Census

Pictures:
1. Victoria Falls, with the falls cascading over the Zambia side of the Botoka Gorge. Across from the falls, in a triangular shape, is the Zimbabwe side. Picture taken from a helicopter ride Adam and I paid for dearly. That red dot near the island in the center (Livingstone Island) is where we went swimming with a guide in a pool on the edge of the falls that stays stagnant after a certain point during the dry season.
2. Zebras at a watering hold in Etosha Park, Namibia.
3. Vista from the toilet at our campsite in Ngepi Camp on the panhandle of the Okavango River Delta in Namibia. Some enjoyable bathroom time, for sure, as there were hippos playing across the river all day.
4. Elephants swimming across the Chobe River in Botswana to an island where there’s more food.

Yesterday at 7:05am, five minutes into period one, Mr. Hamusira knocked on the door of Grade 8A, where I had just begun a lesson on angles, and said all the teachers were meeting in the staff room. The sudden and seemingly impromptu nature of the meeting didn’t surprise me. Indeed most business at school is conducted in this extemporized fashion.


Waiting for us in the staff room were yellow documents from the Ministry entitled “Class-group Information: Annual Education Census 2010”. A set of forms was given to each class teacher, a role parallel to that of a homeroom teacher in the US with responsibilities like taking attendance, distributing report cards, etc. I’m the class teacher for grade 9A so I quickly scanned the questions, becoming first encouraged, then dismayed and disheartened.


The first set of questions was standard: How many kids in your class, male and female? What is the age range of your students? Then came rather significant questions that were, more or less, easy to answer: How many kids, male and female, have participated in HIV/AIDS awareness programs this calendar year? What is the distribution of home languages (18 possibilities, but the mother tongue of most is Rukwangali)? How many textbooks are available per class, per subject? All very important; I was pleased. Because they are black and white questions with similarly straightforward answers, this data is great for the Ministry to have, presumably to help address issues of language instruction or resource supply.


Where the questionnaire threw me for a loop was on page two, under the “Disabilities” category. These questions, in my opinion, are far more profound, requisite for any education initiative - Ministerial or other - related to disabilities in the classroom. The questions, for which we were instructed to tally the number of our students who qualify, read like this:


1.Visually Impaired
- Partially blind, or
- Totally blind
2.Hearing Impaired
- Hard hearing, or
- Deaf
3. Epileptic
4. Behavioral and/or attention deficit disorder
5. Mild or moderate intellectually disabled
6. Severe intellectually disabled
7. Physically disabled
8. Specific learning disorder
9. Autism spectrum disorder

How, I asked several colleagues, should I go about getting this information? “Well, ask the students” was the unanimous reply. Yes, that is how each school assesses the gamut of disabilities present in their student body. Each class teacher goes into their classroom and asks the class, as a whole, who has epilepsy; who is autistic; who has a mild/moderate/severe intellectual disability (remember to specify the level).


So I went into 9A and took an only slightly modified approach by going from group to group (they're seated in clusters of 4-5 kids each). “Okay, does anybody know what epilepsy is?” No. “Has anybody heard of a ‘seizure’”? I write the word on a piece of paper. Still no. Hamwere Beatha from a group in the back has a pocket dictionary on her desk so she looks up seizure, which is defined as “a series of involuntary convulsions.” “Does anyone know what convulsions are?” "No, sir". Not very helpful. Short of demonstrating a seizure on the sandy, stained cement, I was out of ideas. Suffice it to say I didn’t ask the questions in very much detail, focusing on those that produced accurate information more consistently like “What is your family’s home language?”


I was shocked to learn that statistics so essential to education were being gathered in such slipshod fashion. Tenuous at best, falsified at worst, I’d imagine that this data helps define how the Ministry of Education officially views disability issues and thus informs policy. But the look on kids’ faces in grade 9A today was priceless. They shook their heads sheepishly at my questions, laughing and even starting to enjoy my inquiry. When I couldn’t pronounce Kgalagadi, a local language, because it has a click vowel, they giggled. See, while teachers filled out these forms, few taught (including me for four periods) so the kids sat unoccupied in their classrooms from 7am to 1pm. For most, with nothing to do inside a 95⁰ classroom, the survey was a welcome reprieve.

Term Two: Finished

Picture 1: Materials for the 60 sandwiches and apples I prepared for each grade 10 kid during my review session last Saturday morning.
Picture 2: Before the review session started, left to right, Simbaranda Klementine, Kambonde John and Malati Cecilia.
Picture 3: During the review session, Kamisi Erastus, Hausiku Kerthu, Mbandu Joseph and, standing, Tjangano Daniel.


One of my Grade 10 girls, Malati Cecilia, has been especially engaging from the start. Most kids, even if they’re pretty good in English, are too tentative to speak at any great length, usually because they lack confidence. Cesilia doesn’t, and in the first months when I tried desperately to find a foothold somewhere at school, her unabashed attitude was most welcome. Today, that initial boldness has developed into a real friendship, probably one of two I can identify among my students.

On Friday, while I marked my grade 8A exams, Cecilia sat with me for over three hours. I learned more about her background; she asked me questions about mine. On the topic of ancestry, I told her about my family’s role in the Holocaust, a topic about which she’s well informed since Namibia is a former German colony. She told me about hers during apartheid, like her grandfather, who sought asylum in Angola along with so many others during the independence struggles.

She’s one of my brightest kids. So naturally, during the course of our conversation, I asked what she wanted to do with her life. With so few available employment opportunities and a national unemployment rate of over 50%, many smart students want to go into education – one of the few stable, well paid and strongly unionized careers. “Ah, teachers always marking,” she said. I said “do you want to be a teacher?” As is common with any sort of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, I didn’t get a straight answer. She dithered, but clearly leaning in one direction. “One year you do one thing, then the next the same, and the same after that.” I was confused. “What?” “Sir, I want to be a nurse. But I don’t want to see people died.” Oh, okay. So we chatted about nursing and how math and science are her favorite subjects, something we’ve talked about before. For her, the seeming monotony that can accompany a career in education was a put off. She went on to say that she thought about teaching but felt it might be too boring. And she wanted something spicier, which she’ll definitely get fighting infectious disease and parasitic infection on a daily basis.

I also got questions about things in the US: Are their tribes like here? She meant the indigenous kind, so I described the massacre of the Native Americans. By comparison, here in the Kavango Region, the San people (referred to, in my opinion pejoratively, as the Bushmen) are indigenous and though significantly marginalized today, their population hasn’t been decimated by encroaching outsiders. But devastated? Certainly. Regularly the San in Namibia, Angola and Botswana are pushed into peripheral communities.

How many regions are there? So I explained how diverse each of the fifty states is in population, geography, etc. What kind of animals do you have? Interestingly, I found this question the hardest to answer. I started to talk about the parallel species of antelope, snakes, buffalo and cats in Africa and North America. Then I said that Africa had more interesting animals, especially when comparing, for example, lions and leopards to the North American bobcat. “Yes, but here, they’re all very dangerous.” True. Then she told a story from last year, bathing and fetching water from the river when she noticed a Hippo. She ran naked from the river, up the river bank and into the village. I guess I’d never thought about how benign the forest is in Greenwich, NY. Though I do remember getting bitten by a garter snake a few times when I was younger, sometimes causing a tiny cut from which a small droplet of blood would ooze. Here I’m careful to watch where I walk to avoid puff adders. The only non-venomous species of snake is the python, known for eating chickens and, occasionally, goats.

Tomorrow I’m headed down to Windhoek to pick up Adam. We’ll visit Etosha Park in Namibia, then, after a day in Sitopogo, drive east along the Caprivi Strip to Chobe Park in Botswana and Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe and Zambia sides. An ambitious trip (especially since I’m the only one who can drive the stick shift car we’re renting) but I’m ready to take a break from school. My next entry will be sometime in Term 3, which marks the beginning of the end.

August 8th

Pictures:
1) Two boys playing with a ball the one in stripes made by stuffing a plastic bag full of garbage he found here behind my house.
2) Kavindame Johanna and Maliti Cecilia eating lunch I made them after doing my laundry.
3) Some goofy grade 8A girls and guys displaying their typical carefree and fun loving temperament. Kangjimi Ngaudensia, girl all the way to the left, and Doggary Moses, boy second from the right, are two of my favorites in that class.
4) Simbaranda Olavi, my most driven and sharpest grade 10 student.


Recovering from over a month of health derailments – an intestinal parasite, ringworm and bilharzia (“Bilharzia is a human disease caused by parasitic worms called Schistosomes. Parasite larvae develop in snails from which they infect humans, their definitive host, in which they mature and reproduce”). Obviously, because of these hiccups, teaching has been tough but now, at the end of the term, things are looking up. It’s hard to believe I’m finished with two of three terms, with a 12-day vacation renting a car and driving through the Caprivi Strip of Namibia into Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia approaching. But for now, some reflection on the year.

At first, I anticipated starting some community project or activity. This was a naïve. My teaching responsibilities far exceed any level I imagined, which leaves almost no time for other things. I’m the only math teacher for the Junior Secondary School, grades 8-10 in which 230 kids are enrolled, responsible for six classes each day of the week, two for each grade. In addition, Monday-Thursday there’s a two hour ‘afternoon study’ period, which I’ve only missed a handful of times.

There have been several surprises. Most notably, with the focus of many teachers on meticulous, surface-level detail by emphasizing neat handwriting and straight lines, for example, during note taking instead of understanding the substance of each topic, I have to devote all my energy to developing conceptual knowledge. To do this I decided that the two hour afternoon study period, during which most kids go bonkers in their classroom, would be my time to be available for answering students’ questions. And for them to have questions, I started assigning piles of work. That way, those most interested in learning could find me every afternoon in the storeroom between classes 9A and 9B.

I realize this approach seems passive, and it is, but I thought it could generate genuine interest in a topic by giving kids the option of talking to me on an individual basis. During class, I’m like the monkey up there trying to be enthusiastic about each topic. “Today, algebra!!” There's no need to teach more at afternoon study. At first there was trickling interest, mostly my top students in each class – Olavi and Cecilia in 10A; Elyzabeth and Ritha in 9A. Eventually, though, by the middle of Term 1, the line out my door grew and grew each day until, by April, kids were queuing for the entire two hours. I also refined my approach, assigning work in a way that directed my attention to one or at most two grades per afternoon. I learned this after days when my storeroom was stuffed wall to wall with kids, each jostling for a position to ask me their question next. Today I’m convinced I do more effective teaching between 3pm and 5pm, when I can give more individualized help to one or two kids at a time, than during the normal school day.

In all teaching experiences, parallels can be drawn, but there are limits to these comparisons. In this experience, my biggest concern is that individual expression and critical thinking have been suppressed so severely that those abilities have, in a way, atrophied. This isn’t just observed. I’ve talked at length with some colleagues regarding their own upbringing. To transition from a home life that stresses the utmost significance of family hierarchy, where kids speak to adults only when spoken to, to school, where they’re expected to articulate precisely their thoughts, is beyond difficult.

Anyway, in the past few weeks, this is how I’ve reflected on how I truly view my day-to-day teaching life. Hands down, the best part of every day is spending personalized time with those dozens who come in and out of the storeroom each afternoon. Some of my favorites are pictured above: Olavi, Cecilia, Moses and Ngaudensia.

Trigonometry?

Pictures:
1) Kids from grade 10B, sporting fancy pants calculators. Left to right: Tjupa Petrus, Nairenge John, Kayongo Joseph, Katti Jason and Namwira Klementine.
2) May in Cape Town. Camp's Bay to the lower right, some biker and the 12 Apostles, name of the range, behind him.
3) Last weekend visit to Sitopogo by my closest fellow volunteer friends. Here, at a fire we made by the river after my 10A kid, Maliti Cecelia, brought me firewood. Left to right: Kyle, Tina, Kristen, Jena, Me and Wes kneeling.

This week, I taught trigonometry to grade 10. Despite having to exhume the topic from underneath the crap in my brain piled up over the last ten years, I surprised myself by presenting one of the clearest lessons to date. And my kids agreed. “Sir, I thought this was much more difficult!” said Kiliki. So did I.

So naturally, for topic closure, I planned a test on Friday, which would allow us to proceed to algebra (fun!) on Monday. Unfortunately, my announcement in 10B of a test Friday was met with rare groans. “Sir, we have five tests on Friday – English, Rukwangali, Agriculture, Physical Science and Geography.” Damn, I thought. I’ve tried the Monday test thing and, well, never again. A student’s brain retention on Monday of topics covered the previous week is like the barely visible writing on our dirty, 20-year-old chalk boards after you ‘erase’ it with an eraser full of chalk dust. “Fine, let’s review Thursday during class and take a test during afternoon study.” “Yes, sir, thank you!”, they responded in unison, which happens creepily too often.

I arrived today at afternoon study with my trigonometry test in hand. 10A finished quickly, so I walked across the sand ‘yard’ to 10B. “This will be difficult,” I said, “but just follow what we did Monday through today and you’ll be fine!” “Udegoo (pronounced oo-day-goo)” they said. “That’s ‘difficult’ in Rukwangali”. “Oh, so then this is udegoo,” I replied, at which they roared with laughter.

Then suddenly, the afternoon study bell rang – 30 minutes early. They groaned. “Guys, we talked about this and you had me move the test to this time slot. Why is the bell early?” I asked, though I wasn’t surprised because I’m rarely informed about things like early dismissal. “It’s soccer, Sir; they’re letting us out early because of the soccer game.” (Sitopogo’s team, comprised of teachers and students, was playing nearby Tondoro’s squad, which has a similar makeup).

So they sat there writing my tests as the rest of the school poured out of the gate toward the field. I felt like a jerk, out of touch with events and, more importantly, a mean teacher. To me, I saw a series of poorly planned and articulated events unfolding. To them, I held them in when everyone went to watch soccer.

Why didn’t my grade 10 kids tell me about this when we rescheduled the test? Because that sort of thing doesn’t happen. Roll with it, baby.

a pre-birthday rant

Pictures:
1) My roommate’s daughter Gloria biting the fence outside his hut. She visited for the cutest week ever.
2) Sunset down at the river a few days ago.
3) My kitchen, with my glorious hotplate on the left.

Here, I’d like to list four cultural quirks I face on a regular basis – two positives and two negatives. There are differences I find a welcome change from the American pace of life and, conversely, those things from which my stress in Namibia is derived. I realize that the best blogs relay anecdotes instead of oversimplifications, but that requires my perceiving events as anecdotal. After six months (exactly), few things fall into that category so my experience is instead couched in generalities, though I’ll try to illustrate my comments with examples.

The Good:

- Absolutely nothing makes Namibians angry, at least in the aggressive, headstrong sense championed as a virtue by many Americans. This passive and even pacifist approach to life allows most people to preserve placidity. Do my roommates or students ever get frustrated? Of course. For a student, performing poorly on a test or failing to understand a topic is nothing short of maddening, as it is anywhere else in the world. Similarly, when my colleague Josef failed to receive his salary check from the Ministry of Education for the third month in a row, he was livid. But it seems that the feeling of resentment that I tend to have when things go awry, that feeling that lingers and turns into a grudge, is absent here. It’s wonderful. Josef was upset, sure, but you wouldn’t know it ten minutes later. I asked him, “aren’t you pissed?” “Man,” he said, “these things, you know, you can’t do anything about these things. There’s no use in complaining. Just maybe it will come next month.”

- For me, the degree of fundamental kindness I’ve found in everyone I’ve met – on the street, at school, traveling or elsewhere – is unparalleled. People with absolutely no invested interest in your wellbeing will gladly help you. This is true when I’m a stranger traveling and here in Sitopogo. It’s connected directly, I believe, to the local culture of communal living. You find this in situations both short-term (my friend Paratha has had my headphones for about a month because, well, I don’t use them) and long-term (the Kavango region is comprised mainly of circles of mud huts next to which a small farming plot is maintained, used for harvesting seasonal squash, maize and other crops for that cluster of homes). I always saw subsistence living as some sort of Mecca, a utopian lifestyle few could emulate, but it’s not without several severe downfalls, mainly health related. Still, it persists. When I cook, the food is up for grabs to anyone in the vicinity, as I am likewise offered food by those around me. In fact, my two roommates always cook three servings worth of maize meal and meat (usually chicken or beef, sometimes fish). It has taken some getting used to but it’s fantastic.

The less good, but kind of funny:

- Myopia runs rampant, pervading profound issues including basic health and budgeting. Here is a perfect microcosmic example: the teenager who will smash every glass bottle he ever drinks on the ground is the same person who walks around barefoot because his only footwear is a tattered pair of flip-flops. Of course, he’ll cut his feet a few times a year. On money, salaries are paid the last week of every month but many people (I say this from experience with my colleagues, friends, students and students’ parents) tend to be completely broke by the third week. Why? Because they have either spent too quickly and wastefully on what they need or they spent it at the bar. The latter seems more common. In that spirit, during the first two weeks of any given month, many will buy superfluous food like candy, cookies and potato chips while in their last week and a half, they don’t have enough to buy a bag of maize meal (US$2) to make porridge. This lack of foresight is common throughout the world but for me, given my proclivity for neurotic organization, it is particularly worrisome.

- People walk too slowly. Maybe I walk too quickly. Everything’s relative, right? But sometimes, I swear, the only way I know someone is in fact walking is that they aren’t standing still or moving backward. Then, I have to focus on their legs and verify that they are indeed putting one foot in front of the other. Most of the time this cultural idiosyncrasy doesn’t bother me, as I blow by people in town like I’m in going 100mph in the fast lane, though sometimes, like walking with friends or students, I’m forced to fall in line. This is probably related to the general whole ‘be here now’ attitude espoused by most I’ve met. At least where blood pressure is concerned, it’s definitely a good thing.

The Sitopogo Combined School Parent Meeting Under a Tree

Picture 1: During the parent meeting, taken from my house when I went to make a sandwich.
Picture 2: Term 1, helping with group work in class 9B.
Picture 3: Nearby village, a typical scene of mud huts against the backdrop of the river.
Picture 4: Soussesvlei in southern Namibia. For those of you familiar with Planet Earth, it's featured in the Deserts installment for having the highest sand dunes in the world.

Saturday, June 5th

Last Saturday we had our first parent meeting, set to begin at 8:00am, and what follows are observations I took away from that meeting. I would have no reflections whatsoever without my colleague, Mr. Siteketa Veiko, the grade 8-10 English teacher, with whom I chatted throughout. Thankfully, he translated the verbatim Rukwangali dialogue as well as interpreted some of the crowd’s reactions.

For a meeting slated for 8:00am, my roommate, Hakusembe, got in the shower at 8:15am. I walked to school around 8:20, unusually late for me, to find only a handful of teachers trickling in. By 9:00am, parents began to arrive and, since the meeting was to be outside, we started retrieving chairs from various classrooms in a slow, unmethodical manner. We got a bunch, then waited, then got a few more, then waited, then some more. By 10:00am, we reached our quorum (there needs to be 50 parents before we can begin). With the women assembled stage-left in their kaleidoscopic clothing and the men stage-right, Principal Gabriel Sikongo began the meeting with an obligatory prayer.

The first order of business was to review the pass/fail percentages from the April exam period. In a way, parents acted similarly to how I remember them acting when I was in high school: blaming the teachers for poor student performance. But, even with Namibia’s low academic standard, they had a point. For grade 5, 0% passed, followed by 7% and 2.9% in the two successive grades (according to the Ministry of Education, ‘passing’ is 40%). One man used a beautiful, contextual metaphor to criticize the 0% mark. When farming, he said, even the most negligent farmers will cultivate a fraction of their field…maybe 20%. The fact that no kid passed grade 5 in Term 1 is ludicrous, he reasoned, for even the laziest of teachers should be nurturing at least some knowledge.

He was right, of course. Others in the crowd asked those teachers responsible for teaching grade 5 to stand. Three stood. Therein lies the problem, I said to Veiko. The blameworthy teachers are absent, per usual, so now the three most responsible ones who showed up have to be the face of this problem. Absenteeism runs rampant, and this small example certainly illustrated that, especially for the parents.

In the beginning, each parent or guardian had to fill out a sheet stating who they were and which student they were representing. Veiko leaned over to me and said, “listen to them murmuring. They don’t want to do this because only some of them are literate.” With that, he went to the principal and revised the sheet by making columns for each grade, allowing each attendee to simply check the appropriate grade instead of writing the grade. This subtle change, he explained, would solve most of the illiteracy problems, and if it didn’t, it would at least allow the sheet to circulate more quickly. Have I mentioned how much of beacon of creativity and consideration Veiko is? Well now I have.

It was here that I realized the biggest contrast with parent meetings in the states: though to a varying degree, most parents in the US are literate. In this region, where a vast majority of economic activity is communal farming, literacy isn’t a prerequisite for employment or anything else in life. Moreover, since Namibia’s such a young country, nearly all these parents were kids during the Bantu Education System (South Africa’s apartheid system) so it’s relatively recent that black kids from the Kavango region are encouraged on average to read and write. Chalk it up to another African cliché realized.

So the meeting ended at 2:00pm, only six hours after I arrived. It was an interesting Saturday morning, but only because I had a play-by-play translator in Veiko. Great guy.

Fish River Canyon - Another Journal Entry

Picture 1: Before descending into the canyon.
Picture 2: A typical stretch of the trail, which follows the river throughout.
Picture 3: Drinking river water, the only water supply.
Picture 4: A quiver tree (family of aloe trees), one of Namibia's natural icons, on the way to the top.

Back in Sitopogo after a long, fulfilling vacation. I’ll do another blog with a journal entry because the last one seemed well received. Fish River Canyon is a 5 day, 85 km hike through the world’s second largest gorge. Wes and I planned on doing it in 4 days, arguing that we could endeavor to do the toughest stretch, which typically takes people their first 1 ½ days, all in one day. This would pave the way to an easier push in the last three days…

11-5-2010, Tuesday 6:10pm
Leaning up against a smooth rock on the banks of Fish River after a grueling 8 ½ hour hiking day. The trail is tough, as advertised, with huge boulders interspersed with patches of deep sand along the river banks. … It’s time to eat some exciting food, perhaps tuna and cheese on bread. Glad I did this. Feeling nostalgic about family and friends. We’re gonna do this hike in 4 days.

12-5-2010, Wednesday 3:41 pm
I’m laughing about the last line of my last entry. I sit in the ‘lookout circle’ above the 1st emergency exit from the canyon. Let me explain. As it turned to dusk last night, we happened upon another group – 5 men and women from Pretoria, SA – who had forged the river and were setting up camp on the opposite side. We thought that was odd. Why’d they cross? Despite a somewhat fitful night sleep from our numerous muscle aches, we were optimistic in the morning. But not 2 km from our campsite, the trail ended abruptly, compelling us to look for a crossing. Now we knew there would be some river crossings but nothing indicated that they’d be this soon or this deep. A picture on the trail map we bought depicts a happy group crossing in water less than 6 inches deep. So we figured, before starting yesterday, the worst case scenario is we take off our shoes a few times this week and get in up to our shins. No big deal.

Well the first crossing forced us to take off our shoes and plunge, belly-button deep, into the brown, opaque water. We neglected to bring water shoes so the riverbed cut and bruised our bare feet. I thought, “wonder how many more of these crossings there are?” Come to find out that there were upwards of 30 more, many of which would be deeper than the first. Crap. After about an hour of deliberation, we agreed: given our inadequate food supply, reserve of water purification tablets and footwear, we had to exit the canyon…shit, to be continued.

(suddenly, the park ranger arrives and we reenter the canyon to help Wes...)

Same day, 8:00pm
Sitting on a metal chair at Hobas, the entrance point campsite for the hike. Did I already explain that? My muscles are on fire. I’ll just skip to the pith of the story begun above.

So we decided to exit the canyon. Without the constant river crossings, we could have done the canyon in four more days. Hands down. But the high water completely changed the dynamic of Fish River, and thus, the hike. Our listed reasons for exiting were:

- No footwear for crossing a river into which we couldn’t see
- Not enough water purification for more than three additional days
- Not enough food for more than three additional days
- The danger of carrying various valuables into high, fast water

These were enough for me. I’m not in a situation where I can replace the valuables in my bag (ipod, speakers, cell phone, passport, etc.) at the end of the trip. They need to last at least 7 ½ more months.

But there was a kicker. The five person troupe that camped across from us the first night had a problem: one group member, an overweight 49-year-old woman, was struggling severely, which had in turn slowed the group’s pace so that it had taken them two days to hike what Wes and I did in one. Unfortunately, they made the idiotic judgment call to send this woman up the emergency exit – one of two dangerously steep escape options up the east side of the canyon, By herself! I’ve never seen such neglect on the trail. They sent her up the four km ravine/trail with a full pack and no one to assist her.

Okay, sorry. Let’s cut to the chase. Part of our rationale for opting for the emergency exit was because, from a humanitarian standpoint, leaving an ill-equipped, inexperienced person to evacuate herself is ludicrous. You go in together, you go out together. OR, the only legitimate alternative is for part of the group to continue and part to evacuate.

Near the base of the exit, we found her pack and alternated carrying it in hopes of finding her. How she planned on eating, drinking or sleeping without the food, water and camping equipment inside is beyond me. It only took us 45 minutes to catch up with her - Else. Else had been hiking for 6 hours with no water and had a broken thumb from falling off a small cliff. She was in rough shape. Wes stayed with her and, with my pack on my back and hers on my chest, I proceeded up to get help. It took me, at a pretty quick clip, 1 ½ hrs to reach the top with the two bags. There, I found a Dutch couple snapping photos of the canyon. I told them the story and asked them to go get the ranger at Hobas. Meanwhile, Else and Wes pressed on slowly, with Wes pushing and pulling her over nearly every step up.

Finally the ranger came and he and I ran down to where Wes and Else were, still about a kilometer from the top. The ranger took Wes’s pack. Then, Wes and I spent the next two hours bracing, supporting, pulling and endlessly encouraging her up the final stretch. “You two are angels from heaven!” she exclaimed a few times. Don’t get me wrong, the trail was steep as shit. She complained her legs were numb, which I believed because she couldn’t stand up without us supporting her. So here we are, back at Hobas. We set up her tent, unfurled her sleeping bag and supplied her with a few ibuprofen. Hopefully she’s sleeping now. I’m not sure if she’ll move well in the morning.

Barely an hour after the incident, we’re having a hard time speculating about the potential outcomes of her trek to the top without our intervention. We found her at 12:45pm and reached the top at 5:30pm, about fifteen minutes after sundown and 9 ½ hrs after she started. Without a tent, sleeping bag, water, or food on those haggard rocks that comprise the trail, she would have had risked a perilous night. Here during the onset of winter, the temperature can reach 5 degrees C.

Enough ‘what-ifs’. Else would have been screwed, that’s for sure. Luckily (mom would credit intuition), she’s safe and sound, sleeping in her tent about 50 feet from ours. I’m in a lot of pain and still rather dazed. More to come tomorrow…