Friday 13 November 2009

Confessions of a transport geek.....

Dear Friends

To tell the truth I’m a bit of a transport geek…..there I’ve said it…… but don’t get me wrong I’ve never stood at the end of the platform, note pad in hand or anything like that, it’s just that I like, I mean, really like, trains. And it’s not just trains, there’s trams, boats, even buses do it for me, double-deckers of course, and there’s something almost poetic about the turning circle of a black cab.  Anyway the point of all this is that until recently I thought it was just me, well maybe me and a few others (Nicholas Gubbins) who hid our anoraks under a bushel, until a chance conversation with some of my colleagues this week.

Most Namibians won’t have been outside of Namibia, and for those who have, very few will have travelled beyond southern Africa. It was particularly exciting therefore for some of the OYO staff and the young people we work with, to be given the opportunity to travel abroad.  A collaboration with a Berlin youth dance group, supported by the German government, German and Namibian youth working and performing together, both in Berlin and Windhoek. And on another occasion a Dutch based funder, invited OYO staff to Amsterdam to share their experiences. Interested to hear of my colleagues impressions of Europe, I asked Evelina, our very bright PR and Operations Coordinator, what she thought of Berlin. “Ohhh” she said as if she was remembering biting into chocolate “the public transport, it was amazing…”. And then there was Alfa, our unwaivingly cheerful and polite Regional Coordinator, who when telephoning his OYO colleagues will always say “Hello Mr Lesley” or “Hello Miss Grace” before slipping into the more familiar “brother” or “sister”, who replied when I asked him about Amsterdam “Ooh Mr Alan” his eyes literally sparkling “the trams…”.

These were bright, talented and, frankly, ‘cool’ young people.  Maybe, I thought, maybe I’ve been ‘cool’ all these years! The delusion didn’t last, clearly this was not so much a transport love-in, as a comment on the contrast between public transport systems here and those in the wealthy nations of Europe. The vast majority of Namibians don’t have a car, you see. Of the twenty one people working for OYO there’s only one, me, who owns a vehicle, so other than travel by bicycle there are limited options.

Within the city, apart from a limited number of diesel belching municipal busses, which travel irregularly across town, the only public transport is the ubiquitous taxi.  Now these aren’t taxi’s like the black cabs we know, these are small saloon cars which have generally seen better days plying up and down the main arterial routes, charging a fixed fare of seven dollars fifty (about 60 pence), picking people up and dropping people off along the route, the drivers tooting at every pedestrian encouraging them to take a lift.

It can be quite interesting as you find yourself squeezed in beside all sorts of folk. An early taxi ride saw me sitting beside two Herero ladies, their traditional dress based on that of the German missionaries of the nineteenth century, unfeasibly layered dresses with lacework edges and starch stiffened head scarves, shaped to resemble the horns of a cow, extending horizontally from each side of the head by some two feet. In the front seat a workman, who appeared to be carrying a dozen bricks, neatly stacked on his lap. “Nice bricks” I said trying to strike up a conversation. “Yes, these are good bricks” he replied. Some folk like trains I guess, others bricks….

In our first week I had taken a few taxis so I fancied myself as an old hand by my first day at work. We live on the main road to Katatura, the large township in the north of the city so there are streams of taxi’s in the morning heading into town. Sure enough as soon as I stepped out of the front gate a taxi stopped. “Can you take me to Saiderhauf?” I said to the driver, referring to the neighbourhood in the south of town where OYO is based. “Oh no, no” he said and drove off. I tried again, a few times, but it was always the same. I changed tack. “Can you take me to town?” “Where?” “Fidel Castro” I said, giving the name of one of the main streets in the city centre.  “Yes, yes” and we were on our way. Most of the taxis from Katatura run into town and then back out again, repeating the process until they run out of passengers. To get to work I needed to take a cab into town and then another out again. Not knowing, however, where the taxis running south left from, I made my way up Fidel Castro (Namibians always seem to drop the ‘Street’ from addresses) picking up my step as I went, worried I would be late for work on my first day. I reached Robert Mugabe, (ironically home to the British High Commission), which is a main road running north to south, and looked anxiously for an approaching cab. There was remarkably little traffic. Almost jogging now I was relieved to see a battered old taxi wheezing and coughing its way up the hill. I enthusiastically flagged it down. There was just one passenger, a rather large gentlemen sitting in the front seat beside the ageing, smartly dressed taxi driver, who addressed me, like older Namibians often do, in Afrikaans. ‘Could you take me to Sauderhauf?” I panted, in English. “Yees, yees” he said in his Afrikaans accent “but first I go clean window”, I was a little surprised “First you go clean window?” I repeated. “Yees” he said. The large gentlemen smiled. “Okay” I said.

The cab turned off Robert Mugabe and headed east, the driver frantically slipping the clutch up an incline. I looked at the car windows, they were spotless, in fact, in contrast to its mechanical state, the whole car was spotless. Something here didn’t feel right. We’d been warned about pirate taxis preying on unsuspecting tourists, taking them out of town and robbing them of their belongings, but the large gentlemen passenger, and the ageing taxi driver? They certainly didn’t seem likely pirates. “Where do you go to clean window?” I said. “Not far, nearby, clean window” replied the taxi driver “Not far, nearby” repeated the large gentleman. “Service station, clean window service station” added the driver. This seemed to make some sense, petrol stations in Namibia all being called service stations and when you fill with fuel, the attendant always washes your windscreen. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes we pulled into a service station. The passenger paid his fare and stepped out, the elderly driver immediately pulling the wheel around and heading back the way we came, slipping his clutch as we entered the stream of traffic. There was to be no window washing here. “But you were going to clean window” I said. “Yees, yees” replied the driver pointing to the large neigbourhood sign, the type of sign that marks the boundary to every neighbourhood in the city. The sign read Klein Windhoek, (little Windhoek), which to novice ears, sounds in Afrikaans rather like clean window…

I was late for work. I told my colleagues why, they laughed like drains. Later I told my friend Iita, the tears streamed down his face as he repeated over and over again clean window, clean window….

Some weeks later I was commenting on the ability of my colleagues to speak numerous languages, they all speak at least two local languages, often more, as well as English and Afrikaans. “I’m afraid I only speak one language” I said. “Yes, but Mr Alan we are generalists, you are a specialist” said Selma kindly, and then as she left the room without turning her head.. “Clean windows, Mr Alan”……..

Have a good weekend everyone.

Alan

(editorial note: Alan actually cycles a 10 mile round trip to work every day... the car is all mine...mwah ha ha ha)

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Etosha National Park

Last Thursday my Mum, Dad, sister and I all went Etosha National Park and stayed at a camp site called Okaukeujo. The second night and third we stayed in a place called Halali. When we got through the gate we immediately saw springbok, impala and two giraffes. We all pitched the tents in number 9 site and headed straight for the waterhole. Our first sighting was a huge African elephant and later on that day 37 elephants came. At night we saw two black rhinos and then we came back a bigger white rhino too.

We went swimming in the pool there and then went to Halali where we went swimming again because it was so hot. I got a hat in the the shop there and this is a picture of it. It keeps the sun of my face so I do not get sunburnt. I also got an Etosha t-shirt with my own money.




This is a list of all of the animals I saw: elephants, black rhino, white rhino, maribou storks, great african owl, secretary birds (we called these fancy pants), kori bustards, impala, sprinboks, giraffes, ostriches, ostrich chicks, red hartebeest (one with a day old calf with wobbly legs), two kinds of zebras, kudu, elands, wildebeest, oryx, two hornbills, lots of ground squirrels and lot of birds and lizards. My Mum nearly walked onto a black mamba which is a deadly thin black snake. On the second day we saw over 1000 zebra and 200 sprinkbok gathering at the edge of the Etosha pan. When we saw zebras crossing the road I always called this a Zebra Crossing.

We were really hoping to see lions all the way through etosha but we didn't see any. On the last day though on the drive home we spotted a giant male lion and a lioness so we stayed and watched them for 25 minutes. Then we went to a waterhole and we saw 11 lions, 1 male, 4 lionesses and 6 cubs.

I really enjoyed Etosha and want to go back with my Gran when she comes out to visit. I hope my Mum and Dad get me a camera with a 10 or more zoom lens for Christmas so I can take my own photos.

Cameron H.

Monday 2 November 2009

Reflections on in-country training

All the recent VSO volunteers have just been for a weeks in-country training . It was exceptional, with some really inspiring presentations.  One in particular sticks in my mind.  Mr Ben Boys was a SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation) leader during the liberation struggle, eleven years in exile, first as a soldier with PLAN, (Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia), the military wing of SWAPO, then as a member of the Central Committee.  He’s now Head of Education in Hardap Region, (having turned down the opportunity to become the Namibian Ambassador to China, “after eleven years it was time to come home”) and committed, as so many of the former fighters are, to a new Namibia for all Namibians – regardless of race, creed or colour.  “Ours was a national liberation revolution founded on principle” explained Mr Boys “One Namibia, One Nation” the policy of national reconciliation adopted by the first government of this young country.  Somehow, growing like a phoenix from the ashes of apartheid, ‘inclusive education’ takes on a whole new meaning.

I had my first close encounter with African wildlife on Saturday. I inadvertently walked under a ‘social wasps’ nest and got attacked by a rather ‘anti-social’ one.  It was huge…..well, at least three inches long and stung me right on the cheek. Apparently the sight of me diving for cover while whacking the glasses from my nose, was quite comical. I woke up the next morning and looking in the mirror I saw Joe Bugner (remember him, the boxer from the eighties?) looking straight back at me!! – It looked like I’d gone ten rounds solid. The children kindly likened me to the Elephant Man. Insects 1 Hobbett 0.

We were joined on the training course by some new volunteers from Kenya. I got talking with Raymond, quietly spoken and a little older than most of us, maybe 55 or so. He told me he’d be going home in December as there was an important circumcision ceremony for the boys becoming men. Raymond is from the Masai tribe, and I asked him how Masai boys became men, and this incredibly gentle and modest man told me the story of how he became a Masai Warrior. There are lengthy rites of passage, including, Raymond explained, a  requirement to fight a fierce animal, kill it and carry it back to the village. So at sixteen, Raymond with two ‘age-friends’ set out from the village. They headed out in the hope of finding a lion, which although fierce, apparently offers the relative comfort of remaining on the ground during a confrontation, a leopard although smaller, is quicker and more agile. After some time, the boys came across tracks, leopard tracks, and using all the skills they’d been taught, tracked the animal to a small wooded area near a water source.  Keeping low they crept forward, breaking cover just yards from their prey.  Raymond’s friend threw his hunting club, catching the leopard a clean blow on the side of the head. The big cat, shaken and wounded, sprang up into a tree. Raymond came forward, spear in hand, and the leopard leapt from above, directly onto him, a claw catching Raymond’s forehead, before cleaving  the flesh on his forearm in two, from wrist to elbow a clean cut, right down to the bone. The boys struck at the leopard with their spears, killing it swiftly. The three men then carried the leopard back to the village they had left as boys. Badly wounded Raymond knew warriors don’t cry. “I could only cry on the inside” he told me. The elder men attended to his wounds, with herbs and traditional medicine. The scars remain, as neat as any from a surgeon’s knife.  Raymond 1 leopards 0.

The Chinese Ambassador is coming this afternoon. I’d contacted the embassies to see if any would support our magazine OYO, young, latest and cool. (naturally, I’m the centre fold in the next edition) and the Chinese have agreed a donation, so Her Excellency, Ambassador Ren Xiaoping, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Peoples Republic of China is coming for tea. Should be interesting. The Dutch have sponsored an edition already, the Germans like the sound of us too, but the British High Commission reluctantly declined, “due to economic factors in the UK”, explained Mr Lesley, the Assistant High Commissioner from Coatbridge “we’re stony broke”….

I’ve a few days off now and we are heading to Etosha National Park for a short break.  I think I’ll stay away from the leopards….

Have a good weekend everyone.

Alan

Tuesday 27 October 2009

A cheetah licked my frisbee!

Hi again :) well, last week, my family and I along with the rest of this year's VSO volunteers all went to a place called Mariantel right on the edge of the Kalahari desert ! We stayed in a really nice lodge just out of Mariantelle called "Lapa lange Lodge". Once we had arrived, after a 4 1/2 hour drive, we were shown to where we were going to be staying for the next week and it was great! We were staying in a 4 bedroomed chalet with two bathrooms, a kitchen with a bar and a livingroom leading outside! We were sharing the chalet with another family from Canada, with an eight year old girl called Kaia (Kiya) and her seven year old brother Jake. Their parents Yvonne and Cameron had their own bedroom, my parents did as well, Cam and Jake had their own room and I shared a bedroom with Kaia.

In the morning once everyone had woken up we went for breakfast at seven o'clock sharp, yawn :) after breakfast the adults went to the conference room to talk about their jobs so the kids just went of and we just did our own thing. About half an hour before lunch I went back to the chalet to pour a drink for everyone when I looked up at the waterhole and saw four adult ostriches and four chicks and they were so cute. I decided to name two of them I called the adult one flump and the baby one cupcake. There was also a swimming pool, well I say I mean a 2 meter long puddle filled with slimy frogs which I only found out about after I jumped into the pool, and boy did I get a fright :O "Ahhh....!"

The next day once the adults had gone off to do some more training I suggested that we should go to the giant cheetah enclosure to have a look at the cheetah. This was all going well until Cameron decided to have a game of frisbee and guess what? Yes, of course, it went over the fence. The boys ran off leaving Kaia and I to rescue the frisbee, great.

We decided to go and tell the barmaid in the main lodge what had happened so she told the cheetah feeder. He didn't speak english so we couldn't really understand what he was saying but he tied a coat hanger to a really long pole and stuck in through the fence but it wasn't long enough. He said "me go get car" and he came back in an open bakkie, which Kaia and I jumped in, and went through the gate. He chucked a bit of chicken leg to distract the cheetah and quickly got the frisbee.

Eilidh Rose

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Alan's musings......

We have no dew here in Windhoek and the earth is generally very dry. But I was at a meeting in town the other week and as I left, there was sheet lightening across the night sky, the sound of thunder and the wind through the trees. “Can you smell that Alan?” asked my colleague. I could smell a sweet almost sickly sweet smell. “It’s like nectar” I said. “That’s the smell of damp earth, and that’s the reason we can never leave Africa” she said. And I think I understood. That despite the hardships, the suffering, there is always hope, always promise, always beauty.

The skies are ever changing this time of year. There’s the intense blue, so intense it’s hard to imagine, but sometimes grey as the dust builds during the day to a glorious red at sundown, the sun dropping quickly below the horizon. Dusk is all of ten minutes here, from brightness to darkness in just ten minutes.




We’ve made some good friends already. Other volunteers, staff at VSO, one of whom is almost a neighbour (and whose given us a washing machine for the year – which is great!) and my friend Johannas who tells me now I’m to call him Iita, his ‘house’ name, the name his family call him. Johannas is a popular name amongst black Nambians as is Pieters. Basically John and Peter – Christian names. Often white Namibians if they don’t know a black Namibian’s name will refer to him as Johannas or Pieters. Like using Paddy for an Irishman or Jock for a Scot, I suppose. I can see it angers Johannas. So now I call him Iita. I asked him what Iita means. “It means War” he said. I must have looked surprised. I couldn’t at that moment think why anyone would call a child ‘War’. “It’s because I was born in the war, the liberation struggle” he said. Later, I met his wee nephew, he’s just four years old and runs everywhere, is into everything and all at once. “We nicknamed him "Omshasho” said his auntie laughing, then explaining to me, the foreigner, “you know, the weapon that bursts and fires in all directions at once”. She was referring to a cluster bomb. So I have a friend called War who has a nephew called Cluster Bomb. My experiences of war are, thank God, only through the pages of a newspaper, for Iita and his family war was all around them, penetrating their beings even to their very names.

We’re off camping at the weekend, to Gross Barmen, a small game park with a natural hot spring. I read the description from the guidebook to Cameron. Told him about the palm fringed swimming pool, the hot springs, the braii (barbecue), the game walks, the dry river bed, the lookout, the zebra and baboons. “Well what do you think?” I said looking into his widening blue eyes. “heaven” he said “It sounds like heaven”. Maybe it will be.

Have a good week everyone.

Alan

Wednesday 7 October 2009

Our Weekend of Adventure

Still excited about our recent purchase of our new Nissan Patrol (I use the term ‘new’ loosely, the beast is nearly 18 years old and has already done 280,000kms), we loaded up the tank with camp beds, tents, coolbox and enough munchies to feed a small town (or at least keep the kids happy in the back) and headed to the coast.

Breaking the journey at Okahanja on Friday night, we joined other volunteers for a ranch style meal where Alan had the biggest steak had ever seen in his life. His mum would have been proud of him as he struggled on and managed to devour every last morsel, something he regretted for the next four days as it lay in his stomach like a goat in the pit of a python.

Swakopmund was our destination, with the spectacular 380 km transition from semi-arid bushland to white desert providing the in-flight entertainment. We pitched our tents in the grounds of the Youth Hostel (we won’t talk about the facilities here) ideally placed to explore the rather strange town on foot. Late in the afternoon we took the back road to Walvis Bay with ideas of a gentle stroll up the famous Dune 7 to witness a spectacular sunset with our new friends.

The near vertical climb to the top of this mighty sand dune nearly finished me off, how the kids ran up and down it I can’t quite fathom, the camera I was carrying must have been what hampered me…….however, despite the clouds and subsequent lack of sunset, the views from the ridge were AMAZING, almost worth the pain.
On Sunday morning we finetuned our sandboarding skills with Alter Action and Eilidh and Cameron jointly broke the speed record for our group clocking up measured speeds of an impressive 69 km/h. As I watched my 10 year old been given some basic instruction before being pushed headfirst on a piece of plywood, into a 500 ft sand gully, I was grateful that I am not the worrying kind.

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Eilidh's thoughts on school

I went into a high school called St.George’ College about 3 days ago now and sat an hour and a half test to see if I could get a place in the school. Yesterday we received an e-mail from the school saying if I had passed or failed the test which I hadn’t :-D So the school says that I can either go into grade 7 just now and then go into grade 8 in January, go in to grade 8 just now, grade 8 is the same as 2nd year in the UK, and then start grade 9 in Jan’ but grade 9 is like 3rd year and I’m only in 2nd year back in Scotland so the school doesn’t think that I would be ready for grade 9 in January and grade 7 is still in primary school here and I don’t want to go back to primary school, no way. So we have decided that I’m going to start grade 8 in High School in January so that’s cool. Till then Mum says that she can teach Cam and I at home but Mum’s idea of teaching seems to be a 3 mile walk every morning…not so cool.

Today we walked into town and went to a bushman art gallery because yesterday I did some research on the bushmen tribes in Namibia and I found out that by the age of twelve, a bushman child on average knows 200 different plant species and an adult bushman knows about 300. I tried to figure out how many plant species I knew by writing them all down, but I only got to 50 odd plants until I couldn’t think of any more. The “art gallery turned out just to be an overpriced gift shop with dead animal skins everywhere, but seeing all of the pretty jewellery was good and there is a really nice pair of earrings there that I’m going to buy next time go into town even though they are $49.99, that’s £5.00 in the UK !!! What a rip off.

I haven’t seen any cool animals yet except a couple of lizards, a gecko and a warthog when we first got off the plane. Dad reckons that he saw some monkeys on the way to the house, but nobody really believes him :) We are going to go camping as soon as we get a good enough car according to Dad and then we can go see some more exciting animals eg’ hippo’s and even lions :) :) :)

Eilidh Rose

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Settling in....

Well, after a frantic few days tracking down passports, chasing up visas, finishing up at school and a whirlwind of folk visiting and goodbye get togethers, as well as packing up a decade’s worth of domestic detritus, we finally made it to Glasgow airport last Saturday (thanks bruv) without too many tears. We had excellent trip with Emirates Airlines and a smooth transfer at Dubia and Johannesburg airports. The SA Airways staff kindly turned a blind eye to our excess baggage (only 20 kg each for this part) when I explained with a smile that most of it was Lego.




Saara from VSO met us at the airport in Windhoek some 30 hours after we had left Mum’s house the previous morning, and greeted us with the news that a house on the outskirts of the city had been found for us. We didn’t have long too unpack as we were due to meet up with the other new volunteers in the legendary Joe’s Bar 45 minutes later. We had a quick shower and off we went, how we all kept awake for another few hours, I’m not sure.



Last week was full on with the VSO induction training. The staff here are great and a breath of fresh air. Within two days they had found a fridge for us, and today, we took delivery of an old mountain bike for Alan to cycle to work to, they really are trying to help us settle in.



The house itself is great, a three bedroom bungalow in typical (black) Namibian style. We have hot water, electricity -albeit rather dodgy- and a lovely outdoor room to sit out in the evenings and watch the world go by. Even the plastic flowers, bright pink lacy net curtains and outlandish pictures are growing on me. The owners have moved into their garage for the time being while their other smaller bungalow is being vacated by other tenants. The guilt didn’t last long.