Month Number Six...
For the start of February I carried on being Mrs Vermaak and teaching Maths to G6 and G7 which I continued to thoroughly enjoy. I have now returned to my normal job of teaching Art, Music and PT however I hope to be able to do some more academic teaching this term. This term we have got little books for all the children to do their spelling tests in so that they are able to see what they got wrong rather than just get a mark out of 15 rather than 20. My job of marking all the tests now takes considerably longer as I have to write in corrections; G5 – 7 tend to get the majority of the spellings right but in the lower grades its not uncommon only to get a couple right at this stage of the year.
Luise had been having toothache so she went to the Dentist with Gilly in Otjiwarango. It turns out she has a little bit of wire in her gum left over from when she had braces which she needs to have removed when she returns to Germany. Gilly bought us lots of goodies as she thought that we might have been jealous of Luise having the day off so she returned with Coco Pops (Chelcie’s favourite), raspberry jam, nutella, and a cake from the bakery for us. This was a very welcome surprise and Luise also bought us a bar of Crunch chocolate and printed off a picture of Me and Chelcie from sports day which has been added to our collection on the board in the Kitchen. This was very kind and sweet of her.
On Saturday after making Sticker Charts for all the Grades we went to Paul and Sara’s house for a braai which was delicious and great fun as usual. On Sunday after Church I went to the big Girl’s Hostel and watched their Fashion Show which was brilliant. They had four judges from the G7 girls and 14 models. The fashion show took place in one of the dorms and the rest of the girls sat on the bunk beds or the floor and therefore created a runway for the models to walk down. They all walked four times: first they just walked, secondly they walked and then stopped to introduce themselves and say a message, thirdly they walked and then did a song with a dance and lastly they walked again. The audience sang to create a beat to walk to and for each walk they were marked out of 20. At the end it was my job to add up the scores to see who would be crowned the Queen and then Princesses.
Button Box: We finished our second round of auditions and we now have a cast of 26 which is very exciting. We have sixteen people in our chorus, four of which are G7 boys which is very exciting. It was difficult to narrow it down but we wanted a really strong small group to work with. I cannot wait until next Friday when we will have our first rehearsal. The plan is to try and learn all the songs by the end of this term and a couple of dances which will leave the rest of the dances and fine tuning to next term.
We have now taught them the four songs that all the Chorus are involved with – Before the Dreamtime, Paradise Island, Impuku Nekati and Bombay Button. They know the first three off by heart which is brilliant and they are already starting to sound really good. All of them have elements of "round" singing in them and it sounds really effective. We can’t use the backing track for the performances as we don’t have a sound system in the Dining Room so we are teaching it to them all unaccompanied. This means that we are able to bring the songs down in pitch as African children tend to have lower voices than English ones so the songs are too high for them as written.
Dankie: Dankie, meaning thank you in Afrikaans, is the child I have chosen to sponsor. He is six years old and incredibly cute. He is missing two of his front teeth which means he has a slight lisp at the moment which is very endearing. He is one of the children I do Environmental English with – his first language is Damara but his English is rapidly improving. I had a text from Sam saying "Dankie’s a very lucky girl (he’s actually a boy!) to have you! Make sure she grows up to be president or something.", I can’t promise he will become president or something but I can promise to be a very good sponsor and make sure that he is happy here at Otjikondo and hopefully afterwards. He always comes running to see me and likes to hold my hand or sit on my lap which is very sweet. He told another boy Tenneses, Chelcie’s sponsor child, that I was his mother!
Outjo: On the 10th we got up at 5:00 in order to be at school for a 5:20 leave to go to Outjo to compete in Athletics against 7 other schools. When we got there we thought we had missed the cattle truck as it wasn’t there and we thought we had been left behind.....no, it turned out that Outjo had been cancelled so everyone was still in bed! Mrs Vermaak had sent me a text the night before but I had turned my phone off 10 minutes before as I wanted an early night as it was going to be such an early start! Feeling very unamused we walked back to the GAP flat and tried to have a little more sleep before getting up again to go and teach our usual Friday classes.
Outjo was rescheduled for the 15th; however, it was only for the U13s so only 18 children went from Otjikondo. I managed to persuade Mrs Vermaak that it was very necessary for Chelcie and me to accompany the children along with Ken and Rob, luckily it worked as we really weren’t very necessary but the children appreciated us being there. We competed against seven other schools who were a lot bigger than us and stronger. We were slightly out of our league although the children did their best and made us very proud. I felt very sorry for Marvellous and Brinoldt who were representing us for high jump as their personal best is 1.26m and the high jump started at 1.20m and they only lasted to the second round. Stacy and Sitaleni did very well in the sprinting and managed to qualify for the finals. Both Glenn and Brinoldt did well throwing the javelin achieving 5th and 6th place, however, our star of the day was Diina. She came 2nd in the 800m and won the 1500m setting a new record and has therefore qualified for the regionals for both of these events. It is now my job to train her in preparation for this. One of the schools was a private school and all the children were white which we both found very weird – out here we expect white people for some reason to be English but they are still African and their first language is Afrikaans. One of the girls from this school was incredible at the javelin. The old record was 23m and she threw without a run up 27.5m which was very impressive. However, Chelcie and I were very suspicious as either some of the children from the other schools definitely weren’t under thirteen or they were on steroids – there were girls there with legs up to my armpits. After Outjo High School finished for the day the old Otjikondians walked down to see us. It was lovely to catch up with some of our old G7s and hear how they are enjoying their new schools, it also made us realise how much we miss some of them. The end results were: Outjo with 85 points, 83 Jack Francis, 68 St Micheals, 56 Moria (the private school), 36 Otjikondo, 6 Maarseen, 5 Queen Sofia of Spain and 2 Okaukuejo. Although we were badly beaten at least we were in the double figures! As only the U13s got to compete we have organised an athletics match to be held here against St Michaels so that all our children who had been training so hard would get to compete.
Reiner’s Birthday: On the 12th we celebrated Reiner’s 80th birthday. Family had been arriving all week to celebrate: Jenny (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) and her family from the Caprivi Strip, Gilly (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) with Oliver from Cape Town, Heinz (Reiners 82 year old brother) from Germany and Katie (Gilly’s sister) and Ian her husband from England.
During Art lessons all week we had been busy making the world’s biggest and best birthday card! We had a large piece of white fabric and in the middle we painted in black "Happy Birthday Mr Stommel". We then got all the children to do their hand prints around this on the rest of the fabric in a different colour for each grade. G7 – purple, G6 - jade, G5 - blue, G4 - pink, Wings - orange, G3 - red, G2 – yellow and G1 – green. When it was finished it looked really amazing and we wrote each child’s name on the bottom of their hand print.
We started the day with a special Church Service, the priest from St Michaels led the service and he brought with him a choir. The St Michaels choir were very good and there were two girls in particular who were very talented. The service was filled with music and it was lovely. We all then went up to the Dining Room where we gave Reiner our card and we cut the birthday cakes. There were four of the biggest cakes I have ever seen – each cake made 80 giant slices which we then gave out to all the children and workers. The Stommels then went to have a family lunch and we spent the rest of the morning sitting and dancing with the children outside the takeaway. We then all ate lunch together which was a meat stew (Reiner had given the school and community a cow as a present) with rice which was actually quite nice.
In the evening we had an informal concert, which wasn’t that informal, at the Stommel’s house which had been Chelcie and my job to organise. I had taught six girls to play "Pokare Kare" on the Recorder, Desvino and Paulus played "Happy Birthday" on the violins, our Drama boys sang the school song and a group of girls plus Ruben sang "We just want to say thank you Lord". I can’t say that this was their finest hour! We hadn’t had that much time to practice and they were a little rusty, a little out of practice of performing, and quite out of tune, apart from that it all went well! The hostel workers came down later and sang three songs followed by the farm workers which was lovely. The rest of the time was left to me and Chelcie to entertain everyone. We were accompanied by Ian who is a very talented pianist and we had been practising with him for a couple of days, and occasionally by Heinz on the violin. I ended up singing two solos which anyone who knows me is my ultimate nightmare, after being forced to eat bananas, but it actually went okay. I only thought I was going to have to sing "Ich libe dich" which I worked myself up about and got very panicking but later it was requested I sing "Don’t cry for me Argentina" which I did unaccompanied. By then I had drunk some wine which had relaxed me and it was much more successful! Ian really likes me singing "Ich libe dich" so I think I will be performing again in the near future. It was a really fun night and I think that Reiner had a birthday to remember. Gilly has already promised to fly us out to sing at his 100th birthday which Chelcie and I will definitely take her up on!
Rachel: Rachel left for England the day after Reiner’s birthday for England which was very sad. It was very lovely having another English person about and someone who is not a child to talk to! The week before she left she went into Outjo and she kindly printed some photos off for me that I was then able to send to various people. I hope the lucky few appreciated them! I gave her my blog details so if you are reading this HELLO! I hope you got home safely and that the seed head survived! Sara gave Rachel a tremendous seed head which we then made a cardboard box for, the ones we already had weren’t the right shape or deep enough, so that hopefully it would survive the journey home.
Thunder Storms: We have had a couple of terrifying storms with terrific thunder and lightning. I really don’t like the storms, nor does Savanna the Stommel’s dog, and it means that I am often sitting in my bed curled up with my blanket while the lightning illuminates my room. I can’t even go and get Chelcie as that involves leaving my room, too scary, but she says she thinks of me as she lies awake in her bed!
Dancing: Luise does a lot of ball room and Latin American dancing in Germany and she thought it would be fun to teach some of the children some of it so last Saturday she gave us all a dance lesson which was great fun. Sam (the GAP at St Micheals) had come for the weekend and we all had great fun learning some steps. There were about 26 children from G6 and G7 and they all really seemed to love it so hopefully we will do it again at some point.
Valentine’s Day: We had a Valentine themed week during Art and the children either made cards or created boarders for love poems or decorated hearts. I received some lovely cards from the children, a little leather shoe from Kenisha (the Head Girl) and a homemade friendship bracelet from Luise! The G7s made bunting and banners for our Valentine Disco which we had in the Hans Seidel Hall on Saturday night. The children loved the disco and they took hundreds of photos of themselves on my camera – they really loving "catching photos"!
Cooking: This term I have been trying out some new things and changing some recipes to fit the ingredients I have so far I have made vegetable and bacon stuffed peppers, a lentil and vegetable curry, baked sausage and vegetable pasta, bobotie....
It’s a part of life: This is the children’s new phrase which they use, especially the boys, as an excuse for EVERYTHING. If something goes wrong then the answer is "It’s a part of life", if they did badly in their spellings then "It’s a part of life", this got a little annoying at first until we started using it back to them if they complained about something and then our answer would be "It’s a part of life"!
Nesbo: We adopted a kitten for 24 hours...ever since the children discovered that we liked kittens they have been bringing us various specimens to see if we would like to adopt them! On the 15th Chelcie came into my room and asked if would keep a kitten, I said no that it was impractical and anyway Luise is allergic...and then she showed me the kitten. It was very little, incredibly little, and looked just like Snowy, Paul and Sara’s kitten. We were thinking of a name and I came up with Nesbo – it looks identical to Snowy, I read a book called The Snowman which is written by Jo Nesbo so hence Nesbo! We didn’t have any milk so we went over to Paul and Sara’s to borrow some and we were planning to go and ask Gilly then next day if we could keep it. Nesbo was absolutely petrified – I think he had a bit of a terrifying experience with the boys who brought him as he arrived on the end of a piece of string! He was absolutely silent which we thought was good because Snowy is a very noisy cat which is very irritating. He spent the night cowering under my bed even though we had made him a nice bed in a box with a blanket. We left him some milk and went to lessons as usual. At lunch time I suddenly realised that we couldn’t keep Nesbo as there would be no one to look after him in the holidays or when we were away so we had to let Nesbo go. We put him outside our gate and let him be a feral cat once more but Nesbo decided to punish us....he spent the next week or so meowing very loudly outside our windows throughout the night keeping us all awake. Luckily he has now been reunited with other cats and has ceased to haunt us.
Lent: In Germany they have a festival before the start of Lent and we celebrated the last day of the festival here. On Shrove Tuesday all the prefects arrived at our flat at 6am to have their faces painted! I painted Kenisha a red butterfly with red spots, Diina a lion and Joyce a pig. Tjirondwauvi became a very scary vampire, Mario a clown, Tomas a zebra, Paulus a devi, Brenden had the South African flag and Xunta-I and Sevelina were both butterflies. Chelcie made me a jester, Kenisha did patterns and waves on Luise and Chelcie ended up looking like a Picasso painting after the children attacked her with face paints. We were supposed to be done in time for assembly but we ended up being 5 minutes late for lessons which caused some sense of humour failures! It was Gilly’s idea and supposed to be a surprise so the teachers didn’t know what was happening....luckily we all had fun so it didn’t matter too much.
On Ash Wednesday we had a service in the afternoon and we all wrote our Lent promises on a piece of paper which we put in a bowl which will stay in the church for 40 days and nights. I think this is a lovely idea. I have given up carbohydrates and fizzy drinks as well as taking up reading the Bible every day, trying to do a good deed daily and learn 10 Afrikaans phrases by the end of Lent. I am yet to break my Lent!
Activities: These are now back in full swing after the end of Athletics. I have new groups from last year; on a Monday I teach Intermediate Recorders followed by Advanced Recorders (two hours is a ridiculously long time to be forced to listen to the sound of a recorder), on a Tuesday I have G1 girls for playgroup followed by G6 girls for Craft (we are making juggling balls), on Wednesday I have a Beginner Recorder group followed by a young boy craft group (I had been positively dreading this but it actually went really well and we have started to make Desk Tidies), on a Thursday I have G1 boys for playgroup followed by G6 and G7 boys for table tennis and on Friday I have rehearsals for the Button Box. My remedial sessions have also started up again although I don’t know who I have yet for G6 but I have two nice G7 groups at the moment.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATILDA!
When Ian and Katie arrived from England they brought an electric piano and a keyboard which was very exciting. Chelcie and I are going to be giving a couple of children keyboard lessons which will be fun and should start next week. While discussing some music things with Ian we had a glass of white wine and had some nibbles, Chelcie then said "Grapes are made of wine" which made me laugh and she’d only had one glass by then!
Last Sunday was an incredible day – after reading in Church I spent the rest of the morning preparing for the following week. After lunch Chelcie and I go into our pyjamas and walked over to the Hans Heidal Hall carrying our duvets, pillows and my blanket. We then made a bed on stage with the blankets that live there and then settled down to watch ‘P.S I love you’ which was absolutely brilliant and we are now planning a road trip to Ireland together! Towards the end of the film a most terrific storm started – there was incredible thunder and lightning which actually shook the stage and it was raining in sheets which we could hardly see through. After a quick run about in the rain which left us soaking and freezing we curled back up to watch ‘27 Dresses’ as were now obviously stranded in the Hall. We had to watch with the subtitles on as the storm was so loud but we were very happy until the power went! Luckily there was a break in the rain so we managed to make it back to the flat but not before being caught in our pjs by a couple of children and teachers!
I hope that you are all well and that February has been a good month for everyone. Love as usual to absolutely everyone and I can’t believe that I am about to spend my 19th birthday in Namibia! Let’s hope it’s a good one.
Lots and lots of love
Me xxxx
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