Making a Difference

2 Schooling

Schooling My education was driven by my grandmother. I went up to the end of pre-school in Fransfontein (Groot B). My mother was not very impressed with my village education. My carefree life where I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to do irked her and she was worried what I would become with my grandmother spoiling me, so she came to beg my grandmother to let me go to the big school in Otjiwarongo, the capital of the Otjozondjupa region. My mother was a Standard 4 graduate and knew something about education and how important it was. We already had two teachers in the family. My elder brother and my sister were teaching, and my sister was amongst the three women who graduated as teachers from Augustineum School. My grandmother was also convinced that I was clever and needed to go to big school but she was reluctant to send me with others, so she took me there herself. Thus I started schooling in Otjiwarongo, beginning in Standard 1. My grandmother advised me to study diligently, and I did. The school only went up to Standard 5, however, since only three children passed to proceed to Standard 6 and the school was unable to open a new class for only three pupils. We were then sent to Augustineum Secondary School in Okahandja, 70 kilometres north of Windhoek. This was the first secondary school for black children south of the Red Line. There was another high school for the Catholics at Döbra, just north of Windhoek. One of my brothers went there and converted to the Catholic faith. For the readers who are not Namibians let me briefly explain about the ‘Red Line’. It is a veterinary cordon fence, which means that animals from northern Namibia are not allowed to come to the south, to prevent anyspreadofdisease.Duringcolonialtimes,peoplewerealsonotallowed to come to the south unless they were contract workers, and even if they found work their families weren’t allowed to come with them. Although the majority of Namibians live in the north, they couldn’t freely visit Making a Difference 16 south of this line; they only came to work in the mines and on farms, leaving their families behind. Some never returned. That Red Line is still applicable today for animals, particularly cattle. As for the people, we are free at last. Our Constitution stipulates that Namibians are free to live wherever they want to in the country of their birth. Augustineum School There were only three other girls at Augustineum, one of whom was Francisca who became my best friend; we are still in touch today. We stayed in the school hostel. I recall that the food we were given was nothing to write home about. On many occasions the mealie-meal was full of tiny worms and I don’t remember whether we had meat. We, the girls, were locked in like prisoners at 9pm but we didn’t feel like prisoners, in fact it didn’t upset us. Maybe since we were four girls together we enjoyed the privacy. Looking back now, I am not sure whether it was a good or bad thing. I personally had no thought of boys at that time and I think the same was true for my roommates. I now wonder what could have happened if we hadn’t been locked in. Perhaps it was good protection, come to think of it! The boys didn’t harass us, though; we all studied together and became friends. Students worked hard. The language of instruction was Afrikaans and there was a kind of competition as to who could speak the most bombastic Afrikaans. We would use the dictionary to change a word to a more unusual sounding one that we found in the dictionary. We had very good teachers, both black and white. One of the most elegant and well groomed teachers was Mr Martin Shipanga. He is still alive and even, as an octogenarian, dresses well. We used to imitate his Afrikaans as it was so good. We had a music teacher, Mrs Woods, who was also the choir mistress. She taught us songs and we had a choir. Students also had their own singing and dancing groups. There was a guy who looked and sang like Nat King Cole; we called him Sloppy Joe. His real name was Ismail Tjoombe. Thus, Augustineum was a cultural and ‘intellectual’ place that made us respect education. When we went...