Athletics competition

The first Saturday I was back the secondary school had an athletics competition. During the last competition while Daisy and I were away in Windhoek, Sachi had entrusted her camera to one of the learners, who had unfortunately  changed the settings, meaning that most of the photos were ruined. So I offered to be the official photographer of the day :P

Unfortunately that meant getting up early and spending most of the morning directly in the sun - consequentially I spend most of my time hiding underneath a shawl! It was amazing to watch though. There was a proper track laid out and everything! And surprisingly, even though it had been measured out by people shuffling their feet long in the dirt, it looked quite professional :)

Since it was a really sunny day I couldn't stay for the whole event otherwise I would have got burnt. I watched the running which was really quite incredible. Our kids are really good runners, and they were beating the other team by BIG distances. And of course it was all done without shoes. I also wonder what they would run like on a proper track, with proper running shoes on.




I watched the high jump as well which is always amusing. The other team hadn't brought any competitors for high jump  so it ended up just being a practice for our kids. But still, they seemed to be having fun and my learners certainly enjoyed watching the older boys jump.






One thing I do think is sad is that because of lack of funds, our kids are limited in what they can do. For example, schools like ours cannot afford hurdles or javelins, and so it tends to mainly be white learners who compete in those areas. And sadly it just turned out that our kids have been practicing with shot-puts which are the wrong weight!




But Sachi has truly done an amazing job training these kids. Which was shown by the fact that they absolutely thrashed the other school! WHOO! And miraculously I managed to not get burned!!

Project Pen!

This term I am continuing with my quest to make the kids more responsible. I'm trying to take baby steps, like encouraging them to actually look after their own things and to replace them if they got lost or stolen  - which happens a lot around here.






I've been surprised by the positive response from my kids, as a load of them have been buying pens and pencils off me over the last few weeks. I think that I've sold something like 10 pencils and 45 pens! Many of the pens were supplied to me by my amazing God-Mother Bernie, and the company that she works for. In fact, I am now officially out of 'Tennants' pens. I shall have to start selling the Barclays ones that my Gran has been sending me :D


At my God-mother's request I have taken some photos of my learners who have bought pens  - as always they were absolutely delighted that I wanted to 'catch them a photo'!

The library

Whilst Daisy and I were in Windhoek the library was re-painted and re-tiled. Unfortunately I don't have a 'before' photo to show you, but trust me when I say that it wasn't a very nice looking room. The walls were painted this very dark red/brown colour which made the room look really small and dark. But with the newly painted white walls and lightly coloured tiles it looks a million times better, and far bigger as well!

Some donated books from a charity - 'Books Abroad' had arrived and so my first job was to unpack them, record them all in the 'accession register' (the book where all the library books are catalogued - no fancy computer system here!) I had to put coloured tape on all of the books to colour code where they belong:

Red = English
Green = Afrikaans
Black = Non-fiction
Yellow = Fiction

And then I had to start putting them all into place on the shelves. As it turned out it's quite a time - consuming system! I took a photo at the end of each day's work so that I could record the progress I was making :)

Of course like everything in this place I soon began to encounter problems. Like the fact that some of the shelves keep on collapsing, sending books flying everywhere (normally on my head) and almost giving me a heart attack! And now the teachers insist that this is all of the books for the library, even though according to the register there should easily be another couple of hundred! The hunt for the missing books continues...

Back to school

So since coming back to school I have been incredibly busy! I've been making sticker charts for each of my six classes which takes a surprising amount of time. I still haven't even made a start on the Grade 5 sticker charts! (I'll put photos up once I've finished them all)

In BIS I've been teaching the children the rules of how to behave in the library and rules on how to handle the books. Once had written it all down I got them to fold a piece of paper in half, design a front cover, and write all the rules inside their 'book'. I'm hopefully going to be able to make a wall display of all their work next week.

In Arts I got the children to do lessons on movement. First we did examples of facial expressions - they particularly liked the game where they got in pairs with one of them pulling faces and their partner having to guess what expression it was. Then we did body movement. All the leaners walked around the back of the classroom and had to move to the words that I was calling out. Unsurprisingly their favourite words included 'fat', 'old person', 'loud' and 'fast'! What they did not like as much was me making them explain what they did. Original thoughts are honestly not really their strong point! (A society that only ever gets them to copy down off the board will do that to you!)

I finished off the lesson by making them think about animal movement. We discussed why animals move differently from human beings - 'Miss, they don't have brains!' ....... um, not quite! Each of the leaners then chose their favourite animal, wrote down how many legs it has and how it moves. Once they had finished that they were allowed to stand up and pretend to be their favourite animal. I think my favourite was one boy who started flapping his arms about and claimed he was a butterfly! Much to their delight they were then allowed to draw their favourite animal :)

Now I'm beginning to teach them about colour and pattern. So far I've taught them about primary, secondary and tertiary colours (easier said then done!) and they have started making colour wheels. They certainly keep me busy!

A productive holiday

As multiple people suggested, I tried to think of my time in Windhoek as a type of little holiday. A much needed holiday. I tried to make the most of my time however and attempted to be at least a little bit productive! So I bought a load of supplies and made flashcards. Lots and lots of flashcards.





I made multiple packs of them for multiplying and dividing numbers. Sachi made a special request for flash cards with information about triangles so I made those for her. I also made a load showing the numbers 1-100 (the number written on one side and the word written on the other side). I also cut up all the scraps of card into little squares - in preparation for the lesson on mosaics that i'm planning to do. By the end of our time in Windhoek I felt super productive - and just look at all my pretty flashcards :D

And then there was.....me

Waiting for her taxi :(

Finally Daisy was allowed out of the hospital! YAY :D although of course even that couldn't be simple. The hospital was a ten minute walk from the hotel. I should know, I walked there and back every single day she was there. But first assist decided that she had to take a taxi. Which took them 8 hours to book. Then, the taxi turned up at the hotel saying that I needed to go to the hospital to pick Daisy up. However I refused to go, since Daisy was perfectly capable of walking out of the door and into a car, since amazingly enough she was still able to walk (a fact which the insurance company seemed to be ignoring).

When Daisy arrived at the hotel she was outraged. The taxi the insurance company had booked was actually more of a private car, which are much more expensive. Despite the fact that the journey from the hospital to the hotel was only meant to be eight dollars, Daisy was charged 100 dollars! Apparently 50 dollars was for taking me to the hospital - despite the fact that I never got in the car, and 50 dollars for taking Daisy back to the hotel. Daisy started arguing with the taxi driver, and in fact didn't even have enough money on her to pay. But thankfully she was rescued by the lovely guy at reception who sorted it all out.

A couple of days later we had to go visit another doctor for a check-up. The doctor revealed that Daisy's blood tests had come back with a low level of the vitamin B12, so she was going to need multiple injections of it to try to get her levels up. She also decided that Daisy would need to have another G-scope and an endoscopy which understandably Daisy was not particularly happy about. She was also told to go a nutritionist to try to help with her acid problems, and a physiotherapists to show her some easy exercises to do.

My new partner - Draco the Dragon,
a present from Daisy to keep me company!

However, the insurance company finally decided that enough was enough and ordered Daisy home. To be fair to them, I can understand why. There was still no diagnosis and they had been paying for all the bills for both of us for almost a month, with absolutely no progress on Daisy's case. So the rest of Daisy's time in Namibia was waiting for her to finally get her visa so that she could leave the country.

Almost a week later we had the good news that the visa was finally confirmed. so we went to go see Robert to pick it up. He was actually really lovely and took us to Joe's Beer House for a drink, where he listened patiently as we ranted about the events in Tses over the last few months. Surprisingly he hadn't known that we were yet to be paid and that we weren't being fed at our project - even though this was something we had been saying for months! But he promised to send an email off about it.

So the next day Daisy left. It was a short goodbye, neither of us could have managed if it had lasted much longer! And so Daisy headed back off to England while I returned to the Hotel, waiting to set off to Tses the next day.

A lonely volunteers adventures in Windhoek

Almost forgotten what rain is in Tses!

So obviously for the first couple of weeks while Daisy was in hospital I was on my own. As I have already said, I managed to entertain myself pretty well and would go to the mall each day to buy some supplies and generally just to waste some time.

On the first day the thing that Daisy most dreaded happening, happened to me. Someone tried to mug me. Unsuccessfully I would like to point out. I had just walked into the mall and I felt a strange kind of pressure on my rucksack. Turning around I saw a man had opened the front pocket and was reaching in to try and steal my purse! But I manage to scare him away by screaming F*** OFF right in his face, much to the amusement of the woman standing next to me. I am pleased to say that I freaked the bloke out so much than he actually legged it!

The isle of forgotten chocolate Santa's - one of the most depressing
things that I have ever seen!

I did find some new clothes during my adventures - which turned out to be pretty essential actually as I had only brought one weeks worth of clothes and since we stayed in Windhoek for almost a month without a way to wash them this turned out to be quite a problem. I also bought some new DVDs as it was raining every single night and this inevitably knocked out the tv. And whilst I am very good at entertaining myself, I do need a little bit of help now and then!

Events in the hospital

So, hospital life turned out to be more entertaining, frustrating and ridiculous then I would have ever expected. Here are some things that happened:

1.) Daisy got some new stalkers. The young son and daughter of the lady with cancer. The little girl would just sit or stand by Daisy's bed and talk and talk and talk and talk. She would even wake Daisy up just to talk to her. The boy got Daisy's number and started continually texting and phoning her!

2.) The nurses and doctors proved that they were nearly all idiots. Many examples of multiple  nurses asking exactly the same questions two minutes apart from each other. The surgeon supposedly in charge of her case rocked up one day and announced that Daisy could be discharged the next day since she was feeling so much better. In fact Daisy's pain had only gotten worse, she was on more drugs than ever and she had another procedure booked for the following week. What an idiot.

3.)  There was the day of the scan where Daisy wasn't allowed any food or drink for over twelve hours before. The people doing the scan then informed her that she had actually been allowed to drink water the whole time, meaning that her de-hydration and splitting headache were completely unnecessary. A nurse then arrived and demanded a urine test. Which of course Daisy wasn't able to provide since she had no fluids in her system. I think it was possibly the funniest argument I've ever seen Daisy have! It ended with the nurse bringing her half a cup of water and then getting angry when 5 minutes later Daisy still hadn't provided it!

4.) I got yelled at. Many times in fact. Once because I had dared to sit on Daisy's bed - even though I did this every single day without complaint. Another time was when I made Daisy laugh and a nurse came in and yelled at me because I was being too loud and I was disturbing everybody else with my 'noise'. I hadn't realised that a silent and depressing atmosphere was desired!

5.) Daisy's rants were admittedly quite hilarious as well. There were the nurses she hated and complained about constantly, like the three who each just walked off without helping her when she asked for pain killers at 4 am. It must have been an incredibly busy time of the day for them. There were the stupid phone calls from the insurance company, repeatedly asking her how she was. There were her stories about her crazy roommate (when she was moved out of the room with the lady with cancer) who decided that she wanted to dance and so kept on ripping her tubes out of her arms and jumping out of bed.

So overall it was a very strange experience for both of us. Although I must confess that I was very relieved that I was the one able to go home to some peace and quiet at the end of the day. I think if I had been the one in Daisy's position I would have attempted an escape!

Hospital life

That first day Daisy was in hospital was probably the worst. We were both exhausted from the day before, and had no idea what was going on. Daisy had another G-scope except this time she wasn't fully sedated and so was in far much more pain and I wasn't allowed to go with her. The good thing was she was sharing her room with a very nice lady. She was a cancer patient and had a steady stream of visitors who also chatted to us and tried to make sure that we were ok. One lady even offered me a bed at her house and said that I was welcome to stay with  her for as long as I wanted - the kindness and generosity of some people is truly incredible.



When boredom hits...

That evening our insurance company first assist managed to get me booked into a hotel called 'Hotel Pension'. It was within walking distance to the hospital which was of course, essential, and they were going to pay for it (result!) So I set off to try to find it. Except it was late at night which meant that there were no taxi's around to help me find it. So I went back inside and asked the hospital staff until I found a man who knew where it was.

He told me that it was about a 10 minute walk straight down the road, to the building with all the flags outside it. I knew the one he meant and so set off. When I got there I was told that I was at the wrong Hotel Pension. Embarrassingly enough I burst into tears right there at reception (my Mummy later said that I was simply because I was so exhausted and she was right). The ladies at reception were horrified at my reaction and desperately tried to calm me down, reassuring me that there was room at their hotel and that I was welcome to stay there. When I was eventually able to explain that I was already booked into a hotel but I didn't know where it was, they concluded that the insurance company must have booked me into 'Hotel Pension Eros' (Eros is the name of that area in Windhoek) and that it was simply down the road. So with more directions I once again set off, and this time I managed to find the correct hotel!

After a long nights sleep I must confess that I did feel a lot better. Daisy however, was not quite so lucky. The nurses had woken her continuously throughout the night when they went to check her vitals, and then woke her up on the hour every hour from about 5 or 6 o'clock with various messages and requests. Meaning that she was very tired and annoyed!

So life began to follow a pattern. I would get up and have breakfast at the hotel. Then I would go to the hospital where Daisy would have a rant about all the annoying and stupid things the nurses and doctors had been doing. I would try to cheer her up and then I would head off to the nearest Mall to buy myself some food, have a little wander around the shops to waste some time, and would buy food, magazines and credit for Daisy. One day I bought her a necklace with a smiley face on it - so she would always be smiling even if she, um...wasn't!

Then I would head back to the hospital where I would eat my yummy food and we would chat and read magazines. After a while I would go back to my hotel where I would spend the evenings making the most of the wifi and watching tv :)

A trip to Widhoek

The day after Daisy's birthday I came home from a very bad day of school to get some shocking news. Daisy had got a phone call saying that since she was still ill she had to go up to Windhoek and that they were considering flying her to South Africa to get treatment there...........

The only reasonable thing to do was to have a nap, while we waited to see whether we would be hitch-hiking in the morning or if the insurance company would send an ambulance down to us like they had said. Half way through my afternoon nap Daisy woke me up, saying that there was someone on the phone and that they wanted to speak to me?!?!







The person on the other end of the phone asked me if I was Daisy Homes companion (that word always just makes me think of Doctor Who) and asked me to describe her condition. He then informed me that they were sending an AIR AMBULANCE to Keetmans that same night to pick us up and fly us both to Windhoek. I don't think that I have ever been more shocked in my entire life. I was told that we weren't allowed to hitch hike to Keetmans and that I had to call him back when we had a lift.

So it was up to me to tell Daisy the news. To be honest if I hadn't been so totally shocked myself the look of horror on her face would have been hysterical! Leaving her to panic in the house I went to school to find Sachi, in the hope that she could help us find a lift at such short notice (the word 'life-saver' comes to mind!)



After asking around, phoning potential taxi numbers and going to try to find the nuns to ask if Ruben could drive us there in their truck we were left with no option. We had to ask Mrs Kruse. Delightfully her initial reaction was simply to say that Daisy should just go back to England (exactly the kind of encouraging remark you want to hear in that kind of situation) but finally she agreed to take us.



Back home we both packed our little rucksacks. We packed enough clothes for about a week, since neither of us thought that we would be staying in Windhoek for any longer than that. Eventually Mrs Kruse came to pick us up. Well, to be precise, she got Mr Swartbooi to come and pick us up while she sat in the passenger seat. Sat in the back of a truck, bouncing around with no seatbelts. Exactly the situation you want to be in when your partner has stomach feelings and is feeing nauseous!

Not that I wasn't grateful to Mr Swarbooi because we were, it honestly was really nice of him to drive us to Keetmans on such short notice. Although I must confess that we were less than impressed when Mrs Kruse suddenly demanded money off us for the ride. No words.

So we had to stay in Keetmans for about an hour before getting a ride to the airport - just enough time for me to have a delicious dinner of chicken nuggets and chips :) The journey to the airport probably took about 10 minutes. For the first time since being in Namibia the taxi driver was a woman, and an Afrikaans woman at that. But she was truly lovely, telling us when we had over-paid her, instead of just pocketing the money like most people would have done.

The airport was, of course, tiny. So tiny that we were the only people there! Finally the plane arrived and we could set off. It was also tiny, with only enough room for seats for the two pilots, me and the medical guy, and a bed for Daisy to lie in. While it was a pretty cool experience being in such a tiny plane I must confess that it was also slightly concerning.

We flew through the middle of a massive lightning storm, which meant that our tiny plane was going through massive turbulence. Kind of felt like we were trying to fly in a toy plane! But finally we got there in one piece. Once we landed in Windhoek we were met by an ambulance and transported to the hospital.

The first couple hours there were just lots of questions (normally the same questions just repeatedly asked by about four different people, much to Daisy's annoyance) and filling out lots of paperwork. Finally they transported Daisy to her ward, where we were met by our first problem - where was I going to sleep? The only option was the floor and so I politely asked the nurse if I could have a blanket. Since Daisy always loves it when I write down the conversations properly I shall do it:
Nurse: why?
Me: Just to make the evening a little bit easier. The floor is quite hard.
Nurse: You're staying here?
Me: Yes
Nurse: Why are you staying here?
Me: Because it's 1:30 am and I have nowhere else to do

Thankfully a nice male nurse gave me a couple of blankets and a pillow and so I was able to make myself reasonably comfortable on the floor. A very busy and unexpected day!

Busy with arts and crafts

So as you may remember, Daisy was sent an amazing parcel by the Headmaster of her local primary school. I decided that it was time that we started making use of all these incredible supplies, and so I began to make cards. We had been sent coloured card and a whole load of stickers, with messages such as 'Happy Birthday', 'I behaved well', 'Brilliant Helper', 'My Headmaster's special award' etc.

So I cut up the card (my OCD began to go wild!) and made literally hundreds of these cards. My plan is to give them out if the kids have behaved really well, as a sort of special reward. My hope is that they'll want to earn them, want to show them off to their friends and their parents, and therefore work hard for them (knowing my kids this is never going to happen, but a girl can dream!)

At my school the highest award you could get was one from the headmaster (proud to say that I got one :) hehe) I'm trying to set this up as a kind of system as well, so that if one of the learners does something really outstanding i'll write the learner's name on the card and ask the principle to sign his name on it as well - they seemed to like this idea which is a good start.




I've also gotten all of my learners to write down their birthdays. I've made loads of birthday cards so I'm hoping that I can give them out to the kids. Most of them will be away from their families for their birthdays, and even if they're at home it's likely that most of them wouldn't get any attention anyway. So I thought it would be nice to try to do something to make their day feel at least a little bit special :)

Daisy's Birthday

So the 28th of January was Daisy's birthday. In true boarding school style I ran into her room at midnight, jumped on her bed and practically threw her present into her lap (I was rather excitable that evening, as you might be able to tell). I simply cannot understand how someone as arty as Daisy was able to go so long without doing any art, and so I had decided to rectify the situation by buying her a canvas and some oil pastels.

Daisy once told me that she wanted a pet frog. Due to some slight complications (for example...we're in Namibia) I wasn't quite able to get her one. But I've given her a verbal IOU for her 21st birthday - could be interesting! So instead I managed to find her a card with a frog princess which, to be honest, actually looked pretty creepy in a weird kind of way :)




Unfortunately Daisy spent most of the day curled up in bed :/ but she was at least able to stomach a couple of mouthfuls of birthday cake :) Sachi's temporarily given away her cookbook so I had to attempt a new recipe. It actually tasted really nice (if I do say so myself) although the recipe created so much mixture that I ended up making two cakes!

Since Daisy didn't want to tell the teachers that it was her birthday, and there wasn't really an opportunity to give them any cake (since she was asleep all day) we were left with a hell of a lot of cake, even after Ruben and Anne had come over (we were all very excited by a sudden storm that appeared out of nowhere. Rain, what more could you want for your birthday when you're in the middle of a boiling hot African summer?)



Not that the secondary kids complained of course, as quite a few of them managed to get a slice. inevitably Martin (who is undeniably our favourite learner) stole a massive helping all for himself. He must have literally almost eaten half of one of the cakes all by himself!