Namibia update

Hello again, from beautiful Namibia. The temperatures are dropping & for that we are quite grateful.
Jim just came back from our school-supply store with 100 dictionaries, thanks to many of you. Not sure exactly how we will distribute them, but we both are on a mission to improve our learners’ vocabularies & spelling, so we might just hoard them for our own! We are going to Windhoek for a 3-day in-service & at that time will visit a larger supply store to see if we can get a couple of sets of Namibian literature for the classes to read & study together. There is very little aimed at upper-primary level, so I may have to settle for American lit. There are a couple of learners who show some writing potential & I’ve told them, the market is open for Namibian authors…dream on.

We are now coming to the end of our Term 1 break. It has been wonderful. Our oldest daughter, Colleen, & my 2 sisters were with us for a week & we traveled to see a very different Namibia from what we live in. Started with a game drive through Etosha Nat’l Park. It’s not the best season for that since the animals still have plenty of food & water available to them, but we saw enough to make our “guests” happy. Went north to the Angola border to visit a beautiful waterfall & discovered a lush, green, hilly area quite unlike our region. Proceeded to visit the Himbas, which Jim & I had done before, but wanted to share it with the “girls”. Colleen had done great research to find accommodations throughout the trip & our first treat was to “camp” provided with large tents on solid floors, flush toilets w/ hot & cold running water added on to each of our tents (found out there is nothing like taking a shower or sitting on the throne while basking in the sun or gazing up at the stars! Wonderful beds w/ lovely linens. Wish you could have been there with us!

We headed south through the Namib desert (oldest in the world) where we saw petrified trees 280,000,000 years old. There we stayed at a lodge in the middle of nowhere, built into cliffs of HUGE rocks. Colleen came upon a cobra snake that reared its head & spread its hood. After quite a long time & the effort of several brave men, a guide raised in the bush was called & he captured it to release it back into the wild. Yes, they are very poisonous. It was exciting, but only because no one was struck or sprayed.

Reminded Jim & I our trek in the Amazon where our group had a close call with a fer-de-lance (extremely poisonous). As long as they don’t strike…

We had to check out Swakopmund, a resort town on the south-eastern coast that took us back to Germany. It’s is a very wealthy town & we felt we were in a different world. The famous dunes are in that area of the coast, & while we didn’t make it to the largest one, we were impressed with what we saw. Time was running out, so we had to head back home. We had rented a Toyota Yuris, thinking it would be okay since we weren’t going to attempt roads that are “restricted” to 4-wheel. We made it okay, bumping along many, many kms of rough, gravel roads, but next time, we splurge for something tougher. My back is slowly recovering. We’ve kept the car to take to mid-service in Windhoek & have enjoyed the freedom it gives us. Mostly got a bit more familiar with the local region. There is a town at the Angola border that is full of China shops--no, they don’t sell China ware, they sell “junk” from China, run by Chinese & they all have the same things to sell--luggage, aluminum pots, clothes, shoes, low-end electronics, earrings, watches, necklaces, purses, tote bags, plastic flowers, curtains, table cloths….it’s amazing. We have a lot of them here in beautiful downtown Ondangwa (tongue in cheek), but that town is much smaller than Ond. & I’ll bet there are 200 of them. But we also found a fantastic pizza place there, which also has a store in the town where we go to church, so now we have a way to satisfy that craving--they said that they would deliver to us (for a price, of course, but when the need arises, it is do-able). Slowly, but surely, we are finding what we “need” here!

We started our break by “closing out” Term 1 & getting organized for Term 2. We learned a lot & are planning better for next terms. The system is quite different here & we have been working blind, but we’re both geared up for school to start again & looking forward to it. Have missed the learners (one of my most challenging ones has enrolled in a boarding school, so that class should be much easier to handle!). I will be anxious to learn of their reactions to their grades--they were very low. I’m not easy. We’re finishing break by preparing some lesson plans so we can hit the ground running. Colleen, Sheila & Sandy came with suitcases full of pens, pencils, frisbees, books & misc. supplies, so we are excited to be able to distribute those things, too. I don’t know about you, but every summer, as the new school year approached, I would organize my new school supplies & admire whatever new clothes I got & battle the butterflies in my stomach--nothing’s changed (‘cept there are no new clothes!).

May God bless each of you for your support of us. If you have any questions about anything over here, e-mail us. I’m sure I overlook many things in this blog that might interest you. Let me know.

Uhala po nawa
Jim & sharon