Part Twenty Three: Independence Day (19th – 24th March)

Monday morning started with a prize giving ceremony in Assembly – on the previous Friday the Kuene region had had its prize giving and Mrs Vermaak had brought back our prizes. Mrs Vermaak won the best Maths Primary School Teacher and the Best Primary School Teacher. Otjikondo also won the Best Primary School Award (this shield is amazing as it has lots of min plaques on it where the winners name is engraved and the only name on the shield is Otjikondo!). There were also certificates for the teachers and Mr Hawaxab received a bronze certificate for English teaching, Mr Kalundu a silver one for science and Mrs Vermaak got a gold one for maths. I felt very proud of our school and lucky to have been placed at such an excellent school.

We have started teaching Gymnastics in PT which is incredibly amusing as none of us are particularly gymnastic; however, I am rather talented at forward rolls! The children on the other hand alternated with being gymnastic whizzes and the most inflexible, ungainly children ever but they all seem to really enjoy it. With the younger ones we did balancing – using our raised telegraph poles as something to walk along. It is only about 6 inches off the floor but some of the Grade Ones act as if they would fall 6 feet! We had the usual trouble with the girls not having anything on under their dresses (apart from underwear) so we would make all the boys go first and then stand in a line facing the opposite direction. They would then strop saying that the girls were allowed to watch them, why they couldn’t they watch the girls. When we explained about the underwear issue one of the boys started to take off his shorts so his underwear was also on show....I said this wasn’t an answer to the issue!

The author of “Africa Rocks” (last year’s drama) was very impressed when he came out to watch it performed and he recorded the children singing lots of songs. He is now teaching various schools in England the songs and merging the voices. He has started a new project which is about connecting voices all over the world. We have been given the job of teaching a song to some of the children and he will come out in July to record them. He is also recording other schools all over the world singing the same song and then they will be merged together to create one record. This will then be produced and released at Christmas in the UK which is very exciting!

This week was all about Independence Day (21^st March). On Sunday I wrote a speech with Jacky (G7) all about how Namibia won its Independence – this was rather scary as I found myself saying “We Namibians”. In Art we made Namibia flags with the children – you would be surprised how many children drew and painted the flag back to front! Wednesday was a holiday from school and a day of celebrations instead. We had planned to have a Talent Show in the evening, giving the children the afternoon to come up with and practice the acts. However, at Tuesday break time the teachers suggested we have it on Tuesday night instead as Wednesday night was a school night. So we then had to organise the talent show – we restricted the acts to Grades 5 -7 and the rest of the school was the audience. Luise, Chelcie and I were the judges and although the acts were very talented trying to keep the audience quiet long enough to hear them was a totally different matter. The winner of the night was Evangelina (G6) singing Justin Bieber’s “Never say Never” and the runner ups were a group of Grade 5 and 6 boys dancing which was absolutely hilarious.

On the Wednesday we had an incredible ceremony at 9 just outside the gate house where the flag poles are. All the children processed down in a crocodile line from the school all waving flags and banners. Ms Rachel was in charge of the whole thing and organised all the different groups that sang and danced. All the children performed in their different tribal groups wearing traditional clothes which was amazing. We also had a group of boys from G6 and G7 who marched perfectly and put up the Namibian flag. They all looked so grown up especially as they were dressed in the blue overalls that the workers wear. They had done this all by themselves and they marched totally in time and looked very professional My favourite was the G7 Owambo girls who sang and danced – they were really good and I love the clothes. We also had a dance competition at the end between three girls and three boys. The children are really incredible dancers – the big girls hostel mother, Sister Alberthina, tried to call me and Chelcie up to dance together at the end but this wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do! After the ceremony we held a quiz in the Dining Room for anyone in G5-7 who wanted to take part. We had written 20 questions all about Namibia which ranged from “Name the regions in Namibia” to “Who was Namibia’s first president?” to “How many species of snakes are there in Namibia?” They really enjoyed this and they all did very well.

We were invited to have lunch with Paul and Sara and the children which was great fun especially as we got to eat Indian food. Both of us have missed Indian food since about week 3 and this is the first time we have eaten it – we did think it was slightly ironic to eat Indian food on Namibia’s Independence Day but it tasted delicious. In the late afternoon we then met up with the teachers and we drove out of Otjikondo to the nearest stopping place. The equivalent of a Namibia lay by is a place with a table and chairs and a braai. This is where we had our celebration; it was really nice as you wouldn’t really notice you were by a road as not many cars pass and the verges are about 20/30 metres wide here! This was great fun and it was brilliant to socialise with the teachers outside of school. We had a lovely braai and they taught us some more African dance which I have to say Chelcie is rather more talented at than I am.

The rest of the week passed very quickly as it felt like we had had a weekend and therefore we only had a two day week before the next weekend! Thursday was the 22^nd which was a very important day as it meant that in a month’s time Mummy and Daddy would be out here with me which is crazily exciting! On the Friday we had a good Button Box rehearsal but as we left Chelcie gave her keys to Luise as she needed to finish tidying the Games Room. When we returned to the Flat we realised that Luise had locked the door and my keys were in my room. Neither of us could be bothered to walk back to the library so we walked around to the gate into our garden and decided to climb it. This was actually pretty funny as the gate is actually rather tall with spikes on top and we had to do it without being spotted by any of the farm workers or the children but we managed to break into our house successfully!

Until Easter Mr Hawaxab is away and he has asked me to teach for him which is very exciting. He teaches English to Grades 5-7 and Social Studies to Grades 5 and 6. Social Studies is a mixture of politics, history and geography and there is a very interesting syllabus. He gave me some work for the first couple of Social Studies lesson and then I had to do revision work in preparation for the end of term exams. In English he gave me a total free reign which was very exciting if a little scary. I spent Saturday planning the upcoming weeks lessons. I decided to do a week on Creative Writing – I teach each grade for 7 English lessons so I thought I would use the first 5 lessons to work on different components and then leave the last two for them to plan their story and write it. So I worked on description looking particularly at similes, metaphors and onomatopoeias, speech/dialogue, then different words for said, interesting adjectives and finally the importance of planning.

Saturday morning also started with an......Earthquake! Apparently it was 4 on the Richter Scale so I have now lived through my first natural disaster or should I say slept. At breakfast Chelcie told me there had been an earthquake so obviously I told her not to be silly, of course there hadn’t been an earthquake! Actually there had been which was later confirmed by the children and Gilly. And I thought I was a light sleeper.....

On Saturday night we had a big party for Luise as she was leaving on Monday morning. I was in charge of cooking and we had open brotchen with onion, tomato and cheese or onion, bacon and cheese which I grilled. We had this with popcorn, some crisps, lettuce and elephants foot. It was a really fun night and we had the most people we’ve ever had squeezed around our kitchen table: the three of us, Stanley, Festus, Tabs, Vehonga, Rachel, Laurencia, Brenda and Ken. We had a really great time and it was a good way to say goodbye to Luise.

Sunday morning instead of Church was spent clearing up and making sure that the Flat was back in its immaculate state ready for the imminent arrival of John from Project Trust. On our training course we told that we would have a visit in March from our Desk Officer and this time had arrived! He arrived at 11 ish bringing with him the two Omaruru volunteers Tyche and Sophie. It was lovely to see them as we hadn’t seen Tyche since the end of the holidays and Sophie since our arrival. Before lunch having caught up we gave them a tour of the school and then we cooked. Chelcie and I for the first time cooked together making egg fried rice with borevors. In the afternoon John went to have a meeting with Gilly and we took Sophie and Tyche to our Button Box rehearsal. We had a very successful rehearsal doing our first proper read through, although, I had to read Grandpa as he was at home with Chicken Pox. Also started with Ruben’s solo and continued with Damian’s rap. In the evening I had another training session with Diina when she ran the 1500m with Diodores and Brenden and managed to knock 18 seconds off her time which was stupendous. These boys are really brilliant and managed to push her a lot further than I ever imagined. At the end of the race they collapsed in a heap and I got a brilliant photo of them on my phone lying on the floor having taken off their shirts to try and cool down! I am so proud of Diina and of hard she has worked in the last couple of weeks.

Since receiving my offer from Exeter I have had to do some serious thinking about University and where I want to study when I come home. This has been very difficult as out here it’s very difficult to picture myself at University let alone choosing which one I want to go to. However, I know when I came out here that I really wanted to go to Exeter, the whole reason I reapplied, so it would make sense to choose Exeter but I haven’t quite got there yet!

Can’t believe this is the end of another week – time as usual is flying past which creates mixed emotions. In some ways I want time to slow down as this term seems to have disappeared and there doesn’t seem to be anything left of it. However, on the other hand my parents arrive just before the end of term and that is literally the most exciting thing ever.  As usual sending love to absolutely everyone. I hope that it all makes sense and manages to paint some sort of a picture about what I am doing out here. As usual I couldn’t be happier and coming out here was definitely the best thing I’ve ever done. I hope that you are all equally happy in whatever venture you are doing at home.

Lots and lots of love

Ottilie xxx