Life in Luanda

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.