Saturday, February 21, 2015

In My Time of Absence

 I honestly cannot believe that I have not written a blog post in about 6 months. I guess it’s a true testament to how I kind of consider this “adventure” my life now. Day in and day out becomes routine, sometimes boring, mostly busy and one day you sit down and go Shit, when did it become 2014? Wait, no, it’s definitely 2015 now. This moment actually happens quite often in my life as my tiny little Samsung stupid phone constantly is victim to gravity and I have to manually reset the time and date from Jan 1 2007.

Anyways, let me jump into a time machine as I take you all back through the last six months of Shannon’s crazy, although not really SO crazy life.

September
Post Diversity Tour I returned to school only for a few weeks before I had to be back in the capital for my Mid-Service conference. Yep, the middle of my service. While I had been in Namibia for over a year at this point, September marked the middle of my two year commitment to my community. It was nice to see everyone in one place, some of the people who my life revolved around for those first 2 months in country I then hadn’t seen in a year. I went to the dentist and went through the annual medical evaluation. Turns out most of us had high-blood pressure due to the traditional diets consisting of meat. My nurse lectured me about how she wanted me to regularly monitor my blood-pressure and not stress so much because she didn’t want me to have a stroke in class. I thought this was perfect ammo to guilt my students into behaving in class as the year comes to an end. Instead of Yes Ms. Riley we love you and don’t want you to die, their response was: Miss, just go home, these children won’t stop. Well, at least some of them cared a little bit. Thanks guys. So instead, I decided to take up yoga. More on that later...

September also brought some new visitors to the school. Well I don’t know if you can call them visitors, that’s putting it way lightly. In a nut shell, there were demons at the hostel for about 2 weeks in September. While I tried to stay as far away from it I will inform you of what I understood happened. It all began with a boy who wanted to start a Bible study group, which is wonderful. Religion is a huge part of the Namibian lifestyle and many of my students are religious themselves, which I think also played into the craziness that ensued over the next two weeks. Anyway, one of my girls wanted to join the Bible study after school study but was acting strange (I got mixed stories) and long story short the boy who’s idea it was to start the Bible group turned out to be a self-proclaimed prophet, called upon the spirits of the Illumaniti to reveal themselves, and then a book that was under a pillow fell on the ground. I don’t exactly know the specific details of these events, this is what I pieced together. Pardon my French, but that’s when shit hit the fan. I heard the screams coming from the hostel on the Thursday night but I didn’t go investigate, I just thought girls were being girls. The following morning I learned that some girls had been possessed, rolling on the floor as if they were snakes, growling like lions, eyes rolling back in their heads, and someone vomited out of nowhere. No one slept that night and the priest from one of the churches was called in in the middle of the night. The first girl who jump-started it was “saved” I think is what they called it and her and the prophet boy who saved here were making googly-eyes at each other the whole next day. I was a bit peeved. That weekend they brought in priests and other religious groups from the surrounding towns and even the capital. But things weren’t over.

There were two girls who were consistently absent from school, causing problems in school, and having “episodes” in the middle of the night at the hostel. They were sent home for a week to see if maybe time with family would help them (exams were coming up so this was a crucial time not to be missing school). One came back, the other did not. Now in my past experiences of tragedy and sad or difficult times, I find that more often than not a sense of normalcy is what is best for some people. So I tried to provide that because I see every kid in the school every day of the week for English class. Now my kids are smart and their conniving and sometimes I like to think I have had a positive impact on that part of them. For example: “Miss can I sleep?” “What, are you kidding me? No you cannot sleep. Why are you asking me that in the middle of my teaching you about vocabulary” “But Miss you are letting her sleep, so why can’t I sleep? Its because you hate me isn’t it?” Um no I’m letting her sleep because she has been possessed by demons for the past 3 weeks and walks around like a zombie, when that happens to you I will let you sleep in my class too… so I tried my hardest to get this poor girl to lift her head and at least pretend like she was a part of the class. Well she certainly picked up her head but then proceeded to glare at me never moving her head or her body but following me with her eyes. I tried my damned hardest to keep in the teacher mode and ignore it thinking that if I don’t fuel her with attention it will go away. It didn’t cause now she’s clenching her fists and breathing heavily, near to the point of hyperventilation. Tears are pouring out of her eyes and all I can think in my head is I have some mark on me and if I make the wrong move I am dead. She is sitting in the second row and if she comes at me with all the force of the demons inside her the boys in the back will never get to me in time. I can just see the headline “Peace Corps Volunteer Killed By Demon-Possessed Student in Class” I eventually break out of teacher mode and ask the class point-blank if this girl is okay or if I need to be worried or try to take her to the sick room. They tell me to ignore her because it happens but now I’m just straight up unsettled. I was literally saved by the bell as she packed up her things and slowly made her way out my door and onto her next class.

Unfortunately she did not return after that. Thankfully both her and the other girl were able to work with the Ministry of Education and finish their assignments and take their exams off-site in town and I believe they both passed. I also believe they are both continuing their schooling at other schools in the towns where their families live.

I’ll be completely honest, I truly don’t know what happened to these girls. However, and I tried to explain this to my students, the life I grew up in, the schools I attended, and the culture I am a part of don’t really have much emphasis on demons. Here in Namibia though, demons are very real to many people. I can’t say they are real, nor can I say that they are not real. Where I come from, a kid acting/freaking out in school means that there is something mentally and/or medically wrong with them that can maybe be alleviated through medication, counseling, or a transfer to another school better equipped to handle them. The thought of a demon possession has never been an explanation or a reason for anything in my life that I have witnessed. It’s just the life and culture I was a part of. Here though it is a very real thing and my guess is at the hostel, something freaky happened, it was considered demonic happenings and everything my students have ever known/learned/heard about demons came out. I honestly believe it was like a subconscious thing that none of them had control over.

The two girls that were the most affected though also had other challenges/problems that I saw which others might not have. They both sought attention in anyway they could, talking out of turn, making noise whenever they could and constantly accusing me of hating them when I asked them to follow directions or said they couldn’t go to the bathroom. They would get extremely upset and ask why I hated them and often times brought race into the accusation. I would try my hardest to explain that No I do not hate you, you fail to follow simple directions and then cannot accept the consequences. In the mornings walking to school “Good Morning Miss” turns into “Why does Miss hate me?” “Honey we have talked about this and I am expected at a meeting right now so lets talk again at a more appropriate time”. These girls were far from home, staying at a farm school and only a handful of other students are of the same tribe and language group as them. My true gut feeling was that their actions were a form of depression and possibly some other underlining mental instability that unfortunately will probably go unfound for the rest of their lives. I tried to explain this to my principal, and he agreed with me on some parts. He still feels there were demons because multiple girls in different rooms would wake up in the middle of the night possessed, and that he feels is something you cannot explain or plan.

So that was exciting.

September also brought the Ebola Craze. Chain text messages would fly around the country and between my students declaring that Ebola was in the capital and that everyone was going to get it and die. I tried to explain to them the various procedures that were occurring in airports and at borders to ensure that Ebola was not anywhere near Namibia. Still when I coughed up flem from the back of my throat, the entire class raised their hands and yelled Ebola at me. I also told them that if Ebola came to Namibia I would be on the next flight back to the United States before they even knew about it. Unfortunately after that was when I spent a week in the capital for my Mid-Service conference and some kids legit got worried. Opps…

October
October brought chaos to the school days. The grade 10 final exams are nationalized and thus require specific regulations on supervision and handling. This means that every day at least 3 of our 9 teachers were not in class and as a result Ms. Riley gets to supervise the restless 8th and 9th graders. That was not fun but it gave me time to hold extra English classes and give extra assignments. My students told me it was illegal to teach them English when they should be getting Life Science or Geography, so I came back at them and made my English assignments about whatever subject they were supposed to be having at that period. I was then just labeled a terrible person. We needed a vocabulary lesson on what terrible is…

Other note-worthy comments (S*&# My Students Say)

·      “Miss, why do you have so many black dots on your nose?”
“Why are you that close to my face?” – Thanks Allison I know I have large pores
·      Miss I am going to give you my older brother to have babies with.
·      “Miss who were you in high school? I bet you had a lot of boyfriends.”
“Actually boys, I was a bit of a nerd, so no boyfriends.”
“Miss I don’t believe that”
“No seriously I was in the marching band and science club and everything.”
One of the boys actually fell out of their chair laughing; the others just failed to believe such a thing was true.
·      Miss, can you flip your hair like they do in the movies?
I’m glad that is what you are thinking about during my riveting reading lesson.
·      When describing what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was little, I said I wanted to be a princess. Then half the boys in my class and even some girls called me princess. No. I’m Ms. Riley to you.
·      “Miss your kids will be so hot.” This occurred after a spelling test.

November.

I’m not going to put this lightly, the way examinations are scheduled here is unfortunately a waste of time, resources, and people’s patience. To begin with, almost all the content (math, English, science, etc.) subjects have multiple papers (for example: English has a reading exam, a writing exam, and a listening exam). So you can’t just have English on one day and be done with it for 3 months. My students have almost 6 hours of English exams spread out over 3 different days. In total, exams are a month long with one, maximum two papers being written a day.  At least 2 weeks, probably more could be dedicated to in class learning but instead are reserved for 3-4 hour study sessions and 4-6 hour exams. In August when we did this I was peeved, it was valuable time wasted, the kids were restless, I was restless, and I just wanted to be productive. THIS term though, I was expecting it, so I had a nice month of relaxation. To add to my life of general ease, national presidential elections were being held over Thanksgiving weekend which meant all the kids had to be out of the school and home by that Wednesday before. By the time school came back around in January, I hadn’t taught a class in 3 months.  Miss Who???

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