Project Planning visits

The Project Managers have set off in very high spirits to go and visit their sites, meet their project partners and key contacts and start planning their projects. Cazza and Pete have headed north to see the site at Oshana where they will be building a school. Charlie and Rob are traveling with them as Otavi, where they will be building a playground, is relatively close to Oshana.

Tom and Dave may be back later than everyone else as their journey down to the Sperrgebiet has taken two days. They have met up with Tryge Cooper who is Raleigh’s project partner and will be working with them throughout the project.

Andy, Tim and Susie have gone off with Hendrick in one of the Landrovers to recce the first trek.

Kim, Helen and Lottie have stayed at Fieldbase to help with Host Country Participant selection and with preparing for the arrival of all of the 10 week participants

Each group has been in touch with Fieldbase. They are all having a really good time and we are looking forward to hearing all about their trips on Monday night when they return.

The Fieldbase team has been busy ordering all of the food and equipment for phase one and we have also delivered two days of training and induction for the Host Country Participants. Significant prowess was displayed by everyone during French Cricket and Ultimate Frisbee so the gauntlet has been well and truly laid down!

First Aid training

Our medics performing CPR on a rugby ball - sadly they were unable to resuscitate!

Photos from Daan Vilijoen

Making camp at Daan Vilijoen and slowly defrosting in the sunshine after the temperatures dropped to -6 during the night.

The arrival of the main staff group

It’s all very exciting as we now have a full staff team here in Namibia for the 10 week expedition. Everyone flew in on Friday’s night flight from Gatwick to start work straight away on Saturday morning (apart from Dave, John and Tim that is who had been lazing around in Windhoek for a few days!). We had a couple of intensive training days at Fieldbase before heading off to Daan Viljoen National Park for bush craft, radio communications and trekking practice. The self confessed kit anoraks (mentioning no names of course Charlie) got very into GPS systems and knot tying as the rest of us looked on in a slightly confused manner. However, with practice we learnt an awful lot and got almost as proficient as the experts.

We had a brilliant time and saw giraffe (baby ones too!!), zebra, wilderbeast, kudu and warthogs whilst trekking. Luckily the trek wasn’t against the clock as all three groups spent most of their time gazing in awe at the wildlife and the scenery.

The biggest challenge of the whole two days had to be crawling out of our sleeping bags at 5am each morning to find ice on our tents, inside and out! It actually dropped to -6% on Tuesday so it was only Andy’s fire lighting and Fionna’s porridge making skills that enabled us to start the day in any sort of active manner. We had a surprising (and reassuring!) number of creative and inventive cooks within the groups who turned rice, beans and lentils into a more than enjoyable alfresco dining experience.

The funniest moment of the trip had to be the remarkably enterprising baboon who invaded our campsite, probably after a lengthy stakeout, to steal a box of rusks (not the Farleys kind, more like biscotti and really very nice so he was obviously a discerning thief). He made off with them at high speed but failed to take into consideration our very own athlete Rob, who gave chase and in spite of a significant head start in the baboon’s favour, quickly gained on him. He returned (Rob that is, not the baboon) in semi triumphant fashion with the box, but unfortunately without its contents. He tipped off one of his friends the next day who came to attempt another raid, but thankfully our fearless leader Jim was on hand to escort him from the cooking area.