Yzobel visits Africa
September 24, 2011 at 7:36 PM
My trip to Namibia, written by Yzobel herself
I belong to 1st Penryn Rangers and in 2008 I underwent two selections, in County and then in Region to secure myself a place on a Guiding international trip to Namibia in Africa. This trip would be held in the summer of 2011 and there would be one girl from each county in the South West region going.
It took two years of fundraising to get together the £2,500 needed but finally the 30th of July had arrived and I made my way to Heathrow Airport. As we all met up my nerves turned into excitement as the reality of flying for the first time took over.
Flying over South Africa and seeing orange plains, hit home the fact that I was finally in Africa. The main focus of the trip was to spend a week at a local school, painting murals and building play equipment. However arriving at the school proved to be a challenge itself as it is off the main road and we got stuck in a river, meaning we had to wild camp! This put our project a day behind schedule.
Once we were rescued by the local villagers and their tractor and had settled in at the school we started our project. Even though we would have loved to have painted lots of murals, we decided to touch up the existing ones a previous school had done and leave one of our own murals behind. We decided to get all the children after class to stamp their handprint onto a branch of a tree we spray painted and we all did the same as well. We also had to change our plans on the building work as it was the school’s wishes for us to build a chicken coop which we did for them. We just about had time to paint a hopscotch before we left, and I was surprised that some of the children already knew how to play.
During the project, in the evenings many of the children came back so we could play games. On the first night, we got the parachute out and we all sat under it and they sang us one of their songs. I found this truly magical.
We also played a Guiding favourite game of duck duck goose as well as some playground hand clap games, and they showed us some of their games as well, which was a fantastic cultural experience.
At the end of the project we gave the children a pencil case each with stationery and Girl Guide badges as well as a goody bag. We did leave more and I left beach balls and frisbees but these got given to the principal for him to distribute later. On the last evening a teacher had dinner with us and she told us how many of the children slept holding onto their pencil cases.
Leaving the school, we travelled west to the Naukluft National Park, which covers 50,000km², where we trekked for two days. On the Monday we trekked 16km and the scenery was stunning. We had to climb a really high hill and the altitude made it harder but once at the top, all was forgotten as the view was breath-taking, nothing but hills. The next day we did a shorter walk of 10km and already aching from yesterday, climbing uphill for the first part was draining but once we reached the top, it was downhill from there. Three quarters of the way round, we had to climb across a cliff face using a chain, we were also roped on.
My favourite trek by far was climbing Dune 45, over 170m tall. It was hard to walk on the sand but there was already a ridge for us to follow and the climb up was really fun. Once at the top, the view was amazing, and we watched the sunset, the colour it made over the orange sand was spectacular.
We also did another walk later on in the week where we had a local guide take us to Bushman’s paradise, Spitzkoppe. Spitzkoppe is home to 2,000 engravings and we saw some of the ancient rock paintings, they were faint but it was great to learn how these men travelled around and left drawings at the places they visited. As well as this, the guide took us to the local school where they sang us two of their own songs, but they also sang ‘In the Jungle’ so all of us could join in, which felt very special.
The last part of our trip was spent at the top of Namibia in Etosha National Park. When we entered the park itself we saw zebras and giraffes and that was before we had reached camp! One of my favourite moments in Etosha was seeing a giraffe cross the road. I fell in love with the watering hole that was next to our campsite where at one time there were giraffes, zebras, rhinos and elephants, all animals that I thought were in competition with each other and would be fighting.
The next day we left camp for a safari before sunrise and we saw lions, which was one of the animals I most wanted to see. That night some of us stayed up in our sleeping bags at the watering hole to wait for lions. One female lion arrived at around 11pm so after that I went to bed but I know others stayed up till 12:45am to watch the rest of her family at the hole. This was a great way to finish what had been a mind-blowing experience which I will never forget.
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