Amazing how fast time can move. As I get older, it seems every day goes just a second faster than the last. I only have three weeks left in Namibia and I know each week will fly by. This isn’t such a bad thing. If I weren’t busy, enjoying my time here, the days would move dreadfully slow. So although the time moves fast, I feel that it is because I am always up to something; whether that be teaching, coaching, experiencing culture, or simply reflecting, my time here has and is being spent efficiently.

With that said, I usually wake up around 4:30 a.m. and gently coax the internet into working. While the internet lazily stretches and starts up, I pound down my largest meal of the day; oatmeal, banana, and peanut butter. That may not seem like much, but if you saw the bowl that it was in, you would assume I was feeding a gorilla. After breakfast and tea (I have a small gas stove) and shaking my head in annoyance at the computer, I read for a bit, currently, Kafka on the Shore. A splash of water, a tie, and my backpack on, I walk over to school, just a three-minute walk from home.
I greet every person I see, literally every one. In Namibia it is extremely rude to not do so, even if you don’t know the person. So tack on an extra five-ten minutes to your daily commute simply because of greetings. I walk into the hectic staff room and prepare my materials quickly. My colleagues and I joke around before school starts, the previous joke being about male nurses in America. Would they call me Sister Alex if I were a male nurse? No, just Mr. Alex. Really?! Aye! Disbelief, laughter, and confusion, all in one.
At 8:00 class begins. English is usually in the morning, so I wake up my first class with some fun stretching games, simon-says type things. This gets them going and we focus on the week ahead (by the way, the National Park Projects turned out great. I’ll take some pictures and post them once I get home. I can definitely see an improvement I their writing, as well as their speaking during their presentations).
Break comes at 10:40. For a half hour, the learners run around the sandy school grounds, maybe going outside the gates to buy fat cakes (again, small balls of fried dough) from the Memes who walk a few kilos everyday, with a basin of food on their head. The can’t make much, but it is enough (one fat cake is N$1=$.15). I quickly head back home, drink a protein shake (so happy I brought the packets of whey) and a clementine, and then walk back to school.
History is usually in the afternoon. I have used many types of initations, my latest being a set of rules written by me, that a learner makes the rest of the class follow (hold hands, give me your pens, come to the front of the class, etc.). This helped to teach indirect rule. Later, in between classes, I water our school orchard, which is made up of six small guava and mango saplings (currently being ravaged by pesky insects).
After school, I head over to netball and soccer training. I have become one of the assistant coaches for both teams and help the condition all the players. We do quick cardio burst exercise routines, squat-jumps, mountain climbers, push ups, etc. All the usual defensive sliding drills, suicides, what I consider many typical athletic exercises. But they are unknown here, at look at me for direction and really seem to be enjoying (maybe not while performing) the training, especially when I participate with them.
By 4:30, training is over and I head back home to do a bit of my own exercising. Whether it be for ten minutes for an hour, as long as I can get warm and a bit of a sweat I happy. This accomplishes two tasks in one; keeping me healthy and making the cold showers tolerable. By 5:00 it starts to get chilly, so the showers are a bit tough to go into, but as long as my body is slightly warm and a let out a lot of odd airy noises during the showers, they aren’t so bad. I can’t complain, at least I have a showerhead, most of the time, people just toss water onto themselves from a basin.
Dinner time follows, with tuna, carrots, and an apple. Like I said before, sometimes the girls and even some of the men surprise me with meals of thick oshithima and a grease you rub it into. This fills you up with an insane amount of carbs and fat, but again, you aren’t hungry, so you can’t complain. It actually tastes pretty good too.
Night time consists of marking, preparing, and reading. With a comfortable sweatshirt on, I pull a chair into the sand and reflect on the day, as the sun sets gracefully on the low horizon. The pink and tangerine colors seem to stand out more than what I am used to, probably because the view isn’t obscured with hills and forest. Once, darkness hits, I peak out my window and let my eyes melt away in the southern hemisphere stars.
I feel so lucky for all of this and the only way to say thank you, is to work hard each and everyday.

-This weekend their will be a bazaar, basically a open market fundraiser for our school. I have been put in charge of running the bar. I have no idea why they chose me for this position. I know I am young, but I have never expressed my undying love for alcohol. I nervously await Friday and Saturday when I will tend to the local Namibians, who speak little to no English. Mental note of practicing my Oshiwambo all week.

-I got a knock on my door Monday. I opened it up and found a brown chicken’s slightly cocked head staring at me. This was my chicken now. The women insisted on slaughtering it. So we took it outside, placed it on a brick, and slit its throat. A few hours later, everyone got a juicy piece of the chicken and filled their bellies with Oshithima.

-For those of you who donated materials, the learners love them. I have a Learner of the Week in each class, where they receive pens/pencils, binders, highlighters, and Dum-Dums. They love it and it definitely motivates the class. They treasure anything that has something from America on it, University notebooks, pens, whatever. They tote around the gear like a badge of honor.

-If I ever repeat myself, I’m sorry, I can’t look at my blog, so I don’t always remember what I wrote. But hopefully this clues you in to how things are going. Best as always, Alex