We spent this past weekend in Oshikuku with a lot of fellow volunteers. A few volunteers even travelled from the south to come up and see us. It was also a fellow volunteer's primary school's inauguration. Saturday was spent attending the official ceremony in true Namibian style - it started an hour and a half late and ran on for 4 extra hours!


An Owambo cultural group from Oshikuku performed at the inauguration.


Students formed lines to greet visitors as they entered the school.









I got to know the girls sitting behind me and, as we waited, they decided to plait my hair.

A Namibian friend asked me the other day if white women give birth the 'natural way'. Assuming she was talking about epidurals, I said no, many women today take some kind of pain relief during labour.

"No, no," she said, "I mean, do they give birth through the legs?" (accompanied by a pointing motion to the groin area)

I couldn't stop laughing when she said this, I was so completely dumbfounded by the question! I asked her how she thought babies came out of white women. She said she thought they were all cut out of the womb.

After explaining that this procedure is only used on some women in certain cases, I learned that here in rural northern Namibia, Caesarean sections are extremely rare. My friend didn't know anyone who had ever had one. I can't image how women suffer here if they have a problem during delivery. My roommate, who works at the local hospital, told me that directly after giving birth, women are expected to get out of bed themselves and just walk out! Women from the villages camp outside the hospital when they are pregnant, sometimes for weeks at a time, until they are ready to deliver. Women in town generally work up until the week before they are due.

My friend also told me that another colleague had said that white women do not breast feed their babies. She said that they had been watching television when a picture of Angelina Jolie came on the screen. They decided that based on the size of her breasts she couldn't have been breast feeding!

Ah, so these are the perceptions of white women that Angelina Jolie has created here in Namibia.

It's been such a busy week! I'm giving music lessons most afternoons, which are going well I think. One of my students is the principal's son who I am teaching how to play the piano. It turns out that he is very talented, which is a nice surprise. When the principal first suggested his son for music lessons, I kind of just assumed he was using his clout to push his son forward, which perhaps he was, but it's nice to discover that his son is my most talented student!

I decided to show 'Finding Nemo' to my English classes this week and I think that overall most students really enjoyed it, although it was definitely confusing for them at times. For many of my students, it was their first glimpse into what life is like in the ocean. Many had never seen a whale before or a jellyfish, or indeed many of the other creatures portrayed in the movie. They loved the bright colours. However, a few of them told me that it was strange to hear fish talking, and moreover, to hear them talking English! One of my students also told me that it might dissuade people from a sea-related career because it was quite a scary movie with the sharks and all! I like being able to transport my students into a completely different world for a few hours.

This week I also organized a school anthem competition on Friday afternoon. Our school doesn't have a school anthem and wants one, so on Friday afternoon the entire school gathered to listen to six groups perform their entries, including an entry I composed. In the end 3 groups were chosen as finalists, including 'Miss Hunt's group', and the winning entry will be decided next week and will win N$500. I have to say in all honesty though, that the other two finalists are really superb and one of them should win. When I composed my song, I assumed that the melody, as well as the words, had to be original, but all the other groups chose well-known melodies and then just changed the words! The two other finalists chose beautiful hymn melodies that they sang with great harmonies. My song was so monophonic and dull compared to theirs!

This week I also had a run-in with some students when I was supervising evening study for the whole school a couple of evenings ago. In general I really dislike supervising evening study as I hate being the watchdog for hundreds of students by myself! One class, who I don't teach, started to become too noisy so I went into their classroom to find out who was causing the noise, and they were just extremely rude to me. This particular class is notorious in our school, but still, sometimes I think I am too sensitive to be a teacher! It's difficult for me to get accustomed to anyone, even teenagers, being really rude towards me! I know that it's generally not even personally motivated, it's just because you're a 'teacher', but I still find it tough. But the nice part was that when I told my colleagues about it, I really felt supported by everyone and it was really good to know that my colleagues care whether I 'sink or swim', as my mum put it. Also, I am lucky in that I feel respected by all the students that I teach and I know there are a lot of other students who do care about me.

The girls' soccer team played at Pete's school yesterday afternoon. The final score was 0-0, which I think we were all secretly happy about. They played in a soccer tournament in Ruacana a couple of weekends ago and lost their match there, and the goalkeeper, Vivian, in particular felt really bad about it. But seeing as these are the only two matches they have ever played, I think they are definitely getting better!


The girls and me.




You can see Pete's house and our car in the background.


Vivian, the goalkeeper, preparing to save a practice penalty shot. We decided not to take penalties as it was only a friendly match.


The girl's team.

We stopped for a herd of goats to move out of the road and a boy came running up demanding 'skip'. Maybe he was trying to say 'sweet', because everywhere we drove, we passed children who would come running towards the car yelling 'sweets'.




After camping along the Kunene River near Swartbooisdrift, we drove further northwest to the Epupa Falls to spend a night camping. It was beautiful.




A Himba woman and her child at the Falls.

We have just returned from a wonderful weekend which I will describe in more detail later. Here are a few photo previews, however. As we made our way in our little VW to where we would be camping along the Kunene River, two Himba adolescents decided to chase us on horseback. Yes, they caught up with our little car and overtook us (look, it's not made for this kind of terrain!). They then stopped and posed for victory pictures.