Day 60

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blog posts this month. With school finishing at 1 then maths study, library duty and computer classes, the rest of the evening is spent cooking (at which we are becoming quite the chefs), playing with the learners outside and planning lessons. That means that what little time we have left is spent on pastimes such as reading, planning holidays and mosquito hunting.
Teaching remains a challenge - keeping control of a class is hard at the best of times, let alone when there are 40 of them. However we haven't even been here for two months yet so we are still getting to know the classes, and we are learning some tricks to make things easier. And as I was told before, you just have to take the small victories to heart and over time it will come naturally
We have been doing quite a bit of travelling around Namibia with our weekends. Three weekends ago we went to Otjiwarongo to visit two Project Trust volunteers who are at another rural school. The highlight of the weekend was probably holding a baby crocodile at the nearby crocodile ranch. Either that or the crocodile fajita I had shortly afterwards.
The weekend after that we spent at Gqaina. We went into town at half past 7 on Saturday morning to get our food shopping, thinking that we would be home by lunch. But, as per African time, we arrived back at 5 in the evening. It's useless even trying to be punctual. Us and all of our shopping were in the back of an open-topped pick-up truck (or bakkie, as they're called here), so the cheese and chocolate were pretty much liquid by the time we got back.
Last weekend we went to Windhoek to see another volunteer as unfortunately her partner went home a couple of weeks ago. We met quite a few American Peace Corps volunteers who have been in Namibia for over 2 years already, and they showed us a bit of the city. We also visited the craft stalls and, despite our bartering, were almost certainly ripped off for bracelets.
On Friday we were invited to the farm of one of the teachers here, and we stayed there for a night. The two of us, along with the teacher's daughter, spent quite a lot of yesterday smoothing out the sand roads. That consisted of one person sitting on a tyre tied to the back of a truck and one of the others driving as fast as they liked. We also went on a mini safari around the farm, and we saw meerkats, oryx, kudu, zebra, and even a giraffe from far off. Apparently there are 8 giraffes so hopefully we will see more when we visit again.
Today is day 60 since leaving home. African time is usually slower than usual but the weeks are starting to fly by - it will be Christmas before we know it!
Ps there have been no photos on this blog because I seem to have misplaced my external hard drive. I'll make it up next time

One month down...

Sunday was the 29th of September, which marked one month since I left home. Compared to the first couple of weeks which seemed to last forever, days are passing much more quickly now. I have now done 4 full weeks of teaching, which is, slowly but steadily, getting easier. My day was made today when I walked in to take a Grade 3 class for arts, and some of them literally started clapping and cheering because they were so excited. Below is a photo of me teaching a Grade 5 maths study class how to add multiples of 10. They have a national test coming up and many of them are falling behind so we now do study sessions every day, with alternating halves of the class. Note the fantastic new African shirt.

Last week was the national Readathon. The school found out the theme (Read, Study and Explore the African Ecosystem) in typical Namibian fashion - the day before. All the children piled into the assembly hall and each class took it in turns to read a story, sing a song or act out a drama connected to the theme . This picture shows Ewelline from Grade 4 asking questions about the short story she had just read. The enthusiasm of the audience may partly be due to the fact that you got a sweet if you answered correctly.

At the weekend we had our first visit to a Namibian farm, owned by the principal, Carien, and her husband, John. It was nothing like farms at home. There's no grass, for a start. This can be a problem if you have 13,000 acres of land like John, but it's all sand and bushland, not ideal for herds of sheep and cows. Carien told us that it's common practice for farmers to poison their own trees so that the water is left for what little grass there is. There hasn't been any proper rainfall in this region for almost 2 years either, so the farmers need to rely on boreholes for water.

We helped John out on the farm a bit, herding cows into new grazing grounds, and chasing 2 bulls back to the kraal to be loaded on to a trailer (which they were not at all happy about), so that they could be moved into an area with 66 females, just for them.

Below is a photo of a braai, which is essentially just a barbecue, but a much more serious affair. We had pork belly, beef, and sausages made from kudu meat and sheep fat. The beef and sausages were both made from John's meat. Around 30% of John meat is exported to Europe, so if your beef packet says Namibia, it might have come from here! This grill was practically covered in meat for 4 of us.

And finally, especially for my sister Anna, this is a photo of me and adorable little Sowi, the granddaughter of one of the teachers here. My short haircut is courtesy of a lovely Herero man in Gobabis....called Mike.