Outapi Baobob Tree

Trips to Outapi are always a refreshing break from village life.  It’s nice to be in the company of Americans (and Swiss) from time to time who understand everything you say and just in general the trials of being a volunteer.  I recently escaped marking countless papers to go to Outapi for the weekend to a birthday party.  We had a lovely dinner where they even went to Oshakati beforehand to buy the nicest cuts of pork and beef they could find and we enjoyed our braii with a class of South Africa’s finest red wine Tassenberg.  (Okay so Tassenberg may not be the finest red wine, but it is the only wine available in Outapi, the regional capital of my region, but it actually can be quite nice.  You can even go Namibian and add some sprite or coke to it to sweeten it up.)  One of the high lights of the trip was that during dinner we notices smoke rising from a few blocks over, so we go to the edge of the yard and sure enough there appears to be flames engulfing a building nearby.  We decide being the helpful and concerned volunteers we are to go and check it out and make sure everything is okay.  As we start walking towards the fire we can’t seem to find a building on fire.  It had been a few minutes later, we finished dinner before venturing out.  As we continue walking we do come across the Outapi Special School for slower learners and sure enough there was a huge pit in the earth that they had set ablaze full of rubbish.  So apparently this big fire we were worried about just turned out to be the reflection of the burning rubbish in the windows.

The next day we made a turn at Outapi’s single tourist attraction.  In the center of town they have a large Baobob tree that has been used as a post office, church and military base among other things.  So we just peaked around, took a few pics and talked to the guy who was running the tree.