Between Meetings

Monday, 1/17/11

Happy Birthday Aaron.

Most of Thursday and Friday were taken up with conference planning meetings at the university and with establishments around the city.  We did get a call late in the week from a new lodge, River Crossing, and they invited us to take a game drive on their 6.500 hectare (25 square miles) property.  This lodge is less than a year old and they thought this might be a good activity for the conference delegates.  So since our Friday meeting with the university was in the afternoon, we got up at 6:00 am and went up to the lodge.   JACKPOT!   What a fabulous place.  After a five minute drive from the lodge, we never saw another sign of human life for the next four hours.  Absolutely beautiful scenery.  Unlike Okapuka, the game here is not acclimate to human interaction so they are relatively skiddish.  Most of the viewing was across valleys or gulleys.

Beautiful open terrain.

This is mile high country (like Denver)!

Our guide was Albertus Dosh and the Land Rover could cover most any terrain.

   A steenbok in the grass.

 

Kudu crossing the gulley.

A herd of black wildebeest across the valley

Hartemann's mountain zebra

Zebra, blue wildebeest and springbok watching our approach.

Off they go.

Sunday BBQ at Edwin's & Emmy's

Monday, 1/17/11, 6:00 am

After attending the Sunday service in Katutura, we came back and loaded up the SUV with cooking supplies and headed over to Edwin's and Emmy's.  What was planned for a Sunday lunch for 30 turned into a BBQ for 50 as we forgot to plan for the 20 or so kids that arrived to enjoy their pool.

Katie, I asked Dolly about what her favorite toy was and she said, "Dolls".  Below is Dolly (right) and her cousin (Yay/yama rara) with her doll.

Edwin (right) a PLU graduate prepared the fire in their poolside lappa along with his brother, Brian (left).

Emmy (left) and Gloria (a friend of Emmy's) made homemade bread.

Jennifer, Paula and Emmy working on a custard dessert.

Some of the boys enjoying the pool.

Dolly on the back of Ben Bernacke (or is that Sean Connery?)  She stole his hat.  Looks like Ben's been working out in the gym!

Gume, Utarera, Shanda and Yay/yama rara cooling off.

Little Booba watching some of the gang showing off for the camera with one of the PLU students, Veronica.

Sunday Service

Sunday, 11:00 am

Just back from attending church service in Katutura.  Helen, aren't you proud of me!
We went to our friend, Noah !Gaoseb's church.  Noah is a math instructor at UNAM and we taught together when we did teacher training in Opuwo for the Himba Ondao Mobile Schools project a few years back. The service ran from 9:00 to noon and we stayed for the first half of it.

The service was in an old movie theater building.  Lots of contemporary music and dancing and more music and more dancing and an occasional scripture reading and more music.  It was pretty warm inside so everyone was wiping the sweat off their brows.

We were all invited to the front to introduce ourselves and to talk a bit about the work we were doing in Windhoek.  After our brief talk, me about the conference, and Paula about the PLU student teachers, they had these two young boys come up.  One, who was 10 years old, did a Halleluja rap while his 6 year old brother danced.   They brought down the house!

Answers to Katie's questions

Sunday, 7:00 am

Hi Katie,
Here's some answers to your questions.

What is the current temperature?  It has been rather mild here, thank goodness.  Today it is suppose to be a high of 83 F and a low of 63 F with afternoon thundershowers.   They give the weather in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit as we have in the US.  So the paper reads - high of 28 C, low of 17 C.   To change from Celsius to Fahrenheit is another challenging math problem.   You take the Celsius number and multiply it by nine, then divide that by five, and then add 32.   Yikes!  So tomorrow is suppose to be a high of 25 C.  What will the temperature be (in Fahrenheit)?   :-)

What did you have for breakfast, besides chips? :)   I try to eat a big breakfast and a small lunch because the heat at lunchtime effects my appetite.  I had granola with berry yogurt, an egg omelet with cheese and ham, toast with berry jam and coffee.

What do kids her age (8) like to play with?   Kids in the city of Windhoek have access to toys just like yours I will show you that tomorrow morning.  We are going over to Edwin and Emmy's house this afternoon.  We are cooking an "American" meal for them, some friends and the PLU students - probably 30 people in all.  Paula and Emmy are cooking 3 cheese macaroni, Edwin and I are barbequing chicken and we'll have a big salad.  They have a daughter named Dolly who is 8 or 9 and a new 8 year old cousin is living with them.  I will have them get their toys together and will do a photograph of them with their toys.   There is a big, new mall in town where you can find most everything.  

    When we go north later this week, they won't have any of these things. So I will watch and or ask somewhere up there to answer that question.

 
What other animals have you seen? Can you post pictures of them?  Wow, let me see.  I've been on two game drives so far (I plan to do a post on them later today).  On these two drives I've seen giraffee, warthogs, white rhinoceros, crocodile, impala, eland, springbok, steenbok, mongoose, tons of birds, mountain zebra, Burchell's zebra, blue wildebeest, black wildebeest, water buck, kudu, ostrich, oryx, blackbacked jackal and dik dik.   I'll post some pictures in my next blog.

Does the Namibian Newspaper have a section for comics?  They only have one cartoon in the paper called, "Ndeshi & Jakes".  :-)   I'll bring you a Namibian newspaper for you to see.

Take care and thanks for the questions.

Rebuilding of the Okahandja Crafts Market

We needed to see if we could still have a visit to the Okahandja Crafts Market as an optional tour for our international conference delegates.  So we had Unanee drive Dr. Towne and the PLU student teachers up to see the market.

 It had been totally destroyed by a September flash fire.  Here is a picture they have hanging in the stalls.

The rebuilding has begun and they already have about twenty stalls constructed.  They had a truckload of wooden pallets donated.  They are dismantling the pallets and using the wood as siding.  We are convinced that they will have plenty of stalls rebuilt by July to bring the delegates up for a visit.

We weren't able to find Elizabeth and her daughter, Emma.  But we did meet a new friend, Teresa, and her daughter, Lucy, and bought some things from her for Mr. Stafki and Mrs. Stone (batiks).

We'll stop by on our way back from the north next week, to pick up some more gifts for friends back home who made orders.   (FYI- if anyone has late orders for gifts, e-mail them to me by Monday as we leave early Tuesday for the north.  Carved makalani nuts - the fellow in the photo two above his holding some-, batiks, carvings, small or flat baskets, etc.)  :-)

 You can see some of the batiks hanging above.

Another new friend

Never found out if it was OK to make friends with those lizards in front of the Parliament, so I found a new friend at the lodge.

Home Building

House Building

   There is a empty field next our lodge.  Each morning on my walk to the little grocery store down the way to get a newspaper, The Namibian, I stop for a bit at this field to watch a weaver bird building a nest.  Our lodge manager, Paul, used to be a professional birding guide in England.  He came to Namibia to pursue his birding passion.  So I asked Paul, "Why is this bird building a nest so close to other weaver nests (as there are six or seven nests on adjoining limbs)?"   

   Paul said, “Oh no, these are not the nest of other weaver birds.  If they are brown, they are nests from last year.  If they are green, they are this year’s nest built by the same male.  The male will built a nest and then show it to his female.   If she does like the nest, she will rip it apart and he will have to start over.  So if you see nest real close, then that means the female has rejected the other nests (living room to small, she wanted hardwood floors – he put in tile, etc.   :-)"

So yesterday I took my telephoto and watched him for awhile. 

Ready to go to work

 Examining his progress

 Off to find the female to get approval of his progress

 She returns to inspect his progress

 She continues her assessment.  He seems concerned.

 Making final adjustments before she examines the second home.

 Don’t know what her comments were, but back to work he went.

 What's a guy got to do?