Saturday, May 26, 2007

There and Back Again

Hello everyone!

I'm back safe and sound from Mozambique. It was absolutely amazing. The beaches there are what you imagine when you think about desert islands. There were six of us going and we were all pretty much dead broke almost all the time (at one point we just pooled all our money on the floor and figured that together we had enough to pay for our housing with 200 000 metacais left over (approximately 10 US$) for us all to eat for two days. At another point we decided against a certain hotel because US$15 a night was too expensive.) but we had a good time. We swam in the Indian ocean, went snorkeling (with snorkels we bought at the dollar store), and ate pretty much nothing but prawns, bananas, coconuts, passion fruit, cashew nuts, and samosas the whole trip. It was ridiculously cold on the trip back, though. We were in a bus terminal at 3 am and it was around -3 C. Thankfully this Israeli tourist found a place that was open selling coffee and bought us a cup. There were a few harrowing situations. At one point we almost got left behind in the middle of South Africa and at another point we were in this dusty out of the way market and it was very possible we wouldn't have been able to get a ride out when a bus bounty hunter picked us up and gave us a free ride into Maputo. I'll write more later (I'm hiking out of Windhoek just now) but I just wanted to let everyone know I'm OK and I'm back in Namibia and, let me say, after four nights sleeping on a bus, I'm pretty happy to be back. Take care.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Mozambique? (email from Amy)

Hey,
This is the craziness of my life- I had been planning on hiking Fish River Canyon but the water was so polluted that we couldn't hike (well actually, technically, we could hike but we would have had to carry all our water for a six day hike and that would have killed me) I thought the vacation was a bust, but then...
Apparently about a week before the term was scheduled to begin the ministry decided it was stupid to start school and then have a four day weekend the next week, so we got an extra week off. Anyway, in about an hour I'm getting on a bus that will take me across South Africa- through Uppington and Jo-burg and on into Mozambique. We'll spend 36 hours to get to Maputo, then 6 hours and I get to spend a few days in Tofo and we take another 36 hour bus ride back. Probably a little crazy, but I think it'll be fun. Take care!

Google Map of Amy's probable route.

News story about the school calendar changes




Maputo

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Teachers and Learners get another week off!

Pupils Get Extra Week's Holiday


Christof Maletsky
Windhoek

GOVERNMENT schools will only reopen on May 28, as the start of the second semester was delayed by one week to cater for public holidays.

The senior public relations officer at the Ministry of Education, Toivo Mvula, told The Namibian yesterday that the delay was due to the fact that there is a public holiday and home weekend for hostel children in the same week.

"Schools were supposed to start on May 22 but Friday, which is Africa Day, is a public holiday and it is also an out weekend for the hostel learners.

So they will only be going to school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday," Mvula said.

As a result of the delay, schools will be losing two days of work.

The school calendar has 195 days in a year but Mvula said the two days would be squeezed in somewhere else.