International Human Rights Day – December 10

To celebrate the upcoming International Human Rights Day, which will take place on December 10, our school created a “human rights tree.” All of our students were invited to trace their hand and write their name and the human rights which they value most. You can see below our signs raising awareness about Human Rights Day, and our students taking part in this human rights action. It is our hope that through activities such as these, students will become aware of their human rights, and be able to advocate for themselves now and in the future. The rights which our students valued most were EDUCATION and FREEDOM.

I have also worked with my students on human rights in the classroom. Our ninth graders studied case studies of forced evictions around the world. This is quite a pertinent topic as forced evictions take place here in Namibia. Human rights violations are rampant – I see daily the right to education, safety, health, and much more violated due to the challenges of poverty.

It is challenging here – and I have the privilege and benefit of coming into this situation “fresh” with “fresh eyes,” not having been fighting this battle for years. You can see in the gloss of some people’s eyes that they simply accept the perceived or real limitations that poverty places on us. Yet we must fight and try our best to transcend. As a teacher, this must be done for our students. There are days when you want to give up – when it is too hot, when things aren’t going the way you had planned, when the cultural divide simply seems too wide to even attempt to cross. Yet the “success” that one might achieve in this situation has a lot to do simply with not giving up.

I begin teaching in earnest in January – hopefully to the 9th and 10th grade English classes. (We had been team eaching this term.) It is quite a daunting challenge. School supplies are in short supply. Teachers must provide our own basic supplies such as paper, tape, glue, etc. I am looking forward to teaching, in a deep and unexpected way. I do feel I was placed in this community for a reason. But I will also not say it is easy – daily, I am reminded of the stark contrasts between the people and cultures of Namibia and the United States. This is one of the primary goals of the Peace Corps – to foster understanding between the U.S. and other countries of the world, and to provide development assistance where it is requested. On a personal level, this leads to an interesting conflict – the need for diplomacy and cross-cultural sensitivity often usurps the personal journey to find my voice and to speak out against injustice. One must walk this divide very carefully – it is not my place to judge or comment regarding another country and culture. There are so many layers of culture, history, norms, etc that I simply cannot understand yet. And in the interest of strong collaboration, and in favor of locally-led leadership, it is important that I remain purely in an accompaniment mode, to work alongside my colleagues and community members as we all work to realize our human rights. It is more important to let the local community lead than for me to speak out with my own voice. So it is this intercultural tightrope that I work to walk daily. I love my community and compare it to the informal settlements in the novel Shantaram – the author speaks about how he sees a certain purity of spirit amongst the inhabitants, and a real beauty within that. So it is here as well – when living in varying degrees of poverty, you cannot hide behind material possessions, vice or distractions.

My mentor from graduate school, Bill Grace, calls this the “wisdom from the margins.” This is the applied, on-the-ground realities that individuals know best who are living with various injustices. There is valuable knowledge in this wisdom. I can only seek to be a student of this learning.

Finally, I am including a photo of my neighbors, and a photo of the stunning Namibian sky. I don’t know what it is, relation to the equator or what, but the sky here appears vastly different than the sky at home. I continue to be captivated by it.