A few photos.

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This is our flat, behind the two cars (only the combi is ours).



Windhoek has a really nice, new Olympic sized swimming pool. It cost about $.30 to go here, and it is never crowded. There are no lifeguards and they sell beer at the concession stand.



A full view of the Okakuejo watering hole in Etosha.


Some wildebeasts at the water hole.



Maxine, Alice, Ruby and Bill watching the animals in Etosha.



We saw lots of elephants at Etosha. One time, a lone elephant started walking quickly toward our combi. We were glad to start up the engine fast and get away!



The lions were really hard to see in Etosha. We came across a pride of lions that was just beside the road. This is a photo of the male lion, who almost blends in entirely with the grass. When he lay down, he completely disappeared.

Cheetah House!

One of the neat things about Windhoek International School is that they have houses, like in Harry Potter. All kids in the same family are put into the same house. The three houses are: Cheetahs, Lions and Leopards. Maxine, Alice and Ruby are all cheetahs! Like in Harry Potter, you earn house points for athletics, as well as for doing well in class, for being a good citizen, or for doing something extra.
Maxine earned a house point for bringing her photo album that one of her best friends, Frances, made for her of St. Anthony Park School and the neighborhood. The kids were all impressed! They even made Maxine sing “America the Beautiful” in front of the whole class.

Alice has earned two house points. She earned one for helping to develop something for the school wide assembly, and one for being especially creative in math (or as they call it, “maths”)!

Another neat thing about WIS is that they have extracurricular activities that are included in the school fees (though for the price of the school, they better include them)! Maxine is in book club, drawing and choir. Alice is in book fun, girls’ soccer and crafts. There aren’t as many available to Ruby, but she does get to take Namibian dancing. Ruby is picking up the Namibian dancing fast!


The Main Office at Windhoek International School

Work

I (Liz) finally started working at the University of Namibia this week! I’m already very impressed with the people in my department. They teach about 150 undergraduate majors, and only have 5 faculty members and no support staff at all (zero). The head of the social work section, a lovely, committed hard working woman, does everything from arranging field placements to developing the curriculum to fixing the fax machine, along with teaching about 6-8 classes per year. The faculty members all have really heavy teaching loads, and also arrange and supervise field placements of varying lengths for students all over the country. I just went to a meeting where they were being encouraged to do research, but I can't imagine how they could fit that into their schedules too. They have all gone out of their way to be warm and welcoming, and each are very impressive. The Dean is also a very kind man, who has lots of good, big ideas for making the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences more relevant to the county.

Despite all the best efforts of my department, I still don’t have an office or a desk, and it is not clear when I will get one. We went to where we thought my office was going to be, and it had electrical cords hanging out all over the place. I’m not going to be teaching any classes by myself this semester, but instead will be teaching parts of pretty much all of the classes being offered. I’m also trying to get my research started, and have a few smaller projects lined up already. I am not even beginning to be able to find my way around campus yet. Some of it is quite lovely, like the interior courtyards of my “block” (building). Other parts look almost abandoned in the middle of the campus, like the empty Olympic sized swimming pool right in the middle of campus which definitely is abandoned. The pool at UNAM village where we live, while much smaller, is also empty with weeds growing in it. There clearly aren’t funds for extras at this school, though a pool would be ideal in this hot country.

Bill has been volunteering for the past two weeks every night for 4 hours per night at the American Cultural Center (Embassy) teaching GRE classes for Namibians who want to go to graduate school in the United States under the student Fulbright program. He has found it very rewarding, and they are so happy to have him helping them prepare for the tests, which are a week from Saturday.

Waterberg Plateau Park

This past week-end we convoyed with our new friends, the Conroys, to Waterberg Plateau Park, about 3 hours north of Windhoek. They are one of the other two Fulbright families here in Namibia, and have two sons who also go to WIS (Windhoek International School). Drew is a farmer and professor from Maine, who is here teaching agriculture at the Polytechnic. Waterberg is a huge plateau, which is of both environmental and historical interest. This was a German outpost in the early 1900s, and was the site of a war between the Germans and the Hereros in 1904. Now it is known for is wildlife, and there are some rare species, such as cape vultures and white rhino. We couldn't see as many animals as in Etosha, because the brush was thicker. The rains also have made things greener here. But, by our chalet we had dik dik, mongoose and lots of birds. There were signs all over the camp telling us to leave the baboons alone as they were “pests”, but we didn’t see any around the camp. We went on a hike up to the top of the plateau, which really was a quite challenging hike straight up the side of the mountain. The older kids ran right up, while Ruby, Bill, Liz & Janet took their time climbing over all the boulders. We enjoyed swimming in the lovely pool after the hike.

I think I finally am able to put in some photos - hope they aren't too small.


Here we are in the combi - on the left side of the road. This is the largest highway in Namibia.


This is Maxine, Alice & the Conroy boys at the base of the plateau. We went straight up to the top of the plateau behind them.


They have some very nice national parks. Janet & Liz are relaxing in the pool.

How many steps to change a light bulb?

We are thrilled to finally have a new light bulb in the kitchen, but it was a long and arduous process. The light was burned out when we arrived a month ago, and we have tried multiple ways to try to get it changed so that we can wash dishes after dark. We would have changed it ourselves, but the light can only be changed with tools, and the type of bulb is only available in warehouses. Over the past month, we have had four meetings with the management company, sent a letter and had a meeting with the university liaison that rents the flat from the property management company, and had the Embassy contact the property management company several times. On three different occasions we had workers come out and look at the light bulb. The process to actually get the light bulb involved having a worker come out and measure the light, then submit a requisition for the light bulb, then get a purchasing price approved, then pick up the money for the bulb, then get an order for someone to pick up the light bulb, and then get an order for picking up the light bulb. We waited at home for three days for someone to finally come and install the bulb, and it took two workers over an hour to install it. While it took a month, we are happy to finally be able to cook in the evening. We wonder how long it will take to get our oven fixed, which also hasn’t worked since we arrived…

While the management is very slow, we like our neighbors in our complex. The girls play with kids from Zimbabwe, India and Tanzania.

School starts

All 3 girls started at Windhoek International School this week. Ruby was going to go to a different school, but in the end we decided to keep them all together so they’d be on the same schedule – especially for vacations. Ruby started kindergarten in Miss Catherine’s room, Alice started 3rd grade in Miss Jan’s room, and Maxine started 5th grade in Miss Britz’s room. While all three girls still really miss their good friends in Minnesota, they were happy that the kids at WIS were so welcoming and friendly. Maxine already has various plans with some kids in her class (from Namibia and the Netherlands), and Alice gets along well with a Namibian girl in her class. Ruby plays mostly with a girl from the USA, a girl from Namibia, and a girl from England. There are only about 200 students in the school, from pre-K to high school. The kids come from all over the world. While the price of the school sent us into cold sweats (luckily the Fulbright covers some of the tuition), we do appreciate that the rates are drastically cut for Namibian students, so the international school does have a strong contingent of students from Namibia.

After the kids have a chance to learn more about their school, they will give their impressions.

Want to Visit Natural Africa?

After about one month here, we now know that Namibia is a great place to experience natural Africa. It is very empty (in some places even desolate) and easy to drive yourself around. There are lots of places to camp, or guest houses/chalets or more upscale game lodges. You can see wild life, desert, dunes, and the coast…and not be around hordes of other people. You can also go to some nice restaurants in Windhoek, and meet interesting people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The busy times of the year are around school holidays (now, and in August), and generally during the rest of the winter months (June-July). Most of Namibia is also malaria-free. We’d love visitors – let us know if you are planning to come! We have room in our flat, and an extra row of seats in the combi.

We just got back from a quick camping trip to a newly dammed lake about 90 kilometers south from Windhoek called Lake Oanob. Although I’ve never been, it reminded me somewhat of photos I’ve seen of Lake Havasu in Arizona, except WAY smaller, no houseboats and lots of rocks. (Ruby keeps calling every rocky point she sees, "pride rock"). It’s not surprising the lake is small, because we haven’t seen anything but a dry riverbed so far. This lake drains 2700 square kilometers of land (we looked up the metric conversion – it’s about 1050 square miles), and is not too wide to swim across and must only be about a few miles long. It’s a DRY country. We had fun swimming in the lake, camping on the top of a rocky hill and exploring the rocky hill side. We saw lots of lizards and butterflies at this campsite, and met some nice folks who were from the neary town of Rehoboth.

Etosha

The Etosha Park is just amazing. After we got our camp settled at Okakuejo (name of rest camp), we went for our first game drive. At Etosha you can go on self-guided safaris, so we just drove ourselves around this huge park (it takes hours to drive across it) on bumpy, gravel roads. On our first drive, we were shocked by how many animals we saw. We didn’t just see a few animals, we saw herds of springbok, large families of kudu, zebras and lots of other animals just on the side of the road. At first, we stopped each time we saw a group of animals, but after just a few minutes we realized that the whole park was like this. The animals like the Etosha pan (an ancient dried up lake) because of the salty sand , and the fresh springs that feed the water holes. We could drive right up to the water holes and look for animals. There is even a drive where you can go right out into the pan, and feel the salty sand (a little bit like the salt flats by Salt Lake City, but not so salty and definitely not bleak at all). Even though this is one of the busiest times of the year, we usually were alone at the waterholes, and would see cars only occasionally driving around.

At our first water hole, we saw a family of giraffe, who were accompanied also by wildebeest, springbok, gemsok, wildebeast and zebra! At the next waterhole, we saw a group of elephants – 5 adult elephants, two kid elephants and two baby elephants. A number of other animals were at the waterhole too. As we were driving back to our campsite, we were fortunate to see a family of lions right by the side of the road. The male lion was on one side, and two females and some cubs were on the other wide. We watched for about 10 minutes, and the lions just sat there. Finally the male lion yawned, and lay down in the grass. As soon as he was flat on the ground, he was impossible to see because he blended right into the grass. The animals behave SO differently than any of these large animals we’ve seen before, even at the most naturalistic type of zoo in the United States. Aside from the Elephant and the Lion, the other animals looked to be constantly on edge. While the cars didn’t seem to bother them, they were constantly on guard, and would jump at signs of predators. It seemed like they spent most of their time looking around to see if someone was going to come jump on them.

A highlight of Okakuejo is that there is a floodlit water hole right at the camp. The animals don’t seem to notice/mind the lighting. So, you can sit on a bench at the campsite, and watch wild animals just thirty meters away. At night, we watched elephant, zebras, giraffe, a bunch of antelope and a black rhino come by the water hole. It was the best show we’ve ever seen. The next day, we saw even more animals at the Okakuejo water hole. We tried to estimate how many animals we could see at one time, and we estimated that there were over 500 animals in view at any one time, maybe even more. We saw thousands and thousands of animals. Simply amazing!
The worst part of the campground was that there were wild jackals running through the camp. Liz was very mad that one of her jackals stole her sandal and ran off with it! The campsites were very nice though, and all have a braai pit (aka a bar-b-q), and they have camp kitchens for washing dishes. Many of the people have full bush safari equipment in these camps (including tents that fold out so you can sleep on top of your car), but we did just fine with our two small tents and the back of the combi.

In the several days we were there, we really couldn’t believe just how many animals we saw. We took notes on some animals of these animals – and I’m sure there were more than this. And this doesn’t even BEGIN to cover the birds.
Springbok
Gemsbok
Steenbok
Dik Dik
Hartebeest
Wildebeest
Black Faced Impala
Ostrich
Hyena
Zebras
Kudu
Black-backed jackals
Cape foxes
Elephant
Giraffes
Black rhino
White rhino
Lions
Warthog

Our poor internet connection isn't allowing uploading of photos. We'll try again from a better connection.

Driving Up North

We just came back from the most awesome three day trip. We drove 4 ½ hours "Up North" to the Etosha National Park.

The drive itself was very interesting. Driving on the main north/south highway (the B1), you get a sense of just how few people live in Namibia. We were warned by several Namibians how horrible the traffic would be on the highways on the 31st of December. We were advised not to even attempt such a trip, and certainly to leave by 6am if we were foolish enough to do so. But, on this two lane highway, we encountered another car only about every 10 or 15 minutes. The highway seemed to be lined with impressive termite mounds. We expected to see a few, but not the thousands of mounds that we did see. Also darting beside the highway were tons of warthogs. They are the funniest little things. As Ruby says, they are much smaller than “Pumba” in the Lion King, but just as funny looking. According to Maxine’s log, we also saw Ostrich and spring bok within the first hour of the drive. In 4 ½ hours, we passed through only 3 towns, and there is virtually nothing in between, aside from some extremely large ranches (cattle) and some game farms and lodges. The towns we drove through were all very pleasant, pretty towns, with lots of trees. We stopped at a lovely café in Outjo (which means in Herero – place of the cone shaped hills). After driving through the Etosha gates, we immediately began seeing wild animals. We saw a bunch of different type of antelope – gemsbok, springbok, kudu, black-faced impala, etc. just during our drive to the campsite. The campsite is an area right inside the game preserve, which is surrounded by a game fence and armed guards to keep the wild animals out. There also were 3 lovely pools and a poolside bar, which was so refreshing in the hot Namibian summer. Next post will describe the rest of our trip and post some photos.