This post has taken me slightly longer than expected, slight two month delay. Plenty has happened, I don't even know where to begin. We visited Windhoek at least 4 times in September and October. Nowadays I pretty much go every 2nd weekend. We finally felt settled into the country once we received our visas. We literally would have had to take an extra trip to Windhoek if we weren't lucky enough to have managed to spark a little compassion in an employee at Home Affairs. He surely felt sorry enough for us two foreigners who had been told the local catchphrase of "come back tomorrow and it might be done" several times. Taking advantage of our earliest trip, we met up with fellow volunteers at a restaurant on top of a mountain to enjoy the sunset. Windhoek is rather mountainous and hilly, whereas Walvis Bay is just completely flat except for the big sand dunes. 
One thing that I admire most about Namibia is that the sunsets and sunrises are for whatever reason just incomparable to anything you'll get to see in Germany.. Here are some pictures of the trip we took whilst we were off supervising the U19 cricket team. I think it was the first sport team I had ever encountered where chainsmoking in the team bus was granted. But hey, it's cricket, not quite the sport where you'd need that much stamina anyway.
Now getting to our work at !Nara Primary and Tutaleni School, you can see the schoolyard we usually give P.E lessons at. I can say after 2 months of volunteering here that the schoolyard is without a doubt always the liveliest place of all, you will always find several hundred kids running about in the break. It gets hectic.
My personal favourite breaktime activity is to play Rugby with all the young boys. The procedure to let every boy on the schoolyard know you're about to start a game is:
1. Appear on the schoolyard with a Rugby ball
2. Try to catch eye-contact with at least 3-4 boys
3. Kick the ball as high as you can
4. Just wait and you'll soon find one boy running with the ball whilst being chased by 20 others
If you find the kids to be in a mass scrum or piled ontop of each other (shown in the picture on the left) leaving the ball stuck between 20 kids, step 5 can be implemented, which mainly consists of trying to steal the ball and then running away before eventually you realize the kids who are chasing you have better stamina than you, and that you should probably kick the ball up in the air again before you have all these kids around your neck, who could potentially embarrass you if they managed to get you to the ground.
Above is another picture of our P.E lessons at !Nara Primary School. Here, we are doing our best to try and organize a game of Handball with kids that really only want to kick the ball. After 2 months of volunteering at !Nara and Tutaleni Primary School, I can inform on our successful mission of inspiring kids to play something other than soccer. They have now adapted to the game of Handball, which for motivational purposes, we introduced as "Hand-soccer" in the early days.
Being confined to living and having to listen to our female volunteer partners 24/7, me and Benedikt (a volunteer from the German Red Cross) went on a short daytrip to successfully avoid all the drama, including complaints about how much peanut butter I put on my toasts, or accusations about me eating 2/3 tuna-mayo and 1/3 actual bread in my sandwiches. Haha jk, you're awesome Mona :P
Quadbiking through the desert between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay was the best thing I had done for years. The feeling of pulling the throttle all the way and speeding up and down dunes that went on forever past the horizon. The constant adrenaline you get, from when you drop off ledges that go down about 70 degrees, almost as though you're driving off a cliff.
On a different weekend, we made our way to the close by Dune 7 for a not-so-short ascent that took about 5 breaks, it was after reaching the top that I had started to question the advice I had received on the bottom before the climb, from my colleague Quinton, who said a beer would make the climb much easier. Now at the top, it funnily occured to me that I never gave a second thought to advice that was in hindsight, rather thick. Life is sometimes harder when you're not the brightest tool in the shed.
Well anyhow, after my intestines had recovered somewhat and I no longer felt the need to single-handedly ruin one of namibia's beautiful landmarks with an avalanche of the liver sausage sandwich I had for lunch and beer, it really was quite beautiful!
Our first proper travelling adventure in Namibia was our 5-day trip to the south. We visited Naukluft National Park, Sossusvlei (home to some of the biggest sand dunes in the world) and other ghost towns that consisted usually of one gas station and a cafe. Our trip came to an early setback when we had a flat tyre on the first day. We probably wouldn't have noticed the flat tyre if it weren't for the farmers that shouted something whilst we drove by, in their minds, they probably were thinking something like: "dumb german tourists who have been driving the past kilometre with a flat". Being the valuable company that I am, I of course immediately made myself useful... and took pictures of everyone whilst they were trying to fix the tyre :p nah just kidding, I helped.
First night wasn't "the bomb", the original idea was much more fantastic than the night that it actually turned out to be. I shared the back of the 4x4 with Tim. Let's sleep in the bakkie we thought, let's sleep with the back open so we can see the night sky we thought, it's going to be nice we thought...well we thought wrong. Awoken by mosquitoes sometime around 2am, and then several times more, nothing could have really made the night worse, well for me at least. Tim had to deal with my snoring ontop of everything haha.
We did some hiking around Naukluft on one of the popular trails for a total of 4 hours. It was a wonderful sight when we made it ontop of the mountain.
We also went through a sort of canyon, only thing was that it was dry season. Which was too bad, as we happened to pass by a small waterfall that we would have been able to swim in during raining season.
The following evening we made it to our next camp in Sesriem, just at the entrance and a good 30 minutes from Sossusvlei. We decided to quickly leave the campsite for a lovely sunset around the dunes.
The next morning we woke up around 5am to quickly prepare before we headed for Sossusvlei. We made our way early and with the tip of a tour guide, we quickly made our way onto 'Big Daddy' the world's 2nd biggest dune. Dune 7 was nothing compared to this, it probably took us around 2 hours to make it to the top. It was such a view! We made it up there early enough before all the other tourists also started piling up to the summit. Something I'll definitely remember for the rest of my life.
A few weeks ago I found myself in Windhoek once again. It was a terrific weekend, the highlight being the Colour Festival. Went with some of the nice people from the German School in Windhoek. It was good fun, the music wasn't the best, but with the evening moving on you eventually just don't notice anymore.
Next post I will be dedicating to my U11 Rugby Team from !Nara Primary School and my club, Berliner Rugby Club, without them all the rugby projects here in Namibia wouldn't have been possible. Hopefully it won't take another 2 months :)
