I Finally Met Nghimtina

This morning Aoife and I left Connie’s and went straight to school. We just dropped off the car at Hangala’s homestead. Technically, this is the last week of classes before examinations begin. The first one is scheduled for Friday, July 25th. This week in Business Management, we are wrapping up the last chapter and I was planning to let Joolokeni conduct review sessions and cover any material she thinks is important for the learners to know. Today, she had nothing planned. Since I’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks, I decided to give the learners an assignment that would help them use their English and asked them to write me a story or letter and hand it in before the end of the week. I decided to let them work on their assignment during the class period. However, many were doing class work for other classes, which was fine with me, as long as they were being productive. Unfortunately, today one of the Memes decided to come to the school to see if her children/grandchildren were interested in learning and if they were participating. Hilya, the HOD (head of department), randomly decided to pop into my classroom for an observation. The funny thing is that the Meme does not understand or speak English. So, when Hilya brought her in, introduced us and explained what the Meme was doing, I wondered how she would be able to gauge. As an aside, the Meme mentioned that she had heard that there was an Oshilumbu in the village and wanted to meet me. So, when Hilya brought her to class, I told Hilya that the learners were working independently on a writing assignment and that we were not lecturing today. I mentioned that we had just wrapped up the final Business Management chapter for the examination. Hilya insisted that the Meme wanted to observe a lesson. So I asked the learners to pull out their summary notes and handouts for the Ch 10 Organizational Structures to review our previous lesson. I had the class re-do the exercises that we had done the session before. Hilya and the Meme were pleased and eventually moved on to another class for the next period. This entire incident left me feeling uneasy and was a perfect illustration of the current state of the educational system. I know that I am not here to change the system, but I am definitely not here to be a contributor to the problem. And that’s what I felt happened. I participated in the dog and pony show. After school, Aoife and I went to meet Soini and the other locals for a couple of beers and I headed home before dark. I had been told that Nghimtina is in town for the week in preparation for the inauguration of the regional counselor’s office. Nghimtina = hot water = Lisa is ☺. I got home shortly before dusk and gave the kids the N$16 ball that I got for them at Pick-N-Pay. They were excited and immediately put it to use. As a side note, by Sunday, unfortunately, it was flat and by the following week it was completely deflated. Since I knew that Nghimtina had been at the homestead since at least Saturday (Hangala had mentioned that he had been at church on Sunday a.m.), I sought him out. Mpinge was in the midst of preparing a traditional Ovambo meal of oshifima, fish and mopane worms. Nghimtina is a physically large, imposing figure, fitting of the reputation he has as a war hero and former Minister of Defense for Namibia. Meeting him was a bit anti-clamatic We chatted for a bit about JoAnn (the PC volunteer that lived at the homestead in 1999), Etosha, etc. Nothing too eventful.