Sewing the Word

Sunrise Over Desert Camp

Sunday morning, our final day of our safari, we woke up to weather that seemed to be even colder than the day before. What was worse, the sky was overcast, which would mean it would take even longer for the day to warm up. We had a 6:00am call for breakfast, and plans to depart camp no later than 7:00am. We went through our routine of cleaning up all of our luggage, and headed for the outdoor communal dining area. Monet had asked each of us to leave our bags at the foot of the drive for our cabins, and we’d put them in the truck as we drove past on our way out, and we did so with our large pile. Natalie, unable to shake the cold, decided to wrap herself in the thick comforter from her bed, and waddled the eighth of a mile to the dining area with it.

After cleaning up breakfast, Monet went to the truck to start it. “Ka-chump, kaaa-chuuump, click.” He gave it another try, “Kaaaaaaaa-chump. Click” That’s not good. Additional attempts provided less and less in return for turning the ignition. The truck was dead. Meanwhile, we all stood around in the high 30/low 40 degree air waiting.

Monet, always cool and collected, said “That is no problem, we will call a truck from the other lodge to come give us a tow.” He made the call, and about 15 minutes later, another safari truck came. They attached some tow ropes to the front of the safari truck, pulled it out into the road, and after two tries, of pulling the van, and popping the clutch, the engine roared to life. Monet carefully tried to keep the engine revving and drove the truck around in circles for a few minutes to get the engine warm enough, and the battery charged enough to keep it alive.

This morning, we had only one brief activity planned before driving back to Windhoek, and that was cheetah watching in the town of Solitaire. This was about a one hour drive from our camp, and we arrived around 9:00. As we pulled up to the Solitaire Guest Farm, we saw an open air safari jeep sitting there, and we all hoped allowed to each other that we would not be riding in that, as it hadn’t seemed to have warmed up at all since we had awoken, and the skies were still very cloudy. The office had one bathroom, which we all took our time using, and I sensed that everyone was stalling every minute they could standing inside the building instead of out in the cold---and delaying the torture of having to get in an open air vehicle on this cold day. Eventually Monet prodded us along and said that we needed to get moving. We climbed into the jeep with our guide from the guest farm ( a woman in her late 30s from Pittsburgh), and noticed Monet was remaining behind to stay in the warmth. We pointed out that we didn’t think that was quite fair.

As we began driving, it was just as cold as we had feared with the added wind chill caused by the movement. Fortunately, the skies did look as if the clouds were beginning to break up from the warmth of the sun. In fact, we even drove past a couple brief sections of sun, and completely relished the fleeting moments of relative warmth. We drove for several kilometers, up to a fence, where our guide got out, opened the fence, drove us in and closed it behind her. She explained that this was where they kept the cheetahs. Only 4 of them, as they couldn’t be kept in too dense of a population. She then pulled out what looked like a roof antennae for a TV connected to a small radio, and begain pointing it in various directions listening carefully. The Cheetahs had collars on them that enabled tracking them, and finding them relatively quickly for viewing.

Unfortunately, at the first attempt, she was not picking up any signals. We then drove to the other side of the fenced in area (which I believe was a few square kilometers) and tried from there as well. Here she heard a few faint sounds. One of the 4 cheetahs was very young, and she said from the direction the signals were coming from, that she was likely out learning to hunt with her mother, and she did not want to disturb them, so instead she followed the signal for another one named Pepper. This one she said had been hand fed growing up and was very used to humans, though not exactly tamed. As we got close to the point where the signal indicated pepper was, she stopped the jeep and escorted us off the truck into the brush. Something that certainly made all of us a little uneasy. She then pulled out a wooden dowel that was about 4 feet long, and said that was for mom (Natalie) to protect the little one (Kalyssa). Now we felt better. A wild animal with razor sharp claws, and tremendously strong jaws, and lightening fast reflexes, and we get a wooden stick.

Pepper The Cheetah

Nonetheless, we began walking through the brush slowly with our guide infront of us, using her radio to locate Pepper. After only a few minutes, she said, ah, there she is. Sure enough, there about 20 feet away, lying in the sun that was now peeking out from behind the shrinking clouds, was an adult cheetah. We remained there for only about 5 minutes, and the women talked a bit about the efforts to protect cheetahs using shelters like this one, as well as protect the local farmer’s livestock from wild cheetahs. We then headed back to the office, and jumped on our truck for the final return trip to Windhoek. When we boarded, we were delightfully surprised with giant slices of apple pie for the road.

Mid-Sized "Baster" Home, Rehoboth, Namibia

On the way to Windhoek we made one stop for fuel and restrooms, in a town called Rehoboth. I’ve read a little about this town, and Monet gave us a little bit of history on it as well. Over the last couple centuries there have been a lot of german immigrants into Namibia. (though white’s are still by far the minority). Many of these immigrants over this time have intermixed with some of the Nama people. Their children historically referred to as coloureds, endeded up developing a community in the village of Rehoboth. They’ve since began referring to themselves as the Rehoboth “Basters” (which is a derivative of the derogatory term bastards. As we sat at the gas station and saw some of the locals coming in and out, it was very interesting to see an entire community, where almost everyone was 50% Nama, and 50% German. Many of the individuals had very german facial structures, but then had very dark complexions, and African hair. This community has developed strong building skills and as a result has done very well. On the way out of the town, along the main road, we were able to see some of the beautiful houses that they have built. (unfortunately, I missed most of the really nice ones while looking for my camera.)

The Ziemanns and our Guides: Monet, and Oeckert

At about a quarter to 3 we pulled into the driveway of the Chameleon Safaris Offices and Lodge (at this point we wondered why we hadn’t been booked here instead of the Pension Moni, as this would have been convenient, and looked like a fun place. We also learned half of our travel companions had stayed here. Though we also learned that the Chameleon lodge did not have heat either. As we disembarked Oeckert was there waiting for us. It was great to see him again, and he said if we had the time, that Chameleon was offering us a free round of drinks. We definitely had time for that! We stayed around for about another 45 minutes, talking with Oeckert and Monet, and reliving some of the funny moments from the trip, such as the Ostrich nest story, and the truck not start for Monet on two separate occasions. Also while we were at the bar, there was an older woman in her late 60s or so that was leaving for safari the next day. After hearing her talk, she seemed to have a mild southern US accent. I asked where she was from, and she said she’s from Maryland, but grew up in West Virginia. I talked with her for about ten minutes, and she talked about how much she loves travelling, and that she’s been doing it every year, ever since she was my girls’ ages. She said that maybe this trip would spark that interest in them. Though I told her that Alexandra has already sworn to us she will never travel with us again, because “we are too annoying.”

At this point, Monet came over and told us it was time to head over to our hotel, so we said goodbye to the rest of our travelling partners as well as Oeckert, and headed over to the Hotel Pension Moni. Since it was Sunday, and we’d been travelling in the morning, I had researched churches that had services in the evening. Though Windhoek is the capital of Namibia, it is still a small town relative to US standard, and there were very few options for Sunday evening worship, but we did find one not too far from our hotel. The service was at 6:00, which left us only a little time for a quick meal.

We dropped our bags off at the hotel, and quickly walked down the road to the Maerua Mall to find a restaurant. Once inside we found a steak restaurant called Peppercorn’s for my Father’s Day dinner. Unfortunately, as we were pressed for time, I consumed a large steak with a very rich peppercorn and brandy sauce within a matter of 10 minutes. We had arranged for a cab to pick us up at our hotel, so I decided to run back and get the cab (which I was now late for), and return to pick up the girls.

When I got there the cab was waiting (which was a Mercedes Kompressor, which still has me scratching my head a bit) and he took us over to The Emmanuel Church, Windhoek, where we were in for a bit of a neat surprise. Natalie got out first to ask one of the ushers what time we should have the cab return. They said usually it’s about an hour, but today they had a bit of a special service going on, and that it may run an hour and fifteen minutes. She returned with this information, and I shrugged, and we went in.

The Emmanuel Church, Windhoek

When I found the church, the website made it fairly clear that music was a big part of the services, and that the music was likely to be pretty rockin’. When the service began, the pastor, who was a white south African about my age, reiterated the same expectation. However, he said, tonight you’re in for something quite a bit different. “We always have music, and we have great music and we all enjoy praising God, and listening to the message. But tonight we’re going to do something for other people instead. Windhoek has many people that are poor, and some of them are homeless, and are living in the streets. Last year several of them, some of them children, froze to death during some of the cold nights. This year we are going to provide blankets to the homeless. And we don’t want to just do a good deed, that is not what we’re here for, we want to share the word of God while we are doing that good deed. So tonight, we are going to sow the seeds of the Word of God. And we are going to do that by sewing the Word of God, John 3:16 on to the blankets:

Sewing the Word

“For God loved the world so much, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but will have eternal life. “

Selfishly, I was initially disappointed, especially after seeing the large stage, the live drum set, guitars, and listening to the uplifting pre-service music in the background. However, the more I thought about it, I thought, this is really great. We had originally hoped to do a couple service projects while travelling. We helped out with the English classes in Cambodia, and we had tried to research Lutheran Church Charities orphanage in India, but were never able to get details. “Sewing” the Word gave us one more opportunity to do something to give back to one of the countries that we were in.

One of the parishioners of the church sat in front and gave us all a demonstration (with aid of the cameras and large screens in front) of how to do it. We would each get a blanket, and a small patch with the Bible verse on it, a needle, and some string, and would stitch around the patch to affix it to the blanket.

For those of us that have not sewed (which was all of our family except Natalie) before this became an interesting challenge. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to thread the needle. Alexandra nailed that part, but halfway through sewing on the patch realized she had three stitches that went through another section of the blanket, inadvertently affixing a 3 inch section of blanket behind the patch. Kalyssa actually seemed to do the best of the three of us novices, and of course was quick to point out to the pastor her sister’s mistake.

All in all we had a fairly entertaining time, all while doing some good. We had an opportunity to spend a decent amount of time talking with the pastor, Matt, who it turns out has been to the Chicago area on several occasions, and has worked with Willow Creek, the “Mega Church” in the northwest suburbs. We also spent a little time with the youth pastor Jens. For a fairly large church, it definitely had a very welcoming feel to it. And of course they encouraged us to visit Namibia again, and come back and see them. Though we’ve had a great time, but somehow I don’t see that playing out in the cards in the near future. 

Our church experience in Namibia and our experience in Hong Kong made for nice bookends on our trip, as both provided a very welcoming environment and a reminder that even in different continents almost half way around the world, we are never too far from our Christian "family". 

As the service ended we turned in 3 finished blankets, and our cab driver was waiting for us outside, and we headed back to the hotel, filled up our hot water bottles, and climbed into bed before the evening chill was able to fully take over our room.