There's no denying it, these bloggers are bound to make you jealous. Whether it's their guts, their energy or their tan you admire, overseas volunteers have got plenty to share with you about their remarkable work in fascinating countries. Read on to find out what you could be missing.

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Monday Sep 10, 2007

The Last Post

Although this is horribly overdue, I thought I should do one last entry to round off properly. I’ve been back in the UK for nearly a month now; in some ways it feels like I was never away (which is quite depressing), but there are some things I’m still adjusting to. Rain being one.

Bozena and I left our project in the customary mad rush of the permanently disorganised, having spent more time chasing up debts and finalising arrangements with the printers than cleaning the flat. It was only as Liz, our co-host, was driving us out to the airport that I realised we were really not coming back, and I’m sad to say that by the time we got on the plane I was a snivelly, weeping mess.

As I mentioned in my last blog, it was hard to stay upset as we then went up to Zambia for our last holiday. Victoria Falls (or ‘Mosi Oa Tunya’, the smoke that thunders) was amazing. We scorned the waterproof ponchos on sale at the entrance to the park and after a few minutes in the spay looked like drowned rats, but how often do you get to say you got soaked by Vic Falls?

Being the adrenaline-seeking fools that we are, we also added to our list of ‘fun and interesting things that involve falling’ that we’ve accumulated this year. We abseiled, rap jumped (abseiling forwards), did the gorge swing (3 times) and the flying fox (10 times). The only problem was that each time you’d thrown yourself off the cliffs of the Zambezi Gorge in whatever manner you chose, you had to hike back out. By the end of the day both of us were exhausted and covered in sweat and mud. On the way out of the park we stopped at a craft stall and bought some Zambian masks as souvenirs; we didn’t have enough money on us so we put together what we had and added our flip-flops, Bozena’s hat and my belt to the bargain, which isn’t bad for three masks. However, this did mean that we were heading back to the backpackers barefooted; the sand soon turned our feet bright orangey-red, which nicely complimented our legs and shorts that were already dark brown from the dust in the gorge. We got a lift back to town in the back of a bakkie (adding mad, windswept hair to the equation), and just as we were coming up to the backpackers a big Zambian wasp flew into my eye. I ran inside looking like I’d been lost in the bush for months, one hand clasped over my eye, shouting, “Bozena! I’m blind! Will I ever see again?!” while she tried to get me to stand still for long enough for her to yank out the sting.

One of my less elegant moments, I’ll admit.

Anyway, our adventuring over, we headed home. A mess-up with the tickets meant that I didn’t actually have a seat on the Windhoek-Johannesburg flight (the lovely captain let me have a crew seat and I just had to get out of their way once we were airborne), but no journey’s perfect, is it? We all lost our luggage, too, but got it back a few days later…

It was really strange seeing my family and friends again for the first time. My younger sister and brother have both grown an indecent amount, and my friends admitted they were really scared to see me in case I’d changed loads and didn’t like them any more! I think spending a long time away from your family makes you appreciate them more. Amazingly, I haven’t argued with either parent or any of my three siblings since I got back – I should go away more often, haha.

I’d decided to throw myself headfirst back into British culture by going to Leeds Festival shortly after I got back, which was no Vic Falls but still brilliant. From there, Bozena and I headed straight up to the Isle of Coll for our last Project Trust course, debriefing. It was great to see Marcel again, along with all the other Southern Africa volunteers. I think Project have got the right idea that we all needed a chance to get some of the “When I was in Namibia/Botswana/Lesotho” rants out of our system. They also spent quite some time on counselling; in the lead-up to going away we’d all been told by family and friends that this would be the most amazing year of our lives. And now it’s over. And we’re only 19. Project did their best to emphasise that this was only ONE OF the most amazing years of our lives, and there was no need to get depressed!

Every volunteer was asked to do a community report, focusing on something that really interests them about their country, their area or their work. On each debriefing course there are prizes for the top three, though I’d been working on mine more as something that I’ll like to look back on in years to come. I built up a description of Luderitz through interviews with locals, to try and combine a depiction of my community with an element of my journalistic work. The amount of work we had at the project meant I was only half finished when I got back to England, and spent a couple of sleepless nights completing it, but it paid off – much to my surprise, I got first prize, £100! Just as a demonstration of how brilliant the Luderitz volunteers were, the second prize went to Bozena. We rock.

It’s strange to think that now my Project Trust experience is completely over. Bozena and Marcel aren’t my flatmates any more. I have nothing to do with the running of the Buchter News. The next volunteers will already be busy learning their new pupils names. I never have to go back to Coll. I miss Luderitz, I miss my work, my friends, the sun, the sea – even my pupils, a little bit!

But I should look to the future, I suppose. There hasn’t been a moment that I’ve regretted my choice to take a year out, and to have a year’s experience working as a journalist overseas at 19 is something pretty impressive to put on my CV. I just need to up my standards, and do something even more impressive next…

So, I’m off to university in a couple of weeks. At least I don’t have to be scared about moving away from home, haha; I just hope I haven’t forgotten how to write English essays. For anyone reading this who’s undecided whether to do a gap year or go straight to uni, go with the gap year! There is nothing as frustrating as a missed opportunity. This is one of the few times in your life that you have practically no ties or responsibilities, and are free to do whatever you want to do.

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 10:40 AM )
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Wednesday Aug 01, 2007

So, they're throwing me out...

It's my last ever night in Lüderitz. How has this happened?

We've been frantically attempting to finish everything up with the paper and get everything sorted for the next volunteers, so I haven't had time to give too much thought to actually leaving. But I am, tomorrow. It's funny, when I thought about applying for Project Trust the main thing that people picked up on was the fact that it's an entire year working overseas. When it comes to the end, it doesn't feel like it's been nearly long enough – I've been ripped off, dammit...

I was thinking about what I'll miss most when I leave – it's impossible to choose between the amazing landscapes, the view of the sea from our flat, the spectacular sunsets, the weather (it was almost vindictively nice today, like the sun was saying, "Look! It's nice here! Why leave?")... But work-linked, when will I next be able to introduce myself as a journalist? It gives you the right to be nosy wherever you like! Walking into somewhere and saying, "Hi, I'm Lucy from the Buchter News" gives people the impression that I know what I'm doing. Now, I'm too used to having a believable purpose that doesn't require an explanation. I'll end up walking into places I obviously don't belong, saying, "Hi, I'm Lucy... Actually, I'm just Lucy. Um." And seeming more confused and incapable than ever before.

I think I've gained a lot from committing myself to a year away from home. There are skills and experience, but one of the main attitude changes I've undergone this year is that I'm no longer afraid to think about living away from England for the rest of my life. This has made me realise that a year is really not as long as it sounds, and that distance doesn't have to be a daunting thing. I don't want to cut all ties with the UK or anything like that, but I just always used to imagine myself growing old in England. I've widened my horizons to more far-flung old age homes, haha.

Obviously it will be great to see everyone again when I get back, and I'm sure I'll love uni. It's just that I knew nothing about Namibia before I came here, and it's proved to be such an amazing country – there's got to be thousands of other places that I know just as little about that are just as worth living in. That's badly expressed but you see my point.

I can't get too upset about leaving as we have some holiday time first. Me and Bozena are going up to Windhoek, the capital, tomorrow, then on Friday we head up to the Zambian border to go to Livingstone and see Victoria Falls.

Christ, I'm lucky. Life is good.

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 10:09 PM )
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Monday Jul 16, 2007

The play is over!

 

It's strange how soon I'm going to be back in England; before I left a year sounded like a long time but it's gone ridiculously fast. Probably because I've been doing so much, but it just seems weird that in less than a month I'll be back in the frozen north – or flooded north, as I hear.

Work has been mad recently. Bozena was away when we were finishing the last edition of the paper, and after she left various complications appeared, the day before we had to go to print. This resulted in me staying up working on it til 3 in the morning when I had to be up at 6 to go and teach. The next morning I was rushing to get out of the house, being loudly exasperated at the blocked toilet and hunting around for any hair grip as I appeared to have lost them all, and I managed to snap my toothbrush in half. I sighed, "Come on. I know I'm having one of those days, but HOW do you snap a toothbrush?" Oddly enough, I later found my hair grips – I'd put them all in a bag to be organised (so that I wouldn't always lose them, haha) which had somehow then fallen down the toilet, thus blocking it. Don't you love it when these little things all join up together.

We've just finished with the primary school play, which has given me a newfound respect for all my teachers who ever organised that kind of thing when I was little. Marcel went to pick up his sister Claudia, who's coming to visit, last Tuesday. He was meant to be back to help out on Friday, but then rang on Wednesday saying he was too ill to make it home. I find it REMARKABLY convenient that he fell ill while staying in the capital in a backpackers with a pool... Not that I'm implying anything...

But anyway, there was so much to do in so little time on Friday that it was quite funny. In the morning a shriek from the kitchen announced that troops of our ever-intrepid ants had made it into the fridge. Bozena has a black belt in kickboxing, is unfazed by things like bungee jumping and skydiving, but for some reason has an intense fear of ants. Other bugs she's fine with. It's inexplicable, to be honest. So I put a stop to the ant's polar expedition before we began running to and from school with props and whatever This was made all the more interesting by our broken gate. It jammed a while ago and a friend tried to open it, then came climbing over the fence sadly announcing, "I used a bit many power..." When we managed to get it open we saw that he'd snapped the outside handle clean off. So now if it blows shut when you're outside there's no way to open it.

 

 On Friday, I came home to find myself locked out with no one to come and open it for me. A street kid was sat in the road playing with a bit of scrap metal, and looked completely baffled at this mad white woman as I swore and kicked the gate, threw all my bags on the floor and scaled the fence. As I came down the other side I heard ripping noise behind, and slowly realised that my mended jeans were no longer mended, and my underwear was a lot more visible than I would have liked.

We got a local hotel to give us their function room for free for the play, and we pretty much had everything sorted by the time the kids got there that evening. There's one kid who's the coolest thing ever, he's 6, Congolese, and has an afro that adds about a foot to his height. He turned up in his own clothes, and when I asked, "Johnny, chick, where's your uniform?" He looked up at me with his huge eyes beneath this mad nest of hair, grinned and went, "It's at home." "Why is it at home?" *pause* "I left it there." "But you have to wear it for the start of the concert!" "The what?" "The concert! The play!" *pause* "What?"

Oh dear god, I would never have enough patience to be a teacher for the rest of my life. Even so, the kids were great and I couldn't help feeling a glow of pride that the hours of rehearsing and hair-tearing were paying off as the audience were genuinely amused by each sketch, rather than just sitting bored as a duty to their own kid. I did a quick thankyou speech at the end, and just when I was about to go offstage the kids swarmed on and mobbed me. I disappeared under an avalanche of hugs, and it took me a minute to realise they were all thrusting goodbye and thankyou cards they'd made themselves into my hands. When I emerged I was completely coated in the charcoal and cocoa we'd used for chimney sweep soot in the absence of face paint. But still, it was sweet. I'll miss my kids.

Anyway, I've rambled more than long enough, so I'll sign off for now.

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 9:45 PM )
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Sunday Jul 08, 2007

My partners are great

 

So, what have I been up to... The week after I last wrote there were memorial services for the two friends I talked about, Christine and Dolf, as the actual funerals were actually held elsewhere. The amount of people that came showed how loved both of them had been. Christine had taught at Brightstart (one of the schools I work at) and so a lot of the kids knew her; the headteacher requested I get them to sing Amazing Grace at the mass. It was a really nice service and the kids were good, for once.

It seems strange how soon I'm leaving, it comes up so often when I'm talking to Bozena and Marcel. I'm really thankful that I got such cool partners. Ok, there are occasional spats because we're all human, but as a rule we get on really well. As an example, yesterday I sat down to work on my community report for Project Trust. I started chatting to Bozena as she was sat at the table too, then Marcel came in and joined what became a massive debate about everything from whether the prison system should be for punishment or rehabilitation, to the different social expectations of men and women when dating, to the existence of the soul. I ended up sat in front of my work for a good three or four hours and wrote about one sentence.

It's going to be really odd to go from being with two people practically all the time – we live together, work together, eat together, socialise together – to barely ever seeing them at all. Of course I'm going to stay in touch with both of them, but going from being with someone constantly for nearly 12 months to seeing them maybe in holidays will be a big shock to the system.

So, this is turning into something of a eulogy to my partners, but I do have a point to make. When I was thinking about working with Project Trust one of the things that really worried me was whether I'd end up stuck with someone I couldn't stand, for an entire year. Perhaps in a normal situation, like at university or if we worked together but didn't live together, the three of us wouldn't be good friends. We're all very different people, but I think one of the things we've all gained from this year is more of an ability to make accommodation for someone else – I'll remember to put the lid back on the toothpaste if Marcel remembers to rinse out the bath after he's showered, type of thing. But we've been lucky. Yes, if you put your mind to it you could get through a year living with practically anyone, but we've actually all become really good friends and it's been a lot of fun. Forcing three dissimilar people into one small flat for twelve months can sometimes have a positive outcome!

Marcel's leaving in two weeks time, and his sister, Claudia, is first coming to visit then they're going to travel round Namibia before flying back to Holland. She's going to arrive next Thursday, just in time to see me in insanely panicked mode about the Brightstart play on Friday. I hope I don't make too much of a horrific impression as a stressed maniac, or at least manage to redeem myself after the play... But it should be fun!

 

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 9:13 AM )
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Thursday Jun 14, 2007

When breaking news is a little too local

 

There's no way I can write an upbeat entry today, but a lot of things have happened. The mother of two friends of ours has been seriously ill; it had seemed like she was in remission then they left a couple of weeks ago to be with her because the doctors weren't sure how long she would last. They don't have the facilities to deal with cancer patients in Lüderitz so she was being treated in the capital. She died the night before last. Her son's 18 and her daughter's 16.

That was coupled with the news that last night a friend of ours was shot dead in his garage. It appears his house was being broken into and he surprised the burglar when he came in, though we're not sure of the facts yet. He was young, in his early 40s at most, and he leaves behind a wife and two children. It was so unexpected it's surreal, I saw him just yesterday. We weren't really close or anything but he's someone we see around all the time, he's always friendly to me, Bozena and Marcel; he'd jokingly invite us as 'the guests of honour' to events he wanted us to cover for the paper.

Which makes it all the more surreal – as local news goes, you can't get much more local than a friend who died a couple of streets away from you. I don't know how to go about writing a piece on this for the paper; we've had calls from the national press asking for more information, and it seems strange that what would usually be a sensational story is actually something that affects us personally. I can't believe I was at the police station yesterday, going through the crime log and bemoaning what a 'slow' month it had been.

If I was in England, I could be more confident that the murderer would be caught and brought to justice, but things are different here. In the First World the combination of massive CCTV coverage and modern forensics units make almost any crime solvable; although the richer areas of Lüderitz sometimes seem just like Europe, in some essential matters Namibia is very much a Third World country. The police here don't have forensics units; they don't even have cameras, or phones that can reach outside the Karas region, for God's sake. I just hope that they manage to track down whoever did this.

The higher amount of violent attacks in Namibia as a whole acts as another reminder that you're in Africa, when sometimes the rich suburbs and luxurious hotels allow you to forget. Perhaps I'm generalising, but I'm willing to bet that knife-point muggings end in a stabbing much more often here than in England. A combination of less effective law enforcement (and so less fear of consequences) and considerably more severe poverty means that criminals are frequently desperate enough to turn to violence. A friend of mine who lives in Windhoek was stabbed three times when he refused to hand over his mobile. The attacker obviously thought it was worth risking 10 years in prison for the N$500 (just under £40) he could get for the phone.

Me, Bozena and Marcel were talking about how easy it is for someone's world to fall down around them, and it made me appreciate more than ever how lucky I am to have my family and friends. My heart goes out to everyone involved – but at times like this is it wrong to admit that you're thankful with every fibre of your being that it didn't happen to you?

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 6:36 PM )
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Sunday Jun 03, 2007

Birthdays, holidays and long-lost relatives

 

I really had no idea it had been such a long time since I last wrote, too much has been happening... We finished a damn good edition of the paper just before my birthday and then our May holidays. There was quite a lot of depressing and dramatic news going on which isn't good for everyone involved, obviously, but it makes for an interesting paper and we got to put a picture of a skull on the front page. They found some skeletons in the desert while building the new railway line, and though it was in diamond area we managed to get some pictures, which was cool if a little morbid.

Anyway, my first ever birthday away from home... I spoke to my parents on the phone for the first time since I left England (10 months ago, eek), which was a little odd because it had been so long, but it was good to speak to them again. I originally didn't plan to ring home at all in case it made me too homesick; oddly enough, I haven't been homesick at all which rendered that plan a little pointless. So I figured there was no reason not to, especially seeing as it had been so long.

We had a birthday braai (Namibian barbecues are just better) with all our friends at our flat which was really fun. The next day Marcel and Bozena had organised free lunch and a swim in the pool at a hotel in town - our newspaper contacts come in very handy at times. They also got the best cook we know to make me a birthday cake, which completely assured their titles of 'best partners ever'.

At the start of May we headed off on our two weeks holiday. There were 6 of us altogether; us 3 Lüderitz volunteers then two other Project Trusters, Conor and Miles, and a girl who'd been working on hyena conservation in Lüderitz, Kyra. We're all becoming well acquainted with the knack of managing to sleep while balancing on the broken seat of a rickety combi taxi for the 10 cramped hours drive to the capital...

We went to Etosha, a national park in the north of Namibia which is the size of Wales. Really. I still find it hard to get my head around just how much space there is in this country. It was so amazing, we saw loads of animals including black rhinos which are incredibly rare. There have been so many times where I've just had to stop and think about how amazing life is and how lucky I am, and watching the sun set behind a herd of elephants crossing the road has got to be one of those moments.

There is one highly important aspect of being a volunteer which anyone considering volunteering should mentally prepare themselves for. Working on an tight budget is made infinitely easier if you become well versed in the art of 'blagging free stuff'. This holiday I excelled myself; as I'm a pretty fantastic person, I actually managed to convince the guy who was our tour guide for Etosha to give us a lift to Swakopmund, our next destination. He had some time without any tours so we convinced him he wanted to come travelling with us for a bit, which was obviously because we all got on so well and had nothing to do with the fact he had a car. Not only that, but it turned out his parents had a house in Henties Bay (just near Swakop) where we could stay really cheaply.

By far the most fun thing I did in Swakopmund was skydiving - from 10,000 feet, with a 35 second freefall, it was incredible. The drop was over the desert so I had the most amazing view of bright blue sea rolling up to meet sand dunes the entire time. Well, some of the time I was upside down and screaming, but most of the time I was admiring the view...

Anyway, coming back to Lüderitz and work was made a lot more fun by the fact that I left again shortly afterwards. A friend of ours, Ramon, who's a tour guide took me on a 4x4 dune driving trip for free – yes, that's more free stuff I managed to get! Though I can take less credit for this as he's taken the Project Trust volunteers on his tours for the past few years, just because he's a really nice person and knows we have very little money. That was a lot of fun, we did some terrifying driving through the desert while Ramon laughed at me for the occasional involuntary whimper as we approached near-vertical slopes...

Oddly enough, I found that I shared surnames with a father and daughter on the tour, then quickly established that our families actually come from the same county in Ireland; their branch of the family had emigrated to South Africa two generations ago. There can't be many people that can say they found long lost family in the Namib Desert, can there?

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 9:10 PM )
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Wednesday Apr 11, 2007

Go Mario

Life is fantastic as ever. Somehow no one has realised yet that I'm just some idiot pretending to be a journalist, so I've got to do more fun things like review a tour company – which meant a free boat trip, yaay. We saw a load of penguins (which sounds bizarre but we are actually quite close to the Antarctic, if you think about it...) and dolphins jumped out of the water so close to the boat that I could have reached out and touched them.

It was independence day in March, and me and Marcel wandered along to the ceremonies to see what was happening. We'd been hanging around, edging to the front of the crowd, when a tall, imposing man in a dark suit and shades (with an impressive collection of gold teeth) approached us. He looked important and was wearing an earpiece with a wire, so I guessed he was in charge of security. He walked straight up to us and said, “The Inspector says you may join him.” Only then did I realise that it was our mate Nicky, a policeman, just looking classier than usual. 'The Inspector' is Mr Iikuyu, a friendly man who we go to pester for stories on crimes every now and then.

So, we got to go into the VIP section, which was cool as we got much better pictures of the wee kiddies dancing and old people doing speeches. Another friend of ours from the town council came and grabbed me just before the guest of honour (some government minister woman...) arrived. In what I think was a subtly concealed attempt to make Lüderitz seem multicultural, he wanted me to be part of the welcoming group for her. I was almost the only white person there so it was quite convenient that he knew me! This meant I got to pin a carnation to a very important woman, which was all quite exciting despite the fact I was one of the few who had no idea who she was.

Our host, Lindsay, gave us a load of little Easter eggs to give to the kids at the creche, which was sweet of her. The kids looked overjoyed when we handed them out, and most of the younger ones promptly started munching on the brightly coloured wrappers. When I showed one little girl that the idea is you open it to eat the chocolate inside, the expression on her face was of sheer amazement. Most of the older kids saved theirs in their pockets, despite my attempts to convey that in 30 degree heat they would be liquid quite soon. But when you think about it, it's not like they'll get any other Easter eggs, so you can see why they'd want to treasure them.

I was grinning at one insanely cute little boy's expression as he munched away on the chocolate; he saw me looking and smiled back, then held out his hand to offer me some. It's a small gesture, but I think it's damn well inspirational. This 3-year old boy lives in a shack the size of a single room with his entire family; he was wearing an odd collection of dusty, hand-me-down clothes, and too-small shoes with the ends cut off. It couldn't be more obvious that I have more than him. But he offered what he had to me. Why would you do that? I can't quite put into words what I mean, but come on, how many English 3-year olds do you know that are that selfless?

Well, my point is that I was impressed. I thought I'd take this opportunity to show Mario as an example that perhaps not all humans are inherently selfish and greedy. So, go Mario!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 7:03 PM )
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Monday Mar 19, 2007

'One of us'

 

So, slightly more than a week has passed, again...

A lot has happened as always, but I've decided to pick out a not-too-happy story to relate, because it shows a lot about Namibian society today. At school I was partnering the kids up for PE, putting them boy-girl to make them less raucous, when one boy started kicking up a fuss. Putting on my stern teacher voice, I told him that he could either be her partner or stay inside.

Hurt, he looked up at me and explained, “No no, I want to do PE, I just don't like being partners with black people.”

I'm not one for hating things about yourself that you can't change. I'm the only white teacher in the school, which is perhaps why he looked at me with such conviction in his eyes that I would understand; I'm one of us, not one of them. It's strange that the words of an 8-year old boy could make me feel ashamed of my race, but it was the way he said it like he knew at least I, if no one else, would sympathise.

I gave him the worst telling-off but it seemed pointless. He cried but he wasn't sorry because he purely did not understand why I was angry.

I know this is a minor example of racism, but for something to be already so firmly embedded in the mind of a child emphasises how hard it is to change views of an entire nation. The laws of apartheid have been struck from the national constitution, but it takes a lot longer to remove them from people's minds.

For all I've said, things are immeasurably better than they once were, and are improving still. So it's not all bad.

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 8:48 PM )
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Sunday Feb 04, 2007

Where I Live

 

It's sunny and hot outside, but the wind's blowing so hard there's no point in attempting to walk anywhere, which is annoying. As it's Sunday everything is shut; I don't have anything I have to do right now, but during the week we just have to brave the wind and come back completely coated in sand at the end of the day. I can still count myself lucky in a way though – Marcel wears contacts, and is temporarily blinded every week or so!

We've delivered our last edition of the paper now, despite getting it back from Windhoek late. I'm quite proud that we've got the delivery subscriptions up by 400 while we've been here, and hopefully they'll keep increasing. There are so many little shops in the townships and places away from the middle of town that we keep finding new ones. If I've got a paper on me, I'll pull it out of my bag, head into the shop and start my little sales pitch: “Hi, I'm from the Buchter News [brandish paper as proof of it's existence], we're the only local newspaper in Lüderitz. I was wondering if you'd be interested...” A few times I've been faced with fairly blank looks while it slowly dawns on me that the shopkeeper speaks no English, and so has very little use for an English newspaper. It's always worth a try though.

I haven't really written much about what Lüderitz is actually like. It's a significant settlement by Namibian standards, but there is only one road in, as we're surrounded by either restricted diamond area or national parkland. This creates an odd sensation of being cut off from the world despite being in a town. Most people that live here say that if you don't manage to leave every few months or so, even for just a little while, you go mad. I must admit I think there is a fair amount of truth to this statement!

I've heard estimates of the population of Lüderitz ranging from 25 to 40 thousand. Despite this, the main town is quite small, but has enough shops for us to get by. There's also the port, a doctor's, a police station and the other vital things you'd expect. Shark Island is just outside town – not actually an island anymore since the causeway was made into a proper road. Not many people live there, but it's where some of the biggest houses and richest people are. In the other direction is Benguela, originally the black township, which is still a poor area although there are quite a few new developments. It's by no means the poorest part of town, but the difference in wealth you find in a 10-minute walk from one of the big houses in town to the middle of Benguela is still surprising. Just past Benguela is Nautilus, which was the 'coloured' township. There some quite nice houses in Nautilus, as it's richer than the other areas away from the centre of town. The hospital is there, and though it's shabby by English standards it doesn't seem too bad. The only other Namibian hospital I've seen was in Ondangwa; we went there to pick someone up while we were getting a lift from a friend (as a rule, you can't drive anywhere in Namibia with only one purpose – there's always friends and relatives to be picked up and dropped off along the way). That seemed a lot more crowded and basic, so perhaps Lüderitz Hospital is good for a state-funded one. The secondary school which we work at is in Nautilus too; it's extremely overcrowded, over 800 pupils in a building designed for 270. Many lessons have to be held outside and in the corridors as there aren't enough rooms. Crystal, the headteacher, is fantastic, and dreads the day when the school will have to turn pupils away because it will become impossible to hold any more.

The other areas are Agate Park, which has small houses but real houses nonetheless, which is a step up from many. There's also Old Location, which is mostly shanty houses, and New Location (inventive names) which has more recently constructed houses, the kind that look like they could have been put together with some kind of concrete flat-pack. They're all identical which makes it hard to get your bearings, especially if, like me, you a non-existent sense of direction. Jakkalsdraai is part houses and part shanties which have sprung up alongside the more permanent dwelling-places.

Just past Nautilus is Area 7, where people live in tiny corrugated iron shacks without running water or electricity. Astonishingly, this still isn't the poorest area. It was built by the town council to move people out of Sand Hotel, the shanty town on the hill behind Benguela. There, 'houses' are built out of any available material in a sprawling maze. The advantage of Area 7 is that the houses are relatively evenly spaced and there is access by road. Without electricity, people cook on open fires; if a fire gets out of control in Sand Hotel there's no way the fire department could get near enough to put it out quickly.

I think I've mentioned everywhere now but there's probably some area I've missed off, as there are so many names it's impossible to keep track of them. It's hard to tell where each of the different townships/suburb parts start and stop as they seem to overlap quite a bit, but it's easy to tell when I'm out of town – purely because I'm the only white person walking.

Apartheid left it's mark very strongly on Namibia; all of the white people in Lüderitz live in the middle of town, and although now people of other races can live freely alongside them, there's no white person poor enough to have to live in a township. Racism is a big problem, though thankfully I haven't had any directed at me as yet. Well, I get the occasional shout of, “Hey, white girl!” if I'm walking in Benguela or somewhere, but that's more because I'm such a novel sight. A lot of the white people here can be very racist at times. I can't help being shocked at the things people say. I was talking to Kieran, a friend of mine who's mixed race (here they say coloured but that's not exactly PC in England...); he suddenly came out with some sweeping statement about all Owambo's being lazy and good-for-nothing. I pointed out that over half of Namibia's population is Owambo, but he didn't seem at all perturbed that he was insulting a lot of people, including the president.

Well I should stop rambling now, this is far too long. Sorry!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 5:14 PM )
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Sunday Jan 28, 2007

Back to work

 So, I've been back at work nearly a month and surprisingly it's not been too much of a downer after the holidays. It helps that we've had interesting stuff to do – just before we went to print with our last edition of the paper, we got a call telling us about a plane crash in the desert near the town. Being a fairly low-budget paper we don't have a car or anything, so we rang up a friend to give us a hand. “Hi Andries, you up to anything? ...Fancy coming to find a plane crash with us?”

The plane had fallen in diamond territory, unfortunately, so we couldn't go in to get pictures (unless we wanted to risk getting shot for trespassing!). In true journalistic style, I went and annoyed people at the hospital to try and find out what had happened. There had only been 5 people in the plane and none were seriously injured so I wasn't being completely insensitive. It paid off as I managed to interview one of the guys who'd been in the crash while he was waiting for an x-ray. I was surprised he didn't mind, but I think the painkillers may have put him in quite a good mood!

My teaching work isn't quite as exciting, but at the primary school we've got new grade 1s and they're so cute. You try to tell the naughty ones off but they just give you this cheeky grin and you're like, “Aw, carry on scribbling on the other kid's work, you're too adorable for me to stop you...” I still think it's really sweet when they call me “Miss Lucy” even though I should be used to that by now. I'm so weak.

At the secondary school I have to draw a much more definite line as some of my kids are 17 (and still in the first year of high school... Ouch), but it's all good. Me and Marcel have started work at a creche too, in Area 7 which is the poorest bit of town. The creche is actually a corrugated iron shack with no windows, running water or electricity, and 54 kids inside. All of whom speak Oshiwambo, a language that I've got as far as 'Hello, how are you?' in. So we're doing a lot of sign language and songs and the like. The teachers speak a bit of English and are meant to teach in it, but as they taught them the alphabet missing out the letter H, and most of the kids can recite the days of the week but deny the existence of Thursday, there's still quite a language barrier...

Anyway, I should probably go and do something constructive, but as it's Sunday and I'm lazy I might just go to the beach... Ah, I love that I can say that when most people I know will be braving the freezing British winter right now. Not to rub it in, of course!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 12:33 PM )
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Sunday Jan 14, 2007

Best Holiday Ever - Third and Final Instalment

 

Well, I'm back in Lüderitz, after having 6 weeks of a completely lekker holiday. When I last wrote I was in Cape Town, so I'll update you from there. Us 5 Namibian volunteers met up with all the South African Project Trust volunteers when we got to Cape Town – about 20 of us were staying in the same hostel which was so much fun. I had, hands down, the most amazing New Year of my life. We were staying on Long Street which is like the party centre of Cape Town; one of the clubs had blocked off one of the side streets and covered it with canopies so that the club extended out into the street, and they had an outdoor DJ set. Even when you were out on the main street you could hear music coming from all the different clubs so loads of people were just dancing round in the road. We spent some time up on the balcony of the backpackers just watching the massive party below. One of the other volunteers produced a load of sparklers from somewhere so everyone on the street could see us having a mini-rave on the balcony, hehe. At midnight in the street party they fired hundreds of fake million-rand notes in the air – I carried one round in my purse for the rest of the holiday and kept mistaking it for real money!

Me and 3 other volunteers made a pact to stay out until the sun came up – we outdid ourselves, I must say. If got light around 6 but it wasn't until half 7 that we finally stumbled back to the backpackers, exhausted but happy, with a police line tied round various parts of our bodies, and collapsed into bed.

Later on New Year's Day we went to the beach, it was boiling hot so by the time we got there we were dying to just jump straight into the sea. As we got closer we noticed that everyone seemed to be crowded round the water's edge but not actually swimming; we then realised this was because there was a shark lurking in the shallows. It didn't move for the whole time we were there so we couldn't swim, I wasn't impressed but didn't fancy taking my chances with the shark...

As well as partying we did touristy things too, of which the most fun was going up table mountain. We went in the cable car which has a floor that rotates as you go up so you can see the full view – not great for one of the guys who doesn't like heights, but everyone else loved it!

The day before we left Tristan, one of the Botswanan volunteers, got some bad news. He'd been feeling ill for a few days and went to the doctors to find out what was wrong, and was told he had malaria. We'd planned to go straight up to Botswana with him and his partner, but he couldn't return to a malarial area until he was better. We waited in Pretoria for a few days (not that I minded that much – the backpackers we were staying in had a swimming pool) only to find out that he in fact had food poisoning, so we could have gone to Botswana after all...

Me and Bozena spent hours in a travel agents attempting to sort out a way of getting from Botswana back to Namibia. We'd booked onto a bus from Maun to Windhoek, or so we thought – when we tried to confirm our bookings we found out that the company had closed down, and was the only one that runs between the two cities. In the end we completely changed our plans and decided to go to Swaziland instead. Why not?

Swaziland is a tiny kingdom inside South Africa with it's own language (Seswati) and currency (Emelengeni). It's a beautiful part of the world, we spent almost an entire day swimming by an amazing waterfall. On one side of the river were sheer cliffs covered in twisting vines, and the other river bank was shaded by spreading trees. All 5 of us had got so used to how arid Namibia is that the amount of green in South Africa and Swaziland seemed strange!

We went to a village inside Mantenga nature reserve, where we were shown round and saw some traditional Swazi dancing. Our guide gave us all positions in the family and I ended up as second wife to the chief. I know my place... It was fun though, we stopped where an old woman was selling necklaces and the 'chief' of the group bought me one, which he put over my head as the Swazi way of betrothal. When I told Marcel about it he said, “What are you like, I leave you alone for 10 minutes and you get married?”

We also saw our first rain for months – unfortunately, we were camping. I have never seen rain that heavy, you stood in it for 10 seconds and were completely drenched. After a few minutes we realised there was no point in attempting to stay dry so we just ran round in the rain storm shrieking like little kids. Was a lot of fun, but we ended up booking into a backpackers' dorm for the last couple of nights when the rain showed no sign of letting up and our tents were completely sodden.

We met an English guy called Dave in the backpackers, and in the course of chatting to each other I discovered that he's starting the same university as me next year – it's such a small world! We laughing about how we can try and seem really cool by just dropping into conversation, “Oh yeah, we met in Swaziland...”

Well, this is a ridiculously long entry and I should really be doing something newspaper-linked so I'll leave it at this. It's been an amazing holiday but it's nice to be home, and that's what Lüderitz feels like now. As we drove towards the town yesterday a sandstorm started up, and me, Bozena and Marcel were like, “Ah, we're back...”

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 3:02 PM )
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Saturday Dec 30, 2006

Best Holiday Ever - Part 2

Ok, so it's been a little more than a week.... And again, the lack of time means I'm going to have to do bulletpoint/snapshot things of what I've been up to since I last posted.

We've spent time travelling along the beautiful Garden Route on the South African coast. We camped near a town called Mossel Bay, where we saw a whole group of dolphins jumping in and out of the waves just as they broke.

We stayed in the best backpackers in the world in Plettenberg Bay, where we decided to spend Christmas because it was so cool. They had a braai every night and the people were friendly - and as a bonus for Marcel, a lot of them were Dutch so he got to speak his own language again for the first time in months!

We did the highest bungee jump in the world off Bloukrans Bridge. It was amazing. It was even hard to be scared because it's like  a party up on the bridge, they have a DJ set up there and all the crew are like hardcore adrenaline junkies who've done the jump (all 216m of it) hundreds of times. The feeling when I was just freefalling before I felt the pull of the rope was so cool, all of us were on a high for hours afterwards.

Right now we're in Cape Town which is the best place to be this close to New Year. We've met up with loads of other SA volunteers and so sleep has gone out of the window a bit, but it's more than worth it!

Today we're going up Table Mountain, then on the 3rd we're leaving for Botswana. Wish me luck!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 10:39 AM )
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Wednesday Dec 13, 2006

Best Holiday Ever - Part 1

Why is it that time always seems to go faster when you're in an internet cafe? I think it's some kind of conspiracy... There's no way I can give a detailed account of all we've done so far in the time I have left, so I'll settle for snapshots of the best parts of my week-and-a-bit of holiday so far. I'm travelling with my partners, Bozena and Marcel, and the two other Namibian volunteers, Conor and Miles.

Even leaving Luderitz was fun: our lift to Windhoek fell through at the last minute so we had a manic time attempting to get out of town. We ended up leaving a day later than planned in a crowded combi taxi as far as Keetmanshoop, then hitching with a friendly Angolan the rest of the way to Windhoek.

We've been to Daan Viljoen game park, and sat on top of a Land Rover watching giraffes cross the road right in front of us while zebras grazed 3 metres away.

We crushed into a combi taxi for the 8 hour drive to Onayena, listening to the driver's choice of music at full blast: traditional Oshiwambo songs, more modern Namibian music which is like Oshiwambo reggae, and for some reason, Westlife. That was a little surreal.

We visited the village of a friend in Onayena, where his 2 year old niece stole my hat and sunglasses and posed like a pro despite having never seen a camera before.

We were given a gift of a live chicken when we complimented the cooking; when we went back to where we were staying there were 6 of us in the back of a bakkie (open truck thing) with a 12-year old driving and the Houdini of all chickens doing it's best to escape the bag it was tied up in.

Conor, much to his delight, got to decapitate the chicken; Marcel didn't realise that headless chickens really do run around, and so let go of it once the head was off. It flapped round the yard like a mad thing squirting blood out of it's neck, all over Marcel's shoes.

I cooked the chicken! I was so proud. Then we ate it sat on the floor with a makeshift table of bricks watching the amazing Owamboland sunset over the desert.

We saw dolphins swimming just off the shore at Swakopmund, right in the shallows; it was amazing how close to us they came.

We went sandboarding on the dunes just outside Swakop. At one point we had Conor lying on the plank of wood, with Bozena on top of him and me on top of her, hurtling down the sand dune at a ridiculous speed before coming to an abrupt inelegant stop and ending up with quite a lot of sand in my mouth. It was so much fun.

We hitched from Swakop back to Windhoek in the back of a bakkie again - we were out in the open for 5 hours across the middle of the day. It was the hottest I have ever been in my life. I lay with my hat over my face to attempt to stop myself burning to a crisp, and Bozena even resorted to wrapping her head in a towel. Our coke, Bozena's Lipsyl, Conor's toothpaste and my deodorant all overheated and exploded, which was highly amusing but messy.

And that's it for now! Hopefully the rest of the holiday will be as fun as the start has been, because I'm having an absolutely amazing time. Life is great.

Are you jealous yet? You should be!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 1:12 PM )
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Friday Dec 01, 2006

Holiday!

 

This is just a quick one to say that I leave to go travelling tomorrow, so I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have for the next 6 weeks. Don't know if they have many internet cafes in the wilds of Botswana!

School's all finished up for the summer; my Christmas play didn't go too badly, despite the Wise Men refusing to give Jesus the gifts and a sheep's costume falling apart. Oh, and there was a slight confusion with one of the costumes; the Afrikaans words kameel and kameelperd are, respectively, camel and giraffe. The cutest and smallest of my camels misunderstood his instructions and only realised his mistake at the last minute, ensuing in this conversation:

“Miss Lucy, is my camel costume ok?”

“Yeah, it looks great.”

“....It's a giraffe, isn't it?”

“Yes, Shareef. Yes, it is.”

Anyway, our holiday plans: We're first going up to the north of Namibia as we haven't seen that much of the rest of the country, and we're going to visit Marcel's old project in Onayena. It's a tiny village outside Ondangwa, so we're going to go there too and also probably to Oshakati as that's the biggest city in the north.

We're then going to head down to South Africa and meet up with more volunteers there, and after travelling along the coast we'll spend Christmas and New Year in Cape Town. We want to try and get to Mossel Bay, where there's the biggest bungee jump in the world. On 3^rd January we're going to go back up through Botswana, ending up in Maun from where we'll go back across to Windhoek then home to Lüderitz again.

Hopefully.

I've got to say, I'm looking forward to spending Christmas on a beach in Cape Town... I hope everyone back in the UK isn't suffering from the cold too badly!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 6:54 AM )
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Sunday Nov 19, 2006

Journalism - why I love it and why I shouldn't

 

Right, I really will sort myself out sometime about this whole 'posting once a week' thing... There's so much that doesn't get mentioned just because too many other things have happened by the time I get round to it. Like I still haven't talked about when we went out to the desert to find a herd of wild horses with one of our friends who's a photographer. It was amazing, when we sat really still just watching them they came to see what we were, and actually came so close they were touching us. It was such a strange experience to be that close to a completely wild animal.

 

A couple of weeks back we went to the desert festival in Solitaire, that was an experience and a half, too. It's a really strange concept. Solitaire is a tiny place in the middle of nowhere, but once a year people come from all over Namibia for a big party there with live music and, of course, huge braais. It was a really spur-of-the-moment decision to go, we didn't even have tents, but slept in sleeping bags on stretchers, under the stars. The sky here is so beautiful, in England it was a rarity to have a really clear night when you could see stars clearly, and here it's every day. On the way back we got a puncture and due to various complications ended up stuck in another tiny place called Maltahohe for another night, which actually turned out to be pretty fun (though I hadn't anticipated that long away from the flat so we were all badly in need of a change of clothes!).

 

Today we were talking about how strange a career journalism is. In the paper that's about to go to print we were really happy that we had 3 interesting stories that all could have been front page news – but it can't be right that I'm happy about 3 engineers dying in a ship fire, a 14-year old girl getting raped or a man being stabbed to death in the street. The stabbing was early this morning; we got a call from a woman who runs the hotel next to where it happened. Me and Bozena ran out with a camera to get pictures of the scene of the crime, there'd been a big fight so there were lots of smashed windows, a smashed up car and when we got there there was still a large bloodstain on the pavement. We were shocked and everything, but we still took pictures. There's something disturbingly voyeuristic about it all. It also struck us as odd that the police weren't even at the crime scene, let alone had it cordoned off or anything.

 

Apparently the police had been called before it happened by a security guard, but didn't turn up. A local took the man who'd been attacked to the hospital in the back of his bakkie (pick-up truck type thing) but he died before they got him there. He was only visiting Lüderitz on business, he lived in Cape Town. We actually met him on Thursday night – our desk officer from Project Trust had come to visit so we'd gone out for a drink together, and talked to him and his friend in the bar. Lüderitz is a little place, so chances are you'll know most people here, it's just odd.

The thing that's strange from the 'journalism' point of view is that I find myself getting irritated that I couldn't get a good enough picture of devastated people at a memorial ceremony for the men that died at sea last week, or thinking, "My god, I'm getting some good quotes here" while talking to a guy who's in tears because his friend just died...

 

I apologise that I'm not ending this on a very happy note. Don't worry, Lüderitz isn't that rough, it's just been pretty crime-filled recently. Which is good for the paper of course, which brings us back to the whole moral dilemma... But hey. Whether I should or not, I love working on a newspaper!

Posted by Lucy Hayes ( 8:38 PM )
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