Snorting and clicking

I took a walk around the Khomas mountains yesterday before dinner. When the wind is completely still, the silence of the bush is unworldly. Birds seem to have already gone to roost at that time of the evening. The only sound is the crunching of shoes in the quartz gravel and the faint sloshing sound of my water bottle. It almost feels like you are in a sensory deprivation chamber with only two distinct sounds being fed to you.

Half way through my walk I startled some wildebeest. They made a quick, scrambling noise and then trotted ahead of me. I was just as startled as them. Then one of them decided to stand his ground. He stared at me and snorted. I waved my arms and shouted back. There was a standoff. Wildebeest won’t attack, but they are much bigger than me. He snorted. I waved and yelled some made-

up wildebeest insult about what yummy steak he would make. He didn’t seem to like that and I won the day and continued on my merry way back down the mountain. I made the mistake of inviting too many guests to the kindergarten today. They turned up all at once in a big bunch of six – two families with teenage children. The poor kiddies where outnumbered and immediately looked intimidated. The kids all have huge, forceful personalities, but they completely clammed up. These six big people who were feeling so good about themselves for visiting a kindergarten in Africa were basically saying “hey, kid, play with me”. “Hey kid, do you want some pencils.” “Hey kid, pose over here away from the window for a photo.” I looked up amongst the scrum of photographers at one point and a very overbearing German woman standing five feet away from me had her camera pointed right at me for a “candid shot of the teacher”. BLOODY EXCUSE ME!!!! If you want to take a photo of me, you have only to ask. I am not a static display of local color and that is just plain rude. I have to give the kids credit. They mostly kept their cool and were respectful, but they absolutely refused to perform a cute act. Good for them! They were having none of it and the guests didn’t seem to realize at all how miserable they were making the kids with such overwhelming fawning. At one point I had the kids sitting at a table playing with play-dough and a circle of guests totally surrounding us. I reached out for something and Patrick smacked my hand. Now, Patrick knows that hitting anyone in the class will get him physically thrown out of the room. Hitting the teacher will bring down the wrath of God! I looked into his eyes and I could see the clear message “please get rid of these people.” So I did. Patrick was a perfect gentleman the rest of the day. One of the employees had a baby yesterday (a new sister for one of the girls in my class). We first heard it was a boy and they were going to name it !ontas (or some such thing). The ! is the symbol for the clicking noise they make in the Damara language. I thought it was a bit limiting for a child in the modern world to have a name beginning with a click. I’m doing the genealogy of the families at the lodge and none of them have clicks in their names. Their names are overwhelmingly European. A couple of hours later we found out it was actually a girl and they are going to name her Geraldine. I only have two weeks left at the guest house. It makes me feel sad just thinking about leaving – although a nice spicy meal of non-German food would be very welcome right about now.