Assembly at Bukalo Primary School

Assembly is once a week on Monday at 10 minutes to 7. All the learners line up in their classes, facing the front.

Even though the temperature is quite warm, some learners are wearing a jacket and hood.

The assembly begins with everyone singing Namibia's National Anthem while the flag is raised. 

Next the learners say a prayer, which is led by one of the teachers at the front.

The man with the file is the principal.

At the end, the learners go quietly in their lines back to their classrooms. 

Swakopmund

Swakopmund is on Namibia's coast (in the west) roughly in line with the capital Windhoek.

It is 1400 km from Katima Mulilo, and it takes around 16 hours to drive in a car. 1400km is around 875 miles, so the whole distance there and back is 1750 miles. The road is very long and can get very boring at times.







The sun makes the road ahead look as though it disappears. This is called a ‘mirage’.

There were many road signs like these, to warn drivers to watch out for elephants. There were also road signs showing warthogs and kudu (a kind of antelope). Although we didn’t see these animals, we did see several families of baboons and ostriches, a single giraffe, two elephants and a large stag deer, possibly an oryx.

Rossing Uranium Mine near Swakopmund

is an open cast mine which extracts uranium from the earth. 

The pieces of rock are crushed and processed until they end up as pure uranium, which gives energy. One barrel of uranium gives the same energy as 40 000 barrels of oil. The processed uranium is radio-active and so there are many, many safety measures in place to ensure everyone who works at or near the mine is safe. The uranium was first discovered by an ‘amateur prospector’ called Rossing in the 1930s. It took until 1980 to begin mining in Namibia. The shovels on the vehicles are enormous! The dust cloud is from the blasting.  

The Museum in Swakopmund has many interesting things, showing how life used to be in Namibia. Things are changing very slowly. The musical instruments and the necklace were of particular interest.

Women from the Himba tribe

The Himba people put special paste on their skin to make it a red colour. These ladies were selling crafts and jewellery. The lady in the picture is holding the very bracelet I bought for my daughter. I will give it to her when I return to England.

VSO Conference in Swakopmund

Here is a little challenge. Can you find out where Swakopmund is and how far it is from Katima Mulilo? How long do you think it would take to travel there and back in a car?

Meat for Sale

Fresh meat is on sale each day at this roadside stall. The photo shows the Principal buying meat from the stall on his way home from school. It is cheaper to buy it from here than in the supermarket.

There is a little chicken pecking at the meat lying on the leaves

The Feeding Programme

The Namibian Government's Feeding Programme started this week. The stuff in the sacks is maize meal. Now the school has found some volunteers from the village, the maize meal can be made every day.

First the volunteers make a fire in a little mud house, built especially to cook the maize meal. 

They light the fire under the giant cooking pots and fill them with water. Once the water is boiling (which takes a long time to heat up), they pour in 1 and ½ sacks of maize meal which has milk powder and sugar already in it. 

It is cooked and stirred for about an hour and looks, and smells, delicious when it is ready. It reminds me of semolina pudding.

The youngest learners go first at 11.30 which is when school finishes for them. They queue up in a very orderly way (no pushing or shoving) and wait patiently for their plateful. The plates are washed before being given to the next person. Some learners bring their own plate. They eat the meal with their fingers.

All the younger learners have some, but not all the older learners. 

Some of the learners about to enjoy their food. 

Bukalo Primary School

This is Bukalo Primary School. There are about 550 learners at the school, from grade 0 to grade 7. The classrooms are arranged around a rectangle of sand, although the grass has grown a lot recently with the rain. People are clearing the grass out of the sand, as the grass hides harmful creatures, such as snakes. In the middle of the rectangle is the flagpole for raising the Namibian flag in assembly on Mondays, and also the water tap from which the learners get their water to drink throughout the day.

 

The classrooms are mostly built of brick, but there are three classrooms made of very hard mud (called the ‘muddy classrooms’) which no-one likes to learn in, as they are very dark inside (there is no electricity) and the floor is just a dirt floor which is very dusty. 

Many of the desks and chairs are broken and waiting to be repaired, but the soldering tool to mend them is waiting for a grinder. So many learners do not have a chair or a desk. Many of them share a chair with another learner.

The government runs a ‘feeding programme’. They provide sacks of a type of grain which can be cooked to make something like porridge called ‘pap’. It is for the children who are registered as OVCs, which stands for 'Orphans and Vulnerable Children' - it is not for everyone. There are many sacks of pap at Bukalo, but there is no-one to cook it, so the children have not been able to have any yet. There are two very large pots to cook a large amount.

Here are the school toilets, a few hundred metres away from the classrooms and offices. The building on the left of the tree has four separate toilets for the staff. You need a key to get in, as they stay locked. The building on the right of the tree is the one the learners use.  

African Dancers and Story of Lion Attack

These ladies danced for everyone at the education conference

There were 7 women dancers and one man

And three male drummers

I met a driver today, called Charles, who was taking me somewhere. He told me a scary story about how he was attacked by a lion in his village. His village lies 140k from here in between two national parks, and the event happened 20 years ago. A lion had come too near the villagers’ huts (the ‘kraal’) and the villages had shot and wounded, but not killed, the lion. The lion returned the next day and attacked one of the villagers (Charles' relative). Charles tried to assist the villager and the lion attacked Charles, swiping his head with his giant paw and causing a deep wound on the back of his head with one claw that caught him. With the other front paw, he caused three more wounds with its claws. Charles fell to the ground, and by this time, police and other villagers were coming to help. The lion leapt over Charles and attacked one of the policemen. The lion was finally shot dead, but three people had been hurt, though thankfully no-one was killed.

Charles asked me lots of questions about the UK, and said his brother had been there. When I asked him which part, he said Canada. He found it hard to believe that Canada wasn’t in the UK!

Another person I met recently asked if we had elephants in England and was surprised to find we didn’t.