then say, "My dear, what were you thinking?" And everyone smiles. It reminds me to the first time we were in Germany. We thought Urte and Wolf were having a rip roaring fight at supper, then they both burst out laughing!
I feel like I am doing really well getting another blog written in less than a week, but there is a good story to tell you all. I call it "The Day of the Exorcism." On Saturday at 9:00 a.m. the priest and his assistant arrived to bless the school. I had got up and even dressed nicely, thinking I was going to church. He didn't actually do a service, but said some prayers and gave a little talk to the students. Then he was going to bless us and all the buildings with holy water. As he got to the end of the hall, one of the girs with asthma had an attack. She kind of flails her arms and cries (which I might do if I couldn't breathe). She had her inhaler with her, so a friend got it out and then as she started breathing they took her out into the fresh air to sit and recover. Just as she was getting pretty recovered, a second girl had an asthma attack. She had just got an inhaler, but they hadn't really taught her to use it, so she was taking the meds into her mouth, then breathing through her nose and not getting any of it into her lungs. Finally she got enough to start calming down. Then someone came running to say a girl had collapsed in the hostel next to our flat. She had actually stopped breathing (not asthma). Rachel fortunately has had lots of first aid and is a life guard and camp counselor, so she did CPR and got the girl to a point where we could get her to the car. They decided not to wait for an ambulance. So they took her and the asthma patients to the hospital, with Rachel and my co-teacher Lucia who is the girls' supervisor. After they left we had another attack. This girl was aware that she had a condition and she took pills for it; but she had run out of pills the night before. So I had her lying on the ground trying to calm her down enough for her to breathe. I sent someone for a pillow, and someone else for a teacher who has a car. When she seemed calm enough to make it to the hospital, they went off too.
By then, most of the girls were convinced there was a witch at work. I had visions on one collapse after another, so I tried to explain that they were all afraid and were feeding on each others' fear. That did a lot of good. (sarcasm). One girl said that when the one who stopped breathing first was sprinkled with the holy water, she said she felt dizzy. "Coincidence," I said bravely. That did no good. So then I told them that the best defense against witches is to not believe in them. They were not convinced. Finally, in desperation, I said, "Well, God is more powerful than any witch!" Mind you, I have been rereading The Chronicles of Narnia before I give them to the library. I felt like I was standing there with a sword in my hand and a horde wolves coming at me. Anyway, they did seem to think about that and calm down. They all went to find shade and rest. Heat does put a damper on hysteria. Anyway, when it was time to got to their classrooms to study, they all went quietly. Then we got good news from the hospital, so it all calmed down.
That evening we had a debate for entertainment. These kids are REALLY good at debate. it is a little more like British Parliament than our debate. The opposing team is allowed to call a point of information and the debater speaking can accept it or not. if she or he accepts, they can get into a bit of a side debate. In between debates we had dancers. The first were some boys doing quoit-o which looked very like break dancing, but they were quite good and funny with it. The other were some girls doing traditional Caprivi dance (we are almost in the Caprivi Strip). The whole evening was very fun, so we seem to have driven the witch out.
I have taken over one of the 8th grade English classes, although we plan together and try to stay together. It is a lot more work, but I am liking it. This weekend we are going to Omgwelume to meet up with the other WorldTeach teachers. One of our teachers home is there, and his wife works there, so he is going home for the weekend. So we won't be going on a combi!! I'll continue the adventures when I get back.
I finally read all my comments and messages. That was so wonderful. Thank you all for continuing to read and comment. Email is good, too, now. I don't look at Facebook that often, but if I get a message that one of you posted, I will certainly look.
Have to go correct papers!! Love to all, Wendy (becoming more beautiful daily, but missing my friends and family) Still no fridge. I've decided to call Ms. Eises.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.071s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0433s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
kathryn
non-member comment
The Exorcism
"Well, my dear," I'm so glad you figured out that the Exorcism entry didn't get posted at first! I was so anxious to read "The Rest of the Story!" WOW. What a tale to tell. It is really fascinating to read, not just this way-out-of-our-own-experience story, but all of the things you are discovering that you must learn from scratch when you are living in a brand new culture! You seem to be thinking quickly on your feet and that ability will always be there for you when you need it. Best wishes as the days go on.