Advent, aka "Pass the fire extinguisher, please!"

I am loving the festive spirit in the air. It's not even December yet, but the Christmas markets have been up for a week already. I've had my Gluhwein, roasted almonds and chestnuts, and crepes (both sweet and savory), but I fought off the impulse to buy a chocolate covered apple today. I think it may win next time. We'll see.

Today I went to a craft (basteln)-making session with our neighbour - very fun! I made an advent wreath and a decoration for our door, using stars, pine cones, cinnamon, star anise, birch bark, etc. We also enjoyed yummy snacks, including my first taste of Baumkuchen - a German classic.




































However, the event that I'm really burning to write about is the Adventsgärtlein at the Kindergarten. They had sent a big letter home about it, which didn't do us much good, although I did understand enough to get a babysitter for Kaia, since there was something about absolute Stille. Seems like one-year-olds would not have that.
Lia's teacher had told us to be sure to be on time, and we were!! We gathered in the main room where we were admonished again to be very quiet. We proceeded slowly into the gym where there was a large spiral made of pine boughs and a large candle in the middle. We sat around the perimeter of the room, and one of the teachers told a story in German about Mary making a dress for Jesus out of the moon, sun and stars...uh, it loses something in the translation, I guess.
Slowly and ceremoniously another teacher took an apple with a candle in it, and, holding it in two hands, walked carefully around the spiral until she reached the large candle in the centre, and she lit her candle. She reached down and picked up a golden foil star lying on a bough and replaced the star with her apple candle, being very careful to position the round apple so it would not tip and allow the flame to come in contact with the flammable tree branches. She walked back along the spiral path until the end, where there were more apples. She picked up another, and handed it to one of the children from Lia's class.
So there were 20-some 3-5 year-olds all to perform this task (with increasing fire hazard levels as more and more candles were burning at knee level along the path) with absolute Stille. And some of them did - especially near the beginning. But there was one kid who had been getting restless, and had seen enough to know exactly what to do, and he didn't feel like he needed to walk slowly. So he kind of ran, and tripped on a bough, and skidded a bit, and knocked over some candles. Marc and some other parents hopped up quickly, and righted the apples before anything caught fire. Everyone else seemed quite composed, but I think I may have gasped a little loudly. There were no actual injuries, I guess, but there could have been - don't you think? Would something like this EVER happen in Canada? Even the foil stars - they were sharp!
So everyone recovered nicely, and the next kids were very careful. Lia was the very last child - except for the boy that didn't get an apple (not sure what happened there - poor kleine Mark) - and I think her courage faded a bit the longer she had to wait. So she wanted Daddy to go with her, which left me with a great view of her glowing face as she completed her task carefully and solemnly. And then, with the smell of singed hair lingering in the room, we made our way out into the night, unsure of what an Adventsgärtlein was really about...

Bombs Away!

Back in September, I was having a chat with a colleague at his desk, when we heard an enormous crash outside (it sounded structural - we actually looked out the windows overlooking the parking garage to see if it had collapsed, or if a construction crane had fallen over or something).
But everything outside was peaceful - we had a beautiful clear view of Stiepel and the Kemnader lake (and Ruhr river), with the towns of Witten and Hattingen on the opposite side of the valley.

It took an hour, but it turns out the internet told us what happened:
An unexploded WWII bomb went off in Hattingen at a construction site when a backhoe scrapped it while digging out some foundations. 17 people were hurt (acoustic shock) but no one was gravely injured. The house being dug out was quite damaged, and I bet the backhoe didn't do too well either... Here`s an article about the incident.
The Ruhr river valley suffered a lot of bombing during WWII since it was a nexus of heavy industry and manufacturing (as well as coal mining). You would never know it now... Unless someone discovers unexploded ordinance the hard way :(

The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it Was None of His Business

Early in her kindergarten career, Lia was not happy about going to kindergarten. This was made evident by much weeping and gnashing of teeth (enough that on a particularly rushed and stressful day, when Lia was throwing a fit, we ended up taking her home).
To try to turn kindergarten into a daily routine, and a fun experience, I decided to read Lia a book each day at kindergarten as I dropped her off. The book first book she picked was all in German, but Lia made me translate the story, which unfolded as follows:

A mole decides to explore the wide world above, and pokes its head above ground one morning. A second later, someone defecates on the mole's head. (See the drawing above. Yes, that`s excrement.)
On the next page, the mole starts going around trying to find the culprit, and we are introduced to a graphic tour of all the animals which inhabit the barnyard. Each time, the shape/size/style of the animal's droppings is wrong, so the mole concludes that it wasn't the horse... it wasn't the cow... etc...
Finally, it gives up and some flies come buzzing around (yes, the pile of droppings is still on the mole's head throughout the whole story). The flies reveal to our protagonist (through their advanced sense of taste) that it is dog poop. The mole decides to confront the sleeping dog in the farmyard, but at the last minute decides against it, and defecates on the dog's head instead.

The End.

This story became Lia's favourite book, and required-reading every day for about two weeks.
I thought this might just be an interesting cultural difference between Canada and Germany, but it turns out that it's a UK book. Go figure.

-Marc

Happy St. Martin's Day!

Without knowing or understanding much about St Martin's Day, we ended up at Lia's kindergarten on November 11th with our neighbours and friends, paper lanterns (built and decorated by Karla and Lia a few days earlier) in hand. Every kid there had a lantern on the end of a stick lit up with a battery-powered light. Despite the dark, cold, and rain, we were a cheerful bunch! After some songs and a re-enactment of Martin's encounter with a poor person (apparently he cut his coat in half and gave it to a someone...but I don't have all the details about Martin), we all formed a parade.

We followed a horse, while eating the giant Bretzels that were hanging around our necks on purple and pink ribbons. The kindergarten had asked us whether we wanted to pre-order our Martinstag Bretzels along with everyone else, so we were all set.





























Children were singing, poking each other in the head (accidentally, I'm sure) with those lanterns-on-a-stick, and a police officer was walking ahead of the horse and rider to stop traffic.
Once we had walked a big loop, we ended up back at the kindergarten, while the fire department set up a gigantic bonfire. It seemed to me that those guys sure enjoyed starting a big fire for a change. Some more songs were sung, and we headed inside for hotdogs and Gluhwein. It was a strange mix - but I think Karla and I are integrating here despite ourselves and our lack of understanding about what's going on :)

On the way home, we watched the massive fire truck put out the enormous bonfire in the kindergarten yard. Huge though it was, that poor fire never had a chance.



















It turns out that every school in Bochum has St Martin's Day parades. But there are so many that they are spaced out over two weeks, so as to prevent the world's most massive traffic-jam-inducing, lantern-waving, Bretzel-eating parade of children. Sure enough, the other night, from our balcony, I heard a brass band playing some vaguely familiar Martinstag tunes.

It's pretty cool here in Bochum, once it begins to feel familiar. Happy St. Martin's Day!

-Marc

Etosha and home

Our next 3 days were spent in Rundu, visiting the Orphans and Vulnerable Children project (for more on the OVC, check out the Neufeld's blog), going with Daryl and Sabrina and some volunteers to do home-based care for the OVC, and touring the hospital.

We went for dinner with other missionaries at a lodge overlooking the river bordering Angola, and enjoyed Kudu steaks! We also visited some friends of Daryl and Sabrina and had a delicious lamb braai (BBQ). We were even given an ostrich egg (which did make it home safely)!

After Rundu, we drove to Etosha. Along the way, we stopped to see Mufasa, a 'tame' lion. I scratched his belly and shook his hand. Pretty crazy!

In Etosha we found the Onguma Safari Camp where we set up our tent, cooked our chicken and preassembled potato packs and went to sleep listening to lions rumbling not very far off. I comforted myself with recalling the strong fence and gate which we found wide open the next morning at 6am!! Lions can still eat you in the morning...why did they leave it open?? Another question I have is why the German guys at the next campsite felt the need to blast "Ave Maria" before bed. It was a little surreal to brush my teeth while fighting the urge to break out into my best operatic stylings.

In Etosha, we saw SO MANY amazing animals. Oh look, a giraffe! Wow, an actual rhino! Hey, an ostrich! O my goodness, there's a pair of lions!!

We got up early each morning, and the motto of the day was, "Keep your eyes peeled!" Here's some photos of us with peeled peepers:

Not necessarily so attractive, but we were pretty good spotters. Until...

We had been driving for a while without seeing anything. All of a sudden, some sharp-eyed person saw a turtle. We backed up and found it. Sabrina got out (yes, there are signs everywhere saying not to exit the vehicle, but hey, we hadn't seen anything for miles...) to take some photos. Marc was driving, and joked that this was just the time to see a leopard. Just then, he looked into the bush straight in front of the van, and spotted the evil grin of a hyena. A HYENA.











Marc had just one word to say: "Sabrinagetbackinthecar! Sabrinagetbackinthecar!! Sabrinagetbackinthecar!!! She did. She even got a photo of the hyena bush. We all laughed nervously for the next few miles. And no one got out of the car again.

No one else knew it was Thanksgiving, but we were very excited to have Kudu steak again for our Thanksgiving dinner at the Halali resort. Just before dinner, we went to the waterhole that is just outside the resort, and lit by spotlights. We happened to see a rhino - very rare and exciting. After dinner we went and sat for an hour or so, and only saw a jackal. Bah! We already saw one of them things - and way closer too! Our lack of results later just underlined the excitement and good fortune of seeing the rhinoceros earlier. We went to bed happy.

We drove to Tsumeb, a beautiful little town, had a quick lunch at Wimpy's and said goodbye to Daryl and Sabrina. It was pretty tearful on both sides. We had had a wonderful time with our good friends. Thanks for the memories!!

Marc and I checked into our hotel, and napped. Keeping your eyes peeled all day can be exhausting! :)We did a quick tour of the block around our hotel, but it was pretty deserted on a Sunday. We did get some beautiful shots in the light of the setting sun.We had a yummy dinner at the hotel. Fish and steak. The waitress asked us, "How must it be cooked?" so earnestly, it was as if it was life and death. Which, I guess, it was...

We watched a little South African TV before bed - a game show and a sitcom. Funny. It's so strange how everything was in English which makes it much easier in some ways than living in Germany. Much harder in other ways. We had lots to think and talk about - nice to have the down time before going back to our new home away from home, and children that don't really allow for much debriefing.

In the morning, Marc picked up our car at the Avis car rental. He was very nervous about this because he had overheard someone talking the night before about how hard it was to get a rental car. Thankfully Marc had made a reservation, so our car had been driven up from Windhoek the night before. There were no cars available for drop-ins. So, we drove ourselves to Windhoek in our little car with the steering wheel on the wrong side and no AC in 40 degree weather. We stopped in Okahandja just before Windhoek to have lunch and buy our last souvenirs. We also tried to have cool drinks, but the 'cool' don't last too long.

We pulled into our pension and relaxed around the pool for a few minutes, watching a little bird who was missing a foot. He looked like he had a peg leg, but he did just fine. He looked tough, though. Like you wouldn't want to meet him in the birdhouse alley after dark.

We located the shopping area for the next day, and scoped out a few places before they closed. Then we headed to Joe's Beerhouse for the Bushman's Sosatie: a skewer of crocodile, ostrich, zebra, kudu and chicken. We thought that crocodile really does taste like chicken, but the locals (like our Chobe guide, Innocent) say chicken tastes like crocodile. Whatever. Yummy!

The next day we shopped, had a delicious lunch in a little cafe (including carrot/orange/ginger juice) and headed to the airport. No delays like on the way to Africa (7 hours late -did we mention that? Also that they temporarily lost our luggage?), it was mercifully uneventful.
And so ended our first experience of Africa. I feel like this trip has just whetted my appetite. What an amazing place. So many challenges for the locals and anyone trying to bring support. We are thankful for our time and can't wait to see Africa and Daryl and Sabrina again! :)

Chobe Game Reserve

Day 2 was a trip to Botswana. Amazing!! Check out the Chobe game reserve at this website: www.botswana-places.co.za/chobe

The morning was a boat trip along the river between Namibia and Botswana.

We saw so many animals - elephants thundering down the hill toward us and splashing around in the water, hippos yawning, Cape buffalo by the billions, crocodiles pretending to be logs, logs pretending to be crocodiles...

The afternoon was a driving safari. With our guide Innocent driving, we saw more elephants, including a rather close encounter with a single elephant. He came VERY close to us - no one was even breathing! No cats, unfortunately. Still, amazing and FUN!

Driving from Zambia to Botswana was interesting in itself. We were thankful for our guide who helped us do customs. We passed maybe 60 transport trucks waiting to take a ferry over to Botswana - it can only take one at a time, so drivers wait sometimes for 2 weeks. It's unreal. Lots of prostitution and trouble with all those bored drivers sitting around for weeks at a time. Anybody want to build a bridge?

That evening we tried a traditional African restaurant where the waitresses wore traditional clothing and we heard an awesome band. We were given a welcome drink made with corn which is an odd taste and texture for a drink, we found. Luckily, the actual meal was much more to our liking - chicken with peanut sauce, with wild eggplant and sweet potato leaves for vegetables. Dinner was accompanied at first by some drumming which was cool at first, but I had had enough after about 30 minutes. African rhythms are way too complicated for me, so it seemed kind of random and noisy, and it was a wee bit tricky to talk over the ruckus. We tried though, and Daryl and Sabrina told us of their experiences at the hospital. (Heart-breaking and frustrating most of the time, it seems -- power outages causing deaths, lack of training and compassion on the part of most medical professionals, wards based on gender only, putting TB patients, burn victims, psych patients etc all together....A surprising thing is that the pharmacy is well stocked. There is enough stuff, there isn't enough staff. Daryl and Sabrina are trying to influence change, but it's a slow process.) So after a lot of drumming, other musicians joined the lonely drummers, and the ensemble was fantastic. We had a great time talking and enjoying our banana splits.

Next day was the afore blogged gorge activities and Livingston Island - here's a double rainbow at the very edge of the falls.

The following day, we made the long drive back to Rundu (about 8 hours), stopping in Katima to shop for baskets and wraps. We saw many fires along the way and miles and miles of trenches dug for internet cable. Also frequently visible were cows and goats which were actually quite dangerous since they run onto the road without warning. Even elephants do, especially at dusk when the tarmac remains warm as the air cools. Unfortunately, early on in the road trip, we hit a baby goat. He didn't suffer. Despite the casualty, we had a lot of fun talking and listening to music. I took a million blurry pictures through the window of gigantic termite hills and tiny roadside villages.

Africa...