Community Based Training (CBT) is officially
complete and we are finally in the home stretch of all our training so that we
can be officially sworn in as the Peace Corp SUPED group 42 of Namibia!!!
First off I'd like to start by saying CBT went by
way too fast! I absolutely LOVED the community myself and 7 other trainees were
in for CBT, I loved my host family and all the extended family, and full on
fell in love with the river and skies. It was simply gorgeous! I truly look
forward to being able to come back to visit my host family.
So what is CBT?
CBT is a 4 week immersion part of our Pre-Service
Training (PST) required in order to officially Swear -In as Peace Corps
Volunteers. The 4 weeks is envisioned to give us exposure to how education is
provided, hands on experience teaching, language immersion (many languages are
only spoken is specific areas of Namibia), and have cross cultural
exchange/exposure to the region of which you have been assigned to. Myself,
along with the 7 other volunteers I had CBT with we assigned to learn the
language of Rukwangali and serve our 2 years in the Kavango Region. We were the
lucky ones who got to serve in the great village of Bunya about 50k (approx
30mi) west of Rundu.
Bunya Combined School was nice enough to allow us
to perform our training at their school hosting grades 0-12. The school served
learners (students) from Bunya and neighboring communities making it a very
large school. It was not uncommon to have classroom sizes well into the numbers
of plus 40 learners. Both my grade 6 classes had over 50 learners in the
class. We did observations for the first week along with co-teaching and
then took on our own classes including everything from the lesson planning, to
teaching the lesson, to debriefing and analyzing it after the fact. I got to work with grade 6
and grade 8 learners. Schools in Bunya are definitely different than they are
America so it was a great to get our feet wet. I really enjoyed having the
opportunity to get feedback from my co-volunteers and support teachers. At
first I was nervous about working with older learners because teenagers are so
cool, and well, I’m really silly and dorky. However, the games I used with my
younger ESL (English as a Second Language) students in the states worked just
as well with the older learners. Guess you’re never too old for learning to be
fun. Though I have done volunteer work in other countries prior to Peace Corps
and worked actively in classrooms in the States I had not been a teacher by profession
prior to this. I was an American Sign Language Interpreter and though I did
enjoy that profession a lot a piece of me longed to be a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching abroad. It really
felt good to get feedback one day telling me I am “one of those people who are
just meant to be a teacher and work in classrooms. It comes naturally to you.”
That comment really made me feel like I’m on the right track! J
The village of Bunya was extremely welcoming and
everyone was rather kind. Each person we crossed wanted to have a conversation.
The typical school day started at 6:45am and ended at 1:00pm. We then had
debriefing and language training till 3:00pm. After that we typically went down
to the river banks to enjoy the amazingness and soak up some sun. Locals and
ourselves would have a great time playing and exploring. It was a great
opportunity for learning conversational language and bonding with family
members, extended family, and each other’s families. There were more times than
I can count that I would just stop and think, damn, this is really happening
isn’t it? This is real life, my life!!! Sometimes it all seems so surreal.
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