Spring 2015 - Day 88: Namibia (Easter Sunday)
Happy Easter!!
Some of the people on the ship had found a church to go to in town and invited anyone who wanted to go to meet at 9:15 in Tymitz Square.
Stephanie was going so I thought why not. It would be awesome to see a church service in Africa and it would definitely make it feel more like easter.
So I got up, put on a nice dress, and went. Once everyone had gathered we got off the ship and managed to convince the airport shuttle to take us to church.
He dropped us off at a gas station, which confused us all so much. But the church ended up being the nondescript building right next to the gas station. The name was right on the front in crisp, modern looking letters: Walvis Bay Community Church.
It was a very modern building on the inside. There was a seating area to the left, a bunch of high tables to the right, and a bar where they were filling cups of coffee in the middle of the room, just left of a set of double doors. A large cross draped in a cloth was in front of the doors.
I grabbed a bulletin and learned that there was an 8:30 service that was in Afrikaans and then the 10 o’clock service was in English. Very shortly after we got there people started pouring out of the doors.
There was considerably more people than I was expecting. Which was awesome.
Once the sanctuary had empty we walked through the double doors and up the stairs into it. It was arranged more like a theatre, with banked individual seats instead of pews. The stage at the front had various musical instruments on it, including a drum, a piano, and a guitar, and had a large projector screen hanging above it. The projector screen was running through various announcements and advertisements about happenings at the church.
Brianne and I were the first SASers in there and we chose seats more towards the back. We wanted to be respectful and not potentially take someones normal seat. But all of the other SASers went right up to the front and filled seats in the middle section. Then we just felt weird about being apart from them so eventually we moved and joined the rest of the group.
The service began with what seemed like a trailer for the Passion of the Christ movie. It was very bloody and definitely unexpected.
When it was over a women came up and sat behind the piano. She was joined by two other musicians. She welcomed everyone to the service and specifically mentioned all of us visitors from the U.S. Then she invited us to join her in song. We all stood and they sang 3 modern sounding songs and projected the lyrics onto the screen so that we could sing along.
Once they had finished the last song we all came together in prayer and then the pastor came up to speak.
He welcomed us again and again called out all of us from Semester at Sea. He made all of us stand up and say hello. He then opened the bible and realized he had the Afrikaans bible so he had to come down and get the other one.
Then he started to talk about the resurrection.
It felt a little like a lecture rather than a sermon. He had a powerpoint presentation with bullet points of why we should believe that the resurrection story is true.
He spoke for about 30ish minutes and referenced us visitors multiple times which was equal parts awesome and cool.
When we was done speaking the service was over. There wasn't another prayer or a closing song or anything. It was quite abrupt. As I was walking up the aisle to leave the sanctuary the women who had been playing the piano stopped me. She thanked me for coming and then asked if she could pray for me. I said that she could pray for this all as we finished our traveled. She ok, can I do it right now. That took me aback but I said of course. So a group of us stood in a circle and held hands and she prayed for our safe travels. It was lovely.
Honestly, I did not think that church would be anything like it was. But I really enjoyed it.
We had arranged for the airport shuttle guy to come back and pick us up but after 15 minutes we decided that he probably wasn't coming.
There was one cab that was hanging out by the gas station but he didn't seem to eager. For some reason no one seemed to keen to figure things out. I think because there was a huge group of us and no one really wanted to split us up. Which was ridiculous since that was the only solution. So we convinced that taxi driver to take some people as well as call a friend to come. So five of us got into that cab and took it back to the port. I was in that one so I am not sure what happened with the others but one other cab full of people showed up right after us and our cab said that he would go right back.
We got back on the ship, changed, and ate lunch. Then Stephanie and I set off for our own adventure.
We decided to go ATVing. Yes, it is against the rules. But we were going to do it anyway since it was one of the only things to do and it seemed like a ton of fun.
We had heard of a place that was right outside of Swakomund so we walked outside of the port and got a taxi. We shared the taxi with Austin and Kelly, who were going to go find horseback riding in Swakomund.
Only having 4 people in the cab was considerably more comfortable.
I definitely fell asleep during the ride and woke up suddenly when we pulled into the ATVing place. Steph and I went inside and asked about the ATVing. It was available for either one hour, two hours, or 90 minutes. We wanted to go for only 1 hour because it was the cheapest. The lady said that we would have to wait until 4pm for the one hour but we could do the two hours right then. So we said ok.
Then, a few minutes later she said that they had a one hour available at 2pm. That was only about an hour wait so we agreed. We asked if they had wifi and they said yes so we were especially fine with waiting.
It turned out to be really good wifi too.
She called us at two and we went into the back to get helmets. We were then introduced to our guide and he brought us out to our ATVs.
He gave us quick instructions. Basically, don't horse play around, stay in a single file line with the group. Leave plenty of space between you and the person in front of you and make sure you give enough gas to go up hills. He then taught us a bunch of hand signals that he would use to tell us to stop or let us know that there was a drop off on one side.
Then we were off. It was AWESOME. ATVing through the sand was so much fun. We started off on a normal dirt road to get out to the dunes and then we set off across the perfect yellow sand.
It was not challenging, the ATVs moved easily across the sand and someone only got stuck once going up a hill. We just followed the tracks of the guide, who went all over the place, some times following the tracks of those that came before us and sometimes doing his own thing.
We stopped in the middle of the desert at one point and our guide showed us how we could jump off our ATVs to take pictures. I think that was the best part of the whole day, jumping off the ATV.
Our ride back was better than the ride there because he rearranged the order we road in. We were with four other random people and the woman was the slowest rider out of all of us. On the way she was in the middle of the pack and so we kept having to stop and wait for the second half to catch up. He moved her to the front on the way back so that we were all following her pace and could stay together. I think being right behind the guide gave her more confidence because we went faster on the way back.
We arrived back in one piece, just a little sandier. Stephanie and I sat in the building for a long time after we were done just using the wifi. More SASers showed up and went off ATVing, leaving two girls behind to wait for them.
Stephanie and I had thought about going back into Swakomund to eat dinner and see another movie. But when it started to get close to 5 o’clock and we started to have to think about how we were getting back, we decided that we only wanted to try and get a cab once.
I went to the women at the front desk and asked if she could call me a cab. She was very unsure but called a few numbers. She didn't get an answer. I gave her the number of Nessy, the cab driver that took us to Dune 7, but there was no answer there either.
So Stephanie and I packed up our stuff and walked out towards the road. In the middle of the parking lot the shuttle driver of the ATV place saw us walking and asked where we were going. When we told him Walvis Bay and he shook his head - too far. But he said he had a friend that he could call. His friend said that it would be 200 Namibian Dollars, which we agreed to. We couldn't really negotiate, at that point it was our only way back.
We offered the two girls who were waiting to share the cab with us but they said they were unaware of their plans. It took about 10 minutes for the guy to get there and in that time the rest of their group came back. They denied our offer and so Stephanie and I set out by ourselves. We thought it was silly of them to not take us up on a ride back. There were 7 of them, which meant that they would need two cabs and we had just experienced how hard it was to get one.
I hope they figured it out.
We had the cab driver drop us off at The Raft. We both needed food and we wanted to eat off the ship one last time before our 12 day stretch.
I got a chicken burger and it was one of the most delicious things I have ever had. For dessert I got an Amarula ice cream sundae with peaches. That might have been one of my favorite meals in country. Probably because I was just so hungry.
As soon as we had finished eating, which actually took a while, we went back outside to wait for the shuttle. There were so many SASers leaving The Raft at that time that we had to be a little aggressive getting on the shuttle. Then everyone proceeded to jam themselves inside the tiny shuttle, which left me with someones butt in my face.
Luckily the second shuttle pulled up at that moment and we forced everyone standing to get out and go on the other one. The ride back was much more enjoyable after that.
Back on the ship it was right to bed. My plan for tomorrow was to jump on the lay down sand boarding trip and it left fairly early. Austin had said that he had gotten a ticket from someone and so knew there was room left on the trip. I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be like the first day, with only a capacity of 10.
