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Hannah Russ and Lasse Schneider are our new weltwärts volunteers in Gobabis and have been supporting the project for a year since August. We are delighted by their wonderful commitment and share their first impressions with you:

We have only been here for a few weeks, but it feels like half an eternity - at least considering everything we've already experienced. On 12 August, we arrived in Namibia and were welcomed straight away by Ulrike Mai (National Coordinator of steps) and Jac-Louis van Rooyen and his family. In the next few days, he showed us a bit of Gobabis and introduced us to the project. As it was the last week before the holidays, the project had a holiday feeling and nothing really was happening anymore. The teachers, Gerald, Angela, Noubert and project manager Henk, were all open and friendly. Georg and Sibylle, also volunteers from Germany, helped us settle into the project and gave us ideas for the coming year. So already in our second week there was a Holiday Club, where we played, painted, sang and did sports with up to 170 children. The club only ran from 8-12 o'clock, but afterwards we were really exhausted. Even so, it was a lot of fun.

We used the rest of the holidays for our first trip through Namibia. We visited volunteers in Windhoek and Rehoboth and then travelled with them to Keetmanshoop, Lüderitz and Swakopmund. It was very nice and we already got lots of different impressions of Namibia.

The trip was also good for another reason, because when we got back to Gobabis we somehow really felt like we had arrived. Although Jac-Louis and Henk had taken good care of us, at the beginning we had the feeling of what on earth we were supposed to do in Gobabis for a year, as at first glance it looks like a small backwater without proper leisure activities. But the other volunteers had the same problems at first. Now we feel really at home in Gobabis and have got to know lots of people and already taken part in one or another event, such as a bike race.

By now, we volunteers have taken on many different tasks: for example, we teach the children in small groups the numbers up to 10 or how to write their names. We help in the kitchen with cooking and serving meals, or in the guardian angel programme and in the garden. In the afternoons, we then do homework with the schoolchildren or give maths and English tutoring. New is the German class, which we have been offering from 14:00-15:00 for a few weeks now.

In the afternoons we meet with Jac-Louis or Louisa, a volunteer our age from Germany who is helping out in the project for three months, or go into town, do sports and chill in the Roundhouse. The last few weeks have passed very quickly and we have almost been under time pressure 😉 If things keep going like this, the year will be over quickly.

The Roundhouse is simple, but we are settling in well and it is very cosy. Last week it was also painted by Henk and a few volunteers from South Africa with sun-reflective paint, which has made it pleasantly cool inside. We are also getting on well with the host family.

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