Goodbye Namibia

Here I am, sitting in a backpackers hostel in Windhoek, writing my final post from Namibia. It's very strange to think that it's now a matter of days, not weeks or months, until I'm back home with my friends and family (and caramel wafers & bacon butties). I have had such an increible year, with so many good times and a few challenging ones as well. I'm sure than when I return, everyone will notice me much changed (for the better I hope!)

The last few weeks at Gqaina were a strange mix of being sad at my year being almost over, being excited to go home and wanting to make the most of what time remained. Amongst the learners of Gqaina there were many choruses of “Sir you must give me many presents when you go home” and “Sir when you go back I will cry”.

As to the presents, I did end up leaving over half of my clothes, because some of the kids at Gqaina will probably never be bought new clothes by their parents. I also left these sunglasses to X’amce here; she clearly felt very suave and liked them more than I did! And as for the crying, there was actually very little, which was nice. Now the children will remember us laughing and playing rather than crying and being sad. 

This is me helping to make the maize porridge a few days before I left – seriously good arm exercise! The kids eat it once or twice a day, but I have not developed a liking for it. It’s bearable with a heap of sugar, but give me Weetabix any day.

This is me with Salinda, one of the girls in Pre-Primary class. The night before I left she burst out crying. It was difficult to tell her that I would miss her and remember her as she speaks next to no English, but hopefully she, too, will remember all the nice times we played together.

One of the last lessons we taught - grade 2 PE. The boys love playing soccer and the girls love netball, but they also enjoy throwing a rugby ball about. This is a girl called Queen throwing it to me.

We had a small party with each class in the final few days. They each got a toffee and a bubblegum and some juice. It also gave them the opportunity to draw pictures or write letters to us. The letters were very sweet, and some of them were quite amusing. “God pless you,” one of them wrote, and one girl signed her letter “Mrs Ben.” This is the picture that !Oro (Sussana) drew for me.

I will post again when I'm back home with a few final photos and thoughts. For now, however, it's goodbye to Namibia!

Holidays I - Namibia

Once again I have neglected my blog, so apologies for that! I have less than 2 months until I come home, so I will be definitely be more active on my blog until then.

In April - May, I had a month of school holidays, which was spent with my brother and sister. The first part our trip was spent in Namibia itself. One of the highlights of the whole trip was in Swakopmund, when I skydived from 10,000 ft into the barren but stunning Namib desert, which backs on to the Atlantic Ocean. We also went sand-boarding (which I wrote about at Christmas) and I beat my record to get to 78km/h. Here is me and my sister Anna pre-skydive. Looking pretty calm, don't you think? It's only 3 kilometers up the air, after all. 

After Swakopmund we made our way to Etosha National Park for 3 days.The first 2 days were reasonably uneventful - apart from some giraffes, all we really saw were springbok, and springbok, and more springbok. Our local guide said that because of the recent rains, many of the animals had enough water so they didn't need to rely on the waterholes. When it got to day 3 we were a bit disheartened at the thought of missing all of the "big 5", but then our luck turned. We saw a cheetah, a sleeping lion, a rhino crossing the road and an elephant washing itself. In our tent at night, we heard what sounded a lot like a lion roaring just outside the campsite...luckily the fences were high enough. Here are a few of the pictures I took in Etosha.

Giraffes play fighting. This is also how they fight for real - hitting each other with their necks.

After leaving Etosha NP, we stayed in several towns throughout Namibia - Tsumeb, a mining town; Rundu, a town in the North of Namibia which is just over the river from Angola; Katima Mulilo, which lies at the very end of the Zambezi Region (formerly the Caprivi Strip) which is the northern part of Namibia which juts out Eastwards. My sister Anna left us from Rundu to fly home. Apparently something important to do with sitting university exams...

Anyway, tomorrow we will be teaching the grade 1 class all day so I better go and plan some lessons. I promise it will be less than 3 months until my next update.

The New Year

So, what has happened at Gqaina in 2014 so far? Well, the grade 1 teacher left about a week into the new term for a job at a different school, and the class was left teacher-less, so Ollie and I decided to teach them ourselves - using our initiative or something like that. Easier said than done. 

Let me paint a picture of the grade 1 class for you. 41 children, ranging in age from 6 - 9. English is their 3rd or perhaps 4th language, after one or two tribal languages and Afrikaans. Whilst some of them know a handful of words and understand the basics, some of them know nothing at all in English. This makes it difficult to give instructions or tell someone off if they just look at you blankly and have no idea what you're saying. However I did rely on what little Afrikaans I've learned to try and make them comprehend, and I have learned the very useful phrase "be quiet" in 4 new languages.

Luckily there was a "Grade 1 Readiness" program at our disposal, so we had plenty of worksheets to do with them, as well as play-dough and PE to fill up time. This photo shows me re-arranging the desks from the military-style rows they were in beforehand.

In true African style, whenever it rains here, the electricity goes off, usually for about 24 hours. However I've learned to keep a supply of dry wood in the house, so when there's a power cut, we build a fire and have a braai. It usually consists of meat and corn-on-the-cob, but it's fun nonetheless. My normal cooking skills have also improved a lot, I thought you would all like to see my signature curry (from scratch, I'll have you know). We don't get chicken very often, so when we do, it has to be put to good use.

This term is also athletics season for Namibian schools so I have been helping to train them in everything from running to discus and javelin. Gqaina got an impressive 10 learners to the regional competition, but none qualified for the national level. Last but not least, here is a really cute photo of some children helping me on the swings. 

Holidays

It has been far too long since I last posted, so in this post I will talk about my holidays and next time I will update what has been happening since then.

The majority of our Christmas season was spent in Swakopmund, a town in the West of Namibia, on the Atlantic Coast. It's very popular as a holiday destination amongst people from Namibia and South Africa as well as further afield, especially Germany. In fact the town is still very reminiscent of German influence, being home to a "Brauhaus" pub and plenty of old European-looking buildings. 

We had originally intended to stay in Swakop for only a few days and then travel to South Africa to visit Cape town and Port Elizabeth, but unfortunately our work permits from the government STILL haven't been processed, so we were unable to travel outwith Namibia. Considering all the plans we had made for our South Africa trip, it was very frustrating not to be able to go. However, Swakop was a very safe and relaxing place to be - 5 minutes walk from our hostel to the beach and plenty of things to do.

As I have grown up near so many beaches, it was wonderful to be able to swim in the sea again - and the South Atlantic Ocean was about as cold as the bitter North Sea! On two separate occasions I was swimming in the bay of the beach, I found myself in the presence of about half a dozen dolphins, who were all very playful and not at all scared to come within 2 metres of me. You don't get that at Largo beach.

As well as the Atlantic, Swakop backs on to the dramatic Namib desert. One day we went quad-biking through the dunes. I don't have any photos of that day, it's rather hard to hold a camera whilst on a quad! Another day we were introduced to the activity of sand-boarding, which was incredibly fun. The sand-board, in typical Namibian fashion, was nothing fancy, in fact nothing more than a 2'x5' piece of oiled plywood. In the photo below I am doing a tandem run with Katie, another volunteer, but most of the runs were done solo, lying face-down on your board, your face no more than a couple of inches from the sand. I think my fastest run was 74km/h. It could be a bit sore when you hit a bump in the sand but the bruises were soon turned into proud battle-scars. 

The dunes themselves were about a 15 minute drive from town so we had to take a mini-bus. Of course, the health and safety regulations are somewhat lacking in this country, so I was obliged to hold the door shut to stop myself falling out.

Another day we went out on a day-cruise from Walvis Bay, a nearby town. We saw a colony of thousands of seals, as well as a few dolphins here and there. A couple of the seals were trained to come aboard - here is me trying to hi-5 one of them. Walvis Bay is also the home of one of the biggest oyster fisheries in the world, so we were allowed some fresh oysters.