Life in Luanda

“Beat and Wind” from Japanasia

2010-05-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

Feb 20 2010
We saw this advertised just a few days before it happened – a special event organised by the Japanese Embassy. We didn’t have much information about it except the title, but as an avid fan of live Taiko (drumming) from Japan, we signed up for the bus that was going to it without hesitation. Bill hasn’t seen Taiko drumming before but was easily convinced he’d enjoy it.

The concert was quite different to what I’d expected – I thought it would be like a Kodo show (a hugely popular Taiko group in Japan) with lots of drumming on traditional taiko drums – in a very Japanese style. Although there were a few taiko, there wasn’t any of the size you’d see in Japan (I guess flying those big drums around the world isn’t that practical) and the music was less Japanese than Central Asian. However, despite this, it was still a fantastic concert that we both thoroughly enjoyed.

Japanasia consisted of just three musicians – Ryutaro Kaneko was the leader & the taiko drummer, Yasukazu Kano played a Japanese flute –the shinobue and finally Haruhiko Saga played Central Asian “violins” and even did some throat singing!

After the opening act when all three performed, the most wonderful Angolan group came on stage – unfortunately I don’t know what they were called. They also did lots of drumming (and some singing & dancing) & were so spectacular that it was worth going out just to see them alone.

The whole night was superb – I found it a bit difficult to take photos with my sling but we’d been lucky (or cheeky) enough to get front row seats. Bill soon abandoned me & moved right up to the edge of the stage to take his photos!

There were a few speeches at the end (where I understood much more of the Japanese than the Portuguese translation) and then there were drinks & nibbles provided by the Japanese embasy. All in all, it was a fantastic evening that we thoroughly enjoyed.

Carnival festivities

2010-04-24T02:55:00.000-07:00

February 2110
Carnival was right after I got back from South Africa (travelling by yourself with an arm in a sling brings out the best in people) and although my shoulder was very painful & the amount of movement allowed by my sling was quite limited, we were determined not to miss it. We booked a car to take us down for 2pm with an arrangement to pick us up 2 hours later – we figured that would be more than enough time to take photos but would get us home well before it got riotous.

Having a “big” camera at carnival is an amazing experience – just like last year we were mobbed by people asking us to take their photo, when we asked people if we could take their photo, they almost always said yes. In fact one of the biggest issues we faced was more & more people crowding in on the photo we were trying to take. Also it was quite crowded – so many people in a small space.

There were many more police & security people around this year – although we were on a different section of the Marginal. We got to see some samba teams practising their dance, which was very cool. Everyone just looks so excited and happy.

Costumes were similar to last year – there seemed to be quite a few guys wearing condoms as part of their outfit & as always, lots of guys dressed up as girls. There was a man whose costume was hundreds of clothes pegs & another had a tie made from a loaf of bread with fish embedded in it! Very weird.

It’s hard to judge the mood precisely when you can’t speak the language – I felt most people were happy to have us take their photos, but there is an underlying current with some others – they pose, but you get the feeling that their attitude is more aggressive.

The timing of our return home was just right – it was getting much more crowded & as it was it took ages for our driver to be able to get in to pick us up.

Catching up at last

2010-04-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry – health & work issues have kept me from keeping my blog up-to-date so I will start to catch up with some back-dated posts for the last 2 months. Mostly it has been a quiet time with my right arm in a sling limiting what we have been able (or wanting) to do. Despite this I found I could use my camera if I was careful, so we went to Carnival again, a wonderful evening of Japanese music & then I went back to South Africa just before the end of the school term to get assessed by my surgeon again. Then off to Tanzania for a very welcome holiday & then back to Luanda again for the final months of school. Unfortunately bad health is still an issue for us, as Bill has been diagnosed with pneumonia and is now into his second week off school. We’ll both be glad when we are feeling fit & well again.
(The slideshow is photos of African "babies" taken in various locations - I put this together for a preschool teacher who was looking for photos for a calendar she was making.)

Medical Adventures in South Africa

2010-02-05T06:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I am in Johannesburg on medical leave to try to sort out my right shoulder. It has been troubling me for close to 6 months now, and I’d hoped to be able to delay treatment until the summer holidays. But the last 2 – 3 weeks has seen both the pain and the immobility get significantly worse – to the extent that I had to do something about it.

I went to the doctor in the SOS clinic in Luanda, and after 2 x-rays and an examination, he decided that I would need to be diagnosed in South Africa. He had hoped to send me for an MRI in the main SOS hospital in the Ilha, but the machine is broken, so he wasn’t able to do much more than refer me to SOS Johannesburg with a request for an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon.

This happened about a week or so ago – I had to cancel the first appointment they made as it was so soon that I couldn’t get a flight. I arrived here on Tuesday (after another hellish airport experience – just as I was beginning to think they’d got it sorted) only 2 hours late. My appointment was for Wednesday morning, and that’s when things started to go badly wrong for me. The doctor I saw was convinced he knew what was wrong with me – after about 3 minutes of my walking in the door. He didn’t test the extent of the immobility of my arm, nor did he ask about location of pain. He already “knew” what was wrong anyway.

I tried to tell him about the surgery I’d had on my left shoulder almost exactly 5 years ago – I’d ignored all early warning signs back then and as a result had gone swimming one evening – to wake up the next morning with NO movement at all in my left arm. Panic time! I was in Kuala Lumpur at the time & the specialist I saw was excellent - & no problems with getting x-rays or a MRI. I had a sharp bone spur that had damaged the tendons in my shoulder joint – the photos he showed me after surgery are implanted on my brain – tendons all frayed & splayed around looking like they had been hacked apart with a blunt knife. About 50% of my tendon had been cut through - he removed the spur as well as stitching up my tendons during arthroscopic surgery.

Unfortunately, my copy of his surgery photos are in storage in KL along with most of the other stuff I couldn’t take to Luanda – so I couldn’t show him or any other doctor what I was talking about. I did bring the MRI x-rays to Angola (which I didn’t think were necessary to take to SA as it was the wrong shoulder) but had the MRI report with the diagnosis on it. I’d shown the same report to a specialist I’d seen in Manchester the day before we flew out to Thailand just last month, as well as the doctor in Luanda. Although both needed imaging to confirm diagnosis, they both thought it was probably a similar problem with my right shoulder.

But not the doctor I saw on Wednesday – he told me “I don’t believe it” & that it was impossible for a projection to damage tendons the way I’d described. He sent me off for x-rays and an ultrasound, neither of which seemed to be very helpful for a diagnosis. The ultrasound doctor said she couldn’t see signs of tendon damage & that it wasn’t something like tendonitis. My follow-up visit with the doctor after the tests didn’t go well at all. He still believed his initial diagnosis, even when I told him I felt he hadn’t examined me sufficiently or looked for other possible conditions. I explained how vulnerable I felt as I wouldn’t be able to return to Johannesburg in a month if he was wrong & that there was no possibility of proper care in Luanda itself. He ignored me – even though I was in tears by this time (I don’t handle confrontations well). He said all I needed was a cortisone injection & that I would regain instant mobility & lack of pain in my joint, followed up with some Physiotherapy and I had to never write on the whiteboard again and I had to get new pillows to sleep with.

What happened next is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. I was still crying when he injected my shoulder from behind. It was incredibly painful. He instructed me to wave my lower arm around to move the solution in my joint & then asked me to raise my arm (the only thing he had asked me to do during the earlier consultation). I lifted it, and it was about 10% better, but I could still feel it catching. When I told him that, he grabbed my arm himself, shook it a bit & then lifted my arm for me. Maybe a total of 15 – 20% improvement, but nothing like the “total cure” he’d promised. When he let me go, I tried putting my arm up my back (something he hadn’t looked at) & it was still the same – no higher than waist high. He seemed shocked when I told him this. For the first time he touched my shoulder (other than to put the injection in) & asked where it hurt. I told him the pain was in the front of my joint – I had no pain at the back. The pain (as the other doctor’s I’d seen had realised) was located at the head of my biceps. It seemed to surprise this particular doctor – but he wasn’t fazed – he simply got another syringe & put more cortisone in – directly on the tendon (& left me with a nasty bruise). I was crying so hard by this time that I was actually shaking – but he never ever acknowledged how upset I was – to the extent that he didn’t even offer tissues!

He then wrote me a referral letter for a physiotherapist (saying I had tendonitis) & wrote a prescription for anti-inflammatory pills & painkillers (“to take only if I needed them”). That was that – said I should stick around until my scheduled flight on Tuesday in case I needed to see him again, but the impression I got was that he thought my problem was solved.

I was in such a mess when I came out of his office to pay the bill, that his secretary came round to give me a hug! I got the prescription filled, had lunch in the hospital cafeteria & tried to absorb what had happened. I was in tears again when I talked to Bill that evening – he was really mad. I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep & at midnight, got up to write out what had occurred & my concerns about it.

When I woke (after about 3 hours sleep) in the morning, I was horrified that my mobility behind my back was actually much worse than it had been the day before. I went to the physiotherapist that morning and she was wonderful. I told her what had happened & how scared I was. She recommended I get a second opinion & gave me the names of two shoulder specialists to try. She was able to improve the mobility of my arm and certainly made me feel much calmer & not so terribly alone. When I got back to my guest house, I wrote to SOS Johannesburg (who have been in contact with me every day asking how things have been going) and asked them to try to get an appointment for me with one of these doctors as soon as possible. I slept much better knowing that I would get a second opinion before going back.

Today I got a phone call from SOS at 8:10am to say I had an appointment at 9:00. I was out the gate 5 minutes later & fortunately the traffic wasn’t too bad so I arrived at the hospital in time. I’d had the forethought to pick up my x-rays and ultrasound on a CD the day before (what a wonderful technology), so I was able to show the new doctor those. I tried to briefly explain what had happened & he checked my arm mobility, did a confirmation ultrasound & diagnosed the same problem as my left shoulder! He said that I had a large amount of tissue swelling (which I think is a result of the injections I got) but he didn’t think the tendons were as badly damaged as they had been in my left shoulder when I had surgery then.

Everything happened very fast – he booked me for surgery on Monday morning & asked me to delay my flight back until Saturday. I had to cancel the appointment I had with the physiotherapist, but went to see her anyway to tell her what had happened. She said that if the tendon damage is less, I will probably recover much faster than last time. I left her to get in touch with school to contact the insurance company to try to organise payment for hospitalisation costs (this had been done earlier but of course for the hospital of the first doctor!) So, I’m going to have surgery in 3 days time but I feel 100% better than I did on Wednesday when the only thing wrong with me was that I was a teacher! I know now that I will get better – my recovery for my left arm was wonderful – full mobility in every direction & no problems with it ever since. So I am optimistic about this arm too – although the physiotherapy situation in Luanda isn’t good. I’m hoping that I will be able to do much of it myself.

The really sad thing about all of this is that I will miss Bill’s birthday on Sunday. I have some presents hidden for him, but can’t get what he really wants until we get back to the UK in June. I haven’t found anything great for him here either. I hope what I’ve managed to get will at least give him a bit of a birthday feeling (even though I don’t think it will last for long as they aren’t very exciting). I made the newspaper clipping at the beginning of this post to let him know that I was thinking of him. This is from the Newspaper Clipping image generator - a great site if you are more imaginative with words than I am. “Monster” was Bill’s band nickname when he was in KL.

Luanda celebrates 434 years

2010-01-31T05:53:00.000-08:00

The city of Luanda celebrated its 434th birthday yesterday afternoon – making it one of Africa’s oldest cities. (The City of Luanda day was on Monday.) The Angola Field Group sent out general invitations to the celebrations downtown in the large square close to the marginal.

We arrived about an hour and a half after the festivities started (we wanted to avoid the midday heat) and were just in time to catch the end of a capoeira demonstration. These people are incredibly highly skilled & it is fascinating to watch. We were a little surprised at the small turn out – we saw people from the Angolan Field group of course and several other teachers from school, but the audience seemed to be mostly “tourists” (as such exists in Luanda) with few locals. This is a shame, as the event was organised to raise awareness about the need to preserve Luanda’s cultural heritage – in particular the old buildings (many of which are in a state of disrepair) that date back to Portuguese colonial times. There were bus trips and walking tours organised and the later were well attended by kids in particular. Bill & I didn’t really want to sit in a bus (even though one of the bus tours was in English), so I can’t say what the tours were like.

About five minutes after the capoeira had finished, we saw a big group of people coming into the square. This was one of the dancing groups that take part in Carnival – and they were all dressed up for the event. It was fantastic – they were enthusiastic and cheerful and the dancing was very spirited. Great for taking photos! Afterwards we got a few more shots, but they left quite quickly and there didn’t seem to be much else happening soon. The heat was pretty intense, and we figured we were happy with what we’d already seen, so we decided to give up while we were ahead, and go home. It was a very nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon though.

African Cup of Nations: Party Time

2010-01-29T12:18:00.000-08:00

I am not a football fan – in fact I avoid football (or soccer as I’ve always known it) as much as possible. However, the African Cup of Nations is being hosted by Angola & it is unavoidable. The competition started while we still in Thailand, so we missed the opening ceremony that the other teachers got to see. What we didn’t miss, as it made front-page news, was the shootings at the Togo team in Cabinda. Not good publicity just as the school was trying to hire new teachers. Hard to explain that no sane person would consider going to Cabinda & quite why Angola thought it would be a good place for the Cup of Nations, who knows?

Once we got back, it was all excitement as it seemed Angola had a real chance of getting into the quarter-finals, & from there, well anything was possible. Bill succumbed (he is a real football fan) & paid over the top to go to the Angola vs Algeria match that would determine Angola’s fate. I was happy to stay at home. I saw the last 15 minutes of it on TV & even I could tell that it was abysmal – some sort of match-rigging had taken place & neither side was trying to do anything except waste time & play out a 0 – 0 draw that would guarantee both of them a spot in the quarter finals. Bill’s comments when he got home are mostly unrepeatable, except for “it’s the worst football game I’ve ever seen in my entire life” – which is saying something for someone who has been going to live games since he was about 4!

Despite this ill omen, we had already put our names down for tickets to the quarter-finals – for me it would be my first ever live match (remember I am a kiwi & soccer doesn’t count for much back home). The game was on Sunday & as luck would have it, the Monday was a school holiday (City of Luanda day), so there was no stress about getting home at a reasonable hour. In fact, the consensus was that the traffic jam back into Luanda would be so bad (2 hours the night Bill went) that we would have a barbeque at the stadium after the match & only attempt the drive home a couple of hours after everyone else.

So, on Sunday we got dressed for the game – me in an Angolan T-shirt & Bill in an Angolan flag! We got to the stadium early (also in an attempt to avoid the jams), so Bill & I took our camera’s into the crowd. Bill had learnt from his experience during the week that any camera of decent size (ie bigger than a cigarette packet) was not being allowed into the stadium – he’d come home without a single photo as he’d had to return the camera to the bus for the game. We’d come prepared – our SLR’s for the before the game shots, and a couple of small cameras to try to get into the stadium.

The atmosphere outside the stadium was typical Luanda on a party day – everyone was dressed up & having a good time. People were asking us to take their photos or happily posing – just like at Carnival. The most outrageous thing we saw was a goat on a lead dressed up in Angolan colours! (We saw this outside the stadium – I doubt the goat was allowed inside!). (Bill disagrees and thinks the guy in drag who did the “hula hoop” for us to photograph was more outrageous)

The place was a sea of red and yellow and black (the colours of the Angolan flag). After about half an hour of taking photos, we had to retire our good cameras & then try our luck with getting the smaller cameras through security. It was touch and go – I had a compact camera with a 200mm lens that they just didn’t want to let in – but eventually they gave up trying to tell us it wasn’t OK & let us go. Security was very tight & everything was very well organised. I was impressed with the new stadium – lots of toilets, lots of places to buy water & food etc & tight checking of tickets so that you had to sit where your ticket was & not just where you pleased.

The stadium was a sea of red & yellow (it turned out that the few Ghanaian supporters at the match were sitting underneath us, so we couldn’t see the little patch of orange that was there). When the game started, there were still a lot of empty seats (traffic jams) but by 20 minutes into the game, most seats were filled. We wondered how much most people paid for their tickets – we were on the very back row, right behind one goal & our tickets said 300 kwanza (about $US3) – but we paid Kw 1000 each and I am sure others paid much more.

I can’t comment much on the game, except it went much faster than I’d been dreading & it wasn’t nearly as bad as the other game (but still quite dismal, with many good chances badly missed). Angola had the most opportunities, but failed to do anything with them. Ghana had one real chance and scored – and that was the end result: 1 - 0 to Ghana. The crowd wasn’t happy, but the mood was still good as we exited the stadium. Considering Angola was out of the cup, everyone seemed to take it very well.

We got our barbeque going & as the coals burnt down, we watched the traffic crawling back towards the city. Despite the fact that it made it a very long day, the barbeque was a great success and when we finally packed up to come home, the trip was less than half an hour and we were able to collapse into bed having already eaten.

So, such was my very first live football match – and frankly, probably my last! Lots of colour and atmosphere, not much excitement on the pitch, but still a great day out. I’m sad for Angola that it won’t go further, but if you play that badly…..

A New Year in Bangkok

2010-01-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

We arrived in the heat and humidity of Bangkok – what a shock after the snow and cold. However we think we were lucky to get out, as the winter UK weather just hasn’t got better. We were also badly jet-lagged (the layovers in Dubai and KL probably didn’t help) so crashed very early in the evening after attending our orientation meeting for the job fair.

We had a busy fair with lots of interviews and we also managed to catch the presentations of the schools we were particularly interested in. We also attended the presentation for our school, so people could come and ask us questions about life at the school or in Angola. There seemed to be lots of interest, which is a healthy sign for the school.

After much wrestling with the decision, we finally decided on Sunday to accept job offers for a school in Dubai. Despite taking hours to decide, and talking to as many different people as we could about it, once we made the decision, it felt like the right thing to do for us now. We are really excited. Ironically, it will put us much closer to the boys in Tanzania – about 5 hours vs the current 36 hours plus!

Our flight back was on Monday, so Sunday evening we visited Pantip Plaza for our “techie” fix, followed by a great Indian meal. On Monday morning we got up early and caught the ferry to Wat Arun – the temple of the dawn. Although we definitely weren’t there for dawn, we did catch the early morning light on the river and at the temple. We’d both been to the temple before, but it is so photogenic that it was an obvious choice with just a couple of hours to spare.

Our flights back to Angola were uneventful, but the stop-over in Dubai airport took on a new meaning now we know we’ll be using it so often! We arrived in Luanda around 3pm on Tuesday and Bill was one of the first in the immigration line – we were through in about 15 minutes – an all time Luanda record for us. We were very surprised to find that the luggage hall had been over-hauled since the last time we flew in – it now boasts 3 “proper” luggage conveyer belts and they even have signage up saying where to expect your bags. That in itself would have been a huge improvement, but to our total surprise, the bags started to appear not long after we arrived there. We actually got our bags & were out of the airport in just under an hour from landing – that is nearly 3 times faster than normal! (Unfortunately, when we swapped notes with other teachers, it appears that this record speed is not consistent – despite the new conveyor belts, some people still had a two hour wait for their luggage).

So, jetlagged again (although not as bad as the other direction) we had another very early night with a three day working week to deal with the next day. Back to school…

Winter Wow!

2010-01-06T05:26:00.000-08:00

Who would have guessed – in amongst all the global warming hype we arrived in Manchester to a scene covered in snow! In fact, on our flight from Dubai, all we could see from the time the sun came up as we flew over Europe was a sea of snow. Snow everywhere. Luckily our flight wasn’t significantly delayed, by the time we got to Manchester the airport had been open long enough to clear most of the back-log.

Although it snowed more the day we arrived, from then on it was really just sub-zero temperatures with frosts & no snow – so the snow didn’t melt & the footpaths became dangerously icy & everyone walked on the roads instead.

By Christmas, it was still icy and much of the snow was gone, but with the boys with us for Christmas morning & the whole family for Christmas dinner it was a wonderful day. After Christmas we visited Bill’s aunts and cousins in Scotland – many of whom he hadn’t seen for nearly twenty years. They made us feel very welcome & the snow up there was still thick. The kids had a great time with snow-ball fights & learning how to roll snowballs to make snowmen. They even got to go sledging down a hill behind Bill’s cousins house.
After just 12 short days, the boys flew back to Paris to their mother & we flew out the next day. But our last morning in Manchester we woke up to about 7 inches of fresh snow on the ground! No one could remember seeing so much snow for years. It was so weird – everything was strangely quiet as the schools had been closed & many businesses as well. Cars were trapped & supplies of grit to clear the roads almost exhausted by the series of heavy frosts and icy roads. Bill & I took our cameras out to the nearby park & found what seemed to be half the population making snowmen. And not just families with kids either.

With all the snow, we were a little anxious about our flight out, but with an 8pm departure we hoped we’d have no problems. As it turned out, we were lucky – Manchester airport opened about 1pm & our departure was delayed by only about an hour.

We are currently in Dubai airport waiting for our flight through to Bangkok for the job fair. Here’s hoping it goes well!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

2009-12-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Bill & I are enjoying what looks like will be a white Christmas - it was snowing when we flew into Manchester airport. We'll be with family & loving every minute of it. We hope that everyone reading this also has a great Christmas and a wonderful 2010.

Rio Longa Once Again

2009-12-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

The last day of school was a Thursday, & although most people fly out as fast as possible, once again Bill & I had booked our flights for about a week later. However, just like last year we found ourselves so busy in the run up to end of term that we didn’t get around to booking ourselves a break away. When the holidays actually came, we were still quite busy as we needed to make cover lessons for the first 6 days because we are going to the job fair in Bangkok.

We’d spoken to Tony B several months ago about our plans – we are happy at the school, but know it’s not the place we’ll stay long term. We wanted to start the process of looking for another school because we will be quite fussy about where we go next & reasoned it may take two years of looking to find the right school. Tony was great & agreed to let us postpone our final resignation until after the Bangkok fair, by advertising our positions as tentative.

We’d spent ages updating our CV’s – mine in particular needed re-working due to the fact that I’ve been teaching mathematics and MYP for the first time. Our first few days of holidays we found ourselves writing letters to a few schools that had matching vacancies, which had just come up on the job-fair website. I was also busy with my two online courses (an advanced Flash course & an intermediate Photoshop course) – the final assignments were due just as we finished school.

After spending several days on cover and writing application letters, we decided that the only realistic plan for our remaining week was to go to Rio Longa for a couple nights. We tried the telephone number we had, but of course, couldn’t get through. However, I managed eventually to find the website & make a booking online.

We were a bit surprised to find that we weren’t the only ones still around – one day when I was in my classroom working on my cover, Carolina walked in. It turned out that her son’s passport still hadn’t come back from getting his family visa. (Sami’s was late too – but had arrived with just under two weeks before the holiday). The school was doing its best to get the passport back, but because his original visa had well and truly expired, they couldn’t even just get his passport back & leave as the fine for overstaying his original visa could be thousands of dollars. They had missed the flight they had intended to leave on that day, and the remaining flights before Christmas were all heavily booked. Tony B had said they could take 3 weeks holiday from when his passport arrived, but understandably, she was quite anxious about where they would be for Christmas. She was remarkably calm about the situation – I know how stressed we would have been if we’d had to miss our flight. The whole visa thing has been a nightmare this year – the “blue stamp” issue is unofficially resolved – after a meeting with several people in the school and the board with the minister for petroleum who reassured the school that the people with blue stamps would in fact be able to renew their visas next year. The reassurances have worked, very few people other than Bill & I are looking at other schools, despite the large number of blue stamps issued.

We went up to Rio Longa early Wednesday morning & although the boat to pick us up wasn’t there, it arrived about 5 minutes later. The trip on the boat didn’t go past many birds, but we did see a very big crocodile – one of the biggest we’ve seen there. It was sunning itself on the bank, but as our boat came in closer we obviously disturbed it as it launched itself into the water in a fraction of a second. Very scary that a crocodile so big can move so fast!

When we got to the resort, we could see that we had it to ourselves & after explaining that we were the type of vegetarians that didn’t even eat chicken, yet alone fish, we sat out on the balcony and relaxed before lunch. After lunch we went in a kayak across to the ocean side & walked up to the headland. Distances are quite deceptive – we walked for a good couple of hours before we got to the end & then we finished off the water we’d carried – for some reason no matter how much water we have, it never quite seems to be enough! We saw several palm nut vultures which are common there, but not low down – they were circling way up in the thermals of the cliffs. The beach was covered in crabs as usual, we found a dead fish that been washed up in the waves – it was covered in a heaving mass of crabs trying to eat as much of it as possible before the sea reclaimed it.

By the time we’d walked back to the kayak we were quite exhausted & spent the rest of the afternoon being lazy & reading our books. The thing we love about Rio Longa is how totally relaxing it is & how beautiful it is to just sit & watch the lagoon with the sound of the sea in the background. It is also the sort of place that you go to bed really early (no electricity, so not much choice) and then get a great night’s sleep.

The next day after breakfast we went on our first “kayak safari” – we perfected this when we were here last year – one of us gets to paddle the other as close to the birds as possible while they take photos, and after working our way around the central lily pads and up the mangroves, we swap over when we can land the kayak on a beach. We thought the water hyacinth was much thicker this year than last, and it made it quite hard to get close to the mangrove roots. However, we saw a good assortment of birds, including the tiny pygmy kingfishers that live in the reeds.

In the afternoon we walked along the beach in the opposite direction (with much more water in our packs), but didn’t go nearly as far. We also went out on the resort boat, but it can’t get very close to the banks or trees, so not as good for taking photos of birds as the kayaks. We had another quiet and relaxing evening & the next day we went out on the kayak again – it was a very overcast day & there were noticeably less birds around, but we still managed to find a few. We had arranged to be picked up at 2pm, so had lunch before we left. When Bill went to pay our bill, they gave a price 50% more than the price quoted on their booking page on the internet. In the end we paid the price we’d expected, but to be honest the new prices are beyond even Angolan expensive. I doubt we will go back – US$600 a night for the two of us is just too much to pay for no electricity, free beers & sodas, but not wine or spirits & pretty average meals. The beauty of the place just isn’t worth that sort of money. With rates like that it is no wonder that we had the place to ourselves for two days with another couple only arriving just before we left. But, it was the perfect relaxing holiday for us before we headed back to the UK for the craziness of Christmas shopping and full on family. We have just a few days in Manchester before the boys arrive on Christmas Eve & from then on our days will be based around them. We are looking forward to it hugely, but it has been nice to have a bit of respite between the craziness of the end of school, getting ready for the job fair and being busy with family.

Fashion Extravaganza

2009-12-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

Dahni, one of our year 13 students organised a fashion show as part of her CAS hours. She had designed a whole set of clothes and for the previous month or so had been organising practice sessions with the student “models”. As well as her clothes, one of the ladies in the office also designs clothes & she provided clothes for the second half of the show.

As well as the actual fashion parade, a group of mostly year 9 students choreographed a dance to perform & a student band – “the alternatives” performed as well.

I spent a couple of hours the day of the show taking photos of the dress rehearsal – the parade was on the ramp of building 6 as the theatre was still a construction site with the guys installing the light & sound system not quite finished. At first I wasn’t convinced it was going to work, but after watching the rehearsals, I could see that it would be very successful – the turns on the ramp gave the models a chance to turn & pose.

Danhi had a big crew of student helpers – they set up chairs both downstairs in the foyer & “VIP” seats upstairs at twice the price. The show started late (maybe that’s standard for fashion shows), partly because Danhi had taken the girls who were modelling to the hairdressers & they weren’t back by the time it was supposed to start. Dahni had done a superb organising job, as well as actually getting everything ready for the show. I took photos of the first half but went home at half time exhausted. All the money from the audience went to UNICEF and Dahni & Callie gave a very impressive speech at the start about UNICEF in general and what they are doing in Angola in particular. Although we don’t have the exact amount raised yet, we think it was around US$500. The whole evening was a real credit to her – no one has done anything like that before at the school.

Windhoek Sports Tournament

2009-12-02T05:14:00.000-08:00

Bill set off to Windhoek with the boys soccer team, the girls soccer team and Bora, Tomi & a parent volleyball coach the morning after my birthday. He’d been organising the details of the trip for over two months & was more than ready for the tournament to actually start. The tournament was firstly a soccer tournament but there was also a volleyball tournament with mixed teams made from the girls and boys soccer teams.

The boys came second to the team from Malawi, the girls came fourth and the volleyball team showed its makeshift nature by playing well but failing to be placed.

The Jungle Book

2009-11-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

This year’s PYP musical was The Jungle Book – Kim & Maggie did it as a joint effort with kids from year 5 to 7. They had originally planned for it to be in the theatre, but the technicians who were installing the lights and sound system had the theatre out of action & couldn’t guarantee that it would be ready in time for the performance. They decided they were better off just having it in the dining room again & hoping it would be their last performance there.

I went to the dress rehearsal during the day, when the younger kids were the first audience. It seemed to go really smoothly – so maybe the rather fraught rehearsal Sheila went to the day before had had the desired effect. I couldn’t stay until the very end, so I arranged with Kim to sit on the edge of the stage for the final night’s production & try to catch some photos from there.

Bill was in Windhoek so I came back to school early to catch the face-painting of the main characters. The kids had made their own “jungle” outfits in art classes & the costuming was very effective considering the limited resources. The elephant trunks were last year’s kangaroo tails!

There was lots of “line” dancing in this production & I wasn’t in a good position to photograph that, but I did manage to get some nice shots of many of the main actors. I couldn’t use a flash as I thought it would be distracting for the audience & I doubted it would catch the atmosphere effectively anyway.

After the performance I joined a group of teachers to go around to Kim’s place for some celebratory drinks. Tomi was in Windhoek with Bill – as was Bora, so Tina was babysitting Ella & Sami. Tony B joined us there & we had a very pleasant evening, although as it was still mid-week, we didn’t stay particularly late.

International Day 2009

2009-11-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

International day had me busy once again making NZ themed stickers to give out for the children’s “passports”. There is actually a couple of half-kiwi kids in the school this year – their mum said they would be responsible for making questions that the kids would have to answer to get their sticker.

Despite Shannon & Danielle both being back in NZ (with their baby due in just a couple of weeks), and Nikki gone to Thailand, we’d gained three more kiwis this year. Candi had the idea of having a “Kiwi Café” theme – serving coffee lattes and having sofas with a DVD of NZ scenery playing in the background. We’d met and allocated tasks a month ago, so everyone knew what they were doing &/or providing. The official theme for the day was “Peace” and Whetu had a Maori story about a rainbow and warring colours. So I made a new set of stickers with a rainbow theme to go with the stickers I made last year.

As usual, I helped with setting up, & then excused myself to take photos for yearbook. I had made myself a “yearbook photographer” sticker for myself, Bill, Sheila and Oscar who were also taking photos for yearbook. It was much more overcast than last year, so not quite so hot watching the performances on stage. After the performances were over, I managed to get something to eat, have a look at the silent auction gift bags (nothing for us there) & check out the various stalls. Surprisingly fast, it was time to start taking our stall down – we’d had several boards with pictures and information on them, but we decided that no one had really bothered to stop and look at it – so we thought we’d try pictures only next year. Just as things were coming to a close, the bus bringing the teachers and kids back from a week in South Africa on their International Award trip arrived back from the airport. Talking to Marek, it seemed they’d had a fantastic time away & the kids had really enjoyed it.

Relaxing at Kissama

2009-11-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

We decided to have a relaxing visit to Kissama on our early close Friday. It seemed like ages since we’d last been & we were aware that as summer got closer, it would be more unpleasant to go camping. We also knew that it simply couldn’t compare with our safari experience in Tanzania, but the thought of having a relaxing couple of days out in the country was still very tempting.

We packed up the chilly-bin with lunch and the food to cook for our dinner & breakfast & made sure that we had lots of anti-mosquito stuff (which we’d regrettably forgotten the last time). For a single overnight, we sure had a big load of stuff. Because it was a “long” weekend, transport was at a premium, so we shared our 4-wheeled drive with Mara, Rodrigo and Angela who were headed for the Kwanza river lodge & beach for the day. It was a bit of a squeeze, with Angela sitting in the back, but it was manageable.

We dropped the day-trippers off first & then drove on to the park. Although the weather was very dry in Luanda, you could tell it was much wetter this far south. There was quite a bit of road-works on the drive into the park – a normal car would have been able to manage fine, until we reached the end of it. We couldn’t decide what it was all for – whether the plan was to slowly improve the road all the way to the park grounds, or whether something else on the way in was being planned.

As usual, we were the only campers & as the weather seemed a bit dodgy, we decided we’d better get the tent up quickly. We decided we’d do only one safari trip – and that would be the morning one. We took our books and our packed lunch into the big jango and made ourselves comfortable for a relaxing afternoon. We were asked several times by the park guys if we wanted to go on the afternoon safari trip – I think they thought we didn’t understand them as they clearly thought our head-shaking to be quite weird. However, as the afternoon progressed, we were soon glad we hadn’t gone on the truck as big thunder clouds gathered on the horizon & soon it was starting to rain. We got chased out of the jango as the weather further deteriorated & they collected the cushions to keep them out of the rain. We returned our chilly bin to the tent & made sure everything there was under cover and then hit the bar. Hardly a minute too soon – the sky got dark & thunder and lightning became much closer. The rain just bucketed down. We were sooo glad we weren’t sitting on the back of the safari truck with nothing warm to wear & minimal protection from the elements! As it was, the bar was a great place to sit and watch the storm. Visibility dropped right away as the storm got closer & the rain harder. It was quite exhilarating watching it all!

Eventually the storm moved on and visibility improved. It was getting on & we needed to make a start on our evening meal before it got much darker. We were feeling a bit lazy, so we thought we’d check out the restaurant. We asked to see a menu, but of course there wasn’t one – instead it looked to be a buffet – with nothing vegetarian. We resigned ourselves to cooking for ourselves & set about looking for a table to take up to the jango by the campsite. This wasn’t that easy as there were hardly any tables, & they were really dirty. But we didn’t fancy cooking on the floor either, so we took the “cleanest” table and carried it up to the jango. The jango was also noticeably worse for wear – there were large holes in the thatch, but fortunately the light still worked & the jango itself wasn’t too messy. We set up all our food & got out the trangia to make a cup of tea & horror of horrors, discovered that the burner was missing from it! We looked at each other in dismay – we already knew the restaurant wasn’t an option & everything we had needed to be cooked. However, after that initial panic, we looked around at what we had – we decided we’d try putting alcohol in the metal lid of our Tabard anti-mosquito candles. The flame was a bit wild & not the hottest, but we were able to use the trangia and boil our water & then cook our meal. We felt rather proud of ourselves for our ingenuity! (Although we’ll never grab a trangia again without checking the inside first.)

We went to bed relatively early (not much to do in the pitch dark after you’ve eaten) and had a so-so night. Somehow mosquitoes got into the tent during the night & neither of us slept very well. This wasn’t helped by the very late arrival by a group of French guys in several identical cars who seemed to drive around in circles & then put up their tents way to close to ours (why did they do that when the campground was empty?). They took over the jango, so in the morning when we got up we went straight to join the first safari trip of the day. There seemed to be a big group of people wanting to go – but Bill & I have learnt from experience to get on board the second we can so we get the seats we want. In the end, one group went off in their own car with a ranger with them.

We saw an eland early on & then lots of giraffes. We also saw some kudu and lots of bushbuck of course. Then more giraffes, & then not that much else. Definitely no rival to Selous! Bill is ready to never go on another safari there again, but we’ve had much better days (& admittedly worse ones) & I think the randomness is part of its appeal. It’s a shame it is becoming so expensive – around $40 for the tent site (& with facilities getting grottier…) and $30 each for the bone-jarring, skin scratching ex-army truck safari. But the location remains so relaxing and peaceful – maybe we’ll restrict ourselves to day trips in future. It would be sad not to go back!

The jango was free for us to make our breakfast when we got back from the safari & as the weather still looked a bit dodgy, we decided to take the tent down early as we didn’t want to have to take it down in the rain. We set ourselves up in the jango again with our books & waited for the driver to come to take us home. Not much photography this time, but lots of relaxing & we both enjoyed our time chilling.

Rufiji River birdlife

2009-10-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

I always take lots of photos of birds – many of which just don’t turn out. However, Selous was great for birds as well as mammals – I saw at least 3 different types of bee-eater, we saw spoonbills, open billed storks, herons, hornbills, Egyptian geese, and lots of different raptors. At the campsite I saw woodpeckers and woodland kingfishers, and one evening I even saw an owl.

Selous Safari

2009-10-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

For our October holiday we take advantage of being in Africa by spending time with Bill’s boys in Tanzania. Fortunately they get almost identical school holidays as us, so we are able to spend as much of the holidays as we can with them. Of course, it takes a couple of days to get there – we have to overnight in Johannesburg, as there isn’t a connecting flight through to Dar. And then, the flight isn’t until the afternoon, so we decided we’d pick up the boys the morning after we arrived rather than trying to do it the evening we flew in. Just as well as it turned out, as our flight out of Jo’burg was delayed due to a big thunder and lightning storm & we didn’t get into our hotel in Dar until quite late in the evening. However, the hotel restaurant was still open so we were able to have a curry (always a treat) before crashing. This was our first trip out of Luanda with the “new” system at the airport – the departures section is a big tent, but still a HUGE improvement on the old set-up. We were able to go into the check-in part as soon as we arrived (no more amorphous mobs trying to get through) and despite the lines being incorrectly labelled, we were able to check-in & go through customs relatively painlessly. We’d only got our passports back with our up-to-date visas about 2 weeks earlier (we’d started to get quite stressed) but some teachers weren’t so lucky – we’d supposed to have shared our bus to the airport with Joel and Mara, but Mara’s passport still hadn’t come back! So it was thrilling to suddenly see them in the departures lounge – they’d been able to pick up her passport (with visa) that morning & still make it to the airport in time for their flight! Some other teachers got their passports at the same time, but they had cancelled their flights thinking it wouldn’t happen in time! The whole visa renewal process has been a disaster this year – for the first time, some of the teachers (and administrators) who were renewing for their third (or more) year got “blue stamps” meaning they wouldn’t be renewed for the following year. But these were random – some people renewing for 5th year didn’t get them, others have just one out of a couple getting them & even one teacher just renewing for the second time got one! School is going to try to sort it out as the current situation is about 25 people who theoretically can’t come back next year!

Anyway – the boys arrived at our hotel in time for breakfast. We’d asked them what they wanted to do for the holiday – go to the beach in Zanzibar (like last year), or go on safari. Despite the numerous safaris’ they have been on (they are very lucky boys), they were adamant that’s what they wanted to do with us. They also told us they hadn’t been very impressed with the northern safaris they’d been on, so we decided to take them somewhere closer to Dar. Their mother recommended Selous as being a good park relatively close by, so after investigating a variety of places, we’d booked 3 nights at Rufiji River Camp (http://www.rufijirivercamp.com/)
– it caters for children (which a lot of places don’t) and it had the most reasonable packages (but still expensive – safari doesn’t come cheap!). We’d booked flights to get there & on our second day with the boys we headed off to the airport. The airplane that we were flying with had warned us that only small soft bags would be taken, so we left the bigger & harder bags at the hotel. The check-in was very informal & pleasant & then we were getting on our plane! It was about a 14 seater – and almost every seat was full. Bill doesn’t like such little planes, but it was exciting sitting in the same space as the pilot & we had good seats next to the windows. What I love about small planes is that you fly low – so you get great aerial views. The flight itself was about 35 minutes – long enough to be exciting without getting boring. The best part was as we got close to landing – we flew over the Rufiji River, and as we got lower, Enzo and I spotted a group of elephants getting shade under a tree & we could see heaps of hippos in the river. The airstrip was just dirt amongst the trees and as we were landing we saw a giraffe along the runway! And as we turned to taxi back to the “arrivals hut” we saw baboons casually making their way across the runway. How cool!

We were the only ones getting off at this camp – the others were flying onto to another place. We were met by a very friendly man from the camp, and the arrival formalities only took about 15 minutes. Then we were loaded into a jeep and as we were driven to our accommodation we saw impalas, a ground hornbill, a glossy ibis – not bad for just a 5 minute trip!

At the resort we checked in, shown around the place and taken to our “tents”. It was obvious that we would need to have a child each in each tent as hippos walked around the grounds at night, as well as the occasional elephant. We couldn’t risk the boys sleeping by themselves & forgetting that it was dangerous to go outside. As it was, to go to dinner at night, we needed to signal to one of the Maasai guards to come & get us to escort us from our tents to dinner and back again!

The resort was all inclusive – the cost included 2 safaris’ a day as well as all our meals. The people running the place were fantastic – we’d let them know that Bill & I were vegetarians so they made separate food for us for each meal, and they asked us every day what the boys wanted to eat for dinner, and made special meals for them as well. They also let us eat slightly earlier at night as their regular time for dinner was just a bit late for the boys after a full day.

Our first “safari” was a boat trip the afternoon we arrived – the resort is built on a narrow projection of land out into the river, so it was essentially surrounded by water except at the “back” of the resort. Our tents were right on the edge of a cliff (just a bit scary) overlooking the river and the hippos basking in it. The boat trip was a couple of hours – we went past lots of hippos and over 20 crocodiles – they were all out basking in the late afternoon sun. We saw waterbuck and buffalo on the banks at the side of the river, as well as lots of wading birds. On our way back we saw a lone bull elephant right by the cliff edge – a very exciting end to our trip.

The next day we met our driver and our tracker/guide Oscar who would be with us for the rest of our time. The guys were great with the boys – especially Oscar who made a real point of talking to them directly and taught them so much about what we were seeing. The boys had a short wish list (they had already seen so much) – they wanted to see wild dogs (they hadn’t seen any before & Selous is famous for having half of all the wild dogs in Africa) and also a leopard (which they had seen before, but not up close). We were in a jeep to ourselves & within half an hour we’d seen our first wild dogs and a herd of elephants crossing the road in front of us! It was a great day – a bit later we were along the river’s edge and happened to be in time to see the same herd of elephants we’d seen earlier come down to the river to drink & meet up with another herd of elephants. We were able to get out of our jeep & go down to the water’s edge to see them cross the water & then push each other up the bank on the far side. We saw lots of birds – raptors & lots of different types of bee-eaters as well as water birds. On the afternoon game drive after lunch we found a hippo skull & Oscar very kindly helped the boys remove the gigantic tusks still in place. He said the boys could keep them – they got a long & short tusk each – definitely one of the trip’s highlights for the boys!

The campsite had lots of birds as well – more bee-eaters, kingfishers, hornbills and smaller birds such as weavers. There was also a troop of vervet monkeys that walked though the grounds in the afternoon & again first thing in the morning. They had lots of females with young monkeys and the second morning when Lucca & I tried to walk to Bill’s tent next door, we were attacked by some very aggressive males as we came out of our tent. I managed to scare them away & get Lucca safely into Bill’s tent without either of us being bitten but it scared us both - & I think we must have scared them when we came out of our tent just while they were passing by a bit close.

The second full day we choose to take a picnic lunch & drive out a bit further. This paid off, as we came across a leopard in a tree. We parked right under the tree – we could see the leopard panting we were so close. We’d only been there a few minutes when the leopard suddenly got up & ran down the tree & walked around between it & our jeep – we were so close that it was a bit scary – we were in an open jeep with two little boys & that leopard sure was big and powerful! It just ignored us however, & soon moved off. We followed it for a bit & then lost it – you’d think it would be impossible to “lose” a big cat you knew was close by, but their camouflage is so effective that even experienced trackers like Oscar couldn’t find it again. We gave up on the leopard & not very much later found a group of lions – one male & several lionesses sleeping under a palm tree. Once again we able to get very close – the lion watched us for a bit but then just put his head down – the lionesses never looked up once! As if a leopard & a group of lions wasn’t enough, we then found a big group of wild dogs & watched them for a while. Like the lions, they were mostly lying in the shade resting – a whole mob of them. We also saw a monitor lizard, which Lucca enjoyed (& me – monitors are a favourite of mine). As well as lots of zebra, wildebeest, giraffes and impala, we also saw lots of kudu – which the boys also hadn’t seen before. We saw a black heron using its wings as an umbrella so it could see the fish against the glare – something I’d only seen on TV, so that was another treat for me too. Our picnic was wonderful – a table & chairs complete with tablecloth, glasses for our drinks & lots of tasty food. We’d had such a good day. We came back to camp after lunch & the boys swam in the pool (despite its rather cold temperature).

Our last day we choose to take an early safari - & we saw lots of waterbuck – a rather unfortunate animal with a big white bull’s eye that seems to be painted on its bottom! We also saw an immature bateleur (a type of raptor) playing with what I think was a piece of twig. We saw a spotted hyena – it literally came out of a ditch right in front of us, and more giraffes than you’d think possible. Our flight back to Dar had been delayed until after lunch – mainly so the pilot could have lunch at our resort! We were driven out to the airstrip ( with the pilot) after lunch & much to our amazement, we were shown to a tiny 6-seater plane – the boys had to flip a coin to see who was going to sit in the co-pilot’s seat! Enzo won & sat in the front, Bill & I were behind & Lucca had the back seat to himself – a bit like the back seat of a car. The 35 minute trip went really fast – the pilot even let Enzo steer the plane for a bit!

We had another full day with the boys – Bill went with them to the beach to have some time with them alone while I did some (mostly window) shopping in a tourist complex. Our holiday was over in what seemed like no time at all, but when we stopped & thought back on all we’d seen and done, it also seemed impossible that had been so short!

Bill & I had an early flight back to Jo’burg & once again needed to overnight before we could fly back to Luanda. We stayed in a hotel close to a shopping mall & bought a heap of food & other stuff (lots of cheese) to take back with us. The flight back was uneventful but as always we had a very long wait at immigration & then still had to wait longer for our bags (how they can take 3 hours to unload one planes luggage is more than I can understand). However, the bags did show up (always a relief after losing our bags at Christmas) & we were back home again in good time. We’d had a wonderful holiday with the boys that everyone had enjoyed – you couldn’t ask for more!

Mussulu, Finally

2009-10-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

We were invited to have a picnic on Mussulu by Kim and Tomi & as we’d never actually been there, eagerly accepted. We’d read and heard about Mussulu long before we’d first arrived – how teachers would get a boat across to the beach & spend the day away from school. It had sounded idyllic. But once we arrived, we’d been tempted by beaches much further afield and had never got around to checking Mussulu out. Mussulu is a very long sand-spit connected to the main coast a bit south of the slavery museum, but by a very bad road. Most people take boats across. It is very long and runs north parallel to the coast for about 30 – 40 kms. The Ilha in the city is similar, just much shorter.

It is very easy to get to from Luanda Sol, as one of the main “ferry” departure points is less than 15 minutes from school. (The other main place to get boats across to Mussulu is by the slavery museum). Kim and family arrived with Bora and Tina and Tari’s family as well. Also there were some other friends of Tomi and Tari who were coming too. Eventually everyone arrived with all the barbeques and chilly bins (cool boxes) and drinks etc. We needed 2 boats to get us & our gear across – but fortunately, once we landed we only had to carry stuff a few minutes up the beach into the shade.

We set up our “stake” and the guys got the barbeques up & lit. There was a “fish” barbeque and a “vegetarian” barbeque as well. The kids got coated in sunscreen & then they hit the beach. The section of Mussulu that we were on was quite narrow – we headed away from the city side to the other side which was actually facing a lagoon – just a few minutes walk. Unfortunately there was a lot of broken glass lying around in the sand & you had to be very careful where you walked. But the sea was very gentle and ideal for the kids to play in – even Sami.

Bill & I walked around the edge of the lagoon towards a large flock of sea birds. We couldn’t get very close to them without walking a long way around, so we contented ourselves with standing on the beach opposite them, taking photos as they spooked themselves into the air occasionally. There were egrets, herons, sea gulls and lots of smaller sea birds as well. Each species seemed to have their own piece of territory along the stretch of beach they were sitting on.

The barbeque was great – a local man came along & insisted on helping with the barbeque – we rewarded him with a big plate of cooked fish and salad for him & his friends. The kids had a great time & it was relaxing for the adults as well. After lunch Bill & I walked in the opposite direction – away from the lagoon & to a wider stretch of sand where more birds were nesting. The view of the city in the immediate background made the beach scene a bit surreal.

At the time we’d asked, one boat showed up to take us back – we caught that along with some of the other friends who’d come along & before we knew it we were back in our apartment. Although the beach was by far the dirtiest we’d been to, the sheer convenience of getting there & home again was a big factor in its favour. The nicest part really was the getting together with friends and having such a nice day!

Beaches North and South

2009-09-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

After a winter holiday in NZ, hitting the beach in Angola seemed very attractive. The last weekend of August we joined a group of others going to Cabo Ledo for the day. At the last minute Bill decided he would go by bike – with me in the van along with our picnic and beach chair etc. We made sure our phones were working (always an issue as they expire in only 2 weeks regardless of how much credit you have) and he set off just after I left. He caught us up just as we started to emerge from the traffic around the slavery museum & he followed us for a while. Then he went ahead as he wanted us behind him in case anything went wrong while he was crossing the bridge (with all the security checks there). However he wasn’t stopped so the next time we saw him was taking a photo of the Kissama National Park sign. He arrived at the beach about 10 minutes after we did – quite exhausted from the long trip. I was very glad to see him as I’d been quite worried about the traffic & how they tend to ignore motorcycles as if they don’t exist.

The beach was great – still not too hot to sit out in the sun during the day, but the water was freezing cold. The surfers were undeterred though – they had headed out several hours earlier than us beach bunnies. Around lunch time a group of dolphins came past – very close to shore. It was very cool! The surfers (who go almost every weekend) had never seen them so close. We went for a walk under the cliffs and saw lots of fossils. Bill left about 2 so that he wouldn’t hit bad traffic back in Luanda & we left about an hour later. Bill got home safely with minimal traffic jams, although we weren’t so lucky. He enjoyed taking the bike for a long run, but felt it was really just a bit too far in total.

The following weekend the two of us went to Shipwreck beach by ourselves. Despite leaving early, the driver took us through Luanda a different way – right through the middle of a market – and it took forever. The beach itself is always great – we decided to walk left instead of right as we usually do, although we had to back-track to find a nice place to sit and eat our picnic. We stopped by the war memorial on our way back – it is just as impressive the second time around. We noticed that bats are living behind the wall panels – they must be very small as we could only see small gaps. We returned the same way we’d come (we thought that maybe roadworks had closed the usual route) and it was terribly slow getting back. Slow enough even for me to read – something I can’t normally do in a moving car due to motion sickness. However, it had been a nice day out.

Our NZ Winter Holiday

2009-08-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

July 09
We spent the first 5 days of our holiday in the North Island - visiting friends and family in Auckland and Leigh (north of Auckland). Then we flew to Blenheim in the South Island to visit my mum. She had organised a campervan for us, so we did a 10 day trip around the highlights of the South Island - whale watching, hiking in Mt Cook National Park, checking out lots of stunning NZ lakes & climbing on Fox Glacier. It was simply a fantastic holiday & the weather was good to us to (amazing considering it is winter & the weather had been dreadful before we arrived. We'll definately be back.

Back to School – Lots of Changes

2009-08-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

August 09
View from our Balcony

Well, after a truly great holiday that just seemed to last forever (nearly 4 weeks with the boys & Bill’s family in Manchester followed by about 3 weeks in NZ with my family), we checked into Manchester Airport last Friday and started the trip back to Luanda.

Bill bought 20 soccer balls for his football team & we went mad in the supermarket the day before we left, so we had 4 checked bags + Bills bicycle. Check-in at British Airways is always so easy – no hassles & the bike went free as an added bonus. Even better, we didn’t need to change terminals at Heathrow so that was a smooth turn-around too.

The flight had many more women & children on it than the flight we made just more than a year ago – an indication of how the country is changing I guess. When we arrived (3am, 4am?) we were very surprised to see that the arrivals hall has been made much larger so the queuing seemed more orderly. Also the air conditioning was working as well. The best part of flying BA is that it is the only flight to arrive at that time, so there are no back-logs of people and even the luggage came out reasonably fast.

Bill was concerned about being hit with import tax for the soccer balls & that his bicycle would make customs more likely to stop him. So when we had all our bags together, he went out first with a bag of clothes and the bike, while I followed him out 5 minutes later with the other three bags. Of course they opened the bag with the balls in it (all bags were x-rayed as a matter of course – another first for our Luanda airport experiences) but when they found out I didn’t speak Portuguese and didn’t have the receipt for the balls on me (a lesson for future packing to put receipts into relevant suitcases), they gave up and let me go. Outside was Tony B (there to pick up his wife, but still good to see him) and an empty carpark. The car park expansion had just been recently finished and the barrier arm that let cars into the park had broken earlier in the night – so no one had been able to get into the airport to pick up relatives etc, and traffic was backed-up at the entrance of the airport for ages. Fortunately, we were able to just push our luggage trolleys out of the car-park & the school buses were there on the outside to pick us up. We were on our way back to the school in really a very quick time. Another big advantage of the BA flight is that there is no traffic on the roads so early in the morning, so the trip to school only takes 20 minutes or so – much faster than the hour or more it takes during the day.

We got back to school & our “house” – it had been cleaned during the holidays & it surprised us how much it felt like “home”. It was good to be back in our own place instead of staying with others – no matter how comfortable and welcome we had felt there. There is no time difference between the UK and Angola at the moment, but we’d only arrived in the UK from NZ two days before we flew out again and we were still feeling a bit jet-lagged & tired from all the flying we had done over the previous few days.

We spent the weekend sorting out the house (all our electrical and music stuff had been locked into the bedroom) and getting the basics restocked again. (The fridge and freezer had to be emptied out over the holidays, so we had no milk etc waiting for us). We unpacked the bags, Bill re-constructed his bicycle and despite the fact that it didn’t go first time, got the motorcycle working as well.

Monday was back to school – meeting the new teachers & getting keys for classrooms to get them ready. However, Monday was a day of meetings & we were both booked onto a first aid training course all day Thursday & Friday, so the actual amount of preparation time didn’t feel quite adequate.

Bill was made Head of Science (he’d applied right at the end of last year), which meant he had more to organise than usual. I was putting together a booklet for the MYP math classes, so we were both busy with departmental stuff.

The first aid course was busy – it totally ate up all of Thursday & Friday and everyone found the exam at the end confusing (it had been translated from Portuguese & the questions were poorly worded), but in the end we both passed. I haven’t done first aid training since I left Japan, so I was pleased to be current again. However the time we lost meant that we had to go back to school on Sunday afternoon to get our rooms ready.

The biggest surprise of the week was Di telling us early on Wednesday morning that one of the apartments was available because the teacher who was in it had decided he didn’t like it and wanted to move back to campus. Of course there was another couple we needed to go into a draw for the apartment – we’d lost out in all the previous draws, so weren’t feeling particularly optimistic. We had the draw at lunch time – Bill sent me as he’d been unlucky in previous draws & much to my amazement we won!!!!

We had to shift on Saturday so we booked a bus for 9am, borrowed lots of plastic storage bins to move with & we managed to have most of it packed up by 9am Saturday morning (we did have to get up early to achieve it). Friday night had been the staff barbeque with the board members and to everyone’s horror, the empty field across the road from the school was converted into a temporary church meeting – hundreds of people arrived and some sort of sermon was broadcast at maximum volume – it was impossible to sleep even though we were dead tired & had gone to bed early. Fortunately they turned the speakers off before midnight so we did get some sleep – but it was an ironic last night on campus – the normal peace & quiet well & truly shattered.

The shift went almost effortlessly – Tomi came to help & the driver was a huge help as well – the whole move took less than 2 hours. I’d been at home packing, so my first look at our new apartment was with it filled with boxes, but what a treat – 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and so much space……

We spent the rest of Saturday unpacking and organising. We don’t get a cleaner come to the flats the way we did on campus, but instead we get an extra $400 a month to cover the cost of supplies & a cleaner if we want one. We decided to try to clean ourselves & save the money – but also decided that buying a vacuum cleaner for $100 would be a good investment. We headed off to Shoprite on Saturday afternoon, not sure how busy it would be, but knowing that we had a ton of cleaning stuff we needed to buy. It was our first Shoprite visit since returning (Bill had been buying bits and pieces on his forays on the motorbike, so we’d been able to put it off), and I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised – Shoprite had the best selection of stuff we’ve ever seen there, the crowds weren’t too bad & the whole experience was quite painless. We even got our vacuum cleaner there!

One of our buys was a bottle of champagne – we’ve been celebrating our Angolan milestones with champagne since our champagne picnic lunch in Regents Park, London the day we got our visa – with a follow-up bottle the dawn we arrived a year ago. We haven’t had one since – coming back for our second year hadn’t seemed momentous enough, but without doubt, moving into our new 3rd floor apartment (with a view out over Luanda Sol) certainly was!

The weekend passed at record speed & to be honest I didn’t feel as organised for classes as I normally like to be. However, this last week with the kids back has gone by remarkably quickly, and it has been great to see the kids again & to meet new students. The week was pretty uneventful – we had a productive MYP meeting on Thursday after school organising linkages between different departments. The admin are also determined to crack down on dress code “abuse”, which certainly led to some interesting discussions in my homeroom on Friday afternoon. The whiff of a uniform is in the air….

This weekend has been more of the same – final unpacking of bags & organising the flat – we moved our dining room table into one of the spare bedrooms so we could use it as a study big enough for the two of us (the apartment does have a little office/study but it just isn’t big enough for both of us to work in at the same time). We needed to take some legs off the table to get it into the room we wanted, but we are thrilled with the end result – we have a huge table to do our work on & the living room is wide open with lots of space.

Other delights of the apartment include our own washing machine – no more using the shared laundry – and (a real treat) a dishwasher! We have a balcony that looks out over the street, & although it is a bit noisy and dusty, it is fine for drying clothes and we are thinking about getting a small barbeque for out there. We’ll buy some pots & potting mix (if we can) and see if we can’t grow some of the seeds we have too. We are still pinching ourselves about being here – it’s been a week but it still feels slightly unreal.

Our “Year” is Over!

2009-06-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

June 09

Finally! Just 1 school day to go, 2 days to get stuff organised and we fly out of Luanda having completed our first “year” here. Of course, that’s a school year – it won’t be a calendar year until we return in August to do it all again!

The last couple of weeks have been crazily hectic (like schools everywhere I guess). We have had a graduation ceremony for the year 13 students (the school’s third). The year 7 students have had their PYP exhibition. A couple of performances have taken place including a huge musical production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Reports have been written and students across the school have had their student led conferences.

In our life, finalising the yearbook has been the biggest issue – but it too is done, several hundred copies burned (in both PAL and NSTC formats), the signing booklets arrived from South Africa and today the students received their first yearbook before the end of school in years (ever ?) as previous printed ones have never arrived or cleared customs in time for the students to receive them before they leave. I was worried the kids might be dismissive of the little signing booklet, but I shouldn’t have worried. Hopefully the feedback tomorrow on the DVD will be good too.

Bill has spent the last three days away at Rio Longa with the entire year 12 class – they have been doing their Group 4 science project there. Every day there are less and less kids in class as they and their parents leave early to go on holiday (a process that has been going on for more than 3 weeks now!). Reports won’t be issued until the end of school tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem a big enough incentive to keep families here till the end of school. (and at the other end of the school year, many don’t think arriving on time is particularly important either).

So – what a year it has been! Partly I feel as if we’ve been here “forever” as the novelty has well & truly worn off, but also I find it hard to believe that a whole year has gone by so quickly. Amongst the teachers here, there have been 3 weddings (with two more these holidays), one baby born, and one definitely on the way. Five teachers have needed to be evacuated to South Africa for health reasons and just in the last two weeks, two others have come down with malaria. The school grew 30% this year and looks like growing a similar amount next year – so already the school is at capacity again (despite a new two-storey teaching block opening this year) – and enrolment at many year levels is closed. It seems more and more families are coming to Luanda all the time & once our school is full, there is really no where else to go. New apartment complexes are springing up all around the local area and the queues in the supermarkets get longer every week. Food prices haven’t come down and supply is still intermittent at best – everyone shops and hordes as you never know when something will disappear off the shelves for a month or two. But the new roads in and around the city have made travel much easier, although if you have the misfortune to travel during rush hour, the trips still take 3 hours or more. Luanda is gearing up for big international football matches in January of 2010 – apparently a new stadium is being built, although we haven’t seen it. There are also rumours of improvements at the airport – at the moment it only seems to be the carparks outside that have changed, but who knows by the time we come back?

Over the year the weather has gone from hazy & cool by day and chilly at night when we first arrived, to clear & then very hot and sunny. We even got about 4 days of rain (not on end) – one rainfall was so heavy it flooded the paths at school & we couldn’t let the kids change classes at the end of the lesson. The temperatures are now noticeably dropping again & it was decidedly hazy at Rio Longa this week. During this time, the baobab trees have gone from bare branches when we arrived, to new leaves, flowered, grew massive fruit pods & although still heavily in leaf, no doubt they will drop while we are away to start the cycle all over again.

“Postcards from Angola”

2009-05-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

May 09

These last few weeks have been very uneventful for us as the craziness of the last few weeks of school takes over. I am doing three online courses – one is due to finish soon, the other two have just started. But a much bigger drain on my time (to the extent that it is literally taking up all my spare time) is that I am putting the school’s yearbook together – virtually single headedly, although Bill has stepped in to help with some of the organisation that still needs to be done. We are making a digital yearbook & I have never made one of those or even a normal yearbook before (which is one of the reasons why it is running so late in the year).

Anyway, we are not doing much other than just surviving it seems. But the big treat this week arrived yesterday from my sister Pam in Australia. She has been working on making a video as part of her job (she is a librarian in Brisbane). When she discovered she needed to make a video, she decided to use our life in Angola as her topic. Yesterday, she sent me the final product – the video labels has slipped a bit in the uploading & downloading process, but what a treat – to see a 5 minute summary of our time here this year. We both love it – thank you Pam!

The Etosha Pan "Sea"

2009-05-22T13:55:00.001-07:00

Another (non-edited) video from Namibia. You can see just how wet the Etosha pan was. This was taken in two different locations, with the second half shot out the moving car. In the first half you get a glimpse of the state of the car! It was so covered in mud that we had to get it washed twice (once to clear the plates and the lights & again at the end of the trip) before we could hand it back. Everyone who saw us after we left Etosha could tell that's where we'd been by looking at the car.

A slice of carnival

2009-05-18T13:22:00.000-07:00

It's a bit late, but this gives you an idea of the craziness of Carnival. This was taken not long before we went home for the day.

Zebra video

2009-05-17T10:50:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the many zebras we saw in Etosha. The first part shows lots of them at a waterhole (where we stayed for the first two nights) and then the rest are the zebras we encounted on a drive in the afternoon. The zebras were standing around, with many of them leaning their heads on each other's backs. You can hear more camera clicking in the background!

Leopard Video

2009-05-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a short video of "our" leopard in Etosha. Neither of us are a great fan of video - we much prefer to take photos (you can hear me on the soundtrack), but it gives you an idea of how quickly it disappeared into the grass once it left the road - watch for the tail. Moral = never leave your car as you just don't know what's out there!

Namibia: Birds & other creatures

2009-05-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

May 09

One of the surprises of Africa is the enchantment of the vastly under-looked animals that you come across in your holiday. I have never been a bird watcher & don’t even own a pair of binoculars, but I love to try to take photos of the birds I see, because they are so accessible & their behaviour is so interesting. They call attention to themselves with their bright colours or in your face antics. They are often much less skittish than the mammals are, their small size & tendency to hide behind branches makes photography a challenge. I also find reptiles totally fascinating – as a kid I used to hunt for skinks under rocks in the hills behind our house & keep them for a day or two. But we don’t have much in the way of flashy or big reptiles in NZ (& no snakes of course) so maybe that’s why I enjoy seeing them so much now. On this trip we saw the cutest ever gecko & my first ever chameleon.

Our favourite birds are raptors & we saw several different kinds. Typically they sit on the highest tree they can find, looking out for something to eat. The biggest one we saw was a juvenile Martial eagle. We also saw several secretary birds, but I never managed to get a decent photo.

Apart from the secretary birds striding through the grasses, we saw several other large birds that mostly stay on the ground. Ostriches of course, and Kori Bustards (the heaviest flying bird in the region) and Northern Black Korhaan’s which stand on a rock in a clearing and make such a racket that you can recognise it even when you can’t see it.

We also saw some storks, and lots of smaller birds that hung out close to the side of the road where we were able to see them. We saw huge numbers of weaver birds & some small birds that flew in huge flocks that attracted lots of attention from some of the smaller raptors. (You can see them flying above the Abdim’s stork). We also saw Guinea fowl
with young chicks (not the most intelligent of birds when faced with traffic), more water birds than we expected (all that rain & the flooded Etosha plain). We also saw lots of lilac breasted rollers every morning.

We saw the most reptiles when we did the “living desert” tour in Swakopmund. (http://www.tommys.iway.na/) This was to see the “little 5” & it was enormous fun! We saw a couple of Peringuey's Adder’s which were just hanging out under the bushes for some shade, a baby & larger Palmato Gecko, which Tommy (the tour leader) somehow found burrowed in sand dunes. These little geckos are nocturnal & have transparent skin & will die if exposed to full sunlight. But by far the cutest gecko’s I’ve ever seen. We also saw
a sand diving lizard and a FitzSimon's Burrowing Skink, which is both blind & legless. But
the highlight for me was the Namaqua Chameleon – we saw 2 adults and a baby one. Tommy had collected some beetles to feed them – their tongues are amazing & they are so fast! And, they really do change colour! Just so cool!

Outside of this tour, we also saw various other reptiles – a couple of snakes including a very scary black mamba crossing the road in front of us. Also we lots of agama lizards & various other geckos & even a terrapin. We even saw the odd frog (amphibians in such a dry country seemed very incongruous).

The final group of my photos are the invertebrates “bugs” as Bill calls them. I realise most people just swat at them, if they notice them at all, but I find them beautiful, or if that is stretching it a bit, at least fascinatingly ugly! I saw great bugs (huge bodies over 5cm long with even longer antennae) all over the fence posts in Damaraland. I can’t find anything like them in my insect book, so maybe they are just juveniles (very big ones). That area was also where we saw our only scorpion. But lots of very pretty butterflies!

Since we’ve got back to Luanda, the main excitement in our life is that Bill has got a new Honda Falcon 400 motorcycle. We bought helmets in Windhoek on our last day there, so now we have relative freedom of movement. Bill is loving it! We’ve made several spontaneous trips into the city & although we have hit some very heavy traffic we have been able to get through it without problems (I hate weaving through traffic). The road conditions are also a bit scary but Bill is being as cautious as possible.

We are in our last month of school but it is a hectically busy time. Last weekend Bill took his team of soccer boys to Johannesburg to play in an inter-school competition. Despite the overall very young age of the team (more than half of them were young enough to play in the next division down) they won the international school round, but were no match for the much older & more experienced local teams.

I’m trying to put the yearbook together on time (& having to take some release time off school to do so) & reports etc are fast approaching. We are very ready for the year to end & to see family again.

Namibia Holiday: Mammals

2009-05-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

May 09

Big mammals are what everyone thinks of when they hear the words “African safari” – lions, elephants, leopards etc. Due to the uncharacteristically wet weather this year , the “big 5” pretty much eluded us. The reality was long days of driving, peering into thick bushes & long grass, desperately trying to spot animals, often fruitlessly, but then we’d go around a corner & there would be some magnificent animal standing right there on the side of the road, making the effort more than worthwhile.

On our first morning in Etosha we’d been driving for about an hour (along pretty wet and muddy roads) when our first “close encounter” happened. We were heading for the toilet (areas in the park that are fenced off so it is safe to get out of the car to use the facilities), and just 10 metres from the entrance to the toilet, we rounded a corner & there was a leopard in the middle of the road! You have no idea how exciting spotting a big cat so close is. We both grabbed our cameras & tried to get photos as “proof” (with the car stopped in the middle of the road). The cat didn’t stick around for long – he continued to cross the road (& this is the creepy part) he walked into the grass at the side of the road & within 20 seconds had completely disappeared from sight. We knew it was there, but no matter how hard we looked – we moved the car to get closer – we never saw it again. It made us realise just why you are never supposed to get out of the car in the park – you just don’t know what is lurking in the undergrowth. By the time we got to the toilet, several other cars had arrived there as well – everyone was so jealous we’d seen a leopard.

A similar thing happened on the next morning – we’d gone to check out a waterhole (no animals as usual) and were on our way out (same road as the entrance) and as we came around a corner, there was another leopard in the middle of the road – but this one didn’t move away, instead, after watching us carefully, it proceeded to sit and drink leisurely from a big puddle in the middle of the road. We were able to get great photos – it kept a close eye on us, but once it finished drinking, it sauntered off into the long grass – with its tail held high, it’s black & white tip was the last thing we saw of it just 4 – 5 metres from the side of the road.

So by now we think we have “early morning cat luck” and on our last morning in the park we were driving along the main road next to the Etosha plain, when out the side window I spotted a big male lion striding along the grass. Once more there was no one else around – we had the lion to ourselves. We could hear him “talking” (not as loud as a roar), but couldn’t see any other lions around. So, as far as the big carnivores go, we think close encounters with 2 leopards and a lion all to ourselves is pretty good. We were delighted with the photos we got.

The only other big carnivore we saw was a spotted hyena – similar story, came around a corner & it was standing in the middle of the road, but this was at the end of the day rather than in the morning. We actually saw the same one (we assume) twice, within 15 – 20 minutes.

The other reasonably big carnivore we saw lots of, were the black-backed jackals. We first saw one close to the seal colony, but later saw many more in Etosha. Actually, they are very cheeky and were walking around the restaurant at night trying to steal scraps of food! Despite how ubiquitous they turned out to be, we saw several playing in the wild & got some really nice photos of them.

The seals are the other big carnivores we saw, but as I said before, we found the colony noisy and stinky and the weather too cold for us to hang around for long. And with so many of them just sitting there, there wasn’t much excitement (no thrill of the hunt).

Apart from the carnivores, I guess most peoples image of the African plains are the herbivores – antelope and zebra and giraffes. These we saw plenty of! Just no elephants or rhinos. The rarest antelope we saw was a roan antelope (very briefly) at Waterburg.

Springbok we saw everywhere, and in the Eastern side of Etosha we saw lots of black faced impala also. We also saw lots of wildebeest and a few hartebeest. We also saw some small antelope (Steenbok and Damara dik-dik) – definitely close encounters on the side of the road as they were well hidden by the tall grass.

We saw large herds of zebra, but one day we came across a whole lot just standing (on the road) but with them all resting their heads on each others backs. Very strange!

We also had lots of close encounters with giraffes – we first saw a parent & baby on our first days driving out of Windhoek. When we were at Waterburg, we were in hides to watch the waterholes and salt licks & we had our packed breakfast watching a group of giraffes at a waterhole. Nothing looks more awkward than a giraffe trying to drink out of a pool in the ground! Even the baby ones look awkward, and they are much closer to the ground.

At the other end of the size scale were several delightful small mammals that we saw along the way. The banded mongooses we watched trying to cross the road without losing any of their babies along the way (so they stuck to each other like glue). The animals that were the most fun to watch were the ground squirrels which act more like a meerkat than a typical squirrel (except maybe for the squirrel in London that punched Bill in the nose last year). But they have no traffic sense at all and we even saw one family with its burrow in the road!

We also saw a couple of young suricates (these are also called meerkats) and some rock hyrax.

So, despite the weather, we really did see a lot of African mammals, and we got some great photos too. We can’t wait until we can go back & see how our luck runs next time.

Namibia Holiday: Scenery

2009-05-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

May 09

Sorry – I have got further & further behind with these so-called “weekly” updates, so here is an attempt to do a bit of a catch up.

We had three wonderful weeks in Namibia – an incredibly beautiful country that is easy to travel in and has so much variety. We hired a car to drive ourselves around, and the sense of freedom was very liberating. We had pre-booked our accommodation, so it was simply a matter of following the map & stopping wherever we liked to have a break or (most often) take some photos. The drives were quite long (probably our only complaint) which meant we arrived in some places disconcertingly close to dark. We also got up at the crack of dawn almost every day – something I don’t think we’d planned to do before coming on this holiday. But the upside of long days is that each one was so packed full, that all sense of time became dilated, so within just 2 days, we felt we’d been on holiday for ages. Needless to say, we both took hundreds and hundreds of photos, so I’ve decided the only practical way to deal with them all is to do this update in instalments based on photo topic (what other way is there?).

So first is scenery – the back-drop to everything that follows. Our photos just don’t do justice to the variety and spectacle that we saw. Bill wouldn’t let us stop every time I wanted to take a photo – as he rightly pointed out, if we did, we’d never arrive anywhere!

The other thing that was so special about our trip is that Namibia has had the heaviest rains this year for 10 – 20 years! So what we saw in terms of plant life was truly exceptional. Wildflowers were in bloom everywhere. The grasses were about 1 metre tall – impacting on visibility for when we were trying to see animals in game parks. The incredibly beautiful sand dunes of Sossusvlei were covered in grasses of the most beautiful shade of grey/green. We realised that our experience on this holiday was probably quite unique in terms of a “typical” visit to Namibia - & although it had some down sides (in terms of the animals we could see in Etosha in particular), overall we felt very privileged to be able to see the country so green and lush.

We started our trip in Windhoek (after a long but not too unpleasant day in Luanda Airport) – just an overnight and then after some shopping (remember we only ever shop for food in Luanda, so that in itself was a thrill), we set off along some minor roads to our first stop, not far from the sand dunes of Sossusvlei. The trip was a good 6 hours drive (which we didn’t know in advance), and the scenery changed dramatically along the way. We passed a lot of “farmland” with not that much to see in the way of livestock. We did see baboons, giraffes, ostriches, a secretary bird, a marabou stork and various small reptiles and mammals along the side of the road. We hadn’t expected to see any “animals” as such until we got to Etosha, so it was a real thrill.
The place we stayed that night was in one of the most beautiful locations you can imagine – nestled in around hills with stunning scenery in every direction.

We had the first of our incredibly early wake up calls the next morning – around 4:30 am for breakfast & a packed lunch to take with us. The drive in the dark was a bit hairy (the roads were unsealed) but we got to the park entrance in good time for the gates to open (we blew it a bit by not knowing we had to stop and buy a permit & had to backtrack, but we didn’t lose much time). The sun was just coming up as we drove into the park – it was just so beautiful! We thought we were just going to see sand dunes (this shows how busy we were before we left – no time to do any decent research!) so we amazed to see first ostriches and then springbok. Then, thrill of thrill, we spotted some oryx (gemsbok). The scenery was just stunning – we stopped at a look-out point and ate our breakfast, and watched as colourful hot air balloons went up into the sky.

We drove (on a sealed road) for about 60 km to reach the start of the dunes themselves. We didn’t want to take our car on the soft sand, so went in with a “taxi” instead. By this time, the sun had come up and the sunrise light was pretty much gone, and a wind had got up, making the whole scene very sandy. We were just wandering around when we saw an oryx walking out of the sand storm towards us! We were able to get fairly close!
Bill decided he wanted to climb up a dune (really not a good idea in those sorts of winds), so we choose one, but it was so unpleasant at the top that Bill quickly retreated back down out of the wind & I decided I could live without getting to the top.

We walked to a valley full of dead acacia trees, which was very photogenic, but by then it was getting pretty hot, so we decided to return early the next day on our way to Swakopmund, and .head back to our accommodation for a relaxing afternoon.

Actually, we climbed a hill behind where we were staying to try to catch the sunset from there, but when we came home we found out we had a flat tire! It was too late by then to do more than change it for the spare, but it meant that our plans to drive back along the dunes would have to be postponed until we got our tire fixed.

There was a service station open from 6am so we were able to go right in & get the tire checked. Unfortunately, the tire has multiple punctures and was deemed “stuffed”. We had to buy a new tire (we had tire insurance & rang Avis first to authorise it). Despite some mucking around, we were able to go back into the park & catch some more photos before setting off on our trip to Swakopmund. It was another long drive, but also incredibly scenic. We passed the tropic of Capricorn along the way (for the second time on our trip).

Swakopmund is on the coast, and is right on the edge of the sand dunes. We were staying in a place that overlooked the desert from the upstairs balcony. We also had internet here for the only time on our entire trip. We had 3 nights, so the first day we took it pretty easy, exploring the town & getting permits to visit a couple of places we wanted to see.

That afternoon we drove back an hour the way we’d come the day before to an interesting rock outcrop, with the plan to catch the sunset. We had a ball there – great photography & some raptors (kestrels & an owl) and even a snake to keep us busy!

The next day we went on a “living desert tour” – absolutely one of my favourite things we did on the whole trip. The aim was to find the “little 5” – chameleons, snakes, dune lizards etc. It was great!

That afternoon we drove out to the “lunar landscape” area & explored that. We were staying in a self catering apartment, so we also ate really well while we were there.

The next day we left for Damaraland – we went via the seal colony further up the coast. It was very foggy & actually cold (as well as smelly – we didn’t stay very long). We did see our first jackal on the way though!

The scenery again was stunning & we stopped along the way for me to buy a doll from a road side stall. The women there were dressed in their traditional clothes (Herero and Himba) and they let us take some photos.

We also stopped to see a petrified forest, which was moderately interesting, but set in beautiful scenery. The place we stayed out was another stunning location and we caught the most wonderful sunset that night.

The next day we went to Twyfelfontein to see the San (bushman) rock drawings. We felt we were rushed around way too fast, which put a damper on our visit. The scenery in the area though was stunning.

The next day we headed off to Etosha National Park. We’d been hearing from people travelling in the opposite direction to us that the game viewing was far from typical and spotting wildlife around the waterholes was pretty difficult. We arrived at the park around lunch time (one of our shortest driving days) and on our way to the resort we took a short detour off the main road & to our delight we saw a giraffe within 5 minutes & a zebra and a springbok up close just a few minutes later. We sat and ate our lunch there (in the car) & decided that we were going to be lucky (as always). We soon discovered that the stories we heard we correct, there was so much water in the park (just lying in puddles on the ground) that animals didn’t need to risk going to a waterhole to drink, & in the three to four days we were in the park, we hardly saw an animal at a waterhole. We got up early every day so we could start driving as soon as the gates opened at sunrise, had a rest around lunch time & then headed out again for an afternoon drive. We think we were really lucky with what we saw – because the grasses and bushes were so high, we couldn’t see much past about a metre from the roadside, but that meant that what we did see, we saw up close! We didn’t see any elephants (much to Bill’s disappointment) or rhinos, but we saw two leopards and a lion! We were really delighted with what we got to see & as for what we didn’t – we’ll just have to go back for another holiday!

The biggest surprise was the Etosha pan – normally a dust bowl, we saw an ocean! Instead of animals, we saw ducks and waterbirds.

After Etosha, we stayed at the Waterburg Plateau – a huge rock with steep sides where the most endangered animals (eg rhinos, roan and sable antelope) are kept. Although we took a safari, we didn’t see any rhino, although we did see a roan antelope. Around our unit we had dwarf mongooses and Dik-dik – the smallest of all the antelope & surely the worst of names! We climbed up to the plateau for the sunset view, which was very impressive.

Then it was back to Windhoek for some essential shopping & the next day we flew out – Bill to Tanzania to spend a few days with the boys & myself back to Luanda & school.

We loved Namibia & truly hope that we can visit again – maybe during the dry season. What bliss to be able to communicate easily with the people we met, be able to buy almost anything we wanted (for very reasonable prices). Our 3 week holiday felt as if it had lasted forever!

Here are links to some of Bill’s photos from our holiday. (He takes better pictures than I do!)
Landscapes

Animals

Week 28: Carnival

2009-03-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

Feb 23 – March 1, 2009

This was not a good week for my health – by Monday after school I was so sick that Bill insisted I take one of our home Malaria tests. Neither of us really thought I had malaria, but it seemed silly not to make sure. I slept virtually all afternoon & quite late in the next morning, as we had the day off school for Carnival. Now, I know I should have stayed in bed, but Carnival was one of the things we’d been looking forward to seeing – since even before we arrived in Angola, and there was just no way I was going to stay home & miss it!

There was a lot of confusion over what time the parade would start – we heard lots of contradictory times, but we thought 2pm seemed to be the consensus. We left home at 11 am as we weren’t sure what the traffic would be like, & of course had a clear run into the city. We didn’t see much on the way in that would indicate that it was carnival – I expected to see everyone dressed up, but it wasn’t like that all. The marginal was just as quiet – the place was deserted, so we ended up going for a drink in Bahia, where we could look out & see what was happening. Along the marginal were lots of tents set up for temporary bars/restaurants, but they were pretty deserted too.

After we’d been in the city for about an hour, people dressed in masks & costumes started to show up, so we left the rapidly filling up bar & hit the street. I can’t say that I was feeling the best, but I was thoroughly drugged up with cold medicine & still determined to survive the day.

We walked along the marginal & before we’d gone very far, people started to stop us to get us to take their pictures – we were virtually mobbed by people begging us to take their photos – no matter how reluctant people might normally be to have their photos taken, obviously doesn’t apply during carnival. It felt friendly and good natured & mostly quite safe, although we had a few incidents with people trying to take stuff out of our bags (nothing much was in them, but we wanted a bag to put the cameras away if we felt we had to) and someone literally tried to take Bills camera off him! After one of the first incidents, a plains-clothes policeman materialized at the scene & it started to look ugly – we got out of there as fast as we could! Realising that we couldn’t get separated at all, we stuck together as much as we could & just kept our “antennae” on high alert. Despite the odd scare, we still felt pretty secure with the cameras out & the people asking us for photos seemed genuinely happy to pose.

Many people were wearing masks – most of which were feathered. But we saw lots of strange costumes & quite a few kids not dressed up at all (but still posing for photos). To be honest it was really refreshing to be open about taking photos – we had expected to be using the long lenses to “sneak” photos of people – I don’t think either of us took a single non-posed photo the whole afternoon. As we walked along we met up with another group of teachers who’d come in about an hour later than us – they’d sat down at one of the roadside “restaurants” for lunch. We joined them as they had shade & there was still no sign of the parade starting. We waited another couple of hours (taking more photos) until we decided to move towards the covered seating that had been erected for dignitaries & (we guessed) people who had bought tickets. People were gathering there, and the footpath was filling up with kids & families sitting on the edges. We joined them & could tell that in front of the seating, a “performance” was taking place – some sort of set act by the looks of it. When they finished, they walked/danced on past the crowds, but it quickly disintegrated into a mass of people rather than an actual parade.

The gap between each group was quite long & I was starting to wilt quite badly – I’d been on the go for hours when really I should actually have been in bed trying to get better. Also, the crowd on the road was starting to get ugly – Bill was trying to film it & frankly it just scared me. So after a bit of discussion, we decided we really had seen the best of what the day had to offer & to leave while we were still ahead (we were concerned about people getting drunker, fights getting uglier & the mood shifting regarding photos). So we headed home – me to bed.

Over the rest of the week I slowly got better, Bill’s chopped thumb continued to break open & bleed (because he hadn’t got stitches in it), so we were a bit of a miserable pair. We did however accept an invitation to be part of a team for the PTA quiz night on Saturday evening, which meant that Bill had to forgo a local soccer match that he would have otherwise gone too because the timing was too tight.

On the weekend we decided to have a quiet day on Saturday & then investigate the mouth of the River Kwanza on Sunday. The quiz night was a fundraiser that included dinner & wine as well as the quiz competition. We were an all-teacher’s team, including the head of school, but we’d lost one of the original team members as she hadn’t got back from the soccer game in time (so I was very pleased that Bill had decided to skip it). We found another teacher at the last minute & managed to come up with a team name “nits of the round table”. Dinner was spaghetti bolognaise & for us vegetarians (there were 3 at our table) spaghetti with homemade pesto. The quiz structure was a little unusual as the format had the same categories for each round (mathematics, world news, current events, entertainment, sports etc) – 1 question per topic each & as the quiz progressed the questions increased in value from 10 points to 50 points by the end. The questions did get harder (mostly) as the rounds progressed & in the middle of it all was a spelling bee and a random game of poker. Not to brag, but our team was in the top 3 for the first couple of rounds & then we were in the lead & managed to stay there! We were the winning team by the end of the competition & went home with a bottle of “champagne” and some chocolates.

Sunday was a hot sunny day – perfect for going to the beach. We’d got directions for where we wanted to go, so were reasonably confident we could find it. The place we wanted was on the far side of the Kwanza River & then past the salt pans so that we ended up close the mouth of the river itself. It is quite similar to Rio Longa – there is a big sand-bar at the mouth with an almost lagoon behind it – in this case the river was flowing a bit more directly into the sea than it does at Rio Longa. The river & the beach run parallel to each other with just a 10 metre strip of sand between them. The beach side had big pounding waves – not that enticing to swim in for either of us, but the river side was calm (no crocodiles in sight or prints) & just delightful to swim in. We were in the river within 10 minutes of arriving! After our swim we sat and had a cup of tea watching the waves on the sea side & then we walked up the river bank until we found a nice little stretch of beach, shaded by palm trees, where we sat & had our lunch, followed by another dip. Now I know that theoretically there could have been lots of crocodiles lurking in the water, but we didn’t see a single set of prints, the water was shallow & clear & the risk just didn’t seem very high – and the water was great – warm & fresh & just great to swim in.

On our way home we took a sidetrack to check out the Kwanza River Lodge – we found the car park totally packed with cars & the restaurant and veranda inside was just as full. As we walked in we saw Jamie & Franco (who we did our geological trip with), which just goes to show I guess just how small the expat community in Luanda really is. We only stayed for a quick drink – we sat on the balcony almost exactly across the water from where we’d had our lunch. There were kids playing in the water (also not too concerned about crocodiles) and a professional photo shoot of some local models in swimwear. It was all go!

We were quite happy to leave & get home so we could get ready for our next week of school.

Week 26: Fossils & an Impressive War Memorial

2009-02-22T23:32:00.000-08:00

Feb 09 – 15, 2009

For those of you who think we never teach a five day week, you’ll be pleased to know that this was actually a full working week. In fact, we even worked Friday evening as well as chaperones for the school dance. I must say, it did feel like a long week!

We had our usual “catch up” day on Saturday, doing shopping etc with the plan being to spend Sunday retracing our steps from two weeks earlier to revisit the fossil cliff at Barra do Dande and then chill at the resort afterwards. Saturday evening we went around to Julie’s apartment to see “Slumdog Millionaire” (courtesy of the Thai pirate DVD industry).

We went by 4 wheel drive & left quite early Sunday morning. We had a good run through the city & out the north coast. When we took the turn off for Barra do Dande, we were rather surprised to find ourselves on the new sealed road for the entire time – in just two weeks, the road has essentially been finished!

We still needed the 4 wheel drive to get up to the top of the cliff for the fossil beach – by this time it was becoming scorching hot. We weren’t the only ones at the beach – there were some sea anglers under the cliffs to the right.

It was nice to explore along the bottom of the cliff by ourselves, looking out for fossils along the way. The place is just covered in them. We were able to go right around as the tide was quite far out. Bill was convinced he saw a turtle’s head a couple of times, but I was never looking in the right direction at the right time!

We found more clam fossils (the most common type of fossil there), a few more ammonite fossils – but in huge boulders, & what looks to me like fish vertebrae & bones.

It was while we were here that Bill started to have trouble with his new zoom lens – unbelievably it is playing up to the extent that it is almost unusable! It will still be under warranty in the summer when we get back to Manchester, but once again we are having to share my 300 mm zoom lens! This just makes me more determined to buy a new camera over the summer – both our cameras are about 4 years old & it would be devastating if one of them broke with months & months to wait till we get back to Europe again. Sharing a lens is one thing – sharing a camera wouldn’t be a happy picture!

By the time we were ready for lunch it was way too hot to sit in the sun so we found some shade under the cliffs at the other end of the beach. We sat & ate our buns & watched the birds fly down from the cliffs to go fishing in the ocean in front of us. We even spotted a common whimbrel looking for crabs in the rocks right in front of us. It flew past & when I looked at my photos I found one with the whimbrel flying over the sea, and right behind it I had caught one of the jumping fish that you see all along this coast. Not a great pic of the fish, but I was still chuffed with it.

After lunch we climbed back to the waiting car & then went to the resort on the other side of the fishing village & river. We were able to find ourselves a jango with table & chairs next to the beach. We had a couple of cold drinks, I went for a quick dip in the sea (which just shows how hot it was) & we sat in the shade & read our books. The sea was a little bit seaweedy, but the beach itself is clean with lots of shade. People were having their lunch outside under their jangos (which is probably just as well, as the restaurant is small). It is a great beach for kids – unlike Cabo Lebo, where the waves are just too big & strong.

There were grey herons flying past, & I took a few snaps, but Bill hardly picked his camera up (he was reading a very good book he couldn’t put down).

We left for home about 2pm & asked our driver if we could stop at the war memorial we’d spotted on the drive down. It was the memorial that had been pointed out to us during our history lesson at the Bende River bridge. From the road you can only just see a statue with a flag above the trees, but we thought it might be interesting to have a quick look.

The driver had never been to the memorial before, but it was easy for us to work out how to get to it, as it is right on top of the only hill in the area (it is where the Cubans had their guns positioned). There is a restaurant on the grounds of the memorial, but it wasn’t open. The guard was happy to let us in to look at the memorial (although he did seem a bit surprised – most people must combine their visit with a meal). I have to be honest, we weren’t expecting anything special – we thought it would just be a statue on a plinth & that would be about that, but we were totally impressed by the entire memorial. As soon as we got out of the car, we could look north and see all the way to the Bende River as clear as anything. (Actually, when I checked on Google Earth, I found it was only about 260 m as the crow flies (or the missile shoots)! What a strategic spot! No wonder this part of the war was won here.

The actual memorial consisted of a dedication plaque from President Santos on Nov 9, 2004 - just before Independence Day on Nov 11, which is about when this battle was fought.

The memorial inscription is written on a huge stone map of Angola: Monument to the Battle of Kifangondo, 1975 (this is the name of this particular area).

The actual memorial is a 3-D representation of the symbol in the Angolan flag. It has two semi-circular marble walls with the base for the statues in the middle, where the machete crosses the “cogged wheel” The star should have had an eternal light (but it was out). The “machete” is a pond, with some fountains at the back.

On the inside curved walls are 6 big bronze murals which apparently tell the story of the battle. Unfortunately, there are no explanations, so you need to already know the story (which we don’t) to be able to follow it fully. It clearly shows a big battle, prisoners being taken & people dying & the victory in the 4th panel. The fifth panel is a city street scene – people holding placards saying “death to the mercenaries”. The last mural looks like a war crimes trial, with a woman sitting at the front underneath the judges while a lawyer points at a person in the audience, who has a leg up on a chair.

Its hard to make more sense of it all – we think the man in glasses – in the main statue and in the first mural is the first president of Angola – Agostinho Neto. I was able to find out that the other man in the big statue is David Moisés “Ndozi” – one of the commanders of the nationalist forces at the site. He is possibly also shown in the other murals, but it is hard to tell. The murals and the statues themselves are amazing works of art – they are very realistic & the artist (Rui de Matos) is very talented. (I read somewhere that he himself is an army general!).

Our driver got out & had a good look around himself, but we were virtually the only ones there apart from several couples cuddling under the trees in the grounds (it is obviously the place to bring your girlfriend). We couldn’t get over the fact that no one seemed to know anything about the place, yet alone recommending the visit. We thought it was really special.

After leaving the memorial, we had a good trip home (especially considering it was a Sunday afternoon) – once the new roads are finished, it will make trips north so much faster & easier.

Week 27: Illness Strikes

Feb 16 – 22, 2009

I’m putting this week as a tagalong after last week as it was so uneventful. It was another full week of school, with things gearing up to the fast approaching end of term & all the extra assessments that seems to bring.

The week was busy with the usual workload, but it took on a much more negative feeling as our health started to pack up. Bill got a series of nasty cold sores (which the medicine kept from getting truly horrible, but couldn’t stop from spreading), and then on Friday night scared both of us by cutting his thumb so badly that we thought he might lose the top. He refused to go to the doctor for stitches so we had to just make do with bandages & crossed fingers. We went into the city for pizza lunch on Sunday, but I started to feel quite ill on the way in & within 4 hours was well & truly miserable with a nasty cold or flu. Not a wonderful week for either of us!

Week 25: Angolan Rap Concert Cheekiness

2009-02-08T04:15:00.000-08:00

Feb 02 – 08, 2009

This was another broken week as Wednesday was another public holiday - Armed Struggle Day – Feb 4 is the name of Luanda’s airport. We enjoyed taking the day easy & catching up with some school work. What a perfect working week: 2 days on, one day off, 2 days on & then 2 days off again!

It was Bills birthday on Saturday & we’d originally planned to go to Kissama National Park for the night, but then we heard that about an Angolan rap concert in the soccer stadium & Bill decided he wanted to go to that instead. It was headlined by a top Angolan rap star – Yannick from the band Afromen (which has been winning best rap awards here), along with a whole host of other local musicians. One of the teachers organised buying VIP tickets for all interested people (at a very reasonable 3500 Kwanzas each (US $50). It was a late afternoon start with the whole concert due to finish around 10pm.

Bill spent time on our Wednesday off to produce fake press passes for us both, so we could try our luck with getting close to the performances. We laminated the passes & put them into lanyards. Although we didn’t really know what real press passes looked like, we figured we could pass ourselves off as freelance photographers working for foreign magazines. It certainly was worth a try. We'd got backstage passes given to us in Malaysia, just by showing our cameras, so we knew anything was possible.

On Saturday morning I gave Bill his birthday present, (bought at Christmas time & kept hidden) – a new flash gun with built in diffuser & reflector. He’s wanted one for ages so it was an easy pick (probably too easy – I think if I’d asked him to guess what I got him, he’d have been right. The flash really was cool – it even had a wireless “slave” function built in – meaning that if he had it disconnected from the camera & another flash went off, it would too! The rap concert would be a great chance for him to “play” with it.

The bus to go to the concert left school at 3pm with the plan being to go to a local bar for a few drinks first & then head to the stadium & the concert about when it was due to start. Nzitu (Angolan by birth, but trained in the UK) had organised the day out & he took us to a local bar (but just where none of the rest of us had a clue). It opened just as we arrived & it was a pleasant place to sit for an hour or so.

Then we headed into the city for the stadium. Nzitu handed out our “tickets” – blue arm bands. When we were about 5 big city blocks from the stadium we encountered huge queues – people headed for the concert – with green & purple bands on. Our bus continued on & was able to drop us quite close to the VIP entrance to the stadium. We couldn’t believe the number of people we saw queuing in streets. We even saw scalpers selling the arm band “tickets”.

The entrance was nothing short of chaotic – huge seething crowds pushing to get in & armed security people checking on peoples arm bands. We finally entered holding our arms high in the air so the bands were clearly visible. Our bags were checked several times (not quite sure for what) but the cameras were no problem.

We’d entered in the wrong place – once we were inside the main stadium, it turned out that we needed to leave again to go into the VIP section – there was no way to get there from the ground level of the stadium. So we forced our way out against the crush of people coming in & then walked around the outside of the stadium to get to the VIP entrance. The arm bands allowed the security people to move people very quickly, & even the bags searches were fast & efficient. The VIP section ran along almost the entire left-hand side of the stadium, the seats closest to the stage were already all taken. We had to move along more than half the length of the stadium to find seats for our group (10 of us). The VIP area gave us seats (as opposed to grass for the people down in the stadium) and also free sodas & beer as well as some food – almost all of it unsuitable for vegetarians (we’d predicted that we wouldn’t get food).

Bill went off by himself (with his camera) almost right away – after about 10 minutes I caught sight of him again down in the main part of the stadium. The actual concert started about half an hour after we’d found our seats, & I could tell very quickly that I was never going to any decent photos if I stayed where I was. Bill wasn’t answering his phone (we discovered later he’d been trying to ring me too – it seemed that the reception in the stadium was intermittent at best). As I walked to the stage end of the VIP area, I caught sight of Bill right down in front of the stage. I wasn’t able to catch his attention & with him not answering his phone, I decided to try to join him. The problem was, I couldn’t find a way down to the stadium (I thought Bill must have just jumped over the side). So I exited the stadium again & backtracked the way we’d come in & joined the now even more frantic crowd trying to get in through the entrance gates. Fortunately I managed to get back in relatively easily, - right at the back of the stadium with the stage at the far end.

The track around the stadium wasn’t over crowded (unlike the pitch which was just packed with people), so I was able to move to the front easily. There was a line of police security blocking off the access to the stage, but I knew Bill had gone through it OK, so I pulled out my fake pass, put it around my neck with my camera in my hand, took a deep breath, and just walked though the security line as if I belonged. Amazingly, no one challenged me & next thing I was in front of the stage, tapping Bill on the shoulder! We stayed there for another hour or more – between the stage & the fence holding back the crowd. The security people were periodically spraying the crowd with a big hose of water – so people could cool down & drink. It was an outrageous scene – the crowd pressed up against the fence behind me & the singers performing in the lights & stage effects right above my head. Bill was having a blast as well – he even followed a couple of (real) photographers onto the stage – but they were all soon chased off.

The acts changed about every 15 minutes or so, but to be honest, we aren’t big rap fans & after taking several hundred photos, we decided we’d had enough & left the security area. Bill had come downstairs by some back staircase, so we went back up to where the others were the same way.

After the huge adrenaline rush of pretending to be something I’m not (Bill just seems to take things like that in his stride, but it terrifies me), on top of having no food, made me feel totally drained & tired, even though it was only about 8pm. Bill felt the same (well ravenously hungry anyway) so we asked around the others to see if anyone else was interested in going home then. 6 of us in total were ready so we called the driver to collect us – he said he’d be there in 10 minutes.

This is where the whole day fell apart – we left the stadium after about 10 minutes, and almost as soon as we were outside, a group of locals asked us for our arm bands. Despite these supposedly being non-removable, they managed to get them off us, so they could use them to get in themselves. But when we got to the street, there was no sign of the bus.

To cut a very, very long story short, the bus never actually arrived & we had to wait for the concert to finish & then wait another hour or more, before the driver actually turned up to take everyone home. Quite what happened, I still don’t know – however we did get home & despite everything, it wasn’t super late. We were still starving hungry though, so we had the fastest pizza on the planet (so fast it wasn’t even fully hot), but overall we’d had an excellent day out & we’d taken the chance on getting some outrageous photos.

We had a big sleep in on Sunday & another relatively quiet day at home, just catching up on things we needed to do.

Week 24: A Geological & Historical Excursion

2009-02-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

Jan 26 – Feb 01, 2009

First let me get this out of the way – the lost bag FINALLY arrived – over 3 weeks late! It had been sitting in Amsterdam all that time. It arrived minus cheese (after that long, I’m sure it was very stinky) but disappointingly, it was also minus a heap of new clothes (in particular soccer kit for Bill), so it was hard to be too ecstatic about its final arrival. We are now in the process of trying to get some form of compensation – we are not holding our breaths!

Aside from the almost end of the lost luggage saga, the week involved Bill trying to catch up with classes he has missed – both teaching & the course he is doing (ESL in the Mainstream, which I did when I was in Tokyo). He also had soccer coaching – he hadn’t seen the boys for 2 weeks.

Monday was a real treat as it was a Public holiday – City of Luanda Day (although I heard later that it had been cancelled at the last minute) – whatever, it was nice for Bill & I to just have time together to catch up a bit on all the time he’d been gone.

Friday was early close & no school for any of the high school students as it was Parent Teacher conferences (by invitation). Because I had primary classes, I only saw a few parents, but the ones I did was worthwhile.

Friday afternoon & Saturday were quiet type catch up days, but Sunday we were booked to go on a Geological field trip with the Angola Field Group. They had put out a message about their trip on their blog the previous week & we’d written off right away to say we wanted to go. The only others from school who got in early enough was Jo & Marek – everyone else ended up on the very long waiting list.

On Saturday I got an email from Peter who wanted to post a link to a site he manages – the Aid Workers Network (there is a link to this on the sidebar). We exchanged a couple of emails – he was reminiscing about being in Luanda in 1994 & the difficulties of communicating with his family. Check his blog post about it at: The Road to the Horizon. It sure made me realise that living here now is much easier than it used to be, even quite recently. As you can tell from the pictures posted below, I spent the day playing in Photoshop.

Sunday morning was an early start to make our lunches & pack up our bags & get our bus into town by 6:45 am. We (Bill & I as well as Jo & Marek) had said we didn’t have our own car, so once we got to the meeting place, we were introduced to the people we were riding with.

Bill & I were lucky – we had a very comfortable back seat with Franco and Jamie – they had said they had room for 2 even though the back sat 3! Franco has been in Luanda for quite a bit longer than us, Jamie for about the same length of time, but it soon became apparent that Bill & I had got out & about much more than they had, despite them having their own car.

There was about 12 cars in total on the trip, but the first car developed engine problems within the first 15 minutes (radiator ran dry I think). Passengers were re-arranged & we continued north of Luanda to the bridge over the Bengo River. We had been this way before, on our way to shipwreck beach, but not stopped.

The geologist leading the trip, Tako, gave a very interesting talk about the importance of this particular bridge. The trip documents (a map & some background information) stressed how dangerous it was to try to go under the bridge due to possible landmines – so everyone stayed very close to the main road.

Tako explained how this stretch of road was where the Cubans arrived (on the Luanda side of the bridge) to help MPLA defend the only access way to the city from the north. They set up rocket launchers (which the Angolans didn’t know how to operate, but the Cubans did) on a distant ridge & were able to completely blast at all the soldiers with Holden Roberto & the FNLA who were backed by Zaire (& the west to stop communism spreading in Africa). The stretch of road along the bridge came to be known as the “road of death”. FNLA never made it past that point & the MPLA were able to consolidate their position. What was particularly interesting was that an Angolan man on the trip said that when he was a child, his family & village were on the FNLA side, but that with peace coming to Angola, all those animosities had been left behind – he said how pleased he was that Angola hadn’t gone the way of (the example he gave was Gaza & Israel).

Apart from the interesting history, there wasn’t much to see other than lots of swallows flying around the river (although they have spotted crocodiles in the past). It was supposed to be a toilet break, but with the threat of landmines off the main road, along with a paucity of suitable bushes & a group of men repairing a truck, I don’t think anyone took advantage of the (limited) opportunity.

From the Bengo River we drove to Barra do Dande – this is where we had ended up on our first attempt to find shipwreck beach. The road (being built by a Chinese construction company who have already finished a new bridge at the mouth of the Dande River) was much better than it had been all those months before, although still not quite completed. We drove though the fishing village & then up to the cliffs which are apparently all Cretaceous sediments. Tako gave us a geology lesson – much of the surrounding area is much later (tertiary?) but this particular set of cliffs are late cretaceous & he told us that there are quite a lot of clam fossils in the rocks as well as the occasional ammonite fossil.

We walked down to the sea & within 5 minutes of getting to the beach I had picked up a small rock on the high-tide zone that looked like an ammonite fossil. It was white crystalline & although it had a distinctive spiral shape, I couldn’t see any segments in it. When I finally caught up with Tako, who was way ahead with the front of the group, it turned out that I was the only person on the day to find an ammonite! We picked up other fossils as well & decided that we would come back another day as it was a delightful little beach with not a soul on it.

Tako kept a pretty tight time schedule, so we had a brief stop at the top of the cliffs with a viewpoint looking north & then back into the cars to drive to the first of the oil seeps. The first site was called Libongos – and just a few minutes walk off the main road took us into an asphalt quarry. The crude oil has been oozing out of the rocks, where all the light hydrocarbons evaporate in the heat, leaving the large bitumen residues behind. Layers of this has formed the asphalt. The black oil was literally oozing out of the ground & flowing down the vertical surfaces where the quarrying had occurred. The Portuguese had mined this for asphalt in the late 1700’s & were shipping it back to Portugal (probably for caulking ships). In 1820, 34 barrels of it was shipped to Rio de Janeiro for the same purpose.

There was one small “well” with liquid crude oil sitting just below the surface – but apparently it is not commercially viable to do much with this (to expensive to extract all the contaminants from it?). Bill had to pose for his photo – with a palm frond that he’d dipped into the oil (but he wasn’t the only one!).

The asphalt quarry crush the asphalt for purification & then it is used to improve the local roads (which were pretty appalling – so who knows what they would have been like otherwise!).

We drove on in what was now a very hot & sunny day to the second oil seep (I have to confess to thinking they all look the same) but this one had a richer source of oil (& was therefore that much hotter & that much more smelly & sticky underfoot). Despite the non-geologists rapid loss of interest, the geologists were pretty excited by it all – these are guys who have worked in the oil industry (I guess) for decades between them & only one had ever seen another oil seep. So actually they are something special. (But when you have seen one…..)

By now we were very hot (& hungry) so the next stop (but not before another car broke down) was just outside the town of Caxito. This town had a big canal running through its length – a wonderful resource in a semi-arid climate & we saw kids swimming, people washing & lots of clothes washing as well. Our actual lunch stop was overlooking the river that fed the canal, at a small waterfall (wide but not high). This was also a popular place with locals as it was shady & of course was an ideal place to swim. Lunch was great (we were starving by this point), Jamie had kept us going along the way by feeding us muffins she had baked – we really did have a lucky day.

After lunch we continued our big loop back towards Luanda, stopping at the abandoned Mabubas Hydro-electric dam on the Dande River. This was built in pre-independence times & used to supply Luanda with electricity. During the war it was sabotaged by UNITA and has never been repaired. Water rushes through it, but all the machinery is broken & rusted. It seems such a shocking waste of potential considering that power is often in short supply in the city. We climbed all over it & found an old tank close by which of course was the second “compulsory” photo opportunity of the day.

That was our last stop & the trip home was relatively quick (given the Sunday traffic) & uneventful. We were dropped back in the city where a bus was waiting for us to take us back to school. We got home about 6pm – a long but wonderful day with new places to revisit to explore at our leisure (& with less people around). Bill found out that Franco & Jamie were involved in the local Hash – so he will get information from them so he can join in the next time they run. So, despite being very tired, we felt we’d had a really great weekend.

Egret

2009-01-31T12:20:00.001-08:00

Eland

2009-01-31T04:41:00.001-08:00

This bull eland from Kissama has most of one antler missing.

Giraffe

2009-01-30T09:50:00.001-08:00

Weeks 22 & 23: Critters on Campus

2009-01-25T10:33:00.000-08:00

Jan 12 - 25, 2009

The last two weeks have been mostly non-eventful. Bill flew out on Tuesday for his workshop in Jakarta, with extended time in Johannesburg in both directions. That left me with the depressing task of daily airport trips (2 hours each time) to see if the last bag had arrived. Bill arrived safely in Jakarta only to find himself with a very bad case of jet-lag & by the second day of the workshop, was so sick he spent the day sick in bed in his hotel. Fortunately he was able to get to the last day & catch up on most of what he had missed the day before. Ironically, he says it was the best workshop he’d been to for ages – it was very disappointing that he was feeling so poorly.

By the time he left Jakarta for the trip home, the missing bag still hadn’t arrived & my expectations of it ever coming were almost rock bottom. On day 15 after our arrival I spoke to the head lady for Air Namibia at the airport & was able to get her to photocopy the documents (tags & boarding passes) that had been taken off us on our arrival, as well as the luggage tag from the bag that did arrive. With confirmation of all the numbers, I got Bill to go to lost & found at Johannesburg Airport to search for the bag there, as well as make a report with KLM. Despite having all possible information, I found that I still couldn’t access the KLM website to directly report the lost bag online. In frustration I wrote a complaint to their customer services, but even then it took 3 days for a response.

Bill arrived safely back in Luanda (with his luggage) and was jet lagged all over again. No sign of the missing bag in Jo-burg, but the KLM person he spoke to told him there was no record of our bag being missing! (This is despite assurances from Air Namibia that they had sent telexes to Manchester & Amsterdam to search for the bag). I finally got an email from KLM, once again asking for all the information (this is day 19 & no sign of the bag). We forwarded the info to Bill’s mum in Manchester & she contacted both Manchester & Amsterdam directly with it. Amazingly, she spoke to someone who found the bag!!!

It had been sitting there all this time (who knows why) & she assured Bill’s mum that it would go on the next flight to Jo-burg & then to Luanda on Tuesday. So, as I write, it is supposedly on its way to us & I will go to the airport on Tuesday to see if it arrives. (Bill has soccer practice with the boys). We are both excited and sceptical at the same time.

Other than the luggage saga, we have enjoyed a quiet weekend together (Bill was away for 10 days). We went out to the Ilha for lunch on Saturday, but other than that, have spent the time at home. I was entertaining myself making geometric kaleidoscopes for a classroom display & Bill entertained himself by making a fantastic birthday card for his son.

Seeing as how all this is rather dull, I thought I’d throw in some photos of some of the wildlife that share the school grounds. The variety of birds is one of the delights of living here. Because they spray regularly for mosquitoes, there is almost no invertebrate life – the exception being the big black slugs that come out every night and the big black carpenter bees.

One of the most ubiquitous birds are the egrets, but there are also mousebirds, finches, a particularly cheeky weaver bird that loves to tap on peoples windows, sunbirds, and blue waxbills (my favourite – they are so impossibly bright blue & as common as sparrows).

As well as the birds, there are lizards that seem to survive the regular spraying. At the moment there is a male agama lizard that has bright blue colouration & another lizard (probably another type of agama) that has red colouration. They are living in the drains that remain dry as the rains have not yet come. It is impossible to believe that this is the rainy season – it is just very hot & dry. I have seen one agama on a tree trunk, but just the one. With the amount of spraying, I wonder what they live on (having said that, the ants don’t appear to be affected by the spraying either & I think they are the main source of food for the lizards.

Well, that’s our news for now – fingers crossed the lost bag will arrive on Tuesday. We have parent teacher meetings on Friday & early close so hopefully we will go camping or something to get out of Luanda.

Week 21: The Highs & Lows of Returning to Luanda

2009-01-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

Jan 4 - 11, 09

Our flights back to Luanda started with a 3am wake up call on Sunday morning for everyone in Bill’s mum’s house. We left for Manchester airport with our bags packed & as awake as is possible considering we’d had about 4 hours sleep. Tony (Bill’s step-father) very sweetly drove us to the airport, where the check-in seemed to be a straight-forward process. Although there were lots of other people there before us, the lines were orderly & check-in didn’t seem to be taking anyone an unreasonable amount of time. Ever the worrier, I asked Bill if we had to use the electronic check-in kiosks all around us. Although he didn’t think we had to, he tried to check us in that way regardless – to get a rather strange message that we had to go to the Air France check-in desk. (We were flying KLM.) Bill joined that queue, leaving me in the KLM one with both our bags. He got to the front first & much to both of our surprise, was told we could check in there.

We had our bags checked through to Luanda & got boarding passes for both Manchester – Amsterdam & the Amsterdam – Johannesburg flights. Of course, the flight left on time & before we knew it, we’d arrived in Amsterdam for our 1½ hour layover before the long-haul flight. We were both half zombies from lack of sleep & the time before we had to board passed in something of a blur. It wasn’t until we were waiting to board that we looked more closely at our boarding passes to see where we were sitting. To my surprise it was row number 2 - & I said to Bill as a joke, “Maybe we’re in business class?” He made some snide remark about how just impossible that would be, but sure enough, when we actually got on the plane, we found ourselves sitting in the nose of the plane, in business class – in seats so far apart that even Bill couldn’t touch the seats in front of us with his feet! (He has very long legs & normally his knees are jammed up against the seat in front, yet alone his feet!) The look on his feet was priceless – he looked all the world like a kid who has been let loose in a toy shop (he’s never been upgraded before). I was so worried that they would notice & tell us that a mistake had been made & send us back to cattle class – but of course that never happened, & the plane took off for our 10 hour flight & we just couldn’t believe our luck.
The flight was about as good as it gets for a long haul flight – the seats changed into practically horizontal position for sleeping (which we both did given our lack of sleep the previous night) & we could see out of BOTH sides of the plane from our seats at the same time! Initially we had cloud cover, but just as we hit the Italian Alps the clouds cleared, giving us fantastic views with amazing low light hitting the snow covered mountains & then the frosty fields once we were past the Alps. It was just stunning – we both fly so much that we’ve become quite jaded, but this was like flying for the first time again!

The flight went very quickly – it was dark outside by the time we crossed the equator & we arrived into Johannesburg right on time at around 10pm, & considering the circumstances, feeling quite refreshed. We had pre-booked a room in the Transfer Hotel in Jo-burg airport, as our next fight was the next morning at 7.30 & we didn’t want to spend the time travelling to a city hotel & back. Although the hotel was very convenient & we’d managed to eat, & get to bed by 11pm, the room itself was way over priced (broken shower, Ac not working, no clock etc), but we didn’t have to get up super early to be ready for queuing at the Air Namibia desk for our boarding passes for the next two flights. It was while we were there that we realised that we only had one luggage tag, not two, although the lady thought it wouldn’t be a problem as the other bag would be either plus or minus 1 from the tag we had. We got two sets of boarding passes again (all the way to Luanda) & then just had to get ourselves some breakfast & wait for boarding.

We saw several other teachers while we were waiting, but only one other was taking the same connections as us. Although we weren’t in business class again, the flight to Windhoek was half empty, so both Bill & I had a window seat (with no one next to us) & we were behind the bulkhead on the last flight, so still had plenty of leg room. I guess all that good luck was just tempting fate, because as we arrived at Luanda airport, another jumbo plane was emptying all its passengers out onto the tarmac. So, the arrival hall was just packed with people, but we found a queue that was moving reasonably fast & I was able to push my way over to the man stamping the arrival forms with the “I have seen your yellow fever vaccination card” stamp, & get both of our forms stamped. We should have known that it was just too smooth going….

The luggage hall was just chaotic – not a single trolley to be had, both conveyor belts going, but no indication of which flights the bags were from. Bill & I split up so we could each watch a different belt & over the next hour (longer?) we stood there & waited in vain for our bags to appear. When it became obvious that they weren’t there, we then had to find the lost & found office (which thankfully was open) & make our report. He told us to come back the next day (Tuesday) for the next Air Namibia flight & look again for our bags. Bill was wonderfully calm & sanguine about it all – not so me – I was mentally composing my resignation letter!

Once we finally left the airport, there were a couple of school buses to pick us up & the teachers who’d arrived on the Ethiopian Airways flight which landed after us. They got all their luggage, but we shared a bus back with the Spanish teacher who’d been in Indonesia for the holidays & his trip had been so bad (in both directions) that we felt bad complaining about what we’d gone through.

I was still feeling very down by the time we arrived home & it really took a huge effort to force myself to do some school work for the next day (School started on Tuesday not Monday because Monday was a public holiday – Martyr’s Day). Bill (in ignorance about the public holiday) went shopping – the small grocery shop around the corner was closed & the supermarket was devoid of both Kwanza (they ran out just as Bill reached the counter to change US$100) & any vegetables except for onions. Then, it took half an hour in the check-out queue! Amazingly (I couldn’t have done it) he was still upbeat when he got home (over an hour after he’d left) & spent the evening trying to cheer me up. (To compound everything, there was no internet & the power kept flickering on & off all night.)

School, of course, was fine once I was there on Tuesday morning, although a lot of kids weren’t there (around 50% attendance in most of my classes). There were also a significant number of teachers not there either – some (like Jo & Marek) were in Kenya for an IB course), others were at job fairs (like the heads of school) & still others were in strange locations around the world, stranded by lost connections & not quite sure just when they would be arriving in. (& I’m certainly not optimistic about their luggage turning up with them!).

Bill (now absolutely my hero) volunteered to go to the airport to look for our bags & I volunteered to try the supermarket again for fresh food. There still wasn’t any tomatoes or peppers (our stable veges) – just more onions, chilli peppers & that was it really. I did manage to get bread, some fruit & a few other basics, but no eggs or any fresh veges at all. At least it wasn’t an expensive shop ($50 is half to a quarter of what we usually spend).

Attendance at school stayed low all week – 67% by Wednesday & around 72% on Thursday & Friday. I hope everyone is back on Monday. Clubs started on Friday & I have 5 new girls – I have my fingers crossed they will be good.

To cut a long story short – no bags on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday! No fresh veges or eggs in the supermarket until Thursday (we got eggs, 2 tomatoes & the last 2 peppers on the shelf). On Friday, Bill came home with one bag that arrived literally just a few minutes before he checked. It was my Samsonite bag & the only damage was a spice bottle lid popped (making the bag smell nice) & one bottle of lotion leaked also. Fortunately I’d packed the liquids inside 2 plastic bags, so there was minimal damage to the contents of the bag (although everything needed the spice powder removed from it). The next flight in to check wasn’t till Sunday.

On Saturday we managed to get all the fresh food we needed to stock up the fridge again. Sunday’s trip to the airport proved fruitless, the lady at the lost & found said it may be on the flight on Monday – so 7 days later, still only 1 bag has arrived.

We had a very quiet weekend – the trip to the supermarket & out to the airport our only excursions. Bill leaves for an MYP course in Jakarta on Tuesday, so we are preparing for that!

Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year

2008-12-28T09:57:00.001-08:00

Best wishes to everyone - we return to Angola and our adventures a week into the new year.

Week 20: Relaxing at Rio Longa & Flying Out

2008-12-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

Dec 13 – 21, 08

Saturday was a quiet day at home – drying off everything that had been soaked in the flood, including all the electrical stuff. However, although one of the multiplugs worked after drying out, one didn’t & there is still no life in my laptop adaptor. Fingers are still crossed that a new adapter bought in the UK will bring my laptop to life again. Lots of people flew out for their holidays – we said goodbye to them as they left for the airport. The residential area was getting quieter by the hour!

Sunday wasn’t much busier than Saturday – I spent a couple of hours making the most of the lack of people around to try to catch photos of the birds flying around the grounds & the lizards that somehow survive the regular mosquito fogging. (Actually the big black slugs seem to survive that too). We were leaving early the next morning for our holiday at Rio Longa, so we organised breakfast & packing on Sunday evening so we would be ready to go on time.

We left for Rio Longa just after 8am on Monday morning & promptly got stuck in traffic. Our driver did a U-turn & then drove us out via the back roads & successfully managed to avoid the main traffic before we hit the main road south again. The trip was fast and easy, and when we arrived at the dock just by the Rio Longa bridge, the boat from the lodge was waiting for us already. We were taken to the lodge in a small powerboat, but the driver kept close to the banks so it was great for taking photographs – we saw a couple of goliath herons – they are such big birds & surprisingly well camouflaged in the reeds. As usual, Bill & I had reached a sharing agreement with the long lens – he would have it on the return trip as I had it on the trip in. It was a wonderful trip – we saw lots of birds & lots of purple flowers – the water hyacinth were all flowering (yes I know this is a noxious weed, but the flowers are really beautiful).

When we got to the lodge it seemed as if we were the only people staying there – we had lunch (they had got the message that we were vegetarian) and then took a kayak across the lagoon to the beach. The waves were really wild – it didn’t look particularly safe to either of us for swimming, so we took a long walk along the beach instead. Just like last time, there were hundreds of crazy crabs on the beach – running in & out of the surf. This time we didn’t see one with a feather – that obviously was a crab in thousand (or more – the beach is covered in them), but we did see a “crab of war” as two crabs were each tugging on opposite ends of a piece of dead fish skin. We saw the remains of a dead fish – almost totally stripped all the flesh of it. I can see now why whole dead fishes aren’t such a common sight on the beach – the crabs must reduce them down to bare bones in just a few hours.

After our beach walk we returned to the lodge & about 5pm we went out in the boat again – a couple of local women working a the lodge were taken up towards the village by the mouth of the river, & we came back along the banks of the mangroves looking for birds & any reptiles. Once again, no crocodiles, but we did see vultures and lots of herons & kingfishers.

Dinner was very tasty, but our solitude was gone as a big group of people had arrived in time for dinner also. Afterwards we retired to our bungalow to crash – Bill read for a bit with the headlamp (there is no electricity at all in Rio Longa, the lighting is all by candlelight).

We had planned to get up early, but it just didn’t happen. Instead we got up in time for breakfast – as we were walking to the lodge, I saw the cat (kept to keep rats away) playing with something at eh base of a palm tree. When I took a closer look, I saw it was a giant crab – the biggest land crab I’ve ever seen – it must have been close to 15 cm wide and was standing up maybe about 10 cm off the ground. Although it didn’t like the cat, it stood its ground & the cat soon got bored & left it. I took a few photos & then noticed the sand around the palms was tracked with what must be these giant crab tracks – there were a heap of them. I don’t know if they come out & walk around at night, or just very early in the morning – it was the only one we saw.

After breakfast we went out “bird stalking” in the kayak. This is something we have now perfected to a fine art – the person with the camera & long lens sits in the front of the kayak, while the other person does most of the paddling. When a bird is spotted, the paddling goes as quiet as possible & tries to steer the kayak as close to the bird as possible without disturbing it. Because the kayak is so quiet to move, this works really well for getting great shots of the bigger birds, but the little birds are always so small through the camera. We went up the side of the lagoon next to all the mangrove trees & were rewarded with seeing lots of kingfishers and bee-eaters. We even saw what we think is a “go-away bird” up on one of the palm trees. When we have gone past all the mangroves, we find a sandy bank, ground the kayak & then swap seats & do it all over again in the opposite direction. It’s a great way to spend the early morning & so cool to see so many birds up close.

When we got back from our paddling, we found Bora & Tina had arrived already – they are staying in Luanda for the whole holidays & we knew they would be coming for our second day at the resort. We hadn’t expected them so early though – they’d left Luanda about 6:30 & as a result hadn’t had any of the problems we’d struck with the traffic.

We had lunch with them & after lunch they sat and read on the veranda while we went for another paddle up the beach side of the lagoon, where we beached the kayak & then walked along the beach until we reached the headland at the south end of the beach. It was a very long walk – well over an hour to get to the rocks – which were essentially just shells stuck together with sand. We’d left our sandals in the kayak, and the sand here was burning our bare feet, so we had to retreat just meters from the actual headland. The beach is stunning – pristine clean, 2 – 3 hours to walk from one end of it to the other (at least) and not another soul on it except for us!

Although we’d taken water with us (& drank quite a bit of it) we were hot & tired when we got back to the lodge. We sat & read for the rest of the afternoon & then showered & changed for dinner. We had dinner with Tina & Bora again, it was nice company and it made us feel less “excluded” as the other guests were having a Christmas party and unwrapping presents!

We were the last to leave (we found out the next day that the party people had left early in the morning) & despite the lack of air conditioning, or even a fan, the rooms are more than cool enough for a good nights sleep. Once again though, we didn’t get up early & simply were in time for breakfast again (although we were earlier than the other two). We did the same kayak trip as the previous morning – out along the mangroves & this time we were lucky enough to see the pygmy kingfishers hiding in the papyrus – they are so small that despite their bright colours, they are really easy to overlook.

After we got back, we relaxed for the rest of the morning – reading old magazines & enjoying the breeze & the beautiful view. We had another leisurely lunch and got ourselves ready for the boat trip back to the bridge to pick up our bus back to school. Disappointingly, we had yet another crocodile free trip, although we did see several big birds.

The bus was waiting for us, so we were on the road back to Luanda very quickly. The trip takes just over 2 hours & we made good progress despite a truck having a tire blow-out just in front of us as we were going up a hill & a 10 minute break at the lunar lookout as Bora & Tina hadn’t seen it before.

It felt strange to be home – especially as we are almost the only people left living on campus. We had planned to have a big day trip the next day, but as we realised how tired we were from the long trip back, we decided to be kind to ourselves & just stay at home to pack & get ready for our flight out on Friday. We were very pleased that we’d gone to Rio Longa – the price is unbelievable, but everything is relative, & we felt that it was well worth the money to have such a relaxing get away. Certainly we couldn’t afford to do it every month, but a couple of times a year isn’t out of the question.

Thursday morning we slept very late (for us anyway) & when Bill went to cancel our trip was told that it wouldn’t have been possible anyway as there were no drivers! Just as well we hadn’t got up at 6am to go out for the day! We spent the day organising stuff we needed & just taking it pretty easy again. We are definitely in holiday mode!

Friday has to be the absolutely worst airport experience of my life. We had no water on Thursday evening & it hadn’t come back on by the morning, so we weren’t able to have showers before going to the airport. Our bus was waiting for us on time & despite some quite heavy traffic, as our route was through a busy shopping area, we made good time. We’d allowed ourselves heaps of time, so the slow trip into the airport wasn’t stressful - & it allowed us to really notice what was going on. Christmas is obviously a big thing in Luanda & we saw lots & lots of people by the side of the road with stuff to sell – either to passersby or to people in the slowly moving cars. Just to give you an idea of what was on sale – here is a list of what I saw (typical of any day I guess except for the Christmas stuff):

2009 diaries
Apples
Babies car seat
Balls (soccer, basket etc)
Bananas
Bathroom shelves
Batteries
Beach chairs
Car tools
Children’s stickers
Christmas decorations
Christmas trees
Clocks
Dog leashes & muzzles
Electric fans
Fairy lights
Fake Rolex watches
Fishing rods
Gas bottle hose
Ice cube trays
Ironing board
Irons (not the same person)
Large mat
Large size calculators
Mangoes
Men’s jackets
Multi-plugs
Music CDs (probably pirates)
Netting (for screens)
Newspapers
Paintings
Pillows
Popcorn
Portable barbeque
Pots for plants
Rat traps
Remote controls
Steering wheel covers
Toilet rolls
TowelsWooden masks

We arrived at the airport just after 8:30 am (for a 2:30 flight) & it was already totally packed in the outer section where you have to queue & wait until your flight is ready to check-in. There were a total of 5 flights listed, but we couldn’t find a line for our flight – we waited for about an hour, during which time nobody seemed to go into the airport proper, & it just got more & more crowded. The tension just continued to mount as people were being held back & several flights got delayed. After about another hour, Bill decided to move us up to the front, where we were eventually able to push our way into the main airport when the security people weren’t looking. It was just completely crazy – people were screaming to be let in, the security staff weren’t letting anyone in despite how close it was getting in to the real check-in times & there was a big group of people like us that were just sneaking in anyway.

Once we got into the main part of the airport, our flight wasn’t listed at any of the check-in desks, so we ate our packed lunch (this is an airport with virtually no food facilities) & when our flight finally came up on the check-in screens, we were about 10th in line in the queue. You’d think that it would be almost over by this time, but each person who went up to check in took at least 30 minutes! There was no air-conditioning in the airport, the whole place was completely packed, & people were still trying to push in. It got really nasty – by this time almost everyone has been in a queue for about 4 hours (including children & babies) & there is no end in sight despite being so close to the check-in counter. We stood in that queue for over 2 hours before we finally got to the desk. Although we were Ok for time, it was obvious that the flight was going to be delayed. We asked about our connecting flights & they told us the flight from Windhoek would be held for us & that they would contact KLM to let them know that we would be arriving in Johannesburg late. The good thing was that they were able to check our luggage all the way through to Manchester, so when we finally left the counter, we were feeling reasonably optimistic. That was until we saw the queue for immigration – it was at least 4 people wide & stretched half way around the airport. It took about another hour & a half to get to the front of that queue to get our passports stamped & put our bags through the x-ray machines. By this time Bill’s shirt was completely soaked though – you could hardly see a dry spot on it - & our patience had almost worn out.

The scene in the departure lounge wasn’t much better than what we’d left, except that we weren’t in a queue – no sign of our flight boarding, so we just had to sit (on our cabin bags) and wait it out. People were smoking everywhere, the 8am flight that had been delayed still hadn’t left, and neither had any of the other flights for the day. We finally got on the plane about 6:30pm – we’d been at the airport for 10 hours!

Typically, Bill & I hadn’t been given seats together, but the flight to Windhoek is relatively quick & we were looking at the time & trying to calculate if we could still make our KLM connection in Jo-burg. We thought that if we left really quickly on the Jo-burg flight, we might just make it, as it didn’t leave until midnight. However, when we got into the Windhoek airport, there was a lady calling for all passengers transferring to Johannesburg. All my initial optimism was crushed – they’d let the flight go & we had to stay the night in Windhoek & they’d put us on the 11 am flight in the morning – well & truly too late for our connection!

We went through a special fast track lane in immigration & then collected our bags (at least they didn’t get lost like some people’s) & proceeded to the passenger services. The initial lady we spoke with had told us that they would help us arrange new flights for the connections we’d lost, but when we actually got to the window, the women only wanted our details to confirm our Air Namibia flight in the morning & wasn’t prepared to do anything about our onward flights. That’s when it got nasty – we were tired & had had a hell of a day & this was literally the last straw. Bill demanded to see the manager, & after rather too long, he came out to give us the same story – nothing they could do, wait for tomorrow morning to try to get onward flights etc etc. Bill got angrier & angrier, I got more & more upset, we knew that with it being so close to Christmas, the chances of getting seats on another flight weren’t going to be good & neither of us wanted to leave it unresolved until the next day. Eventually, the manager took our tickets & offered to ring our travel agent (who is based in Namibia) to try to get new flights for us. That was the breakthrough we’d been waiting for – we didn’t have a phone that worked & couldn’t do it ourselves. After about a 5 minute wait, he came out again to say that the travel agent thought she could get us on the KLM flight the next day & would get back to us in ten minutes or so with a confirmation. It was a long ten minutes, but eventually she rang back (this was about 9:30 at night) to say we were both confirmed on KLM the next night, all the way to Manchester!

After that, we were taken in to the city (a 50 minute drive) to a hotel for the night. The hotel dinner buffet had stayed open for us to eat (there was a total of 21 people who’d missed their flight – including some who’d been bumped off the Cape Town flight despite reconfirming their flights). The food wasn’t great, but at least we were able to eat something as it had been a very long time since anyone had had anything to eat. Bill rang his mum to let her know we’d be arriving 24 hours late (hopefully) & then we both crashed for the night. Not a good day at all!

Saturday morning we had breakfast & then were transferred back to the hotel. The trip to the airport gave us a taste of how beautiful the countryside is in Namibia – we will definitely come back for a longer trip! Check in was a breeze (no comparison at all to the previous day’s experience) & they were able to check our bags all the way to Manchester again (a big relief). It was simply a matter of waiting for our flight, which left spot on time & then, once we arrived at Johannesburg, spending the day at the airport waiting for our midnight flight. Although it was a huge waste of time (we couldn’t pick up our boarding passes until 8:30 pm & therefore still a little stressful as we didn’t know for sure that we’d be on the flight) the airport has enough facilities that a long wait is bearable.

Queuing for our boarding pass was a bit stressful as the line was very slow moving. Interestingly, almost everyone in front of us had also come from Luanda & had similar tales of chaos to our own experience. But, once we got to the desk, we got our boarding passes (for both flights), our luggage details were processed & everything finalised. We were very relieved & then it was just a matter of waiting the last 3 hours or so until boarding.

The flight to Amsterdam was about 10 – 12 hours & all though the night. After the previous 2 days that we’d been though, we both were able to sleep quite a bit during the flight. Once we got to Amsterdam, Bill was able to ring his mum & confirm that they’d be able to pick us up at Manchester.

So, after more than 48 hours since leaving home to go the airport, we finally arrived in Manchester (with all our luggage) & we were able to put the whole experience behind us & start to look forward to getting ready for Christmas.

Week 19: Pilgrimage to Muxima

2008-12-12T00:12:00.000-08:00

Dec 6 – 12, 08

Saturday was another quiet day at home – I discovered a cool site my yearbook kids will be able to use to make colourful movies from photos for big events at school. I spent most of the day playing around with it, so I could show them an example of what they can do. Bill was happy to play guitar & read again. We were very glad we’d left the Christmas party early – there were a lot of tired looking people around. Despite trying to avoid it as it gets closer to the holidays, we had to go to Shoprite for supplies – normally Saturday afternoon is the worst possible time to go with the aisles filled with people and check-out queues that can last for over half an hour. We don’t know if everyone else is now also avoiding Saturdays, but when we went, the supermarket was the emptiest we’ve ever seen it. We were able to race around & get what we needed & then go through the till in no time. Still not a favourite thing to do on a Saturday, but it was definitely bearable. One of the reasons we just had to go was that we needed to make our lunch for Sunday as we were leaving early for a big excursion with a group of other teachers.

Sunday was a really early start as we left school at 7am. We drove through a part of the city I hadn’t been through before – almost due east. We joined up with the old railway line – with a train still sitting at one of the stations – but never leaving. The Chinese have the contract to renew the railway line & get it functional again – we certainly saw lots of work. Early in the morning, the traffic was good so we got out of the city in good time (still an hour – it’s a big city). We drove out to Cabala – a village on the Kwanza river. This is where our guide for the day – Senor Serafim Quintino, was going to hire the two boats we would need to take us up river to Muxima. We waited around the village for a bit, lots of great opportunities for photos as the local women and children walked past going to the river and back.

After the initial transactions had taken place, we walked down to the river ourselves & then while we were waiting for the final details to be sorted, it gave us a chance to look around the local market a bit. Women & children were down at the river doing the washing (clothes & themselves) & rather bizarrely, there was a group of Chinese men fishing off the side.

We needed 2 boats for the 11 of us – 6 in one boat & 5 in the other – we were in the boat with 5, one of which was Serafim & he sat right up the front, so we had only two people on each seat as opposed to the rather uncomfortable looking three in the other boat.

The trip took us a good two hours upstream, it was an overcast morning, which probably saved us from getting badly burnt, despite the sunscreen. The Kwanza river is one of the borders of Kissama National park & the same baobab scenery was dominant in the background. The edges of the river were grassy weeds – with lots of waterbirds & several crocodiles. We also passed many small villages – just a few huts in a clearing, & people out fishing and lots of mango trees with ripe mangoes hanging off them (very similar to the baobab flowers & fruits actually). We saw African openbill storks, spur-winged geese, fish eagles, grey herons & black-headed herons as well as great egrets. It was a very nice trip, although just a tad long. (Bill has a rule that says every water trip is at least 30% too long and as usual, he was spot on about this one too.)

Finally, we saw Muxima in the distance - it has a Portuguese fort built up on the hill facing down the river & as it is painted white, it stood out in the distance. There was a church under the fort (also white) which is one of 5 pilgrimage churches in the Luanda area - although we weren’t there at the height of the pilgrimage season (that is in September) it was still crowded with pilgrims. Serafim told us that This town had always been a holy site & was the centre of the local animist faith – which is why the church had been initially built. The fort had been built to secure the slave trade that came via the river & also to keep the local tribes under control.

When we arrived, we carried our lunch stuff to a covered jango (roofed pavilion) & Serafim arranged for a couple of locals to mind it for us as we explored. While we were waiting for him to organize that, Bill & I checked out the trees around the central square – they were full of village weaver birds – bright yellow birds with black heads that were so noisy its hard to believe. They are social birds – there must have been hundreds of them. We went up to the fort first as the church was still in session.

There used to be a church up at the fort also, and although that is long gone, there were signs that the pilgrims were covering their bases & leaving petitions there also.

The fort had the usual cannons pointing both downstream (the way we had come) and upstream. Not long after we got to the fort, big black clouds came in & it started to rain lightly. We have had so little rain, it is hard to remember that it is actually supposed to be the wet season – only 2 of us had an umbrella (& not Bill or me – it was definitely a wake-up call).

The rain had mostly dried up as we came back down the hill, but it was a false illusion, as not long after we reached the jango & started to eat our lunch, it started to really pour down. The little kids were funny – they ran around in the rain as if it was a shower. Everyone else stayed under shelter waiting for the rain to ease up.

We had finished our lunch, the rain was slowly easing up, so we decided to walk up to a new “hotel” complex - we’d seen these bright blue roofs from the boat as we’d arrived. Just walking the ten minutes or so to the hotel got us soaking wet & our feet totally covered in mud – the dry sand that we see everywhere turns into instant cloying mud as soon as it is wet! The hotel had clean toilets (a very welcome find) although the ladies had a couple of very agitated swallows who didn’t like the intrusion at all! We sat out the rain in the restaurant (the whole place seemed a little surreal – apparently it is completely filled up during the height of the pilgrimage – but it seemed totally deserted when we were there. Fortunately, the rain did ease off, & we were finally able to go and visit the church Although the service was over, the church wasn’t empty. Behind the altar was a statue of Mary (“Mama Muxima”). This statue had been taken from the church during the civil war, & its return from Luanda started the pilgrimages to the church. Most of the Pilgrims are women, praying for their families. Behind the church was an area where they had tents erected, had fires for cooking and the bushes were all covered in their washing.

Because we had waited out the rain, we were a bit behind schedule, and we had to leave for our trip down river back to Cabala. Fortunately, the rain had truly stopped – none of us were looking forward to a boat trip in heavy rain! Bill had my long lens for the trip back, which did go a bit faster than the trip upstream, but was still too long (especially for bottoms sitting on wooden planks). Bill got some great fish eagle shots & we saw more crocodiles.

The sky was spectacular – huge with big clouds & ironically, this is when the sun came out & people got sunburnt! We arrived back at Cabala close to when we were supposed to, but the trip back home was much slower as we hit very heavy traffic once we got into Luanda. However, it was a great day and we were very glad we’d gone despite getting drenched & arriving home totally wiped out.

I had to write a test for my y8’s before going to bed & the rest of the week was virtually as busy – I had to make decisions about what I wanted to teach next year & I’d scheduled a test for the y9’s on Tuesday also. Thursday (the last day of school) was a half day for classes – all the kids from y7 up were playing soccer to raise money for the orphanage that the CAS students go to. The aim is to raise enough money to provide all girls in the orphanage (girls only) with a complete set of new clothes, including shoes, for the new year. Every class had raised US$100 (although my homeroom had a bake sale & managed to raise $170) to contribute to the fund. In January, the plan is to have some adult corporate games & raise a lot more extra money to add to what the kids have contributed. So I spent 3 hours out in the hot sun, taking photos for yearbook. Bill was both a referee and played for the teachers team, but disgracefully, they lost the final against the year 12s – with lots of excuses about hearing a whistle that hadn’t been blown (the games were 6 a side & two half pitches were being used at the same time). Also a teacher & a student got sent off for a very unfortunate incident involving foul language on the student’s part. Apart from that, it was a very successful afternoon, although I can’t help but wonder at the sanity of scheduling soccer games during the heat of the day when there is only a small amount of shade for the kids when they come off the pitch.

The afternoon in the sun took its toll – a group of us went round to a friends place to sing carols – Kim (the primary music teacher) brought along the keyboard & Bill decided at the last minute to bring his electric guitar (despite not knowing any of the chords & earlier vowing not to play under those circumstances). It was a very nice party, the Spanish teacher had printed off words for some carols in Spanish, & the Portuguese teacher had done the same. We also were given sheets with the English words (just as well or I don’t know how many people could have sung along otherwise). Bill coped really well with reading off the chords as he went & Kim was well in her element. But, by 9:30 everybody was ready to go home & sleep, even the teachers who normally can stay up all night during the weekend.

On Friday, some teachers had already left for the airport & Bill & I went into town to finally post the Christmas cards I had made about 3 weeks ago, but we hadn’t managed to get in to post. We had the usual argument with the lady in the post office – my cards are laminated & she is convinced that the stamps will slide off. Eventually she gave into us, the stamps stick well, but I guess can be soaked off easily – the first post cards I sent from here to mum arrived without the stamp (although no one else reported that they didn’t have stamps) & most seem to have arrived OK. We spent an hour or so at the roof-top bar of the Hotel Continental over-looking the open square. It is a great spot for people watching, without them being aware they are being watched.

When we got home, we had a shock waiting for us – there had been a power cut during the afternoon and by mistake our cleaner had left a tap in the kitchen open (no power = no water). When she came back much later, our place had completely flooded – we found all the rugs hanging up outside, bags etc also – but all the electrical cords on the floor – the multi-plugs & my laptop adaptor had been completely soaked. The power had flipped off, but my laptop is dead. We won’t know until we can get a new adapter if the laptop itself is OK or if it was also damaged by the power surge. The school has said it will pay for anything permanently broken – we have our fingers crossed that we will get my laptop up & running when we get to the UK in a weeks time.

The last 19 weeks has really caught up with us, and although we haven’t got sick like a lot of other teachers, we are just totally exhausted & went to bed early again after watching a movie.

Week 18: Party Season

2008-12-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

Nov 29 – Dec 5 08

Saturday was a typical quiet & lazy day with the exception that we were going to the St Andrews Ball for the evening. Apparently it is the only real ball that expats go to in Angola, and we very nearly missed out on tickets – it was only because a couple of people had bought some & then made alternate plans that we were able to buy the tickets off them. Dinner was included in the US$100 price & we’d checked to make sure that there would be vegetarian food. So we got dressed up (Bill opting for Malaysian silk shirt rather than a shirt and tie – we loved Malaysia for the fact that local batik is considered formal wear, equivalent to tails & tux, so we thought we’d stick with the concept). There was a bus leaving school at 7pm for a 7:30 start. The ball was in a hotel in a compound not too far from school, so it seemed an appropriate time. We drove to Jo & Marek’s place to pick them up as well – making a total of 4 couples & Maggie who was going by herself. However, the driver couldn’t seem to find the compound we were headed for & we drove around in circles & down dead alleys before heading half way into the city to take a u-turn to put us on the right road. The whole area where the ball was being held is currently (for ages) under road construction & the problem seemed to be that it was on a one-way road headed back to school & therefore very difficult to get to from school, despite the fact that we pass it every time we come home from the city. So it took us over an hour before we finally arrived & then we still had to get past the security check.

However, once we arrived, we found our table & proceeded to relax. There was no dance music when we arrived & when it started it was Scottish country dancing (I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised – it was the St Andrew’s ball after all). The first dance was the “Gay Gordon” & we bravely tried to copy what the couple in front of us were doing – but we were hopeless & ended up giving up & watching from the side. The next few dances were even more complex, although it was fun to watch. There was some “disco music” but they had got a year 11 boy to act as the DJ & he really didn’t have a clue about what sort of music to play. Bill & I managed to have a few dances, but really, it wasn’t great. Dinner was very good though & we danced a bit more afterwards. It was a fun night & well worth the money. We plan to go again next year, but vowed to make sure that we have lessons in the dances first!

Sunday, I had to write primary reports – it took me all day. However, it was very nice to get them all out of the way. Bill had a great day playing guitar & reading!
The week was tiring – it is funny how towards the end of term, everyone gets more & more tired & tempers start to fray. Everyone is counting down to the last day next week.

The week ended with a high spot although, Friday night was the school Christmas party. We’d been asked weeks earlier for our preference for vegetarian food, so we knew there would be a good meal to eat. It was quite a formal evening – everybody dressed up – especially the local staff. There was DJ here as well – we were blasted with what sounded like Angolan trance music from within 50 meters of the cafeteria. But, after everyone had eaten (a veritable feast that included whole crabs for the brave), people got up on the dance floor & danced - & danced well. The locals were fantastic dancers & keen to dance. It was very interesting – the Angolan men were dancing with their wives & girlfriends & almost all the western guys were outside pretending not to know their wives and girlfriends who were inside dancing as well. Bill was one of the notable exceptions – we danced quite a lot, but the effects of 17hard weeks caught up on us & we were ready to go home by 8:30!

Week 17: Eland in the Garden

2008-11-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Nov 22 - 28, 08

Kissama photos slideshow

We had an early start as we had booked the 4-wheel drive for 7am. Of course there was no sign of the driver that early, but we were on our way about 7:30. The drive out of the city was relatively fast (the main road south seems to be permanently congested) & then we had a really good run out to the entrance road to Kissama. We didn’t see any animals along the roadside apart from a few lizards & a few birds (& lots of starlings). The road was noticeably wetter than the last time we’d been & more of a challenge for the driver. We passed a car which had obviously gone as far as it could before turning around and abandoning the attempt. The lack of animals was wonderfully compensated for when we arrived at the fenceline surrounding the inner area of the park. There was a female bushbuck right there on the road next to the fence – I was able to get out of the car & walk up to the fence to take photos of it browsing in the bushes.

Once we arrived at the park headquarters, it didn’t take us long to put up our tent. There was a troop of vervet monkeys around our campsite & we got the distinct impression that if we weren’t careful, they would steal our lunch out from under us. about 3pm. We walked down to the river (about 30 minutes I guess) & took lots of photos – overhead eagles (Bill got those – he had the long lens), butterflies & various insects. It was much hotter than the last time we were here a month or so ago. We made the terrible mistake of not carrying water with us & by the time we arrived at the river, we knew we’d messed up. The trip back up the hill wasn’t very pleasant, with both of us feeling decidedly dehydrated, but fortunately we weren’t so far from camp. When we got back we both drank 1.5 litres of water each & vowed to never let that happen again!

After re-hydrating we still had a couple of hours until we could go out on safari – so Bill found a quiet spot to read, while I took my camera around the headquarters. I know he enjoyed the peace, & I had a great time – I saw more monkeys, amazing stick-like crickets that had wings like butterflies, cool cactus flowers & purple-banded sunbirds (which just happened to come & pose for me in the cactus flowers).

I noticed a crowd of people standing in the garden with cameras, so I wondered over to have a look & you can imagine my surprise when I saw 3 eland munching on the bushes. The male, who was as big as a large bull (very big in other words) was less than 10 metres away. The crowd took their photos & disappeared again, while I stayed to watch. What a magnificent creature! I got to within 5 meters of the male (the female had a young calf & they were much shyer) – I backed off first – he was so big, I was scared. The bull had an orange tuft of hair on his head & when he was under a bush & you couldn’t see his antlers, his face looked very cow-like (jersey cow to be exact). He had a huge blue-grey burlap – the flap of skin at his chin & then the rest of him just seemed like a large bull. When he walked, he clicked (this is typical, it is mentioned in my guide book, but I don’t know what part of him was making that noise). I realised that he had only one antler – because the broken one was mostly on the far side from me & I hadn’t initially noticed. The female & the calf also had antlers, which have a straight shape with a deep spiral groove twisting around it.

I went to find Bill & gave him my lens so he could take some photos also. The elands had hardly moved – we saw their footprints all around that area of the garden. Like me, he was only prepared to get so close, although he got some wary looks, the animals were more concerned about eating than being frightened by puny humans with cameras.

It was getting very close to the time we’d been told that the safari truck would go out so we returned to the area where it departs from & then waited about an hour before being told that the big truck wasn’t going to go out (not enough people I think) & instead we would be going out with a group of people on a tour. They had 2 extra spaces in their luxurious stretch landrover. The organiser of the tour was Mario from Eco Tur & it cost us the same $20 each it would have on the safari truck, but in a lot more comfort. Also (the best part) there were sunroofs over each seat, so we able to stand up through the roof & get the most fantastic view.

We had agreed that Bill would have the zoom lens on Saturday & I’d have it for Sunday. So I took landscape pictures in a way I’d never managed to from the roofed-in safari truck & Bill was able to take photos of (surprisingly little) wildlife that we saw. It was a bit disappointing in terms of animals – we saw a few herds of eland and the odd single animal, an ostrich which we chased down the road (they can run really fast), lots of birds of various kinds, but no elephant or giraffe or zebra.

We stopped for drinks about half way around & we were still out when the sun went down & were able to catch the spectacular sunset from our roof-top view. The landrover gave a much smoother ride than the truck (not so surprising really) so it was a very pleasant couple of hours out. The people we were riding with were working for one of the oil companies & were having a great day trip including breakfast at one of the luxury lodges on the way to the park. They weren’t staying the night, but heading back to Luanda soon after the safari finished. It was their first trip to Kissama, although they had been in Luanda longer than us.

We had to start cooking relatively quickly so we could set up while it was still light. The very nice thing about camping at Kissama is that you can use a covered Jango (thatched shelter) with lights and table and chairs. Very civilised. That’s about when we realised we’d made another bad mistake – for the first time ever, we’d forgotten all our mosquito repellent things. Normally we burn coils in our cooking jingo but without them, we were attacked by mosquitoes. Fortunately we did have clothes to cover up in.

The tent was very hot (don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to camp in summer) & much worse, we had a few mosquitoes in it. They will always bite me given a choice between me of Bill & I had a miserable time with mossies buzzing in my ears all night. Eventually the temperature dropped in the early morning & I got some sleep, but Bill was up about 5am for the dawn chorus & I was up not long afterwards as the sun was heating the tent up again. We decided to postpone breakfast until after we’d gone out on safari, & as we were walking over to the truck, we saw the bull eland clicking his way through the campground. What a cool start to my birthday!

The truck left close to 6am while it was still quite cool & we saw an amazing number of animals – mostly all antelope, but in large groups rather than as solitary animals. We think we saw more than a 100 animals in total – definitely our best ever trip despite the lack of the more “dramatic” animals.

As you can tell from the photos, it is still very dry, although the wet season is supposed to have started. Maybe that is why we saw so many animals – we don’t know, but it was wonderful to see such large numbers when you think about the history of the park.

It was hot & threatening rain when we got back to camp for breakfast. In fact, it started to rain just a bit after we’d eaten, so we took the tent down in case it got wetter & then retreated to the jingo with easy chairs to wait for our driver to arrive to pick us up. Bill was happy just to read again, while I took my camera out around the grounds to see what I could find.

I had a great time – I saw a posing dragonfly, an agama lizard – the first decent sized lizard I’ve been able to take a photos of here, lots of pretty flowers and the female sunbird (not nearly as glorious as her mate that I photographed the previous day). I also spent ages trying to take a decent picture of the big carpenter bees that were collecting pollen from a flowering tree right outside the restaurant. The lady who runs the place was obviously impressed by my patience, as she came out to tell that the tree was unique to the park. She told me its name, but I didn’t catch it properly – after trawling on the net for a few hours, I think it must be a sub-species of Bauhinia petersiana which normally have very similar white flowers. The yellow, bell-shaped flower is also a Bauhinia species.

Our driver eventually arrived – he told us that the traffic getting out of the city was particularly bad. Our trip out of the park was once again animal free, but for a while we were driving behind a ute totally full of people standing up in the back with just each other to hold onto, bouncing along the rough road in the sun. Our air-conditioned land rover never looked better!

On our way back, we once again stopped at the lookout point over the sandstone escarpment on the coast. No matter how many times you see it, it is always breathtakingly dramatic.

Despite a good fast trip for most of the way, we eventually hit the traffic jam which had delayed the driver in the morning. They had closed one side of the highway, so only one direct could move at a time. The lines of cars was backed up for ages!

Once we finally got past the roadworks, the traffic was still heavy so our driver asked if he could take an alternative route back to school. The way we went was through a poor residential area – the road was only wide enough for one car, so if something came the other way, you had to drive up the side of the road to let it squeeze past. But we made good progress & we were home to hot showers & fresh clothes by mid afternoon.

After such a brilliant weekend, the rest of the week was essentially mundane – the usual shopping, washing & school work. I helped update the school’s recruitment brochure with photos that had been taken this year & generally improve its graphical layout. It was a rush job as it had to in to the printers by Wednesday morning.

Friday was another early close, but we turned down an invite to go camping on the beach again. I’m still covered in mosquito bites & we were planning to go into the city to post xmas cards. However, we couldn’t get a bus, so in the end, just had a relaxing afternoon at home.

Week 16: Out & About in Luanda

2008-11-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

Nov 15 - 21, 08

On Saturday we got a school bus to take us down to the Marginal with the plan to walk around a section of the city we hadn’t explored yet & have lunch. Bill’s twisted ankle from his soccer game limited our options somewhat. We knew where we wanted to explore & walked around for about an hour at the most before he simply couldn’t keep going. So we backtracked to the Intercontinental Hotel which sits one block back from the Marginal, and has just recently been renovated. It has a roof-top bar that we wanted to check out for view, general ambiance and food. Despite it being a very hot & sunny Saturday afternoon, the bar was virtually deserted. It had a great view looking down over a main pedestrian square (with a “map” of Angola laid out in huge rocks). We spent maybe a couple of hours there reading our books & watching people pass by. The final of the Angolan soccer season was due to start later in the afternoon (the stadium is about a 5 minute walk from the hotel) & we saw a huge police presence – blocking off roads around the stadium so no cars could go down, so traffic under where we were sitting got pretty congested at times.

There was also a good view out over the marginal, ilha & the bay in-between. The haze that existed when we first arrived in Luanda has virtually gone – so we had a clear view of all the container ships sitting out in the bay, waiting to be allowed to unload.

The rooftop was divided into three sections – the bar itself in the center, tables overlooking the square where we sat, & on the other side the toilets & a series of deck chairs, and an outdoor shower. No sign of a pool, but maybe that is still to be completed. Along that side of the roof, was a series of local paintings such as you see at Benfica market, with telephone numbers (possibly of the artist?). As there was absolutely no one around, I took advantage of the situation to rather cheekily take a few photos so you can see what the local art tends to look like.

To me much of it looks very similar to what we saw in Zanzibar, although the baobabs seem typically Angolan countryside. It is all very stylized.The bar only did sandwiches for food, so we walked back to our favourite pizza restaurant before heading back home. The pizzas are very good & it always amazes us that we manage to eat one each.

Sunday was a quiet day at home – we both had to go to school to get ready for Monday (Bill still had reports to write). The rest of the week was typically uneventful with the exception of Thursday night. The teachers were playing the gardeners at soccer & nothing would have dragged Bill away from playing, but I decided to go the Angola Field Group’s Thursday evening meeting at the Viking Club for the first time. The main incentive for me to go wasn’t the programme (a local movie about AIDS & HIV in Angola) but the fact that there was going to be a series of things being sold & I had xmas shopping on my mind. There was a bus-load of us going in & we arrived in the city just after 7pm. There was a DVD on Kuduru – a local music & dance style for sale (I didn’t buy), a bilingual (Portuguese & English) photo book on Angola (just published this month) which I did buy, as well as lots of craft items made by local orphanages. There were very cute African dolls with their baby tied on their back (unfortunately I couldn’t think of anyone the right age to give one too), table napkins, aprons etc made out of local fabric. I bought myself a small handbag made of crochet & coke can rings! Having gone for the shopping (& spent a ton of money within 15 minutes) I would have been quite happy to go straight home for an early night, but we stayed to watch the movie “A Strong Heart”. It was an hour long, in Portuguese, but with English subtitles. It was focused on discrimination faced by those with AIDS or HIV. It was excellent – I think it is the best film on AIDS/HIV that I’ve ever seen. I’m really glad that I got a chance to see it. I’m a little ashamed that I haven’t gone to any other of their presentations. So despite arriving home after 11pm, it was a very worthwhile evening & I’ll make a point to try to go more often.

The Angolan Field Group have their own blog at: http://angolafieldgroup.wordpress.com/

Friday was the usual hectic day with yearbook club & then packing to get ready to go camping in Kissama for my birthday weekend.

Week 15: International Day

2008-11-14T02:39:00.000-08:00

Nov 8 - 14, 08

Saturday was International Day at school – opening at the rather civilized time of 2 pm, giving everyone involved in setting up country stalls plenty of time to do it without having to sacrifice a sleep-in.
Bill didn’t need to do anything, although there aren’t a huge number of Brit’s in the school, they hadn’t asked for teacher help. Not so for me though, with no NZ families, it was left to the Kiwi teachers on the staff to organize a stall for the day. I begged out of manning the booth, claiming responsibility for taking yearbook photos, but I did my share by producing several sheets of NZ-themed stickers to be used on the kids “passports”, as well as helping with the set-up of the stall. There was quite a lot of “inherited” stuff – fabric, flags, pictures etc, so it was mostly a matter of setting things up. A couple of teachers had made and iced about 80 afgan biscuits to give away & several of the teachers had items they’d bought back for display (a toy pukeko, a Maori doll, a flax kit etc).

After getting everything ready, I left to take photos of the chaos of getting ready for the Parade of Nations which would start the day off. (Experience of many other International days has taught me that this is one of the most fraught times for kids). Sure enough, I saw lots of despairing parents trying to force their little ones into a costume they didn’t want to wear, and lots of unhappy kids. The PTA organize the whole day & I don’t think the mum who was trying to organize all the countries for the parade was having a good time! Typically people turned up well over half an hour later than they were supposed to, but the parade actually got started only about 15 minutes late. This is the first school where they have let EVERYONE who wants to be part of the parade – so many parents and babies took part also. It also meant that the biggest nationality groups had huge crowds of people in the parade, whereas other countries had as few as two people.

After the parade, which did a circuit of the main playground, there were dances by kids from different countries. It was obvious that some countries are fiercely competitive about this & everyone is trying very hard to outdo each other. Fortunately, most of the kids looked as if they were enjoying themselves. The dances themselves were great & many countries managed to get almost all the kids from that country on stage (which is a real achievement when the ages vary so much). Another unique (in my experience) tradition is that the dance acts were interspersed by national costume demonstrations where the MC read out the descriptions of the clothes, where they came from, what they were called & when they would be worn etc. The audience was great and it was much more interesting than it probably sounds.

The stalls from each country had food and drink to try & they all had stamps or stickers for the kids passports (which you can see around their necks in some of the photos). After the dances, it was time to check out all the stalls (& get a drink as it was a very hot afternoon). A local martial arts group (Capoeira which is Brazilian-African) gave a display and some of the smaller kids gave it a go. (Everything was very slow motion – I don’t know if this is normal or was just for the display). The final act was bizarre – it was a local Angolan singer and two dancers who were performing a local style that was frankly risqué. Certainly not the most appropriate of performances for a school function. The adult males seemed to love it, almost everyone else was a bit bemused by the whole thing.
The dancers were very scantily dressed, all three were tattooed, and the dancing involved lots of body shaking! They drew a big crowd, so maybe the singer was quite famous – I never caught her name of the style of dance.

Another surprise was that the day ended on time - around 5pm, with the clean-up happening very efficiently and quickly. We were happy to go home & crash.

Sunday was another lazy day with report writing and accompanying marking hanging over our heads. A couple of teachers were flying out early Monday morning for PYP course in Mumbai, India, so we wrote a long list of food & spices for one of them to try and get for us.

The week was very nicely broken up by Independence Day – a national holiday on Tuesday, so we had the day off. Of course, with all the procrastination of the weekend, we both spent the day in school marking & getting grades for reports. The rest of the week was insanely busy & frankly passed by in a whirl.

Bill had a students versus teachers soccer game after school on Friday, where the teachers whipped the students 5 – 2. Unfortunately, Bill fell & badly twisted his ankle during the game & then had to leave the game (he was playing on the teachers side) to coach the kids as they were behaving so badly. So he wasn’t particularly happy afterwards.

Friday evening all the teachers had been invited to the official opening of the new apartment block (that has 14 units for teachers). The show apartment was open for inspection & there were copious amounts of food and drinks at the pool for everyone. Bill & I ate lots of cheese (virtually the only vegetarian option) and then left for an early night.

Week 14: The Baobab Tree Flowers

2008-11-07T02:31:00.000-08:00

Nov 1 - 7, 08

What a wonderful way to start a weekend – waking up on a beach & going for an early morning swim! The water temperature is so much warmer than just a month ago, although it is a bit “refreshing” when you first go in; it is very pleasant to swim in. The waves are fun & there were a heap of fish literally jumping out of the sea.

After our swim we went for a walk along the beach & right under the cliffs I found some fossils! Very cool! I am sure they are ammonites. I found both a big one (about 6 cm) and a small one (about 2.5 cm). It makes up for our inability to find sharks tooth fossils at shipwreck beach.

We returned to the campsite to make breakfast – eggs & vege burgers – with Bill as chief cook of course! We are borrowing school camping equipment to cook with – buying our own set is on our increasingly large shopping list for the UK at xmastime.

After breakfast the sun started to get very hot, so we went for another swim, took the tent down ready to go home, & then went back swimming again. Bill had another (unsuccessful) go at trying to surf, but this time he foolishly forgot to wear a t-shirt so by the time he gave up, he’d given himself quite a bad rash from the top of the surfboard. A rash shirt for him is another item on our list!

The bus to pick us up arrived about an hour late – about mid-day. By then the beach was already starting to get quite crowded & it was getting very hot. We were more than ready to get out of the sun & the heat & return to Luanda.

The rest of Saturday went by quietly & on Sunday we went into the City to have pizza lunch down on the Marginal after a drink at the rooftop bar of Bahia (we decided we weren’t keen on another banana pizza, which is why we went next door to eat). Very mellow! We also had Monday off school as it was the day of the dead & although we probably should have done more school work, we both had another relaxing & mostly lazy day. I finally got the blog I’ve been meaning to start up & running – initially with just the first few of these weekly missiles. But it means that I have everything all in one place & easily accessible for anyone who is curious about our lives here. It is tricky to embed photos the way I can in this document, so instead I have slideshows running along the side. You can click on them to see the slideshow as bigger pictures, hosted on a different site.

The week at school went by quickly as always – Saturday is International day, so everyone is getting ready for that. It is a PTA event, so fortunately, not a lot of extra work for us, although I had to help out the Kiwi contingent as it is only teachers.

What has been a fascinating thing this week is that the baobab tree has started to flower. They have the most unlikely flower buds – they look like long green fruit hanging down out of the branches. The buds start off small (the size of a small kiwifruit) & get larger and rounder each day. Eventually they get to about the size of a baseball, - still hanging down from the tree on a stalk about 30 – 40 cm long – and then they are ready to open.

The baobab flower buds only open at dusk – so just on sunset, you can see the biggest of these buds starting to split open at the bottom. The flower inside is pure white, so you can see the white contrasting with the green bud. The whole process of the bud slowly splitting open to reveal the flower inside takes around an hour – by which time it is pitch black. The white flowers stand out clearly in the darkness, & then the bats come – it is a bat pollinated flower. The flowers only last one night – by morning they are looking brown & worse for wear. So far I haven’t detected a scent, but the conditions haven’t exactly been ideal – so far all the flowers have been high up in the tree & the only slightly lower one that has flowered so far did so on a night with a strong wind – not ideal for taking photos as it swung around in the wind, with the light getting poorer & poorer by the minute. I haven’t managed to really catch a good photo of the flower “popping out” yet – because as the bud splits open, once it gets to a certain point, it peels back suddenly as the flower falls out of it. It is just amazing to watch the process & the baobab tree has become a gathering point at dusk for those of us (new teachers – the others have done the same thing in previous years) trying to get a good photo.

Week 12 & 13: Tanzania with the boys & back in Angola

2008-10-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

Oct 18 - 31, 08

Johannesburg:
Saturday morning was a bit stressful – both Bill & my phones had died from lack of battery & the hotel couldn’t provide us with an adapter plug for the South African socket. We asked for a wake-up call, but of course it didn’t come! Fortunately we woke early & were able to have a very quick breakfast before catching the shuttle back to the airport. Check-in was as easy as immigration the night before, & this time we actually got boarding passes with seats next to each other!

Jo-burg airport was very nice but unfortunately a lens for Bill was outrageously priced & that was the main thing we wanted. Bill did get a replacement sunhat for the one he lost last time we were at Kisama. We also picked up a South African plug adapter for future use, but otherwise we were happy to just sit in a “real” airport & wait for our boarding call.

The flight to Tanzania took about 4 hours & once we arrived it was straightforward to fill out the visa application (US$50 each) & get issued with a visa on the spot (Angola could take lessons….).Interestingly, although they have just recently changed the rules to make it compulsory, we didn’t need to show our yellow fever certificates.

Once out of the airport, Bill found a taxi driver to take us to our first choice of hotel (remember we hadn’t been able to organize this in advance) & I was able to take local money (Tanzanian Shillings) out of the ATM machine (a huge relief). We also got our plane tickets to Zanzibar sorted for Monday for the 4 of us. The first hotel we went to was booked & the second had a vacancy for just one night, but it was hot & we decided it was better to take the hotel for one night & then ring around for the next rather than drive around in the heat.

The hotel was a nice choice as they had an Indian restaurant! They were also able to book us a hotel for the next night so we didn’t need to spend time trying to find one for ourselves. It was reasonably late in the afternoon, so Bill was only able to arrange a time to meet the boys in the morning.

The next day after we had switched hotels, Bill picked up the kids by himself & they went to a place with games for kids. I went over to meet them briefly – long enough to see Bill outrageously cheating at mini golf (I can’t help it if I’m lucky!...) & then I left them to a (rare for the boys) fast food lunch.

Our flight to Zanizbar was late afternoon on the Monday, the boys arrived just before it was time for us to go to the airport. The flight was just 20 minutes long (small plane) & we were picked up by the hotel taxi & taken from the airport to the hotel on the northern-most tip of the island.

We noticed how green the island is (coming from an arid country) & a noticeable muslim influence.

The hotel was right next to a fishing village & was in the process of expansion –
they were building pool-side units, as well as upgrading the pool. We had two beach-side chalets next to each other. The sea was full of dhows – the traditional arab fishing boats with a single sail (& outriggers). The sunset was stunning & we ate at the hotel restaurant. Despite Bill’s worries about how the boy’s would accept my presence, the day had gone quite smoothly. The biggest problem we had with the hotel was that the beach was covered in seaweed & it wasn’t exactly ideal for the boys to play in. Bill took the boys the next day to a beach that they knew (this was their third or fourth trip to Zanzibar), while I stayed behind to relax at the resort. The beach they went to was much nicer for the boys, so he booked us in for the next two nights.

After another stunning sunset, we moved hotels the next morning to a beach on the East coast – where the sand was just immaculate – pure white coral powder! It was much nicer for the boys to play in & the sea was less busy with fishing boats. The water was a delightful temperature & we went snorkeling ever day. The flip side was that it was more touristy, but it wasn’t to much hassle. Interestingly enough, the touts were almost exclusively Maasi from Arusha, much further inland in Tanzania. They were selling beaded souvenirs and their very distinctive style of paintings. Despite all the stuff for sale, it wasn’t cheap & we didn’t actually end up buying anything!

The boys played predator & prey in the sand, built sandcastles & Enzo worked on perfecting his hand-stands & Bill built his muscles by spending hours tossing the boys around in the sea. It really was a lovely holiday & hopefully both boys realized that nothing has changed between them & their dad by my presence.

We flew back to Dar on Friday afternoon and our flight to Jo-burg left Saturday morning & we discovered that there was no money exchange in the airport (how’s that for method to ensure you spend money in the airport shops!) so we bought a load of African music CD’s with the Tanzanian Shillings we had left over.

We hadn’t booked a hotel for the night as we had a vague idea of staying in an airport lounge, as our flight was quite early the next day. However, we discovered a lounge would cost us about the same as a hotel, so we backtracked out of transit & found ourselves a close hotel with free transfers both ways. As we’d got up at 4:30am & South Africa is 1 hour ahead of Tanzania, we were ready to eat & go to bed by about 7pm! Despite having to get up equally early again in the morning, we were very grateful we’d had a bed to sleep in. We were at the airport early enough to one of the first to check in – so we not only got seats together, we got a window seat on both flights. The airport had a great bookshop and a good pharmacy also. So we managed to spend our Rand quite easily, despite not getting a lens for Bill.

Unfortunately we struck lots of low clouds, so the window seat was a bit of a non event. We landed in Namibia & had a couple of hours at the airport there before boarding our flight for Luanda.

Coming into Luanda was interesting – the plane flew up the coast past Luanda – all the way to shipwreck bay (we could see the stranded boats really clearly) & then circled in low back over Luanda before landing.

Luanda airport was much less intimidating second time around (having proper legal status helps too) & rather quickly we were out of the airport to find one of the school buses waiting So we arrived back home mid afternoon Sunday, with school again on Monday! (and a ton of work to do). The week at school was essentially uneventful (except for the absence of 3 teachers who had been bumped off their TAAG (Angolan Airlines) flights despite reconfirming & turning up at the airport early! Apparently it happens all the time. The bonus of the week was that it was 1) early close Friday & 2) that Monday of next week is “day of the dead” & is a public holiday (which had been missed when the calendar was put together) so we had a 3½ day weekend to look forward to!

Despite initial misgivings (feeling pretty tired out) we decided we would still go camping at Cabo Ledo on Friday night to help break up the weekend. So straight after lunch on Friday we were hastily throwing together the stuff we would need to go camping & started loading the bus up at 2pm. It was a very different crowd of people from the last time we went (almost all new teachers) so it was a quite different experience. For a start, when we arrived, it was almost full high tide & the high ground we had camped on last time was covered in the sun shelters the locals build. So we had to camp close to the lagoon, further down the beach. It was also VERY windy – almost as soon as we got our tent up, the wind caught it, so we ended up weighing down every peg with big rocks (which fortunately were in good supply).

However, once we’d eaten, the week crashed in on us & we were the first to bed – well before 10pm! (Shows our age).

Week 11: Hanging-out for holidays

2008-10-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

Oct 11 - 17, 08

The weekend was another “stay-at-home” one; we went into the city for lunch on Saturday – at a place called Bahia. It is right on the marginal – so it overlooks the bay. It is on three levels – we went up to the “rooftop” to have our lunch. It is a very relaxed place & a cool place to hang out for an hour or so. We only took my small pocket camera, so the photos are a bit hit & miss, but you can get the idea.

We had the vegetarian pizza – a rather ominous-sounding concoction in the menu – eggplant & banana being two of the main ingredients! Due to lack of other options as much as anything else, we braved it & much to our surprise, it was actually quite tasty. Not that we’re going to add banana to any of the pizzas we make at home, mind you, but it certainly it is something we could happily order again in the future. After lunch we found a small supermarket close by (I’d spotted it when we’d driven past going to shipwreck beach) & we were absolutely delighted to find pesto! (Do you get the impression that we are becoming besotted with food? Its simply that so much of what we have taken for granted is just not available here - & of course, what you don’t have is what you miss the most!)

Although we only spent a couple hours in the city, it was a nice break away from campus. Just to prove the previous weekend’s cooking wasn’t a fluke, I made naan bread when we got home & we had a wonderful dinner of curry & naan on Saturday night.

On Sunday I had to mark some tests & write some reports. Bill joined a group of teachers to go watch a soccer game in the city – Angola vs Niger as part of the qualifiers for the World Cup in South Africa. Due to a combination of paranoia (trying to blend in with the crowd with white skin) and just genuine support for Angola, almost everyone turned out in Angolan colours. This photo was taken just before everyone jumped on the bus to go into town.

The first stop was for a few drinks along the Ilha, waiting for the time to go the stadium, which is right down town.

You can get an idea from Bills photos what the crowds were like – all supporting Angola because of course the visas are impossible for anyone to get, so any Niger supporters who may have wanted to come were just out of luck!

Crucial to the local support was the Angolan Brass Band who played randomly throughout the game. The Angola team won the game: 4 – 1 but the last goal was such a blatant offside that there was a huge upset – so huge infact that the riot police had to storm onto the pitch!

At the end of the game, Bill managed to con his way down onto the pitch, claiming to be a photographer with nothing more than my little camera, the size of a cigarette packet - & was even able to get into the players tunnel as the local media were interviewing the players as they came in off the pitch! Talk about cheeky! Of course his biggest regret of the day was not having a better camera with him! I was sorry I hadn’t been able to go, but I did get my reports written, which was something.

The week at school was a short one, with Thursday being a parent – teacher day. For us it was drop-in rather than interviews, I saw alot of year 5 parents (give me parents of older kids any day!). Bill had a nice relaxing day while I was busy the whole time (I teach a lot more kids than he does as the primary classes are much bigger than the secondary ones). Thursday evening was the first chance we’d had to pack for our holiday & due to internet & Skype problems we were only able to confirm accommodation for our first night in South Africa & nothing at all in Tanzania.

Friday morning was an early start – our flight left at 2:30 in the afternoon – we left school to go to the airport at 7:30 in the morning! The trip to the airport took just over 1 hour – so you can see were very early. The system at the airport is unlike anything I’ve ever seen – in the main “hall” of the airport are queues for each of the flights going out that day. As we were so early, we were at the start of our queue. (we were flying Air Namibia to Windhoek & then Johannesburg) We weren’t allowed into the check-in area until the security guy let us through – which wasn’t until after midday. Although we were at the front of the queue – we weren’t the first to check in as about 10 people had bribed their way in front of the line (we saw the money change hands – someone told us later that it costs about US$200 to do that). Despite being there so early, we weren’t able to get seats together – there were a heap of school families on the flight & apparently they had block-booked their seats! We will obviously have to try & sort out this booking-seats-in-advance for future flights! In case you are still wondering just why we arrived so early – the man sitting next to me on the flight to Windhoek told me that a friend of his (who arrived at the airport about 12) was the first to be bumped off the flight, & that the following 2 days flights were also fully booked, so he wouldn’t be able to fly before Monday!

Anyway, the flight to Windhoek was about 2 hours I think & unfortunately neither of us was sitting next to a window, which is a shame as we would have flown directly over the school. But looking out the window as we flew into Windhoek airport, it looked like a very cool place but absolutely in the middle of nowhere – it looked as if we landed in the middle of the desert. Obviously we weren’t the first people to think it kind of surreal, as they made an announcement once we landed that we couldn’t take any photos of the airport due to security reasons! We had about 45 minutes before our flight to Jo-burg, but although our luggage had been booked all the way through, we had no boarding passes for the second flight. It was a bit stressful, queuing again for new boarding passes (still no seat together), but we got into the departure lounge a good 10 minutes before the flight boarded! Once on the plane, a man came to my seat & asked to see my boarding pass – we both had the same seat! His friend was also doubled up in the row in front! The cabin attendant was looking a bit stressed, but fortunately this flight had a few empty seats – so I asked if I could sit with “my husband” & we were both moved to the emergency aisle next to the wing exit where there were only 2 seats instead of 3 and we had twice as much leg room! So that was a nice flight to Jo-burg – also only about 2 hours I think. At the airport it was obvious we were back in the land of the modern – our bag arrived quickly, immigration was painless & we were able to change money easily & there was even a shuttle to take us to the hotel (which we hadn’t known about but a taxi driver told us!).

The hotel was only about 10 minutes from the airport & we crashed pretty early – it had taken us 12 hours to get there with just 4 hours or so of flying time!

So – at the end of week 11 in Angola, we were in our third African country (I know, 1 hour in Namibia is pushing it a bit!) & definitely feeling the “it’s not a developing country” type of culture shock that life in Luanda has already given us. (You won’t know the symptoms as you live in this world already, but our 10 minute taxi trip had “look, a McDonalds & take-away Pizza”, and “there’s traffic lights”, not to mention the existence of taxis!)

Week 9 & 10: A couple of quiet weeks

2008-10-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

Sept 27 – Oct 10, 08

Camping out on the beach was a great way to start a weekend. Bill got up early and went for a very long walk – almost to the next bay. Breakfast was a leisurely affair with good coffee, home-baked cakes and fried eggs!

The surf had improved overnight enough for the surfer boys to go surfing, although the water felt way too cold for me still to even contemplate a swim. Bill also gave it a miss. Our transport back to school arrived early so it easy to pack everything up ready to go home. The plan was to leave the beach before lunch so that we still had most of the weekend free. The trip back was uneventful aside from a noticeable presence of traffic police. We kept passing police cars & although we weren’t stopped we were getting curious about why the increase in their presence. As we got closer to Luanda, the traffic got pretty heavy & the going much slower (we were however moving much faster than the people trying to get out of the city!). We saw yet more traffic policemen standing in the middle of the road, stopping drivers & handing them some kind of leaflet. We were so curious by now, that we got our driver to ask them what they were looking for. The policeman said that they were doing a driver awareness campaign & handed us a bunch of his leaflets. They covered everything from telling drivers of shared taxis to turn their music down for the comfort of their passengers, to don’t overload your motorcycle or car or truck to wearing seatbelts. We shared the posters out – some teachers wanted them for using in class & others, like us, just for a quirky souvenir.

The rest of our weekend was pretty quiet – it had been so nice to get out of the city on Friday – it felt like the weekend lasted forever, but truthfully we were starting to feel pretty tired from the combination of adjusting to a new country, all the travelling we’ve been doing and the teaching. We were happy to just stay in, read a few books & relax.

The weather is getting noticeably hotter, the school gets electricity from the town supply & has diesel generators as a back-up. One generator literally blew up about a month ago, so we have been surviving on one generator for the school. Of course Murphy’s Law applies here too, so since we’ve had only one generator, the town supply has been very erratic & for days on end it has cut out. That leaves the school trying to run on the power supplied by the lone generator. To keep it from being overloaded, we have to keep the air conditioners off. So these last two weeks have been hot with classes in hot & stuffy rooms with no air conditioning at all. The school buildings are well designed with wide eaves so at least we don’t get direct sunlight pouring in, but it has added to the general feeling of fatigue that is becoming more noticeable.

The “normal” 2 day weekend was also very quiet – the only thing we had planned was going into the city on Saturday night for dinner – in a Chinese restaurant that had been recommended to us. It was a bit of a surprise – very red & Chinese (typical restaurant I guess but looking very out of place here). They had a reasonable selection of vegetarian food & the place was very busy (with lots of Chinese eating – always a good sign). The food was very good & the bill (we went with LOTS of money) wasn’t too bad given the prices here. Actually it was a very successful evening & although we just didn’t feel up to staying out & going clubbing with some of the other teachers, (who left the school much later than we did) we felt as if we had done something with our weekend.

Sunday was a cooking day – I found a recipe for soft tortillas on the internet & as we haven’t been able to find anything like that at all so far, we decided to join virtually everyone else here & go into self production. I actually made the tortillas & Bill cooked them & we had Mexican for dinner! Actually the whole weekend was a food treat as on Friday we had lentil soup for the first time here also. This is one of Bill’s most wonderful recipes, but we haven’t been able to get any red lentils. One of the teachers who lives in the city saw some in a shop & bought us a few packets, so that has been a real treat. Of course, when we asked her to get more packets, they were already sold out. We’ve learnt that things come in & then disappear – you just have to grab (& horde) stuff when you see it. Neither of us have ever had cupboards so bulging with dried & canned food, as the hording instinct kicks in real fast!

School keeps us busy during the week & Bill plays soccer with other teachers twice a week after school as well as once with the kids (as coach) also. Wednesday evening was the grudge match as the parents tried to take revenge for the thrashing they received from the teachers last time. They were so desperate to succeed that the “parents” team was re-invented as “parents + big sons who play soccer at school” in an effort to out-run the teachers. Despite a very good start by the teachers (& a stunning goal by Bill), the run-them-off their-feet strategy did work at the end, resulting in a 4-4 tie.

So, that really is pretty much all that happened – we are hanging out for our mid-term break when we fly to Tanzania to spend a week with the boys. Everyone is a bit nervous about how it will go, but the thought of shopping in Johannesburg airport (stocking up on stuff we can’t get here) & then a week on a beach sounds pretty enticing. We can’t wait.

Week 8: A camping we shall go!

2008-09-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

Sept 20 – Sept 26; 08

Saturday was an early start to get loaded up into the 4-wheel drive to take us to Kisama National Park. There were 7 of us going in total – Jo and Marek, Tony & Juliette, Heather (a kindergarten teacher who arrived this year with us) as well as Bill & I.
Jo & Marek were investigating another access route into the park & were travelling with Tony & Juliette in their car as they had been that way before. Jo & Marek will be taking kids to the park in a couple of weeks, but some of the oil companies won’t allow their families to cross over the bridge that is on the normal route to the park. The way they went involves a completely different road & finally arriving at the park by boat. So it was just Heather, Bill & I in our car, but we took most of the other’s gear as they knew they would be walking from the river up to the camping spot.

We arrived at the park without seeing any animals (I think increased people to the park have had its effect) & got our tents up before catching a ride on the safari truck. We really wanted to see elephants, but despite the best efforts of the trackers, saw no more than lots of elephant poo. We did see a wilderbeast though. However, we didn’t see giraffes or anything much else so it was a bit disappointing. Lots of cool birds as always though! Bill & I were sharing my camera as his big zoom lens is broken – so some of these are his shots.

We cooked as usual, although Tony & Juliette ate in the restaurant. The next morning we went for another ride in the safari truck – and this time we did see elephants – we didn’t get good shots as they were right in the trees – quite close – they had a small baby with them. In fact we were too close for the comfort of the rangers (because of the baby I think) so they moved us on quite quickly.
Back at the campsite, we relaxed until it was time to go home - & during that time I saw a troop of vervet monkeys come through the trees, as well as a very cute squirrel.

We got home around 4 on Sunday, totally feeling as if we had a wonderful break. Although we didn’t see as much wildlife this time, it still is a very beautiful place to relax in & feel as if we are far, far away from school. We really noticed how much greener the park was (from a month ago) and also, how much clearer the air is (less haze). The park’s baobab trees still haven’t started to leaf, but the tree at school is now covered in leaves. The extra vegetation makes it harder to see the animals of course. But it is such a cool weekend. Marek & Jo have everything set-up for the kids to go camping in a couple of weeks, so we have our fingers crossed that they will see a lot of animals as they will be there during the week when there are much less day trippers.

The week just flew by (school is like that) & the special treat this week was that it was “early close Friday”. This school year is the first time that the school has been in session on Fridays afternoons. The history to this has been that it has been so difficult in the past to find food & stuff that teachers needed an afternoon a week to do the basic shopping or go into the city. Since the new supermarket was built just around the corner, those days are now gone (well sometimes it’s hard to find things – I was able to buy my first box of matches this week in 2 months). However, to allow people to get to see the doctor or whatever, there is one early close every month. Bill & I had planned to go into the city for dinner, but we were invited to go camping with a group of other teachers on Cabo Ledo (the surfing beach). We left at 2pm on Friday afternoon & arrived at the beach by 4. As it was a Friday night, there was absolutely no one else there. The beach is quite shallow & it has changed drastically since we were last there. The lagoon that the local boys were playing in last time was gone completely. There were 11 of us in total (6 tents) & not a huge amount of high land for pitching a tent. We claimed a piece of high land (I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I thought there was a possibility of the tide coming into the tent during the night) but 3 tents went up on the high tide zone.

One tent (closest to the sea) had to be shifted at 3am when the tide came in! The other tents were just far enough back not to need to move. We both slept through the whole thing! I was very glad we had pitched our tent where we did. Bill thought I was being well over cautious, but even he admitted in the morning that he was glad we hadn’t had to do a move in the dark with the tide at our heels!

Week 7: Shipwrecks, Slavery, Shopping & Soccer

2008-09-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Sept 13 – 19; 08

We had a relatively quiet weekend with a lazy day at home on Saturday and a return trip to Shipwreck beach on Sunday. We’d had such a short time there last weekend (due to the amount of time it took for us to find it) so we thought we’d go back & have a proper day of it.

We got there in good time (despite having to wait for an hour for our car – long story that doesn’t need repeating). We had made a picnic for the day & walked as far along the beach we could, where we stopped & ate our lunch. The weather was great – much sunnier than the previous weekend – which is what we had been hoping for. We explored around the cliffs behind the beach, but unfortunately didn’t find any fossils!

It was another nice week of school, with Wednesday off due to a national holiday, – Hero’s day. We asked around but it seemed as if nothing was planned for the day in the city – no parades or anything like that. So instead we organized a bus for the day & went out to visit the slavery museum. This is located quite close to the Southern edge of Luanda & is actually a church right on the coast. As a museum it was a bit of a zero – it had no artifacts to speak off apart from some large cooking pots (or at least that’s what we think they were) and a few canons. The inside had photocopied pictures from books or maybe other museums on the state of slavery in Africa. The church wasn’t used as a fort or holding place for slaves, but every slave shipped from Luanda (& it was one of the biggest slave exporters in Africa) was taken to the church just before being loaded onto the slaves ships, so they could be baptized! I’m not sure whether it was to ensure that any slaves who died at sea would go to heaven, or whether it was important that they were “Christians” when they arrived at the other end, I don’t know. The hypocrisy stinks regardless. Despite not having “anything” to put in the museum, I think it is good that they have kept the church standing as a memory of what happened on the site.

After the slave museum we went back to Benfica – the local souvenir market. Bill bought another couple of masks, but we both were able to take photos to give you an idea of what it is like. There are lots of paintings for sale, as well as the wooden carvings & masks & some Angolan national football shirts. Also – the more unpleasant side – ivory & cat skins! At least there were no live monkeys this time!

The trip home from the market was the typical weekend traffic jam around this area – what should have been a 15 minute trip maximum took well over twice that long – and our driver took a shortcut as well!

Friday afternoon the school took part in the international day of peace celebrations by playing football (some UN organization’s idea). As I am in charge of yearbook, both Bill & I took our cameras into school to get some photos of the event.

Friday evening we were busy packing for another trip to the national park.
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Video of Shipwreck Beach - please be patient while it loads.

Week 6: Shipwreck Beach & Luanda

2008-09-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sept 6 – Sept 12; 08

What a relaxing long weekend! Four and a half days long – most of it admittedly spent at home, but we did get away for the day on Sunday – two days after the elections. Actually, as the polling booths ran out of ballot papers, & some opened late, the election was extended for another day & voting took place on Saturday as well as Sunday. It was very quiet around where we live & when we drove through Luanda early on Sunday morning (all the voting tents were already down), everything seemed quiet there too.

Sundays adventure was to find the “shipwreck beach” that we had heard of. Teachers had been in the past & reported on a surreal experience of many boats mysteriously beached on the shore – all at one location. However directions were vague & it seemed that it had been several years since anyone had been. We (naively as it turned out) requested a driver who knew the way to drive the four wheel drive. As soon as we got in it was obvious that our driver didn’t know anything – he didn’t even know the way to Jo & Marek’s apartment. It took a bit of explaining (thank goodness Jo speaks quite a bit of Portuguese already) that we weren’t going shopping & that we were in fact heading through the city to the other side (north).

Once we got going, the drive into & through the city was fast and easy (traffic in the city is the main reason why nobody really goes north of Luanda (we live right on the south edge of the city, so going south is usually straightforward). There is no bypass in the city at all – so we actually had to drive down to the marginal & then around the port to hit the coast road north. It was an interesting trip – our side of the city has lots of expats (which is why the school is there of course) & flash, expensive housing to go with it. Of course we see lots of poor local “slum” areas as we go into the city, and the housing on the north side was very much the same – just no “well off” housing in amongst it! Instead, there were lots of factories – including the coca cola factory!

We’d been told that the turn off we wanted was about 2 hours away & that it would be clearly marked. Amid the initial confusion with our driver over where we were going, we somehow were given the name of the beach in Portuguese. Our driver regularly stopped & asked directions (all of which were correct & happily given) & sure enough, about an hour or so out we saw the clearly marked road to the beach we were headed for. We quickly left the sealed road & bounced away along a dirt track for another half an hour or so. Eventually we arrived at a small fishing village which vaguely rang a bell with some of the directions we’d been given. However, we couldn’t see any shipwrecks! We proceeded to drive along the coast, but nothing looked promising. We passed a “tourist complex” on the beach so we decided to call in & see if we could find anything out. The complex was right on the beach & was very nice. The beach was a great swimming beach too with lots of sun shelters & seating etc. Hardly a soul there. Fortunately, we did meet a Portuguese man who spoke perfect English & when we told him we were looking for the shipwreck beach, he immediately knew what we were talking about. Turns out the name of the place we had been given was exactly where we had ended up, but was not the name of the shipwreck beach! He was able to give us both the correct name and directions – we had well & truly overshot the turnoff we needed!

As there was a nice restaurant there, & we were pretty sick of bouncing around in the car, we decided to have a hot snack & drink before heading back towards Luanda to try to find the illusive beach. Once feeling a bit restored & fortified with a much better idea of where we were going, we backtracked to the main road. Expecting that we had overshot the turnoff by at least half an hour, we were somewhat surprised by Bill’s announcement that the dirt track turn off in front of us (closed off by a wire) was the way we were meant to go. How did he know? He had seen some shipwrecks on the coast. So, we managed to persuade the driver to go through & we found ourselves in a newly constructed village. From there, we could clearly see the ships on the coast, but we couldn’t seem to find a road to get us to them. Eventually, we had to give up & we were back on the main road again. However, not much further on there was a real turn-off & our driver (who surely by now was thinking we were totally crazy) was able to ask for directions so we knew we were finally on the right track. I’d love to report that we simply drove straight to the beach, but between taking the correct turnoff & actually ending up on the beach, we took three more wrong turns! The school has installed GPS on all the school transport & we couldn’t help but laugh at how strange our “blip” must look with all the backwards & forwards paths we were taking.

But, despite all the wrong turns, we did eventually end up where we had set out to go – even if we’d arrived about 2 hours later than we thought we did. We took our picnics along the beach & walked past several of the stranded ships. It really was a strange place. There were a lot of Angolans there swimming or enjoying a day at the beach & we saw people fishing off the deck of one of the boats that was partly on land. A hole had been cut into its hull so people could climb inside & access the top deck. Of course Marek & Bill (being boys) had to climb through as well. Neither Jo nor I had the slightest urge to follow them!

We had our picnic along the beach, but it remained overcast the whole day & we were both a bit disappointed with how our photos turned out. However, Bill did discover what was going wrong with his photos – his telephoto lens is kaput – so he is borrowing mine (swapping lenses) until we can get him a new one. But at least now all his photos are now turning out OK. We actually were only at the beach for about an hour total – we hardly had a chance to explore properly, but our driver had been so patient with us that we didn’t want to risk getting back to school late (after his change of shift).

What really surprised us was how fast it took us to get home – it had been such a long-winded journey but we were back at school just an hour & a half after we left the beach. So close, yet so far when you take a heap of wrong turns!

Monday was another day off school – another very quiet one with our only outing to the supermarket (in a fruitless search for eggs – we hadn’t been able to buy any for days & days).

Tuesday was back to school & a few more new kids whose parents had decided not to come back to Angola until after elections (never mind that they miss a month of school). For some reason it has been a tough week at school – Bill in particular has found it hard – Wednesday was a particularly bad day, but it improved as the week progressed (despite Bill having to teach “with Aliens” in the science department). Today (Friday) saw the start of “clubs” a one hour a week extra curricula time for kids to sign up for. Bill is running “band” and has two bands he is going to work with. Part of the bad day on Wednesday was being told that the club can’t actually use the music room (you know, the one with the instruments etc in it) because there was a class next door! (Now we believe that actually most of the rooms in the high school are empty because there are no proper classes going on, so quite why the “class” can’t be moved is more than we can understand). But it didn’t make for a good moment!

My club is yearbook & quite how I ended up running yearbook is something I don’t quite understand. (I thought I might be able to help out someone else doing it!) So I had my first club meeting today also. Went OK – I think I have a keen bunch. We are going to make a DVD yearbook instead of a book to avoid the problems experienced last year with having it printed in the US, then having 200 of them DHL-ed to Angola (can you even begin to imagine how much that must have cost?) only to have it sit in customs for over 4 weeks & finally being released AFTER the end of school – so none of the leaving kids got one! We hope to be pretty self sufficient with production so that as a bottom line, everyone will get one at the end of the year.

Next week is another 4 day week (it is a national holiday on Wednesday) & we have booked the 4-wheel drive for Sunday to take us back to Shipwreck beach so we can explore a bit more (& see if we can find any of the reputed shark teeth fossils in the cliffs there). Tomorrow is a catch up with work & chill out & relax day.

Week 5: Cabo Ledo Beach, Benfica Market & Luanda

2008-09-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

Aug 30 – Sept 5; 08

Although last weekend was rather a hard act to follow, we’ve had another great weekend. On Saturday we got up early to get a bus (school provides various forms of transport which are bookable in advance) to take a group of us to the surfing beach – Cabo Ledo. A group goes out there almost every weekend it seems. The beach is south of Luanda – maybe half an hour past the entrance to the national park, but before Rio Longa.

This weekend the transport gods were not smiling on us – we went to pick up Jo & Marek & then the door of the bus wouldn’t shut! So we had to go back to school to get it fixed & then, we hit a major traffic jam on the way out of the city – a truck had flipped over on the road & we had to wait for it to flipped back onto its wheels before the road could be cleared. It took us over an hour to go 15mins worth of distance!

Once we got clear, the trip was smooth & we arrived at the beach about 11 am. I don’t know what I was expecting, but as always, Angola surprises! The beach had a series of rickety shelters built & maintained by some locals – a few men & a group of small boys. Each section of the shelters costs US$5 to rent for the day – somewhat expensive given the size of it, but the shade is necessary. There were a big group of (all foreign) surfers & family there – I think I thought we would be the only ones. The waves were strange too – they basically ran parallel to the beach from right to left, so the surfers ended up on the beach after a run & then had to walk their boards up the beach to start all over again. Altogether there were 4 boards of various quality available to use – many of them just left behind when their owners left. That made Marek’s day when he heard it – British Airways have banned surfboards from their flights, so wasn’t able to bring their boards with them.

Bill decided he wanted to learn how to surf (note – this is despite the fact that the sea was FRIGID & that he has a badly bruised & possibly even broken rib from a soccer game the other week). He was told the basics (all of 1 minute of instruction) & left to try to it out. He hurt his rib, never got on his feet but is determined to keep going till he learns to surf!

Needless to say, the water was way too cold for me, & I didn’t even go for a swim (although I did get pretty wet just taking photos)! We had a big picnic (we had splashed out the night before & bought ourselves a big chilly bin (cooler) & amused ourselves taking photos of the surfers. Marek & Jo took a load of photos we took of them (Jo has also been learning to surf – she can stand up on her board, but sensibly has a wet-suit). We also have emailed some photos of a French geologist who was delighted when we caught good photos of him towards the end of the afternoon when the waves had got a bit bigger.

But the best photos of the day were of the local boys running the “security & shade” on the beach. They asked if they could borrow boards that weren’t being used, & then proceeded to have a surf themselves! They also borrowed a skim board which they were playing on in a little lagoon behind the shelters. The water must only have been a few inches deep but they had a lot of fun trying to make it go in circles.

We stayed at the beach till about 3pm – Bill & I walked along the beach & both of us got great photos of a little egret as well as more surfing photos – a great day out with the camera. Unfortunately his camera is playing up at the moment & many of his shots have been ruined. We are trying to work out what exactly is the problem – his camera, the battery, the memory card etc. You can imagine how upsetting it is to come home & find a heap of great shots beyond salvage.

On Sunday we had a lie-in (first in 2 weeks) & then went with a bus load of others to Benfica market – the only tourist market in town. Neither of us took any photos – maybe next time. The market is definitely a mixed bag – lots of paintings (of various artistic merit), not many of which grabbed us very much. Lots of tacky jewelry, a few Angolan t-shirts, and various wooden crafts – tables, boxes, trays, carvings, masks etc. Bill was in his element (he has a large mask collection from his time in Togo) & bought a pair of masks. He also got an Angolan t-shirt (for the football world cup in South Africa in 2010) and a very interesting wall hanging/textile. I think it must be made from sisal. It is sewn together in pieces & then has appliqué on top. The weird thing is that everything we bought is permeated with a wood/smoke smell. I washed the wall hanging & a lot of dirt came out, but it still smells. The masks are outside in the hope that they lose their smell relatively quickly.

The market has its ugly side too – there was a small live monkey chained to a post, there were numerous cat skins that we didn’t bother to investigate closely and way too much ivory! Despite the CITES breaking stuff, the market itself was non-pushy & I suspect that if we go back every now and again & get to know some of the sellers, the prices will come down. However, everything is relative & considering that we routinely spend US$100 at the supermarket on next to nothing, $20 odd dollars for a mask no longer seems excessive!

School was a short week – only 3 teaching days & a half day professional development day on Thursday. The days fly by – our TV is no longer working (maybe something to do with recent power cuts?) and on Tuesday Bill stayed at home to wait for someone to come to try to fix it while I went to the supermarket by myself. This turned out to be a really bad plan as I had to queue for half an hour just to get the bread, then I had to queue again to go through checkout! Nasty!! So much easier with two people – one to stay & queue (me – Bill isn’t the queuing type) & the other to shop. Lesson has been learnt! Maybe everyone at the supermarket knew something I didn’t (it did seem unusually crazy) as Wednesday morning we were informed that the government had announced that it was a public holiday (we heard they announced this at 6pm the day before)! Of course it was too late to cancel school so it was a normal day for us with almost full attendance. Rumors were flying but it appears that the holiday was to allow people to attend political rallies that were scheduled for the day. So maybe the supermarket was closed on Wednesday (I certainly did not go back to see).

Wednesday evening Bill played a football game of teachers vs parents. Historically this has been an ugly affair with teachers coming off very worse for wear. Not quite sure why the tradition continues, but it was initiated by the parents, which tells you something! However, (due to the new talent on the staff) the teachers thrashed the parents this year (4-2 with the last parent goal scored in the last minute), so maybe it will all die a death now they have been whipped!

Thursday was a teacher-only half day where we worked on some paperwork for an upcoming accreditation of the school. Tedious, but has to be done. Then, we went into town so we could catch the post office before it closed. We both had postcards to post & although we were successful with buying stamps, don’t hold your breath that you will actually get one. I figure there is no more than a 50% chance of them arriving & goodness knows what sort of time frame will be involved! The trip in was very fast (no traffic) & the trip home wasn’t too bad considering the traffic was much worse. What was interesting was all the tents up for people to vote in on Friday. They seemed to be all over the place – in islands in the middle of the road even. Schools are also being used for voting. It all seemed very organized – the tents were being guarded as it seemed that the ballot papers had been delivered. Certainly, from an outsider’s perspective, it seems to be very well organized & calm.

Friday we had to stay at school as it was voting day & the admin didn’t want us in town at all. So it was a very lazy & relaxing day just sitting around at home. Bill was watching the BBC online reports of the elections – apparently there are charges of ineptitude (rather than corruption) with late starts, long lines & ballot papers running out. I guess we will just have to wait & see what the election watchdogs have to say about it all.

So it’s been a nice week (when there are only 3 teaching days, it is hard to go wrong). We have Monday off as well so it is a lovely long weekend in front of us.

Week 4: Kisama National Park & Luanda

2008-08-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

Aug 23 – 29; 08

Well, we had an early start on Saturday morning to make the trip out to the National Park. We had booked a four –wheel-drive car (& driver) to take us there & then pick us back up on Sunday, but we didn’t really know what size the car would be. We were a bit concerned about the 4 of us (Bill & I, Marek & Jo) and the driver & our tents etc all fitting in – so we packed lighter rather than heavier. As it turned out, the car was quite roomy – so there was plently of room for the four of us & all the gear. What we hadn’t expected was that we had a security guy go with us as well as the driver (not quite sure why – maybe they don’t allow the drivers to be in the cars by themselves outside of the city – which the driver would have been on the return trip?)

Anyway, despite having to turn back for Jo’s papers (legally you need to carry papers all the time), and a long & dusty detour due to road works, we arrived at the entrance to the park in good time. That’s when the good road stopped & it was 49km of dirt track (hence the need for the 4-wheel drive). We weren’t really expecting much other than a bumpy ride, but within about 5 minutes, we had spotted the first monkey and after that there were a series of antelope bounding across the road in front of us! It was so exciting! Heaps of birds (mostly hornbills) as well. We arrived at the headquarters around 11am & got our gear deposited next to where we would camp (we were the only tents). We had a toilet block close by (& even better, a shelter with lights for cooking our meals in!) & just the most stunning view! We were camped up on a plateau overlooking a river valley below. The surroundings were baobabs (the most spectacular of trees) and surreal cactus trees – the grass was brown (it is the dry & cold season now) but down by the river, it was incredibly green (mostly reeds & papyrus we discovered later). The inner part of the park where we stayed is fenced in with electric fence (but we saw lots of antelope & birds on the “wrong” side of the fence).

We had arranged to go “on safari” with the park ranger in an old army truck they use for the purpose, & went for a walk down towards the valley after lunch. We saw & hear d lots of birds, & a 50cm lizard that moved way too fast to get a good look. We returned in good time for our safari – but other people staying there obviously wanted to go earlier, as Bill & I discovered the truck being loaded up a good half an hour earlier than the time we booked. Bill ran off to collect Jo & Marek while I held the back seat of the truck for us. In the end there were at least 14 of us plus the driver in the truck as we set off. I don’t quite know what we were expecting to see – we all knew the park had been decimated of big mammals & a rescue mission (appropriately called Noah’s Ark) had flown in pairs of various species to try to restock it. Teachers who had visited before had seen lots of antelope & zebra I think – the elephants remained mythical creatures (although we have seen them on TV). What we weren’t expecting to see within 10 minutes was giraffes! And baby twins! It was so cool!

After the giraffes we saw about 6 ostriches in the distance and then as we drove around the park for several hours, numerous antelope of various kinds, heaps of birds & more of the stunning scenery.

When we got back to camp (after about 3 hours on the “road”) we saw a troop of vervet monkeys around the restaurant. Vervets are uniquely distinctive – in the words of my guide book, the males have a “powder-blue scrotum”.

The restaurant had NOTHING vegetarian to eat of course, so we cooked our own meal - & Marek & Jo did the same. They had neat little alcohol cookers so we had a great meal – with the sun going down around 6pm & the temperature dropping rapidly with it. We were very grateful for the shelter we were cooking in.
But the cool night made for a great night’s sleep & Bill & I got up just at dawn to go for a walk. The dawn chorus was amazing & with a bit of luck I hope to attach a small sound file to this email that Bill recorded to give you an idea of what it was like. We walked for about 3 hours – right down by the river & the only animals we saw was a large black monkey (not sure what kind – possibly an Angolan Black & white colobus) and a squirrel in the euphorbia tree cactuses. Lots & lots of birds!

We came back & had breakfast & then lazed around admiring the view waiting for the driver to come to pick us up. We didn’t see nearly as many antelope on the way back as we did on the way in, but what we did see was a big group of giraffes again- real close!

On the way home (no detour this time) we stopped at a scenic lookout – we had seen patches of amazing looking erosion scenery from the road on the way to & from Rio Longa, but hadn’t stopped, so we took the opportunity to do so while it was just the four of us. We were in for a big surprise – we thought it was just a small area, but when we got out of the car, we could see it stretched for ages along the coast.

The only bad thing about the whole trip was that when we got home, just dying for a shower, there was a power cut & no water for an hour! However, as you can imagine, we had such a great time & we plan to go back often! It was very reasonable to camp ( they had small air-conditioned “units” which looked very nice but were expensive at US$200 a night). We spent less than that including our food & the safari trip.

The rest of our week has been somewhat more routine & less exciting than baby twin giraffes, but the week has flown by, despite Bill having to attend 2 (& me one) parent information evenings. Monday morning saw the arrival of a huge container at the school – we are still in the process of unpacking it – it seems to date from orders made around 2006! There aren’t many teachers left from that time to enjoy it! It’s kind of like Christmas, just a bit weirder as we try to make sense of some of the orders (eg the maths department has got even more American text books that none of us like!). We splashed out at the supermarket tonight & bought ourselves a decent-sized Chilly bin (cooler) to take with us when we go camping etc.

This coming weekend we are going to the beach to check it out (the surf beach) & school will be 3 days only due to elections next weekend.

Week 3: School starts

2008-08-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

Sat Aug 16 – 22; 08

This was our first week of school & not much else has happened for us. On Saturday morning I went with a bunch of women from the school to the “fabric market” to buy some African textiles. (for some reason Bill wasn’t so keen to go)We were warned it was an “unsafe area” so I’m afraid there are no photos. When we got there, it turned out that the market was closed and what was left of it was just out on the “street”. There were only about half a dozen people selling lengths of fabric, and local women were shopping for fabric also (this was no tourist market). I was a little disappointed – Indonesian/Malaysian style batik is all the fashion here, but as I’ve just come from there, its NOT what I wanted. However, there was fabric from the Ivory Coast (the main fabric centre of Africa) so I bought some of that. The fabric comes in 6 meter lengths, two of the ones I bought had contrasting fabric as part of the package (mini versions of the same pattern).
I’m hoping that the quilters out there might be excited by some of these, as I was keeping them in mind as I was buying! They are all very dusty – not suprising considering they were laid out next to the ground!

I have to say that it didn’t feel unsafe, although it was very crowded (it was a general market area) and the sight of the day was a petite woman/girl carrying a HUGE suitcase on her head through the market!

As it has turned out, that was my only excursion of the week – we spent the weekend preparing for classes & the rest of week has gone in a bit of a blur with preparation & just general exhaustion – we’ve been in bed before 10 every night. We get lunches made for us at school, so we have been having lots of salad at night. The TV is finally sorted (we get South African cable) so we have been blobbing while eating dinner. So we have actually now seen some of the Olympics.

I am proud (and somewhat relieved) to say that I have survived 8 lessons of year 5 (nine year olds) maths as well as all my other classes. I’ve never taught kids that young before. The kids are great & Bill also has got great classes. He is teaching the IB chemistry classes, as well as some chemistry & general science to the slightly younger kids. His youngest age group is year 9 which is my oldest year group!

We needed to change our return flight this week & that (of course) wasn’t as simple as making a telephone call. Bill was given this afternoon off to go down to the Ilha to the British airways office to pay for the change in flights and pick up new tickets. It’s the first time he’s been there in the day time - his comment “it ain’t Miami beach” isn’t particularly illuminating as to what it IS like.
Bill says…..
Ok, picture Skelmersdale (a housing project in West Lancashire) 20 years after the nuclear war, with Wimpy just setting up the first Burger Bar on the beach after the zone has been declared “safe” (Note – the landmark for finding the British Airways office was next to Wimpys) At the British Airways place Raul was very cool and assured me the dollar was priced just great for our needs and I (and Mr Francis…obviously my boss) would be well pleased. In fact the printing machine had run out of tickets and the “finance department” was “ out to lunch” that’s Raul’s words. I said “whatever”. Like you do and was assured that the tickets were sorted, any problems would be his and the receipt would be there for me to pick up anytime, “if I forget to take it to the airport”. It cost me 190 US$ but I absolutely know he is right. I have a handwritten note to explain it all to the authorities. Raul is my man. Actually we will go back first chance we get and pick up both our new tickets and the receipt! I’m not going through Luanda airport with a handwritten note!

Tonight we are packing for a camping trip to the National Park –we are optimistically hoping to see some elephants (they were flown in from neighboring countries at great cost after the war to try to restock the park to what it had been). We are going with Jo & Marek & they are bringing the cooking equipment. We don’t quite know what to expect, but it will be great to get out of Luanda again & even better that we may see some large mammals.

So, it feels as if we have been here MUCH longer than 3 weeks, the internet is working really well now (got my fingers crossed so I don’t jinx it) & we are fast settling into what will probably be our weekly routine for the year. We have our apartment cleaned every weekday – which is very nice to come home to. Bill has been able to skype (internet phone) his family, including the boys, so things are looking up. We are so far from the city that it feels quite isolated here – but the 2 minute walk to school each day is a bonus! We have one more full week of school & then the next two weeks will be short as the school (as is the whole country) is closing down for the parliamentary elections – it’s a huge deal for Angola, so maybe you’ll even catch some of it on TV where you live!

Week 2: Settling In

2008-08-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Aug 9 – 15; 2008

Saturday morning we got a bus with Jo & Marek into the city. The plan was to be dropped at the old Portuguese fort on the waterfront, walk around a bit & be picked up again later. We choose the Lebanese restaurant we ate at last weekend as our pick up point – which turned out to a bit too adventurous as the streets aren’t so clearly marked & we didn’t have a great map. We walked along the “marginal” or main waterfront – lots of beautiful old colonial buildings (mostly banks or government offices), many of which are under restoration. The waterfront itself has just been developed – it is possible to walk all the way around on a big wide footpath. There is a huge curved sandbar that hooks around to form a partially enclosed bay – this is called the “ilha” and was our original destination for the day. Jo & Marek talked us out of it as they said it was just beach & a few restaurants with not much to see. It is a night-time area so we may go back for early evening & explore then.

We really enjoyed our walk (we separated from Jo & Marek when they decided to go into the museum at the fort) & felt very safe. We saw lots of cool buildings & took a few photos (not so many – we thought we’d play it very conservative on our first trip). Just when we were starting to feel a bit lost in getting to our meeting point, we found Jo & Marek & together we were able to ask for directions & a very nice man took us to the street we were looking for.

The trip in had taken us about 30 mins – the trip home MUCH longer as we got jammed in traffic. However, we felt that it had been a much better thing to do than sit around the apartment all weekend.

Funnily, that’s precisely what we did on Sunday – had a lazy day at home. We sorted out the cupboards a bit better & feel a bit better adjusted to the small space. Bill tried to watch a soccer match with Man. United, but it wasn’t on any of the sports channels. Our TV isn’t up & working yet either, but that isn’t causing us any grief at all.

The rest of the week has kept us busy with school – meetings every day & trying to sort out rooms ready for school on Monday. Supplies are a bit frustrating – Bill was disappointed by the chemical supplies & it is obvious the kids haven’t done much lab work. Everything (we hope) has been ordered, but of course school supplies have to be shipped here in Containers. The port is full of ships waiting for their turn at coming in to unload (a year or so they can wait..). Once they land, they then have to wait for customs (an indefinite time). The school currently has FIVE full containers at various stages – some in boats, some waiting for customs etc, dating back more than 18 months. We heard that one has just been cleared so the container should arrive early next week (transporting the container to school is the last challenge). No one knows what will be in it but everyone is hoping it will be stuff for them. A container holds a heap of stuff so I hope there is something for everyone.

Some stuff has been a surprise – no shortages of basic (& not so basic) stationary supplies, although the school has run dry of laminating film. Bill & I are keeping quiet about our personal stash. New textbooks are in containers but there appears to be no limits to printing or photocopying (although there are only 2 photocopy machines). Certainly while we wait for stuff to arrive, some things will be a challenge.

The school is also in the process of building a new classroom block which should be open in about a month. Although neither of us will be teaching in the new building (remember the furniture for the building is also in a container somewhere), the reassignment of rooms will make thigs better for both of us – at the moment there are 4 science teachers using 2 rooms, only one of which is a lab. When people shift over, it will free up a room (that Marek & I are currently sharing for maths) which will be converted to another lab. I will get a room of my own (I have 4 rooms and a different room for homeroom!)

The apartments for teachers are still making progress (although they may also be waiting for furnishings in a container). We definitely have settled better into our place & although we will be very glad to have a bigger place, I think we will cope until we do.

There has been a blurr of social events this week as the returning teachers had mostly all returned by Monday. So there was a welcome back barbeque on Monday night, another barbeque to meet members of the board on Friday night and on Thursday afternoon there was a “gardeners” vs “teachers” football match. The turnout for people wanting to play soccer was big enough that it looks as if it may become a weekly event. Bill moaned about getting too old to play but he plays 100% effort all the time and as he hasn’t played since early June, he felt tired! Others were complaining of stiff muscles etc so I think he is doing OK. After the soccer match 2 buses of teachers went down to a bar at the ilha – the sandspit with the bars & restaurants on it. The bar was a marine sports bar (big game fishing I think) and it was attached to a marina. The view of the city at night was stunning (but we didn’t take cameras as we didn’t know how safe it would be). It was a fun night & we caught the early bus home so it wasn’t particularly late either.
So – a much less “exciting” but more “normal” week for us. The returning teachers are friendly and are a good mix of ages and nationalities. We are slowly getting to know everyone’s names. Despite living so close to the other teachers living on campus, it has the feeling of being private, even when we eat our meals outside. It feels as if we are developing a routine to our life.

Week 1: Arrival & Introductions to school & Luanda

2008-08-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

August 2 - 8, 2008

We flew into Luanda airport on the British Airways flight from London Heathrow, arriving in the early hours of Sat 2 August. Stamping of landing cards & immigration went smoothly & a lot more quickly than we had expected. Bill’s lack of a Yellow Fever vaccination certificate was craftily got around by us going up separately to get the landing cards stamped & both of us using my card.

Our suitcases took time to emerge but ALL arrived – intact as well. By the time the last bags appeared on the carousal, Tony B the head of school & the school’s security chief had arrived in the baggage hall, soon followed by Tony M, the high school head. Their presence allowed all the trolleys to be managed more easily (Jo & Marek had more bags than us) & more importantly, we were able to avoid customs & with remarkable ease we found ourselves in the car park to be greeted with cold drinks & 3 buses to transport us & our bags.

We met another returning teacher: Carolyn – head of primary, and a newly arriving family Kim & Tomi with Ella (4) & Sami (1) (the ONLY children on the plane). The trip out to school from the airport took about 20 mins at 6am & once arrived, we got our bags & our keys & were introduced to our new home. It is a one bedroom apartment with a kitchenette on the dining room/ lounge. It is small – it clearly is designed for one person & we are struggling a bit with space. However it has a patio facing a garden & we had a celebratory bottle of champagne outside watching the early morning birds. We named everything – “raggety edged butterflies” “squirrel birds” etc. The garden faces into the “fishbowl” – a large baobab tree that is in the middle of a lawn that all (or most) apartments are arranged around.

We slept for about 4 – 5 hours & then walked to the nearest supermarket to change US$ to Kwanza ($1 = 75 Kz) & managed to spend about $75 on what felt like virtually nothing. We spent the afternoon unpacking & went to a welcome barbeque held in school grounds that evening. There we met several other new teachers as well as some of the staff at school.

Sunday we went to the bigger supermarket in the morning – we did a big shop & spent almost all the $200 we initially changed. We looked around the mall next to the supermarket but everything looked very expensive. That took way longer than possible to imagine – the check out queues alone were about 30 mins long. Then, after dropping off our shopping, it was back in the buses for a sea-side restaurant (without much for vegetarians). It was nice to sit & see the sea & watch all the people in the area. It was obviously a popular place to go for well-off locals. There were a family of little girls playing in the sand who were very cute with their hair in braids.

On Monday we had a trip into Luanda finishing with a meal in a Lebanese restaurant. The traffic was pretty bad in places & we cut short some of the itinerary due to the kids in our bus. The views out the window of the bus were fascinating – people trying to sell all sorts of things to passing cars, women carrying impossible loads on their heads with babies tied onto their backs with bright African fabrics.

We drove past a soccer stadium & a game must have been just about to start. Not very far along we meet crowds of youths running & chanting through the streets (supporting their team). They were accompanied by several army trucks full of soldiers carrying guns, but it seemed pretty peaceful.

There is construction going on everywhere – including the roads themselves.

Tuesday morning we all piled into 2 buses & headed south for the highlight of our orientation – 2 nights at a lodge on the “long river” or Rio Longa. It took about 2½ hours to drive to the river – past spectacular scenery & then about 30 mins on a boat to the lodge – seeing 2 crocodiles along the way!

The lodge was great – Bill & I had our own “hut” complete with warm shower & bathroom. All meals were provided & despite no electricity, it was blissful. It was so nice to see some nature & get away from Luanda for a bit. The lodge was virtually on the coast, facing a lagoon full of water lilies & water birds (& crabs) & the beach itself was an easy kayak across the lagoon. I had a field day with my camera & Bill & I went out stalking birds by trying to silently glide up to them in the kayak.

The beach also had crabs galore & it was just incredibly scenic. It was too cold for me to go swimming, but some of the others did. We did a boat trip along all the mangrove trees (looking for more crocodiles, but finding only kingfishers & fish eagles).

We drove back to Luanda on Thursday (more stunning scenery along the way) & found ourselves a bit more comfortable in our apartment.

Friday was a day at school – a tour, and a 2 hour talk by a doctor about Malaria & other health issues. It was very good. We also got info from the HR lady & received our medical insurance cards etc. Nothing particularly exciting, & to be honest teaching still seems a million miles away!

We are hoping to be able to move into a bigger apartment around Nov/Dec time & certainly I think we can cope OK in the mean time. Bill has met some people who are keen about being in a band, so even that is looking positive at the moment. The biggest drag is inconsistent internet connection, something I really hope gets sorted out soon. At least one or other of us seems to be able to get online at the moment, although never both of us at once! We went out & bought a mosquito net after the malaria talk so that will allow us to turn off the air conditioning if we choose. We have found many things we need (no lentils yet) so are starting to feel that life will be OK here (& despite the high cost of things, we still expect to save a heap of money each too).