We have changed the size, design, logo, basically everything about The Buchter News and we have received very positive feedback on this! We have also included other places like Rosh Pinah into The Buchter. We have just recently launched an A3 EXPO edition, of which 9600 copies where handed out in Windhoek and another 2000 are on their way to the travel agents in Frankfurt.

We have launched the website: http://www.buchternews.com and a forum for Lüderitz http://www.buchterforum.com, putting Lüderitz on the WorldWideWeb-map. And of course I have made a lot of new friends here, and fell in love with this beautiful desert country!

As time runs out it is now my duty to write the handing-over-notes and make sure that all the projects will be handed over smoothly to the new volunteers, and hope that they will be as innovative with The Buchter News as I think Anna and I have been.

This will probably not be my last message send to you from Namibia,  anyway I would like to thank you guys for reading my blog and sending me e-mails etc., I will see you all in less than a month!

Hidde

Here’s the picture:

Almost forgot to mention, although the buchter news website is not yet online we did launch the buchter forum: http://www.buchterforum.com

Cheers Hidde

First a little update about the projects I am currently working on:

The Valombola Kindergarden

With the kindergarden things are going much better than last year. We have started teaching phonetics & the children are really starting to get how reading works. They can already read simple words like “cat”, something that I think has never been achieved on the kindergarden before.
Besides the phounetics we have a much stricter time table now and make sure that the children play more as well. We do both educational (puzzles, connect 4, etc) and entertaining (building blocks, stuffed animals) with them and Anna has been doing a fare amount of art with them as well.

Brightstart Montessori
At the Brightstart Montessori I am doing technical drawing with the grade 8 children. This is going great! My small class picks up on the geometry fast and I have even been learning them basic Pythagoras. Even though I might not be very necessary at Brightstart I still really enjoy this project.

Windhoek EXPO
I am helping out a bit with the organization of the Lüderitz stand in the EXPO held in Windhoek in May. I am assisting in reprinting a book about Lüderitz and helping out where ever I can.

Buchter News
The Buchter News is improving with every month. In fool colour now, with a nice design the people of Lüderitz seem to be enthusiastic about the changes we have made. The website is getting there now as well, although it has proven to be quite a lot of work to get it exactly how I want and to make sure that the new volunteers can easily maintain it. I am hoping to launch it this month, even if it might not be completely finished. At least we can already put the news on it.

That’s it for the projects, so here is a little about what has been going on lately:

Our desk officer came to visit us a couple of weeks ago, and I think he left with a positive impression about the project. This is especially important since a lot of things might be changing next year: NamDeb might stop sponsoring, the Buchter News computer is to old to run the software etc. I think that without the full support of Project Trust it might be hard to run this project.
Anyway, we had a nice time with John the desk officer, although a bit short - one day basically. He took us out to dinner which is always a treat.

And it was my birthday on the 10th of march which was celebrated in the kindergarden with the children singing happy birthday, and that night in the pub with Anna, Paddy & Jacob. For my birthday they got me a pipe and the necessary tobacco so I can complete my pirate image =)

Last weekend we celebrated my birthday with the same crew but now reinforced by the two neighbours Justine & Goisha. We did this by camping at Diaz Point. Even though I was sick most of the first night we had a great time with lots of sunburn, braais & swimming. We ended the weekend with a two hours hunt after a manta ray (with self made spears), but unfortunately we never caught it although we spotted it plenty of times.

That’s it for now, I’ll try to keep up the writing for now on & I can’t believe how fast the time is going!

Cheers Hidde

Barack Obama demands that the average income of a banker can not be higher than $500,000 US dollars a year. Of course bankers complain, and most other people agree - especially after seeing the banks collapse. Now the banks come with a lot of arguments why this is unfair. They say for instance that if they pay their talents only a humble 500,000 a year, other international banks will buy them. Fair enough I would say, but a more shocking argument was made in the New York Times on the 6th of February:

The article Trying to Live on 500K in New York says the following:

With private school costing $32,000 a year; A mortgage on your $1,5milj dollar apartment costing $96,000 a year; Another $96,000 for maintenance; And a - yes its really in there - NANNY costing $45,000 a year. The bankers are already spending $269,000 a year without taxes and this doesn’t include a driver, a personal trainer etc.

To make the article even more ridiculous they say the following - and I quote:

“Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.”

Please check this article out for yourselves & if you happen to be a banker in New York reading this, I would love to hear your view of things through the comments area.

More stories about my actual life in Namibia will follow this weekend.

Cheers Hidde

Skies Break Open, originally uploaded by Hidde Stokvis.

It started off with us hitch-hiking to Windhoek. With us I mean Anna, Paddy (one of the peace-corps volunteers here in Lüderitz), Lily (another peace-corps volunteer from somewhere else in Namibia) and me. After 6 hours of unsuccessful hitching, it was pretty obvious that no one was leaving for Lüderitz on this Sunday. So we took are only option left and rented a car from Avis.

After an 8 hour drive in which both Paddy as I took the wheel, we arrived in Windhoek. We checked into the backpackers and decided to go for a late night meal in Joe’s Beerhouse. On are way there we found a blocked of street, Anna & Paddy convinced me to drive into it - because “there is never police around in Namibia”. This particular street turned out to be the street with the presidential house on it and it didn’t take long for the police to pull us over. I convinced them I was a very dumb dutch tourist and really didn’t see the sign and after a nerve racking 10 minutes we where back on the road heading for Joe’s.

After 2 days in Windhoek it was time for us to pack our backs again and go on the Wilddog & Crazy kudu safari to sossusvlei. Here we enjoyed a lovely to days, with an amazing tour group and the amazing dunes of sossusvlei. We where joined by the Otjikondo Project Trust volunteers as well: Hazel & Rose and they brought a German volunteer Inken with them.

The tour ended back in Windhoek where we only spent one day this time, because we where heading up to Swakopmund. The epic centre of tourism in Namibia. Again we where joined by the Otjikondo girls and this time by another Peace-corps volunteer Eric as well. Swakop was a great stay with lots of partying, quadbiking, sandboarding and -for Hazel & Anna - even skydiving!

Anna & me headed up to Windhoek 2 days before the Otjikondo girls to go up to Etosha in one go. After an almost 24 hours during journey we finally arrived in Etosha only to see that it had rained so much that there was no wildlife what so ever. So after 2 days we decided to head back for Windhoek a day early and join - yet again - the Otjikondo girls.

From there we took the bus to cape town for the finale to weeks of our Holiday. Cape Town turned out to be an incredible place. With lots of partying, Christmas in a cave in table mountain, New Years on the streets of Cape Town and in a club called Chrome and finally Steve and I went scuba diving.

Steve is one of the Aranos Project Trust volunteers and he was accompanied by Harry, the other volunteer in Aranos (unfortunately Miles - who is in Aranos as well - couldn’t make it to Cape Town). After an amazing stay in CT we - the Namibia PT volunteers - decided to rent to cars and do a little road trip along the Garden Route. After a nice drive we arrived in Jeffrey’s Bay. This is a little surfvillage where we had both the beach as a nice apartment all to ourselves. Here we spent two days and then decided to head back a bit to Plet. In plet we spent our final night of the road trip & the next day we headed back to CT. On the way we visited an elephant sanctuary to finally see the elephants we had missed in Etosha. In CT we spent our last evening together and than it was time for Anna & me to head back to Lüderitz.

All together it was an amazing holiday which I would like to repeat any day!

Pictures will follow soon as I have to nick those of Anna since I was to lazy to take any - sorry (yet again).

Cheers,

Hidde

The 25th we spent in a cave half way up table mountain, where we enjoyed a Christmas meal, a lot of champagne and the best view in Africa. This most have been one of the best experiences I have had so far in my year!

Currently we are cooling down a bit to be extra fit on the upcoming new-years day which we will spent here in Cape Town as well.

Cheers,

Hidde

Etosha was a rather disappointing experience, since it has been raining so much that the animals are everywhere, but not at the waterhole. So after only seeing zebra, gemsbok and springbok (and a few ostriches), we decided to head back for Windhoek again.

At the moment we are still in Windhoek, with the girls from Otjikondo. And tonight at 6 o’clock we are taking the bus to Cape Town where we will stay until the 2nd of Januari.

Cheers & Merry Christmas!

Although we had all been here before, we still needed directions and we where on are way over Robbert Mugabe Avenue. What we didn’t know was that the presidential house was located on Robbert Mugabe and that the president was staying there at that time. So when we so a road block, we thought it was a construction side and decided to ignore the no-entry sign. It took about 2 minutes before we were pulled over by half of the Windhoek police force. I had to explain to them that my driving license was Dutch and NOT afrikaans and that I was just a stupid tourist. Eventually they did let us go and we found Joe’s Beerhouse with the new directions the police officers gave to us.

After a short stay in WIndhoek it was time for us to meet our tour group and start the tour to Sossusvlei. Here are some of the biggest red sand dunes of Namibia, which made for some pretty incredible pictures and views. Our group consisted of a quite young and fun audience and many hours where spend lying around the swimming pool and at the bar at our guest farm.

After we returned back to Windhoek it was time for us to go up to Swakopmund. THE tourist town of Namibia. We took a mini van - and just barely escaped death doing so - and had a pretty smooth ride to Swakop, made even more enjoyable by the two big afrikaans speaking ladies who made some very amusing comments towards our driver.

Now it’s almost time for us to leave Swakop, but it’s been an amazing stay so far. Great clubs, a nice beach, nice shops (I have finally got new flip-flops!), and amazing activities. We have been quad biking through the dunes and today I have been sandboarding on them. I must say sandboarding is an amazing sport and I can only hope I will find the time to do it again somewhere this year!

Tomorrow night we will take the train back to Windhoek from where we will straight away hitch to Etosha. And after that it’s time for our final part of the holiday: NEW YEARS IN CAPETOWN!

I wish everyone a very merry Christmas & a happy new-year if I can’t write another blog before that time!

Cheers, Hidde

Today we had a “thanks giving” lunch in our flat with paddy (the American peace corps volunteer) and Liz ( our co-host). I made the stuffed chicken and did a - rather surprisingly -  good job at it too (if I may say so). Paddy made the cookies for desert and Liz brought the vegetables and wine. A great thanks giving lunch, although unfortunately Jacob (the other peace corps volunteer) couldn’t make it, because he was still in Windhoek.

I’ve also been busy with some new pictures, so here a few new photo’s:

Cheers,

Hidde