Happy Valentine's Day

After a particularly hard week at work, we loaded up the camping gear for the first time since our big Christmas/ New Year trip and headed off for a weekend of R&R.

We found a lovely shady camping spot at Arnhem Rest Camp, some 2 hours away from Windhoek. Well off the beaten track, we did not pass a single other vehicle other than one donkey cart in 160 km of gravel road. Arnhem is known for its nearby cave system, the sixth largest on the African continent and home to over a million bats, so we duly booked what we though was going to be an hour tour to give us a taster.

Both our guide Basun and Cameron got a little carried away in their mutual enthusiasm for us to find as many of the 6 resident bat species as possible, so we spent a good three hours underground exploring 2 km of very dark passages. The echolocation ability of bats has always fascinated me, but to experience hundreds of bats flying around our heads and not a single one touching us, was quite impressive. The overwhelming ammonia smell built up after hundreds of years of guano (batpoo) deposits was not quite as enchanting. The guide told us stories of the Germans mining the guano to use in biological bombs and we could see the evidence of the mining operations for ourselves in the upper section of the caves. It was unanimously agreed that this was not a job any of us would aspire to and could not imagine anyone living long in such appalling and dangerous conditions. "It was pre-independance" added Basun, as if he needed to.

Trying to clean away the dust and smell in the shower afterwards, it did cross my mind that some women may have been whisked off to Paris, or wined and dined on finest gourmet food for their Valentine's weekend, meanwhile, as I emerged scrubbed clean and smelling fresh again, Alan had the site filled up with woodsmoke as he struggled to light the braii and cried "did you pack any grub, Joey?"

havering- Feb 1

We are all familiar with Tony Blair’s mantra “Education, education, education” and here too in Namibia education is an important political issue. National elections were held in November and in SWAPO’s (South West Africa Peoples Organisation) election campaign, the party still synonymous with liberation, twenty years after independence, showed posters of school children, black and white, “safe in our hands”.

 

There have been huge strides in education over the last two decades, all schools are now mixed, the apartheid segregation swept aside, and many new school buildings, even in the ‘informal settlements’, shanty towns, where people live in houses of tin. But there are two sides to education of course, the provision and the desire to learn.

 

Soon after arriving in Windhoek I sat up late into the night talking to my friend Etta, keen to learn more of him and his country.

 

As a young boy Etta wanted to go to school, “I had a hunger to learn” he said, pressing the flat of his hand against his belly as he spoke, but his grandmother, whose house he lived in, told him it was his responsibility to look after the goats and tend the fields. “How can you do this when you are at school?” she asked.  When Etta ran away from the house each morning to go to lessons, he would be punished on his return by not being fed, not just one meal but no food at all. “How can we feed you Etta when you don’t do your share of the work?”. But Etta was determined to go to the school and so he stole the food he needed from other houses. His grandmother recognised his determination, knew that compromise was needed. And so it was agreed that each morning Etta would be woken at 2 a.m. when he would go to the fields and work by moonlight, attending school at 7am as he desired. This way he fulfilled his responsibilities ..... and he got fed.

 

On Saturday Jo took me up to the school where she'd been working. We drove through Katatura, the huge township from apartheid days and still home to most of Windhoek's population. The tar ran out and we drove along dirt tracks. The small brick houses gave way to tin shacks, tin shacks as far as the eye could see. We drove on and young eyes began to recognise the car, the children waving excitedly. And there in the middle of the 'informal' settlement is the school, a beautiful new school built by the government after independence. And in the dry dust grounds, under the unrelenting sun, is the vegetable garden Jo has been working on with the school kids. And it's beautiful. Raised beds filled with sweet smelling compost, newly planted seeds and seedlings lovingly tended under white shade netting, draped to look like a marquee. And the kids just love it.......they should, after all, it was they who built it. And it will be these children who will grow their food here. Nothing will be wasted, for the children are hungry……

 

Have a good weekend everyone.

Take care

Alan

 

Happy New Year!

Well here we are, at the start of a brand new decade- Happy New Year to you all! Technically of course we are already 16 days into it but it is only now that I have recovered from the shock of getting back to work after our three week holiday that I have managed to sort out proper internet time.

Our Christmas trip was great, camping gear  all piled into our Nissan Patrol, my Mum, Eilidh and Cameron fighting for space amongst sleeping bags, water bottles and nintendo games in the back, Alan's beloved jerry can and spare wheel on the roof, me in the front with a mottley collection of dog eared maps and the all important Haynes manual, and off we went. 

Travelling up north through Namibia, across the 'red line' and along the Caprivi Strip, we entered Zambia and travelled the length of the country to Malawi. There we visited the school we have been in contact with for the last year and a half, a humbling experience. Two days swimming in Lake Malawi allowed us to chill out just a little before our drive back through Zambia, returning to Namibia via Botswana.

There are so many tales that could be told, but perhaps the highlights are Eilidh losing one of her only pair of shoes with her, which doesn't sound too dramatic except for the fact that we were swimming 3 ft from the lip of Victoria falls at the time. She completed the rest of the overland adventure in a quickly purchased pair of Mr Price gym shoes. Another funny-looking-back moment was breaking down in the middle of Chobe National Park after not seeing another vehicle all day (the kids had to go on Lion Watch while I retrieved 3 cans of cold beer from the fridge in the boot) three hours before dark and the brakes failing as Alan slammed them on hard to avoid a suicidal cow (at least it wasn't an elephant).

The children have both now settled into school, Cameron in the laid back International School which suits him perfectly, and Eilidh in one of the High Schools in town. She has made friends instantly and now declares she wants to live here forever, well, until the first major teen fall out I suspect. This of course translates into me making popcorn at 5.30 am the other morning (Cam's enterprise project), revisiting Maslow's heirarchy of needs (Cam again) and running Eilidh here there and everywhere across the city to keep up with her various social engagements. Still, at least its nice and sunny here....


We have now an early start to the day, schools starts at 7.oo/7.20 am and I start work at 7.30, a routine of sorts seems to be emerging, despite my best efforts. My work is tough going, the management style is somewhat different to what I have experienced before, but the curriculum resources that I am writing are slowly coming together and in two weeks time I will be based at two schools in the informal settlement area to help set up organic gardens. I remain optimistic (read doggedly determined) that this placement will still work out.


Anyway, I am going to make a big effort to keep in touch between now and August now that we are a bit more settled, starting off with updating this blog with Alan's recent ramblings. Visions of having hours and hours of spare time in which I dreamed of revisiting the old art of letter writing, proper paper letters, haven't materialised, although perhaps I could pretend that they have been intercepted by Somalian pirates. No, thought not.


Take care everyone, and all our love and best wishes for a happy 2010.


Jo x

Doughnuts and pink icing

The journey between Lusaka and Chipata was a long one, but the road was better than expected and our progress was good. At lunchtime we pulled off the main road at the sleepy little town of Sheswe. We were hungry.  Traditional mud houses on one side of the street, a petrol station and row of shops on the other, a bakers proudly, and interestingly, pronouncing itself as ‘al halal’ beside a small general store and a couple of doubtful looking take-aways.  Stepping from the car we greeted the small group of smiling, barefooted children who looked on curiously as we crossed towards the shops. 

A determined, rather manic looking middle-aged man approached us, torn trousers and tea shirt, a white plastic banding strap (the type used around cardboard boxes containing hoovers and microwaves) hung incongruously around his neck. He carried a small wooden box from which he took a crumpled and dirty brown banknote. This he held towards us, repeating words we couldn’t understand. We continued across the street. The man persisted, his manner agitated. We hurried on. 

The take aways’ wares had been taken, so we moved along the row of shops to the general store. As we entered, the man with the banding hesitated to follow.  The children stood open mouthed eyeing the deep fried doughnuts, each covered in bright pink icing as we decided what to buy.  I watched as another customer entered. He handed a brown banknote to the shop keeper, who in turn handed back a single cigarette from an open packet on the counter.  In that moment I understood. 

I turned just as the banded man entered the shop, desperation in his eyes. In one hand a match box held high, jabbed frantically with the index finger of his other.  All in a second the man moved towards us, the shopkeeper shouted harshly, a smartly uniformed security guard rushed in, raising a stick four feet long and as round as your thumb, above his head.  The man continued his desperate gesticulations, but the raised stick was no idle threat. The banded man tried to turn, tried to jump ahead of the blow, but the stick came down with all the guards might, a terrible crack against the desperate man’s thigh, a crack which seemed to echo around the tiled shop interior. The shop keeper smiled, laughed nervously…

As the children ate their doughnuts I stood beside the petrol pump attendant as he finished filling the tank. It started to rain, all who were outside rushed inside, for rain can be heavy in Zambia. Quickly I counted out the bank notes and jumped back into the car. The rain was torrential now. I hit the wipers as I pulled away. Fifty feet ahead, stood the man with the band, drenched and motionless, the small wooden box in the mud at his feet. He starred directly at me. But there was no more determination, no wildness, no more desperation, nothing but a helpless resignation.  I drove on.

Over Christmas we stayed at Flatdogs Camp by South Luangwe National Park. It’s a remarkable place where elephants wander under your balcony and hippos cross your path as you walk back from the bar. On Christmas eve all the local lodges join together for a carol service in the bush. Two hundred lodge guests sipping wine, eating canapés and singing carols along with the fabulous staff choir under the spreading branches of an enormous sausage-fruit tree.  Although we sang heartedly about them, contrary to your experience, our frost was not cruel and the mid winter not so deep! As we drove back to the lodge, Eilidh looked at me through tired eyes. “Dad” she said “Why did that soldier hit that man?”…..

On the Sunday after New Year we battered down the tarmac from Kasane to Maun, past huge solitary elephants and wonderfully graceful giraffes. We would have stopped each time but we had time and distance to make up. All went well until slowing to pass a small heard of cattle, a suicidal cow turned and jumped in front of the car. Swerving and braking hard we managed to avoid the beast but a loud crack and the brakes failed completely. Earlier heavy driving in Choebe National Park had taken its toll and a damaged brake hose had given way. It could have been a lot worse. Just two hundred yards along the road was a lay by, in which I could safely view the damage. There would be no Hobbett bodge job here! We limped along to the next village, Gweta, just five miles and where we knew from the map that there would be a petrol station, the only one for a hundred more. Trying to maintain our spirits and knowing that spare parts can take days, we joked that what we needed was a Mr JLB Matakoni, the respectable owner of Speedy Motors in the wonderful television series The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

Arriving at Gweta I went into the petrol station shop. There were plenty cans of beans, packets of Maze flour, mops and buckets but nothing in the way of spare parts. I stood by the counter looking at the cans of motor oil. A middle aged man stood chatting to the cashier. He opened a sachet of indigestion powders which he poured into his mouth and washed down with a can of coke. “Hello Ra” he greeted me in the traditional way. “How are you?” “I am well, thank you Ra” I said returning the greeting “but I am afraid my car is not. Would you know if I could find a mechanic in Gweta, Ra?” “But Ra” he responded, the car’s life is not your life. Provided your life is good, that is all that matters.”  “I think you are right, Ra” I said. The man smiled. “And besides” he said “I am a mechanic”

In less than an hour we were on our way, Mitre turned out to be a fine mechanic indeed and his young son an avid apprentice. From his own scrapyard of crashed and abandoned cars, Mitre found just the right part and charged a very fair price indeed.  As we drove away we looked at each other and laughed….

Alan

Steinbeck's Tortoise

Before heading to our placements VSO volunteers are required to attend several training courses at Harborne Hall in Birmingham, a curious building and one time convent, hospital and stately home. By the last of these courses, a week’s long ‘Skills for Working in Development’, a strong camaraderie has developed and excitement runs high. The last evening, lubricated by tepid English ale and cheap red wine, becomes a crescendo of emotions as VSOs share their formative experiences; childhood traumas, lovers and sweethearts, the death of parents, the birth of a son or daughter.

I was sharing a room in the gatekeepers lodge with Paul, a young man older than his years, modest but confidently spoken, an astute observer. Sharing a bottle, sitting on the steps of the lodge, we spoke of books, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A House for Mr Biswas, Under Milk Wood (complete with Burtonesque renditions of the slow dark, crow dark, fishing boat bobbing sea),  A Man’s a Man, and later, much later into the night, The Grapes of Wrath and talk of Steinbeck’s tortoise, the symbolism of the struggling creature so poignant now, Paul closing his eyes as he spoke…….The wine ran out, we went to bed.

Raising our weary clouded heads the next morning we joined the other pasty faces for breakfast. I stood in the queue next to Stu, one of the trainers. “So Stu, how are you?” I said “Sleep well?”  “Not so well really.” He said, yawning.  “I was woken by a couple of drunken wankers talking about a bloody tortoise at three in the morning”…….

I was at an event at the American Cultural Centre, some weeks ago, (yes I know, the irony wasn’t lost) when I met one of the OYO Directors, Sandy Rudd, Director of Namibia’s National Theatre.  I mentioned a book I had read shortly before coming here, Mukiwa, an autobiography by Peter Godwin, a white Zimbabwean who wrote of his experiences during the war for independence, a conscript for the forces of White Rhodesia. “I’m in that book” said Sandy, and she was, “the girl in the orange skirt, with fishnet stockings and platform shoes”. When the laughter subsided, Sandy spoke of the importance of the book to those like her, white Zimbabweans, whose fathers and brothers never spoke about their experiences, soldiers on the wrong side in a war that should never have been. “I gave that book to my husband. We’d been married thirteen years. He read it in a day. We walked around Avis Dam and we cried as he told me things I didn’t know” She closed her eyes “of things that he had seen and things that he had done. This is an important book”

There are just two of us in the office today. Namibia closes early at Christmas as thousands return home to villages and homesteads, for many the one time in the year when families are together. My colleague Ivan ‘Fly’ Meuse, he who starred in the brilliant OYO DVD, The Virgin Pumpkin, the story of a boy from the village moving to the school hostel in town, teased by the cool guys who call him a pumpkin. He whose character falls in love with a girl, but who denies their relationship when she becomes pregnant, Fly who played this part so well, showed me his poetry. And this young man can write.

The Flame in My Heart

No one teaches the sun to rise

A bird to level its wings to fly

A fish to swim

A plant to grow and flower

A child to cry

Raindrops to quench the earth

The heart to glow

You had the instinct of a comforter

When life went up and down

You were my true companion

Always willing to listen to my tears

You helped me celebrate my victories

And with you by my side

My troubles had no principal role

My smile is a gift from joy

My love is steered by your happiness

My touch a sign of your affection

My candle might melt and its flame might die

But the flame in my heart will remain a lifetime

Time might ask you to forget about me

But knowing you were once in my lifetime

To have held a person like you

Is a true sign that God has been good to me

I think he likes her.

We’re off to Malawi on Thursday, driving via Zambia, the mighty Victoria Falls and South Luangwa national park with the greatest concentration of leopards in Africa, Cameron and Eilidh just bursting to see one.  In Lilongwe, Area 25, we hope to visit the houses we built last year with the Dunfermline Building Society, Habitat for Humanity Team, and the teacher’s house we have all since funded. I remember Gordon cutting the ribbon, the day we danced the Dashing White Sergeant in the dust and sang Auld Lang Syne together.  It’ll be different this time, my mother-in-law is with us……

Have a good Christmas everyone.

Alan

Let us Pray

“When the white man came to Africa, we had the land and he had the bibles. He said “Let us pray”. When we lifted our heads we had the bibles and he had the land.” This is how Archbishop Desmond Tutu described the indefatigable link between western religion and colonialism. Certainly there are communities in Namibia who have retained their own beliefs and others who have assimilated elements of their own into Christianity, but there is no doubt that Jesus is booming in Africa. On Sunday I can hear the congregation of the Church of Our Saviour, singing and swaying like Christ’s return will be tomorrow. There are no empty pews here, no falling congregations, no churches turned into carpet warehouses or nightclubs, in fact more churches continue to be built, Evangelical, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian.

I struggled to make sense of this. If Afrikaans was the language of the Oppressor then Christianity was his religion. The Dutch Reform Church, with the same Calvinist roots as our own, infamously using scripture to justify apartheid. I consulted the oracle, I asked my friend Iita.

“Oh yes I was very religious” he said. “I would pray many times each day.”  I pressed him on this, repeating how he had once said that the missionaries stole his culture. “It was necessary” he said. “When a child is frightened, when he can make no sense of things, when he needs protection he runs to his father. When the soldiers came to our house, when they held their guns against our heads my grandmother comforted us, saying that God would deal with these men, that he would look after us, and we prayed. When I was a young man so full of hatred, when the white garage owner in Tsumeb killed a man because he complained about his car, I prayed. If I didn’t have God I would have been like a wild animal, I could not have stopped myself.”

Iita no longer prays. “When I went to Britain I tried many churches.  I went to the Catholic church where they said prayers written by someone else, I went to the Church of England and watched the Boys Brigade marching, I went to the Baptist church and the Evangelical church. To Africans, God is white, yet in Britain, the people don’t believe. It was in Liverpool I lost my faith.”

Two years ago, a friend of mine was in Malawi when a statue of David Livingstone was unveiled. The guest of honour was no other than Nelson Mandela. Pulling the cover from the statue, President Mandela referred to David Livingston as Africa’s first freedom fighter. In Windhoek there is a street which was renamed in honour of the Reverend Michael Scott, the British clergyman who worked so bravely and so closely with Chief Hosea Katako against South African rule. And recently, the state funeral of the Reverend Hendrik Witbooi , the first deputy prime minister of the new Namibia, a much loved man and the grandson of  Kaptain Hendrik Witbooi  leader of the Nama peoples in the genocidal war of 1904-07 when the God fearing German army killed half of the Nama and 80% of the Herero people.

Waiting for Cameron and Eilidh last week, my eye was caught by the posters on the bus shelter. There was notice of a concert by Gazza, a big hip hop star, details of a fashion show, SWAPO posters urging all to vote for President Pohamba, and a picture of a smartly dressed young man in a three piece suit, “Apostle Daniel D. Double Portion. Fresh anointings.” It read  “Jesus is performing miracles today. Bring deads, cripples, deaf and dumbs, HIV/Aids, oppressed. Katatura Community Centre.” For some reason I thought of the time that Cameron, just six, had asked me if Rabbie Burns and Jesus were friends. Somehow, here in Africa, the question now seems a wholly reasonable one.

Alan

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)