Looking back to August 2016:
Trainings were fun, and I think useful.
I hope the students agreed. I
know, though, that few Namibian students think training is worth much without a
certificate to show for it. So
certificates there would be.
My prejudice is that what you learn is invaluable, and a paper that
says you learned it is a far distant second or maybe fifth. So at first I thought I’d just print up the
papers and hand them out at the last class.
But as I thought about the amount of work the students did, and that I
did, and the support I got from my boss and our foundation, I decided that
something a bit more special was warranted.
Thus, a certificate ceremony.
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| His Worship, the Honourable, and Mister congratulate Miss. |
Scheduling was the usual just-be-patient blend of urgency, tardiness
and changes. I worked with my boss to
try to make sure we invited all the right people. It is easy to get protocol wrong and offend
someone, and there’s no one around here I’d want to offend. The invitations have to go out from the right
person, to the right person, and the mayor has to be ‘his worship,’ and the
councillors have to be ‘the honourable,’ and former councillors cannot be ‘the
honourable,’ and the speakers have to be scheduled in the right order.
And someone needs to decorate the head table, and goodness knows I
don’t own a fancy tablecloth.
Eventually everything came together, with a few comic moments of
complete befuddlement on my part, rather rumpled table linens and a slide show
of pictures of students in training sessions to run in the background. My boss’s boss arrived and signed the
certificates; the regional councillor arrived and networked with folks; the employee
comms guy came down on his leave day with a camera and tape recorder. Most of us gussied up at least a bit, and
some quite a lot. Selma’s shoes: whew!
And the mayor was late, but only by about 45 minutes. You cannot start on time and let the mayor
catch up when he arrives; that’s against protocol. And when he did arrive, everyone stood for
him. And some people still call each
other ‘comrade’ here. All rise for
comrade his worship. It’s an interesting
mix.
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| Final final final. |
Pastor Daphne opened the ceremony with a prayer, consistent with
tradition here. My boss handled
director-of-ceremony duties with casual good humor and appropriate
protocol. His boss spoke, the regional
councillor, the mayor and five students.
I wanted to get a nice range of our certificate-earners to speak, and
balanced it with two business learners and three English improvers; four women
and one man; one schoolgirl, one youth and three adults. They all did fantastic jobs with their
remarks, largely without assistance from their putative teacher. I was bursting with pride and respect.
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| Tonia. This girl has a bright future. |
The mayor said Americans are not the most civilized people in the
world, in his experience; the Japanese are.
A pilot, he’s rather better traveled than many Namibians. The regional councillor reminisced about her
school days in our town, when she was one of the fastest runners in the region. My boss’s boss told people about a new
micro-financing initiative our foundation is supporting. The mayor got some laughs when he imitated an
American accent. (Several students
generously thanked me in their comments, and he wanted to make the point that
as much as he and everyone appreciate Peace Corps’s and my contributions,
Namibians can and must do for themselves.)
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| Melody had a fish shop and wants to re-open it. Transport was a problem. |
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| The mayor on deck; Councillor Imbamba warming up. |
Our three principal dignitaries handed out certificates in a happy
muddle, with many handshakes, hugs and photos.
Then we all gathered on the stage steps for a group photo. More hugs.
Two of the younger students asked if they could help me clear up, which
offer I really appreciated. When we
finished, I shut out the lights, locked up the hall, and lugged 40 kilos of
junk home in the dark to a very late dinner and a satisfied feeling of great
accomplishment. In the end, it was a lot
of fun, and I hope to do it again.
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| Honestly, it got a bit giddy at points. |
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| Months later, I'm very glad we did it right. At the time... |
