Vervets, Mongeese and more

P and I just came back from safari and camping in Chobe National Park. We spent three days amongst the most incredible animals. At the camp site on the first day I had to fight off hoards of vervet. Armed with a stick I defended my neighbors foodstuffs while the head vervet ran at me, hissed and threatened. I stood my ground (sort of) and triumphed (with the help of one of the campground staff.) As I turn around to resume my seat there sitting to my right is a HUGE baboon hiding behind my other neighbors tent. As P returned from his shower, I told him of my experience and he whisked me away to the safety of the restaurant for lunch.

That was the first afternoon.

The next morning, I was awoken by squeaking and a knocking on our tent flap. Again, P was in the shower and when I emerged from the tent, sticking my head out the flap I came face to face with a broad striped mongoose! I said "Good Morning" and looked to my left where I sited 10 more ready to scamper as I spied them. As the day progreessed we encountered bigger and bigger animals...crodiles, hippos, sables, springbok, gemsbock, TONS of ELEPHANTS, water buffulo, and giraffe. We got stuck in the sand and had to be pushed out by four men (one of which was in his eighties - all tourists as well).

The next day we went to the second largest waterfall in the World Victoria, Falls in Zimbabwe.
Stunning! We have lots of pictures so don't even try to imagine it all we'll show you the pics!
We are back in our present house and will move to the capital for two weeks before we leave to Germany. We will be living in Germany for a year at least. But, I might be coming to Canada for a visit end of September.

Miss you tons!!!!!!!!!!! and Love ya tons too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Namibian Travels

Hello Everyone,

We are Namibia and boy is it beautiful. It took two days to get here (we are traveling by bus). When we got to the border we discovered there is no bus to Windheok (the capital of Namibia). We were about 500 km from Windheok and had to find lifts. We lucked out by getting a taxi to Gobabis and that taxi driver brought us to another taxi driver who brought us to Windheok. All it cost us was 180.00 rand. The taxi driver to Windheok was so nice we are going with him today to Drobabis to see weavers and on Sunday we are going to his house for his birthday.

We are staying at the Puccini Backpackers until Saturday where we will move to a different backpackers. The computer I am usiong is not very good so I will leave off here. Love you all!

Leaving

Hello Everyone,

It is July and we haven’t posted on the blog since April. I didn’t post anything while things were going badly and today is my second to last day of being with the organization I work with in Africa.

It has been pretty terrible here over the last few months and especially bad in the last month and a half. We never received any more funding than the original 78,000.00. Which means we can’t really go on with the plan we came up with. But, that isn’t the worst part. The board again let the staff go (rightfully, as we had no money to pay them) and when one staff members resisted (she just says "I won’t accept that") the board again withdrew the letters and had them stay on. When they were given the letters, the women who refuses to accept things said that "if anyone works here besides me I will burn the building down with petrol". This was because one employee was given an extra month so as to complete the books for the end of the fiscal year.

We owed the employees over 50,000.00 for back pay, gratuity and leave days untaken and the board was panicking. Within a week I had sold our store of oil and we received the money from the buyer before shipping to help us get out of the situation (I sold more than 55,000.00). Once that happened I went to a trade fair to sell the products and the money we made was stolen from the apartment we stayed at. When the chairperson of the board found out she yelled at me for over an hour in front of three employees and demanded that I pay the money back.

Since then things have gotten worse and worse. The chairperson has informed me that I am not allowed to make any decisions with asking her first, she gets angry when I make management decisions. She even refused to let the money leave the bank to pay employees, without her – she said that if I and the accounts officer stole the money she would go to prison. One board member (the one who was with me selling at the trade fair refuses to speak to me in English, so I don’t know what she is saying.

The chairperson and three other members make decisions without quorum and have treated the employees with disdain (because they wanted their back pay.

The board had a meeting last Friday and when I found out it was scheduled to discuss my extension (I had been given an extension because me sending agency wanted to pull me out in December when we discovered there was no money in the organization), I asked why I had not been informed and I was told "because it has nothing to do with you." This is interesting because I am at all board meetings and recently when I said I wasn’t a board member but was an advisor to the board they got mad and insisted I was a board member.

Yesterday, my sending agency director asked to attend the scheduled board meeting tomorrow to discuss things and the chairperson said she wasn’t allowed to come. As of today, a fax from my sending organization has arrived saying that tomorrow I am being pulled out. It demands a formal apology be made to me by the board.

I have arranged that tonight a friend will come and move our things from the house (next to the organization I work- and which is owned by that organization). Tomorrow I will attend the board meeting and then leave the village. It also means my sending agency will not find me another placement and we are to be repatriated. So we will either go to Germany or back to Canada. We might see you soon!
WOW! What an experience this has been.

My partner's experience written by him

This is quite an eye-opening experience. With every day I get more comfortable and there are many things here that I really appreciate. I’ve been a ‘back-to-nature’ guy since my neo-hippie youth – in theory at least. Here, aspects of life are as they would have been in Europe several centuries ago, or in Canada in the early 1800s. Here I see where phrases like "when the cows come home" came from – every morning a herd of the large cattle that they have here (crosses with Brahma bulls) come by our house, big cowbells clanging, and at sunset they come home, big cowbells clanging. They’re impressive beasts, and it’s wonderful to see that they’re not penned up in some factory-farm barn. The donkeys are cool, too, and it’s a shame that they weren’t given better vocal chords because they try so hard to vocalize, sometimes they sound like bellows with holes in them. Their raspy, trumpeting calls sound all over the village any time of day or night. It’s usually the males, complaining about their love lives, of course. Every once in a while I’ll hear a rush and thunder of hooves and I’ll go to the window and see a group of donkeys charging by the fence (we’re the last house in the village and there’s a large wild hill that rises to tower over the village about half a kilometer from our doorstep) – in those cases it’s often males chasing females around. While this might sound idyllic (and I really appreciate the realness of it, and that this, essentially, is the wellspring of life), the omnipresence of these animals has to do with their economic necessity, and there’s no sentimentality expressed toward them. Here, if a dog barks at you or some goats are in your way, you just throw a rock at them (not hard enough to injure, of course). My worldview is expanding and now that the bewilderment is draining away the enjoyment is setting in.

Good News!

Well…I really need to write more, but I haven't been in our home village that often in the last month, nor will I be in the next coming month.

We have now been okayed for funding of 78,000.00 in the local currency. (21,544.70 CDN). Also, because of that, another funder is now letting us spend the funds they gave us in 2004 - they said we couldn't spend it until another donor came in.

We still need more so that we can do all we plan to do to become sustainable. About our trip on the road to sustainability, we have been given great support by one of the Embassies here. They are helping us to access and penetrate the export market for our best product. This will greatly help the over 1000 women who harvest and produce the products from the wild.

Getting our product to market so the women can make money is hard, to say the least. One of our truck's 5th gear doesn't work, the shocks are shot and the radiator fills with oil and mixes with the water. We took a trip to the capital the other day and on the way (in our other truck - we have two trucks on their last legs, ooops wheels) we had two flat tires. We had no money to fix it and what we really needed was a new tire. But, people are great and giving! When we got to the capital we went to a tire place, you know where they sell tires and put them on for you. I told the owner that we had just travelled over 350 klm and on the way had two flat tires. We still had to go back but had no money to buy a new one. So….he gave us a brand new tire and put it on for us.

I saw the most amazing bug the other day (see photo- I can't seem to download the photo I will try later). I just had to take a picture because it looks like a bug out of "A Bug's Life" (the movie).

There is a lot of death here. Every weekend, in our village, there are at least two funerals. A month ago there was a murder in our village. A young teenage girl was dating a young man (just a few years older than her). The young girl's mother didn't like it, so she and her son beat the young man to death. After the funeral the villagers (mostly youth) had a riot in front of the house of the woman who killed the young man. She had been let out of prison, until the court date, because she claimed that she didn't do it - that only her son had done it. So the youth of the village rioted and threatened to burn down her house. The police were there, but apparently they kept running away from the rioters when they got really excited. I wasn't there to see this, I stayed home, but I heard the voices and shouts all the way to my house at the edge of the village near the hill.

Then the other day I was staying in another village near the capitol. When my driver came to pick me up he said "have you ever seen anyone hanging by their neck?" I said no and he said "well you are going to." As we turned the corner there was a police car and many people on the road. And to our left was a man hanging from his neck from a big tree. I had never seen such a thing. The man was dead and had been for a while. His skin was blue and his feet were buckled under him on the ground. He could have stood up if he had wanted to, but I guess he didn't want to and so he died. For some reason the police hadn't cut him down by the time we drove by. When my driver told me about it before we saw it, I wondered how I would deal with seeing something like that. When I saw it (and now when I remember it) I get a hollow feeling in my chest. It's scary to see something like that but mostly there is sadness for him. I asked my driver if he had ever seen something like that before and he said "yes, this is my forth time". To top it all off, when going back to the capitol last week we saw a car stopped on the side of the road. As we drove by we saw that it had hit a donkey. It was a baby donkey and it was still alive sitting on the road. It was hurt badly and I hoped it wouldn't suffer for too long. When I saw that I thought "there is so much death here". I debated whether or not to write on the blog about this because when writing you will all read it (and see it) in a condensed form, all at once and that doesn't really give the reality. I don't want you to worry and it is so easy to do so when I am so far away. Although, I see more death here than I ever did there is so much beauty too.

The people are so nice and their smiles are beautiful. They love to laugh and I complain that I can't laugh with them because they tell the stories in the native language (because it's easier for them to tell a story that way). They laugh a lot. The staff I work with love to learn and the training and capacity building that they are getting while I am here has made them quite pleased wit themselves and their abilities. This work is definitely uplifting!

On the funding front, I have always said I would not ask for or accept funding from outside this country until this country gave us funding first. We now have achieved that! So…if anyone is interested in doing fund raising for us, we need lots of things, but at this point we really need:

- A new vehicle which would cost approximately P40,000.00 (11,048.60 CDN)

- The chemicals we need to make shampoos and lotions P100,000.00 (27,621.40 CDN)

- And money to pay for petrol, paper, ink, wages, communication tools etc…P168, 000.00 (46,403.90 CDN)


Thanks!

I have to tell you this story.

A couple of days ago, our Office and Accounts Manager was going to the closest big town, with our driver, in the vehicle. When they returned, I was trying to get the water tap to open so water could fill up our tanks. It was stuck and I was struggling with it. I decided I needed something to use as leverage, so that the tap would turn. I went into the kitchen and took a spoon. I was going to insert the handle through the openings in the tap and turn the tap using it for leverage. When I came out the driver was there. So I decided to ask him to fix the tap. I showed him the spoon and ask it he would use it to fix the tap.

He looked at the spoon then he looked at me and said "Ah!"
I said here and handed him the spoon.
He looked at me, "What is this? You need a spanner, not a spoon!"

He then went to get a spanner. At which point our Office and Accounts Manager came over to me saying "Ah! We had a bad accident on the way."

"Really?," I replied.

"Yes" she answered, "When we were driving a bweid hit our truck on the left side."

"Was there damage?" I asked .

"Oh yes, it broke the front light"

"Did you stop?"

"Yes, to see the damage", she replied.

"Did you get all the details, then?" I asked

"Details? No.". she erplied.

I then said, "You didn't get his name and insurance details?"

She answered, "Insurance? No."

"No? That is what insurance is for, his insurance can pay for the repairs."

"How", she queried.

The driver then came over to us, and I asked if they had had an accident.

"Yes, a bweid hit us." He said.

"But, you stopped, did you get all the details" I asked

"What details?"

"The insurance, his license number, his name", I said.

At which point our Office and Accounts Manager said, "No, how? It was a bweid that hit us."

I said a "Bed?"

"Yes, a bweid."

"So a bed hit the our truck?" Did it fall off a truck in front of you?"

"No, It flew off and went right into our light!"

I started to laugh. "A Bed went into our front headlight?"

"Not into it." Our driver said, "It hit it and broke it completely".

So I said, "Well did you get all the details so his insurance can pay for it?"

They looked at each other.

"What insurance?" they asked.

I said, "The driver's insurance, the one that had the bed fly off the truck and hit our truck."

"Ah, No! " they replied, "What good is that?"

"The driver's insurance can pay for the repairs."

"What driver?", they asked.

"The driver of the truck with the BED!"

"There was no driver."

"No driver?"

"No, just a Bweid"

"A bed?" I asked.

"A Bed?, they replied, "No, not a Bed…a bweid"

"A bweid. What's a bweid?"

They looked at each other.

"A bweid. A bweid", they said and looked up.

" A bweid? I asked and looked up. "Oh, a bird!"

"Yes, a bweid!" they replied.

"A bird flew in and hit our head light." I stated.

"Yes." They replied.

And, I burst out laughing.

Into My 4th Month

I have now been here for four months. I have gone through the culture shock phase, when you are not happy with all the differences here - the ones you thought were fascinating when you first arrived. I have come out the other side, where things are easier because you just accept them. Although, I still find some differences very fascinating still!

We still have not received any funding. That is all I will say on that topic, as it isn't as fun to write or read about.

The Kgosi (chief of the village) might be coming over to our house Saturday night for dinner. He is a little sick and might not be able to come, but he really wants to come over. I had mentioned having him come to dinner once, when I first got here. I hadn't seen him since, until the other day. We have a group of University students visiting our village. They are from South Africa, Botswana and Denmark. I was invited to be the guest speaker and of course the Kgosi was there to officially welcome them. When he saw me, one of the first things he said was "you had said you would invite me for dinner". So he has been invited and it should be interesting if he can come. I had sat and talked with him for a while that day. He said he wanted to marry a white woman. I told he didn't really want to because we were difficult women. He asked why and I told him because we have been taught that we are equal to a man and that would be difficult for him. He said that in his culture a man is superior to a woman. I said that I knew that which is why being married to a white woman would be difficult. He then said that if he married a white woman he would have to change to adjust to her culture and she would have to change too so that the marriage was good. I expect if he comes to dinner, that we will talk more about this subject.

I had wanted to tell you a story about when I had visited the one of the Region's region council, but didn't have time to write until now. I had visited each region and met with them to talk about what they wanted from the organization I the future. After the meeting at the last one I visited, it was time for me to go. We had sat under a tree and eaten the lunch, which the members had prepared for us all. I got up and said my good-byes. The women all gathered together and to my delight they began to sing (see the picture below). I listened to them for a while and slowly realized they kept singing my name. Then they began to dance - a small shuffling step. I joined them and they slowly danced me over to the truck. All the time they were singing and in the song was my name. I got into with our driver and we drove off while I waved at the ladies and they waved at us - all the time continuing to sing. I asked our driver "What were they singing?" and smiling he said "they were singing that it is too soon for you to leave, Amanda. That they will wait for you to return."

Wow, isn't that beautiful?

These are the women as they started singing. 

These are the friends I told you about 

This is my favorite bug in Africa. It's a beatle. His name is George.