Some weeks ago I was invited to a 60th birthday party from one of the locals. It was an amazing experience to see all the people dressed in their huge, colourfull dresses, dancing and singing. People here just use dance and singing as a sort of expression of their feelings and emotions, which makes it very moving to watch. Namibian people really appreciate their families and normally live together with all their family. It's just so different from our culture where young people can't wait to leave their families to travel, to be independent. The people here made me appreciate my friends and family a lot but also the fact that I have the chance to travel the world, unlike most of the young people over here.
As a part of my remuneration for the internship, my company tutor Christine took me on an “educational trip” to the Fish River Canyon in the South of Namibia. This is the second biggest canyon of the world. When I got to the viewpoint where you could overlook the whole canyon, the huge and ancient geological formations of the canyon just seemed completely unreal to me. It was huge! Someone told me the story of a German couple who went to the canyon when the husband wanted to walk down the canyon for a little bit but never returned and was never found. Until some weeks after the incident. Somebody spotted the apparently dead guy back in Germany- the couple just wanted to profit from the husbands life insurance and made up the whole story! As you can imagine, all the people working at the lodges around the Fish River Canyon were pretty unhappy about this couple as tourists started to be worried about the canyon and the safety there. Well, we didn’t fall down the canyon which is why we enjoyed two lovely days at the “Canyon Roadhouse”, a lodge that is designed in the motto of being “on the road”- beautiful old-timers everywhere (even in the function of a fire place or plant pot), number plates from all around the world and even a real man’s workshop with playboy calendars and all sorts of tools.
Every evening, we came together with the lodge’s managers and had a good laugh over the delicious food and wine. At the roadhouse, I tried ostrich steak for the first time in my life and it was so yummy! The meat was very tender and had a distinct, spicy flavor.
And I saw zebras live for the first time—they are such lovable creatures and always seem to be nice and chubby. Apparently, in times of need, zebras digest the bacteria that live in their stomachs. In the course of an experiment concerning that matter, researchers removed these bacteria from the zebra’s stomach. Shortly after, the zebras lost an incredible amount of weight and suffered a lot more. Isn’t it amazing how nature helps itself?
Well, when we came back from this trip, Klein-Aus Vista was already getting prepared for the upcoming Easter weekend. So I helped with creating little nests out of grass and decorating the restaurant with all sorts of eggs. Other than that, the kitchen baked Hot Crossed Buns over the Easter weekend- just delicious. I have to say that I will really miss the food here at the lodge. Every morning, you can choose your breakfast from a huge buffet including several sorts of freshly-baked bread, cheeses and meats from a farm nearby, sausage, chicken liver, egg and fresh fruit salad. That’s quite a luxury which I got pretty used to.
The Easter weekend was horribly busy with many South African families coming here to spend their holidays. I celebrated Easter pretty untraditionally by spending 4 evenings in a row, drinking with tourism managers: Two nights at the Fish River Canyon, where Christine and I were invited for drinks every evening and two nights back in Aus with far too much “Schmiedefeuer” schnapps and tasty South African red wine. As my life here in Namibia is usually very quiet and relaxing, I have to say that I suffered a bit from this Easter weekend and suddenly felt like I got a lot older :).
Then there was the Mountain Bike Race at Klein-Aus Vista on the 1rst of May. It was the first mountain bike event, the company had ever hosted and we spent a lot of effort and time creating flyers, T-Shirts, finding sponsors and building the mountain bike route. During the race through the mountains in Aus, I was sitting at checkpoint 1 and did my best to be a good “marshal”- giving drinks to the bikers, checking if everyone passed by and feeling very lazy and unathletic in the sight of these fit people who were a lot older than me :D.
My laziness and lack of sportsmanship was increased by the “ lekker braais” we had with the bikers after the race and during the next days. Some friends of the family took part in the race and invited us several times to a barbeque at their campsite. It was really nice and typical Afrikaans – with a big “Poikie”, a lot of “Boerewors” (see below for a definition of these words) and too much Redwine and tequila. And dogs all over the place.
That’s another thing I am going to miss about Namibia- having dogs blustering around me all the time. Every family here has several dogs and when it comes to family get- togethers, it’s like a big children’s party – only that the children are dogs. And of course I will miss my host family and all the members of staff here. They have really grown dear to me and I feel like a part of the big Klein-Aus Vista -family.
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