Merry Christmas from Livingstone, Zambia

Merry Christmas to you from a hot and humid Livingstone, Zambia, home of Victoria Falls. The falls are spectacular, but somewhat lacking in water this time of year. We visited them a couple of days ago.

It is VERY hot and humid here. We are almost at the height of summer.  Apparently we are not at the hottest time, since it usually rains once a day.  Still, it's hot to me and I find it hard to do anything during the day. You just want to drink cold water, sit under a fan, and turn into a vegetable. The mornings are pleasant and cool, as are the evenings. I wake up around 4:30 am courtesy the serenading roosters across the street. 


Max and I have been staying with a Zambian family with 3 kids, the Matekes, for the last week. We will be here until December 28th and then will take the bus, plane and boat to a small resort on Lake Malawi - that is, if the fuel shortage in Malawi doesn't get worse and there is still petrol for the bus, plane and boat! If not, we'll have to change our plans, I guess. You have to be flexible on a trip like this.


The organization which led me to the Mateke family is called SERVAS. They try to promote peace by having people open their homes to people from other countries. I encourage you to become a host in your country, and a guest when you are travelling.  It's wonderful to be able to share a few days of "normality" with a family. 

For the last two nights, Max and I have been careening around Livingstone sitting in the back of a small pickup truck with 14 African members of the local Anglican church. We have been carolling at the homes of the members of the church. We have seen all sorts of corners of the city which tourists normally don't see: night markets, suburbs, inner city homes. The mangos are ripening, so Max has been in 7th heaven, picking a mango off of a tree at each of the homes where we sing. Sitting in the back of a pickup truck makes it easier to reach the fruit. The African carollers now call him "Mango Boy."

Max is a big hit as a "muzunga" white kid. He was swarmed by a bunch of African kids last night, wanting to touch his arms and hair. He had a small taste of what it must be like to be the Canadian pop star, Justin Bieber. Max and I have both decided that anonymity has its benefits.

As I type this, we are at the home of "Granny", the grandmother of the three kids with whom
we are staying. She has internet and very generously lets us all use it.  Max is building a lego mini-robot with Sipho, the 11 year old boy and Temba, the 13 year old boy. Alina, the 16 year old girl, is writing emails on a different computer. She will be flying to North Carolina next week to stay with an American family her family met a few years ago. It is a very big trip for her. I have been helping her choose gifts for the family. Clare, the mother, is busy running errands in town. 

On Saturday, December 24th we will spend the day decorating the fake Christmas tree at Granny's. We'll also spend some time at the Anglican church where there will be a lunch and church/baptism service. The Christmas Day meal will also be at Granny's. An aunt who is a farmer, will bring chickens. I will make potato salad and oatmeal cookies. There will be a lot of people here. It will be noisy and chaotic and fun. I wish you all could join us! 

Here in Zambia the life expectancy is only 35 years since so many people have AIDS. People don't live long enough to retire, and when they do, there is no pension for them so many of them go back to their little villages and try to farm enough food to survive on. There is a lot of
poverty here. Max told me yesterday that when he gets back to Canada, he will really appreciate the luxury he lives in. I think it is great that he is seeing, in a very real way, how poor so many people are, and how wealthy and priviledged he is in comparison. I am very proud of the way Max has "rolled with the punches", and we have had our share of punches.  He is a confidant boy on the edge of adolescence with one foot still firmly in boyhood.  I am grateful to have him with me on this trip.

We have been having lots of wonderful adventures in Namibia, Botswana and Zambia. We have seen so much wildlife! It's quite a sight to see an elephant family crossing the road in front of your car. You turn the engine off, wait patiently and respectfully until they finish crossing the street, before continuing on your way. 

Max and I have seen many animals crossing the road in front of us.  If anyone has the punch line to any of these jokes, please share:

"Why did the elephant/ostrich/baboon/mongoose/giraffe cross the road?"


Here's a seasonal joke for which there is an answer at the end of this entry:


"Why did Santa say "Oh, oh, oh"?"


Blessings on you and your loved ones.  May we all find inner and outer peace in the New Year.


Much love,
Elizabeth and Max

Harnas Foundation, north of Gobabis, Namibia, Dec. 12 to 14, 2011

 [ok everyone.  the computer thinks i'm in Israel writing in Hebrew.  so just read this backwards because I can't figure out how to change the format.]

We will backtrack to fill you in on other adventures we had before Harnas, but would like to jump to the present since we have access to internet for one week.

On Monday, December 12^th we had a long drive to a very special place.  Harnas is an organization like the SPCA except they don’t take in dogs and cats, but lion, leopards, vultures, cheetahs, carcals, monkeys and other wild animals along those lines.  They take them in because they were house pets but people weren’t able to control them, or they found them in the wild and they were injured. 

Harnas is a 10,000 acre farm with different enclosures where they house the different animals.  There’s the main reception area which is green grass with turtles and mongoose running around (in the turtle’s case, more like crawling).  They also have a few enclosures around it which include crocodiles, cheetahs, chacma baboons and hyena. 

They use eco-tourism as a way to fund their operations.  We camped at one of their campsites and then took a tour of them feeding all the big cats in the morning.  They also had an afternoon tour which we took the next day.  It was mostly of the baby animals and animals which aren’t particularly dangerous. 

In the beginning of the baby animal tour we went into a courtyard where they had some parrots (with which I had a conversation in “whistle-nese”),  a blind monkey, some ducklings, BIG dogs, a baby springbock, and all sorts of other birds. 

The highlight of this part was that they fed the wild mongooses by making a trilling noise so that they would come and then have pieces of meat in a tin that they threw in different directions.  There were about 200 banded mongooses and it was really interesting to watch. 

We then walked down a pathway to some of the bit more dangerous animals.  They had a cage with a vulture and ground birds or birds that were damaged and couldn’t fly.  They fed the vulture (I think it was a Cape vulture) a couple of pieces of meat and asked if anybody else wanted to feed it.  I said “I would” and they let me feed the rest of the meat to the vulture.  After I had stopped feeding him meat, he proceeded to bite my thumb.

In the next cage (that we also went into) there were about 4 carcals including a blind one.  Carcals are big cats that look like a cross between a cougar, a lynx and a spring (because they can jump up to 14 feet).  The carcals were used to humans enough that you could pet them. 

We then walked through to the next cage which had a pair of baby leopards, but they still weren’t that small.  Their mother had been killed.  Have you ever been hugged by a leopard?  For me, it was definitely a first, and hopefully a last.  It’s very unnerving to have an 80 pound cat that could eat you, no problem, clinging to your waist from the back where you can’t see it.  His claws were retracted so he didn’t scratch.

Next they fed the wild dogs intestine that were really stinky.  We were also in with them which was a scary thing, but they weren’t very threatening since they already had food.  Following this we visited the bat eared foxes which were very cute, except they were kind of mean (except for one tame one who was scared of the others and let us pet him). 

Afterwards, since I asked the tour guide, Thomas, I got to go into the monkey cage  [“How appropriate,” comments Elizabeth].  The monkeys immediately proceeded to climb up my leg, jump on my head, and chew on my ear.  The monkeys have very sharp teeth if you didn’t know.  If I was offered the chance again, I’m not sure I’d go into a monkey cage any more. 

When we were driving in to the farm, I saw a zip line that I thought would be a lot of fun, so afterwards I went out and tried it.  The zip line was extremely hard to get up.  You had to hold on to a rope attached to the zip line, run, have your arm pulled out of its socket and climb up two pieces of wood that were in an X shape at 45 degree angles while getting splinters the whole time.  It was definitely worth it though.  The zip line drops very steeply, then straightens out, still going down, and to stop yourself you put your feet in front of you like you were sitting on the floor, shooting a dust cloud in front of you.  It is extremely fun and I want one like that at my house.  I later found out that it was built for monkeys. [“How appropriate,” comments Elizabeth]. 

Merry Christmas to everybody from Livingstone, Zambia where we are staying with a great family who have 3 kids my age.

African math problems

African math problems      There are 12 cows. 6 of them cross the road, 2 stand in middle and 4 go halfway and turn back. How many car wrecks are on the side of the road?      The first day 36 bugs bite you. The next day you put on 12 drops of bug dope. This time 43 bugs bite you. How much money could you have saved by not buying the bug dope in the first place?      If you have 8 maps of Botswana and Namibia, 5 of them are for the cities, 3 are for countryside and none of them are accurate. What is the probability of arriving at the same spot you left 4 hours earlier.  A) quite probable B) very probable C)extremely  probable       The average termite mound is 1 and a half meters tall.  The distance between Etosha National Park and the moon is x km. If termites were to build a termite mound to the moon, how tired would the average termite be?      You pass 7 houses. 4 have  barbed wire on their fences, 2 have electric fences and 1 has metal spikes on their fence. How many thieves have looked for alternative carriers?      

Swakopmund

On the ride from Sesriem there were lots of ostriches.  Mostly they were just lone, but at one point we saw a whole herd; there must have been 30.  On the way we stopped at a place called Solitaire.  It's called Solitaire because there is a dead tree in the middle of it.  They also had a very nice bakery.  At the bakery we met a ground squirrel and decided to name her "Karen" because she walked on her tippy toes like Karen Kain, the ballerina.
In the evening we went to a restaurant called "The Tug".  It is a very nice seafood restaurant with all kinds of fish.  I had a Norwegian salmon steak and my mom had a local fish called Kabeljou.  It was very, very nicely cooked with lots of interesting spices. 
The next day I went quad biking in the sand dunes.  My mom didn't come because she is not a quad bike fan.  It was really fun because we went out to the dunes very deep and also got some amazing views that you don't get from the hiking trails.
The next morning me and my mom went hot air ballooning.  The pilot just floated up the one mountain and when we came up the other side we were really, really high.  It was a very cool experience, but contrary to what you would expect, very hot because of the burners that keep shooting fire up into the balloon.  Afterwards we went to Alliance Francaise where they had an art exhibit and I met a bunch of brothers that were all dressed in their karate outfits and came in and started doing all the katas.  At one point they saw my iPod Touch and were all immediately mesmerized by "Fruit Ninja."  They also taught me how to use a rip stick (a kind of skateboard with only 2 wheels).
In the morning we went on a desert tour.  It was led by a man named "Tommy" and he came and told us all about the desert and the animals that were there.  At one point he drove us down the steep side of a dune in his big jeep and it felt like we were going to tip over forwards.  I learned a lot about all the animals and snakes there.  At one point he found a clump of sand that was black and was completely magnetic and he took a big magnet and took the iron fragments out of the sand until he had a big clump of pitch black metal shavings it looked like. 
The next day my mom and I went sand boarding.  It's like sledding except it must be twice as fast and it's on the dunes which are very high.  They used a speed gun and timed us on the last run and I was timed at 69 kilometers per hour in the beginning of the descent which means I got faster as I descended.  My mom went 64 kmh and the fastest run they ever had was 84 kmh (they probably had a back wind).

Sossuvlei, Namibia

Friday, November 18, 2011 Swakopmund, Namibia Hello Everyone! We have been without internet access since we rented our camper truck in Windhoek on Monday, November 7th. We have a lot to report. Max is dictating and I am typing. We rented a truck with a tent built into the back cover so that when we lift up the cover of the back part of the truck, we have an instant tent. If we figure out how to add photos to the blog, we’ll include a photo. It was hot and rush hour and we left Windhoek and headed south to the Kalahari Desert Lodge. We arrived in the dark seeing our first springbok (a type of deer) grazing on the grass. We stayed at the campsite there which had a building which contained our personal toilet, sink, shower, sort of covered verhanda and braai (BBQ pit). They had a swimming pool that was nice and cool. There was tons and tons of butterflies always swarming around; so much so that you would think it was snowing. They had a pet zebra whose name was “Namib” (named after the desert) who jumped in front of the waitress who was getting me a pop, stared at her, then ran off chasing the dogs. The next day (Tuesday the 8th) we drove further south to Quiver Tree Forest. A quiver tree is a giant aloe vera plant with which they used to make quivers for bows and arrows. They had a rectangular trampoline that they had dug a pit for and put in the pit so you could run, jump on it and then land on the other side and keep going. At 5pm they fed the cheetahs and we went in the cheetah pen while they were feeding them. They also let us pet the one cheetah. It was kind of felt like petting a big cat, which it was, I guess. They had lots of border collies, enough to be a whole pack and the alpha dog or “Pipe” as he was called, went in the swimming pool to go swimming. There were lots of big rocks everywhere and our campsite had a table that was just a big flat rock on top of some others. On Wednesday the 9th we went to Giants’ Playground. It’s a giant jumble of rocks precariously stacked on top of each other. Now we know depth to the meaning “the illusion of being alone”. There were these little animals that looked like guinea pigs except a bit bigger and they were completely brown without any spots of colour. It felt like they were watching us since they would just pop up behind rocks and stare at us with their pitch black eyes (no pupils). There was one of these animals did parkour. There were two rocks very high with flat sides and “Par – pig” as we decided to call him, took his feet and ran up the sides stopping on the very top ledge. Afterwards we drove to Keetmanshoop. On the way there we picked up a hitchhiker, John was his name, and he said he had been in Windhoek and that he had found out that his house had been broken into. I guess that was a foretelling of what we would see in Keetmanshoop. Keetmanshoop is not a nice place. Nobody smiles and there was a lot of begging and poor people trying to make money by selling stuff at the roadsides. Then we drove on a gravel road that was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland except real. The Indiana Jones ride is where you are in a jeep and it’s a very bumpy, fast ride and you go through the adventures that Indiana Jones has had in the movies. At one point we saw a sign that said to watch out for lions. We arrived in the evening at the Canyon Roadhouse in the south of Namibia, just outside of Fish River Canyon. It’s a cool place because they have old, wrecked cars sitting around everywhere with trees growing through the hoods of some of them. At the restaurant we had a meal of oryx and springbok kebabs and ostrich steak. It was very good and I prefer it over ham and beef. On Thursday the 10th we drove into the national park of Fish River Canyon. It’s the second largest canyon in Africa. It was very, very big. We went to several different lookouts and I think it is as big as the Grand Canyon which is to say that it is huge. The roads were terrible and at one point my mom had to drive carefully as to not to roll the truck. We drove south through the park. The road was absolutely terrible. It was also winding and twisting every which way so that I didn’t have any idea where we had come from. We arrived at the Ai Ais Resort and Spa in the late afternoon. It has a mountain range on either side of it and a river just beside it that had barely any water in it since the rainy season is just starting. We camped under some trees and had to use the nice indoor hot springs pool since they were painting the big outdoor pool. The indoor pool is super, super nice. It’s the hot spring water so they didn’t put any chlorine in it and I could open my eyes under water very easily without them getting itchy. There was a baboon that in the morning came and took one of our water bottles that had had tea in it and tried to open it. My mom had to actually get out of the tent while yelling before it meandered away to terrorize some other campers. Before we left Ai Ais, we made sure that we ate an “eis” which is German for “Popsicle”. We spent two nights there. Saturday we drove further south and along the winding river which marks the border between South Africa and Namibia. It’s all very beautiful and there’s no people except for some of the quartz and diamond mines. At one point there was a checkpoint where police stopped us and asked us if we had diamonds. They were being serious. Then we turned north and went to a place called Rosh Pinah where we met a boy a bit younger than me whose name was Johann. I went to his house while my mom did some shopping and he showed me a lego racing computer game. It’s very silly. He was very proud of his lego game. After the stop there we drove on to the Klein Aus Vista Resort near Aus, heading towards the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a nice campsite except it’s way too windy and cold at night, despite being in the desert. I recharged my e-reader there for the first time. On Sunday we drove to Kolmanskop Ghost Town. There was a backhoe shoveling sand off the highway that was being blown on, whereas in Canada it’s snow. Kolmanskop is a very interesting town. It used to be a diamond mining town, but they shut it down in 1956 and now it’s a ghost town. In the houses the doors are open and sand is blown in so much that you have to duck down to go through the doors. Floor boards are all rotting, but you go anywhere. There was so much wind that sand kept getting in your face and eyes. I would never want to live there. It’s not my kind of a place. To answer to Pat’s comment, it is the best place for parkour that I’ve ever seen. My mom took a video of me doing parkour in the one area. Then we spent the rest of the day visiting Luedewitz and area. We went to Shark Island that is a point and which was probably an island at one point. There was so much wind that I could lean forwards at a 45 degree angle and be supported by the wind. There were big boats off shore that were used to mine the diamonds on the ocean floor. They have big vacuum cleaner things that suck up all the dirt and they sift through it to check for diamonds. We also drove around Diaz Point and visited an old whaling station that had been shut down. I found a whole bunch of whale bones. It was really windy and there were guys using big parachutes to go surfboarding very fast. We saw wild horses on the way back to Klein Aus Vista. Time for some of my new jokes I made up: With what animal do you never want to play a game?? (a cheetah) What do you call a girl lying beneath a pile of rocks?? (Karen / cairn) On Monday we left the wind and sand and drove north through Namib Rand Wildlife Reserve. This is a private reserve. We saw a lot of zebras. There was a sign for giraffes, but unfortunately we didn’t see any. We saw a herd of ostrich. We stopped at Duwisib Castle in the middle of nowhere built by a European couple with too much money and not enough taste. We arrived hot and tired at Sesriem in the afternoon. It is at the park entrance to the great sand dunes. At 4:40 am the next morning, we drove 60km in the dark to get to dune 45 which we climbed to watch the sunrise. I was really tired. It was tiring and cold climbing up the dune since the sun hadn’t come up yet. I rolled down the dune slope after the sunrise. I am tired now and will finish this tomorrow. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web LIVE – Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE

Elizabeth in Windhoek, Namibia, Africa

Well, it has been an adventure just getting here.  We spent the night in Vancouver where I learned that the MEC duffel bag I had purchased was just too awkward and heavy for me to carry.  I also found out that Max had worn his flat soled skater shoes which would have been quite useless on any hikes here. So Wednesday morning we visited Zellers and bought new running shoes for Max, and a duffel bag on wheels for Elizabeth.  Talk about last minute shopping.

The flights were long and I was only able to sleep a couple of hours on each of the long routes.  By the time we arrived in Windhoek, I was very grateful to have a few sleeping pills with me.  It helped with the time change.

We stayed at a backpackers hostel called "The Cardboard Box".  It was serviceable.  Nothing fancy, but we had our own room.  Met some lovely travellers there including two French girls who were very sweet.  We tried to use the internet together, but the hostel's computer was too archaic.  A kind Japanese education student let me use his MacBook Pro, but it kept reverting to Japanese which was annoying.  Funny to see me typing in Japanese so quickly.

We visited two churches on Sunday morning; a methodist church where most of the congregation was African and the church was packed and the choir sang with gusto, and the Lutheran German church which was mostly empty except for mostly grey haired parishoners.  The service was in German and the pastor gave an excellent sermon on the nature of evil...that evil results primarily from people remaining silent when they should speak out.  I enjoyed hearing the organ.  The church was small, beautiful, and made in the style of a Bavarian church.  Had a good conversation afterwards with a man who used to work for a factory which made organs.

Today we picked up the camper truck.  My head is spinning with all the details of how the truck works.  It truly has everything.  I wonder who came up with the compact design.  We bought bus tickets to get us from Windhoek to Lusaka on December 14th.  I've changed the itinerary of our return home once I found out how expensive airplane tickets are withing Africa.  We will no longer be returning home via a stopover in Paris, but will instead stay that extra time in Africa.  In case anyone needs to know:  we fly Lusaka to Entebbe, Uganda on Saturday Jan. 14th arriving in Entebbe at 19;05.  We depart Entebbe on Tuesday 21 Feb. and fly via Brussels, Frankfurt and Vancouver to end up in Nanaimo on Thursday Feb.23rd at 12:05, flight 8261 from Vancouver.

It's hot and dry here.  No sign of any rainy weather.  We will drive 3 hours south just past Marienthal and do our first night of camping.

Max is a great traveller - very patient and helpful.  His patience at waiting for me to do my boring business is helped by the new iPod touch I bought him. 

So, south it goes.  We'll keep you posted when we hit reliable internet.  It might be a week.  Oh yes, I have a cell phone:  011-264-81-7857691
Elizabeth

Max in Windhoek, Namibia, Africa

Hello Friends -
We have FINALLY managed to get internet access, courtesy of an overpriced internet cafe here in Windhoek.  Yesterday, Max wrote a great blog, but when we clicked on "Publish", it evaporated into the ether.  OK, max, do you remember what you wrote yesterday?  Here goes:
HELP!!!  Somebody send us a fast laptop computer.  The one we used at the hostel was as slow as me doing my homework [mother's note:  that is EXTREMELY slow!!!!]. 
We finally got here to Windhoek.  It took us 3 days, 4 airplanes, a 10 hour wait in Frankfurt and a whole lot of jetlag.  If you ever need a good place to have a nap, go to Frankfurt, climb up the bell tower of the cathedral, find a nice stone bench under the gargoyles, and sleep away.  You'll have a great view, lots of fresh air, and nobody will steal your daypacks.
In the Frankfurter market there are lots of meats such as pig heads, pig feet, cow tongues, ox tails, cow stomach, heart, kidneys, whole skinned rabbits, etc.  I took about 90 photos of meat alone (within an hour). 
On the planes I watched "Green Lantern", "Cars 2", "Transformers 3" and one more.  The flight from Frankfurt to Johannesburg was 10 hours long.  Then we switched planes and took another flight for 2 hours to Windhoek, namibia, where we are at the moment. 
We went to the German Church service yesterday morning.  Afterwards I played the Star Wars Bar theme on their pipe organ.  It was a neat experience.  [mother's note - I'm not sure what God thought about the choice of music.]
If anybody wants a souvenir, ask me, delivery fee charged as extra.
Max