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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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