Smiles

My husband and I stand sheepishly beside the head teacher as the school assembles in the sandy courtyard for morning announcements. More than seven hundred students wait in the early morning sun staring at the strange Americans.  Some clutch bottles of what looks like muddy water. Many wear blue uniforms while others sport ragged T-shirts and dirty shorts. A few hug tattered sweaters close to ward off the morning chill.

Behind them, the classroom buildings line up in rows. Bare walls studded with holes enclose broken desks and chairs. Faded posters advise safe practices against HIV/AIDS. Sand and paper litter the floors. Here and there an alphabet or number line hand-painted by a diligent teacher brightens a room. 

The school is located in the rural Namibia, reached only after an eight-hour journey, (driving on the left at 120 kilometers per hour on a tarred road), bumping another hour over a dirt road, and finally, after switching on the four-wheel drive on our rented truck, sliding along on sand tracks through the brush another eight kilometers. Cattle, goats, chickens and dogs scatter as we rumble along. Folks smile and wave.

Students, called learners here, walk from as far as ten kilometers to get to the school each way every day. School begins at 7:30, long after the students have risen at dawn to pound grain, work the fields, fetch water and firewood, or tend the livestock.  Breakfast was served last night. Many students only get one meal a day, after dark, a bowl of porridge called oshifima made from mahangu (millet) the staple crop. The “muddy water” is oshikundu, a drink made from sorghum. A lucky few carry a coin to buy “fat cakes” sold by enterprising local women at recess. These are also made from millet flour

Fifty percent of these students have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. They live on the homesteads of relatives, many headed by widows, without water, electricity or telephones. Studying must be done at school, after hours, while the sun shines.

As we stand squinting in the sun, the head teacher introduces us, the honored guests, all the way from America who have helped to build the library building and brought books. In English and Oshikwanyama, he exhorts them to welcome us with politeness and good behavior. The older learners and teachers speak English, official language of Namibia since 1998. The younger students speak and are taught in the local language.

We are afraid that they might ask us to speak. We know a few greetings, which we nervously tried out earlier on the teachers when we arrived. The teachers smiled, shook our hands, and responded in kind. Greetings are very important here. How do you greet seven hundred curious kids?

The head teacher turns to the students and asks them to greet us. An older student starts them off.  “Welcome, welcome, welcome visitors!” They sing in English, huge smiles on their faces. We smile back. Tears sting our eyes.

The sun rises and the air warms. The learners scuttle off to class. 

School begins.