On June 23, 2014 I began and adventure through Namibia with 18 juniors from ACS Cobham. We were to begin in Windhoek and end in Livingston, Zambia. While I won't write up the whole month, I will give you some highlights from our trip.
It started with an overnight flight through South Africa to Windhoek. We landed around mid day and were picked up by a van as we were to meet up with our driver at the Cardboard Box. We weren't even 5 minutes out of the airport before we got our first Baboon sighting. Thus began my Namibia animal list! After we settled into our rooms and sorted out where we were all staying, we got taxi's to Joe's Beerhouse. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area!
The next day we braved the mall for some shopping. The mall was pretty standard as far as malls go. I went with kids to get school supplies for our first school. When we checked out the receipt was as tall as I am! We then had some time in the grocery to stock up on food for ourselves. One of the things that I love doing when I travel is stopping into a grocery to see what they are like. Making it back to our truck was a bit exciting and took the help of the mall security to get us past the taxi drivers who wanted to give us a lift back.
We had an early start the next day and headed down the main road
towards S. Africa in order to head towards our first school at Kutenhoas. Coming into the village was amazing because everyone came to greet the bus. The kids met us about 1/2 mile from the school and swarmed the bus. The ACS kids all piled out and the Kutenhoas kids pounced on them. Each ACS kid had 3 or 4 Kutenhoas kids handing off of them.
We stayed in Kutenhoas for 5 days. During that time we managed to paint two classrooms from floor to ceiling, paint murals on those two classrooms, build a chicken coop the size of a small apartment, teach some reading, math, science and IT lessons, plant some fruit trees in the garden and celebrate with the village the arrival of the new truck. I think that the kids would have stayed longer if we could have even though we hadn't had a bath in 5 days or had any water for anything other than drinking and washing dishes.
We left Kutenhoas and headed to the Naukluft Moutain range where we were going to do our trekking. We were meant to trek the Fish River but there was no water as the year had been very dry, so we couldn't do that. We did two hikes in Naukluft one was 10k on the Olive Trail and one was 17k on the Waterkloof trail. My tent got broken into by Baboons while we were on the 17k hike. They didn't much like the taste of dioralyte or tampons! They broke into James's tent as well and didn't take to Tabasco either!
It started with an overnight flight through South Africa to Windhoek. We landed around mid day and were picked up by a van as we were to meet up with our driver at the Cardboard Box. We weren't even 5 minutes out of the airport before we got our first Baboon sighting. Thus began my Namibia animal list! After we settled into our rooms and sorted out where we were all staying, we got taxi's to Joe's Beerhouse. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area!
The next day we braved the mall for some shopping. The mall was pretty standard as far as malls go. I went with kids to get school supplies for our first school. When we checked out the receipt was as tall as I am! We then had some time in the grocery to stock up on food for ourselves. One of the things that I love doing when I travel is stopping into a grocery to see what they are like. Making it back to our truck was a bit exciting and took the help of the mall security to get us past the taxi drivers who wanted to give us a lift back.
We had an early start the next day and headed down the main roadtowards S. Africa in order to head towards our first school at Kutenhoas. Coming into the village was amazing because everyone came to greet the bus. The kids met us about 1/2 mile from the school and swarmed the bus. The ACS kids all piled out and the Kutenhoas kids pounced on them. Each ACS kid had 3 or 4 Kutenhoas kids handing off of them.
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| Jennifer, in white, was my shadow for the 5 days. |
We stayed in Kutenhoas for 5 days. During that time we managed to paint two classrooms from floor to ceiling, paint murals on those two classrooms, build a chicken coop the size of a small apartment, teach some reading, math, science and IT lessons, plant some fruit trees in the garden and celebrate with the village the arrival of the new truck. I think that the kids would have stayed longer if we could have even though we hadn't had a bath in 5 days or had any water for anything other than drinking and washing dishes.
We left Kutenhoas and headed to the Naukluft Moutain range where we were going to do our trekking. We were meant to trek the Fish River but there was no water as the year had been very dry, so we couldn't do that. We did two hikes in Naukluft one was 10k on the Olive Trail and one was 17k on the Waterkloof trail. My tent got broken into by Baboons while we were on the 17k hike. They didn't much like the taste of dioralyte or tampons! They broke into James's tent as well and didn't take to Tabasco either!
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