Allo!It has gotten cold again with big gusts of wind.Not so fun when the main terrain is sand.Today was very eventful!Well not so much teaching wise, but still.I gave the grade 11s, then the grade 10s their tests.Peter forgot that the grade 10s had a double period so they finished a lot earlier than I thought they would since he had planned a test for only a 35 minute period.But it's such a small class that I just let them talk among themselves.Additionally, I happened to have a bunch of NASA materials that my mom brought from home to give to people; so I was able to share information about the sun, solar flares, auroras, and other things that NASA is researching currently.Acides and Kornelia were very interested!Acides must have asked a million questions about what I was teaching him.I also had a stack of these 3D postcards with NASA's newest probes pictured on the front with the sun (one will be orbiting the sun and the other is supposed to go with in 2 million miles of the sun), so I gave them each a 3D picture.They were absolutely amazed just staring at the 3D image of the sun for minutes on end and trying to poke it.LolIt was actually pretty funny!Then I waited for period 8 when I had a 9th grade maths extra course.They were very loud today.Two of them have been getting into fights all week too so I had to monitor that as well.I again shared the information about the sun with them.I had about 8 people that asked continuous, well thought out questions, and the rest were just joking around about how NASA should try to go to heaven or how the moon is made of cheese.I again gave them the postcards, which shut the louder ones up for at least 5 minutes.

Catching a taxi was a bit harder today, but I eventually got to PAY.I have to give you a brief background about Paul.Paul is a long-term volunteer at PAY, but he going home within the next 2 weeks.He has really helped to organize the students into their teams and get a lot of reorganization done.Paul is also a bit of a conspiracy theorist, in all sense of the word.When I got to PAY, I mentioned that I had some materials from NASA to put in PAY's library.Paul then went into a 15 minute rant about NASA and how all of the Apollo missions were fake and how he had seen this gray scale thing that shows that their were cities or something in the background.He honestly totally believes the conspiracy.I asked him a few questions that threw him off and he started to back track a bit and then stopped talking to me.I was totally shocked that I had met someone that believed that it was all fake…I had heard of the theories, but never known anyone to actually believe it.But to each his own, so I didn't really think about it…at least for another 10 minutes.

Since it's Friday, they have life skills and not sports.Yesterday they each wrote down a question they wanted answered during life skills.Given that they had to draw and write a skit about AIDS yesterday, a lot of the questions were about HIV/AIDS.Paul leads a lot of the life skills discussions.He began the discussion by telling the students that he had done all this research to make sure he had the right answers to their questions; that he was going to talk about how HIV started basically and where, what to do if you have it, and treatments.I was like, ok this should be interesting.NO!Paul proceeded to tell the students that the story they have heard about HIV coming from Chimpanzees and then being passed in a polio vaccine was not true.His proof was that there was a 20 year gap between the first documented case and the world wide spread.Instead, Paul prefers to believe that (and this is what he taught the students) people were concerned with Earth's overpopulation and wanted to find an efficient way to kill people without telling anyone.So the American government was trying to create new deadly viruses in their labs when they made HIV.Then the Illuminati took vials of the virus all over the world and slipped it into different vaccines.Paul continued to tell the students that they needed to cut Benzene out of their diets because it was toxic to them and because the combination of Benzene and parasites causes HIV.And if you didn't know the combination of polyethylene and parasites causes cancer.He listed all of the things that they used that contain Benzene: toothpaste, sweets, and lubricants in condoms…etc.So at this point, all of our students have been told that they need to stop the spread of HIV and either abstain or use condoms, but Paul is telling them they can get HIV from the lubricant in them.Paul claimed that HIV is a bunch of parasites in your body that need to be killed off and because of the Benzene they can't be killed.I was absolutely LIVID at this point in the discussion!I couldn't believe that he was actually teaching the conspiracy crap to them!And if you know me at all, I do not get mad at random people that I hardly know.It's one thing to believe it yourself, but to be a teacher and instruct other people and force your beliefs on them when they have no scientific proof is absolutely uncalled for.So I spoke up…mostly to get my mind wrapped around what he was saying, but also to challenge.All of the volunteers were horrified at what he was saying and they wanted to show the students that what he was saying was wrong, but none of them wanted to do it.I clarified that he was actually telling them that it was parasites and benzene that causes HIV and not the virus.And so he tried defending saying that the parasite carries the HIV.So I was like ok, so the parasite or mosquito bit you and carried the HIV, but now you have parasites in your body?His answer was yes.And these parasites can be passed on through body fluids (instead of the virus which is what it is).This is when the older students were like….oh; ok this is not making sense anymore.But we clarified this was Paul's opinion and then we took a break.We took a break mainly to eat cake because it was the Brits last day and they wanted to say a few things.When we returned, Paul started going on about treatments.Apparently, he has met a doctor in Namibia who has cured AIDS.And that if you don't drink or smoke or do any sort of drugs and have HIV, it won't turn into AIDS.So this doctor has something called an NRI machine or a Rive machine that can be created out of things you have in the house so it is relatively cheap (if the students wanted one, they could talk to Paul after) that cures her patients.She apparently has a lot of people that have been cured for 5 years.The other cure was something called MMS or Miracle Multivitamin Supplement…I just rolled my eyes at this point.He swears on MMS.He told the children that if they have HIV or AIDS they should take it and it would cure them.He also told them that if they were to find a vaccine for the swine flu or any other illness to come, they shouldn't get it (because of course it could have the HIV parasite in it!) and instead take MMS if they got it.And we should never take the full treatment of antibiotics that a doctor prescribes, because that will make our bodies more accessible to harmful bacteria and viruses; not mentioning the fact that if we don't finish, the bacteria could grow resistant to the antibiotics.He was constantly interchanging bacteria, virus, and parasite.All of our mouths dropped at this point.Not only was he telling the students that HIV is really a parasite (bringing on many students to think they can now get it like they could get food poisoning) and that condoms have something that can help give you HIV, but that you shouldn't be immunized or listen to any doctor other than his friend because they might be giving us HIV and there is a new cure all called MMS anyway.I honestly couldn't be in the room anymore.Natalie was busy calling Dave (both part of the British team) to check some of the info online and calling Harry telling him what Paul was teaching the kids.At the end, we took attendance.We now have to make sure that we talk to every student that was in that discussion and correct what Paul has said.It still makes me mad to think about it!

Well once the kids went home, we had a meeting at Namas (the house where the Brits were staying) about the Windhoek International Mini Olympics and World Cup that is tomorrow from 9-3.The Brits have organized it as part of their class at JMU.PAY, Score (a group that teaches PE in different Katutura schools), and Special Olympics will be participating.They have assigned 8 students to each team and given them a different country to represent.Namibia will not be represented because they were afraid of students arguing that they weren't on their national team and America is not represented either.I am helping Martin with the French team…mainly to make sure that he doesn't kill any of the students. JlolThey will be playing relays and Kicking Out Aids! in the morning.Then for lunch they have organized a braai.If you've forgotten, a braai is basically a cookout of farmer's sausage, beef, and chicken.After the braai, we will start a soccer tournament.Since there is not time for all of the teams to play each other, each team gets 8 penalty shots.The top 4 teams play in the semi-finals…etc.There are 10 teams I think.While we were discussing this, we were also telling jokes and eating Cheetos! Lol

After our meeting, we had our own braai.If you have a braai for dinner, they go until you can barely keep your eyes open.It was a ton of fun.At some point we created a human pyramid on someone's stupid suggestion.And we played soccer, getting way too close at times to the fire.And we danced or in some people's case tried to dance J until we were rolling on the ground laughing at them.

I am going to head to bed now, since I have to be up bright and early with a ton of energy!JWe should be a miserable bunch tomorrow morning, but we had fun. haha

Hope everything is ok at home!!Love you and miss you!Can't believe that I have a little over a week left.:/

Love,

Shannon

---I forgot tell you yesterday about the skit that I filmed.It might be a little shocking when I put it up so I wanted to just give you the background.I told you that they had to explain how the person got it, how they coped, and other people's reactions to HIV/AIDS.But the one that I filmed was about a student getting raped.Unfortunately, from what I've heard in conversation and have talked to people about as well, it is fairly common for students to get rapped after school by a male teacher.Since school is over at 1:15, teachers hold afternoon classes that are optional one or two days a week.Some of them are actual classes whereas most are just tutoring in a specific content area.Students are specifically recommended by teachers to come if they are struggling or they can come voluntarily.I've noticed that there is a lot of reluctance to go to afternoon classes and now I know why.If certain male teachers (definitely not all) ask a student to stay, it is not just to help them with their work.>:[