Christmas at OVC

Before we left for our 10 day adventure we tried to sort out some plans for the Christmas celebration at the OVC project that was scheduled for 4 days after we returned. We hoped that the committee and volunteers would take ownership for their event and plan while we were away, but weren’t surprised when we arrived and absolutely nothing had been done.

On Sunday after church, three days before the celebration, we met with a few of the committee members to plan an event for 300 people. We tried to plan a menu, a program and sort out many of the details, but this is Africa and planning is not done the same way as home. In Canada this would never fly!

Monday morning Mom and I went shopping with a couple of the cooks and filled up the back of the truck full of food. We bought huge bags of chicken, rice, potatoes, tomatoes and the lot. It’s hard to comprehend, but a meal like that is only for very special occasions in the village that we work with. Some of the kids had not had rice before and chicken was very rare. So although it was a big job, there was an element of excitement in our task.

We then spent the rest of the day frantically trying to put together gift packages for each of our 180 kids… not an easy task! We used the remainders from other give-aways, as well as some recently received packages from Canada. The gift packages all had some basic school supplies in them like paper, crayons, markers, pens and pencils and then we tried to put a few items in each bag that were age specific. Our favourites were the packages for our youngest orphans that contained lovely cuddly stuffed animals, a rare treasure for them!

The morning of the event was spent running last minute errands, checking on the hardworking cooks (of which there were about 20) while mom and Kimmie worked away on the gifts. We were truly African when we were still at home trying to organize, label and package the gifts at 3pm when the program was due to “start” at 2!

Daryl had the opportunity to share the Christmas story and it was a great success. We also sung some Christmas carols which the kids loved. The most successful part of the day for us was having the kids eat FIRST(!!!), before the elders and caregivers. This was a huge feat as it is very counter cultural and has yet to happen at any of the big celebrations at project. Everyone participated in the celebration feast in a relaxed way, all the kids lined up without pushing and shoving and chaos did not ensue.

The gift giving also went amazingly well as we called the kids one by one to receive their gifts. There were many smile s on many faces. After that we had the opportunity to honour the volunteers and cooks by giving them a small financial gift that had been donated by some of our supporters. Daryl and I also ordered custom t-shirts for all of them but unfortunately this is Africa and they weren’t done on time.

We were setting ourselves up for disaster but it was far from it. We thank God.

For more pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=49000&l=9e8b3&id=518018255

Dunes with mom

The much anticipated visit from with my mother has been fantastic so far. After her arrival, and getting over the excitement of seeing one another, we spent a few days in Windhoek eating great food and catching up on sleep. Then the adventure really began.

We drove South West to the world famous (and Namibia’s number 1 tourist attraction) Sossousvlei in the Namib dessert, the oldest desert in the world. Our drive there was fantastic as we were surprised by the panoramas as we drove through ever-changing landscapses. Sossousvlei is known for the tall, majestic red sand dunes, which get their colour from the iron content found in the sand. We stayed overnight just outside the park gate so that we could get in at 6am when the gate opens, as the colours are more dramatic in the soft light of morning.

“Dune 45” is one dune in particular that you are allowed to climb, and so all three of us slowly made our way up taking in the breathtaking view of dune upon dune. After having lots of sandy fun on top (see pictures!) we made our way down and drove further on to make our way to “Dead Vlei” which is a pan of 900 year old fossilized trees and a beautiful sight. By the time we did all this the sun was full blast at noon and it was time to seek some shelter. What an amazing morning!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48694&l=10165&id=518018255

It took a couple of days for us to get to the Atlantic coast with more surprising landscapes along the way. The desert landscape changed dramatically to light yellow dunes and it was amazing to see them literally disappear into the sea! Mom never ceases to amaze me as she was keen to participate in Quad biking in the dunes (especially after she learned that it was not a regular bike that you have to use your “quads” for!). So we took an amazing 4 hour tour of the dunes on our Quad bikes stopping to learn about the flora and fauna, and the 10 000 year old fossilized foot prints, jewellery and pots, and human skeletons from when the bush people lived in the dunes with all the animals.

Mom was also keen to go sea kayaking in the lagoon near Walvis Bay, and we paddled along side colonies of seals and dolphins that were jumping right beside us, and thousands of flamingos. I have to say that Swakopmund also offered really nice shopping (surprisingly Daryl didn’t enjoy that part quite as much as mom and I, but made sure to sample the great coffee).
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48705&l=529d7&id=518018255

The journey continued in the North West region of Namibia to Twyfelfountein where we admired the most extensive and oldest rock art in all of Africa. Then we had the chance to visit a Cheetah Conservation Project to see those amazing animals run!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48706&l=8756a&id=518018255

Other than me successfully bursting a tire, we made it home to Rundu safely and were thrown into the midst of OVC Christmas planning…

Choir Debut

Just as coming to Africa has been a long dream of mine, so has singing in an African choir. My expectation was of a beautiful choir accompanied solely with drums. Unfortunately, thanks to Western influence they have replaced their drums with a horrible synthesizer which overpowers the beautiful voices and diminishes the overall effect.

It’s hard to describe the “culture” of choir here. Church services last on average 4 hours and the far majority of that time is filled with songs sung by the choir. But there is not just one choir. There is a “youth” choir, made up of men and women of all ages, a Sunday school choir, and a women’s choir and each choir sings a handful of songs weekly. It is an honour and position of prestige to sing in one of the choirs, and they take membership quite seriously. Little did I know that joining the choir would prove to be so difficult.

The first hurdle is that the church we are working with prides themselves on memorizing all the songs and therefore there are no written words. If the songs where in a language that was recognizable for me, that would be one thing, but I struggle picking up the African dialects by ear alone. So then the next hurdle is getting someone to write them down for me, but most are unconfident in their writing skills and claim “they don’t know it well enough”. It has been months now of me attending practices and still not knowing the words well enough to sing on a Sunday, which drives the choir crazy but not enough for them to help despite my asking.

Then there is choir practice. These are every Friday and Saturday afternoon. On Saturdays, choir practice is suppose to start at 2pm, and when people don’t show up on time they are scolded publically…but no one shows up on time. Except for me, until I learned better after spending 3 ½ hours waiting by myself… Practice starts when enough people show up to form a choir and that is different all the time. So the couple times they did start before I arrived, I was chastised for being late! Can’t win.

A few weeks back the Choir Master approached me because they were going to be a “guest choir” at a different church. They agreed to work with me to put some extra effort in to help me prepare and so I, in turn, agreed to have my debut. They doubled the number of practices the week leading up to it, and I filled a voice recorder with all the songs we were to sing, forced someone to write down all the songs, and was practicing day and night to try to wrap my tongue around the language. I still don’t actually know what I was singing about but at least I could mimic the words!

The lead up to the Sunday brought a lot of commotion. There was such excitement about the prospect of being a guest choir that I felt as though I was watching little kids in a chocolate factory. This excitement was magnified because they were going to have a white person singing with them. Church members were coming to practice just to see the “chindele” sing and dance (did I mention each of their songs are choreographed with African moves, which they think is hysterically funny to watch the white girl attempt…) This one guy kept going on about how much people were going to laugh and stare and how great it was all going to be…I told him he wasn’t helping my confidence with his comments.

So we met at our church on Sunday and hopped into the back of 2 pick-up trucks in the rain to drive to the other church, singing all the way. We all lined up outside the church and came marching in with our “entrance song”, but as there were 50 of us it took two entrance songs to get us all in and organized. There was also another guest choir from a third church that had been invited, and as such the church was packed. All the receiving church’s choirs, of which there were at least 5, and then the two guest choirs were each given the number of songs they were to sing. So we all took turns singing and dancing and sweating. I definitely stuck out but did my best and had sweat running down my face like the best of them.

The service started at 9 am and by about 2pm the half hour sermon was coming to a close. We were all gearing up for the end of the service and looking forward to some fresh air when the service leader announced that each choir was to sing another 4 songs each (not including the song that it takes to get up from the benches and move to the front, and then the song to return)! Each song lasts on average 8-10 minutes and most songs are only 1 or 2 verses max with a whole lot of repetition.
So after 7 hours and 20 minutes we were finally allowed to do our exit song! It wasn’t only Daryl and me who thought this was out of control, everyone in our choir was complaining. As this is a bush church, there are no toilet facilities, no place to get a drink of water, no snacks and it was hot and muggy! We figure that we heard about 50 songs in total and over 6 hours of singing.

Daryl is sure that if I wasn’t so stubborn, I would have given up on this whole choir thing months ago. But, I am glad I finally did it and have built some good friendships in the meantime. I think I am still feeling a bit shell shocked and am not sure when my next attempt will be!

Good-bye Shelley

As we celebrate the 6 month mark of us being in Namibia, we also are sad to see the end of our dear friend Shelley’s time here.

Shelley arrived in Namibia from Australia the same day as us. We did our Orientation together and have spent a considerable amount of time together here in Rundu. Shelley worked in Rundu hospital as a nurse on the paediatric ward. She worked alongside us in the OVC project three afternoons a week. We went through culture shock together, experienced similar difficulties in the hospital and at the project and encouraged each other in the face of the regular challenges of being a foreigner in a new place.

I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to watch Shelley grow in her time here. When she arrived she was a brand new nursing graduate and lacked confidence in her skills and struggled to find her feet in a very different hospital culture. She worked hard to learn some local language and managed to do assessments in Rukwangali, but most impressively she managed to maintain a good attitude in spite of the shockingly poor work environment.

As she worked on the paediatric ward, one of her biggest struggles was dealing with apathetic nurses that would sit by and watch a child die without attempting the necessary emergency steps to possibly prevent it. Over time she was able to encourage the nurses to do basic resuscitations and was an excellent example of taking action before it was too late to save a child’s life. I’m not sure I would have had the strength to see what she saw, and am thankful that God called me to rehabilitation! Shelley eventually began to enjoy work in the ward and developed fantastic relationships with the kids through games, cuddling, and compassion. The mothers also loved her company, and I have no doubt were thankful for her individualized care.

The loss of Shelley at the OVC project means much more to Daryl and I, as her help was invaluable. The younger kids in particular would come rushing to Shelley once we arrived at project wanting a hug and a hand to hold. She definitely found her niche there, constantly bandaging little wounds, holding skipping ropes, throwing a ball around, and most importantly "tickle ministry"! Her help with organizing Home Based Care and some of the administrative work for the project will also be missed.

Shelley was a great example of one of the main goals of Africa Inland Mission in Namibia: to show God’s love and compassion to orphans, vulnerable and disabled children and their caregivers by ministering to their physical, spiritual and educational needs and seeking to empower them.

We miss her already.

Rain in Rundu!

We have finally experienced rain, after being in Namibia for 5 ½ months! This has been a dramatic change compared with Vancouver where rain is the norm. Our first few months we had bright blue skies everyday. Then as the ground became drier, the air and sky filled with dust. The horizon was no longer clear and the sun would disappear in the dust, rather than set. Then about a month ago we started to see beautiful fluffy white clouds, which have progressively become darker and more ominous. So what does rain mean for our lives in Rundu?

*After a short rain, you can actually smell the flowering trees, instead of dust and burnt garbage.
*Thunder storms are so loud you think your house will crumble
*Lightning shows that would rival any I grew up with in Ontario
*Laundry becomes a trickier task as we use a clothes line (this will be my nemesis I know it!)
*I had to figure out where the windshield wipers were on the car because I hadn’t used them yet.
*A break from the stifling heat! Rain is usually so welcome here because it can bring the temperature down from the 40’s to the 20’s…BIG difference.
*The pot holes on the roads get much worse.
*Bugs, bugs everywhere, of all sorts and sizes. Back onto the Malaria pills…
*Not sure yet how this will affect our OVC project. We are trying to complete the kitchen in the new building so the cooks can prepare inside. As of now, they are cooking huge pots of pap outside on firewood. We will also need to come up with some indoor games for the kids - not sure how we will keep 180 kids organized in a small building…
*Rundu has already started to look a little more green and less brown, and hopefully our water bills will be less because our gardener won’t have to use so much water!

Motivating our volunteers

Since September we have had a difficult time with the volunteers out at the OVC project, with their enthusiasm and commitment decreasing significantly. In October there were days when only one volunteer would come, especially dangerous when we were on vacation and Shelley was alone with the one volunteer and close to 200 kids: chaos ensued, including fist-fights.

We called a meeting this past week and invited the OVC Committee Members and the volunteers so we could improve communication. Originally, the volunteers expressed frustration by the lack of supplies for the Home Based Care (HBC) program, which haven’t been replenished for months by the ministry of Health. Eventually the main issue appeared, that the volunteers are burnt out. Some regularly give up 3 afternoons a week, 2 for project and 1 for HBC. We have been asking the committee to search for more volunteers for months now, to no effect. We would ideally like to see the number of volunteers triple from 11 (of which usually only 3 or so show up), so that there could be a rotation schedule and we could supervise and interact with the kids better. We are also going to try a formal schedule for the volunteers: we hope it works!

In August we hosted a pizza party and showed our volunteers the first Lord Of the Rings movie to bless their hard work. It was such a hit we decided to do it again, this time hoping it would excite them to renew their commitment as a volunteer! It was a great success. We served homemade pizza and showed them the second part of the series and they enjoyed it tremendously. I don’t think I have ever watched a movie where there was so much cheering and applause! We hosts couldn’t contain our laughter as we watched them enjoy it so much.

We took a little intermission half way through and as it was Sabrina’s birthday, Kimmie and Shelley had made a cake and everyone sung happy birthday, which just began an impromptu time of singing and dancing - what fun! We also took some time to let the volunteers say their thank yous to Shelley as she prepares to leave us this week.

Hopefully we see some change in terms of the volunteers showing up on their scheduled days. Please pray we get more of them!

Our first African vacation!

We met our friends from Canada (Marc and Karla Drader, who are currently living in Germany) at Livingstone Airport in Zambia on Oct 2nd. It’s an 8 hour drive from Rundu to Livingstone, so we split the trip into 2 days so that we could get to the airport in time to pick them up at 12:30. The border crossing at Zambia was quite a cultural experience, as most of the many visa and car fees were collected in broken down motor homes! We managed to get to the airport just on time, only to find out that the plane was going to be delayed (it arrived 7 hours late) and then their luggage didn’t come until the next day! What a way to start..

Our first day we went River rafting down the Zambezi river. Apparently river rafting junkies travel from all over the world to raft these rapids, especially at this time of year as the waters are very low making the rapids even more challenging. None of us had ever done it before and it was so much fun, not to mention hair raising! (The highest level of rapids is a class 6, which they don‘t allow people to actually attempt, and we travelled through a series of class 4 and 5’s. One rapid we travelled through was going to be shutting down one week after we went as it was getting too dangerous - yes, this is the one that we completely flipped in!). The afternoon was spent on the top of Victoria Falls looking down at the beautiful valley and the rapids we had rafted through that morning. The falls are very low at this time of season but it was still a majestic sight.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38326&l=f62e1&id=518018255

Our second day was spent doing a full day safari in Botswana at a Game Park called Chobe. We saw well over 250 elephants, fields full of the dangerous cape Buffalo, crocodiles, and hippos! The morning was spent on a boat along the river where we got to “swim” with the elephants crossing the river, the hippos playing hide and seek, and the crocs poking their heads up to say hi. In the afternoon we were given a private tour in a safari jeep in the bush where more wildlife made themselves known.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38874&l=80099&id=518018255

Our third day was spent doing “Gorge activities” in the morning. Unfortunately Karla came down with the travellers bug and wasn’t able to join in. The first activity was called “Absailing”, or rappelling, where you propel yourself backwards down a cliff-face, and then hike the Gorge up (about a 20 minute steep climb). The second activity was the “Flying Fox” where you are attached to a sort of zip line and you run off the cliff to zip across the Gorge. The third and definitely most challenging was the Gorge Swing. This is very close to a Bungee jump as it is a 53 meter free fall and then the “swing” catches you and you and gives you time to recover before they let the line down onto the ground. Marc and Daryl found that although they wanted to yell, they couldn’t. Not to worry, because Sabrina’s scream made up for it all!

After the Gorge activities we met up with Karla again and had lunch on a little island called Livingstone Island. This is a very popular destination as we had the opportunity to literally sit one meter away from the edge of the falls. Karla was such a trouper - not many people can literally say they threw up “over” Victoria Falls!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38883&l=b11e2&id=518018255

Much too quickly our time in Zambia was over, and we were on the road back to Rundu. Although we had already spoken a lot in the previous few days, the road trip was a great time of processing so many of the challenges that we face in our lives here. The next few days Marc and Karla were able to participate in our ministries here at the OVC project and home based care. They immediately clicked with the kids and we wish so much they could stay and help! They also got a tour of the hospital and saw our work environment.

Both Marc and Karla where overwhelmed by the heaviness and the struggles that we simply know as life here. We so appreciated having them here and listening to our every detail. Saying goodbye was extremely tough, as we knew we were returning to Rundu to deal with all the hardships here, whereas we felt a certain sense of jealousy that they just got to leave. These last few days have been really tough on us, as processing and discussing has brought to the surface several painful issues. Conversely, it also allows us to deal with situations and reminds us to pray and press into God for help and grace.

We truly had a wonderful vacation and felt a deep gratitude for good friends.