Go Sandboarding!

Katie’s favorite pastimes are still playing with kids and books. Puzzles rank a close third and often trump books if she’s really grumpy: there’s something about concentrating on which piece goes where that takes her mind off other troubles. Recently, we’ve had a lot of tea parties, although not your average china-and-pink-frilly-dress affairs. Our new favorite restaurant in Swakopmund is Napolitana, which we’ve been frequenting about once a week on our arrival from Windhoek to the coast (now that class is over, our flexible research schedule has returned). Katie stands on a wooden shelf and watches pizzas in construction: Roll the dough flat, cut it with a metal circle, sprinkle with flour and store in a pile. When a pizza order comes in, place the crust on a second counter, use a device a bit like a rolling meat tenderizer or massager to put tiny divets in the crust, then paint on a thin veneer of tomato sauce. Add toppings all the way to the edge. Katie prefers just plain Margherita (tomato and cheese, but she picks off the tomatoes even though she loves tomatoes and will eat them by the handful. Kids. Go figure.), but options include creamed chicken, spare ribs, springbok and more, stored in two dozen metal containers with lids, their contents precisely memorized by the pizza makers. After a thick layer of grated cheese, the pizza is popped into a cob oven (well, perhaps cob. Here in Namibia there’s the distinct possibility that it’s made of concrete – but it has the right round shape and turns out very tasty pizzas). The best part for Katie is when one of the pizza-makers gives her a ball of dough. First she slides under the table to try to get away with eating it raw. When her parents object, she rolls and pulls and tugs it into various shapes, lets it sit overnight to get its yeasty rising over with and lose a little water. Then we mold the dough into cups, saucers, spoons, sugar bowls, pitchers, and lids. They dry for a day and are ready to paint with finger paint. The result is clearly for pretending – something Katie has just gotten the hang of (“Don’t worry, Mama, I’m just a pretend lion.”). The dishes would droop with any liquid and in fact won’t handle much more than a week of playing (a perfect excuse to go get more dough…).
Katie’s language skills continue to amaze me. When there is too much adult conversation or science going on, she says, “I want someone to pay attention to ME!” (Either that or she yells and screams unintelligibly.) Bad smells such as tanneries along the road or rotting seals on the beach are pronounced “Disgusting!” She will often tell elaborate stories about animals chasing each other – usually the springbok escapes, and I haven’t yet been able to get her to see it from the perspective of the hyena, who goes hungry. Some of her statements really indicate what a sponge she is for language: “Dorothea [her much-loved doll who has 2 broken legs, a cracked head, and a face painted with blue pen to look like a hyena] is sleeping, but I am getting up to do some work.” “You go from the mussel shell to the gerbil hole, while I sit on the jackal bush.” She makes up songs – sometimes with an odd assortment of Mother Goose phrases – and at the end asks, “Was that a nice song?” Her tenses still get mixed up a bit, but it’s English, so no wonder: I goed. I falled. A shining moment was rhyming “pocket” with “chocolate.” Possibly a fluke…!
One of the earliest polysyllabic words Katie learned was “sandboarding.” We have a beautiful card game of Namib desert plants and animals – her fourth favorite thing to do, which we’ve been playing a bit like “Go Fish.” If you have a scorpion card and want to collect all 4 arachnids, you ask another player if they have an arachnid (At this point, with Katie, we put all our cards out on the table for everyone to see, and she usually won’t ask for an arachnid even if it’s obvious in my hand. And she definitely won’t give up a flamingo or ostrich to complete my bird set! Of course, we play by “Katie’s rules.”). If the other person doesn’t have what you want or won’t give it up, you “Go Sandboarding.” Go Fish didn’t seem to make sense, given that the backs of the cards show unending red sand dunes.
On a weekend in early November, we actually did go sandboarding, joining the Lightfoot/Plummers for a morning of adrenaline-rushing, high-speed thrills with Alter Action on the red dunes near Swakopmund. They provided helmets, elbow pads, and gloves (none small enough for Katie, whom we dressed in a way that we hoped would at least protect her from the sun, our worst worry). They also provided rectangular boards of flexible masonite, about 1.2 x0.6 m, which were waxed on their smooth side. We marched up the sand dunes, lay down on our tummies on the rough side, held up the front of the board slightly, and tried to go head-first. Some of the group personally experienced what happens when you let down the front of the board (huge clouds of sand in your eyes, nose, ears and teeth) or spin to go side- or feet-first (the board digs in and flips you over on top of your passenger). These events were somewhat traumatic for the 5-10 year old girls experiencing them, but they made for the best video footage (the video, complete with soundtrack, was included in the price of the trip, along with lunch – not bad for N$200 per adult). Even the girls thought their wipeouts looked pretty exciting on screen – at least, if you’re going to crash your sandboard, it’s better if the photographer is actually around to capture the event! Katie, fortunately, weathered the day without anything worse than a faceplant, self-induced when she ran down a dune so steep and fast that her head got ahead of her feet. The rest of the time, she clung like a baby baboon to mom or dad’s back, smiling (we have it on video!), even occasionally whooping (can’t be heard over the soundtrack), at speeds up to 59 kph (our guides clocked us with a speed gun). Well, she also clung to our backs on the way back up, making the climb an extra good workout for her parents. We were very proud of Katie’s courage, excitement, and willingness to try new things – enabling us to have one of our most exhilarating experiences of Namibia. It’s true. Sandboarding is a blast!!! That day really felt like a vacation.