Our home-sweet-home

We moved into our final destination and are so happy to have a place to call home. It is a one floor house with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and large yard. We live in an area called Tutungeni, which is very close to the river that separates Namibia from Angola and we get to view marvellous sunset on a regular occasion. Many of the houses still have bomb shelters in the yard, a legacy of the pre-independence skirmishes between Namibian rebels who were in Angola and would launch artillery at the South African forces stationed in Rundu.

We have adopted the house gardener, Mr. Kamocha, who is here faithfully 2 days a week. He is an elder at the church, has about 3 teeth from the looks of it, speaks very little English and walks an hour and a half to get here for 7 am despite his badly arthritic joints. From what we can gather, he has been working at this house for about 10 years.

I need to introduce you to our new house mates: Abby and Molly, two year old beautiful black Great Danes. They live outside and love to bark at anyone and everyone who walks by whether day or night…very good watch dogs. :) People are terrified of them because they are so darn big but of course they are super lovely once you get in the gate! I am having fun getting to know their personalities and learning that to teach on old dog new tricks is no easy task! The missionary family who we are house sitting for have 6 young children who are constantly in and out and playing in the yard, which would make consistency in training tricky, but they loved being stimulated all the time and I'm sure the dogs miss those kids very much. As of yet they don’t have a clue how to “sit“, “come” or even catch a ball and the couple of times I have tried to teach them, they are so distracted by each other it is pointless. I even tried locking one up in the entrance way but the other would not leave to come and play! So funny! Training aside, it is wonderful to be greeted every time I open the door even though it means getting slobber on my shirts because they are so tall.

It’s been fun to get a few items to make this place a little more “ours”, and I, Sabrina, have been busy scrubbing walls, floors and furniture to get some of the sticky finger marks off from the wonderful kids! It will take weeks before it is all scrubbed but it will get there. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful accomodations while we are here.