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Science education in black Africa's newest independent country is a far cry from UK discussions of the National Curriculum. Even more remote than key stages are the primary science needs of the rural schools of Namibia's rugged north-west frontier with Angola. This area, known as Kaokoland, is a remote and inhospitable region regarded as one of the few great wildernesses still remaining in Africa. Namibia is a country of great contrasts, both educationally and socially. Educationally, because prior to independence it consisted of 11 completely independent education authorities; socially, because Namibia is struggling to shake off the shackles of an apartheid system under which it laboured until 1989.

At the outset of independence, the EC earmarked money to help the new nation set its science education on a more egalitarian basis. My task was to 'in-service', through workshops, as many primary school teachers as possible in the country. It was a daunting prospect, since inevitably the most deprived in terms of expertise and physical resources were those teachers living in the remoter regions.

Aid to Namibia

The exercise was part of a European Community funded project for science and mathematics, implemented by the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. The project, aptly code-named INSTANT (in- Service Training and Assistance to Namibian Teachers), aimed to provide in- service training for all Namibia's teachers and, true to its name, as soon as possible. The rural schools of Kaokoland Most of the smaller schools in Kaokoland cater for children of nominal ages 6, 7 and 8, though the age of pupils in some classes is as high as 17 years. Some have served in the preindependence SWAPO ranks fighting along the border with Angola. We were already aware of the condition of many of the schools, since I had spent a week in Kaokoland a few months previously with the education inspector for the region. We had travelled by four-wheel drive, visiting many of the primary schools, he to determine numbers of teachers required for the next year, and I to ascertain the schools' needs in terms of maths and science.

It was not difficult to discover their immediate physical needs. Classrooms were usually of concrete, but one headteacher's study had been built by the staff from locally cut trees, lined with dunged earth and thatched with a conical roof. Women teachers had also built their own residential accommodation in the same way. Food, in the form of bags of maize-meal, is brought by the Red Cross once a month and prepared for the children in an open iron cauldron in the centre of the compound (figure 1). In one school, a concrete, tin-roofed building of four rooms, housed two women teachers and two men teachers. In these schools there is no electricity, telephone or running water and the boys' latrine in one school consisted (most ingeniously, I thought) of a pipe projecting about two feet out from the ground and sloping at an angle of 45 degrees!

Needs in maths and science

The physical needs of these children and teachers are obvious enough, but what of their needs in science and maths? Classrooms are generally devoid of teaching aids other than old and worn charts, bags of scrap materials, and assorted quantities of coloured pencils and Plasticine. Yet one school was proud to show me their very own science kit. It consisted of two tortoise shells and a green wine bottle, salvaged from an abandoned South African army store. The bottle was found on inspection to contain the preserved remains of a large snake!

Although workshops for teachers was the aim of the project, teachers needed materials. For most of the schools, a science kit in the conventional sense was clearly impractical; in any case, to teach primary science effectively does not require expensive apparatus. It was decided therefore to supply teachers with an assortment of materials which could be used to demonstrate as many simple science principles as possible. None of the items eventually chosen required electricity or batteries and all were durable and maintenance- free. Adaptability is of paramount importance but because children are unacquainted with delicate or sophisticated apparatus, materials need to be simple to understand and easy to handle. Since goods of any sort are in desperately short supply, a basic set of tools was included in the kit from which teachers could produce their own teaching aids using locally available waste materials.

Booklets were specially written to accompany the kits with instructions for making 'science' models and mathematical teaching aids. Models selected for demonstration in the workshops included a straw flute, a straw-and- paperclips tetrahedron, a child's paper windmill, a kaleidoscope and a cuboid-packet car. The mathematics booklets included instructions for making metre rules from newspapers, litre containers from cardboard and an accurate balance, measuring to the nearest 1/4 gram, made from a plastic oil container. In the absence of this the balance could be constructed from just paper and paperclips! Bundles of back copies of a Namibian educational newspaper (Abacus) were also delivered.

Visiting the schools

Assembling materials was one problem; taking the kits to the schools was another. After numerous enquiries, it became clear that no commercial transport was prepared to take the material up to Kaokoland - the largest firm even asked me where Opuwo was! Since the intention was to run mini- workshops at each of the 14 schools in the region, it seemed sensible in the circumstances to load the materials into my own 16-year-old Land Rover and transport it myself.

In the event, the kits proved useful not only to the teachers but also to sustain the programme of visits. For example, the small compasses included proved invaluable for finding the way I should have come and I raided the kits on more than one occasion for pieces of wire to repair the Land Rover. On one memorable occasion, I retrieved my science booklets from the Head's cupboard by cutting off his padlock with a hacksaw borrowed from the school's newly acquired science kit!

Etanga

One of the most enduring memories of this eventful week was a visit to the tiny kraal of Etanga, in the heart of Kaokoland. The journey took four hours, following rocky tracks across numerous rivers, and I met just one vehicle - a broken-down lorry. Learning can only take place if the learner is sufficiently motivated and this was the reason I found myself in Etanga, wrapped in a coil of rope, being pushed up into the branches of an acacia tree by three stalwart elders of the local Ovahimba tribe (figure 2). The aim of this 'science happening' was to suspend a Land Rover tyre from the rope, creating a swing. Since the tree was effectively the social centre of the kraal, the swing could be used by both the school and community as a fun way to discover the principles of a pendulum.

Responses from the teachers

The response to the science kits varied from incredulity to overwhelming gratitude and the head mistress at more than one school offered to buy me a beer at the local kiosk. Within minutes of opening their Pandora's box, the staff and children had everything 'working'. The notion that magnifying glasses were looked through rather than at was soon discovered and tennis balls bouncing randomly around the school compound clearly demonstrated laws of reflection - a major advance over screwed-up Polythene bags bound with thong! Elastic bands were an intriguing novelty; needles and cotton were quickly taken into safe custody by the women teachers, and men fingered the shiny new nails enviously. A large mirror was provided for each classroom, with a reminder that it was to be hung at a height pupils could use! This was much admired and numerous small mirrors were also supplied for individual children to use. The patterns of iron filings created with magnets were also fascinating for the children, as they are all over the world.

Games such as draughts were introduced to stimulate logical thinking and, although it was not an easy task, teaching youngsters to play 'marbles' in the sandy soil was one of my fondest memories.

Culture shock

It is difficult to comprehend the perspective from which many of the teachers view the materials. Most textbook science 'experiments' seemed patently irrelevant in these remote areas: teachers and pupils just wanted to know 'How does it work?' or 'What do u do with it?'

However, the teachers met were amazing in their versatility and enthusiasm to teach under conditions which no European teacher would tolerate. Most spoke not only their own dialect of Herero, but additionally Afrikaans and English, in which language they were expected to teach. Communication at workshops was therefore less than perfect.

At one workshop - which took place on the 20th of the month - tried to explain to the assembled staff and headteacher, in the briefest possible terms, how a large thermometer from the kit worked. I began, 'This is the scale It tells us the temperature in degrees'. Holding the scale close to a teacher in the front row, I asked him to read the number of degrees on the scale. 'It's 19', he announced. On hearing this, a voice from the back shouted, 'Yes, but today is the 20th'!

Our first reaction might be to smile at the teacher's ingenuous remark. However, both language and environment conspire to confuse these teachers. Also, since I gave no clue in my explanation as to what a degree is, nor did I point out that there was a liquid in the red thermometer tube, this teacher displayed a commendable scientific attitude, by hypothesizing a link between two seemingly unrelated numbers. In truth, the ability of these teachers to cope with a Western- oriented science syllabus in the absence of any materials remotely scientific, is nothing short of remarkable.

If we had been confronted by a being from another planet displaying a similar esoteric instrument, would we have made that connection so quickly?

David Womack has worked on various science and moths teacher-education projects in the remoter parts of Namibia and Kenya. The work described here was undertaken while working as science and moths consultant in Namibia for the Vrije (Free) University of Amsterdam. He is currently working at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.

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