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on John and Dinah with VSO in Namibia (Namibia), 21/Sep/2008 15:12, 34 days ago
This is what I get when I try to load on a photo. It is meant to be the assembly when we gave out the shirts. Do people see that or a load of letters?! That's what I see but it may be something to do with my settings?It's another 2 weeks into the term and we are into the final lap with the grade 10s and 12s. They have another lot of exams next week and in 2 weeks finish lessons and have the actual exams. I wish we had more (or at any rate some) experience of the exam system here. I would know in an English sch. more or less exactly what grade they were going to get by now. I have no such confidence here. Add to that that this is the first time the school has had grade 12s and it's the blind leading the blind. Even though we couldn't do anything about it it would be good to have at least some idea! I have filled in predicted grades for UNAM (University of Namibia) applications etc. which could be very embarrassing. we will both lose classes when they go so should be an easy month in Nov. We will miss them though, especially the grade 12s who are an exceptional lot.They come to our house a fair bit and are welcome visitors. Although some of the others do too we seem to have a special bond with this group. I really wonder what will happen next year and if they can go on with their education as they hope. It will be really interesting to stay in touch with them and I hope that we can manage that. The internet should facilitate things.Once again the heat here is unbelievable. We have put all our duvets and stuff away and got out our air cooler although we haven't really started using it in earnest. We know from this and the fact that we still have one blanket in the middle of the night that we will get a lot hotter and face this with dread. One of our friends, Linda, another VSO finds the climate here wonderful and is not sure she can face the English 'grey' again. I would never feel like that! My skin is dried out so much that 2 of my sisters and my mother all gave me skin stuff for my birthday! I look 5 years older and would be much too vain to stay even if I enjoyed the heat!Last weekend some new volunteers arrived in Rundu. It was lovely to meet new people although it made us wish fondly for some of our absent friends. It was an eye-opener to see how much we'd learnt in a year. We found ourselves offering all sorts of information and advice to them. Luckily for them there was a cultural competition going on and we spent a couple of happy hours watching traditional singing and dancing which I hadn't seen before. Hope to add pics!!!! There were mini-plays as well but not in English so lost on us. I am quite ashamed that I'm still useless at Rukwangali.We woke up this morning to a load of goats outside our window. Poor things are really having to work hard now to find anything edible in this parched land. Our garden has a couple of shrubby things which are obviously delectable. John says there is still some water in the vlei (river valley) unlike this time last year but by Dec. they will be very thin (and many dead). Anyway we were very worried about goat droppings upsetting our wonderful neighbour so we rushed out in our dressing gowns and drove them straight out! It was a marvelous fluke as most times we chase round and round until some local takes pity on us and drives them away. However we felt like old hands!We got the car serviced last weekend. It has new shock-absorbers each major service and no wonder with these roads. They appear to have nearly completed about 50 km of the new tar road but meanwhile we have to drive in the ditch alongside. This means it's actually worse than before they started and the journey is very bumpy. Wish we could have new shock-absorbers. They will have to tar over the new part before the rainy season or it will ruin all they've done so hopefully not much longer like this.We got some lovely long emails today and if anyone has the time we'd love to hear from you dinahhilbourne43@googlemail.com incase you've lost it!All the best to everyone.The views expressed in this blog are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of VSO.