marie used back channels to inquire about my diarrhea situation, thinking i might be a bit bashful about sharing the poopie through my blog. on the contrary, i'm not embarrased. well, a little, but only b/c i've yet to suffer like she has. i'm not looking forward to the actual discomfort, per se, but i really, really, really, rilly want to talk to the owambos about it. i'm not into scat or any of that shit (notice the pun?), but the word is so cool: oshimelo. it's aurally perfect.

that's enough about that.

school's been all my rage for the past two weeks; i have no idea where to begin. perhaps the beginning? actually, before the beginning. i'll start with a caveat and a declaration: i'm glad i hold out no pretense of being a writer, else i'd feel relatively untalented when comparing my creativity to that of real life. that gamut about life and fiction is no simplistic platitude...

time's a bit of an issue. so are resources. imagine if time was a treated like a resource here. hmmm... i was told to report to school that first thursday at 8.00am. it's hard for me to translate english into english, so i assumed i should be to school by 8.00; the african teachers arrived around 9.00. i can get into this, i thought, but then the principal used my punctuality as a way to admonish the rest of the staff, something about americans taking time seriously. (i gather it wasn't much of an issue for him that he wasn't ready himself till 9.30.) anyhow, i arrived the following day at 8.00 again; the africans showed around 10.00.

after the principal did his song and dance about punctuality, he went over the pass rates for last year's students. grade 10 is extremely important in namibia. it's when students have grown past the social promotion of earlier grades (students can fail each grade once before automatic promotion) and have a single chance to pass their entrance exams into senior secondary school (grades 11 & 12). if they happen to score less than 30%, and consequently fail, they're out of the school system. i was a bit worried about my potential efficacy as a teacher, but then i discovered the number to beat: 18%. yell yeah! <------- thoughts before students reported. oh shit <------ thoughts after students reported. at least i can use first year teacher as an excuse when i fall short of expectations..

it's not as if one can blame the learners here for poor performance. to say there's a shortage of resources here would be simplistic. i was told i might have to improvise, but that's when i thought of resources as things like books and photocopiers. i suppose i should regard other aspects of education when i think of resources, things like an actual floor. once i get a floor in two of my classrooms i'll start thinking about chairs. from there i'll get into actual classrooms instead of corrugated steel shacks, and from there into actual teachers. this past friday was designated "general school cleaning;" the students were told to bring hoes and sponges to clean both the buildings and the grounds. i'm fairly certain we have a cleaning lady, so i asked why she didn't do it. -she's busy teaching physical science.

i suppose employing the cleaning lady as a makeshift science teacher is an efficient way to manage labor resources, though that's where the effiency ends. the day is split into eight 40 minute periods with a 30 minute break between periods four and five. students are split into class groups, and groups remain in the same classroom the entire day; the teachers move from class to class. it's alright, i like the exercise, but i don't know how i feel about the three minute walk to my next class and waiting while the previous teacher borrows even more time from my now 37 minute class. actually, i like it. i'm generally unprepared and don't mind haveing less time to kill. but pretend i was prepared. my classes are now closer to 30 minutes than 40 because i use the beginning of my time to erase the board from the previous class and setup whatever it is i'm using to teach. some days i have even less time b/c learners are still copying notes from the previous class and i don't have the heart to tell them tough shit. i haven't even gotten into knowing when one class ends and the next begins. it's the secretary's responsibility to ring the bell, but she doesn't always remember, though it'd be more accurate to claim she always forgets. sometimes she's right on cue, others a few minutes late, and most of the time five to ten off schedule. the nice thing about one class being 50 minutes is that the next is now 30.

so school is school, and school is somehow randomly perfect. i like my coworkers, my students are always smiling even though i bore them to death, and i get to go home one day and tell people i taught english to a bunch of kids in a metal shack while they sat in mud. the personal life is keeping me occupied as well, albeit occupied has become a relative term. i have somehow tamed a wild dog to be my house pet, which in namibia is akin to taking a nun home from a disco. i've named him sancho since he follows me around the village. i figure he can be the squire to my don quixote-like notion that i can somehow slay giants, be they windmills or the 30% required for passing marks. although, i finally got to looking under the carriage the other day and it appears i might have to change the dog's name to sancha. oh yeah, i think i said something about being occupied. i read a lot of books... and i joined a soccer club. and i hang out with rastas on the weekend. ever been to a reggae show at a petrol station?? i also have time to sit around and be appreciative of the friends and family i have, both here and there. more specifically, i was thinking about my brother-in-law the other day and how he used my sister to photocopy 23 of his chromosomes. actually, i was more concerned with how easy it's been to be kelly's brother; dz's what's commonly referred to as a good guy, and i've never had to play the role of over-protective brother. good thing, b/c i'm lazy...

a friend of mine scanned the two photos i sent to him. the one on the blog is from okaku, the village i lived in with my twin memes. i think i mentioned in my letter to him that the sky looks a bit dramatic in the photo, but i have to amend my statement. the sky in the photo is actually tame compared to how it's looked during the rainy season. seriously: fooken shite...



here's a pic of the homestead i was living on.

i only joined peace corps b/c i thought it was spelled p-i-e-c-e corps. wtf am i supposed to do now that holiday has passed and i have to [gasp] work? work? that shit's for suckas. selah, better go out and earn my $3300 per year. good thing i have a graduate degree..

other than the conventional inquiries that get asked during introductions, the first thing my principal asked me when we met in november was how good i was at soccer. he still hasn't asked me about my professional qualifications. -i'm teaching at yr school; anything about me you'd like to know? -can you handle the midfield? now that priorities are in order, i wasn't very surprised when i reported to school on thursday to find out which classes i'll be teaching:

- grades 8-10 english
- grades 8-10 phys ed ("hopefully jeremy will teach them new sport")
- grade 7 religion

eh? religion? religion? RELIGION? religion? yr fooken kidding me, non?

- uh, e.t., i'm quite handy with a map, and i noticed the other day that we're in the north. i have on good report that, here in the north, we're christian.

- yes?

- i'm not.

religion? so now that i've been charged with conferring religious and moral understanding upon a bunch of 12 to 20-year-olds, i've been pondering ways to broach the subject. my first consideration was a comparative approach, the whole muslims do this, buddhists believe that, christianity was started this way. but that's the easy way out. i'm thinking large scale. term-long projects. experiential learning. something that will make them really understand religion: fundamentalism, evangelism, and proselytism. i think there's nothing wrong with basing a student's grade on the brimstoned quality of his/her hellfire call-to-arms, or how blown out an abortion clinic is from a molatov cocktail or two. my other idea is to collaborate with another teacher teaching religion. i'll make up my own religion, she'll make up hers, and our two classes will engage in holy war out in the courtyard. i'm sure those competencies are somewhere in the national syllabus. religion?

i think death is slowly descending on my umich email account. i'm still not impressed that "over 8000 people are registered on wolverinesingles.com," so i doubt i'll set up forwarding. the point: i'll soon be using jermpolio@yahoo.com as my exclusive email address.

new years was a good time, to say the least. scratch that: nye was a good time. the thing about nye is that it invaribly becomes new years day, and the first of the year is when michigan traditionally flies home from pasadena after scoring less points than their opponent. i was doing the happy dance shit when i found out i had a place to watch the game, but my glee melted into dismay when i realized i would be awake till 4am to watch texas pull out the belt.. das sigh.

i planned to leave windhoek for the north on the 2nd, but my loose conception of time has stretched itself even futher, and i made it back to onyati on the 6th. now that i'm back, my first order of business it to make some alterations to my cupboard so that it can be the fridge it was intended to be. i might mention here that there's something alarmingly comfortable about a gas powered fridge that doesn't work, especially the hissing sound made by the gas tank.

i mentioned this to a gentelman at the education ministry before my departure for epupa. he told me to phone him when i returned from holiday. i choose instead to actually pass through his office, but he said this time to check back when i return from windhoek.

- the motherfucker's broke; i know you have keys to my place; can't you just fix it while i'm gone?

- no, maybe it's not level. we have to see.

- while i'm gone?

- you have to be there so we can show you if it doesn't work.

i'm finally back, and the guy came as he promised he would. while we waited the hour or so for verification that not all americans are electricity dependent retards, he made small talk with me as i washed two weeks worth of clothes (or two shirts, whichever you prefer). i don't recall the exact progression of our conversation, but he eventually asked about my plans for marriage--most people here ask that--before the big inquiry: why do you have so many guys in america?

-guys?

-yeah, guys.

-are you asking why we have so many men in america?

-yes!

[oh shit, now i get it] -you mean gAY people?

-yes, what is this men can get married thing?

so i tried to relate the state of sexual affairs back home, that even though a lot of people don't like homosexuals, many others - me included - think it's a person's right to send love notes to whomever, that it's not my duty to dictate the terms of other lives. his rebuttal:

-you have to respect god
-it's not natural
-how can you bring children to yr own parents; they want grandchildren

i don't think he bought any of my reasoning - different ideas about god, adoption, infertility, lesbian sheep, dogs' mounting habits - so he closed the subject with, they have lesbians in the south, but not in the north. in the north, we are christians. yeah, how 'bout religion and namibia..

so now that we are christian in the north, he quickly went back to how important marriage is to the community. i chose here to inquire about monogamy, to which he claimed it's alright for the man to gad about but not the woman, although the dood is better off not getting caught. he divorced his wife of 25 years b/c she cheated on him. is that not to be expected, i asked. eh? no. men can cheat because:

-it's natural for a man to be with many woman
-they have urges
-they travel more
-they don't exhibit proof (ie. women get preggers)

but:

-i only do it when i'm away from the village. never at home. i respect my wife and would never do that to her.

cultural differences indeed. or not. i don't think america has such a strong track record re: fidelity. nevertheless, i decided to ramble on about how i've never cheated on any of my girlfriends right before i asked if his wife didn't feel the same way about different men the way he felt about different women.

my fridge still doesn't work; he'll be back monday with a new one.

it's been brought to my attention that ingrates/postal employees aren't endemic exclusively to namibia. the u.s., for example, where if one encounters a letter intended for namibia, and that person is unaware of namibia's existence, the logical course of action becomes to stick that letter in the bin marked "iraq." it seemed odd that some of our letters were being routed through iraq and, consequently, arriving weeks and weeks after they should have, but it's happened enough to warrant a jump to conclusion; namely, if yr stoopid, yr a postal employee. it makes for good cultural exchange, however. stoopid here, stoopid there, lots to share.. anyhow, if you plan to send anything, notice the newly designed address:

p.o. box 2135
ondangwa
namibia
AFRICA!!!!

you could prolly even draw a nice map on the envelope, namibia highligted... (i said could; i should have used should.)

a friend here started up a blog. miss gee thinks he looks a bit like dds. certainly doesn't act as such..

happy new year. fuck jim herrmann.