The Big Reveal, Where the Next Two Years of My Life Will Take Place

Exciting news everyone! I officially know where I will be for the next two years! I have been assigned to a small village named Schlip in the Hadap region of Southern Namibia (I dare you to find something about it on the internet) and I will be the English teacher for grades 8, 9, and 10 at Pioneer Junior Secondary School. The school has a whopping 139 students, 7 teachers (I will make number 8), and the community as a whole +250. No I did not leave off a 0 or two. I can already say off the bat that coming from a university of 50,000, moving to a village of 250 is going to be quite a challenge yet an extremely unique experience for me. I do not think that in my life I have ever been a part of a population smaller than maybe 300. My elementary 6^th grade class moving on to junior high was 100 but we were moving from over a 500 person school to a 1000 one. My graduating class was 700 and even being in James Madison at MSU there were 300 of us in my class. Small communities is not something I have experience with.

Aside from the super small community, it is also fairly isolated but its not too bad. I can apparently get necessary essentials in my village but my official shopping town where the main post office and bank are is called Rehoboth (Rehoboth actually has a lot of history which you CAN look up if you want). It is about 100km away. While I am still trying to figure out and mentally calculate km into hours, the application says it should take an hour and 15. However, depending on my mode of transportation (i.e. do I have a set up ride or do I need to find a hike) it could take longer or shorter. One of my nearest volunteers is also in Rehoboth so that is good.

Now the big question: Will I have to poop in a hole and live in a mud hut? I’m sorry to disappoint but no. I actually have a 3 room flat to myself on the school hostel grounds (I forgot to mention the school is a hostel school, kinda like a boarding school). From the application it says that I have running water, electricity, cement walls, and a modern kitchen (modern used loosely – could be a room with a sink and a two burner stove…) I am assuming that I will live next door to other teachers from my school and here is the best part: distance to work is 100 m. I’m not good with long commutes which is probably reason why my entire college career was centered around a small residential college on one of the largest campuses in the nation.

As far as my actual job goes, due to the extremely small size I believe I will be teaching every English class at the school. That is good because I will be able to get to know every student however; that makes me question what they are doing now and what will happen if I am not there? It also says that that will only be 20 periods a week which is actually really good, I will not be overloaded, nor do I feel I would ever be pressured to. So in teaching English, they want me to help with increasing the pass rate (which I will go into more detail later) but also help with getting the library in order. I don’t know what status their library is currently in but I am suspecting it isn’t good if they want me to “get it in order” as opposed to “take over task of running”. My school also apparently has a computer lab and they noted that it would be nice if I could help in there. I don’t know how much help I could do but I do know a few very nice IT guys here that could probably help me out.

As far as for the rest of the community I don’t know what I could potentially do, it was only noted that I could maybe do something at the local multi purpose center. So we will see what I can come up with…. J