Email Letter 6 From Namibia
April 13, 2005
Windhoek, Namibia
Email Number 6
Dear Everyone,
We will be home one month from today! Amazing! We are anxious to see all of you again, but when we are about to leave we will also feel sad about leaving new found friends. We suppose we should get used to these conflicting feelings, but even after doing this for the past 4 – 5 years, we still miss you when we are here, and we will still miss them when we are there.
In this letter we will share some of our recent personal travels and some work stuff as well that we are particularly proud of and also a way for any of you to participate in a neat project in a not very expensive way. More about that later.
For those of you who follow our journeys on a map, next week we will be off to the north again, but this time much more east to Rundu in the Kavango Region, and to Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Region. Rundu is on the Angola border and Katima Mulilo on the Zambia border. We will be doing some training, planning, and evaluations of small grass roots projects. This trip will be many many kilometers: One day to get to Rundu, another to get to Katima Mulilo, a day and a half in each place and then back again. Whew!!
Last week we went to the Africat Foundation at Okonjima, about 250 kilometers from here. We stayed in very beautiful accommodations, (photo enclosed, taken by Hinda) and had wonderful experiences with leopards and cheetahs, (photos enclosed) and also porcupines and honey badgers as well as kudu, giraffe, and other beautiful wildlife. They kept us pretty busy. We arrived at Okonjima at 10 a.m. ; had coffee; lunch at noon; went to see leopards at 3, (2 cubs and a mom); dinner at 7 (Oryxx); porcupines and badgers at 9 p.m. in a “blind”; cheetahs at 6 a.m. the next morning, and then a nice brunch and home. Not much time to rest, but very interesting. We learned much about these animals, especially the cats and they are really quite beautiful. Namibia has the world’s largest population of cheetahs, and also quite a large number of leopards as well. These cheetahs can become quite tame, but certainly not the leopards. The cheetahs at Okonjima are fed daily and are in about a 150 acre enclosure, while the leopards are in a 10,000 acre enclosure and are self sufficient. In fact when we found them they were feeding on a duiker carcass they had dragged up a tree.
We also spent a couple of nights at the Waterberg Plateau, a 60 km by 20 km plateau about 250 km north of Windhoek. Very beautiful also, and this time we stayed in government accommodations and as you would suspect, the government does not do as good a job as the private Africat foundation at Okonjima. So, is there something to capitalism after all?
We want to tell you about some good and interesting things at work. One of the things we were asked to do was to help CAFO develop a fundraising and marketing plan which we did. Here is what has already happened: The bank of Windhoek just donated N$25,000, about $4,000 US, and the BOKOMO company of South Africa is just about ready to donate cereal product to us to distribute to the orphan and vulnerable children programs that CAFO works with. The most important thing about this is that we helped them develop the plan, did a little teaching about how to write letters of request, etc., and now they are doing it themselves. Remember, you can give a man a fish every day, or you can teach him how to fish. For us, it is the latter that we try to do.
We brought the US Embassy Public Affairs Officer to Rehoboth to visit some of our programs. He usually just stays in his air conditioned Windhoek office and is a nice, but kind of reserved and stiff. After a few hours he had 2 kids on his lap reading them stories, was donating twice as many books to the 3 programs than he originally promised, had agreed to personally give a basketball clinic to these orphan kids, and other things as well. Here is the email we received from him today:
Dear Nicolette, CAFO is doing fantastic work and I cannot say enough about Peter's golden heart. I put a good word in for CAFO to the Ambassador and agency heads at this morning's meeting.
I look forward to seeing the children on Friday. Will yours be the name on the small grant we will give to pay for transportation?
Regards, Stan
How’s that? Hopefully this will be a long term relationship for CAFO and will provide them with a lot of future benefits.
When we were still in the States, several of you were kind and generous enough to donate some money for us to use here with CAFO. We want to tell you what we have done and even offer you a chance to help.
We visited a program about 75 km from the nearest town. No electricity, no hot water. There were 72 orphans living there in dormitory style housing. And there was a soup kitchen for them for 3 meals a day, and also a very small school for grades 1 – 7. The school has 2 teachers. This whole program called Witkop (White Hill in Afrikaans) is located on a very large farm. The Witkop program is run by a Lutheran church in Rehoboth. On the farm there are 18 goats and the goats are used for milk for the children, and occasionally for meat.
With your help, we have purchased an additional 7 goats ($50 each), and we got CAFO to match our/your donation to buy another 8 goats. So now there will be 33 goats. Still not enough for all of the needs, but a nice increase. And remember Stan, the guy from the US Embassy? Well, he is going to try to get the embassy to donate $3,000 - $5,000 so that Witkop can buy more goats and not only meet their need, but also become self sufficient and sell milk and meat and “kids” – the 4 legged ones – from time to time.
If you want to buy a goat for $50, or half a goat for $25, let us know and we’ll tell you how/where to send your money. We think it’s a great idea and can keep on going. Goats procreate you know – right?
Check out the photo of the kind of goats they have. Kind of cute aren’t they?
Anyway, that’s all for now. Be well and peace to all of you.
Lots of hugs and kisses,
Peter and Hinda
Windhoek, Namibia
Email Number 6
Dear Everyone,
We will be home one month from today! Amazing! We are anxious to see all of you again, but when we are about to leave we will also feel sad about leaving new found friends. We suppose we should get used to these conflicting feelings, but even after doing this for the past 4 – 5 years, we still miss you when we are here, and we will still miss them when we are there.
In this letter we will share some of our recent personal travels and some work stuff as well that we are particularly proud of and also a way for any of you to participate in a neat project in a not very expensive way. More about that later.
For those of you who follow our journeys on a map, next week we will be off to the north again, but this time much more east to Rundu in the Kavango Region, and to Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Region. Rundu is on the Angola border and Katima Mulilo on the Zambia border. We will be doing some training, planning, and evaluations of small grass roots projects. This trip will be many many kilometers: One day to get to Rundu, another to get to Katima Mulilo, a day and a half in each place and then back again. Whew!!
Last week we went to the Africat Foundation at Okonjima, about 250 kilometers from here. We stayed in very beautiful accommodations, (photo enclosed, taken by Hinda) and had wonderful experiences with leopards and cheetahs, (photos enclosed) and also porcupines and honey badgers as well as kudu, giraffe, and other beautiful wildlife. They kept us pretty busy. We arrived at Okonjima at 10 a.m. ; had coffee; lunch at noon; went to see leopards at 3, (2 cubs and a mom); dinner at 7 (Oryxx); porcupines and badgers at 9 p.m. in a “blind”; cheetahs at 6 a.m. the next morning, and then a nice brunch and home. Not much time to rest, but very interesting. We learned much about these animals, especially the cats and they are really quite beautiful. Namibia has the world’s largest population of cheetahs, and also quite a large number of leopards as well. These cheetahs can become quite tame, but certainly not the leopards. The cheetahs at Okonjima are fed daily and are in about a 150 acre enclosure, while the leopards are in a 10,000 acre enclosure and are self sufficient. In fact when we found them they were feeding on a duiker carcass they had dragged up a tree.
We also spent a couple of nights at the Waterberg Plateau, a 60 km by 20 km plateau about 250 km north of Windhoek. Very beautiful also, and this time we stayed in government accommodations and as you would suspect, the government does not do as good a job as the private Africat foundation at Okonjima. So, is there something to capitalism after all?
We want to tell you about some good and interesting things at work. One of the things we were asked to do was to help CAFO develop a fundraising and marketing plan which we did. Here is what has already happened: The bank of Windhoek just donated N$25,000, about $4,000 US, and the BOKOMO company of South Africa is just about ready to donate cereal product to us to distribute to the orphan and vulnerable children programs that CAFO works with. The most important thing about this is that we helped them develop the plan, did a little teaching about how to write letters of request, etc., and now they are doing it themselves. Remember, you can give a man a fish every day, or you can teach him how to fish. For us, it is the latter that we try to do.
We brought the US Embassy Public Affairs Officer to Rehoboth to visit some of our programs. He usually just stays in his air conditioned Windhoek office and is a nice, but kind of reserved and stiff. After a few hours he had 2 kids on his lap reading them stories, was donating twice as many books to the 3 programs than he originally promised, had agreed to personally give a basketball clinic to these orphan kids, and other things as well. Here is the email we received from him today:
Dear Nicolette, CAFO is doing fantastic work and I cannot say enough about Peter's golden heart. I put a good word in for CAFO to the Ambassador and agency heads at this morning's meeting.
I look forward to seeing the children on Friday. Will yours be the name on the small grant we will give to pay for transportation?
Regards, Stan
How’s that? Hopefully this will be a long term relationship for CAFO and will provide them with a lot of future benefits.
When we were still in the States, several of you were kind and generous enough to donate some money for us to use here with CAFO. We want to tell you what we have done and even offer you a chance to help.
We visited a program about 75 km from the nearest town. No electricity, no hot water. There were 72 orphans living there in dormitory style housing. And there was a soup kitchen for them for 3 meals a day, and also a very small school for grades 1 – 7. The school has 2 teachers. This whole program called Witkop (White Hill in Afrikaans) is located on a very large farm. The Witkop program is run by a Lutheran church in Rehoboth. On the farm there are 18 goats and the goats are used for milk for the children, and occasionally for meat.
With your help, we have purchased an additional 7 goats ($50 each), and we got CAFO to match our/your donation to buy another 8 goats. So now there will be 33 goats. Still not enough for all of the needs, but a nice increase. And remember Stan, the guy from the US Embassy? Well, he is going to try to get the embassy to donate $3,000 - $5,000 so that Witkop can buy more goats and not only meet their need, but also become self sufficient and sell milk and meat and “kids” – the 4 legged ones – from time to time.
If you want to buy a goat for $50, or half a goat for $25, let us know and we’ll tell you how/where to send your money. We think it’s a great idea and can keep on going. Goats procreate you know – right?
Check out the photo of the kind of goats they have. Kind of cute aren’t they?
Anyway, that’s all for now. Be well and peace to all of you.
Lots of hugs and kisses,
Peter and Hinda
posted by Peter and Hinda Schnurman at 6:19 AM
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