Just to keep you all updated and to ensure that you aren’t forgetting me now that I’ve been gone over 6 months....!
Most frequent letter writer: Mummy – I’ve received 50 things from Mummy (not including anything for my birthday) which is pretty amazing and I love knowing that I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a letter with news from home when someone collects the post. (Daddy has written twice which is once more than I expected, so also very grateful!)
Non family best letter writer: Emma C is officially the best friend ever and has written to me endlessly and always sends me little bits and pieces such as a jumping plastic frog and a balloon that screams!
Best Sister at writing: 1st place: Cluny 6 letters
2nd place: Lou Lou 5 letters
3rd place: Matilda 3 letters
Most useless letter writer: Sam texted me on the 16th of October to ask if I had got my letter, it has yet to arrive and no other letter has been lost/stolen so.....! Abi has also yet to manage to get a letter in the post!
Funniest letter: Staighty, her letters make me laugh out loud: this is one of her own teaching experiences from Orchard House in London "Q1. Define the phrase ‘To Knock with Force’ using these letters: A, P, R, E, F, S, L. (child’s answer) RAPE (instead of RAP), of course this just so happened to be on the white board when the deputy head walked in...luckily he laughed."
Best thing sent out to me: Photos of me and Emma with friendship quotes on the back and emergency sweets from Mummy.
Weirdest thing sent out to me: Garlic powder....
Best Text: "Hunting lion in Damaraland, back next week." Byron
Best Quote: "I recognised you by your shoes and it was confirmed by your face"
Weirdest chat up line: "You have a very adorable chin"
Chelcie’s Best/Worst Joke: When teaching Long Jump – "He’s such a bad jumper, he’s a cardigan!"
Most beautiful sight: Ohorongo sunset
Most disgusting sight: Dead and gutted wildebeest
Number of Months without rain: 2.5
Number of Days without sun: 0
Best Moment: There are so many fantastic moments out here so I’m really not sure I can pin point this so here are a couple instead - watching the Nativity was amazing and it made me so proud of how well they did and how hard the children had worked, being told that we are the best/their favourite GAPs by the children is always wonderful or when they say "I love you", singing with the Swakopmund girls always made me immensely happy and every time we did it I was surprised by how talented they were. Generally being with the children when they are happy or doing something that makes me proud of them, even if it’s just a dyslexic child getting full marks in their spellings.
Worst moment: The second month was difficult as we were both homesick – not so much that we wanted to go home but we wanted to be able to share our experiences with our friends and family and show what an incredible place this is. It was also difficult getting news about how Cluny was and trying to deal with that so far away from home. Christmas day was hard but that was only one day out of six months so we both survived. Hearing what some of the children have been through and go through is always hard to hear and makes me realise very quickly that we are in Africa and not in a developed country. When Chelcie said she was going to go home and leave me alone....!
Near Death Experiences: 1 – Tate Daniel and a tree cutter tried to "poison" me one day as I returned to the flat to collect something, they ushered me over and then scooped with a mug what looked like muddy water from a bucket. They then encouraged me to drink it much to my peril – it tasted absolutely disgusting and the taste remained in my mouth for a long time, supposedly it was a mixture of sap and mealy pap syrup, never again! Also the many thunder and lightning storms have potentially been very perilous!
Most useful bring: A sharp kitchen knife, we all use it at least twice a day as it’s the only knife in the kitchen that is actually sharp. My head torch has also been very useful, especially this term during the frequent power cuts. My camera kind of goes without saying, I couldn’t imagine not being able to capture some of these moments. My blanket...
What I should have left at home: Fanny bag, second pair of pyjama bottoms, blue Aladdin trousers, pen knife...
What I miss most: Family, friends, Peppermint, Parents cooking for me, being able to sleep through the night without waking up, playing lacrosse, my scent, Marlborough Choir, having a variety of food rather than the same ingredients every week but most of all being able to share what I am doing with friends and family.
What I haven’t missed: Television, exams!
Number of books read: 94
Favourite book read: Afterwards by Rosamund Lipton
Least enjoyed Book read: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James – it took me ages to get into and then nothing really happened and it had a very disappointing ending.
Favourite film watched: Bridesmaids
Number of times cried: 30 – one of these was when I first chopped onions and it got counted, if I had continued counting how many times I have cried while chopping onions this number would be A LOT bigger!
Number of Arguments: 1
New Countries Visited: 2 – Namibia and a flying visit to South Africa
Total letters received: 108
Total letters sent: 123 (I win!)
100th letter received is from: Godmother Jo from Singapore on her way to Australia
100th letter sent was to: Mummy and Daddy
Number of photos taken: 3498 (technically this is only half of my photos as Chelcie and I take it in turn to take photos and don’t generally take photos of the same thing....)
Favourite Meal that I make: Spaghetti Bolognaise or Mashed Squash with boerwors and peas
Favourite Meal that Chelcie makes: Pancakes (and worst has to be when she made me try her Banana bread!)
Worst Food eaten: Liver and sweets which tasted like feet which I bought from the shop to inspire the children to run faster while training for athletics
Best African Recipe: Bobotie
Broken Kitchen Ware: 6 (2 plates, 2 bowls, 1 butter dish and a tin opener – I blame Chelcie for 4 of these items!)
My most annoying habit according to Chelcie: Cooking supper for half an hour without turning the oven on at the wall, this happens probably three times a week! (The arga at home is permanently on so there is no need for me to remember to switch it on!)
Visitors to the Gap Flat: 10 (Nina, Ralph and Paul Mollman, Rachel, Luise, Sam, Random German Couple, Another random couple, Faustinas and friend)
Unexpected Visitors to the Gap Flat: 4 (Snowy, Nesbo, 2 mice)
Nicknames gained: Ottowa, Smeegs and Dimples
Face paints worn: Tiger Cub, fireworks, Reindeer, Yellow star, hearts, a jester and today a zebra
What I can’t wait to do in six months time: Have a proper hug from Mummy and Daddy although I only have to wait 7 weeks and two days for this now. See everybody including the animals and go riding on Orange. Eat sticky toffee pudding and bagels! Sleep in my own bed upstairs.
Love Me xxxx
Friday, 9 March 2012
Part Eighteen: Dankie and Reiner’s 80th (February)
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
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
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Part Seventeen: Back at Otjikondo (14th – 31st January)
I can’t believe that is my second term out of three working at Otjikondo and I’ve already had one out of two holidays – the time seems to be flying past and I’m sure it will only fly faster.
The weekend before the children arrived was spent doing washing, tidying and getting everything sorted for the start of term – this included sweeping the vast amount of bat poo from the Art room. I was also very trusting and let Chelcie cut my hair, luckily she was trustworthy and I have been left with some hair. We gave Luise a tour of the school and bombarded her with information about what she could expect once term started. We have also been joined by another volunteer called Rachel from England
School started with an assembly in the Hans Seidal Hall where all the teachers are introduced and then all the new children. All the new children are then given a teddy of some sort to help them settle into boarding life – another special Otjikondo way. For the first week I was teaching Grade 4 as their teacher was still on maternity leave. This was quite challenging as I wasn’t given anything specific to do with them but told to occupy them with something useful! Their class is also massive – 35 due to 3 new children (Izaura who wants to be called Natasha and twins called Marlin and Martin) as well as 6 children who have moved from Wings. It’s quite a jump for them moving from a class of 12 to a class of 35 and it definitely takes a while to get them all to be quiet. I spent the week helping them cover their exercise books, doing mental maths, spelling competitions, English exercises, extra PT classes and teaching them elementary Spanish which they loved. When I came to mark a writing exercise on “My Christmas Holiday” I got a couple of shocks. The majority wrote about their Christmas day, time on a farm, visits to family, travels to other parts of Namibia
The second week of term I became Mr Kalundu as he went to Windhoek
I made my first cake in Africa as it was Rachel’s 59th birthday so I made bobotie and then a chocolate cake. I was very anxious about how this would turn out as I didn’t have a measuring jug and the scales I borrowed from Gilly were the old fashioned sort and therefore not very accurate. Luckily it turned out well and we had a really lovely birthday supper. We had decorated the kitchen with bunting and made a happy birthday banner.
The Button Box: We have had first round auditions which were incredibly exciting and we are now half way through our second round of auditions. This is something that I have been looking forward to ever since I got my information pack from Project Trust about what my job at Project Trust would entail – putting on my own musical. We have already cast all the main parts and the solo parts and now are only left with choosing our chorus. We have nine solo parts and are looking for a chorus of 20 to support them. We have already narrowed them down and they are returning to sing and dance for us on Friday so I will keep you updated.
Athletics: This is Athletics term and since we’ve returned there has been a competitive air running through the school. Every member of the school is either in the Yellow Team (me and Rachel) or the Green Team (Chelcie and Luise), every year but one the Green team has won at Sports day but I have been saying continuously that the year that I am here will be the year that this changes. We have been training so hard every afternoon. I was put in charge of getting the older children fit and working with the relay teams. This meant that at the beginning of the term I was absolutely crippled. Having done no exercise what so ever for the last six weeks my body went into shock and slight melt down! We also went for cross country runs with the older ones before they had supper. Sports day is incredibly important and the rivalry is massive between teachers and pupils alike. All the pupils were given wool in their team colour so everyone was sporting yellow/green bracelets and necklaces as well as having braids in their hair. I was firmly branded in the yellow team with my yellow watch on my right hand, a yellow friendship bracelet on my left and then a braid in my hair done by Chelcie.
Sports Day: The most incredible day. My alarm went off at 5:40 and after a quick breakfast we headed for the school. I had a yellow star on my face and I have written GREEN on Chelcie’s face (we had missed our anniversary face paint for January so this was our face painting day instead). My first job was to hand out all the name badges to the yellow team and I branded them all with a yellow star on their forehead! We then marched out to the sports field followed by the enemy – the green team. The sports pitch looked incredible – the day before they had painted all the lines on for the races, put up bunting around the edges and erected gazebos and umbrellas for shade. My job for the day was timekeeping and in particular I had to time the person who came 2nd in each race. This was easy for the long distance races but slightly more pressurized on the 80m sprints as they would come out of nowhere and I would have to spot who was coming second. It was a really good job to get as it meant that I got to watch all the races, coach the children before the long distance races and I had a pretty good view of all the other events. The atmosphere was unbelievable all day – each team had a tent where all the children sat when they weren’t competing and they were joined by their parents dressed in their child’s team colour. All the children were in little blue shorts and either a very vibrant yellow tshirt or a green one. They sang all day team songs and the parents got very competitive in their singing and dancing. It was soon incredibly hot (the previous evening it was 36˚C at 6:30 in the shade) but the children were very good at doing their best – even when the number of laps for the 800m was miscalculated and they all ended up running 1100m! The end of the events came and it was time for the relay races – for the younger ones there were 6 races and yellow won 5 of them. By this time I was sooo over excited that I was jumping up and down laughing uncontrollably which amused the older ones who thought I was going crazy! The relays for the older ones didn’t go quite as well but we still won a couple and that was the end of the events. I knew that we had done well but I wasn’t sure we had done enough – I thought we could have done with winning more of the older relay races. I wandered down the pitch for prize giving where I was spotted by Mr Hawaxb who told me it was my turn to run! The parents have two relay races – one for the mothers and the other for the fathers and they wanted me to run for the mothers! I found this distinctly unamusing as a) I can’t sprint and b) it was 3:15 and scorchingly hot however I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Luckily I won my 100m and we won overall so I didn’t embarrass myself! It was then time for prize giving: first of all certificates were given out for the best girl and boy for each year group. Out of 14 children 11 were yellow children and my hopes rose. They then announced the winning team and...............................WE WON! It was so incredible and all the children were so happy. We were given a massive trophy and we paraded up to the dining room where they were rewarded with chocolate icecream. It was a marvellous day which didn’t actually have much to do with winning but the atmosphere throughout the day. The only bad thing was when the parents left and we had some very unhappy six year olds who wanted to stay with their parents. I had one little boy who I was having to physically restrain with all my strength as he screamed for his Mummy and kicked and fought me to run away. It broke my heart.
Environmental English: Chelcie and I have been doing environmental English supposedly every day with 12 of the Grade Ones. Some of them have very little English and this is to help them with their vocabulary, so every session we do 5 new words. For example: head, nose, mouth, ears and eyes. This was all okay although they confused the sounds for ears and eyes. So I would say point to your eye and they would, then I would say point to your mouth and this was fine and then I would say point to your eye and then they might point to their ear. I have also done a bit of phonics teaching with the Grade Ones and I think I will do a bit more of this when my schedule is back to normal. Chelcie and I get to sponsor a child from Grade One so as awful as it sounds we have been vetting the children to choose which one we want! I feel I should just blindly choose from the list but....I have narrowed it down to a couple of them. Some were taken out straight away as I feel I can’t sponsor an African child called Sam! I think I’ve made my decision but I will let the suspense build and release the name of my child in my next entry! It really made me laugh reading through my little book that my friends wrote in before I came away – 90% of the messages say don’t come back with a child and I’m going to even if it’s not in the way they meant!
Yesterday I had a moment when I find it really hard to be in Africa rather that in England Stanley
I really don’t understand how but...it’s the end of January (I left home 5 months ago today) so record time: I have read 17 books (I would recommend The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins and Afterwards by Rosamund Lipton, both of which absolutely gripped me), I have sent 12 letters and received 11 so another win to me, competed in one relay race, discovered a passion for teaching science and maths (aghhhhhhhhh) and won one incredibly competitive sports day!
MASSIVE CONGRATULATIONS to Emma who has won a history competition and is heading off to Poland
Lots and lots of love
Ottilie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Part Sixteen: Happy New Year! (29th December – 13th January)
The main reason that we were heading to Luderitz was to see Alex, Simona (two project trust volunteers working and living here) and Tyche (another PT volunteer who works and lives in Omaruru who had also come to visit, her partner is Sophie but she had stayed in Omaruru to be with her boyfriend). We had an absolutely horrendous journey down to Luderitz which I have no wish to dwell on but I will just say that we sat in a Combi for 11.5 hours so squished that both my feet couldn’t rest on the floor at the same time and in order for my arms to fit one had to be out of the window!
Luderitz was great fun and very different to what we both imagined. It didn’t feel likeAfrica at all, in fact it could have been anywhere. It was in the middle of nowhere, absolute nowhere surrounded by sand and sea. After a comforting bowl of butternut squash we all went out apart from Chelcie – explanation in a bit, and they introduced me to all their friends who were lovely. There is a large crowd of 20 somethings who are all white Afrikaans. At first it was quite weird as these were the first white Namibians that we had really met and for the first time we also met some girls! They were all really lovely and I will definitely keep in contact with quite a lot of them. It was also so lovely to be with all the PT volunteers and to be able to catch up with what everyone had been doing and hear about all the projects.
Luderitz was great fun and very different to what we both imagined. It didn’t feel like
General Luderitz: It was lovely to be able to totally chill out and relax. We spent a lot of time in Luderitz chilling and talking. On our first day we walked to Shark’s Island – I was very disappointed that there were no sharks and it wasn’t even an island! It was actually just some rocks on sand where we just sat and talked which was lovely and there was an incredible view out to sea. We all got very into our milkshakes in Luderitz which were yummy and very good value! One night we went out to supper at an Oyster Bar which was incredible although none of us actually ate Oysters! Apart from Tyche, who doesn’t like fish, we all had Tuna steaks. These were cooked in front of us and were served just as they were with a little dish of soy sauce with a smidgen of mayonnaise and a chilli concoction. It was absolutely delicious and we were even given a class of champagne on the house which was a great accompaniment! I also acquired a new nickname on my first night in Luderitz: “Dimples” because I have “the most beautiful dimples in the world”!
Chelcie: For someone who claims never to get ill, she gets ill an awful lot...Chelcie had been complaining of a sore throat since just before Christmas and on the 30th she woke up and her right side of her face was massively swollen, she had a large lump in her throat and she was in a lot of pain. We decided it was time to get checked out by the doctor just in case it was tonsillitis or something needing antibiotics. We couldn’t get an appointment for that day but she went to see the doctor the next morning. I was still asleep at this point...when she returned I knew something was really wrong as she had tears in her eyes and Chelcie always says she has the “emotional range of a teaspoon”. The doctor had told her that she had a paratonsilar abyss – in English an abyss behind her right tonsil which he recommended removing because if they return they can swell up and block the airway. This meant that Chelcie would probably have to fly home as she and her parents didn’t want her to have the operation in Windhoek
End of December: I can’t believe that this is the end of the 4th month and the end of the year. It seems crazy that is now 2012 – not only the year of the Olympics or the year that the world is supposed to end but most importantly I COME HOME THIS YEAR!!! December was a great month that I really enjoyed, it wasn’t what it promised to be but we had a lot of fun never the less. Okay records – I was very lucky and received 21 letters but I sent 31 to you. I win! (However, they were mostly postcards so we might have to call it a draw!) I read eight books and also cried eight times! Also lots of firsts: I put on my first Nativity and Christmas Concert, completed my first term at Otjikondo, I went dune boarding, I met my first Pelican and I survived my first Christmas away from home. Let’s hope that the new month and New Year are good ones!
New Years Eve: SUCH FUN! We set off to the beach at around 5 and we went to this place where there used to be an old golf club. The building was deserted and now covered in really cool graffiti which made an amazing background to photos! We built a massive bonfire there and we had a couple of flares and fireworks which were really cool. At about 11 we headed back to town and went to Barrells. This is the place where we went out most evenings, it was a bar/restaurant and really fun. We stayed here dancing until about 5am when a fight broke out which was pretty scary as everyone was getting involved and picking up bottles ... we then set off back to the flat but then we ended up going to someone’s house where we went swimming for hours, and ended up looking like prunes, we were all in our dresses as obviously no one had gone out with their bikini! We then had breakfast and we finally returned to the flat at 8:30. Such a good night
Skype: This is so clever and I still can’t get my head around it. Staighty had been trying to organise a ‘skype date’ for ages and I finally managed to talk to her on New Years Eve in the afternoon. It was so amazing to be able to see her and to properly chat. Letters are great but being able to talk to her was INCREDIBLE and we talked for ages and it didn’t cost anything. I tried to talk to Mummy but we didn’t have any of the right equipment for it to work.....thank goodness for Amazon Express. I managed to talk to Mummy and Daddy – once he worked out that his face needed to be in front of the camera and it didn’t just work if he looked at the camera – all I could see was his tummy! Then on my last day in Luderitz I talked to the whole family, including Peppy but sadly no Orange Africa even if occasionally I did turn green! It was very reassuring to see all their faces and to see that they hadn’t changed a bit and to be able to show off my watch mark. It was so lovely to have instant communication during the holidays but Chelcie and I both agreed that it would be too hard to be able to have it all the time. However, I am looking forward to the next time I might be able to Skype and see people’s faces or tummy’s again!
Sea trip: One morning we got up early and went out on a boat which was amazing. We sat right in the middle of the boat on top of the roof and admired the view. It was very cold out on the boat but we were given rugs to huddle up in and in the middle of our journey we were given very welcome mugs of steaming hot chocolate. The sea was absolutely beautiful and it was sparkling in the early morning sunlight. We sailed around the edge of Luderitz and we were given lots of information about the diamond ships. Chelcie and I had both been very disappointed not to meet a diamond diver in our time in Luderitz...I had imagined that they would be sitting at bars in their wet suits and flippers, but no such luck. As we were sailing along we saw dolphins and seals which were amazing. When we got to an island we saw PENGUINS....both Chelcie and I thought that penguins only lived in Africa in the film Madagascar
Kolmanskopp: This for anyone who doesn’t know is commonly referred to as the “Ghost Town”. Fifty years ago everyone moved out of town due to the wind and sand and now no one lives there. However, the houses are kept up so that you can visit and see what it used to be like. This was one of the things that I had learnt about Namibia before I arrived as Magnus had shown me some photographs which I thought were incredible and luckily Kolmanskopp lived up to my expectations. Some houses just had a thin layer of sand in as they had been recently swept however others you had to duck to get through the door way as there was so much sand deposited on the floor. It was really weird walking around a town where people used to live but now totally deserted.
Beach disaster: On the 7th we all decided to go to the beach for the day and after numerous transport difficulties we finally made it. After a braai of cheese sausage (a very weird food which strangely tastes neither of cheese or sausage but is very yummy...), a walk down the sea and just general relaxing the boys decided they wanted to play some rugby. We carried on talking until someone came running over saying “Ian has just broken his leg”....I thought this was a joke and that he might have pulled a muscle or something but it wasn’t. It was very clear from how he was lying and the amount of pain that he was in that he had broken his right femur. Luckily we had a buggy with us (a truck with an open back) and after strapping his leg with a car mat (the only thing we had) the guys managed to lift him onto the back and then a couple of us headed for the hospital. There are a lot of speed bumps in Namibia Windhoek Windhoek Namibia Windhoek Windhoek
Back to Windhoek: On Monday we decided to head back to Windhoek, we needed to be there for Chelcie’s appointment on Thursday and we wanted to visit Ian as no one could go with him as everyone had jobs to go to. Simone came with us as she was bored of being in Luderitz and we had a really lovely couple of days. We even went to the cinema in Africa ....! We watched “New Years Eve” which was absolutely hilarious although Chelcie has sworn she will never ever go to the cinema with me again as I was often the only one laughing out loud and everyone knows how loud my laugh is! On Wednesday we were joined by Luise who has come to Otjikondo for 3 months. She is our age and is from Germany Namibia
Visa scare: When we were in hospital with Ian we got a text from Tyche saying she had bad news about visas but would tell us later, obviously we wanted to know straight away! Sophie (Tyche’s partner) had been in contact with PT who had told her that there was a 50% chance that our visas wouldn’t be sorted ever and if so we would be flown home straight away. This was pretty crazy and obviously we all panicked. Not that any of us haven’t wished for a quick weekend at home – like an exeat but there is no way I want to leave Namibia. I absolutely love Otjikondo and I’m having the most incredible time. Luckily after our parents talked to Gilly we were calmed down and reassured that our visas will be sorted and we won’t have to leave. At this point and time they haven’t been sorted yet but we are “reassured” that things are being done....
I have been told off for my excessive amount of exclamation marks in my Blog entries....my excuse is that everything that I am doing or seeing is so incredible and exciting. Therefore in my eyes it merits an exclamation mark but I apologise to any grammatical lovers who view the amount as unwarranted! (Yes, that one was put in on purpose) Also according to Zim, I have very special spelling abilities....I know that I’m special as my parents always tell me that and I also realize that I have slightly dodgy spelling talents HOWEVER I’m using spell check so I fail to see what I’m spelling wrong.....please enlighten me?!
After an incredible five weeks or so of travelling around it feels incredible (and safe!) to be back here at Otjikondo. I did feel as if I should be heading home after the holidays but that is still a way off! I hope that everyone is enjoying the New Year and I’m sorry that this has taken a while to be written
Lots and lots of love
Ottilie xxx
Part Fifteen: Happy Christmas! (23rd – 28th December)
Total nightmare of a day! The direct shuttle from Windhoek Windhoek
Christmas Eve started with receiving a lot of post which was amazing! As usual I had lots of exciting things from Mummy including colour changing popping candy, mini face washes, moisturizer and Sudoku to stick into my diary. I had a second hilarious letter from Staighty which made me laugh out loud multiple times and the most amazing package from Emma. Emma definitely deserves a MASSIVE shout out as my most regular friend correspondent, despite having to revise for all her exams – she sent me nine photos of the two of us together and they all had really sweet friendship quotes on the back; “Friendship isn’t about whom you’ve known the longest...it’s about who came, and never left your side”. We spent the day prepare for the evenings celebrations and generally chilling out. In Germany
It was requested that Chelcie and I sing something in the evening service so we went over to the Church to try out a couple of things. We ended up singing four verses of Amazing Grace – the first and last in unison and the middle two in harmony. We had a really lovely intimate service, we all sat around the altar rather than in the pews and throughout the service we were joined by more people from the Otjikondo community. Gilly had put me in charge of choosing the readings and the hymns for the service so we sang “How dark was the stable”, “Silent Night”, “Once in Royal David’s City” “While Shepherd’s Watched” and “O Come all ye faithful”. I also read the first reading which was Isaiah IX. As usual the prayers set me off and I had a quiet cry, unfortunately as we were all sitting together the tears didn’t go unnoticed as usual!
After the service we all went back to Gilly’s and Reiners and presents were handed out under the tree. Obviously, Chelcie and I didn’t expect anything but Gilly had bought us a beautiful candle holder each made from Namibian wood. She also gave us a bottle each that she had been given – Chelcie’s turned out to be red wine and mine was whisky! We also got a little wooden carved elephant and a wicker basket. All so lovely and unexpected. Supper was a seafood feast – we had massive platters of prawns, crab claws and crayfish which were accompanied by bowls or rice and asparagus with lemon butter or garlic butter. We then had the most incredible chocolate and walnut torte with strawberries and WHIPPY CREAM (so much fun!). We then sang through every Christmas song and carol that we could think of which got rather hysterical. Sara and I were convinced that there was one about Christmas pudding but we couldn’t for the life of us remember it....luckily after a quick text to Mummy she came up with “We all want some figgy pudding!”
I started Christmas Day reading my kindle by the pool as Chelcie slept in our room. After she woke up we opened our stockings which was great fun. I received a net of chocolate coins – Rand, a packet of chocolate raisins, a bar of Lindor chocolate, an elephant cuddly toy on a key ring, a South African fabric badge to go on my rucksack (I have the British and Namibian flag on there and I said that I wanted to add other countries that I travelled to, hopefully I will be able to add the South African one at some point!), and a shot glass with an Elephant on and Namibia written underneath. Chelcie did very well as I told that I always get chocolate coins from Father Christmas and a new cuddly toy even though I am 18. We had a Christmas breakfast with Gilly and Reiner which included my first taste of stolen which was pretty disgusting!
Christmas lunch was at Paul and Sara’s and it was another feast (no wonder all the teachers keep telling me I’ve put on weight over the holidays – I blame the Stommels!). It started with chicken liver pate, olive tapernade, peppers and tomatoes and homemade walnut bread. We then had duck breast, smoked chicken, mashed potato, carrots and green beans with walnuts and bacon. This was followed by panna cotta with berries and Christmas pudding. I feel full just writing it all down! As well as being with all the Stommels we were joined by Byron, his girlfriend and his Mother so there were a lot of us. I spoke to home twice and they seemed to be having a nice day, they had changed their routine and were having goose. Made me cry...
Boxing Day was held at Gilly and Reiners and we watched Mattie and Ola swim before having a cold lunch of ham, cheese and salad followed by ice cream and chocolate sauce. I found it very funny that as I was watching the children swim in the heat my family would have been at the Boxing Day meet in the cold! Gilly got a Kindle for Christmas and I helped her upload some books on to it – I got a text from Mummy saying she wished I was helping her with her new Kindle instead... I also spoke to Alex (PT volunteer in Luderitz) and they were going down to Luderitz for the rest of the holidays so Chelcie and I decided we would definitely go and see them after our tour. In the evening Chelcie and I watched Bridesmaids on her laptop which was absolutely hilarious, and I kept on getting the giggles when we were trying to go to sleep thinking about some of the lines!
The 27th became a day of organisation for us – I rang up the tour people to book it and it turned out they had quoted us the wrong price before and the actual price was £999 so very unaffordable! This was so frustrating and it just felt like everything was going wrong for us. We then had to decide what we wanted to do for the rest of the holidays and we decided we would go straight down to Luderitz to see the others and then maybe we could all go on a short trip together in the New Year. Gilly very kindly organised for Tate Simon to drive us to Otjiwarongo the next morning so that we could catch the shuttle to Windhoek
The next morning we said goodbye to the Stommels and thanked them for having us to stay for Christmas and everything that they had done for us. They were so kind to welcome us into their family and we really felt included in everything – I can’t express my thanks to them enough. After arriving at the Cardboard Box we went had lunch before setting off to find Brandberg Street . Some family friends from home had come to Namibia Windhoek Windhoek
Being totally honest I found Christmas day incredibly hard, I thought it would be easier to be with a family and although we were welcomed totally into their family and treated as one of them, it just emphasised to me that I wasn’t with my own family. However, Christmas Eve and the days after Christmas were amazing and it was lovely to be with a family, to be cooked for, to be able to properly chill out and relax and we really owe the Stommels! I hope that everyone in England
Missing you all loads and sending you even more love
Me xxx
Part Fourteen: Holiday in Swakopmund and Windhoek (19th - 22nd December)
After our complimentary breakfast of eggs and bacon we walked into town to sort out our desert tour and dune boarding. We went to Charlie’s which is a travel shop and managed to book a full days Desert Tour for the next day. This was a splash out costing £83 but we both thought that it would be worth it as it was a full day, including a picnic lunch and we both agreed that it would be amazing to see the desert properly. They didn’t have space for us to go dune boarding that day so we walked to another shop where we managed to book it for that afternoon. We also found bright yellow and green t-shirts with Namibia
After going to the market again and this time buying a couple of presents – no, I won’t say who they’re for! and exercising our bartering skills, we returned to Villa Weisse to write a few final post cards. We returned to the Village Cafe for our final lunch in Swakop where we both had steak toasties and coke – we have got into a habit of ordering exactly the same thing which waiters always find amusing! We then went to Pandora’s Box for pudding – chocolate brownies, which we both agreed were the best things we’ve eaten in Swakop! After returning to the shop, we were picked up by two guys in a Combi and we headed for the dunes alongside a German Girl, our age, and her father. We arrived at the same place that we went after our first concert and after donning hats (yellow for me and white for Chelcie after I pointed out that a pink one would clash with her purple hoodie!) we started walking up the dune. The walk up the dune is actually quite hard work but you can always stop for a breather while admiring the incredible view. Our instructor was called Daniel and he was 16 and incredibly chatty! We started off by doing two taster runs, to get us started as we were both rather apprehensive, they were only little and you didn’t go very fast. You lay down on a board which was greased on the bottom side and then you lifted up the front and off you went....it was so much fun! I felt like a penguin sliding on ice, just like in Happy Feet, especially when you get to the bottom of the slope and then you just keep on going across the flat sand.
After going to the market again and this time buying a couple of presents – no, I won’t say who they’re for! and exercising our bartering skills, we returned to Villa Weisse to write a few final post cards. We returned to the Village Cafe for our final lunch in Swakop where we both had steak toasties and coke – we have got into a habit of ordering exactly the same thing which waiters always find amusing! We then went to Pandora’s Box for pudding – chocolate brownies, which we both agreed were the best things we’ve eaten in Swakop! After returning to the shop, we were picked up by two guys in a Combi and we headed for the dunes alongside a German Girl, our age, and her father. We arrived at the same place that we went after our first concert and after donning hats (yellow for me and white for Chelcie after I pointed out that a pink one would clash with her purple hoodie!) we started walking up the dune. The walk up the dune is actually quite hard work but you can always stop for a breather while admiring the incredible view. Our instructor was called Daniel and he was 16 and incredibly chatty! We started off by doing two taster runs, to get us started as we were both rather apprehensive, they were only little and you didn’t go very fast. You lay down on a board which was greased on the bottom side and then you lifted up the front and off you went....it was so much fun! I felt like a penguin sliding on ice, just like in Happy Feet, especially when you get to the bottom of the slope and then you just keep on going across the flat sand.
Chelcie didn’t really enjoy the taster runs as they made her feel sick and she bottled out of the first proper run but when I had walked back up to the top again, I managed to black mail her into doing it and luckily for my sake, she really enjoyed it. You got a massive adrenalin rush and you went so fast. Not so fast was the long walk back up to the top of the dune again....actually incredibly hard work! We then did the really big one which apparently we would have gone up to 180 km per hour – I know this sounds totally unbelievable and no I haven’t got my figures wrong, but this dune was pretty long and incredibly steep. I then nearly bottled out as when you looked down you couldn’t actually see the bottom was pretty scary but it was absolutely amazing. The German girl was doing it standing up on something which looked like a snow board – I think you needed a pretty good sense of balance and I’m not sure that I would have managed it! When we were too tired to climb any more sand dunes we had one more turn down to the bottom and then we stood having some much needed coke and nibbles before heading back to town.
Chelcie and I then headed out to get some supper. We were sitting eating when a guy approached us and said that he recognised us from dune boarding. He had recognised us by Chelcie’s shoes which had then been confirmed by my face which we both found pretty funny! He invited us to go for a drink with him later at his father’s club which we accepted. We texted him when we were on our way but when we arrived the club was deserted and we couldn’t hear any music and there were no cars.....so we did a runner! He had already told us that he was on his way so we just texted Pally saying we were going to Kuckis, but, we never expected that he would join us...he did! We had just bought a drink and then he came, he started talking really loudly about how racist the place was and that although he had lived here all his life he had only come in about 3 times before. We both became really uncomfortable as everyone was now staring at us as he was so loud so we suggested we went elsewhere. Both Chelcie and I were now really awkward so we decided to do a runner, we wanted to escape but there was nowhere to run to! Chelcie then said that she was feeling suddenly really ill and didn’t want to go out anymore and we managed to escape back to our hostel felling very uncomfortable!
The next day we headed off for our Desert Tour, we were collected outside our hostel by our tour guide Clio and it was just us on the tour. We spent the morning driving through the desert and stopping to look at plants such as the money bush and the pencil plant. We saw incredible granite mountains with streaks of basalt running through them. We went to one place where there were non-magnetic iron stones and if you struck them with another stone they sounded like a bell. The different sizes created different pitches so we could create a tune with the different stones – it was so bizarre and really good fun. The morning was interesting if a little awkward as there is only so many questions you can ask and we could have done with a couple of more people joining us. We stopped for our picnic lunch under the shadow of a large rock and we got to experience real silence which was absolutely incredible. After lunch we were shown Namibia
The township is where the majority of the black people live and it’s just outside of the main settlement of Swakopmund. There was a huge range of houses from two bedroomed breeze block bungalows to shacks made from rubbish and cardboard. I found it particularly difficult to comprehend how it is still deemed acceptable in this day and age for that large a population to be living in houses made purely from rubbish with no electricity or running water. They had a very clever system for buying water – each house would have a magnet and they would pay x amount of money. You would then go to the tap and plug your magnet in which would turn the water on, when you had enough water you removed the magnet and a certain amount of money would be subtracted from you total depending on how much water you had taken.
It was a good day out and very interesting, however, we both agreed that it wasn’t worth the £83 we paid but it was still worthwhile and I’m glad we went. After having one of my worst nights sleep ever (we had a new dorm mate who was a very obese American peace core worker who sounded like a hippo when snoring which she did all night, I was so close to throwing my alarm clock at her but I thought I might miss and I didn’t want to break it...) we got on the shuttle to Windhoek. The journey went well and I managed to sleep for most of it which was useful. When we arrived, after dumping our bags at the Cardboard Box, we headed straight for the Bank of Windhoek to meet the lady who was sorting out our visas for us. She was a very scary lady who reminded us both of Cruella d’ Vill! There was no development in our situation but she told us that she would have an answer one way or the other tomorrow, she also made it pretty clear to us that we weren’t her priority! We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling in the Box.
In the evening we ventured out to the bar and started playing cards, we were quickly joined by a group of guys, all in their 20s, who were all really good fun. After being there a while we went to Joe’s for drinks before heading to Zanzibar
The next day was a very emotional day for both of us....after returning to the Bank of Windhoek we were informed that we weren’t getting visas and that we were lucky not to be chucked out of Namibia Cape Town Cape Town Namibia
We had two American Peace Core workers from Malawi
The next morning we headed back to Otjikondo to spend Christmas.....
Lots of love Ottilie xxx
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)