Count Arthur will soon be home

Hello from sunny Namibia! Lots of children have been asking Mrs Conway where I am and I thought I better let you know I am still in Namibia. We had such a fabulous trip and I made all sorts of new friends that I haven't returned to Miriam Lord just yet. I will be coming home at Christmas and will see you all then.

Mrs Conway took me to Damaraland after we went to the Namib desert and it was completely different to everywhere we had been before. In places it was a little creepy as it looked like we were on another planet with rocky, dusty moonscapes and we drove for hours and hours and never saw anybody, I was a little scared because we went through the Skeleton coast and I wasn't sure why it had that strange name.....

Damaraland was lovely and I spent time with a family who thought we all looked a little strange and when I shared my sweets, the little boy wasn't sure what to do with them as he had never had one before. I've never had to teach anyone to eat a sweet before and it made me realise how different we all are.

We drove for hours and hours and hours to the Kalihari desert. Mrs Conway had made me a special place on the front seat of the truck but as I started to see the road signs going past I decided to sit in the back with Shona (Mrs Conway's daughter) because I got a little nervous. I am only a little llama after all.

We don't get roadsigns like these in Bradford and when Mrs Conway explained to Shona, Sean and I that if we did come across elephants that she would have to drive slowly past and we would have to stay quiet and not make a noise to scare them or they might get nervous and stampede. Mrs Conway also pointed out that elephants are much bigger than the truck we were in so I was a little bit jittery. Thankfully, nothing happened .... on that day .... and we soon got to our camp.

Shona wondered why there were no fences at our "camp site". Mrs Conway explained that this was an open fenced camp so that we could "be at one with nature" so animals could roam freely and we would be able to see how animals really live in the wild. The game ranger told us we could only walk around at night outside of our tent with a ranger who had a torch and a gun! It was very strange sleeping in our canvas tent at night, listening to lions making load growling and roaring noises. One day the game ranger in the camp told us that whilst we had been out trekking some rhinos that elephants had come in and trampled over some of the camp too. (I kept all my best toys in the truck just in case it happened again).

We spent a few days here and I fell in love with the place so decided to stay a little longer with my new springbok friends. Not even the day when we were stampeded by a herd of elephants protecting their young was I put off. Even though, Shona and I saw our lives flashing by in front of our eyes at that time,  as the massive mama elephants trumpeted and started to charge towards us. Mrs Conway did ask if we could take a photo of this whilst we accelerated off at top speed with the elephants running behind us but we weren't too keen on the idea so we can't show you the terrifying event.

I don't like it when the lions make all the noise at night, it's quite scary because you can tell that they are really close. However, running free around the desert with all my springbok (a kind of deer) friends makes it all worth while.

It was a sad day with we waved Mrs Conway off at the airport but I will be with you all at Miriam Lord soon. Thank you for all your kind comments.

Count Arthur

Dino and Lion cycle to Africa

Mrs Conway has been reading about other animals who blog. Dino and Lion are cycling with their primary school teacher to Cape Town in South Africa. They are cycling from England to Africa visiting many different countries along the way for charity. They are doing it to raise awareness about street children in Africa.

You can follow their journey too at http://dinoandlion.wordpress.com/

    

Alan does the Drummond Road community consultation

Alan was a very happy pet today. Normally, on a weekend, Alan tidies the classroom and enjoys the peace and quiet after a hectic week. However today there was much excitement. Miriam Lord was hosting a community consultation for the new Drummond Road site that it has acquired.

The whole community was invited to visit the school and the site on Drummond Road. There were lots of visitors and fun activities going on throughout. As the year 6 team were running the Human Fruit machine stall Alan came downstairs to join in with the fun and excitement.

He was particularly impressed with the Year 3 stall, which sold biscuits made by the Year 3 pupils earlier in the week, and said they were a very tasty treat. Alan was unsuccessful on the tombola that Year 2 provided and was rather hoping to win the yellow spiky hedgehog :( . Year 1 were raising money for Marie Curie and provided a fun activity of planting your own daffodil bulb.

However, being biased, after all Alan is a Year 6 dinosaur, he thought the human fruit machine provided the most fun and he was lucky enough to win a chocolate bar.

Count Arthur visits the Namib Desert

Well, I finally arrived in Namibia after a week in South Africa and couldn't believe it as the plane landed.... there was only sand and scrub to be seen for miles and miles around! Windhoek is the capital city of Namibia and Mrs Conway went there to hire a 4 wheel drive car (well it was more of a truck actually). The man in the garage showed Mrs Conway how to drive in sand and gravel (as there are hardly any tar roads in Namibia) and I got a bit worried when he then explained how to protect the car during the frequent sand storms on the coast. I got even more worried when the man went on at great length about what to do in an emergency when an animal, like an elephant, collides with your car, and all the items he gave us in the first aid kit and talk of snakes and baboons. I'm only a little llama after all.

We started our adventure into the Namib desert the next day and it was a little creepy as we drove on dusty sandy or gravel roads and only saw 3 other cars and 4 farms... It took us all day to get to Sossusvlei, which is the home of the world's largest sand dunes, and I was very excited to see all the wildlife that was running about around us. We saw oryx, baboons, warthogs, mongoose, ground squirrels, springboks and lots more. I was just nodding off, as it was very very hot in the car, when I was THROWN OUT of my seat (on the front passenger side in a little pocket Mrs Conway had made for me so that I could see out the front... I am only a little llama, but unfortunately this meant I was not wearing a seat belt.) A zebra had come flying out of the scrub and ran right across the road infront of us. Thankfully this was near the end of the journey so I managed to recover by the side of the pool when we arrived at the ranch.

Driving in the sand was quite tricky, you have to take a lot of the air out of the tyres or you get stuck in the sand, and the wind blows the sand all over the place so you can't really see how deep the sand is until your tyres get stuck in it. I tried to be brave though as it is a very very wobbly drive and I didn't have a nice steering wheel to hold on to.

The sand dunes were even taller than some of the hills in Yorkshire, I couldn't believe it. We spent about 5 days in this desert driving around and we even went as far as the coast and the german town of Swakopmund. This was a lot of fun as we went quad biking up and down the sand dunes and sand boarding too.

Unfortunately, as I am only a little llama I wasn't allowed to have my own quad bike like Mrs Conway's children as my arms were too short and couldn't reach the brakes so I had to go on the back of the quad bike but it was still a lot of fun. At least it was, until the guide pointed out some interesting marking on the sand and said we should follow them. Guess what we found..... I was NOT a happy llama.

Count Arthur learns about Evolution in South Africa

Count Arthur spent the first week of his African adventure in South Africa and spent some time visiting the Cradle of Humankind. This is a collection of sites where archeaologists (and paleoanthropologists (very posh word)) have discovered the very earliest remains of our ancestors that are many thousands of years old.

Count Arthur visited a museum at Maropeng where he learned how the Earth was evolved. Mrs Conway tried to explain to Count Arthur (and Shona and Sean) about the different processes and types of rock but all managed to escape and were really interested instead in the explanations of evolution and how man evolved from apes to the people we are today.

Count Arthur learned how people had evolved from crouching to standing, how diets had changed from being herbivores to omnivores and how we know this because of the shape of out teeth. Count Arthur vagually remembered something about the job of each of our teeth from way back when he was in Year 3 but now thinks he is an expert on this and he knows all about how each tooth has a different job for different types of food.

He also learned how the shape of the head changed and how this affected human brains and how we learn today. It was very ineresting.

But.... on going outside, into the Magaliesburg valley and bright sunshine Count Arthur froze in his tracks.... he was not a happy llama at all and had to be carried back to the car as he was too scared to walk any further.....

 Luckily, Count Arthur didn't see any snakes on this day.....

Will Count Arthur stay snake free?? Will Count Arthur get trampled on by elephants?? Will Count Arthur survive in the Namib desert.....

Count Arthur says goodbye to Year 6

Near the end of term Year 6 went with their teachers and Mr Harrison to Lightwater Valley. It was a fantastic day out with brilliant sunshine and lots of laughs and happy memories. Count Arthur was very pleased to be shown around the park by Khadeejah, Amna and Sannah as he hadn't been before. He laughed when he saw the big Year 6 boys on the spinning tea-cups and was a little disappointed that the Ultimate rollercoaster was closed for maintenance but he had a great day out.