Celebrate

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.

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.

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.

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.)

Melody had a fish shop and wants to re-open it.  Transport was a problem.

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.

Honestly, it got a bit giddy at points.

Months later, I'm very glad we did it right.  At the time...