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As we wrote to you in our last newsletter, we visited Namibia in February/March en of course paid a visit to Siama. We enjoyed the progress of our project as well as ‘our’ girls at Siama.

The girls are very happy and enthousiastic. Some of them are definitely in their puberty years, which does give the occasional confrontations with house mother Apollonia and Heike, our manager. But we will bear this as facts of life, so to speak…..

Our housemother Apollonia is doing an amazing job and we have a lot of admiration for her. She is running a household with 17 children (she has a baby of her own). There is definitely a good atmosphere and she manages to keep the place calm and in good spirit, regularity, giving each girl attention, etc. The girls all wear clean clothes, and Apollonia sees to it every night that they shower, brush their teeth, etc.

She also takes responsibility of making the weekly menu’s. Herein she takes care that everybody gets a healthy and varied meal with lots of fresh vegetables, mostly coming out of our own garden.

Heike, together with a gardener, is taking care of the vegetable garden. Sometimes the girls are helping them out with that. It is definitely a lot of work. The garden needs to be sprinkled every day which takes a lot of time. During our visit, we saw peppers, aubergines, zucchini’s, salad, leeks and cucumbers. Everything looked fantastic.

Arrival

When we arrived in Omaruru the girls were happy and were litteraly clinging to our arms and showing their affection. Because that is certain, as every child they are really in need of attention and love. They want to do everything for you. Our car, which we rented, was very dirty and was full of mud (it is raining season). We asked them if they could clean the car. As they have no vacuum cleaner, they used a broom and cleaned the inside of the car. The outside of the car was cleaned with water and newspapers (yes!!) and the result was fantastic!!

We gave them a special party evening, which we organized for them. This consisted of games, songs, dances, etc.

For the whole group, we gave them a talking globe. This teaches them where the countries are in the world, what their capitol is, the oceans, population, etc. Very educational.

Also the children of the Don Boscoschool in Lisse, made presents for everybody like necklaces, bracelets, little books, cards, and a friendship book with photo’s and letters. The girls loved it, and didn’t know where to start with all these presents.

We also gave them a film to show them what it is like at a Dutch school. They watched it in full admiration and lots of questions were asked; why are they wearing winter clothes, is it cold, how do they get to school, why are they not wearing uniforms??

But the best present was that each girl got their own toiletbag full of samples. The past year we collected all kind of cosmetic samples, like lipstick, creams, lotions, shampoo etc. Everybody received a well filled toiletbag. And ofcourse they used it to the full content…. Legs were smeared with anti-wrinkle cream, lotion on your arms, lipstick everywhere….. They were over the moon!!

In short, we, and the girls, had a fantastic evening seeing so many happy faces.

The next day, Saturday, the girls were off school and the eldest girls had to help Apollonia with the laundry and ironing. This is the day that the school uniforms are washed. And also in the afternoon, just like during the schooldays, they have to do their homework. From 3 to 4 pm. They do their homework, supervised by Apollonia and Heike. If they haven’t finished, they have to continue after dinner. Yes, there is definitely discipline at Siama!

There is not a lot of things to do for the girls. Sporting clubs or hobby clubs are not present in Omaruru. Heike therefore started to introduce the girls to other parts of life, such as yoga lessons. She also does one hour a week self defence lessons with them. They listen very carefully to Heike’s explanation and they practise all the exercises together. They need to yell really hard, which they really like. Hopefully they will never need this practical exercises. But as you see, they are prepared for everything!

Last day

At the end of our stay, we went out for pizza with the girls at a local restaurant. They love it and it is always a special treat for them. The owner of the restaurant also gives them the chance to swim in the pool. The pool is not that big, so the girls have to swim in two groups. We taught the eldest to dive. Lots of fun, because a lot of ‘flat’ dives were made. We didn’t swim ourselves, but after the divinglessons, we were just as wet as they were!

For this time enough news from Siama. We are very happy that things are doing very well in Omaruru and that so many people in the Netherlands and abroad are supporting us financially!! Thank you very much.

Next time, we will tell you about a day at Siama. We will keep you informed.

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