School in Session

Lockdown restrictions in Namibia have been lifted enough to allow NETS (Namibia Evangelical Theological Seminary) to return to face-to-face classes. Naturally, we must follow all the now-typical precautionary measures like registers, temperature taking, and sanitizer upon entrance, distancing of 1 meter, and wearing mandatory face masks (though apparently that doesn't apply when taking a group photo! 😂). Our class sizes are generally small anyway, so we are able to accommodate.

Thanks to our large hall we are able to gather for Chapel once a week. We play videos of worship songs but forego actual singing. This semester lecturers will be preaching through a series called "Stories Your Momma Never Told You," consisting of strange, obscure passages throughout the OT that we rarely hear messages on. Some of these texts include cultural practices that seem very strange to us today, and thus take hard exegetical work to understand. This was illustrated as one lecturer made a piñata of a treasure chest, which students beat until the candy "treasure" came out. Similarly, we sometimes have to do hard exegetical work to figure out the treasure of a passage.

Covid-19 Update

Across Namibia, our number of Covid cases had been fairly limited into June, so the lockdown restrictions were being slowly lifted. However, a few truck drivers escaped from quarantine and took the virus back to their homes in Walvis Bay. Since then, our numbers in that coastal town have skyrocketed. The government instituted a quarantine line around 3 coastal cities that allowed travel between those towns but not into or out of that zone except for emergencies.

To date we are up to a total of 1,775 cases with 8 deaths (see live numbers here). Most of those cases are in Walvis Bay, however, lately cases have been showing up around the country from people who have traveled from there. It appears only a matter of time before the outbreak hits Windhoek as well.

Our economy is seriously struggling. Hundreds of small businesses have closed and even more jobs have been lost. The government is trying to find that line between "preserving life and also livelihood," thus avoiding another total lockdown is a priority.