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).