Time with my Kids

This was at 'Woorabinda' a park not far from our house. Eli's new boat that he got for his birthday.

Back in Oz

I'm back in Oz for Christmas and it is great to see everybody, I'm looking forward to doing a bunch of catching up with friends and rellies and doing some serious merrymaking and relaxing.

Mango thief

A troop of Baboons came raiding the mangos in the tree out the front of my place this afternoon, I didn't get a photo of the alpa male but he was big, this one still made a lot of noise going over the roof though.

Chris and Wally escape the madness

My dear friends, Christine and Wally Ross, (NSW) also Aussie volunteers, have finished their tour of duty, and are escaping from one madness to return to a different brand of madness. Naturally this required some memorial events, such as fishing with the two Dicks on the Zambezi and a top brai, (beaut barbie for the Ausies).

Dick and Wally on one last Tiger fish hunt.

Chris, Dick, Wal and Rob enjoy the size of it.

Happy ladies

Malcolm cooking a top brai (barbie)

 The morning after

Insecticide

I'm so glad it is fresh odourless DOOM I didn't like the stale stinky DOOM. Wierd how it's on it's side, but then maybe DOOM is like that.

Meat Dave

A local buther shop, notice the upside down head, he keeps it untill last to prove which animal it is you are buying. The butcher is quite a nice bloke, these are some of my students buying some meat.

Work

I know I've only been puting fun looking stuff on, so for those of you who are wondering what I'm doing with the rest of my time, here are some examples. 

(sorry only low resolution vid, but youget the idea) 

                                               Some of our 'Too cool for words' 3rd years.

 Mr Festus Kanyanya, one of the fine plumbing instructors at Zambezi Vocational Training Centre

 Yes they even do it here. Australian training package has a lot to answer for.

South Africa trip

I was invited down to South Africa (Johannesburg) for the anual in country meeting of volunteers, it just happened to be the 60th year of Australian Volunteers celebration, so that was a part of it too.
While in Johannesburg, one sees some interesting things. JB is big, including the metro area has about 6.3 million, so is bigger than Sydney, it is a city of stark contrasts, haves and have nots. Virtualy all of the BMWs and Mercs you see in Oz are made in this city. Nuclear power plants, big freeways, slums and leafy street suburbs with electric fences on virtually every house, I recon you need a couple of those nuclear power plants just to run the electric fences (I'm not joking).

 I hope that tailgate has good latches.

Mandela square in Santon Mall

This one's for Eli, a real Messerschmidt, this one crashed, look at that prop, this was in the war museum, which was the place we had the conference, so we could look around at lunchtime. Quite an amazing place.

This is a 105mm German Howitzer, this thing could shoot more than 10km, so it must have been one heck of a pop when this happened. WW2.

Rain at last

Now here is an event, I remember growing up in the deasert in South Australia, and the relief when the short rain season came,.... Oh what a feeling,... well we are experiencing that same thing here now, massive lightning/thunder storms, it is sooooo refreshing after the dry.

(yes this was hand held, but click on it anyway, it is more intricate than it loks on the small view)

Yet more lovely people, took me out to the Namibian side of Chobi park this morning and we didn't see much game, some Zebra and Water buck and lots of birds, but we had a lovely lunch under a shady tree on the banks of one of the tributary rivers.
We only had two bricks with us and the sausages were burning so we found some props to lift the rack up.
I have never before had Elephant Dung smoked Boer wurst but, but do you know what, it's yummy, and the smell of the smoldering dung is not unpleasant at all.

On the way there, yes I kid you not.

I was fishing after work one day this week and fortunatly I had my camera, this is a colony of Carmine Bee Eaters, they were being hunted by a hawk, on the banks of the Zambezi, very spectacular.
Like all of the photos on this blog, click them to enlarge.

The Bee Eaters nesting, they dig into the sand, down to nearly a metre.
You can see a couple of them having a teritorial battle mid air in the centre of the shot.

Their 'bogeyman'

  The panic when the bogeyman comes

Finding a resting spot waiting for the predator to get lost.

You are having too much fun. I would contribute more if I knew how. Loving your pics

Lets whiz over to Botswana

I've met yet another nice person, on Friday night after work a coleague here took me out for a look around the town, we ended up at her parents bistro in the middle of Katima.

Her father runs a tour company, and was talking about how he was taking a couple of Germans to Chobi National Park in Botswana in the morning, just for a day trip, I said "can I go along"? and he said yes, so I have just spent the day looking at elephants, kudu, impala, crocs, hippos, elan, fish eagles, maribu storks, sable antelope, orix, spoonbils, rollers, bee-eaters, bla bla bla, didn't see any big cats though, bet you feel sorry for me huh.

Specialy for my beautiful son Eli, I broke the curse mate.

Check out my dear little house.

I have had most of the items on the menu, these meals average around A$14 and are HUGE portioins, Kudu is very yummy. (if you click on the picture it should enlarge)

Eli,... check it out

Dinner last night

Yes I know this is out of cronological order, but I just thought I would share my dinner experience last night. It is steak 500g massaged in peper and lime then cooked to perfection with a bourboun based sauce dangling over mashed spud, YUM.

 The woman in the background is Rejoice, my country manager.

The "Drop Off" exercise

It is 7am and we are doing an orientation exercise today called the "Drop Off", it is where they just take you to a location somewhere in the city and drop you off and you have to find your way back to the office of the aid co-orbination folks. I'm looking forward to it this is just fun sight seeing in my eyes, public transport here we come. Rejoice is my in country officer and she wanted to come with us today to get to know her way around too, so,... let's go

I'm in Namibia

I've been in Namibia for about 4 hours now, first impressions are, driving in Namibia from the international airport to Windhoek, I could be driving along in South Australia, it is sooo similar it is incredible, that is of course apart from the African trees and the roadsigns which have antelope in stead of kangaroos on them, and oh yeah there is the taxi driver who is doing 140 in the 120 zone overtaking on the double white line section with the realy big sign that says not to do that, at least the cars that you could see were a long way off (whew).
 I'm in my hotel I'm a bit tired because I was awake for 23.5 hours yesterday, but I feel OK the hotel has a well stocked fridge and a pool and it is 27 degrees so I went for a swim, had a drink, and now I'm blogging.
The work starts tommorow with orientation meetings and meeting my host employer etc.
So far, I'm loving this place, it feels good and right and friendly.
The future looks bright.

Centuwion,..centuwion,... why do they titter so?

Righto you lot, it's been a while since I put a blog together, so bear with me while I gets thu setttins rite.
Mind you, you may have to wait till I'm in Namibia, but it's bound to happen eventualy.
Thanks awwwfly for your payshunce.

anybody

hellooooo. technology challenge

Still in Oz

Hi folks, I've just set up this blog so that I can get a bit of content out to lots of you.
 I'm not in Namibia until Sept 14th or so and there wont be a lot of posting until then, but I jusy thought I would set it up now.