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!
