Hello Africa!

Well I am here at last - I am sitting here in a youth hostel called The Cardboard Box and I have a free 20 minutes on the Internet so lets see what I can cram in!

Mummy and Daddy took me to Heathrow where I met up with the rest of the Namibian crew who were just as remembered which was a pleasant relief! We went to check in and that's where the problems started! I went to check in and they asked when my return date was - I showed them the ticket which is booked for March (you cant book a year in advance so the ticket will be changed later), they then asked to see my visa (you need one if you are staying for over 3 months) when I explained that my visa was being sorted out when I arrived n Namibia and that my return date was only provisionally they wouldn't let me check in EVEN THOUGH Chelcie, Alex and Sophie had been let through. After a few telephone calls to Project Trust and a lot of panicking we managed to change our return dates free of charge to the 20th of September so it appears that we are returning to England within 3 months. We were then all allowed through but not until I had learned that airport people don't like me: one of the officials asked her colleague "What is wrong with this child?" after I couldn't understand her accent - how rude!!

After a very tearful goodbye to the parents and a few friends on the mobile we boarded the plane to  Dubai. This flight passed quickly - flying with Emirates definitely has many advantages but food is not one of  them. To my excitement I saw sticky toffee pudding on the menu but it was an insult to any sticky toffee pudding to call this cold sponge surrounded my congealed cold custard sticky toffee pudding!

By the time we got on our plane to Johannesburg we were all pretty tired and we tried to sleep most of this flight we varying degrees of success. It was decided that Project Trust were being stingy and we could definitely have flown at least Business Class! by the last flight to Windhoek we were all feeling pretty sick - combination of limited dodgy food and being very over tired. However we arrived after a very bumpy flight all of us clutching sick bags for "just in case".

We then had the challenge of getting through without visas! This was interesting.....and once again shown that airport officials just don't like me! We all split up into pairs and there most challenging question was to Alex and Simone (from Glasgow and Holland) was "why are you friends you are from Scotland and you are from Holland"!. Chelcie and I had slightly more issues with the woman grilling us as to why we wanted to travel in Namibia, why 3 months, what were we doing, who were we staying with etc etc. Luckily we all made it through and went to collect our extremely heavy baggage!

All of ours arrived apart from Chelicie's and Alex's after a long wait and lots of talking we discovered that their baggage was being put on a later flight and would arrive at 7.15pm that night. No explanation. We organised it to be delivered to Robert's house (our project trust contact in Windhoek). We then met up with who we thought was Robert who took us to the Youth Hostel. We had a competition to see who could see which animal first - Chelcie saw 5 monkeys (jealous!) and  I saw 3 cows....

The airport was about 30km from the main city and the drive was FASCINATING. Some times you could just see nothing for miles and the countryside is bare and then there would just be a scattering of houses on the side ranging from pretty smart houses to what looked like goat sheds.

We arrived at the youth hostel and the man declared that Robert would be over at about 5.30 (this was when we discovered he wasn't Robert!). It was very hot so we decided to go for a swim in the pool. Having dipped our toes in and nearly gotten frostbite we decided that would be plenty until egged on by some other travellers we all decided to jump in. IT WAS FREEZING but very very refreshing!

Robert arrived at about 6.15 by what time we were pretty hungry and sleepy but we decided to go out for supper. We went to the most  amazing restaurant called Joe's where I have my first ever Zebra steak which was amazing (steak, chips, salad and a glass of very sweet rose cost me 110 rand = 10 pounds!) The place was like a museum filled with nick knacks and a lot of Yagermister bottles! On the roof was a mini which had been driven by two girls across Africa! They were was a pond with MASSIVE fish in and just a lot of relics including a wheelbarrow strapped to the ceiling!

I am off to Otjikondo at 9.30 (having expected to be collected tomorrow) so I will try and buy a Sim card on the way. This is very exciting and I cant wait to get to my new home! So far Namibia is amazing - the colours are so bright and everything is so well African!

After a long night of listening to people snore I am ready for my own bedroom and a proper nights sleep - hopefully breaky will be as good as last nights supper!

Lots of love to everyone

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