Part Thirty Seven: Party, Baboon and Performance (23rd – 29th July)

We had a ‘long weekend’ in that Carla and Hannah taught our Monday lessons so we could continue with the Art Displays. For the Europe board background (also two boards) we drew out a map of Europe and then painted the countries different colours. Chelcie copied the map from an atlas but then ‘Chelciefied’ it; this means that the countries size depended on how much Chelcie liked it (massive England and Ireland) and some countries like Kazakhstan seemed to mysteriously disappear and don’t feature on our map. I tease her about this but we all know what would happen if I had to copy out the map – I would probably still be doing it now I’m such a perfectionist!

The Art Room now longer looks like a classroom – all the chairs have gone into storage with a couple of the tables and the rest have been rearranged to create a shop. This means that all our Art lessons for the next two weeks will take place outside or in other locations. For G3 this was just too much excitement and the lesson was pretty chaotic. Luckily lots of picnic tables have come out of storage and we have created a classroom outside the art room so lessons shouldn’t be so unruly from now on.

At lunch time I went for a walk on the tar road (meeting four warthogs) and was stopped by a tourist bus who was very concerned about me. They seemed to think I was trying to walk to Outjo and wanted to give me a lift and couldn’t understand that I was just walking to go for a walk as opposed to trying to get somewhere!

We have started working in the Art Room after supper in order to try and get everything completed. We stuck up all the children’s Europe work on top of the map and started on the Australasia boards. One has a black background with lots of Koru art work stuck on and the other one we have created an Ayres rock on which we have stuck turtles and lizards which have been done aborigine style. The Ayres rock has been made with literally sand paper – paper covered in glue which we put in the sand outside the art room to create authentic sand paper! Also very busy making and printing off name tags to display next to the children’s work. I have started making the people for the world – we painted a giant world on a piece of fabric in bright, block colours which is going up on one of the walls. We are making 7 people to be stuck up around the world; one representing each continent and they will be wearing clothes traditional to a country from that country.

                        Europe – Greece (a toga and green garland)

                        Africa – Namibia (body paint and an Ovambo skirt)

                        Asia – China (a kimono)

                        North America – Hawaii (sequin bikini, grass skirt and flower garland)

                        South America – Rio (carnival outfit – sequin top, feathered skirt and mask)

                        Australasia – Australia (t-shirt, shorts, cork hat and surf board)

                        Antarctica – Arctic (snow suit)

All the clothes are made from Material and so actually took ages to make. I painted the body of the person the same colour as the continent was painted on the map, so when they are stuck it will be really obvious where they come from. (Europe – lilac, Africa –yellow, North America – orange, South America – light green, Asia – dark green, Australasia – red and Antarctica – pink)

The Africa board is now completed as well. For the background we stuck up loads of red African patterned material which looks very effective. We then displayed G6’s silhouette work – sunset background with a black tree or animal in the foreground, and G7’s charcoal drawings of African trees. We decided that the Europe board didn’t have quite enough WOW factor so subsequently some of it is becoming 3D. Each country has various drawings stuck on to it and now some of the drawings are attached to half a loo roll so they stick out. This was an absolute nightmare to achieve but the whole thing looks a lot better. I had to use a mixture of glue, masking tape and selotape and they still all repeatedly fell down until I thoroughly lost my sense of humour with it all!

Matilda posted a picture today on Facebook of her diary with 26^th of August marked as ‘O coming home’. All very exciting but can’t really believe it’s so soon. Flu has now hit Otjikondo and most of our cast seem to be suffering – aghhh. Uapiona one of the four main parts has lost his voice which isn’t very conductive to successful rehearsals! So now we are trying to look after all the cast in order to make sure that they all stay healthy and happy!

Friday was a bit weird – all of the teachers apart from Mrs Vermaak, Ms Fabiola and Ken were away at workshops, meaning that we had responsibility for Grades 1 to 4. We did PT for two Grades at a time while the other two Grades watched a film, so it worked out quite well. In the afternoon we had a dress rehearsal in front of Gilly - this was to determine whether we were ready to perform and subsequently whether our first performance to St Mike’s on Sunday would happen….or not. Despite Uapiona being unable to sing, Paulus being in bed and a couple of out of tune songs we were deemed ready for performance. Button Your Lip (Damian’s rap), Crow’s Button (Wlatraudt’s solo) and the Irish Leprechaun Dance were absolutely brilliant and we were both ecstatic. This was the first time that we had actually allowed Desvino (Granddad) to eat on stage – we supplied him with a packet of biscuits and sweets and he was marvellous. We also realised that we hadn’t yet worked out a bowing sequence of an encore song which is customary so that was quickly remedied. They will repeat the second half of ‘The Pgyama Button’ (the last song) to bow to and then the encore song is ‘Button Your Lip’ with everyone joining in on the chorus rather than just the three backing singers. This is a risk as Damian still tends to rush but everyone enjoys singing the Chorus so much that hopefully it will work out. Gilly rated us 95% ready however we are going to change our set….

Just before TV started Byron arrived at our flat with a two week old baby baboon! It was so, so, so, cute. He had called it Thomas Philemo. When out hunting he had seen a lone baboon which means that it is a male one so he shot it (they have way too many baboons here so this is a form of population control) however, it turned out to be a female and there was Thomas. Byron was giving it to a conservation trust and was just waiting for it to be picked up. Thomas was like a really ugly little old man with a lot of hair. He was really sweet and we would just cling to you- he was fascinated with the collar of my jacket. His hands were amazing and he was just like a little baby but apart from the fact that he was a baboon! The children did not except our excuse for being late for TV and wouldn’t have believed us if a couple of children hadn’t also met Thomas.

After TV we joined Paul, Sara and Byron (now minus the baboon) to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. I can’t say I was overly impressed. Despite everything being executed amazingly and the lighting design being incredible, we all thought it was a bit random. I’m not sure if it was just because we were watching from Namibia but the commentator was awfully dull and much too quiet. The highlights for me were Mr Bean and fire beacons right at the end which did make it worth staying up for, just. What were the Germans wearing?

So, on Saturday morning it was time to redesign the set. Before we had our window on the backdrop stage right and stage left we had two ‘armchairs’ in fact two chairs draped with duvets. In between the chairs a table and on the wall behind some photos and a painting Chelcie did. Gilly has now given us two wicker chairs and a matching coffee table, a little desk and a book shelf. We have hung a painting over the desk and Chelcie’s painting (although amazing now doesn’t fit in with the rest of the set) has been replaced with a lovely wooden clock. The bookshelf has been filled with books, some DVDs and board games on top. The stage now looks a lot more filled and much more like a home. I only hope the children like it….

On Saturday evening Hannah and Carla returned from their Etosha trip where they had spent two days with Aileen, having had a great time, and we had Hannah’s leaving party. We decided it was time for another fancy dress party and Chelcie and I became matching Aborgine people/African warriors, Carla was an African witch doctor and Hannah was a clown complete with an Elephants head! I made a curry and Chelcie a syrup cake and we had a great evening.

On Sunday both my Intermediate and Advanced Recorders played in Church and they performed really well. They usually get quite nervous and it never sounds that good but I played with them both and it worked really well so I was extremely happy. In the afternoon it was our opening night of……The Button Box! We were starting at 3:00 but the lorry with St Mikes aboard turned up at 2:00 which momentarily through us until Sara sent them all to watch TV. Our first hurdle was to discover that we were missing two cast members. Firstly Tuhafeni who declared he was too ill to perform, the children all said there was nothing wrong with him but when I went to talk to him he said he was ill and couldn’t perform. Frankly, it was his loss not ours. The second person missing was Robertine. In the holiday she was bitten by a dog so she has been going to have lots of injections this term. She had gone to have one and hadn’t bothered to tell us. We were both seething. Luckily, Waltraudt said she knew all of her parts and she managed to fill in beautifully twice. Tuhafeni’s absence we just had to ignore. We then opened the curtain to show the cast their new set and the ‘wows’ from the children confirmed it clearly that they approved of our decisions. St Mike’s were a hard audience to perform to as they didn’t particularly respond to us but for a first performance I was very proud of them. It was completely flat but nothing major went wrong. The main four weren’t really acting which meant that the whole thing lacked life. Damian forgot his words at the start of the rap but then recovered brilliantly. The Uncle Tom Duet was horribly out of tune but luckily that was it. Kenisha sang her solo the best she has ever done it and it was stunning and once again the Crows Button and Irish Leprechaun dance were brilliant. Damian was really reluctant to do his song as the encore and bless him was totally petrified but I managed to persuade him that he could do it and he proved me right. I really, really love that boy.

We came back to the flat and just collapsed – totally exhausted. Home in four weeks. This time next week Parents Day will be over – aghh, lots to get done still before then. Once again a very busy week which seems to have flown by. I could really do with a time machine at the moment just to slow everything down as everything seems to be speeding up. Love and hugs to everyone

Love Ottilie xxxx

Part Thirty Six: Preparations (16th – 22nd July)

Monday morning started with Finger Painting with Wings Art which they really enjoyed; when we sent them back to class not only were faces, heads and shoes covered in paint but we were exhausted! It was absolutely freezing so as the children played football Chelcie and I walked laps up and down the pitch, much to the bafflement and amusement of the children, in order to keep warm. 

With the G3’s, G4’s and G5’s lessons we did Origami in Art to add to the Asia board – with the G3’s whales, G4’s penguins and the G5’s birds. They all enjoyed it although the G3s were significantly better (I’m sure nothing to do with the fact that the whales were a lot less complicated to make!). They all started off on a practice piece of paper and then they made their real ones on different brightly coloured paper. With the scraps of paper they then made little animals so at the end of the class we ended up with families of animals! With my boys craft group we made Chinese Lanterns which we hang underneath the Asia board and they look really good. Figo (G4) turned up to my Craft group for the second week running which was incredibly impressive – these are the only two times he has come in the last two terms; I think he has heard rumours of a craft party at the end of term!

Our G3 music class was very lively and we taught them 3 new songs – “She sat on her hammock and played her guitar”, “I’m taking home a little baby bumble bee” and “John Brown’s body lies amouldering in the grave” which they loved. I’m very aware that all the songs I have taught them involves someone or something dying and there are a lots of worms featured! Not really sure what this tells you about my childhood and what my parents taught me! The new GAPs are going to find the children’s repertoire of songs very bizarre and maybe slightly inappropriate?!

My G7 boys turned up to Remedial definitely not in a conductive working mood and were much more interested in the laptop in the next door room where Carla and Hannah were making our 3D Big Ben. They were very un-amused at the boy’s behaviour; luckily I am more used to them and could see the funny side of it. At the moment they are being pushed so hard for their exams that they are exhausted and I don’t feel the need to push them quite so hard in Remedial and am happy to relax a little bit. I also know which battles aren’t worth fighting!

I have now also worked out the perfect sleeping arrangement to keep me properly warm at night; I have a blanket under my sheet, I’m sleeping inside a silk sleepliner with a blanket on top, then my duvet and then another blanket. Also when necessary I can add a jumper and hot water bottle. I think it’s going to be a real shock to my body when I come home and it’s not sunny every day. Going to need to invest in some warm jumpers!

On Thursday, while collecting the Irish Sashes from the Costume Room I managed to fall of a stool and ripped my black jeans all the way down the inside of the right thigh which was a bit of a disaster. All my clothes are dying on me and not really sure what I’m going to wear for the rest of this term!

On Thursday afternoon we had the G7 behavioural meeting which was very entertaining. All the hostel staff, teachers, Mrs Vermaak and Gilly met in the staff room after lunch to discuss the G7s. Between us we had to fill in a form about each child which would be sent to their prospective high schools. This included things like their behaviour in class, in the hostel, respect for teachers, and compatibility with other learners…For each category we had to stay whether they were excellent, above average, average, below average or awful. It was a very amusing meeting as everyone had their favourites who they stuck up for fiercely and there were a number of disagreements. Certain people dismissed the child if they weren’t academically capable and others who could see past this were fighting their cause. We also had to decide which High Schools they were going to apply to. The children had already indicated schools that they were interested in but we had to check that they were financially viable as well as if they were academic enough to get in and if not make other suggestions. Out of all the children Diodores caused the most controversy and disagreement. Ken and Rob were very pro him even going as far as saying he could have been Head Boy (even I think this is going a little far) but Mrs Vermaak and a couple of other teachers were very down on him – he isn’t bright and at the moment his average is only 43% so he will really struggle getting a high school place. I am so protective over him and won’t let him go undefended if people are criticising him. I ended up going bright red and very hot fighting his cause and Gilly and Chelcie were laughing at me. Luckily he has ended up with a very good behavioural report which should help his High School application. I really want to get him into Outjo High School as Brenden (his best friend) is going there and is sensible as well as lots of other people from Otjikondo so there will be people to look out for him. His best friend, Sagittarius, from last year is also there along with other boys so lots of people to look after him. It also means when I come back I could visit him!

We were very cheeky and during G3 music and Wings PT we got the children to clean the bid display boards which we would use to display the children’s art work for Parents Day. On Friday and Saturday we spent the whole day camped out in the Art Room working on the North and South America boards. We have one board for North America and two for South. The North America board is a city sky line (New York) and it will have the G7’s collages displayed on top. It’s all done in black and white except some of the windows that are painted colours and it looks really effective. The South America boards have become a rainforest. We dyed tissues light and dark green which we stuck over balls of tissue to make a 3D background. We didn’t have any dye so we mixed paint and water together and used that to dye the tissue which worked really well, the only issue was it worked rather too well and we ended up green too. We then added vines and giant leaves before displaying flowers, butterflies and frogs which the G1’s and G2’s coloured in. The butterflies are attached to pipe cleaners so it looks as if they are flying away. I’m uber happy with how these two have turned out as they are just how we pictured them in our heads when we planned it all. We have now also stuck up the ‘hello’ words in different languages upon the walls which looks good – they are either orange, yellow, purple or red and really pop out on our cream walls.

Friday is keyboard lesson day – as usual Theopoldine progressed really well and we learnt a new piece. Revonia on the hand seems to have gone backwards again. I have made the decision to give up on teaching her to read music and teach her by heart – this is how she learns the recorder and I think she will enjoy it more if we give up the reading music battle.

The norm here is that various children end up wearing my jumpers when I’ve taken them off. Friday night was no different and Damian was curled up in my lax jacket – it looked slightly like a dress on him. The only difference to normal was that I was wearing Diodores jumper – he had given it to me after the matches at St Michaels to wash as it was black (it’s supposed to be white) and then I put it in the kitchen to give back to him. However, this meant that when I was leaving the house without a jumper I would see it and just end up wearing it. It is a really comfy fleece and to be honest I think he quite likes me wearing it although he pretends to be outraged!

Having promised to sing weekly until we leave Chelcie and I sang ‘Lord of all Hopefulness’ in Church accompanied by Hannah on the piano, which went well. My Intermediate recorders played ‘Amazing Grace’ on the recorders, which was interesting. At the end of the service Chelcie, Hannah and I sang outside for ages. We made Gilly nostalgic for her school days as we were singing lots of different English hymns from my Marlborough hymn book. We have also started to teach the children ‘Shine, Jesus Shine’ which was an instant hit and is now going to be used in the First Communion service.  Before lunch I went for a run and on the way back to Otjikondo I got clapped by a group of tourists who had got out of their car on the road side. Quite embarrassing! We went for a braai at Paul and Sara’s and Peter and Byron were also there which was really fun. We haven’t seen Peter since we stayed at Ohorongo in October! Everyone was on really good form and it was great fun.

I really can’t believe this brings me to the end of another week at Otjikondo. Time really does seem to fly when you most want it to slow down – not only do I not want my time here to finish but there seems to be an inordinate amount of things to do before Parents Day. Sundays are now very scary days as the each week it is one less week until we fly home. At the start of this year Wednesdays were very special days as we would exclaim “I can’t believe that we’ve been away for three whole weeks!” it seems ages ago since we started counting in months rather than weeks! Love to you all as usual, soon you can be talking to me in person rather than reading blog to hear all my news, can’t wait!

Love Me xxxx

Part Thirty Five: Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal and St Mike’s (8th – 15th July)

Having said that now we have internet I would be able to post my blog more regularly, I feel slightly awful only sitting down to write this now (today is the 9^th of August), my only excuse is that I have been incredibly busy. Luckily I write my diary in great detail so hopefully you won’t miss out on anything. And better late than never?!

Luckily, the antibiotics worked very quickly and I soon started to feel more like myself (I was about to write feel more normal but I can’t say I ever feel normal!). On the afternoon of the 8^th we had our much anticipated full run thorough of the play in front of Sara. This would determine whether rehearsal would continue or whether all our hard work would be scrapped. Luckily we got through without any major mishaps and it was deemed a success, a much lacking energy and pizazz success but still a success. Hannah and Carla (who the children call Miss Colour!) also watched and wrote us an objective list of things to work on to add to our already lengthy one! Much to my delight Glenn also made it back in time to join in with the performance.

This week I worked with Damian daily in order to improve his Rap. When he speaks naturally he has a bit of a stammer and he is very under confident but I love him dearly. I was working with him especially as everyone who has watched the play says that his song is the weakest and I could no longer make excuses for him. I was getting him to slow down so that the audience would have a chance of understanding what he was saying as well as keeping the energy up so that it was interesting to watch. Suddenly, something clicked and he got it. Not really sure how or why but I couldn’t have been more proud of him. Ruben who sings the solo in ‘Uncle Jack’s Button’ is now going to say his solo rather than sing it which is a shame. He has a lovely voice which is why we cast him originally but he can’t project it and suffers dreadfully from nerves. At least when he says it we get some life to the song – this is the other one that lets the play down. Hopefully it will work better this way. Xunta-I and Vanessa have always struggled with the tuning of their duet – we have admitted defeat on this one and are going to have Evangelina and Tuyambeka singing behind Vanessa in the Wings and Albertha and Waldraudt behind Xunta-I.

Not having any armchairs we have made big normal chairs into armchairs by covering them with a duvet each which surprisingly doesn’t look too bad. We have borrowed some cushions from Gilly and Granny and Grandpa should be rather comfortable! On Friday’s rehearsal Damian showed the rest of the cast his huge improvement and he was my star player. I ended up throwing a glass of water in Diina and Uapiona’s face. During the first scene they run in having been in a downpour and they weren’t doing it well so I thought it might help them to be actually wet! It did help but they didn’t appreciate it!

The preparations for Parents Day were still full on – during Wings’ art lesson we drew out words in bubble writing saying ‘Hello’ in lots of different languages – Bonjour, Hola, Privet, Saalam, which they then painted. With the G3s we carried on with the Europe work – they all had different pictures of things that European countries are famous for. For example a pizza for Italy, the Eiffel Tower for France and a cauldron full of goulash for Hungary! We have also finished our painting of the world map ready for the wall and now we just need to make the people. With G7 we started doing collages for the North America board – Brendon and I worked together on a baseball cap with L.A on the front. This put Diodores in a foul mood as Brendon got to sit with me alone (it was because everyone else had a partner and he was the last one and the odd one out so he became my partner) and he had to work with Milla. Bless him, he was acting like a 3 year old but luckily I saw the funny side of it!

I had a very amusing conversation with my advanced recorder group. I mentioned how I had heard from Mummy saying that she was tidying my room and all the children said how much they missed her and could they skype her, which was really sweet. Kenisha (the head girl) then asked me “What if she finds condoms?” which made me laugh a lot.

This week has been absolutely freezing and on Monday morning and I had to do a lot of running around in PT in order to feel my body! The bitter wind was really unappreciated. Luckily my lacrosse jacket has now arrived which I have pretty much lived in since. It wards off the wind and makes me very cosy, unfortunately Diodores has also discovered this. If I take it off even for a moment, it disappears and before I know it Diodores is wearing it! I had a great game of football with the G7s and took an inordinate amount of exercise – I’m good at getting to the ball but then I struggle to kick it!

Chelcie and I joined our craft groups together to get lots of hammer bead coasters made for Parents Day. The children made them and then we ironed the ones which looked good! Neither of us can understand the children’s fascination with the colour brown – it is really rather unattractive! Hannah then used up all the brown colours and made me a beautiful brown heart with a yellow x on which is now stuck on our fridge! With my Boys playgroup I made bookmarks and their colouring in was a lot better than the girls had done the week before.

On Wednesday we decided to have a music day and instead of during Art with G1 and G2 we did singing. We sang all the songs we’ve done with G3 and G4 in music as well as ‘Old Macdonald’, ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ and ‘The Wheels on the bus go round and round’. In between these lessons we had music with Kindergarten, with my voice rapidly disappearing, which once again was great fun. We took along the bells again and taught them all ‘I am the music man’ which they all enjoyed. They are all really sweet and it’s great fun teaching them.

On Wednesday night Glenn had another episode and Gilly took her home to her Father in Khorixas on Thursday morning. We only found this out after she left and I was devastated to hear this as I never had a chance to say goodbye. On Monday she had made me a card saying how much she loved me and asking if I would still be her pen pal when I went home. I reassured her saying that of course I would and I would give her all my details before I left, and I never got a chance to. The school have decided that she should live at home and go to school in Khorixas until she is totally better. If this happens she is welcome to come back for G7 but only if it is totally sorted. Gilly told us in confidence that Glenn’s father had told her that in the holidays he had finally got her birth certificate from her Mother (they are separated) and is name wasn’t on it. Glenn subsequently found out that her father wasn’t her birth father and they think the stress of not knowing whether he still loves her or not is causing these attacks. Hopefully living with her father for a while will reassure her and she will get better.

Did some rehearsing for the BOOF song (Build Our Own Future) and selected some solosists. We don’t know if Laurie will be able to use them but we need to have 2 for soprano and 2 for alto just in case. We selected Joyce and Kenisha for the sopranos and Albertha and Debbie-Debs for the alto one.

Hannah went on Facebook and discovered that she and Matilda have about 60 mutual friends and she is really good friends with Hugo Cod which is so bizarre! Hannah, Chelcie and I played the dictionary game using my Kindle dictionary, which is very lengthy, which was brilliant fun. There was no TV this weekend as the children had been noisy in Friday night supper and Sister Cornelia punished them. Little bit mean in my opinion but it meant we ended up playing a great game of ‘Who’s in the Bag’ which was very entertaining – mostly as I hadn’t a clue about who most of them were much to the amusement of Chelcie and Hannah.

Saturday was an absolutely incredible day. Happy birthday to Sam and Zim! We left at 7:30 for St Michaels on the back on the cattle truck along with the U11s, U12s, and U13 netball and football teams as well as an overage football team. This was the ‘second half’ of the match that we played at the start of the term. We played full matches but the score was continued (this meant that we were start off at a loss for all the matches apart from the U12 football and the overage which hadn’t been started yet). The drive there was absolutely freezing and it was very difficult to stay upright. Chelcie and I ended upstanding in the middle of the truck hugging each other with Johannes (G4) nestled between us and his blanket wrapped around us. I held the blanket up and Chelcie held on to the top rail to balance us – it was a successful way to remain standing until we turned into the drive. St Mikes have an 8km drive which is filled with pot holes. I had Marvelous clinging on to me to balance (not a good idea) and as the whole truck lurched everyone would just grab whoever was nearest to try and remain up right. I failed. I ended up on the floor with various children on top of me and I decided it was easier to stay that way! The atmosphere on the truck was brilliant- everyone was raring to go and singing at the top of their voices. I was confident it would be a fun day out.

The Netball matches were all very tense and exciting to watch – did I just say that about a netball match?! The U11s played brilliantly and won their match qualifying for the finals at Outjo. The U12 match was so tense – we were on form and soon we were drawing, today the teams seemed to be very evenly matched and as soon as one team scored the other team would draw even again. We ended up having two lots of extra times as they kept on drawing, sadly we just lost out losing 22-21 but they fought well. Let’s not mention the U13 team… By now the boys were raring to go and we started off well however they were better and the U11s just missed out. However our U12 team vanquished St Mikes and everyone was happy. Once again better not to mention the U13s – to be fair to us there team included 8 regional players. In particular John played incredibly – he captains the U11 team but then went on to play for the U12s and U13s without a break. We then had the overage match with the likes of Brenden, Diodores, Abner and Tjirondwauvi playing along with the help of Ken and Rob. Luckily they made us proud and we won easily.

We also went to see where Sam lives (the Project Trust volunteer at St Mikes), it wasn’t as nice as where we live but we are jolly lucky. While we were watching the football we had little St Mike’s girls playing with our hair. They were talking about us as if we couldn’t speak English and it was very funny. They were calling us ‘boers’ which is an Afrikaaner, and they were saying how if they were at Otji they would come and play with our hair every day. They said we should just stay at St Mikes but then all the Otji children would cry! It was very amusing. It was then time to go home….what I hadn’t reckoned for as we left in the freezing cold was that the sun would eventually come out. I returned resembling a lobster. Not a good look. By now I was absolutely exhausted from all the cheering and the sun and I curled up at the back of the truck between Diodores and Chelcie. Everyone was in extremely high spirits and it was another great journey.

In the evening we went for supper at Paul and Sara’s – there were lots of jokes made at the expense of my face: “Do we need to take a torch with us?” “No, Ottilie’s face will guide us through the dark”! Not amusing at all. Sara made lasagne and chocolate mousse which made me very happy and made up for all the jokes. Lasagne is one of my favourites and I haven’t eaten it in the last 11 months. This will be my first meal home with peas – please Mummy!

On Sunday I read in Church, luckily my face wasn’t too red due to the vast quantities of after sun I had smothered on during the night. I spent the rest of the morning writing out recorder music which is not one of my favourite activities but it is necessary. In the afternoon we had a great run through of The Button Box with Ms Laurencia watching who was very impressed. It was a really fun weekend overall and a very busy week.

Time to say goodbye now and I shall fill you in on the next week as soon as possible. I am sitting outside the classrooms on a picnic bench at the moment and Dankie has just come running over to give me a big hug which was sweet. He is looking rather interesting in a bright yellow hoodie and his Matilda green cords! I love him none the less.

Lots of love to everyone

Me xxxx

Part Thirty Four: Out Weekend and tonsillitis; the best of combinations! (29th June – 7th July)

Definitely the least planned Out Weekend of all time but turned out to be an amazing weekend nonetheless. I had planned to go home with Glenn but obviously due to her illness this wasn’t an option anymore. Chelcie and I decided to hitch to Outjo on the Friday and then spend the rest of the weekend finishing everything else that we needed to do for the Button Box – finish costumes, props and backdrop.

As we were walking out to the road we watched three cars drive past and thought we wouldn’t have much trouble hitching a lift. As soon as were at the road there was obviously no traffic but we started walking towards Outjo rather than just stand there and after about 15 minutes we got a lift. We got into a cab of a lorry with two guys who were driving from Oshakati to Windhoek and had been driving since 5am. It was one of our more comfortable rides although Chelcie managed to rid the inside of her jeans as she got into the cab! We saw so many warthogs on our journey so we started to count – on the way to and from Outjo (1h 45m in total) we saw 91 warthogs! Apparently you always see lots in winter but this is a crazy number!

We went straight to the Bank where we had to queue for ages as it was the end of month and therefore everyone was taking money out. We then went to the Post Office – Gilly had given us 110 letters which she had asked us to buy stamps for and post. To send to Europe you need $5.40 stamps however they only had 56 of these and therefore the rest of the letters needed 3 stamps to make the right amount of postage not forgetting the air mail sticker on top. This meant that between us we licked 332 stamps! Our tongues were soooo dry by the end of us and we rushed to buy drinks to recover! We went to print off photos and I asked the man to look at my camera. This is the one I bought a month ago to replace my stolen one – for some reason last night when I tried to upload my photos or charge it nothing happened. He told me that the bit inside the camera was in broken so I’m back to square one again without a camera and more money down the drain – very annoying.

It was very weird being in Outjo and not totally overexcited about using the Internet. Also probably the last time that we will be here....agh! We ended up in The Farmhouse for lunch and all of last year’s Grade 7 boys walked past. It was so lovely to see them and it was so sweet that they were all together especially as two were wearing Otjikondo t-shirts! They were such a wonderful year and it was great to catch up as we had missed them. We then started walking back to Otjikondo via the Garage to buy a calypso which was very welcome in the midday sun. We were passed by the Swiss Teachers and we stopped for a chat with them before saying our Goodbyes again.

We managed to get a lift to the turning towards Kamanjab pretty much straight away. We were picked up by a lovely Afrikaans couple – he had been to school with Mrs Vermaak at Outjo and had lived at Otjikondo with his wife for two years when it was still a police station. They were really lovely and invited us to come and stay with them for a night and said if we didn’t get another lift just to ring them and they would come and pick us up. This was all without giving us their name or number but they were really lovely. I get bored of just standing by the road waiting for a lift so we started walking and walking and walking some more without a car in sight. We got passed by a couple of cars containing the children who were leaving school and were extremely excited to see us. (On Monday we got asked if we walked the whole way back, obviously we lied and said yes and the children now think we walked the 90km home!) Luckily, we managed to get a lift in the end on the back of a combi. It was pretty comfortable as were sitting on some tyres but that made us pretty high up and as a result I had tears running down my face the whole way home because of the wind! I say down but I actually mean sideways as the wind was so strong. When we got to St Michaels we stopped in a stopover for a bit and it turned out that one of the guys in the front was Amor’s, from G3, father. We got talking to him and he was asking where we had been in Namibia. He was shocked that we haven’t been to Epupa Falls, somewhere be both would love to go, and said he was going to take us. When we got back to Otjikondo he took my number so we could keep in contact and arrange a time when he would take us. I’ve now had various texts and calls from Harry which I’ve ignored as I feel weird texting someone’s who I teach father and according to Paul we would have to pay in some way or another for the trip!

Reiner has been awarded the equivalent of an MBE from Germany which is absolutely incredible. He deserves it so much as all the work that he has done is absolutely incredible. Apparently it’s even more special as Reiner is actually a Namibian citizen and therefore it’s much more complicated for him to be awarded this as it has to go through loads of different things to be approved. I’m so glad that he’s getting the recognition that he deserves.  

On Saturday morning we managed to get everything done that we wanted which was a first. I finished making the costumes which was a massive relief as I seem to have had a needle permanently attached to my hand this term. Chelcie finished the window for the backdrop which looks absolutely amazing and I’m really exciting to get it up. I also made a table, sorted Grandma’s costume with Aune and glued the handle onto the Button Box.

We decided to go for a Picnic bicycle ride at lunch time. We borrowed Paul and Sara’s bikes and set off with a rucksack containing a blanket, ipod and speaker, salad, yoghurt and water. Chelcie was on Sara’s bike which had Helena’s baby seat in front and therefore she could only pedal with her legs sideways and looked hilarious. I was on Paul’s bike which was MASSIVE for me and my arms could hardly reach the handles so it wasn’t the most comfortable of rides. We went on the tar road towards Kamanjab and stopped under a tree for our picnic. It was really nice and good to be outside and away from the school and then we came back again.

Roland came over at 4 with Max. Although we’ve been in contact we haven’t seen Roland and Max (his dog) since Oktoberfest which was eight months ago. Max who was just a puppy then has tripled in size at least and they were both in brilliant form. It was really great to catch up and we had an amazing time. We had organised to stay in the girls hostel that night as some of the children hadn’t gone home and they wanted us to come for a sleepover. We said that we would come over at 9 as we thought that Roland would just stay for an early supper, sadly we had to let down the girls as Roland was here until 4am! We had a really fun night and it was great to chill.

The first day of July was very relaxed, I spent the morning in bed before having a clear up and clean of my room. We went for a very relaxed braai at Paul and Sara’s who quickly discovered how hung-over we were and found it very funny that as Roland was leaving Helena had woken them up! Can’t say we got much done in the afternoon either but we watched Harry Potter 2 and our lights were out by 8:30 having planned lessons for the upcoming week. Didn’t think that the weekend would be that spectacular but it was very enjoyable.

 I really can’t believe that June is over; I said that May had gone in a flash so June must have gone in a flicker. Chelcie pointed out that it was half way through the year, I said we were half way months ago but she said half way through 2012. That is the craziest thing ever and really sure how it’s happened but it has. At the end of 6 months I did ‘Best Sister Writing Award’ and the outcome was 1^st place: Cluny with 6 letters, 2^nd place: Lou Lou with 5 letters and 3^rd place: Matilda with 3 letters. Matilda has since requested that I re-award this so as of today.....

                        1^st Place: Cluny with 11 letters (I’ve sent 15 letters)

                        2^nd Place: Matilda and Lou Lou joint with 6 letters! (I’ve sent Matilda 10 and Lou Lou 8 letters)

Other records for the month are I cried once (has to be an all time low – Chelcie note The Wanted reference!), read six books, wrote 34 letters and received 8 (dismal effort from you guys! Although to be fair we’ve only got post twice this month so not sure whether you’ve all stopped writing to me or whether they just haven’t been collected), saw 91 warthogs in a day, became legal in Namibia with two months to go, went running with two giraffes and generally did way too much sewing!

           

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STAIGHTY! I really can’t believe that this time last year we had just got back from Tenerife, was going to Leavers Ball and actually leaving school. So much has happened in a year, it seems totally crazy that it wasn’t longer ago.

All the children returned from the Out Weekend full of beans, actually as if they were full of magic beans. They had SO much energy but all were very happy as well which was lovely. I spent Monday morning erecting the Backdrop with the help of Ivan. We nailed our ‘wall’ to the actual wall and then stuck the window to our ‘wall’ and then hung the window frame over the top. Later Chelcie and I glued the border to the ‘wall’ and it’s now complete and I’m really happy with how it looks.

Sadly Tuesday arrived with the onset of tonsillitis which really didn’t make me happy at all. I really think I’ve had enough illness this year and not sure I can cope with any more. Gilly returned from Swakop on Wednesday evening and brought me some antibiotics after I’d talked to the doctor on the phone – my fifth lot in 10 months. Definitely think I could do with having my tonsils removed once I’m home.

Spent the week in Art starting to cut out work and mount it ready to display which is actually very time consuming but strangely therapeutic, maybe that’s just because I’m feeling quite out of it at the moment. I had the idea of making a huge world map on a piece of fabric which would go up on one of the walls above the cupboards. Chelcie drew it out using her own scale and with the help of Diina and Paulus we have painted each continent in a different block colour which looks really good. It looks a bit like a giant risk board. We just need to paint the sea and then we are going to make some people to go around the edge which we are going to make clothes for – one or two to represent each continent. So for example the Asia people might wear a kimono or have one for Europe in top hat and tails. I think it will look really effective on the wall and the G7s will have fun helping us to do it.

On Wednesday afternoon we had a full run through of the Button Box in preparation to showing Sara and.....it went REALLY WELL! There is still plenty to work on but the energy was heaps better, they remembered the dances and most of the time when to come in and generally it was just a success. Very happy. Afterwards we tried their costumes in which had mixed reactions from them – they weren’t very keen on the Indian clothes but loved the African ones we had taken from Impi Ntombi. The boys refused to wear waistcoats without tops underneath to be sailors so we’ve comprised and let them wear little vest tops. Ruben who is Uncel Jack the Sailor Captain cried when he saw his sailor top as for some reason he thought he was going to be dressed as a pirate?! Luckily the next day I took him again to try it on and he has said he will wear it and I managed to find a sailor cap to go with it which he likes.

Swiss Family Robinson arrived in the post which was SO EXCITING. This is one of my all time favourite films and I was so shocked that Chelcie hadn’t watched it that I asked Mummy to send it out! We had a great evening enjoying it and both agreed that with the right person we could quite happily live there.

Thursday afternoon I retired to bed and I awoke on Friday sounding like Darth Vader. Spent the day in bed reading and feeling generally miserable L! Luckily on Saturday woke up feeling slightly more human and the drugs seem to be kicking in. On Friday evening Hannah and Carla arrived....Hannah is 24, from Northumberland and is taking a year off from work to travel and has come to Otjikondo for a couple of weeks. Carla is 18 from Germany and is here for 6 weeks which brings us to the end of term - AGHHHHH. They are both really nice and it will be fun having people here with us again.

I have finally heard my accommodation for next year and after much anticipation I’m going to be living in Holland Halls which was my first choice so that’s very exciting. The most exciting thing is that Hen is also going to Holland so there will be a friendly face about. Chelcie and I spent a break time looking at our respective University websites (she is studying Marketing at Durham) and freaking out. Seems very frightening so just trying not to think about it all! Sending love to everyone in my beautiful Darth Vader voice!

Love from Me xxxx

Part Thirty Three: Dramatics during Drama! (18th – 28th June)

Monday morning started with me giving a drugs talk! Once again I was teaching for Ken on Monday and Tuesday as he sat the last of his exams – the Police Inspector had kindly left his colourful poster and it was up to me to take the Grade 6s through it. I won’t lie....I definitely was learning new things as I was teaching them, for instance did you know that all cannabis plants have an odd number of leaves. The children took this piece of information to mean that a green plant with an odd number of leaves is cannabis and I was brought various specimens of cannabis throughout the day! Mondays mean triple Grade Five which is always a struggle. By the third lesson they had way too much energy to be conductive so I sent them out to do 3 laps of the football pitch and they returned with slightly less energy. Grade 6 agriculture was really satisfying – I started with a test on everything that we had covered last week and they had remembered it all which made me very happy. Grade 7 agriculture was a slight shambles as they knew they had a test in science next with me and were panicking about it so I did a quick recap for them. I really wanted them all to pass as the test was on Scientific Processes which is what I had taught them and therefore their marks would reflect my teaching.

Monday afternoon as incredible weather and I decided it was too nice to waste on sitting inside playing the recorder. Instead we played hide and seek and this crazy African game where one person has a stick and tries to hit everyone else with it on the bum?! Not really sure I got the finer details of this! Glenn is one of the girls in G6 and in my advanced recorder group. She asked me before to go home with her for the Out Weekend and we talked again about it properly and I said I would love to go. I really excited about going home with her as she is so lovely and it will be fascinating to stay with a Damara family. On Monday evening I stayed in the Art Room and skyped Staighty which was lovely. She is the only friend that I’ve actually managed to talk to out here and that was on New Years Eve. It was so great to be able to talk ‘face to face’ with her, being able to have an actual conversation is so much more satisfying than just communicating through leaving messages for each other on the internet or writing letters or texts. It was brilliant to hear what has been going on at home and to be able to share some of my news with her. I was also talking to Zim which was brilliant although he was in a ‘Grahamstown funk’ which I had to get him out of. As he knows I only have one joke which he doesn’t find funny – “What do you call a donkey with three legs?”..... “A wonky”! So I was googling jokes to try and amuse him. I then felt really sad sitting in a dark art room by myself in the middle of Africa, freezing cold and laughing out loud at jokes such as “Why does the elephant wear red shoes?”.... “Because his white ones were dirty”! So thought it was time to go back to the flat – a perilous journey without a torch!

Tuesday was brilliant – having nearly turned into an icicle last Tuesday I literally put on most my wardrobe in order to survive another three double periods of agriculture. However, it turned out to be a lovely day so I shed my layers and switched my hoody and cashmere gloves with Diodores in exchange for his cap so I wouldn’t get burnt! I sat on a bench sewing costumes for the drama while talking to the boys who would take it in turn to go and do some work and then come back to chat. A really lovely morning. In the evening after study we had an extra drama rehearsal for the Belly Button Boogie – the children really love this song as the music is so energetic and the dance is great fun. I always get such a high when we practise this as it makes me so happy and gives me a buzz.

Wednesday was Mrs Vermaak’s and Ms Laurencia’s birthday so at break time we had a celebration with the BEST carrot cake ever. It was absolutely incredible and cake at 9:00 is always very welcome! Thursday was a day of sewing for me and painting for Chelcie as Catherine and Jordan took our lessons so that we would have the time to try and get some things finished for the play. We also got a new kettle as we’ve worked out that it was our kettle that kept on fusing the electricity when Catherine and Jordan took it to the art room and managed to cut out the electricity all over the school! Our new one is very smart and lime scale free but we will miss our old one which used to just turn itself on randomly which we always considered a prompt for a tea break – if the kettle realised we needed a break it must be time for one!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Granny Paul today (22st June) – really hope that she’s doing something amazing to celebrate her 80^th birthday. Wish I could spend the day with you or at least talk to you on the telephone but my thoughts are with you none the less.

On Friday afternoon we had the most DISASTROUS drama rehearsal ever which produced tears in my eyes and great frustration from the both of us. We wanted to have a run through of the first half which would give us an indication of how much work we had left to – the answer was everything. I have never been so bored watching a performance, the main four gave dismal performances needing to be prompted every other sentence and Aune, who plays Grandma, had a two year old temper tantrum and refused to put any effort into anything. No one remembered when to enter or what the dances were and the whole thing was a shambles. Sara arrived and gave them all a pep talk and said that the weekend after the out weekend she would be coming to watch a full run through and expected great results – more pressure. The children just aren’t taking it seriously enough at the moment; they are acting like there is lots of time left rather than just a few weeks. There’s not much more that Chelcie and I can do, at some point the results have to come from them and they have to realise that they have to put the work in if they want to have a good show and not get it cancelled. After this Chelcie and were very downhearted and the last thing we felt like doing was TV for the kids so we went and organised to switch with Alberthina would cover for us and we would do it on Saturday instead. We went to the shop and bought chocolate and then made a picnic of egg and bacon rolls, popcorn, cut up apples and oranges and chocolate! We made a massive bed on my floor where we then curled up and watched Disney films. A very fun night and an effective way to cheer ourselves up!

Saturday was a really unexpected lovely day. There was no official cleaning today but with the help of my girls we managed to turn the Art Room back into an acceptable state in 45 minutes and sharpen all the pencils and colours ready for next week. The reason there was no cleaning was that St Michaels were arriving at 9:00 to play football and netball matches against our U11, U12 and U13 teams.  We looked incredibly smart in our green and white sports uniforms....unfortunately although we looked better turned out than St Michaels they had the talent! We lost every single match apart from the U12 football. Our only excuse is that they have double as many children in those grades so more children to pick from but it was pretty dismal and I think they will now be training harder from now on. At lunch time we did our May face painting (I know it’s nearly the end of June but things have got a bit delayed for one reason or another) – we each had an “S” on our face and we had a piece of paper in between us saying “O”. So we spelt out SOS as we were thinking of May Day in the ship sense! We did Bank and shop in the afternoon and then watched Duma with the children during TV. I was reading my book at the back amongst a couple of the G7 boys and looked up at the part when a boy is fighting of crocodiles trying to get out of a lake where he was swimming and I embarrassingly ended up clinging to Bredon’s (deputy head boy) arm in fright! Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind and is by now thoroughly used to me being scared of everything.

On Sunday I ended up having to read in Church as Ken didn’t turn up. I had helped Brendon with his reading during the week but obviously hadn’t looked at Ken’s so ended up reading it for the first time out loud in Church but thankfully it went okay. It was Sara’s birthday so we ended up there for a birthday lunch which was lovely. We had Indian which not only was scrummy but also a very welcome change. We both had wine hoping that it would relax us sufficiently for the drama rehearsal at 3.30. It wasn’t quite as disastrous as Friday but not much better. In that we now have one person who is taking it seriously – Desvino who plays Grandad, love that boy so much at the moment. However, at the end of the rehearsal we were just mucking around singing along to the backing track and it sounded really good. When we first chose the play we really wanted to use the backing track as it’s brilliant but there isn’t a speaker system in the Dining Room where the stage is. Also we have had to put a lot of the songs down as the music is written for English voices which tend to be a lot higher than the children’s voices out here. However, we have decided to use the backing track for a couple of songs. The music isn’t incredibly loud but you can hear it and it gives the children an instant boost of energy which is what the play needs. It’s lacking pizzazz at the moment. We can’t use it for all the songs as the majority of them are just too high for the children to sing to but it has worked out for six of them. Hopefully, this will really make a positive difference as we are starting to run out of ideas and time to improve the play.

This week in PT I took all the boys in each Grade while Chelcie took the Girls. I did penalty shooting practice with them and put it into practice by playing little games. This was good fun especially as they all really enjoy it and therefore are a pleasure to teach although I lack much football skill! In G7 PT I took Desvino, Aune and Diina to do some extra acting work with them. I managed to inject some life in to their performances and we worked on talking slowly and clearly but still having energy. I still have hope for them....!

G5 Art on Tuesday was a total nightmare from beginning to end. They arrived full of energy and never really settled down. It took us 40 minutes to complete their spelling test which consists of 20 words which they all failed miserably having not learnt it – 8 people scored 1/20. This doesn’t amuse me at all as I always write out their corrections for them and that’s a lot of corrections to write out in a class of 34 with the highest mark being 12/20. After the spellings we got them to line up outside in silence before we would continue with Art but they were being so disrespectful and would not stand quietly so after a while we took them to Mr Hawaxab and left him to deal with them. This was our final resort as this term there have been quite a few lessons when they have been playing up with us and we needed them to realise that they couldn’t behave like that. That afternoon, I had a craft session with my girls which includes a girl called Liezel from G5. None of us were feeling creative so we just went and crashed in the Grass Hut and they were giving me the low down about all of the teachers. I asked what the G5 punishment had been, expecting a bad class punishment such as no bank/break/vet cookies for the whole class......however, it turned out that the class had chosen eight members of the class who they considered responsible and they were beaten. Liezel was saying how she hated how her class were such snitches on each other and the G6 and G7 girls were saying how their classes always stuck together and would much rather take a whole class punishment then rat on each other. I felt so guilty that a decision I had made had resulted with eight children being beaten. The worst thing was that although I knew that Mr Hawaxab hit the children and it’s something I openly disapprove of I thought it was just with his hand however I discovered that he had a piece of metal that he hits them with them. I felt such shame and guilt that the children had been punished like this because of me and I have vowed that I will never send another child ever again to Mr Hawaxab.

Tuesday was Catherine and Jordan’s last night at Otjikondo so we had a special supper. I cooked I between the electricity cutting out a sausage and vegetable pasta bake and we had a lovely last night altogether. It’s been really nice having them here and to be able to share stories and memories with each other. A little daunting when Jordan mentioned that she read my blog....so if you’re reading this “HI!” I have definitely found someone who is blonder than me which is a relief although I’m now panicking about first impressions at Uni as I have been very blonde recently.

On Wednesday we did our first music class at the Kindergarten which was brilliant. There were 15 children, none of which apart from Mattie and Ola have much English so at this stage it was more of a question of singing at them and getting them to join in with the actions. We did “If you’re happy and you’re know it” which was good fun and then we sang some other songs which Sara had already done with them. Sara has given us total free range with these classes and says that if we want to do a game with them or something different than that’s fine. I’m really looking forward to taking over the parachute that we have in the store cupboard – I remember absolutely loving that when I was younger and I reckon not much will have changed!

Thursday I had rather a scary experience and another Oh My God I’m in Africa moments – funnily enough most of the negative ones of these are attached to medical care. When Glenn a girl in G6 and one of my favourites – she is my pen pal, returned to school we were told that in the holidays she had been fainting lots but it was nothing to be overly concerned about and it was to do with growing up. She told her friends that she had epilepsy but we were told this was wrong and we should play down anything we heard. She had fainted a few times at school and had just spent a week at home recovering from a couple. She was in my second remedial class and we were a verbal times and dividing competition. She was very quiet and said she felt faint but didn’t want to go and lie down so we just continued and I kept a close eye on her. When it was time to leave I saw she was very unstable and thought I would accompany her back to the hostel. She then got worse and luckily Chelcie appeared and with some help we were able to carry her to the Clinic. As soon as she was horizontal she blacked out and her body went completely like rigid. We got her on a bed and sat with her having sent someone to get Sister Lizetta. Her whole body was totally stiff but she was having spasms and we couldn’t get her body to relax – her hands had turned into claws as she was so stiff and the end of her fingers were freezing. Her breathing was regular generally although sometimes it went shallow but then would return to normal again. I was very worried that she hadn’t woken up and after half an hour we sent a child for Sara. Sara fetched Mrs Vermaak who had been dealing before with Glenn and with her help we massaged and moved all her limbs which started to relax but then would bounce back to being rigid. Luckily after about 45 minutes of being totally out of it she woke up which was a massive relief. Whatever we had been told this definitely wasn’t fainting but something much more serious. Her Mother came to pick her up that evening and she has to go and have lots of tests. She is very much in my thoughts at the moment.

Our theme for our Art Room for Parents Day is ‘Around the World’. With the younger ones we are colouring in animals from different places but with the older ones we are exploring different endemic art styles. With Grade Three we did Koru Art which is from New Zealand, Grade 6 Aboriginal Art from Australia and with G7 we were exploring Chinese symbols. It’s really important that the art work is of a very high standard and that it all looks spectacular. This is one of our big challenges for the year – 4^th August has become our D Day! As we this is when Parents Day happens and therefore the Art Room is open with the craft fair inside as well as performing the Drama in the afternoon.

On Thursday night we had supper with Nicole, Sabine, Mathieu and Maxime as they leave tomorrow. I cooked Gemsbok Josh Rogan Curry and we ate in the Pastoral Centre where they contributed wine and Swiss chocolate! It was a really fun evening and I only wish we had done it with them before however they invited us to come and stay with them in Switzerland which both of us eager to take them up on! They gave us all their leftover food bits which was so welcome – we now have very exotic foods such as honey cheerios, balsamic vinegar, an avocado, raspberry jam.....so exciting! It’s been really lovely having so many people around this term and we are expecting more people next week, finger crossed that they are as nice!

In order to be ready to perform a complete run through next week to Sara we had evening rehearsals of the Button Box on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night after supper. This is possibly the worst time to have a rehearsal as its 7:30, the children and us are ready for bed and its freezing but there isn’t another available time. I got into a good habit of being changed into my pj’s, teeth brushed and  a hot water bottle warming my bed so once we returned I could jump straight into bed and go to sleep! Monday’s rehearsal went well, we rehearsed the first 5 songs and added the backing track to two of them which was successful. Tuesday was less successful....we went through the middle section of the play and although the majority of the cast were brilliant Aune once again was being silly – she was putting no effort into speaking which was annoying everyone else and refused to sing without covering her face with her arm. We had discussed with Sara what we should do if this happened again and so we put the plan into action which then massively backfired in our faces! At the end of rehearsal we asked Desvino (Grandad) to remain behind as well as Kenisha and Tuyambeka. We asked both of them to read through the first scene with him so that we could “consider our options”, we explained how we weren’t replacing anyone but we needed to think about other options in case things didn’t work out. If we were going to have to replace Aune which we REALLY don’t want to do it was going to have to very soon only to be fair to the person who would take over. We walked outside to discover Aune in floods of tears, literally having hysterics. We sent everyone back to the hostel and took her aside to talk to her. We talked to her and explained that we weren’t replacing her but she was on her last chance and it wasn’t fair to the rest of the cast if she kept dragging us behind and if necessary we would have to replace her. We told her that she was our first choice of Grandma but if she couldn’t pull it together then she would be out. She then went on a massive rant about how seeing people happy and smiling at her reminded her of her Dad. She hasn’t seen her Dad since last Christmas which is very hard on her and we have talked and helped her with this before but at this particular point she was just using it as an excuse. We decided to go with it and said she had to make a grown up decision; she could either cope with it and was able to turn up to rehearsal and just focus on Drama and obviously we would be there for her to talk to at any other point or she had to make the decision that it was too much for her and she should step aside. We were very firm and said she had to make a decision by the next day. Luckily she has decided that she can “cope” and we shall wait with fingers crossed to see what happens next. On Thursday night we went through the last 5 songs in the play which all went well and hopefully things will keep improving.

I really hope that everything is going well in England or whether you are reading this from and as usual sending lots and lots of love to everyone reading this. Please feel free to send me an email as it’s now a viable form of communication for me or if you would like to skype let me know! Also forgot my very exciting big news – I’m officially legal after 43 weeks in Namibia! Finally our visas have been properly sorted and stamped into our passports until the end of August, huge relief although I’m looking forward to getting my passport back and seeing with my own eyes that its true. I trust no one when it comes to visas as we have been let down so many times. But all very exciting and it means I should be able to get home safely, touch wood! Bye for now

Love Me xxxx

Part Thirty Two: The Diamond Jubilee, Crounders and.....WIRELESS INTERNET (4th – 17th June)

This was the week of the Jubilee which we weren’t doing anything in particular to celebrate so we thought we would have a Jubilee themed Art week. With all the younger children we made crowns and they decorated them. This resulted in us having to draw out 34 crowns for G1 as we didn’t think they were capable of drawing them on their own, luckily the rest were able to as the novelty wore off pretty quickly! With the older grades we got them to design an outfit for a Royal to wear to a celebration or to design a form of transport for the Royal to get to the celebration. We started each lesson with a little talk about our royal family which they all found very interesting although they were outraged to learn that the Queen never carries any money on her!

We also invented a new sport which we played all week with all the Grades....it’s called Crounders. It’s a mixture of Rounders and Quick Cricket but played with a tennis ball and bat! It was really fun and all the children seemed to enjoy it as well. One of us would bowl each time and the other would either field or with the younger ones help them to bat. With the older ones the games got quite competitive and we had a really fun time playing this. Wings this year have been quite difficult to teach PT to as they have such a range of ages, however, this was something that they all could play and enjoyed. I think for the first time ever we went a whole week without a strop in PT from a single Wings child, which is unheard of.

I spent the actual day of the Jubilee in bed as at 3am I woke up and then was sick for an hour or two for no apparent reason. Didn’t get much more sleep so spent the day dozing in bed with a rather sore tummy feeling sorry for myself. After the holidays I haven’t been sleeping as well as I’m getting back ache like I did at the start from the mattress. Over the holiday I was spoiled and got used to sleeping on a proper mattress and my back isn’t appreciating my return to my Otjikondo bed! Chelcie is very excited about the return to her bed but worryingly I can’t remember what mine feels like! I know it’s nice but I can’t imagine it at all...

I have started running again on some of the mornings as I need to get fit and thin to come home. It’s a massive struggle to get out of bed that early especially as it’s freezing. I must look absolutely ridiculous in my running gear – trainers, leggings, a t-shirt, Uapiona’s beanie and my cashmere fingerless gloves! Luckily no one else is up at that ear to witness me like that. On Friday morning I met two Giraffe at my half way point which brightened up the run. They were crossing the road where I turn around (a road sign saying Kamanjab 70km) and when I turned around they followed me for a bit. My run took rather longer than usual as I stopped for about 10 minutes to watch them as they were really close to me and very beautiful.

On Friday’s we have a clash class when we have to teach G4 music at the same time as G2 PT. G4 is our devil class so neither of us like to teach them that much, especially on our own, but said I would do it. Last term we battled away doing Theory with them which they hated and I can’t say I enjoyed teaching that much either. I thought I would do something they would enjoy hoping that would make them behave. We went to the grass hut and I taught them some new songs – we started with ‘Nick Nack Paddy Wack, give the dog a bone’ which they already know and like and then I introduced ‘One Man went to Mow’. This has to be one of the most monotonous songs to sing as it never changes but they absolutely LOVED it. We probably spent half an hour just singing this repeatedly! Song of the girls asked me to write down the words for them after the lesson but I said if they couldn’t remember the words to this after singing it about 20 times they really shouldn’t be in G4. Finally I started to teach them ‘There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea’ which they also really enjoyed.

I then had my first keyboard lessons with Theopoldine and Revonia after the holidays. Theopoldine remembered lots and we made great progress so I was very happy. On the other hand it was like I have never taught Revonia the keyboard before, let alone the fact that she is in my Intermediate Recorder class and therefore should be able to read music! I would show her one C minim and ask her what note it was and how long she should hold it on for her. After a couple of tries she would get it right but if I then pointed to another C minim the whole process would start again and she would say it was an G. I haven’t even taught her how to play a G yet! Very frustrating but I made her a key which should help her to identify notes in future and make it easier.

Friday afternoon was spent rehearsing the Button Box (just to warn you if you haven’t already guessed the Button Box will be my main topic over the next 10 weeks or so!). We repeated The Belly Button Boogie, rehearsed Button Your Lip and Crows Button and then added dances to Uncle Jack’s Sailor Button and the Chocolate Button. Absolutely exhausted by the end of it but came back and did some planning of rehearsals before doing TV. We watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which was brilliant – haven’t watched it for ages. I ended up lying at the front on the floor where all the little boys sit. I had Dankie lying on top of me on my back so that he could style my hair – my boy is definitely going to be hairdresser when he’s older, he loves to play with hair and can actually make it look nice as well! I was propping myself up on my elbows and I had Ambrosious (G1) by my side with his head under my chest asleep, Alex (G4) just lying next to me and then Deon (G1) curled up into a little ball in front of me leaning back against me and using my face as a pillow. I can’t say I was particularly comfortable but I did feel extremely loved and they were happy which was the main thing.

We came back via Paul’s house to check he was alive. Sara has flown home to England as her Grandfather isn’t very well and is in hospital, she took Helena, the youngest, with her but left Mattie (4) and Ola (3) with Paul. The children were in bed already and we ended up having a very funny conversation about what we would have for our last supper if were on death row. Paul’s answer pretty much straight away was crayfish for a starter, then t-bone steak with salad and chips followed by chocolate sponge pudding. It was more difficult for me – obviously sticky toffee pudding but couldn’t think of a starter and I was debating between the same main course as Paul versus lasagne and peas!

Saturday was a very nice day – before cleaning I put up the new spellings for the week. It’s quite challenging comeing up with new words each week. There are three different lots of spellings; one for Wings and G2 who need 15 very basic words with no more than 4 letters, then 15 words for Grades 3 and 4 at a medium level and finally 20 quite difficult words for Grades 5, 6 and 7. I had done all the lists and then decided to play the dictionary game for Grades 5, 6 and 7. I came up with a word for the letters A-R all of which the learners wouldn’t already know so that they would end up improving their vocabulary. I can’t say I was very popular when they saw the list and spotted Quibble and Rumbustious. Chelcie and I spent the whole afternoon painting our border for the backdrop while eating chocolate – very naughty. Gilly came and invited us for lunch tomorrow – t-bone steak, chips and salad, which we both found very funny. Paul obviously couldn’t wait any longer!

On Sunday morning rather than go to Church we went over to the Costume Room and got out all the costumes that we need for the Button Box. The musical has 14 songs, all of which require different costumes as they are all about different countries or music periods so as you can imagine that’s an awful lot of costumes! Last year all costume changes were eliminated from the Drama to make it easier so I’m not really sure what we’ve got ourselves into! Luckily we managed to find most of them and get it all sorted but we still have a couple of things to adjust and make. My latest project is to sew 6 green sashes for the Irish Leprechaun Dance all of which need a big shamrock sewn with beads on the chest. In the afternoon we had another Button Box rehearsal which went well partly as Gilly came to watch most of it and therefore all the children were very well behaved. Sorted out a couple more of the dances which was good but still not finished which is slightly worrying. Also Nicole and Sabine arrived – they are two Swiss women who are training to be teachers and have come for three weeks to get some experience. Nicole has brought one of her son Mathieu who will be joining the Grade Fives and Sabine has brought her youngest daughter Maxime who will join Grade Four. They will live in the Pastoral Centre which is adjoined to our flat.

Can’t believe second week of school is already done. This is our shortest term and it’s already flying by. On Monday and Tuesday I was back to teaching Ken’s subjects for him as he was in Otjiwarongo taking some exams for his degree. Having talked to Mummy on the Sunday night and said there was no need for her to send out some winter clothes I swiftly changed my mind on the Monday morning. I have never been so cold – when I was packing for Namibia I really didn’t believe that Winter in Africa could actually be that cold as it’s Africa! MAJOR ERROR – so I am now trying to combine summer clothes to make winter ones which isn’t really working. It’s freezing, luckily I have a sympathetic Mother who is sending out my hat and Lacrosse jacket, cannot wait, literally.

Craziest thing ever happened on Monday....we were sitting in the staff room during break and there was a telecom man installing something. We asked what was going on and Mrs Vermaak informed us that they were installing WIRELESS INTERNET. I now have internet at Otjikondo which is mental. Luckily it doesn’t get as far as the flat otherwise I would get nothing done but I can get it at the school. So you are now free to email me! So exciting as it means I can be in better contact with my friends and hear what they’re up to rather than hearing about it 3 months later. Looking forward to some skype dates....

On Tuesday I had double agriculture first with the G5s, then the G6s and finally the G7s.             This was quite torture like as I have never been so cold and the sun was refusing to come out, so I was very unhappy. The boys finished levelling their plots in about 15 minutes and then were left with not much to do. They haven’t planted anything yet so there is nothing to weed or tend to so they were literally just levelling the soil and then lightly watering it. They then introduced me to Namibian figs which are purple, very sour and quite yummy. They stain everything you touch so you end up with bright pink fingers and tongue. Also they have thorns on the outside which can be very painful but the boys were very sweet and de-thorned figs for me so I wouldn’t get hurt!

I started making beaded match boxes with my girl craft box to sell in our craft shop. My idea for this was to paint the top of the match box white and then glue beads on to it to make a pretty pattern or shape. Some of them got the hang of this but others much to my horror put glue onto the whole of the top and then just threw a handful of beads onto it. Needless to say this looked pretty disgusting and I made them pick them all off again. My theory is that if I can manage to do the craft project then the children definitely should be able to and I managed to produce a decent looking matchbox!

Unsurprisingly, during the last ten months we have heard a lot about our predecessors from the children. When they left the children only had a two week holiday before we arrived and therefore the previous GAPs are very much still in their minds at the beginning and are never totally forgotten. Also once you leave you definitely become golden in the eyes of the children and are used against the next GAPs – ‘Miss Catherine and Miss Jordan always let us do this/never made us do that’. You know most of it isn’t true but you do get to hear a lot about them. We have been in contact with Catherine and Jordan most times when we have had internet which has always been nice and we’ve known for a while that they were coming to Otjikondo for two weeks ish sometime this term. We were actually really worried about them coming as we were concerned that a) they may not like us, b) they could be really scary, c) this was their home for a year and now it’s ours and we were just generally very nervous. However they arrived on Thursday evening and were perfectly lovely – they said they were just as nervous about meeting us and coming back to Otjikondo. We stayed up for a long time on the first night after having supper talking about all the children, general life at Otjikondo, travelling and what they had been doing in their year since being here. It was so lovely to be able to talk to people who understood how amazing Otjikondo is and knew all the children so weren’t bored by stories about them! They also brought us ingredients to make Fajitas which went down very well – it’s always nice to have something different so we have some variety.

Saturday the 16^th was the day of the African Child in Africa however we ended up celebrating on the Friday as there was too much happening on the Saturday. After lessons finished for the morning we all trooped to the Hans Seidal Hall where we were given a talk by the Head of Police from Outjo, our nearest town, and then a little concert from the children.  In my eyes the talk was very inappropriate – he was trying to make the point that the police are our friends and there to protect us rather than being people to be scared of. However, the story he used to illustrate his point was horrific. He asked if anyone knew what had happened in Outjo recently and then proceeded to tell us in detail….‘a woman had been hitch hiking with her two year old child and had hitched a lift with 5 men. They took her to the bushes and raped her before killing her child by bashing its head against a rock’. He told this story in very graphic detail which I found disturbing and I’m 19 – the whole school was present and therefore lots of six year olds were listening to this. The point of this story was that the police have since arrested the five men and they are in jail so the police have protected us. Chelcie and I were slightly more concerned that this had happened in the first place. He then went on to talk about drugs and started talking about date rape….with six year olds in the room! His English accent wasn’t very clear and he was talking about how juveniles are sent to an institution in Rundu where they are rehabilitated but it sounded like amputated – I was very shocked and thought that this was a bit extreme!

The concert was definitely not one of the best we’ve heard as not much preparation had been done. We heard from all the culture groups who either sang or danced in their traditional clothes. My advanced recorder group also played and luckily didn’t put me to shame even though we hadn’t rehearsed for a while what they performed so I was happy. We also heard from Maxime, Sabine’s daughter, on the violin which was impressive.

On Saturday morning Catherine and Jordan took our cleaning and did bank for us so that we could fit in some extra Button Box rehearsals. Unfortunately, it was a music weekend which is always lovely but it meant that we had to fight Faustinas for the children. Funnily enough all the musical children are in our play and therefore they were being pulled in all directions. We managed to finish choreographing the Irish Dance which was a massive relief and now it just needs loads of practice.

When checking my email – how crazy is that?! I had an email from Daddy saying how fantastic Cluny’s new flat was. Well this was the first I’d heard about a flat, funny how being in Africa people can forget to tell you things! Anyway, they have found a flat for her in Wantage which they are renting and she is moving in next Sunday. Totally bizarre.  

On Sunday morning I went for a run with Sabine, we set off at a very fast run and luckily she said it was too fast for her which was good as I was dying slightly. So much easier running with someone else and it pushes me a lot more and we definitely ran a lot faster than I normally do by myself. Church was filled with music and it was really good – especially the debut performance from Catherine and Jordan on the flute and violin. In the afternoon we managed to finish all the choreographing which was very exciting and satisfying. Technically everything is now learnt we just have to get it to a standard where we can actually show anyone which will take quite a while!

These two weeks have gone in a flash but a good flash! It’s been fun having lots of people around although we know that as soon as they have gone it will only take about a day for it to feel like they were never here. Just remembered that on Sunday Chelcie cut my hair again; having not cut it since January it was in a serious need of a trim. Loads of the G7 boys then arrived into the flat and thought it very strange to discover me sitting on a chair on a towel with Chelcie behind me armed with a pair of scissors. The scissors were then hastily put away as I definitely didn’t trust the boys with them!

Sending lots of love

Ottilie xxxx