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Views from the Top
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 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
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