Nik Naks maize snack

    It’s always fun to check out the snack food in a different country.  Here the main labels for chips and snacks is Willlards and Simba.  They have some interesting flavors.  Besides the regular cheese & onion, salt & vinegar and barbeque flavors, they have smoked beef, hot peri peri, spicy tomato and fruit chutney flavors.   Yummmmmmmm.   
You can see that I got the "Party Bag" size.  :-)

Galimoto Math

Found a galimoto bicycle for when Mrs. Mebus reads the book, Galimoto, by Karen Williams to her 2nd grade class. A galimoto is a toy vehicle usually fashioned out of old wire.  Sometimes they a bikes, usually when I see kids playing with them they are rather large four wheel cars.  I've only seen two of these little bikes so far in any of the craft stalls I've been in.   It was hot and I didn't have the energy to bargain so I paid full price for it, $25!

So before Mrs. Mebus faints about how much of her money I spent, let's do the math.  Oh, I forgot to mention that the $25 was 25 Namibian dollars.

Practice MSP Math Question

   If Mr. Leitz spent 25 Namibian dollars for a galimoto for Mrs. Mebus and if one US dollar is equal to 6.7 Nambian dollars, how much in US money does Mrs. Mebus owe Mr. Leitz?   :-)

New Friends

Wednesday, 5:30 am

Uanee Karuuombe

Busy day yesterday.  Needed to meet with the gentleman who will be guiding the extended tours (up to Etosha Park or down to the big sand dunes) offered to the conference delegates.  His name is Uanee  Karuuombe.  What a great guy.  He is Himba, from a village just outside of Opuwo where we used to go to work with the teachers from the Ondao Mobile School Project. He started as a camping assistant and worked his way up to guiding for a number of major tour operators before starting his own company, Ombaue Tours and Safaris. You can probably pick out which one is Uanee.

He gave us the sad news that the big crafts market in Okahandja had had a flash fire a few months back.   It used to look like this and housed some of our favorite merchants including Elizabeth who sold baskets and batiks.  We known her for six years, from right when her baby Emma was born (in this photo Emma is about one).

The whole place burned to the ground in about 15 minutes, fueled by the thatched roofs, dry wooden posts and the crafts.  Okahandja does not have a fire truck and there were no water spouts or hoses to help.  Thankfully, no one was killed but most all the merchants lost all their wares and for most their life savings were in their merchandise.   Unanee is taking us up to the market later today so we can see what is left.  There is another market at the other side of town.   One of our conference tours was to visit the market, so we have to decide if that needs to be changed.

 This is what the market used to look like.

Penduka & Martha Muulyau

 Drove back out to the Katutura township to the other side where there is a place called Penduka.   As stated on their website, “Women in Namibia suffer from a low social status, which makes it difficult for them to find a job. As a result, the entire family lives in poverty. This vicious circle is often strengthened by a physical handicap or by diseases like tuberculosis and HIV AIDS.  Penduka tries to break this negative circle by providing these women with work. This way they can support their families and as a result their social status will improve both within their family and within their local community. “  They make beautiful textile products, embroidered goods, batiks, soft dolls, etc.  It was started in 1992 with 4 employees , I believe as a co-op/shelter for battered women  and now has 110 employees and supports another 500+ women through training in the crafts trade and interest free loans for education and housing.   One of the co-founders was Martha Muulyau and we were lucky to find her out on the café deck.  She a wonderful, kind lady and despite here physical disabilities (she was diagnosed with polio at age 4 and still uses braces, has had operations for scoliosis and wears a pacemaker), is a real powerhouse.

We invited Martha to our big conference Gala dinner and she accepted.   This will be fun as delegates will wear traditional, formal attire.  With delegates from 35 countries including India, China, Bangladesh, Zanzibar (is that a country?), Cyrus, 10 African countries, ... it should be an explosion of color! 

We would like to support this organization by paying them to make our conference bags, 300 to 350 of them.  After our discussions, Martha showed us around Penduka.  Some women were right in the middle of making batiks.  Batik fabrics are created by forming patterns from a mixture of flour, maize meal and water on fabric that is then painted.  The dried patterns are peeled off leaving beautiful designs.   Here they are laying two batiks out to dry the flour mixture.  Next they will paint them.

 Headed back to the lodge in front of an incoming thunderstorm.  Here are the clouds forming over Katutura.

Have to run to breakfast as Uanee is coming soon.  More later.  In the upper 80s today, so no snow in the forecast.  I hope all is going well at Minter.  Take care.

See below

I've added to the previous post, so if you've already read it, go back and see the additions.  :-)

Oops.  Internet was messed up so I've tried it again.

Monday, 3:10 p.m.

I found an answer to my arthropod question posted in my last blog.  These millipedes are not dangerous.  Found another particular large one and here's a girl trying on her new millipede bracelet.




So new questions, the park in front of the Parliament building was filled with these reptiles.  Do you think it would be safe picking up one of these?

We've been joined by our colleague, Dr. William Towne, who has flown in from Boston.  He is the president of the International Association of Special Education (IASE) and will participate in our planning meetings later this week.  He has never been to Windhoek so this morning was spent showing him around town, especially some of the sights we plan to include on the tours we are planning for the international delegates.  (As I mentioned in the first post, we are planning a conference for IASE for this July.)

 Here's Paula, Bill Towne and Dr. Jan Weiss who is here to help supervise the 9 student teachers from PLU who are here to start a two month student teaching experience.  We are in front of the Parliament building.

(it's starting to shower here so I might lose my internet connection)

Next we took Bill and the students out to Katutura to see one of the schools where they will work and to show Bill where one of our conference tours will go.

  Namibia has a population of 2.1 million.  It is the least densely populated country in the world, next to Mongolia.  About 300,000 people live in and around Windhoek.  About half of these live in the "informal settlements" around the township of Katutura.  These are mostly people from around the country who come to Windhoek looking for jobs and better schools.

(Yikes, the shower has turned into a 30 minute torrential downpour that is partly flooding the street outside, although traffic is still moving.  Now a thunderstorm has started so I'm going to upload a few more Katutura photos and write about them later.  I think we may lose power here in a few minutes.)
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Monday - 11:30 pm

The thunderstorm did not knock out the power, but it did knock out our internet connection until now.   So to finish this post.....................
Some of homes in these informal settlements have permanent walls, running water and sewer connections.  But most of them don't.  As you can see, many of the homes are one or two rooms with tin roofs.

Wednesday, 5:00 am

Students coming home from schools will often be told to bring home jugs filled with water - like the girls in this photo.  The city will have one water spout available for a large section of these homes, so you have to walk to the water spout to get your water.

Since there is no sewer for most, the city also sets up some outhouses usually along the dirt road so that they can be maintained.  You can see a row of three in both of these photos (the red boxes with the grey doors).

These informal settlements can stretch for miles.   It's hard for the city to keep up with the growth, especially when it comes to school.  Some of the students (students are called "learners" in Namibia) walk 5 or 6 kilometers to get to school which for elementary learners starts at 7:30 am!   They get out at around 1:30 pm.

School starts this coming Monday.  Teachers have work days this Thursday and Friday to begin to prepare for the learners.  You can imagine how chaotic the first week or two of school will be.  No one knows how many children have moved into the informal settlements.  Some have gone back to their villages and new children have moved in.

  So it is impossible for the school principals to know how many classes and teachers they will need for each grade.  Last year, one of the schools serving this area had so many learners the first two months, they had to set up temporary tents for classrooms and double shifted the schedule.  They had 600 learners come in the morning and they went home at lunch time.  They were replaced with 600 more learners in the afternoon.  Eventually they found more space at another school.  They are just finishing building extra classrooms for this year's group of learners, so things should be better for them.

Last two photos:  Katutura's version of a fast food restaurant.    

Mrs. Webster - Is this a good price for chickens?

(By the way, if you click on the photos, you can see a larger size - or double click to zoom in.  :-)

What day is it?

We've arrived safely at our destinations.  From door to door, our trip took about 38 hours, of which 20 hours were on two planes.  Our first flight on the German Lufthansa airlines was quite nice - every seat had its own video screen with a free selection of 18 different movies (watched Despicable Me and The Last Airbender), two meals with real silverware :-) and comfortable seats.  But after 10 hours we were ready to get off the plane and stretch our legs.

    Just under the airport you can catch local or long distance trains to take you anywhere in Europe.  We hopped onto a free local train and took a twenty minute ride to Weisbaden.  Well, I think it was free.  We just got on and no one came around to collect our ticket.   It was in the mid 40s and there is still some snow it spots left from the last snowstorm.   Walked the half mile from the Weisbaden bahnhof to old town center where the Saturday market was in full swing.  Didn't have any Euros on me so just looked at the delicious fruits and vegetables and baked goods.

 After a tour of the St. Augustine's church, searched for a restaurant to try some pork schnitzel and potatoes.  Couldn't help be think that if I could have found a kolbasa with that, it would have been the perfect fourth grade meal.   :-)

Then back to airport to wait for our :30pm flight to Windhoek.   The Air Namibia flight was not nearly as nice.  No movie screen on the seatback, less leg room and not as good food.  Fortunately, I had brought my own supplies of essential foods - CheezIts, beef jerky and Trio bars.  So all was good!

Arrived in sunny, warm Windhoek at 7:25 am.  And the fun began.
I passed through Immigration with no problem, but the first our Paula's student teachers (who are staying here for two months to start their student teaching experience) made the mistake of saying of answering, "Why are you here" with "I'm here for tourism and for working in the schools."  "Where's your work permit?" which no one has.   Paula's and all the students passports were confiscated and they were taken to a separate room.   I went outside to find our friend from the University, Edwin, who was planning to meet us, but he was no where in site.  We were stuck.   Eventually, though, after all the other passengers had left and we kept insisting that Edwin would be here soon, the head Immigration officer proclaimed, "I don't have time for all of this, go on." And that was that.   Edwin never did show up.   We heard from our driver coming in to town that there had been a big thunderstorm the night before.  So we think Edwin and Emmy, who were out at there village north of town, must have been delayed by the rain.  Many roads become impassable after big rains due to flash floods and such.   Some traffic lights in downtown were out, the internet at our place (Casa Blanca Hotel) was out and more.
      Made it to Casa around 9:00 where our rooms were ready but our friend, Frank, the owner was no where to be seen.   A English fellow, Paul, introduced himself and when asked about Frank, was told that he had returned to Germany, for good.  Yikes.  But Paula and Sherry are quite nice and knowledgeable so it will be fine.

Here's a friend who visited me while I was typing this.  So someone do some research for me.  Is it OK for me to pick this up next time he visits?

Having trouble uploading video.  Any bloggers out there (Mrs. Barnes, Mr. Stafki) - have a recommendation on how else to share video?  I'll try to use YouTube, but I suspect the internet connection is not very fast here.

So one last note, before I head to breakfast.  Here's a photo of Reuben who cooked us a traditional Namibian braai last night with chicken, pork, beef, lamb and beef sausage.  I'm trying to upload a video interview of him saying hi to the students, but it's not working with my connection right now.  Now I'll just post a picture.

  Today we try to find Edwin because he has set up our meetings with the Minister of Education and the University local organizing committee for the July conference.  We'll go downtown to exchange money, rent a car so we can drive to our meetings and return to Casa.  Paul is a professional birding guide and he has asked if we want to go out to Avis Dam to do some birding in the afternoon, so that's a possibility. 

Hello to all the Dolphins and welcome to guest principal, Mrs. Rimmele.  I hear that snow is in the forecast for you all.    :-)        Be well.

Mr. Leitz

Flight Path for getting to Windhoek

This is the route we're taking to Windhoek.   We are leaving from Seattle Friday afternoon on a 5,095 mile, ten hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany. 
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       ?? Question for the iPod Touch users --
       Is this flight longer or shorter than driving
       from Minter Creek across the country to
       New York City and back to Minter??
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We'll still be in the northern hemisphere  when we land in Germany so we're expecting cold weather.    We'll have a ten hour stay in Frankfurt.  We will cross nine time zones during our flight.  When we arrive in Frankfurt at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning, our bodies will feel like it's still Gig Harbor time which would be only 10:00 p.m. Friday night !   To make the adjustment, we'll force ourselves to stay up by taking a train into Wiesbaden or Mainz.