April's Almost Gone??

Whew it’s been a while. April has been a bit hectic, so I’ll update you on the goings-on in Luda. Over Easter Weekend we had about 15 volunteers here for the Crayfish Festival, which was a blast. I realized that I am one of two volunteers in the south of Nam that has not read the Game of Thrones series, so that is now on my immediate to-do list, if I want to be involved in the heated conversations and repeated inferences to that world. In addition to the large blocks of time spent discussing that series/show, we were able to get some eating in. The festival was held at the Waterfront, with lots of booths selling crayfish, and others selling traditional Namibian food and braii meat.  It was awesome to see so many people in town – normally it seems as if no one is in the town [people stay in the location mostly], and on this weekend I saw at least half of my learners on the waterfront! Then after a few days of relaxation it was off to Omaruru!

On Monday a few of us from Luderitz started heading up to this town for a gardening workshop. As it was the first time I was leaving Luderitz in four months, I was pretty much thrilled to see green things at all, but this town had so many cool plants and trees! And now after this gardening workshop I will never look at them the same way. The person doing the training had been in the Peace Corps as an Agriculture Volunteer twenty or so years ago, and his training was extremely interesting, I feel like I learned so much. Hopefully I will be able to get a garden going, though there are a fair amount of obstacles that would lie in my way in Luderitz [intense wind, no rain, soil = sand + rock, no green]. However, there are people here who maintain gardens, so next term I will make an effort to talk to all the people who have cool plants in front of their houses and maybe we can make it work! Also in Omaruru I got to see a bunch of 34 friends and have a mini-reunion. One of them, Alex, had her birthday on our last day there, so to celebrate we went and toured/had a mini-wine tasting at the small vineyard just outside of town. Our tour finished just as we watched a standard gorgeous African sunset, ending an amazing week. Of course, as travelling goes in the south, another typical trying to get home story to add to the saga – waiting 6 and a half hours to get a lift to Luderitz… didn’t even try to hike, was totally willing to pay, there was just no one going there at all. I think this country has really helped me become verrrrry patient. Oh, and I should note that the combi driver blasted for three of the three and a half hours Phil Collins Greatest Hits, only to be followed by even BETTER Celine. And then we almost hit a springbok, guess it got confused by the car in the road when it started to run towards instead of away from us. These antelope, ahhhtata.

Upon returning to Luds, exams had already begun at DPS. Things got a little frantic with the marking, but finally it all was finished. There is SO much paperwork and formalities involved in marking and the end of term, but as of today it is over! Tomorrow I’m outta this town! I think spending some time away will definitely help me love and appreciate this place! The odds are it will be another month until this blog gets updated – that is unless I magically get internet in the bush. Some of the family is about to be here and we’ll be off on an epic adventure! On a different note, I can’t believe it’s been a year since I graduated college… wow that time really flew by!