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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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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Monday Jan 22, 2007

Here at last

Well, after all the months of waiting im here! im sat in Iringa, Tanzania. We landed jan 9th at 7am and after the 8 hour plane journey we had to travel another 8 1/2 hours by bus to Iringa which is further in land than dar es salam. the journey was amazing, which breath-taking views and nasty toilet stops! For the first 2 nights I stayed in a hostel with my fellow volunteers...5 other english, 6 americans, 2 aussies and a kiwi. they are all roughly my age (19) up to 22ish, with only one american a lot older, but hes only 28. After 2 days we moved to homestays, where we are living for 4 weeks. I am with a huge family, with only the mother speaking english, but it means I get to practice my swahilli which im learning 9-4.30 mon-sat. so far not getting very far past gramatic rules, but its only the 2nd week of lessons. The family are really nice, with a 2 yr old and a 3 yr old called gladdy and happiness; they have become my best friends at the moment, and a few older sisters aswell.

Learnt to wash my clothes the other day which was an experience and a half, but it amused the family greatly. Also have been alowd to cook,  which is a step up from the first week, in which they wouldnt let me even take my plate out, but admitidly all i did was stir and pour in what the gave me, but i was proud!

Not much more to report at the moment, just getting used to life over here, squating to go to the toilet, sticking my bum out the window to get to and from school, eating rice continually! but Im loving it.

Hopefully have more to tell when swahilli is finished in a few weeks.

em

P.S i appologise for my spellings, after 6 hoursof swahilli lessons my attention to grammer and spelling are minimal.

Posted by Emily ( 2:38 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 Jan 13, 2007

almost done, i promise!

OK.... so when I thought up the countdown idea, it seemed fabu. Now? Oh well. Trolley on, as you say, right?

So,

6) Go Abroad - Why do i like this one? Simple. I logged on looking for volunteer opportunities, ended up exploring the eco/adventure section and suddenly began imagining myself rafting down the Nile or trekking through Patagonia to conduct research! You've gotta love any website that can spark the mind like this one can.

5) Cross Cultural Solutions - This was one of the first sites I stumbled onto and, even though I haven't found anything through here that floated my boat, have been receiving their e-newsletter for almost two years because I love opening my mail and getting that little hit of 'mmmm....that'd be nice' in the middle of a cranky day at the library. (You know what? I now understand why librarians have a reputation for being so crabbit. Patrons can make a person crazy.)

4) Inter-Cultural Youth Exchange - This is the UK site for a world-wide organisation that has partner offices in 34 countries and offers a wide range of short and long term volunteering ops.

As expected, I've saved the best for last so drum roll, please..................

(come on, annoy the person next to you and tap your fingers on the edge of the desk, you know you want to)

 Are you tapping? (Have you made the person next to you look over yet? No? Tap harder. And faster.)

Right. Check out my next post for my tops! (HA. Did you really think I was going to give it all away in one feel swoop? Don't forget my previous picks are here under A Top Ten Volunteer Site Listing)

Posted by Dana ( 4:40 PM )
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