Holiday Part 2: Namibia

After having a thoroughly enjoyable time back home it was a great feeling to know that when I landed back in Namibia my holiday wasn’t over!

After picking up the rental car I ended up getting a bit lost in Windhoek due to me being extremely tired (and stupid) but I eventually made it to Arrebusch guest lodge where I met up with Kate. I was very pleased to see her and she appeared pleased to see me however she was rather more excited to see the 4kg of dark chocolate Toblerone I bought for her from the duty free shop, that’s right 4kg!!!!! I am a bloody good boyfriend am I not?? :)

I was far too tired to venture out anywhere so we just relaxed at Arrebusch and ate at their restaurant, which was excellent (the food there is probably the main reason me and Kate keep returning.) The next morning we headed of to the airport and picked up my sis and Jim. After a quick lunch we said goodbye to Kate and headed back to Arrebusch where this time it was Kate and Jim who were too tired to go anywhere. So the next morning is where our holiday really began!

Our first destination was Soussesvlei, but to get there we had a good 4-hour drive south ahead of us. Soussesvlei is an area consisting of stunning sand dunes and is one of Namibia’s most popular natural attractions. It has been a place I have been dying to see ever since I arrived in Namibia and it exceeded my expectations, being there was like being on another planet and all three of us loved climbing/sliding up and down the dunes.

Also, our accommodation near Soussesvlei was amazing as our room/tents were located in the dessert with stunning views of the Namib-Naukluft mountains. And my two years in Africa has helped turn me into a braai master and I thoroughly enjoyed cooking over a fire under a moonless sky with millions of stars above us – it was a fantastic start to our Namibia hols!



Our next stop took us right to the coast to Swakopmund. Swakop is Namibia’s prime holiday destination and is famous for all kinds of extreme sports and exciting activities. I have seen many of my CCF colleagues leave and return with amazing stories over the past two years and for one reason after another I have been unable or forbidden to go, so it was an amazing feeling to finally drive into Swakopmund and set eyes on the South Atlantic ocean for the first time.

We again lucked out with our accommodation, which was a very nice two-bedroom apartment with a sea view. When I booked this trip there were four things I just had to do in Swakop and I am pleased to say over our three-night stay we managed to do all four. The first was to go quad biking and sand boarding in the dunes and I can’t even describe just how much fun it was!


The second was to have dinner at the Tug restaurant, which is famous for its seafood; I had very nice calamari and kingklip and even braved the oysters that Kate had raved to me about although they did little to convert me. My sis and Jim had the………….chicken (although they also braved the oysters, again there were no converts!).

The third was to kayak in Walvis Bay with the sea lions, which was another amazing experience and something I will definitely try and do again before my time in Namibia is up.


The final thing I had to do was visit the craft market and test out my haggling skills. When we arrived we found that we were the only visitors in sight and were instantly pounced upon by the craft sellers and luckily for us all of them were offering a ‘special price’. Their special prices however were aimed at gullible first time tourists and so the haggling began. My greatest success was to get my favorite craft seller and fellow Liverpool supporter to come down from $2000 to $740 for two impressive woodcarvings. Again, never underestimate the power of the English charm!

Sadly after only three days it was time to head to CCF where we would stay the night before setting of early to Etosha. I took my sis and my cousin Ayesha there last year but unfortunately it was during the rainy season and animal sightings were not as plentiful as we would have hoped. This time our chances would be better and as it turned out I had my most successful Etosha trip yet! As well as plenty of Zebra, Springbok and Giraffe our sightings included 2 Leopards, 14 Rhino, Elephants, Hyeana, Honey Badger, Civet, Genet and a huge Male lion.




Kate and Jim’s last two days were spent at CCF and I got to show them our recently born livestock guarding dog puppies and take them feeding where they met the greatest cheetah in the world, my beautiful Xena!



The two weeks flew by and sadly one of the best holidays I’ve had was over :( Kate and myself took the day of and drove my sis and Jim to the airport and we said our goodbyes - How my sis managed to squeeze all the souvenirs she bought into her suitcases I will never know!

With Kate and Jim safely on the plane Kate and I made our way to Joe’s Beer House where we met up with some past CCF volunteers to enjoy one last night of freedom before getting back to work. It was also the night of England’s opening game in the 2010 World Cup. But more on that to come……

Holiday Part 1: Home

Despite the best efforts of the Namibian authorities I finally made it home for my holiday. It was great to see my family and friends and I had a fantastic time. Here are some of the highlights:

One of my favorite places in England has to be the Cornish Cyder Farm, at this magical place you can learn how cyder is made and enjoy free samples! They also serve the best Cream Tea in the world - for those who don't know, a cream tea is a pot of tea served with scones with clotted cream and Jam .........delicious!! Knowing of my love of the place and my wish to pick up a Cornish Rattler glass my lovely sis and her boyfriend Jim decided to take me to Cornwall for a weekend. It was great being at the coast and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Cyder Farm, I enjoyed some free samples, picked up some Rattler Cyder and of course had a cream tea! Other highlights of the trip included having proper English Fish and Chips and playing some crazy golf.





It was nice to see my cats, Sam and Robbie again and I was pleased to find that they still remembered me and came up looking for attention. The two boys are starting to look their age now but are well looked after by mum and sis.


When I had to cancel my holiday in March due to visa issues I was thoroughly peed off and thought the world was against me. However, I then found out that my rescheduled holiday would mean I was in the UK at the same time Infected Mushroom were playing their only UK gig of the year, it was fate! I quickly booked up my tickets and on the 21st of May myself and my good friend Dan traveled to London and spent 6 glorious hours raving it up through the night to Psychedelic trance acts - the highlight being a two hour set by the Room! It was AWESOME!!!




I LOVE theme parks and haven't been to one in two years so again my wonderful sis stepped up and despite not being a fan of almost all theme park rides took me along to Thorpe Park where I had great fun trying out all the rides, the best was the 'Saw' which made even this hardcore roller coaster fan feel queasy at the end.


The night before I was due to fly back out to Namibia we had a family meal out at a local Pub and the grub served up was unbelievably good.


So there we have it, thanks to my mum and sis I really enjoyed my time back in the UK and was sad to leave so soon. But upon arrival in Namibia I would begin the second half of my hols with sis and Jim traveling around Namibia! Blog coming soon :)

Bush Cricket

You may remember me talking about the introduction of cricket to CCF in a previous blog. And here is proof that its really taken of and the fields of Boskop (and donkeys) now regularly bare witness to titanic sporting battles on Sunday afternoons.

The pictures you see before you are from the first of the Boskop Test matches where CCF staff and volunteers formed teams of two and took turns to bat. Now, I have to say that I am rather good at her majesty's game so to make it fair I chose the Morkel as my partner who seriously failed to impress during our dinosaur weekend knock-around. So the game got underway and me and the Morkel took to the field and waited for our turn to bat.


Wickets fell at a quick pace, which was to be expected as most of the participants had never played the game before and it took them a while to learn the rules, especially the Americans who had a tough time realizing that they weren't playing Baseball.

Finally it was team Cleverley's turn and what followed will go down in the Boskop halls of fame as we proceeded to annihilate the competition! The Morkel summoned the eye of the tiger from somewhere and smashed the ball all over the park and at one point I hit the ball so hard that it literally disappeared. By the time the Morkel was bowled out we had racked up a monstrous 70 runs, a score that would prove unsurpassable by the others and the game was won!


There was some whining from the losers that we had hustled everyone and I knew of the Mighty Morkel's skill with the bat, but I can honestly say I didn't and her transformation from a hopeless amateur to cricket genius was worthy of a blockbuster sports movie with a montage.

Despite everyone taking defeat badly everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the great game did a fantastic job unifying multiple nationalities (Namibian, South African, American, British and even French) in a common cause :)

Photos by Rob Thomson

Morkel No More

Its taken me a while to post this one but I couldn't not do a blog about the departure last month of a CCF legend....the mighty Cheri Morkel. Cheri is of to the big lights of Windhoek where she'll be working at a veterinary clinic there. However, at this very moment she is in the states meeting up with Leigh and has by now probably eaten half of the USA's chocolate supply and gained another Morkel in weight (yes you can use a Morkel as measurement of weight as well).

So Cheri requested a country hoe down for her farewell bash and wanted to have it in our barn, so we could have a proper barn dance! However, we were never going to be given the OK for that so I did my best and transformed our visitor centre into a barn complete with two tractors parked outside.


Many people thought I was mad but it was worth it as lil Cheri loved it and the scene was set for barn stopin' hootanany! A great night was had eating great food of the braii and dancing long into the night to country classics such as 'Achey Breaky Heart' and 'Cotten Eye Joe' :)


The Morkel will be greatly missed but her legend will continue especially with the installation of the Morkel meter, which is now the most common way of measuring things at CCF. We all wish her well for her new life in the city and hope its not too long until we can meet up again :)

Friends of Thad and The Joy Centre

Its hard to believe its been a year since we lost Thad Owens, one of the nicest people and biggest characters I think I will ever meet. I have often thought about him over the last year and just as I said in my tribute to Thad last year a smile or a laugh often followed.

This week myself and Kate had the pleasure of meeting Thad's sister Jessica and her husband Garrett. They have traveled to Namibia to visit the places Thad stayed during the last months of his life and oversee the construction of a new building at the Joy Centre in Otjiwarongo.

The Joy Centre is a home for vulnerable children and orphans and during Thad's stay with us in 2009 he and the other Florida students visited the Centre every weekend to spend time with the kids and help out. In Thad's memory a charitable organization was formed to help raise funds for the Centre. Please check out their website at: http://www.thadowensjoy.org and give them your support if you can :)

It was really great meeting Jessica and Garret who were a pleasure to be with and it was really nice to show them around CCF and pass on some of the stories we had about our time with Thad. It was also Thad's birthday last week and his family and friends had a birthday bash in his honor. Happy birthday buddy, you are gone but definitely not forgotten :)

Goodbyes, Cricket and Dinosaurs

We have recently had to say goodbye to not one but three of our staff. Leigh has been our director’s PA for just over a year and has just been accepted into Grad school at Yale University. We have known Leigh’s time was up for a while and were very pleased with the news of her success and see her moving on.

However, the departure of our Operation’s Manager Glen and his wife Natalie was sudden and is a real blow. Glen arrived in November 09 and is hugely experienced and has worked in South Africa and New Zealand. Having Glen and Natalie here over the last four months has been amazing, we have all learned a lot from Glen and have really appreciated the effort he put in trying to make CCF a better place. Whereas Natalie wasn’t strictly staff she felt like it as she was always mucking in and helping out when it was needed and always seemed to have a smile on her face and do her best to cheer you up when you were feeling down. But alas, it was not to be and Glen and Nat decided to move on.

Glen really appreciated the hard work we all put in and one of the things Glen initiated here at CCF was a regular staff outing, allowing us to get away and unwind. He regularly took staff up to the Waterburg Plateau – one of Namibia’s famous geological features and only an hour and half’s drive away, but believe or not most of us here had never been up it. So in their last week here Glen and Nat organized a trip to see the world’s best-preserved dinosaur footprints. As many CCF staff as possible signed up and we had a fantastic night camping under the stars and enjoyed a braii. The highlight of the campfire talk was a discussion about Rob ‘Warlock’ Thomson – is he a machine, a supernatural being or a 2000 year old Egyptian mummy? At the time of this discussion the Warlock was passed out on the floor in a coma-esque state and posing like Tutankhamen. When he did arise he retreated to his one-man tent, which looked like some kind of alien re-charge pod from a sci-fi movie.

In the morning we had a great breakfast around the fire and then played a bit of Cricket! Myself, James and Gail are very familiar with the great game and had a bit of difficulty explaining the rules to the Americans and French. But the game got going and it was a huge hit, especially with Leigh who actually had some natural talent. Stay tuned to the African Adventure, as there will be more about the introduction of Cricket to CCF!


After Cricket we then went to the footprints and for me it was really interesting to imagine a dinosaur walking exactly where I was standing, especially when I put my hand in one of the footprints. For those who lacked imagination (the French) they were a bit of an anti-climax and yes, I entertained everyone by humming the Jurassic Park theme which no one found annoying at all.


Back at CCF we threw a farewell party for all three and if you ever wondered what it would look like to see Rob Thomson dancing with the Morkel to the Y.M.C.A then wonder no more…….

I was DJ so I of course had to introduce the uninitiated to Infected Mushroom and believe it or not Glen and Nat were fans and mashed it up on the dance floor to ‘I’m the Supervisor’……

Sadly the day came to say goodbye. We all wish Leigh good luck with her new adventure and whichever organization receives Glen and Nat will be very lucky indeed.

Little Britain

If things had gone according to plan I would be sitting at my home in England right now catching up with my sis and enjoying my Mum's cooking but my love affair with Namibian authorities continues (I have previously had the pleasure of sitting in customs for 8 hours when i first arrived). This time the government have decided to put a hold on all work visa application forms until after they have a 'committee meeting' (I have to apply for a new visa every 3 months). Therefore, if I turned up at the airport without proof that I was legally allowed to be here I would be arrested. I find this out the day before my flight and lets just say happy I was not!

However, Kate and I still went to Windhoek and enjoyed a very relaxing weekend eating great food, going to the movies and shopping at the Mall. It was at the Mall where I saw something that I knew I had to buy and bring back to Boskop.....a dart board! I thought that if I couldn't go back to the UK I would bring the UK to Africa. So upon my return to CCF I enjoyed a couple of days of and went about creating my own English pub far away from home. The dart board went up along with some football memorabilia and some photos of classic english culture. The bar itself was equipped with Union Jacks, crisps, peanuts and of course a healthy supply of booze!!


I am very proud to say that the Boskop Arms’ opening night was a huge success and everyone had a great time playing darts, being served drinks by a generous host and dancing long into the night (which is about 11pm for us here at CCF!)



So there we have it, the Boskop Arm's is open for business, feel free to pop by anytime :)