We continued our safari in Namibia continuing north. It was another early morning as we got up at sunrise, broke down camp, had breakfast and headed to our next campsite called Treesleeper near the village of Tsinsabis. It was a cold morning and a long drive (about 450-500km). When we arrived it was go-time. We had lots of activities planned for the afternoon and evening.
Upon arrival to Treesleeper we set up our tents, quickly used the facilities and then met one of our Treesleeper guides, Hilda. She took us to visit a nearby village. I still can't get used to the idea of people living in stick huts, but that is where many of the villagers live. It was a good thing I wore my sunglasses. Seeing the filthy children play with old, broken car parts made my eyes tear up. It just wasn't right that any child should live in those conditions. Eventually I made peace with the fact that the kids don't know any other way of life and they are happy and content. We played with the kids, took many photos and stopped to buy a few crafts hand-made by the people in the village.
 |
| Villagers' Homes |
On the way back to the campsite we stopped at a local school, visited a classroom and chatted with the principal. She said, "We are sorry to hear about all happening in America and we pray for you." I assumed she was talking about our economic woes because I couldn't think of anything else. It must be bad if people in other parts of the world are praying for us. Oie. Anyway, the girls brought along some school supplies to donate to the school and it sounded like they were in need of the items brought. Way to go!
 |
| Inside a 1st grade classroom |
When we got back to the campsite we were whisked away onto a Bushwalk with our next Treesleeper guide, Moses. He took us along a path that was built by Dutch students and local people in the area a couple of years ago. Along the way he showed us plants that were used for recreational smoking, poisonous plants to avoid, how to make and use an animal trap that was made of nothing but string and sticks, animal tracks and how to tell from which animal they belonged and which direction they were going. Out of the blue, while walking along the trail, he urgently says, "Get back. Get back." It turns out there was a Boomslang (sp?) snake in a tree...He told us it was "kind of poisonous". Well, we later looked up this snake in our reference book and it said that it was "highly venomous - causing death between 1-5 days of being bitten from internal bleeding". Hmm...I think Moses downplayed that quite a bit!
After the Bushwalk, when it was dark, we rejoined Moses and Ewald and headed over to an area where the local tribes people would meet us and show us some of their traditional dances. It was amazing! Afterwards we took photos with the tribespeople. The unfortunate thing is that many people in Africa don't use deodorant so there was a lot of body odor all around. Well, one of the tribes people draped his arms around Mai and Heather in the photo. The pungent odor from this man's armpits transferred to their clothing and followed us around the rest of the night resulting in them having to shed those items of clothing until morning when they could launder it in the sink. Anne and I, odor-free, laughed and laughed as Heather and Mai sniffed their clothing over and over again - as if by sniffing the offensive odor multiple times might make it disappear all together. Haha...makes for a funny story.
We then had dinner prepared by the Treesleeper staff. I think this was the only meal I didn't really enjoy, but it was because the beef was prepared rare. I don't eat meat rare, even here in the U.S., so I wasn't about to do so in a foreign country! And that sums up our second day in Namibia and our Safari adventures.
 |
| Trail we followed for the Bushwalk |
 |
| Traditional dance by villagers and tribesman |
