Blogs from Africa - page 11

I am exhausted! Traveling for two days is tiring, even when you've travelled in the utmost comfort. I arrived at the Da Vinci Hotel in Nelson Mandela Square at 7 a.m. and thankfully they had a room ready for me, even at that hour. I was asleep by 8a, and didn't wake until 330p. I have no clue what that means as far as my body's clock is concerned, the only thing I know is that my body is tired! Not only from the travel, but from losing items on every plane and every security stop along the way. I swear, being ADHD can be very inconvienent. I have a "stick" with me, it looks like a walking stick but it is actually a mount for my new camera. I lost it no fewer than 3 ... read more

Well hellooooo Swakopmund!!! Swakopmund is a german town on the west coast of Namibia. It is set between the vast Namib Desert and the Atlantic Ocean which provides a play ground for every kind of person. We were immediately thrown into this playground upon arrival as we went to book our activities for the next couple of days. The choices were plentiful, varying from dolphin watching, fishing and township tours to sandboarding, quad biking and sky diving. Megan and I chose dolphins, quad biking and township tour while the other girls were braver and chose sand boarding. Sadly though as I mentioned our dolphin tour did not go ahead, however, this gave us time to explore the little town and have a walk along the beach before we set off on our quad biking tour. After ... read more

Friends and family were invited to a farewell party at RCYC.... read more

Hey! We made it to Africa, but we can't talk! We are having a hard time finding internet so we won't be able to access our blog until the beginning of June. We are having a blast though! Talk to everyone later!... read more

Our holiday has finally started! Well it may seem strange hearing that after several months already in Africa but the fact that we have now hired a car from our final leg of the journey through South Africa is making it a breeze. Not having to get up at dawn with our thumb sticking out towards the road is something that we are not really going to miss at all and it has been a tiring experience but when we look back is will be something we appreciate that. Our last hitching experience was to get to Cape Town from the Namibian border. The moment we have crossed Namibia/RSA border we felt quite unsafe to stand on the road without to have a shelter. But we don’t know if the horror stories about this country we ... read more

Our first couple of days in Namibia have been quite relaxing & involved short drives and lots of time spent in our camp sites, therefore I don’t feel they deserve a whole blog to themselves or you’ll all give up reading! We reluctantly left Felix Unite and its luxuries and headed towards Fish River canyon. Amongst the barren mountain landscape, grape farms become visible. The farms are for table grapes and during harvest employ up to 20,000 workers but there are around 8,000 people who work there permanently & they have a small straw village and a store. A short drive later we arrived at Fish River canyon where we had a few hours to enjoy the sun, write our postcards and watch a movie! In the afternoon we were driven to the rim of the ... read more

This is my first long weekend on duty. Let me tell you about the dining room duty. It seems like a boring read to me, but you may be interested. Friday has a regular meal schedule. The Saturday and Sunday morning and evening shifts are longer, but we have one long break of several hours in between. The dining room is on deck five. When boarding ship we climb up the gangway to deck five. We take turns washing dishes now, no more paper plates and cups. Lome was working on the streets which caused a loss of water for a while. However, we still need to conserve. The major change is washing dishes and being able to do a load of laundry a week. In the dinning room there are two small “back rooms” for ... read more

Here is a quick little story for you: Levi and I were driving out in a rural area in the bush with a pastor from MCC and his five kids, all 8 of us crammed into a suburban car. His kids speak some english, and one of them, 8-year-old Jared, all of a sudden asked me for my email address. So I wrote it down, and he wrote down his for me. He specifically stated that his was 'yahoo,' and seemed really proud of it. When he noticed mine was a gmail address, he said, "I tried to make a gmail account once, but for some reason it didn't work." I couldn't believe I was sitting in this car filled with kids, driving down a rural bumpy road, and talking to an 8 -year-old african boy ... read more