Back to Work

Once again, it’s all gone a bit quiet on our blog. There’s no need to worry, we’re still here – alive and well. We’ve just both found ourselves with work to do! All the time!! This is quite different from before Christmas, when we were spending lots of time sitting at our desks wondering what to do.

It all really got going with Fearghal’s workshop. Despite not having any funding he decided to go ahead with a two-day workshop with the Senior Secondary Biology Teachers. This year, Namibia has switched from International GCSE to a localised version called the Namibian Senior Secondary Certificate. As the Advisor for Biology, Fearghal organised the two days to do some long term planning for the region as well as to develop the teachers’ maths skills and their ability to carry out practical work with a class. 11 teachers turned out, which was quite impressive given that there are only 9 Senior Secondary Schools in the region.

The following week we went straight into the first of a series of afternoon meetings, arranged jointly for us to meet the Upper Primary teachers of English and Natural Science (in Namibia children are taught by “specialist” teachers from Grade 5, one of the many problems is that they are often not specialists in the subjects they end up being asked to teach!).

We have just passed the half way mark with these meetings, having done the 5th of 9 today. We arranged to do 3 per week, going around the region and meeting with two or three clusters at a time. A cluster is a regional group of between 3 and 6 schools, a system intended to support teachers, but rather neglected.

So far these meetings have gone really well. We have been very impressed with the turnout – despite heavy rains and long distances. We even had teachers who travelled from the primary on Impalila Island, which involves a half hour walk, a boat to Botswana, and then an hour’s drive to the border crossing back to Namibia!

The teachers have been really forthcoming with their problems, and are also good at discussing possible solutions, with some good debates going on amongst them. It has been really useful for our future training, and really enjoyable too.

Of course, now that we are busy working, the days can begin to seem quite routine, much like work would be back home. Then we find ourselves off-roading down wet sandy tracks through ever deepening undergrowth as we return teachers to their bush schools. Children wave at us from newly formed ponds at the side of the road, bright blue birds fly out of the trees and lightening flashes up ahead as another tropical storm breaks. Then we remember we really are in Africa and it becomes exciting all over again!