Watering Place of the Leopard

Welcome to the March 06 Update of the blog. There may or may not yet be uploaded the pictures mentioned below. Once we get a phone installed, I am sure it will work but I have tried twice from internet cafes and have had no success as yet.

Hint #1 HOW TO CATCH A TAXI
Taxis in Windhoek are often very dilapidated. But they usually get you from A to B. They drive around the streets giving intermittent honks. That tells a person they have space. You wave it down, get in and give your destination. It is a flat rate of N$6 into the city centre and another N$6 to anywhere the other side. The reason for this flat rate is that, even after you get in, they will continue honking and picking people up and, if their destination if nearer than yours you will end up going via everyone else’s, picking up people to replace those set down. Whoo-hoo! Ya get to see a bit of the location that way!
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HINT #3 SHOPPING
Using the credit card when shopping takes ages as the shop has to dial up for each purchase (and it may not be answered for a while), unlike Australia where telephonic flat rates means that CC transactions are very quick.
David was asked by some shop assistants if he knew any Australian men who wanted to settle down with some nice Namibian ladies! Any takers? Just email us.
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10 March
We have just had a great day off. Feels like the first real ‘getaway’ since we went to the beach last December. We have had our German friend, Vera Pabst, staying with us for a few days. Vera and I took the children to a small, local game park one day whilst David was at NETS. We saw wildebeest (gnu), zebra and blesbock. Caris loves animals but Étienne sat in the back and read the whole time! Yesterday we drove up to Gross Barmen, near Okahandja. Not only did we enjoy the thermal pool, but we braved long grass and spiders, reeds and ditches (and itches from grass rash) to find the overgrown ruins of the Carl Hugo Hahn’s mission and church (1871). The buildings are just about forgotten but the legacy lives on in the people, which is what it is all about. More about him in our next newsletter.

David has really enjoyed getting to know his fellow labourers in the Windhoek TEE department. Everyone has been very supportive and encouraging. From the testimonies we have seen and heard from TEE students, it is a marvellous ministry and we feel so privileged for this opportunity to be a part of what God is doing in Namibia.

Sad news from the coast, Walvis Bay; a diarrhoea bug has killed 8 children already. We take medical facilities so much for granted in Australia. And, northwest, on the Angolan border at Rundu, people have been advised to stay away from the border post as there is a rogue hippo behaving dangerously.

Life is so much more African in Owamboland. If you visit us you will drive up the main road north until you reach Tsumeb where there is a police checkpoint. No animals are allowed south of what used to be called the ‘red line’ running across the country unless they have a certificate of vaccinations etc so as to keep diseases out of central and southern Namibia. As soon as you drive into Owamboland you feel you have ‘come’ into the Africa you have imagined. The cart you see with the donkeys is made of corrugated iron. People hoe by hand, out of the town they have a communal tap and have to cart water home, cattle and goats just graze wherever. On our first morning in Ongwediva I saw cattle grazing on the plot verges … and goats arrived in the evening! Meat is strung up in the open air until bought. Homes outside of towns are either mud huts or corrugated or concrete brick one-roomed structures.

18 March
We arrived in Ongwediva (‘watering hole of the leopard’) late afternoon and set up home in our rented house. We had no furniture for the first few days so we ate by sitting on the floor using a scavenged box as our table (By day 3, how I wanted to have a ‘sit down’!). We brought some bedding and 4 airbeds with us so we did not have to camp out too badly. By the evening of the next day we had a fridge. Cold, refreshing water to drink at last!

With all the rains, mozzies are hatching from the standing water. The children have been very good at taking their malaria tablets. Unfortunately, David has already suffered side effects from them – fortunately, this has limited itself to nausea rather than the psychotic (Help! I married a chainsaw massacrer!) reaction warned about! Other than that, we are all doing well, health-wise.

HINT #4 HOW TO FIND OUR HOUSE
Make sure you have VERY good directions as there are no street names or numbers, just erfs! Hence no postmen, only PO boxes!
The phone book for the WHOLE country, including yellow pages, is about 1 inch thick! It is divided into towns and regions.
Phone costs are 30c per minute for a local call. We are still waiting for a phone number (one buys one’s own phone here). There are no ISDN ports available (to make our internet connexion faster and thus a bit less expensive) but the lady David spoke to says to call her each week in case one becomes free.
Little “inconveniences” like these remind us we are in “Africa” – yet Namibia is SO much more efficient than much of the rest of Africa is.
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Our house is only a short way from a sealed road so that is a bonus. As you can see from the pic, grass is not something one finds in gardens. This dirty sand usually is kept weeded and raked. At our house I don't think there will be much raking as the children see the yard as a giant sandpit!

We are only 2km from a nice little Spar (grocer, general store), bank, garage, stationers, PEP (cheap clothing store – including school uniforms) and post office. Oshakati is about 15 minutes’ away. There are bigger shops there and David is at Game (sort of like K-Mart but without clothes) and OK Furniture.

HINT #5 HOW TO ‘SURVIVE’ CHURCH
Church in Windhoek was very similar to churches we are used to – except they start earlier and go for LONGER! They tend to be in English, unless you go specifically to an Afrikaans, German etc church.
Up North we looked for a church to go for our first Sunday. There are no boards outside them to tell you what denomination or what the starting times are.

We chose one (it could have been Protestant, Roman catholic, or come cult – it turned out to be Lutheran) and arrived at 8.30. It officially began at 9.00am. We asked someone how long the service would go for. ‘About 2-3 hours’, was the reply. There were about 500 people there. Apparently it was Mary’s Day so many of the women and girls wore white and had head coverings. The singing was good. David and I sat next to helpful people who shared hymn books (a great way to hear how to pronounce words!). We were the only whites so tended to stick out and when, at one point, all heads turned to us, we were told that the leader had said there were some visitors who did not speak Oshiwambo. No prizes for guessing how everyone knew it was us!
Anyway, the only words we recognised were ‘amen’ and ‘hallelujah’. They did sing one hymn I knew the tune of and I felt like Mr Bean as I joined in occasionally – and enthusiastically – whenever I remembered a bit. I think I just sang extracts of verse 1 and put myself on ‘repeat’.
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It is a long weekend so the children need to wait until at least 22 March before we can confirm they have a place and enrol them. Étienne’s Afrikaans is coming on well. David and I are trying to learn the Oshiwambo but have not found anyone yet (well, it is only our 3rd day here) to help us with pronunciation. But we practice on people and they are always happy to help us. The language course in Oshakati will only happen if enough people enrol and, so far, they haven’t. What we have done is buy a small sort of Dictaphone. As we get to know people, we ask them to speak some words into the machine and we can then repeatedly hear and practice them at home. Meanwhile, we are on the hunt for a language helper to teach us to get our tongues around words like ‘mbomeshixupi’ and ‘njodjolokela’.

For those of you who have seen ‘Beautiful People’ (the movie about the animals and plant life of Namibia and Botswana), and have enjoyed the scene where the animals are eating the marula fruit which ferments in their stomach and gives them a hangover, you will be interested to know that there are lots of marula trees around here and their fruit is busy dropping! But we shall resist the temptation to partake of overripe fruit (hic!).

HINT #6 HOW TO GO SHOPPING
When you shop you can use the shops or the roadside vendors. I bought dried mopane worms (caterpillars) at a market for David today. I videoed him eating one (just dip it in salt)! I think it was one of those never-to-be-repeated experiences. It went down and somehow stayed down but his face was a Kodak moment – the critter was crunchy and chewy, and took some effort to swallow! Hail the conquering hero!
I have not been ‘game’ (no pun intended) to buy meat at the markets as it hangs all day outside and has a lot of flies on.
When I went to the market, everyone was a bit wary of me at first (wondering what I was doing there, I guess) but, when I tried talking to them and bought some of their wares, they were transformed into very friendly people, showing me the different stalls and trying to communicate with me, There was much laughing and curiosity!
Just getting into or out of a shop can be a task because there are so many vendors trying to sell you anything and everything. If you even LOOK interested they make you feel you have agreed to buy it.
When you leave the shop (however big or small), there are security people at the entrance and you have to give them your shopping receipt and let them check your purchases correspond to your receipt before you can leave the shop.

Mopane worms are very popular here, in Botswana and Zimbabwe. You can even get them canned or dried. Some Afrikaaners eat something here called ‘Pofadder’ (puff adder’). It is like a haggis in that it is a long, fat, braaied (barbied) stomach full of offal. Our language book, in the food section, give words for ‘dog’ and ‘field mouse’. I guess the rule of thumb when buying meat is not to ask any questions and thus get told no lies!
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20 March
I am missing having a comfortable chair to sit down and just relax (think of us if you are sitting down reading this!). And a ‘phone would be a real joy – not least because we can find out what is going on in the world beyond the borders of Namibia (and I can check my email!), but also because we only have one mobile between us so one of us is always incommunicado if they go out on their own (eg shopping). David did buy a phone card but it costs about N$2-3 per 30 seconds. Some things are cheap here, but other things are not.
When we got the ute/bakkie we found that the hinges to keep the back doors open had perished and, as the doors tend to shut on the children as they climb in, we priced replacements. The front door hinges are made in SA and cost NA$75. The back door hinges have to be imported from Japan and cost N$290! David – hero that he is – found replacements for N$45 each at a scrap yard up here!
As I write this, we are faced with the possibility of having to move again as the owner of the property has still not done the repairs he contracted to have done BEFORE we moved in. The estate agent thinks he will never do it and wants to relocate us. I am not relishing the prospect of packing again but, at least, we still have next-to-no furniture to transport. (But it also means that no phone can be installed until we know what is going on.)

We eat a lot of boerewors (a South African, spicy, sausage) here. David and the children love it. There does not seem to be much (sausage) alternative so the novelty may wear off in a month or so. Being bitten by mozzies is another (daily) tedium we could do without. Maybe the mozzies will look for another menu after a while, too! Caris is delighted with the variety of porridges South Africa makes and which are available here. Étienne, missing his Milo and Nutri-grain, lives on Weetbix.

There are no parks here at all (how we remember all the parks to choose from in Armidale!). There is KFC in Oshakati and I think that is about the extent of anywhere entertaining to go for them (for anice cream). Hopefully, once they start school, they will make some friends. And when they are at school we can finally apply ourselves to language learning. We have been home schooling the children up till now. However, once we get our lives together and can go further afield, there are lots of adventures to be had sort of nearby – not least, Etosha Game Park and the Goba Meterorite. We did take a trip up to OshiKango, a border town next to Angola, as we heard of a cheap furniture shop there. It was a hairy experience. A seething mass of humanity, it is considered a crime centre as people can steal whatever and slip over the border to sell it. Oshakati also has a high crime rate. We are a bit off the beaten track here in Ongwediva and it is much quieter.

The hard news for us at the moment is that the things we packed in Australia to come to Namibia have yet to be put on a ship (for a 10 week trip) for Walvis Bay, Namibia. The reason is that the shipping agents in Windhoek have changed their quote and now demand an additional US$1,000 for their part in getting it from Walvis Bay to Ongwediva. The children are missing their toys a lot and it is hard for them to understand that it will be months before the stuff arrives. Much of it has been in storage since December 2004 so if and when it arrives there will be much pleasure in reacquainting ourselves with treasured possessions.

When David is away from home, I realise that I know nobody for miles and miles around. But time will resolve that! How hard it must have been for the early pioneers and missionaries; no news from home for months and years on end, maybe no friendly face speaking your mother tongue, no access to medicines and comforts one took for granted at ‘home’.
We finally have a sofa and Étienne, upon first seeing it, said ‘It looks like a real home now!’. With no curtains and no furniture, the tiled room always echoed and the sofa helps absorb some noise now.

Hint #2 HOW TO START SCHOOL
First you discover the language uses the same letters as yours … but that’s where any similarity ends!
Then you just gotta have fun!
The children have been very welcoming and the teachers very helpful at the school.
Étienne is working hard at his Afrikaans – his Dutch Gs are coming along well, but he still can’t roll his Rs.
He is NOT impressed with rugby. He had his first taste of it today and a pass hit him on the nose. ‘Rugby is just to hurt people to get the ball off them’, he says.
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PS We get to stay in this house!