Discovery channel!

‘Thank you’ to those who sent me some recipes. I would like to reciprocate with a couple for YOU!

Ulusu Lwenkomo (Stewed Ox Tripe)
1 kg stomach (ulusu)
1 kg intestines (amathumbu)
salt and pepper to taste

Clean stomach and intestines thoroughly and rinse under cold running water. Place in saucepan and cover with salted water. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for three hours or until very soft.

Mopane
2 kilograms dried mopane worms
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cooking oil
1 onion
1 tomato, peeled and cut in small pieces
1 tablespoon peri-peri sauce

Soak the dried mopane worms in warm salt water till swollen. Drain.
Now boil the worms in a little fresh water and drain again. Fry the worms in some oil in a saucepan. Add the onion, tomato and peri-peri (like chili) sauce and simmer till the tomato is cooked. The dish is especially tasty if served with hot mielie (corn) porridge.

Omagungu (mopane worms) are hand-picked in the wild, often by women and children. In the bush, the caterpillars are not considered to belong to the landowner, but around a house permission should be sought from the resident. Women in Zimbabwe tie a piece of bark to particular trees to establish ownership, or move the young caterpillars to trees nearer home. When the caterpillar has been picked, it is pinched at the tail end to rupture the innards.
The picker then squeezes it like a tube of toothpaste or lengthwise like a concertina, and whips it to expel the slimy, green contents of the gut. The traditional method of preserving mopane worms is to dry them in the sun or smoke them, giving additional flavour. The industrial method is to can the caterpillars (usually in brine).
Dried mopane worms can be eaten raw as a crisp snack, although in Botswana people tend not to eat the head. Alternatively, mopane worms can be soaked to rehydrate, before frying till crunchy or cooking with onion, tomatoes and spices and serving with a very thick corn flour mixture (like mashed potato). The flesh is yellow, and the gut may still contain fragments of dried leaf, which is not harmful to humans.
Come and visit us and we can let you try some!

26 March
We have been told, by old timers here, that to have a phone line installed 2 weeks after you have asked for it is EXTREMELY optimistic. But hey, I can live with optimism. But maybe we should start adjusting ourselves to West African Internal Time (WAIT)!

Our second Sunday we spent at an Afrikaans church. How different from the Oshiwambo one. This one had sing-a-long CDs (a small congregation with no musos), powerpoint, roving mics … the other one relied on everyone knowing the words and the speaker having a loud voice. We enjoyed both. With David needing to make contact with across the denominations we shall be visiting a few over the coming Sundays, but then we will choose a home church for the children and I whilst David will spend some Sundays each month liaising with churches across the northern region. Sunday school, if it happens, usually takes place before or after the main service, and the children simply sit and listen to the minister talk to them. This means a long morning but everyone gets to church.

Someone came to our gate looking for work. We have her to clean and to speak Oshiwambo to us once a week. Although we are officially learning Oshikwanyama, she is from a different tribe and some words/pronunciation differs. Oshiwambo is sort of the collective term for the different languages up here. Everyone speaks their own language and everyone else more or less understands them. So, although we may be confused by more than one word/way of saying something, we are encouraged to persevere and, if we say something wrong, they may well put it down to us speaking a different dialect!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …
When we moved in here the air conditioner had still not been repaired and we had to WAIT (!) for nearly 2 weeks for its repair. Meanwhile, I was pleasantly warm at night and slept well, whilst David tossed and turned in the heat (the room is usually 27o at bedtime). Now he sleeps peacefully in its coolness and I can’t sleep for the noise, and the icicles on my pillow! You can’t please all the people all the time!

Having a phone is a very African experience. We rejoiced when the line was finally installed. We got to check email in the comfort of our own home. David even managed to make ONE phone call …before the line stopped working. Now begins again the WAIT for someone to come and repair the fault. They said they would come today but …

The Oshiwambo word for ‘now’ is ‘paife’. However, it can mean anything from 5 minutes to ‘sometime today/this week’. Stringing together paifes can help convey the immediacy (or not!) or what is being conveyed. ‘Paife paife’ is less immediate than ‘paife paife paife paife’.
Oshindonga also has its own word for ‘now’: ngashingeyi. An urgent ‘now’ would be: ngashingeyingashingeyingashingeyingashingeyingashingeyi!

We have found a very pleasant young lady to help us learn Oshiwambo. Amalia is 29 and shares a ‘house’ with another lady from her church. It is made of corrugated metal sheets and is about 3m x 2m, and about 1.8m high. There is a communal tap outside. She has asked me to teach her to cook (me?????) as she has only ever cooked food like spinach and porridge etc over open fires in her village. I remember when I was in Malawi and used to spend time in villages out in the Bush. I was not financially well off by any means but even wearing my oldest clothes in the Bush made me rich compared to those I lived amongst. And we feel rather like that here. We all have (more than one) change of clothes and a choice of shoes, variety in our diet and we ‘choose’ to live here. We could go back to comfortable Australia and get a well-paying job if we wanted to. People here have no such choice.

One thing we have done with Amalia is to play Snakes and Ladders. This is a great way to learn how to count as we have to say every Oshiwambo number as we land on that square: omilongo mbali nahetatu, omilongo mbali nomnwoi … (28, 29 …). One thing that amazed us is that Amalia did not know how to shake or throw a dice. And when she did, she initially had to count the dots to know how many she had thrown, whereas we ‘recognise’ the dot ‘shape’. We see that even playing board games with our children is a privilege for us all.

Amalia goes to the local Four Square Gospel church. She also goes to Bible study. ‘How many people in your church attend Bible study?’, we asked her. ‘Everyone. We all want to learn more about Jesus.’

1 April
We have 5 weeks left on our temporary work permit. Is that a lot of time or a little time??!!

Even finding out what words DON’T appear in a language is very useful. In Oshiwambo there is no word for ‘cheese’ or ‘garlic’ or ‘pea’ as they don’t have them naturally in their culture. A pea is called the same word as ‘bean’.

We like to walk around the neighbourhood and meet people, talk Oshiwambo with them and increase our vocab. When I am walking alone I often get hooted at by passing taxis because they are sure I must want a lift somewhere. Yesterday I got caught in a downpour and learnt the word for ‘rain’!

Next week David is away for the week. He will catch a local taxi bus from Oshakati and travel eastwards to Opuwo where he will meet up with Sebastian van Rensburg who is the TEE coordinator for the South. He is based at NETS and, before our arrival, he was able to only make 1 trip a year up North. With Sebastian David will meet the existing TEE groups from Opuwo to Rundu (in the West: a distance of about 1000km). That will be so interesting – I am fairly green with envy!

You may have noticed that I mention both Oshiwambo and Oshikwanyama. Oshiwambo is a sort of generic term for all the dialects found in the different tribes. Oshindonga and Oshikwanyama speakers can understand each other but they have different ‘dialects’ so words can be quite different. This makes it rather hard when we are doing our language learning as we come across different words for the same thing. ‘Fingers’ is ‘eenyala’ in Ndonga but ‘ominwe’ in Oshikwanyama. In this instance, the Oshiwambo (commonly-used) is ‘eenyala’.

As I think I mentioned before, there are security guards at the exit of every shop to compare your invoice to the contents of your bags (to discourage shoplifting). We practice our limited phrases on these unsuspecting ‘victims’. David did so the other day and the chap asked why he had come to Namibia. When David told him the guy hurriedly ticked the invoices waiting behind David then dashed off. He came back with his Bible and began asking David questions about what Genesis 6.1-2 meant. Providentially, David had been reading that chapter and its commentary that very morning and was able to help!

This Sunday (2nd) we will spend at Bishop Kalangula’s church (in Ondangwa, 30kms away). David has been asked to preach and I am to do Sunday school, after the service. I am not sure what language I will be expected to work in which makes certain aspects hard to prepare (is the memory verse to be in Oshikwanyama or English?). And the Sunday school is the church and has ZERO resources. No crayons, pictures etc. So we are off to buy some stuff to help make Sunday school memorable. When our stuff finally arrives (… we thank God that someone has been found who will bring it up to us for the initially-quoted price), we shall have puppets!

Étienne is working hard at his Afrikaans. Unfortunately, he has not mastered the art of rolling his Rs. This is very necessary to speaking Afrikaans, and means certain vowel blends ending in R are, as yet, inaccessible. Starting school at 6.55 means a very early start for us all but coming home at 1pm is great. And, as it is the termly test time, they finish at 11 every day.
He still reads everything he can get his hands on. Recently, he has been reading about diseases. Caris came in the other day and said she did not feel well.
‘Perhaps it is tapeworm,’ said Dr Étienne. ‘Or maybe ringworm. Or liver flukes. I think it is actually all of them together.’ Caris accepted this diagnosis without hesitation.

3rd April
It was so weird (yesterday) sitting to be in an Anglican service, singing a song with a familiar tune and it is all almost totally incomprehensible! It was also weird as I was last in Bsp Kalangula’s church10 years ago (minus 2 months), when I came to Northern Namibia with a George Whitefield College team.
David had a translator but was able to put in a few Oshiwambo words! When the main service was over, the children’s turn came. They had been sitting through the main service and now came forward eagerly. There is not usually any Sunday school and we had fun with a Colin Buchanan song, a memory verse taught via water balloons – that were burst (amidst much wet laughter) at regular intervals – and a chance for them to do colouring with some crayons we had brought along (we made a ‘wordless book’ with them).

Next weekend David, along with the Prentices who will come up for the w/e, will be attending the Installation/Enthronement of Bp Nathaniel Nakwatumbah (9 April Palm Sunday).

Young, male and single?
Looking for a wife?
For the cost of one cow and 2 hoes (to pay to your parents-in-law) you can get yourself a wife here in Owamboland.

5 April
David went to a restaurant when at Opuwo – but they apologised for there not being chips and no vegetables available!
He saw his first Himba people over there in Kakaoland. The Himba still preserve their traditional ‘dress’. Amalia, our language helper, told us that, even if the women practices as a doctor or something and wears European clothes at work, they change into their Himba clothes at home. The way the women braid and wear their hair indicates their age and marital status. I guess a husband would not have to worry about them overspending on their wardrobe!
When he went East, just into the Caprivi strip, he and Sebastian had a chance to go in a dug out canoe to see hippos up close but not personal. A couple of days later he heard on the news of two men crossing from Namibia to Angola in their dug out close to where he had been. They were attacked by a hippo and one man died.

11th April
David went to the inauguration of the Bishop on Sunday. He went with the Prentices (see CMS prayer diary, Day 23) and Jackie, who all drove up from Windhoek.
They arrived 30 minutes early and sat in the church ready for the service to start. It was delayed by 30 minutes. So, 1 hour later, it began and 5 1/2 hours after THAT it was cut short by a further hour as the Namibian President had to leave. What a loooonnnng service. Can any of you reading this beat a 5 1/2 hour church service?!
Jackie (from Manchester) was telling us of one supermarket she has been into North of us where they have coffins and nails propped up for sale next to toilet rolls! It is weird even going to our Spar and having an armed guard outside. We did not have that kind of presence in Armidale, to be sure.

I met some Americans at the weekend. They had hit a donkey and totalled their car, sending the donkey into eternity. Their lives were spared but there are many tragic accidents due to donkeys, cows and kudus on the road at night and twilight. Like the ‘roo problem when we were in Collarenebri.

When we were in Melbourne Étienne has many Vietnamese children in his school and he learnt Vietnamese as a subject. He began speaking like them, leaving out his prepositions and articles. When in Armidale he began to speak like an Aussie and change his Ts to Ds and drop off the end of some words. Now, in Ongwediva, he has already developed a clipped way of pronouncing his words, unconsciously echoing the way his Afrikaans school friends speak English!