Elephants in Nkurenkuru

Elephants
A few weeks ago we had elephants in our town. It was pretty exciting and the whole town went to see them. Our host father who is the consummate historian of the area said that this had happened before in the 50's and 60's. Evidently they crossed the river from Angola, some twenty strong. We were only able to see two of them who had been separated from the group. A few weeks before this there were lions sited within 30km of our town. Evidently they had escaped from Etosha National Park. Hopefully someone rounded them up. Lions and Elephants and Snakes OH MY!!! Here are some pictures of our experiences with the elephants.

Walking to the elephants

A rare picture of both of us:)

Looks like the whole town came out for this one!!!
Maybe its aliens!!!

After this whole scene people actually followed the elephants further into the bushes. I thought someone was going to get trounced.

These two elephants were lumbering around in the town graveyard trying to get reconnected with their group. This one made a run for it but then turned around back into the bush.

Rachel and Caleb with their host father Nairenge (see how crappy his truck is? I love telling people that I have a truck that is even crappier than theirs haha)

Garden Project
Here is the garden we helped to build and complete. There are 14 official women who are part of the garden project. They decided on having 4meter by 21 meter plots. Many of them have cleared their plots. A few have even started planting!!! This is so much fun. The other day I went by to see how the work was going and found that they had cut the pipe that we used to pump the water into to tank. If you look at the picture of the tank its the black pipe going into the top. They cut this pipe while burying it and so now we have a quandry of how to fix this. At first I was livid that they had cut the pipe because it was the only pipe we had that was long enough to go from the waters edge to the tank. Luckily I found some fittings at the hardware store in Rundu (1 hour away from Nkurenkuru) with which we can easily connect the cut pieces. Crisis abated.

Women from the Tulikwateseni Garden Project

Water tank and stand
(Those things are a bear to get upright on top of the stand. It took many people and about 20 minutes)

The most beautiful women involved with the garden project!

Three of the women on the garden administration committee

Pump Problems
Funny thing happened while pumping the water into the tank. Since I had never run a water pump over this distance before I first put the pump 10 feet from the tank with another 40 feet to the river. This caused the pump to run for quite some time with little water going into the tank. The next day I moved the pump to just outside the fence so that it was about 30 feet away from the tank and 10 feet from the water. Same result. Frustration. Then we moved the pump to within 5 feet from the water and 45 feet to the tank. Success!!! This pump goes at about 520L per minute so it didn't take long once the water finally started pumping since the tank is only 2500L. The instructions to the pump say it could pump water up to 8 meter from river to pump and up to 20 meters from river to tank. Little did I know that was a bunch of crap. But hey the school of hard knocks is a good teacher though it likes to dish out failures up front.

Time for a little Africa magic...
In addition to these setbacks the pipe didn't quite fit to the pump fittings(though they were the same diameter), and under pressure there would be water everywhere. What could we do? Evidently Namibians have one solution for improper plumbing fittings, that is strips of rubber. They take skinny strips of rubber and wrap them tightly around the pipe fittings then force on the pipe, using clamps to tighten it down. This is amazing. The reason I call this Africa magic is because while doing similar work to get a leak to stop on our water heater, our friend Tate Thom pulled out the same rubber strips and said, "Ah now it is time for some Africa magic" then started laughing hysterically. Conclusion, strips of rubber is to Namibians as duct tape is to Americans.

Sewing Project

Around the same time as the garden project got going we also had our sewing project get off the ground. We finally were able to purchase all the machines and materials and began with training. The first training included sewing instruction of course, orphans and vulnerable children care, HIV/AIDS information, and small business training. They were not able to finish the sewing training in 1 1/2 days so we set a date for Aug 8 to finish, with other trainings as a possibility. So far they have sold a little girls dress and made a number of baby carriers (adaptation of baby bjorn). Now if we can help them understand cost prices and how to keep track of profits so they don't spend all their earnings before buying more material.

Random pictures of birds

African Wood Hoopee
(affectionately called zebra bird, don't see this one very often)

Violet Backed Starling
(this one looks amazing in the sun with all the iradescent purples)