Monday, 3:10 p.m.

I found an answer to my arthropod question posted in my last blog.  These millipedes are not dangerous.  Found another particular large one and here's a girl trying on her new millipede bracelet.




So new questions, the park in front of the Parliament building was filled with these reptiles.  Do you think it would be safe picking up one of these?

We've been joined by our colleague, Dr. William Towne, who has flown in from Boston.  He is the president of the International Association of Special Education (IASE) and will participate in our planning meetings later this week.  He has never been to Windhoek so this morning was spent showing him around town, especially some of the sights we plan to include on the tours we are planning for the international delegates.  (As I mentioned in the first post, we are planning a conference for IASE for this July.)

 Here's Paula, Bill Towne and Dr. Jan Weiss who is here to help supervise the 9 student teachers from PLU who are here to start a two month student teaching experience.  We are in front of the Parliament building.

(it's starting to shower here so I might lose my internet connection)

Next we took Bill and the students out to Katutura to see one of the schools where they will work and to show Bill where one of our conference tours will go.

  Namibia has a population of 2.1 million.  It is the least densely populated country in the world, next to Mongolia.  About 300,000 people live in and around Windhoek.  About half of these live in the "informal settlements" around the township of Katutura.  These are mostly people from around the country who come to Windhoek looking for jobs and better schools.

(Yikes, the shower has turned into a 30 minute torrential downpour that is partly flooding the street outside, although traffic is still moving.  Now a thunderstorm has started so I'm going to upload a few more Katutura photos and write about them later.  I think we may lose power here in a few minutes.)
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Monday - 11:30 pm

The thunderstorm did not knock out the power, but it did knock out our internet connection until now.   So to finish this post.....................
Some of homes in these informal settlements have permanent walls, running water and sewer connections.  But most of them don't.  As you can see, many of the homes are one or two rooms with tin roofs.

Wednesday, 5:00 am

Students coming home from schools will often be told to bring home jugs filled with water - like the girls in this photo.  The city will have one water spout available for a large section of these homes, so you have to walk to the water spout to get your water.

Since there is no sewer for most, the city also sets up some outhouses usually along the dirt road so that they can be maintained.  You can see a row of three in both of these photos (the red boxes with the grey doors).

These informal settlements can stretch for miles.   It's hard for the city to keep up with the growth, especially when it comes to school.  Some of the students (students are called "learners" in Namibia) walk 5 or 6 kilometers to get to school which for elementary learners starts at 7:30 am!   They get out at around 1:30 pm.

School starts this coming Monday.  Teachers have work days this Thursday and Friday to begin to prepare for the learners.  You can imagine how chaotic the first week or two of school will be.  No one knows how many children have moved into the informal settlements.  Some have gone back to their villages and new children have moved in.

  So it is impossible for the school principals to know how many classes and teachers they will need for each grade.  Last year, one of the schools serving this area had so many learners the first two months, they had to set up temporary tents for classrooms and double shifted the schedule.  They had 600 learners come in the morning and they went home at lunch time.  They were replaced with 600 more learners in the afternoon.  Eventually they found more space at another school.  They are just finishing building extra classrooms for this year's group of learners, so things should be better for them.

Last two photos:  Katutura's version of a fast food restaurant.    

Mrs. Webster - Is this a good price for chickens?

(By the way, if you click on the photos, you can see a larger size - or double click to zoom in.  :-)