A disregarded rural school in Oshiteni village

A disregarded rural school in Oshiteni village By Tungeni Elago

It has been 26 years since Namibia has been free from its colonisers but only a relatively small percentage of the country’s population is enjoying reaping the fruits and benefits of the labour system, which we historically all worked so hard at to achieve. I know that I am a born free as many may reckon, but this article is written with special attention for the people of my village, and with extraordinary attributes to the learners and parents (teachers) of the Ombalagelo Junior Primary School.

Allocated west of Omuthiya town is a village called Oshiteni, where the Ombalagelo Junior Primary School is situated. This school was inaugurated in 1983, seven years before independence and yet it consists of only two buildings with three classrooms in one building and four classrooms in another building. Currently this school accommodates 147 learners a number that includes classes from pre-grade to grade eight. Now I am no expert but the numbers of classes at this school are clearly in no way enough to accommodate all the learners at the school, forcing the parents of the learners at the school to gather funds to build their children classrooms that are made of corrugated iron. Currently these classrooms do not have appropriate flooring, leading to floods during the rainy season and resulting in the disruption learning periods. Summer time it’s known to get extremely hot in the northern parts of the country, the temperatures rise greatly and affect the unfit classes causing the learners to find it hard to concentrate and to participate in lessons. During winter to make matters worse, the corrugated iron classrooms get really cold and the children endure the extensive cold while being taught. In my opinion, it is actually demotivating and demoralising to come to school and sit there enduring such severe conditions more so than they suffer at home. The case I make is not to demand that these classrooms need air conditioners but I reckon that at least these children deserve to have proper sanitation and in classrooms with windows, proper floors, ceilings, proper roofs and functioning doors.

Classrooms are not the only problems that the people at this school experience as one of the school’s storerooms is used as the staff room and the same time as the principal’s office. It only has one window which is not bigger than a little bathroom window. Also this room is so small that it cannot accommodate more than five of nine staff members, without colliding into each other. Apart from the office space issues, the teachers are not provided with teacher’s houses and they are not provided with proper sanitation, personally, I would refuse to wake up every morning in a shack just to go spend the whole day teaching in another shack. The school does not have proper toilets and the teachers do not have bathrooms - both staff and learners use the same pit-latrine facilities.

In addition the school does not have electricity making the work harder than it is supposed to be. A number of hardships that this school experiences without electricity is that all administrative work is done by hand including the drawing up of the master timetable or the normal timetables used by the learners and the teachers. Thus due to the absence of a secretary and electricity and computers at the school, this work is done by the principal, Understandably it is evident why teachers want their salaries to be raised, as one cannot do multiple jobs and only be compensated for one job. Thus the essential study of technology is unknown and unheard of at this school, by this I mean the learners at this school do not have practical computer classes as they do not have electricity or computers at the school, and in efforts to help the learners with basic computer education understanding the principal has to use her personal transport to drive these learners to another school which is kilometres away from their initial school, for their own well-being. Due to these factors even small essential things such as the school bell is rang manually which is time consuming to the bell ringer to attend his or her duty on time.

To sum up my article, I would like to ask the government or otherwise the education department of the government to visit this school and to make the changes needed so that the school can progress and move forward to the level at which it potentially needs to be, to help achieve and contribute to the country’s educational objectives in efficient and objective manner possible.

*Tungeni Elago is a third-year student studying towards a Bachelor of Public Management (Honours) at the University of Namibia