Hank the Tank

Here is a piccy of us and Hank the Tank. Named for the blue politician in X-men. I know, so far off the geek radar it hurts. But he’s blue and huge and when he gives us trouble we can call him Beast. It’s been quite a feat to get the dealership to sort him out – and I’ll name names… General Motors are a total pain in the arse. We are driving to Cape Town in a couple of weeks and the dealership has promised to have him sorted out by then, so hold thumbs etc for us! Meanwhile feast your eyes on the fabulousness that is a ’95 Volvo in almost mint condition, or rather, heading towards mint condition!

You say Tomato

I have now been back long enough to notice some essential differences between the two places I call home. The first and most noticeable is the lack of plastic spoons in Namibia. Or maybe it’s just Whk that insists on only eating off only the finest cutlery.

We used to use our thousands of plastic spoons to dish our cat’s food. That way we could feel like we were recycling the wretched things. Here, we have been reduced to using our own cutlery and then two precious plastic forks, one of which has lost all but one tine. In DC, plastic spoons were practically thrown at you! Coffee shops, Chinese takeout, lying around on the streets, magically appearing in the back of your spatula drawer. Here I have had to BEG the local chicken joint to share their spoons with me and I am becoming know as the crazy spoon lady.

I have one spoon now, but it has taken me three months to get it and I am still guarding my two plastic forks (named Winnie and Minnie) like they are a matching pair of diamond earrings!

mad skillz

In this pic you can see my sis doing a very complex manouvre called trapezing. The essential idea is that you strap yourself into a harness and then trust that harness with all your body weight and drop off the side of the boat. This makes the boat go MUCH faster and also tilt. For some reason, this is thought to be fun. For me, it mostly meant that I wouldn't pee on the boat out of fear, cos my rear end was hanging over deep blue sea and goodness knows what IN that sea! Clearly, my sis has an over-developed sense of adventure and should share just a little of it with me.

mmmmmm

Whoah - I reallllllly am craving Chipotle. The creamy guacomole spread all over the black beans, with the crunchy green peppers and the strong onions. All laid on a bed of fluffy, warm rice. Mmmmm, and if you're not on diet - the contrast of the cold sour cream in between, and the cheese to hold it all together. mmmm

Oh dear.

Walvis Bay

Here are a few photos - full story to come later once I have finished my history homework!

There was a resident seal at the yacht club who came up on shore and barked to be fed at 4 every day. He was very cute and did tricks for his fish! Actually, it may have been a she. Mum went over to talk to her/him and it rolled over in the water like it wanted it's belly scratched! Which is a bit like a leopard asking the same! At one point someone's rottwieler was running around on the beach and there was a brief face off between him and the seal. My bet was on the seal, especially if they got back in the water, but the rotty was smart enough to back off to a safe distance and bark instead.

Group photo

All 47 youngsters plus the four adults... I think one of the guides is in front too.

more Orange river

Orange river

This is K and I coming down a rapid called sjambok... in English... the equivalent of a cat-o'nine-tails.

Orange River - pictures four and five

On the last evening, the campsite was very large, we were basically camping out in a river mouth that had dried up. The boys couldn't resist putting sticks in the gravel for goal posts and playing some soccer. These are the same boys, who on the first night, wanted to sing Manchester United songs at close to midnight when everyone else had gone to bed long ago. They went to sleep talking soccer and woke up talking soccer. So when K bounced the ball on his head and some other fancy stuff, the boys were immediately smitten!

Watching them play in the dust with the sun setting on the mountain behind them was seeing soccer as poetry.

Orange River - pictures two and three

This gives a good sense of the geology and what it was like to be on the river with all the canoes, surrounded by water and mountains. In front is the guide giving the signal to stop.

Orange River - picture one

This is one of the river in the early morning on the last day.

wishes won't wash dishes

B and S wash dishes at their place next door, and I wash dishes at ours. I miss our dishwasher. Although, even if we used ALL our dishes we still wouldn't fill a machine. So I guess it's a blessing in disguise! Not to mention the water saved!

This is the Quinn cat next door that Henry desperately wants to be his new best friend. But she is making him work for that priveledge!

This is the wall we share with Mum's garden as seen from our upstairs bathroom. B and I sometimes have whole conversations from our upstairs bathrooms.

House & Home

Here are a few pictures of the house as we have done it up. I was given a new digital camera and so can finally put up pics - if I can get the internet to work with me, baby!

The first is of C and K at work in our dining room on a Sunday morning.

The second is of part of our kitchen, we seem to have unintentionally found a striped theme for the downstairs.

The lawn looks like it is starting to recover which makes the smell of the manure we put down worth it. Not that we can lie, walk or sit on the lawn without getting poo all over us yet. Hopefully we'll get it healthy just in time for winter!

I just cut some bougainvilla to put in our house, it doesn't have a scent but it is so exuberant, even in a vase that it livens up the lounge and K's fave sitting and reading the paper chair.

We are slowly starting to get to the place where we are completely set up and the admin is over, and we can actually start living a daily life. For me this involves getting up with the cats, walking around a few blocks with H before it gets too hot and then working on my history before going in to St P to teach it. For K it means running around in the car and eventually ending up at DRFN for some work.

The Great Orange River

The geography of the river is largely towering granite walls painted in red, oranges and blacks. The rock is folded and creased and cut sharply through the middle where the river has carved a path. Often in the morning and evening we were in the shadow of the mountains on either side of us.

It is hard for me to describe the feeling of being on the water in that place. In the early morning there are so many sensual experiences. The cold and wet grass tickling your feet. Drops of water falling off the paddle onto your bare legs as you pull your self through the water with smooth, even strokes, twisting your hand and shoulders to put the blade into the water. the sun burns the backs of your eyes as you watch a bird that is just a black shape against the light blue sky. In the evening the feelings are very different. Your body is exhausted and done. Your brain is on hold from feeling completely dominated by the environment around you. There is dirt everywhere but it is comforting and feels like it is keeping you warm. There are so many things that simply do not matter on the river and living becomes elemental. It is so physical all day that the physical becomes all you can focus on. Food, sleep, water are all your body needs. It leaves your mind and spirit completely empty and then fills it with the unforgettable scenery which becomes seared onto your pupils so that even when you close your eyes at night, in your sleeping bag, you see the silouette of the granite against the sky. And even in the night the physical environment cannot be ignored. It seems as though you must memorise every star and all the star dust and their place in the sky before you can sleep. It cannot be possible that anywhere else on the world is the sky as full as the earth.

rain, sunburns and the Orange river

Oleo just came dashing in, disgusted that the sky is once again promising to fall on her head. It has been thundering and lightning all day and the humidity is gross. You could say that a monkey is getting married cos it is raining at last, but the sun is till shining through the drops. The humidty after the rain is always worse because the water evaporates off the hot concrete.

K went to a workshop yesterday and didn't know it was outdoors. As a result he spent most of the day in a borrowed hat and trying to hide his crispy forearms under his shirt, behind his back and any other place that could give him some relief. His face is brown as a farmer's but his arms are nothing short of two large lobsters. Sleeping next to him last night was like sleeping next to a radiator. I on the other hand am looking more like my natural colour. Just from swimming and walking around I have got a healthy hue back.

We will be canoeing down the Orange river next week, we'll be going with the International Youth Award students. Four adults, fifty teens - promises to be fun. I made the lead teacher promise to let me be in the same canoe as K and his sunburn. I am feeling more than a little apprehensive as I have never even managed to make a kayak go backwards, let alone forwards over rapids! The advantage of having fifty kids with you is that I won't have to wash a single dish! I am looking forward to sitting at a fire, watching the glow of the embers, while the unending stars are above us.

Keir in the dunes

Keir, in Gobabeb

Catchup

I have now been here two weeks and as cliched as it is, time seems to pass differently here. It is like two weeks have been stretched out till I never left. And yet, I seem to not have done very much in the days I have had.

The house is all set up, and we have hung pictures, which goes the furthest to making a place feel like home. We bought and borrowed furniture from various sources so that now we have a lovely lounge and small dining room table. Most of you will understand that a small dining room table doesn't leave much space for scat or speed scrabble. Which is fine as we end up next door at L's most nights anyway.

C is already tired of speed scrabble but the rest of us love it so much that a night hasn't passed in the last six that we haven't played a game. The scat has gone down equally well with the more rowdy crowd. Of course that makes me happy as my bliss is to play cards all night, every night.

The cats are in heaven, Henry gallavants and is fast making buddies with all the neighbours, including L's cat and H's two wee dogs. The one is actually smaller than Henry - giving him an unfair advantage, it won't be long before there are complaints about our roving ginger boy. Oleo is as happy as a pig in mud, she has favourite spot under a bush for her mornings, and a spot in the ferns for the hot afternoons. They are getting along and even snuggle together with me when it finally cools down at about 3 in the morning.

I am walking everyday with H and in the evenings with L, the only times of the day when you want to be moving further than the fridge for water, which must be boiled and then cooled before drunk. On these walks I get thrills from all the birds I see that I have missed. This evening we saw guinea fowl, as well as the blue waxbill which looks like it was dipped in paint.

I have occasionally swum in the new town pool with R and that is lovely. As always, getting in is the hardest part. Your body is warm from the car ride, and the water is still cold from the previous night. Swimming under the sun, with the water glinting in front of me makes me impatient for visitors so that I can share these simple things that define life here.

A Closed Mouth gathers no Foot.

Last night I sat at my Mother's table and played cards with her, my two sisters, a boyfriend and my husband. The title of this post was something said by S - the boyfriend. It made us all laugh so hard and in that moment I was overrun by the feeling of being home and being held in the normalcy of here.

There are so many changes to the town, and to the people that are here, almost everything is slightly different. Whole new suburbs where, for me "here be dragons" was once stamped on the map. Wanaheda, Rocky Crest, Prosperita, these were not words that were part of my childhood. Now they are sections of the city I have never been to, in a city where I have lived in 18 houses in half a dozen suburbs, in a city where half a dozen suburbs was all there was.

There are also things that are the same and it is these things that give me silence in my soul. The roads still smell like evaporating petrol. The smell of rain (petrichor - I looked it up) and the smell of dust are all sensory reminders that I am where I always have been in my heart. They also remind me that these smells will always be here, wherever I go. The backs of my Mother's hands are still as soft as talc and the couch's texture is grainy. The sky is so blue and all the other colours are washed out by the sun. Everyone spells colours this way.

I do miss WDC. She is a large and vibrant city that sucks your time and leaves you with a nervous and tense energy that almost never fades until you collapse on your couch determined to ignore her, waiting, just outside the window.

WHK is so different, the breeze blows in my open door, and warmth of the passing day leaves a layer of dust on my skin that seems to make my day slow and gentle.