Views from the Top
12 May 2003
Hello Everybody,
Sera and I are in the midst of our May holiday now;
concerning ourselves mostly with reading, cooking and small jobs around the
house. On the 15th
we have a group of friends coming to stay for a couple of nights.
We are hoping to snag another taxi driver into taking them on a trip to
Etosha and if there is enough room we will probably go with them.
On Sunday or Monday we are going with another group to do some camping
and hiking on the Brandberg (aka Fire Mountain (whoo)).
The summit is the highest point in Namibia and the whole mountain is
spotted with rock paintings. It
sounds like a lot of fun and if we actually get anywhere near the top I’m sure
we will be rewarded with a spectacular sight of the surrounding area.
The hard part of our trip, I think, will be to getting to the foot of the
mountain in the first place. It is
easy enough getting taxis to take us around near where we live but I imagine we
might be spending some quality time trying to get from one town to another and
then finally to the mountain. At
any rate, our gentle readers may rest assured that all adventures will be duly
recorded and reporte
d.
Until then however these pictures that we are sending
along today will have to suffice. The
story behind these pictures is that this morning we climbed up to the top of the
school water tower. It is about
four stories tall and, hey, it’s just standing there waiting for us to climb
it. It is always interesting to get
a birds eye perspective on an area and therefore we took the along the
binoculars and the camera to make it even more so.
The picture of our house and view of the surrounding area can pretty much be summed up in two words: flat and rural. Notice the cattle walking past, the green field of mahangu
and the termite mound in the said field.
Ekulo is the school where we teach. Since
the weather here is
almost always dry and warm the majority of “buildings”
in northern Namibia are really collections of buildings; schools are a good
example of this. In the center of the photo is the administrative building,
which contains offices, storage and a staff room.
The structures beyond the admin building are the classroom blocks.
The purpose of the blue and white canopies in the foreground is to
provide shade for parked cars. Presumably
the architect was planning ahead for more prosperous times when more than one
teacher would have a car and drive to school.
Looking this direction from the tower one can make out in the picture the
enormous veldt just dimly discernable at the horizon on the right side.
love, Zachary
