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.