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

Part Twenty Two: A week of being Mr Kalundu (12th – 18th March)

Mr Kalundu was away this week at a Life Skills (a bit like PSHE in England) in Windhoek, so I got to teach all his lessons this week which has been absolutely amazing. This consisted of teaching Maths to Grade 5 and science, life skills and agriculture to Grades 5, 6 and 7. Not only do I love teaching this age group and doing some academic teaching but I really enjoy teaching maths and science. Ken had given me a pile of resources which I spent Sunday afternoon utilising and planning my lessons for the upcoming week.

Life Skills is a very funny subject and they have one lesson a week. It ranges in topics from Career advice, to leisure activities, to healthy eating, to discussing the role of food in different tribes. These lessons are quite laid back with more discussion than formal teaching and I covered healthy eating and leisure activities during the week.

Teaching agriculture always makes me laugh as it just for the boys as the girls learn home economics instead. I’m always worried that they are going to know more than I am even though I have the text book. Luckily, there is quite a cross over from what I learnt in Geography at school (see Daddy it has come in useful even if I can’t place the counties in England!). As it’s just the boys, the class is much smaller and therefore more intimate which is nice. It is easy to discuss different views with 16 people in a class rather than 32 as you can actually hear what someone is saying. In my G5 agriculture class Heinzley farted and literally gassed out the whole class. First of all, the people sitting at his table all ran for the windows and I told them not to be so silly as it couldn’t be that bad a smell.....and then it hit me! It was the most disgusting smell which seemed to fill the whole class and soon we were all standing by the windows fanning ourselves with our books. I’m glad that none of the other teachers came in at that point. The other boys told me that I had to punish him as Mr Kalundu had banned farting in the classroom so I asked what I was expected to do. They answered that I was supposed to hit him, which I obviously wasn’t going to do, so they told me to send him to Mr Hawaxab, but I really couldn’t do this. Not only do I not approve of them being hit but I just couldn’t send him to Mr Hawaxab with the message that he had farted in my class!

I was teaching the Grade 5 class Data Handling in Maths which was fun as it meant lots of tables, bar charts, tally tables and pictograms. The downside was that I didn’t realise they had maths textbooks until Thursday so I spent all week drawing tables and graphs on the board and writing up endless questions. I had shown them one of the textbooks I had and asked them if they had it and they said no. No one had thought to mention that they had a different text book! Grade 5 were the least fun to teach out of the three year groups as they are still at the stage when you have to ask them to be quiet the whole time and they don’t listen to instructions. On Thursday after I had finally discovered about the textbooks I set them a task to do from them. This involved answering two questions from pg 9 and one question from pg 10. I wrote this on the board as well as writing that they needed to copy out the graphs or tables and the questions before they answered them. I also said this to them at least three times – repetition is very necessary with this age group! However, I was still asked at least TEN times whether they should copy out the tables and that doesn’t even include the amount of times I was asked if they needed to copy out the questions.

Science is probably my favourite of these subjects to teach as it involves a mixture of discussion as well as note taking. With the Grade 5s I was doing “Water around us” and “The Water Cycle”, with the Grade 6s “Energy from Water” and “Advantages and Disadvantages of Air” and with the Grade 7s “Air Pollution” and “Puberty and Reproduction”. When Ken told me all of this I said I was happy and confident to teach all of these topics apart from “Puberty and Reproduction”, which I thought was just mean of him to give me. His advice was don’t let them be silly about it, easier said than done with 32 twelve to fifteen year olds in the room. This was actually really challenging to teach as some of things I was asked and some of their answers it’s probably best not to post on the internet and I had to then try and answer them. As everyone knows I go red when embarrassed and I think I was probably bright purple for the majority of these lessons. I then had to draw the male and female reproduction organs on the board for them to copy down and my lack of any artistic talent meant that these were absolutely horrendous...luckily we found some in their text books for them to copy instead. At least I now know that I’m definitely not interested in teaching that again without some formal training!

I slightly despairing with one of my Grade 6 remedial groups – at the moment we are working through the times tables. Having had a test on the 2 and 3 times tables separately we combined them to have a test out of 24. I told them that I obviously expected them to get full marks but I could just about live with two silly mistakes. One of my girls Stacy got 6. I really didn’t know what to do – it’s the two and three times table! If you ask her to do it she can count up easily but ask them separately and she has no idea. I saw her count 3 x 1 on her fingers....aghhh!

Really annoying my watch strap has finally snapped...it started to die pretty quickly but I bandaged it with selotape and it has survived thus far. But when eating breakfast one morning it finally just fell off. Not only is it annoying not having a watch, it means I have to take my phone everywhere which the children love, but it means that I no longer have my watch mark. This was my only proof of how ridiculously white I was when I came out here and showed how much I have actually changed colour even if both Chelcie and Luise are a lot darker than me.

We have now finished doing all the Christmas thank you letters with the learners including rewriting two which somehow managed to get lost in the process. It’s good to get this off the ‘to do’ list. The Button Box is coming along well and we have started teaching some of the soloists their songs. We started with Damian who is our rapper – we picked him as he has lots of character and is very good at doing his own raps. He learnt his first verse very quickly but we just need to make sure he keeps in time. We then taught Kenisha her solo which is actually our least favourite song but it really suits her voice. There is a really simple melody which is repeated throughout the song.

Chelcie and I decided that we want to make a DVD all about us titled “Kicks and Dimps” featuring Kicks and Dimps. It would contain all the crazy things that we do together and just generally be all about us! We have to do a community project for Project Trust for the end of the year and we think this would be a prize winning project! We are also considering handing in a collage of our Smartie box collection (at the moment each box of smarties comes with a picture on the back of a person from a different country with some facts about their national country, there are 16 friends to collect and at the moment we have 8!) with the photos of our monthly face painting.

On Friday night the three of us went to start painting the backdrop for the play; it is set in a sitting room so at the moment we are painting the ‘wall’ pale yellow and then we will stick on paintings and a window. We painted about a quarter of the fabric and then went to rootle in the Costume Room for Costumes for my Birthday fancy dress party on Saturday. We had great fun becoming princesses, Dorothy, wearing fur coats, Indian people, African people and clowns in dungarees or onesies. I was very upset as despite looking everywhere I was unable to find Josephs Technicolor dream coat which is what I had been planning to wear over a pretty dress. After making our final choices we headed back to the flat, it was by now pitch black and we didn’t have a torch having not realised we would be away for so long. It was then I saw my second snake.....we were walking up our path when we heard a noise and both Chelcie and Luise screamed “It’s a cow”. I on the other hand screamed “It’s a snake”, quite a difference in opinion I’m sure you will agree! I was the most scared out of the three of us but the others couldn’t see the snake so I pointed to the snake no less than 4m in front of us on the ground. Chelcie and Luise kindly pointed out that it was actually a twig....it was then I noticed the cow – “Aghhh it’s a cow”. For some reason we had an escapee cow right outside our flat and in the dark it was very sinister. The next day Festus told us he had heard the screams from his house and had come running out to see if we were okay, obviously he didn’t consider a cow a threat to our lives as he didn’t venture any further. We texted Paul to see if there was anything we should do and his only reply was “Don’t shoot it”!

My birthday party was absolutely BRILLIANT and totally made up for being ill on my actual party. After a normal Saturday, Luise and I went to do TV for the children while Chelcie cooked. I had been banned from our kitchen all afternoon while she took over. We came back from watching Mamma Mia to find Chelcie transformed into a flower girl, in her blue dress with flowers at the bottom and flowers done in face paint down the whole of her left side as well as flowers in her hair. I then transformed into a fallen angel in a little black dress with a gold tinsel halo and gold wings and sash borrowed from the Costume Room. Luise became a warrior princess in a pinky shirt dress, silver crown, and a very sharp bow and arrow. Stanley came in normal attire but with a Peruvian style hat and Brian was most definitely himself. Chelcie had made pizzas from scratch which will definitely be repeated as well as cupcakes decorated with smarties. We used the Happy Birthday individual candles Mummy had very kindly sent out and they looked amazing. We had a really, really fun night. The next morning was less fun especially church which was a musical church featuring lots of recorders! I also was called up to read the first lesson on the spot as the first reader hadn’t come to church!

On Sunday afternoon we had another Button Box rehearsal where we taught our four main characters the opening song, Damian the second verse of his rap and Xunta-I and Vanessa’s duet. All very successful. Had mu usual weekly conversation with home but not with Daddy as he had gone to watch the rugby....talk about priorities! Apparently from when I get home I only have 21 days until Freshers Week at Exeter starts so that will be frantic!

Had a really marvellous week, I get such a buzz from teaching the academic lessons, although it slightly scares me that I’m considering becoming a science teacher! Who would have thought that?! Lots of love to absolutely everyone

Love from

Me xxxx

Part Twenty One: Sleeping with Cheetahs (9th – 11th March)

 Our out weekend started with a lift into Outjo from Gilly who was passing through so we were there but 8 o’clock. In return for the lift Gilly left us with 210 letters to stick stamps on, luckily this didn’t take too long but we were left with that horrible stamp taste in our mouths. After posting our own letters and buying new stamps we headed to the stationary shop where I bought more envelopes as well as being able to print off some more photographs. I have kept two for my diary and I am in the process of sending the rest home to various people. We then went to OK Foods, not only to stock up on shampoo and chocolate but to buy food for the rest of the weekend. After looking around a couple of shops and visiting the bank we headed to the Bakery for 11s. Outjo Backerei has gone bust and been taken over by new people and neither Chelcie nor I were too impressed with the new food! We then went to investigate a different internet cafe to see if they had lower prices and they did - $40 per hour rather than $72 and the internet was twice as fast. We spent an hour, reading emails and starting to reply to some (because of my birthday I had hundreds which was lovely but the first bit on the internet is always stressful as you want to read everything and time goes so quickly). It was lovely to read two email with the subjects ‘Darling Daughter’ and ‘Dear Darling’ – one from each of my parents before you start speculating!

We then had an early lunch before returning to the internet. I had a chicken salad pitta with chips having realised that I hadn’t eaten chicken since the holidays and I love chicken! We then spent just over two hours on the internet which I found very emotional. I have wanted to listen to Hattie’s new music since I came out here but have never had the chance to before so I listened to all of them on YouTube (if you haven’t listened to them type in Hattie Briggs to YouTube immediately, not only does she look absolutely stunning her photos but the music is incredibly beautiful and I am so proud of her). The combination of this and looking through lots of my friends photos had me sitting in absolutely floods of tears for about an hour – I think I started to worry Chelcie a bit when I started properly sobbing! I was suddenly feeling very overwhelmed and incredibly homesick; I just wanted to be at home surrounded by my friends and family. Luckily Matilda was on hand to cheer me up and then I even managed to Skype Abi for a little bit. This was very amusing as we could both see each other and I could hear her but she couldn’t hear me. Luckily after a while I was able to find where I could type and we managed to have a conversation which was lovely and it was amazing to see her. I managed to talk to a couple of friends on facebook but then had to be content to leave messages for the rest as they weren’t online. After another quick shop to get meat for the weekend we started walking out of town trying to catch a lift. We were totally unsuccessful in trying to get a lift but luckily Gilly passed and took us back to Otjikondo, we tried again to catch a lift from there but failed miserably so in the end Stanley drove us.

We were headed for a Cheetah Farm which was between Outjo and Kamanjab, about 40km beyond Otjikondo. It was 8km off the tar road and we passed through various gates telling us that we entered at our own risk and that there was Danger! We arrived at a house surrounded by a gate with a bell telling us to ring and on the other side of the fence was a cheetah. This was so surreal that I got nervous giggles. Having rung the bell two guys arrived and they drove us to the campsite where we were staying. Having failed to find a tent at Otjikondo, we stayed in what looked like a garden shed although it was camouflaged on the outside. On the inside there were four beds and that was it, not even electricity so we were lucky that we had brought torches. There was a gas canister attached to a little hot plate on which I cooked borewors which we then ate with brotchen and tomatoes. This tasted amazing washed down with Savanna. The guys who were in their late 20s then came back and we went to the bar and had a couple of drinks with them. It had been a very good day with some very high points seeing my first Cheetah and some pretty low ones.

Saturday morning was blissful, after a lie in until 8 o’clock (!) we went over to the pool which was big and round and lounged next to it reading our books and writing our diaries. I did my first sunbathing in Namibia before it got too hot! We then read inside eating brotchen and cheese with some Doritos for lunch. In the afternoon the guys came and collected us and we went to their garden where we met the tame cheetahs. Before we were picked up we made friends with a tortoise although he objected to having his photo taken; we have photos of each of us lying next to the tortoise and they are all really nice however in mine I look absolutely petrified....I didn’t want it to lick me! They have three tame cheetahs which are 3, 10 and 12 years old and one is even called Babar! The cheetahs were just like cats although a lot bigger! We could stroke them and one of them lay on his back and wanted his tummy tickled! At first I was a bit scared but then I relaxed even though I could have technically been eaten at any moment. They were really soft and very friendly, just like a cat; apart from they had really rough tongues which felt like sandpaper. I had scratches on my leg from being licked! It was very odd just chilling in a normal garden but just sitting next to a couple of cheetahs. We then watched them eat; a hunk of donkey meat with the fur still on was on the menu. They were actually very civilised eaters – they didn’t use their paws or anything but just lay on the ground nibbling at the meat. This was when Chelcie cracked out her joke if it can be classified as that “Why aren’t they allowed to compete at the animal Olympics? Because they’re cheaters!”  We then went to meet the wild Cheetahs.

They have 14 wild cheetahs that all live together in a big field but which wasn’t as big as I had anticipated. We were in the back of the open-back truck and as we drove around small groups of Cheetahs would pop out to follow the truck. After there were quite a lot we stopped so that they could be fed. Not all of the cheetahs came, probably 10 did, as if they have caught something themselves and aren’t hungry then they don’t come. These cheetahs looked a lot more scary and a little bit evil – not sure why, maybe because they were thinner and they had the ears back? It was amazing to be standing on the back of a car and to be surrounded by cheetahs. It was fantastic to watch them run towards us and to watch them jump for the meat and between us we got some brilliant photos of the cheetahs in action.  It was only when we returned to where we were sleeping that we released that the cheetah run finished literally right next door to where we were sleeping!

On Saturday evening we had an incredible braai! We cooked chicken kebabs, green pepper kebabs and bacon which were accompanied by tomatoes and some left over Doritos. I finally got to make real use of my pen knife and got great satisfaction out of using it for anything and everything! The knife is actually very sharp and a good size for cutting things. We talked outside for ages and had a really fun night although our conversations got a little deep.

On Sunday we spent the morning relaxing and reading before hitch hiking back around lunch time. The guys gave us a lift out to the road and said they would ring us in an hour or so to check if we had got a lift and if not they said they would drive us which was very kind. Fortunately, our luck had changed and we managed not to flag down one car but two cars. Luise got put in the boot with our rucksacks and Chelcie and I sat in the middle. The good thing about this was that there was air conditioning which is a luxury we have never had on a hitch before but the down side was I was in the middle of Chelcie and a guy who had his arm around the back of my seat and was pressing his leg closer and closer to mine as I shifted closer and closer to Chelcie! However, they were really nice despite playing the song “Girl, I just want to get you pregnant” twice in a row which slightly creeped us out, and we got safely back to Otjikondo!

We didn’t have any signal at the Cheetah Farm and when we got to the gate I had two texts from my sisters; one saying “Wish you were here at Florence and the machines!!!!!!!” which I would have loved also, and another which was a little more difficult to understand from Cluny: “CONGRATULATIONS!!! OMG well done soooo exciting mummy screaming!!” Obviously I had no idea what this was about and was about to text back when Chelcie made me ring home on her phone as she was too impatient to find out what had happened. The news was......I had got into Exeter! This was very exciting and a massive weight off my shoulders. Although I haven’t been thinking about university at all, it has been lurking in the back of my mind that I have yet to hear from them and having an unconditional offer was very exciting and was a great way to end the weekend! Now I just need to be 100% sure that I want to go so that I can reply. It’s very difficult trying to picture myself at university while I’m out here so trying to choose which one I want to go to is even harder!

All in all it was a pretty amazing weekend. It was lovely to talk to the people who I managed to talk to although very disappointing to miss the ones that I didn’t manage to talk to. I hope that you are all well and enjoying whatever you are up to at the moment

Sending so much love

Ottilie xxx

Part Twenty: My Birthday (1st– 9th March)

An interesting start to March....

I know I’m starting to say this in every blog but I cannot believe that it is now March; February seems to have flown past even though we managed to fit an incredible amount in. The most exciting thing about March, apart from it being the month dedicated to me (!) is that April is the month that follows it and at the end of April Mummy and Daddy arrive!

On the 1<sup>st of March we finally heard word that our passports had been stamped with our visas. I haven’t actually written much about my visa here as you never know who might read this and it’s all been a bit dodgy. We came out to Namibia on a 3 month tourist visa while our year working visas were being sorted. Our first visa ran out on the 30th of November and ever since then we have been illegal immigrants. This is why we were unable to go to Cape Town at Christmas as we would have been unable to return to Namibia and we were told we were lucky not to have been chucked out of Namibia. All very scary and every time we passed a policeman (quite often in Namibia) my heart would stop. In January we were told there was a 50% chance that our visas wouldn’t be sorted and we would be sent home, as you can imagine this was very upsetting but luckily it didn’t come to fruition. Anyway, apparently it is now sorted, however, I won’t believe it 100% until I have my passport in my hand and I can see the visa stamp. However, we can start thinking about where we want to go in our next holiday and take the chance to visit as many surrounding countries as possible in the time we have!

That evening we went to Gilly and Reiner’s house for a braai; this was a combined celebration for visas being sorted and a goodbye braai for Ian and Katie who left on the 5th. We had a delicious braai which actually felt very English: steak and chips with salad followed by apple crumble and ice cream. Reiner was being very funny and forcing me to drink the most disgusting shots as I had to make the most of my last few days of being 18! We then had another little concert – singing after the very potent alcohol was easier said than done but it was good fun. Ian had very kindly photocopied a lot of the music that he had brought out so that we could continue to use it.

On Friday there was a lot of preparation for the next day which was not only Parents Meeting but an athletics match against St Micheals. I also gave my first two keyboard lessons....I taught Theopoldine (G6) followed by Revonia (G5) and they both went very well. Theopoldine picked it up very quickly and Revonia less so – she was struggling to remember to lift up one note before pushing the next one down but I’m sure she will get there next time. I am going to have to brush up on my reading the bass clef skills as they are a little rusty but I think this will be a really fun project and I can’t wait to see how far they get in the next six months. Friday being our sixth month anniversary we painted our faces as usual, although this is the first month we’ve actually managed to do it on the right day! So we transformed ourselves into Zebras...I was in the Art room cleaning (Friday afternoon becomes Saturday morning when Saturday mornings are taken up with other things) when Ken (G6 teacher) walked in and got the shock of his life. Although we have face painted a lot we haven’t actually been seen by the teachers as we do it in the afternoons and don’t tent to bump into them. He was very puzzled and amused as to why I had a white face with black lines all over it!

I got a really sore tummy in the afternoon and I wasn’t feeling very well so I decided to have an early night and was in my bed by 7. Sadly I got a tummy bug and spent the rest of the night throwing up. I spent Saturday in the same position feeling incredibly sorry for myself while listening to the cheers and singing from the Athletics pitch. Chelcie bought me some Coke to drink flat and later Sara arrived with medicine and the most disgusting tasting mint tea! Unfortunaltely Otjikondo lost to St Micheals although we did our best HOWEVER Diina who I have been training since Outjo won the 1500m at Regionals and will now compete at the Nationals which made me very happy and proud. I was supposed to have been introduced to all the Parents at the Parents Meeting but Mrs Vermaak introduced Chelcie and told everyone that I was in bed throwing up – how kind of her!

I woke up on Sunday (my birthday) feeling slightly better but not really in the best birthday mood ever! I went into the kitchen to be greeted by a large stack of present which did improve my mood! Chelcie made me a cup of tea as I still wasn’t up for food and then I opened my presents. Chelcie had created a treasure hunt around the garden and my birthday card included the first clue: "The first is to eat but for you and to me. You’ll find it underneath not a chair, bush or tree." I discovered under our large rock a big packet of sour skittles and my second clue: "The second you’ll find, where the cat liked to climb. If you look up, you’ll find it in time." In the branches of a tree was an elephant necklace on a yellow chain (like the cheetah necklace on a blue chain I made her for her birthday) and the third clue: "Where it is won’t work, if the sky turns to rain. If you touch while it’s ‘on’ you’ll feel a great pain." In our braai I uncovered a package containing two friendship bracelets and the fourth clue: "Down in Rachel’s plots, in the soil and the dirt, you’ll find the next one. (Digging won’t hurt)". Buried in the soil, in Rachel’s newly planted flower bed, I discovered a bag containing a very arty ‘Ottilie’ sign and... the fifth and final clue: "Lastly you’ll have to search, where visitors rest. It may be spiky, but it’s good for a guest." Behind the curtain in our spare room which is called ‘Porcupine’ (I sleep in Gecho, Chelcie in Tortoise and Luise in Warthog) I found my favourite present. Having lived with me for the last six months Chelcie knows me very well – she is very aware of my lack of artistic talent but she knows how much I like to colour in so she made me my very own colouring in book! She has drawn lots of our favourite photos of things that we have done together or of people and drawn the outlines for me and then made them all into a book. A very clever idea which I absolutely love. Luise had also made me a lovely card with photos of us on and bought me some smarties and wine gums. She had also made the most incredible sign which says "Happy Birthday" in 3D letters and there is a giraffe and two balloons made from cardboard stuck on. She also found sweets in the shop called ‘Dimples’ which she stuck all over it!

Mummy had sent out lots of cards and jiffy bags with lots of little things inside so that I would have something to open on my birthday, so that was very exciting. Inside all of the cards was a DVD so we now have a very exciting new collection to watch – Chelcie and I watched ‘Footloose’ that night which was very good. I got lots of yummy goodies to eat like tangfastics, toffee sauce, popcorn and sour skittles as well as some ingredients to cook with. I also got a mint gel pen, a silver O key ring (almost as much fun as my ring to play with), sunflower seeds to grow in elephant poo (!) and lots of balloons. It was really lovely to have all these things and made it feel like my birthday. Throughout the day lots of children came over to say Happy Birthday and to bring me cards they had made me so that was really sweet.

At lunch time we went over to Paul and Sara’s for a special birthday braai which I watched them eat as I still felt very sick...it smelt good! Ian and Katie gave me a beautiful necklace which has lots of blue and green stones on – this was very kind and totally unexpected of them. Gilly and Reiner, my "Otjikondo family" gave me the most incredible fabric painting – it’s of an African sunset with some round huts, people and a tree in the foreground which I love. This will definitely be framed and go up when I return home. I got lots of lovely texts from people – African and English friends which was brilliant and I talked to all my family including all three sisters! Mummy told me that she had Daddy are giving me two large green photo frames which have been engraved with OEM and Namibia for my birthday. This is hugely exciting and I am already considering what to put in them! All in all I had a good birthday, even though I was feeling pretty ill, as so many people had put a lot of effort into making sure that it was a special day and I felt very cared about.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in bed doing not much apart from reading and doing numerous Sudoku. I have now finished my 100th book – a comfort read book "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Mayer. Wednesday and Thursday were back to normal and teaching – on Wednesday I took my birthday cake in to have at break time with the teachers and there was much discussion about how much weight I would have lost and how jealous they were all of me! I can’t say I can agree! On Thursday night we went down to Gilly’s and there was a German couple who are in Namibia for two weeks doing research on the English language and how it has been affected in Namibia. We stayed and had a drink with them and they gave us German chocolate which was amazing!

Next week I am back to being a science, maths, agriculture and life skills teacher as Ken is away doing a life skills workshop in Windhoek so I am taking over his classes which is very exciting. Hope that you are all well and that you are keeping you Lentern promises!

Lots of love to everyone

Me xxx</sup>

Part Nineteen: 45 things about my life in Namibia (2nd March)

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: 1<sup>st 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</sup>

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 <sup>we got up at 5:00 in order to be at school for a 5:20 leave to go to Outjo to compete in Athletics against 7 other schools. When we got there we thought we had missed the cattle truck as it wasn’t there and we thought we had been left behind.....no, it turned out that Outjo had been cancelled so everyone was still in bed! Mrs Vermaak had sent me a text the night before but I had turned my phone off 10 minutes before as I wanted an early night as it was going to be such an early start! Feeling very unamused we walked back to the GAP flat and tried to have a little more sleep before getting up again to go and teach our usual Friday classes.

Outjo was rescheduled for the 15th; however, it was only for the U13s so only 18 children went from Otjikondo. I managed to persuade Mrs Vermaak that it was very necessary for Chelcie and me to accompany the children along with Ken and Rob, luckily it worked as we really weren’t very necessary but the children appreciated us being there. We competed against seven other schools who were a lot bigger than us and stronger. We were slightly out of our league although the children did their best and made us very proud. I felt very sorry for Marvellous and Brinoldt who were representing us for high jump as their personal best is 1.26m and the high jump started at 1.20m and they only lasted to the second round. Stacy and Sitaleni did very well in the sprinting and managed to qualify for the finals. Both Glenn and Brinoldt did well throwing the javelin achieving 5th and 6th place, however, our star of the day was Diina. She came 2nd in the 800m and won the 1500m setting a new record and has therefore qualified for the regionals for both of these events. It is now my job to train her in preparation for this. One of the schools was a private school and all the children were white which we both found very weird – out here we expect white people for some reason to be English but they are still African and their first language is Afrikaans. One of the girls from this school was incredible at the javelin. The old record was 23m and she threw without a run up 27.5m which was very impressive. However, Chelcie and I were very suspicious as either some of the children from the other schools definitely weren’t under thirteen or they were on steroids – there were girls there with legs up to my armpits. After Outjo High School finished for the day the old Otjikondians walked down to see us. It was lovely to catch up with some of our old G7s and hear how they are enjoying their new schools, it also made us realise how much we miss some of them. The end results were: Outjo with 85 points, 83 Jack Francis, 68 St Micheals, 56 Moria (the private school), 36 Otjikondo, 6 Maarseen, 5 Queen Sofia of Spain and 2 Okaukuejo. Although we were badly beaten at least we were in the double figures! As only the U13s got to compete we have organised an athletics match to be held here against St Michaels so that all our children who had been training so hard would get to compete.

Reiner’s Birthday: On the 12th we celebrated Reiner’s 80th birthday. Family had been arriving all week to celebrate: Jenny (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) and her family from the Caprivi Strip, Gilly (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) with Oliver from Cape Town, Heinz (Reiners 82 year old brother) from Germany and Katie (Gilly’s sister) and Ian her husband from England.

During Art lessons all week we had been busy making the world’s biggest and best birthday card! We had a large piece of white fabric and in the middle we painted in black "Happy Birthday Mr Stommel". We then got all the children to do their hand prints around this on the rest of the fabric in a different colour for each grade. G7 – purple, G6 - jade, G5 - blue, G4 - pink, Wings - orange, G3 - red, G2 – yellow and G1 – green. When it was finished it looked really amazing and we wrote each child’s name on the bottom of their hand print.

We started the day with a special Church Service, the priest from St Michaels led the service and he brought with him a choir. The St Michaels choir were very good and there were two girls in particular who were very talented. The service was filled with music and it was lovely. We all then went up to the Dining Room where we gave Reiner our card and we cut the birthday cakes. There were four of the biggest cakes I have ever seen – each cake made 80 giant slices which we then gave out to all the children and workers. The Stommels then went to have a family lunch and we spent the rest of the morning sitting and dancing with the children outside the takeaway. We then all ate lunch together which was a meat stew (Reiner had given the school and community a cow as a present) with rice which was actually quite nice.

In the evening we had an informal concert, which wasn’t that informal, at the Stommel’s house which had been Chelcie and my job to organise. I had taught six girls to play "Pokare Kare" on the Recorder, Desvino and Paulus played "Happy Birthday" on the violins, our Drama boys sang the school song and a group of girls plus Ruben sang "We just want to say thank you Lord". I can’t say that this was their finest hour! We hadn’t had that much time to practice and they were a little rusty, a little out of practice of performing, and quite out of tune, apart from that it all went well! The hostel workers came down later and sang three songs followed by the farm workers which was lovely. The rest of the time was left to me and Chelcie to entertain everyone. We were accompanied by Ian who is a very talented pianist and we had been practising with him for a couple of days, and occasionally by Heinz on the violin. I ended up singing two solos which anyone who knows me is my ultimate nightmare, after being forced to eat bananas, but it actually went okay. I only thought I was going to have to sing "Ich libe dich" which I worked myself up about and got very panicking but later it was requested I sing "Don’t cry for me Argentina" which I did unaccompanied. By then I had drunk some wine which had relaxed me and it was much more successful! Ian really likes me singing "Ich libe dich" so I think I will be performing again in the near future. It was a really fun night and I think that Reiner had a birthday to remember. Gilly has already promised to fly us out to sing at his 100th birthday which Chelcie and I will definitely take her up on!

Rachel: Rachel left for England the day after Reiner’s birthday for England which was very sad. It was very lovely having another English person about and someone who is not a child to talk to! The week before she left she went into Outjo and she kindly printed some photos off for me that I was then able to send to various people. I hope the lucky few appreciated them! I gave her my blog details so if you are reading this HELLO! I hope you got home safely and that the seed head survived! Sara gave Rachel a tremendous seed head which we then made a cardboard box for, the ones we already had weren’t the right shape or deep enough, so that hopefully it would survive the journey home.

Thunder Storms: We have had a couple of terrifying storms with terrific thunder and lightning. I really don’t like the storms, nor does Savanna the Stommel’s dog, and it means that I am often sitting in my bed curled up with my blanket while the lightning illuminates my room. I can’t even go and get Chelcie as that involves leaving my room, too scary, but she says she thinks of me as she lies awake in her bed!

Dancing: Luise does a lot of ball room and Latin American dancing in Germany and she thought it would be fun to teach some of the children some of it so last Saturday she gave us all a dance lesson which was great fun. Sam (the GAP at St Micheals) had come for the weekend and we all had great fun learning some steps. There were about 26 children from G6 and G7 and they all really seemed to love it so hopefully we will do it again at some point.

Valentine’s Day: We had a Valentine themed week during Art and the children either made cards or created boarders for love poems or decorated hearts. I received some lovely cards from the children, a little leather shoe from Kenisha (the Head Girl) and a homemade friendship bracelet from Luise! The G7s made bunting and banners for our Valentine Disco which we had in the Hans Seidel Hall on Saturday night. The children loved the disco and they took hundreds of photos of themselves on my camera – they really loving "catching photos"!

Cooking: This term I have been trying out some new things and changing some recipes to fit the ingredients I have so far I have made vegetable and bacon stuffed peppers, a lentil and vegetable curry, baked sausage and vegetable pasta, bobotie....

It’s a part of life: This is the children’s new phrase which they use, especially the boys, as an excuse for EVERYTHING. If something goes wrong then the answer is "It’s a part of life", if they did badly in their spellings then "It’s a part of life", this got a little annoying at first until we started using it back to them if they complained about something and then our answer would be "It’s a part of life"!

Nesbo: We adopted a kitten for 24 hours...ever since the children discovered that we liked kittens they have been bringing us various specimens to see if we would like to adopt them! On the 15th Chelcie came into my room and asked if would keep a kitten, I said no that it was impractical and anyway Luise is allergic...and then she showed me the kitten. It was very little, incredibly little, and looked just like Snowy, Paul and Sara’s kitten. We were thinking of a name and I came up with Nesbo – it looks identical to Snowy, I read a book called The Snowman which is written by Jo Nesbo so hence Nesbo! We didn’t have any milk so we went over to Paul and Sara’s to borrow some and we were planning to go and ask Gilly then next day if we could keep it. Nesbo was absolutely petrified – I think he had a bit of a terrifying experience with the boys who brought him as he arrived on the end of a piece of string! He was absolutely silent which we thought was good because Snowy is a very noisy cat which is very irritating. He spent the night cowering under my bed even though we had made him a nice bed in a box with a blanket. We left him some milk and went to lessons as usual. At lunch time I suddenly realised that we couldn’t keep Nesbo as there would be no one to look after him in the holidays or when we were away so we had to let Nesbo go. We put him outside our gate and let him be a feral cat once more but Nesbo decided to punish us....he spent the next week or so meowing very loudly outside our windows throughout the night keeping us all awake. Luckily he has now been reunited with other cats and has ceased to haunt us.

Lent: In Germany they have a festival before the start of Lent and we celebrated the last day of the festival here. On Shrove Tuesday all the prefects arrived at our flat at 6am to have their faces painted! I painted Kenisha a red butterfly with red spots, Diina a lion and Joyce a pig. Tjirondwauvi became a very scary vampire, Mario a clown, Tomas a zebra, Paulus a devi, Brenden had the South African flag and Xunta-I and Sevelina were both butterflies. Chelcie made me a jester, Kenisha did patterns and waves on Luise and Chelcie ended up looking like a Picasso painting after the children attacked her with face paints. We were supposed to be done in time for assembly but we ended up being 5 minutes late for lessons which caused some sense of humour failures! It was Gilly’s idea and supposed to be a surprise so the teachers didn’t know what was happening....luckily we all had fun so it didn’t matter too much.

On Ash Wednesday we had a service in the afternoon and we all wrote our Lent promises on a piece of paper which we put in a bowl which will stay in the church for 40 days and nights. I think this is a lovely idea. I have given up carbohydrates and fizzy drinks as well as taking up reading the Bible every day, trying to do a good deed daily and learn 10 Afrikaans phrases by the end of Lent. I am yet to break my Lent!

Activities: These are now back in full swing after the end of Athletics. I have new groups from last year; on a Monday I teach Intermediate Recorders followed by Advanced Recorders (two hours is a ridiculously long time to be forced to listen to the sound of a recorder), on a Tuesday I have G1 girls for playgroup followed by G6 girls for Craft (we are making juggling balls), on Wednesday I have a Beginner Recorder group followed by a young boy craft group (I had been positively dreading this but it actually went really well and we have started to make Desk Tidies), on a Thursday I have G1 boys for playgroup followed by G6 and G7 boys for table tennis and on Friday I have rehearsals for the Button Box. My remedial sessions have also started up again although I don’t know who I have yet for G6 but I have two nice G7 groups at the moment.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATILDA!

When Ian and Katie arrived from England they brought an electric piano and a keyboard which was very exciting. Chelcie and I are going to be giving a couple of children keyboard lessons which will be fun and should start next week. While discussing some music things with Ian we had a glass of white wine and had some nibbles, Chelcie then said "Grapes are made of wine" which made me laugh and she’d only had one glass by then!

Last Sunday was an incredible day – after reading in Church I spent the rest of the morning preparing for the following week. After lunch Chelcie and I go into our pyjamas and walked over to the Hans Heidal Hall carrying our duvets, pillows and my blanket. We then made a bed on stage with the blankets that live there and then settled down to watch ‘P.S I love you’ which was absolutely brilliant and we are now planning a road trip to Ireland together! Towards the end of the film a most terrific storm started – there was incredible thunder and lightning which actually shook the stage and it was raining in sheets which we could hardly see through. After a quick run about in the rain which left us soaking and freezing we curled back up to watch ‘27 Dresses’ as were now obviously stranded in the Hall. We had to watch with the subtitles on as the storm was so loud but we were very happy until the power went! Luckily there was a break in the rain so we managed to make it back to the flat but not before being caught in our pjs by a couple of children and teachers!

I hope that you are all well and that February has been a good month for everyone. Love as usual to absolutely everyone and I can’t believe that I am about to spend my 19th birthday in Namibia! Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Lots and lots of love

Me xxxx

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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, who is English and 59. She has come for a month and has been twice previously. The children all arrived on the Monday and we spent the day going around the hostels, helping get things ready and welcoming the children back. It was so lovely to see them all again, we have both massively missed them, and it was very exciting to meet all the new children. The new G1s are so CUTE and really little. Andrew who was the smallest boy in the school last year has been joined by his younger brother – Solomo, and they are identical although Solomo is slightly taller. The pair of them are so adorable.

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, what I would have typically expected. However, when marking one boy’s exercise he wrote how he was so cross with the man who had beaten his friend and how he had gone to visit his friend in hospital. More shocking was another boy’s account of how his family had just been about to leave the farm when someone had hung themselves on a tree. I can’t say this is what I expected to read at all but as Gilly says you never know what happens to them in the holidays. The thing that I found most shocking was how they seemed just to slip it into their writing and then just carry on as if it wasn’t something massively scandalous or scary.

The second week of term I became Mr Kalundu as he went to Windhoek for a week. This entailed teaching Maths to Grade 5 and Science, Maths, Life Skills and Agriculture to Grades 5 – 7. Anyone who knows me would think that Otjikondo are crazy to put me in charge of teaching this but I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. I had one of my most enjoyable and satisfying weeks at Otjikondo so far. I loved teaching academic subjects and I really enjoyed teaching the older grades. I have always thought that I would want to teach lower primary, around Grade 3, but I am now properly considering teaching upper primary and specialising in one or two subjects. The children really wanted to learn and they were old enough to be able to listen and then ask intelligent questions so it wasn’t just me standing talking at the front. I had to learn to write on the chalk board after my white board pen stopped working which was pretty horrendous but didn’t kill me. I have now become Mrs Vermaak as she has gone on a conference so I am teaching Maths to Grades 6 and 7. I am doing Approximation and Estimation with the Grade 6’s and Factors with the Grade 7s. Today the Head Girl, Kenisha, came up to me after the lesson and told me what a good teacher I was – this meant the world to me.

I made my first cake in Africa as it was Rachel’s 59^th 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 2^nd 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. We are carrying on with Athletics in the afternoon with about 60 children who are representing Otjikondo at Outjo next Friday where we go for an athletics match to compete against 5 other schools. We were doing high jump and Damian had a crashing fall. He totally over jumped and missed the mats completely landing on his head. At first I thought he had knocked himself out but then he started making this awful animalistic groan, he was writhing about so I knew he hadn’t damaged his spine but I made him stay still on the floor and tears were just pouring from his eyes. I sent one of the older boys to get Mr Hawaxab and he came over but after he saw that Damian wasn’t seriously injured he went back over to his sprints session. After a while I got him to sit up and then slowly I walked him over to the clinic. He was very dizzy and I was properly supporting him. We don’t have an actual trained nurse in residence but we have the school “nurse” who was trained by a visiting nurse a couple of years ago. She got two girls to wash his head where it was cut, put some ointment on the cut, gave him two pills and sent him to the hostel to lie down. I felt so helpless as I didn’t want to leave him alone as I thought he might be concussed as he was still very dizzy. I walked him back to the hostel and then told Stanley that he had to check on him every half an hour to see how he felt, how dizzy he was and if he had double vision or anything. Luckily today he is absolutely fine but I felt very responsible last night and I wasn’t happy with how he was looked after.

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 at some point as her prize – I am so proud of her as she has been working like an absolute Trojan! This is a dedication to Qwirkle who disappeared off over a month ago and has yet to been seen so if you have my cat please give him back as his brother is missing him and apparently is getting very fat. A big thank you to Godmother Katie to my parcel – the tangfastics disappeared very quickly and Chelcie didn’t get a share! I really hope that everyone who has gone off on their own travels this month is having an amazing time and that you are all sage. Love as usual to absolutely everyone, I’m missing you all although still having the best time ever despite losing the ability to sleep again. Last night I had horrendous nightmares of centipedes coming up the side of my bed and crawling over me and my blanket. I thought that I had actually stabbed a scorpion last night but when I couldn’t find the knife this morning I ascertained that it must have been a dream although in the middle of the night it was very real! Gilly has told me that I should try having a stiff drink before I go to bed?!

Lots and lots of love

Ottilie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx