Buchter News

Our Crayfish, Our Pride

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:49:45 +0000

ANNUAL FESTIVAL in Luderitz! The Crayfish festival of 2012, Our Crayfish Our pride. This year’s Easter weekend was all in this theme and Luderitz was the busiest we have seen. Giving a bit more life into this quite town. Starting on Thursday the 5th of April with sport activities, Friday the 6th was in the morning the day for SME Roundtable Discussions and the stalls were all standing at the Waterfront. It was also the day for the Fun Day Run for School going children, which was a success. A beach party to end the unofficial first day of the Crayfish Festival.
On Saturday, the day started with a big parade through town led by the Police, Defence Force, Prison Services , Navy Force, School Drum Majorettes, dance and singing groups and many more people. Everyone was aware that the Crayfish festival was official. With the arrival of the Mayor, Reverend Scholtz, Regional Governor Bernandus Clinton Swartbooi and even the Minister of Trade and Industry, Honourable Dr. Hage Geingob the opening finally started and the speeches began.
The Crayfish festival was a great way for investment and an ideal attraction for tourists to come to Luderitz and Minister Geigob wanted to congratulate Luderitz upon that. He hopes that this will gives any opportunity in the various sectors of economy. Mainly the fishing, mining and tourism.
Minister Geigob told that the Ministry of Trade and Industry in particular, has various programs and facilities in place to assist the SME sector to establish and grow their business. From the total of 778 entrepreneurs they provided with equipment from, in total, 54.13 million Namibian Dollars, there were 38 entrepreneurs helped in the Karas Region with equipment in an amount of 3.2 million Namibian Dollars. This equipment was handed over in Keetmanshoop a couple of days before the Crayfish Festival. They also provided a champion with heavy-duty earth moving equipment to the value of 1.2 million Namibian Dollars in the Karas Region. Champions are neither small nor medium or large and producing goods or services that just need product development or diversification to improve.
Minister Geigob is proud to be associated with Luderitzbucht Crayfishfestival and encourages to see that more and more growth of this key platform will stimulate the economy in Karas Region. The event continued to annually. Managing the Waterfront Development Project, he sees the critical needs for the development of the future and he asked Luderitz Town Council to look at the possibility to develop a trade centre or industrial park to provide a proper venue for this and other events in the future.
With all these words, Minister Geigob officially opened the Crayfish Festival.
After all the speeches there was time for traditional dances and the Southern Youth Choir. They all gave a fantastic performance and everyone was able to enjoy the rest of the Crayfish Festival!
This year’s Crayfish Festival was an improvement on last years and there was actually crayfish being sold at the festival. Maybe not as much as there could have been, but it was there. That’s an important part of the Festival and we hope in the future, the improvements will be more and more and it stays as our real
Crayfish Festival.

Editorial

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:46:24 +0000

Hello Buchters, how do you do?

We reach another month and a cold one at that! The Summer days are definitly over.

We’ve got some changes in the pictures this month, with only three papers till our departure we thought we would give you a bit of a giggle.

This month we have the winners of Miss Crayfish and Miss Nest hotel! Everyone enjoyed that long easter weekend. Find out what was going on around town and how the fifth Crayfish Festival turned out.

The Hyena Project and updates on the dolphin’s in the Luderitz Bucht, find out about the wild life in your area.

This month we finally are having the chance to step into another Country: South Africa, Cape Town, is our stop.

We joined some of the Brightstart children at the Nadeet Centre and had an amazing time, learning about the environment.

Enjoy our seventh edition. Only three more to go!

Simone and Alex

Editorial

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:45:52 +0000

Hello Buchters, how do you do?

We reach another month and a cold one at that! The Summer days are definitly over.

We’ve got some changes in the pictures this month, with only three papers till our departure we thought we would give you a bit of a giggle.

This month we have the winners of Miss Crayfish and Miss Nest hotel! Everyone enjoyed that long easter weekend. Find out what was going on around town and how the fifth Crayfish Festival turned out.

The Hyena Project and updates on the dolphin’s in the Luderitz Bucht, find out about the wild life in your area.

This month we finally are having the chance to step into another Country: South Africa, Cape Town, is our stop.

We joined some of the Brightstart children at the Nadeet Centre and had an amazing time, learning about the environment.

Enjoy our seventh edition. Only three more to go!

Simone and Alex

And Miss Crayfish is …

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:44:47 +0000

On the 30th of March, the Miss Crayfish Competition was held in the main hall of the Youth Centre. 15 girls from the Luderitz community were on stage vying to become Miss Crayfish. Before the ‘big day’ occurred, the girls had driven around in a car to promote the Miss Crayfish Competition. Every year, the Miss Crayfish competition happens before the Crayfish festival in order to choose who will be the Queen and Princesses of the Festival.
That evening, the hall was full and everyone was enthusiastic about what was going to happen. The girls were a bit nervous, but no one thought badly of them for it.
The Crayfish festival began with the girls coming in attired in fishing boots, overalls and holding a rope to represent the fishing community of Luderitz.
There was a casual wear competition, followed by the swimming wear section, and then most importantly, the evening dresses. Everyone looked amazing and the girls did their very best to grab the crown. One of the audience’s favourite part of the night was when the girls wore their evening dresses and were escorted by a boy onto the stage and were each given a rose. There was also dancing and singing groups performing that night to give some entertainment to the audience.
Before the jury would make their decision about Miss Crayfish, they first decided who was Miss Personality and who was Miss Photogenic. Ruusa David deserved Miss Personality and Elina Lazarus got the prize of Miss Photogenic.
The jury chose seven of the girls to interview and asked them questions they picked out of a box. The girls answered the question the best they could and the jury finally made their decision.
The jury chose Matilda Adolf as the First Princess and Abigail Gariseb as the Second Princess. Everyone was in suspense until the jury gave their final word. Miss Crayfish 2012 is … Ruusa David!
Miss Crayfish 2011, Abigail Gariseb, handed over the tiara and Ruusa David was crowned Miss Crayfish. The audience went crazy. Ruusa couldn’t believe it herself. She enjoyed it very much and you could see she was happy. Congratulations to Ruusa!

What has happened to the Lüderitzbucht brown hyenas?

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:43:46 +0000

Our apologies to Ingrid for forgetting a bit of the article in the previous Buchter News.
Many of you will still remember the noisy nights, when your or your neighbour’s dogs started barking frantically, initiating a concert that every other dog in town would follow. Upon investigation of the course of their distress, you would often find yourself in the presence of a brown hyena that was roaming the streets. A lot of years have passed since then and some of you may have wondered where the hyenas could have gone to.

The Lüderitzbucht brown hyena clan, also called the Peninsula clan, disappeared from the Peninsula in 2009. At that time, it consisted of at least three adult brown hyenas and their offspring: Tosca, the breeding female, Alaika, a young female and Radford. Their territory included the town of Lüderitz and stretched as far south as to the Wolf Bay seal colony, some 20 km south of Lüderitz. This seal colony was also used as a food source by other brown hyenas that belonged to the Wolf Bay clan. Unfortunately, these hyenas territory included the Kowis mountains that lie to the north-east of the Lüderitz airport and to reach these mountains, the hyenas had to cross the tar road regularly. By approximately 2009 all known members of the Wolf Bay clan had been hit and killed by vehicles on this road and hence the Wolf Bay clan became extinct, which opened up their territory to hyenas of other clans.

I wanted to study the Peninsula hyenas in more detail in 2009, and we therefore darted Tosca and Alaika to fit them with GPS telemetry collars. These collars record GPS positions of the animal at pre-programmed times, which gives us detailed insights into its activities, movements and behaviours. When I received the first data set from these collars, I was surprised to see that these two Peninsula clan hyenas actually lived around the Wolf and Atlas Bay seal colonies and not on the Lüderitz Peninsula any more. They only went on occasional excursions into their old territory, but stayed most of the time near the seal colonies. Furthermore, Tosca had cubs at a den near the Atlas Bay seal colony and this confirmed my suspicion that the Lüderitzbucht brown hyenas had moved south into the vacant Wolf Bay clan territory. Hence, there were no resident hyenas on the Lüderitz Peninsula any more.

Tosca raised two litters of cubs in her new territory, but suddenly, at the beginning of 2011 she disappeared. Alaika took over her position in the Wolf Bay clan and had a litter of cubs in early 2011. I assumed that Tosca had possibly died. We had dropped off her GPS telemetry collar at the end of 2010 and I therefore had no means of finding out about her fate. However, towards the end of 2011, I was surprised and extremely happy to capture Tosca’s image on one of our camera traps that is placed in the Peninsula clan’s territory. Tosca moved back to Lüderitz! And this is the good news: we have our Lüderitzbucht hyenas back – so be prepared, you may hear your dogs barking at night again.

If you want to read more about the Brown Hyena Research Project please visit our web page:
www.strandwolf.org or our facebook page:
www.facebook.com/BrownHyenaResearchProject
Dr. Ingrid Wiesel

The Namibian Dolphin Project is listening to Lüderitz’s dolphins

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:39:53 +0000

How many dolphins occur in Southern Namibia? What species occur here and where are they living? How are human activities like seismic surveys for oil, gas and phosphates likely to affect these populations? These are the questions currently being tackled by the Namibian Dolphin Project (NDP) and the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR). Working together, and using cutting edge survey techniques, the research team aims to produce important data on the distribution, occurrence and abundance of whales and dolphins in southern Namibia.
The Namibian Islands Marine Protected Area (NIMPA) was designated in 2009, primarily to protect breeding seabirds which live on the beautiful islands of Possession, Ichaboe and Mercury. Lüderitz, which lies in the middle of the NIMPA, is known to be a hot spot of Heaviside’s and dusky dolphin activity and we believe that the NIMPA is likely to be important area for these and other species of whales and dolphins. If so, it might play a key role in protecting them from human activities in the environment. Being around 400 km long and 30 km at its widest points, the NIMPA encompasses almost 12 000 km2 of ocean, and is the first Marine Protected Area to be designated in Namibia. Currently, there is very little information on the dolphins and whales found in southern Namibia, and our research is therefore very important to help in conservation and management.
The surveys we’re doing are mainly focussed on whales and dolphins, particularly the endemic Heaviside’s (or Benguela) dolphin and the dusky dolphin. However, we’re also recording sightings of other species such as sunfish (Mola mola) and sharks when we see them and importantly the African penguin. Penguin numbers are declining rapidly, mostly due to a lack of food. We are interested in knowing how far from shore they are foraging, whether they are hunting in large or small groups and how this differs between adults and juveniles.
As we all know too well, the Lüderitz region is renowned for strong winds and high swells making dolphin spotting difficult in poor weather. Therefore we are using Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) to help detect whales and dolphins. This involves towing a 400 meter cable with 3 underwater microphones, called hydrophones, from the back of our research vessel the !Anichab. The hydrophones are essentially eavesdropping on the naturally occurring sounds made by the dolphins and whales during their natural lives. These sounds are used in orientation, feeding and socialising and include echolocation clicks, whistles and burst-pulse sounds. In some cases, the hydrophone detects dolphins and whales which we, the visual observers never see, either because the weather is too bad, its night time or because the animals are far away or under the water. In other cases, we get to both see and hear the animals. Either way, combining watching (visual observation) and listening (passive acoustics) increases the amount of data we collect and makes the best use of the ships time. This is the first time that towed Passive Acoustic surveys have been carried out in Namibia, and we hope that the data collection will continue for years to come, increasing our knowledge of the cetaceans in the areas which will hopefully contribute to protecting these vulnerable populations. So far on our surveys we have see (and heard!) Heaviside’s and dusky dolphins, as well as humpback, sei and minke whales. Surveys start again in late April-early May when we hope we can increase on this list! If you would like further information on our research please visit the website: www.namibiandolphinproject.com and check out the blog page for recent updates on the survey progress.
This NIMPA cetacean survey project is being led by Dr Tess Gridley and Dr Simon Elwen from the NDP & University of Pretoria and the Dr Jean Paul Roux from MFMR. The project is funded by the Nedbank Go Green fund and MFMR.

BE AWARE OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT!

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:38:28 +0000

Some of Brightstart’s older children took a five day training course to the NaDEET Centre. NaDEET (Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust), situated in the NamibRand Nature Reserve, educates participants about the environment. No reception, a bucket shower and a long-drop loo. The chance to experience the red-duned desert and be taken away from everyday taken for granted conveniences.

This non-profit organization was established in 2003. The children were put into groups on arrival and given their own living space with shared bathroom which had a water gage starting with only 150 liters of water to be used during the week for showering and brushing teeth. The amount used each day was monitored in a journal. Throughout the week the children experienced dune walks; trapping and identifying animals and plants; participating in recycled art work projects; using a solar cooker and preparing and cooking meals in their groups without adult assistance.

Learning to re-use reduce and recycle, everyone had a chance to make recycled fire balls which were made from old paper and soap. The fire balls are used every morning to heat the fuel efficient stoves instead of using wood. Everyone is taught about recycling your rubbish. Most of us just throwing everything we use in one bin, we are introduced to dividing litter into five different categories. Plastic’s, glass and tin, paper, compost and burnable materials.

The week came to an end and what better way to say goodbye than dune boarding and watching the sunset before going back to the Centre for homemade bread and sausages. Everybody learned something about their environment and how to help protect it. A fun filled week learning outside the classroom.

RE-OPENING DIAZ COFFEESHOP

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:37:44 +0000

On the 4th of April, Diaz Coffee Shop spread the red carpet and opened its doors. After months of renovation, people can come and enjoy their coffee again. New owners Lukas and Chantelle are really happy with it and having their own Coffee Shop has been a dream come true.
Apart from a variety of fancy coffee to choose from, there’s hoped to have over twenty different teas on offer. Popcorn, candy floss and have you ever heard of waffles on a stick? There is a breakfast menu and light meals to choose from such as toasted sandwiches and wraps. Having the choice to pick toppings and fillers has its bonuses, no food going to waste and generally a happy customer having more options. With even a Take Away, people can enjoy their food when and where they want it.
This rather grand place on the corner really does indulge its customers. It is intended as something with a bit of an edge for Buchter’s of all ages to enjoy.
“A people business, serving coffee.” Not the other way around.

LETS TACKLE T.B.

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:36:03 +0000

International Tuberculosis Day 2012On the 24th of March it was World Tuberculosis Day. The day began with a march throughout the town to make everyone aware that there was an important event going on. A hand full of people were shouting and spreading the word with bells and police sirens to get everyone’s attention. World TB Day is a day devoted to creating public awareness around the disease tuberculosis. It causes death to a devastating 1.7 million individuals each year. One of the missions is to try and lower this number. There are many steps that can be taken to help reduce the disease. However, this sickness can be difficult to treat in the poorer areas, where many families stay in poorly ventilated small housing structures which are often occupied by too many people.
The Mayor and the organizers were thankful for all the organizations and volunteers who were fighting together against TB. By taking the right medicine on a regular basis and going to health clinics most sufferers of TB can get better. Treatment is free and available at the hospital and TB containers in Area 7 and Amalema. There is also soup and water available to take with the medication so that patients don’t feel sick from taking the medication. It is very important that patients do not stop taking their medication as this can cause them to relapse and develop a drug resistant strain of TB that cannot be treated and can be life threatening.
Including all the information that was given, there were several songs and a poem about TB. There were also testimonies of TB patients to tell the people their story. A drama was enacted by volunteers. It told the story about someone who didn’t want treatment for her disease, but people forced her to go and explained to her why she had to get treatment. In the end, she understood and decided to get the treatment that she needed to survive.
Readers, please keep your eyes open for tuberculosis and go to the doctor if you or a loved one is suffering from a persistent cough and fever. Together we can lower the number of tuberculosis patients and we can stop saying goodbye to loved ones who lose their life to this disease.

Cancer Corner

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:34:26 +0000

A FEW THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BECOMING A BONE MARROW/STEM CELL DONOR…….
Donors must be between 18 – 50 years.
Donors must be in general good health.
With no history of hepatitis or sexually transmitted diseases.
Donors should weigh over 50 kg.
Preferably, but not necessarily be a blood donor.
Donors must be informed.
Donors must be committed to help anyone.
Joining the registry is simple: You need to call the Sunflower Fund so that we can make sure that you meet the criteria. All we need is about two teaspoons of blood. Your blood sample is then analyzed and put on a national database.
This is very costly. Funds are limited and we are asking those who can afford to make a donation towards this cost. The Sunflower Fund does not receive any government funding towards tissue-typing and depend solely on donations of the public.
The odds of being a match are about 1: 100 000 which is why we need as many donors as possible.
The donation procedure is minor with little discomfort.
In compliance with international agreement, strict anonymity is maintained between donor and patient.

WHEN IS THE POINT OF NO RETURN?
This stage is reached about a week before the actual donation when the patient’s own bone marrow is destroyed with high doses of chemotherapy in preparation for receiving the harvested stem cells.
At this point the donor is seen to have a moral obligation to proceed because without the donation of stem cells the patient will die.

Sr Carmen Klein and Susanna Masala. We lost them both the last ten days.
“My deepest sympathy with the family and friends of Sr Carmen Klein and Susanna Masala. It is always so sad to loose friends after such a long process but for us it is a privilege to have been able to help them in what ever way we could.”
Congratulations with your ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY, Cunu. May the next year be much easier for you.

We need your prayers and support.
Bertha Naibeb
Cheiniqua Cunu
Ouma Greeff
Hendriena Pieters
Every person not mentioned by name.
We raised the amount of N$ 1220-00 with the Easter Egg hunt. Thank you for your sponsorship and contribution.
Annegreth Schroeter
Billetjie Els
Desmond Visagie
Ellen Langer
Erich/Linda Looser
Meisie Ettwein

Apples will be distribute the second week of June.

LUDERITZ PAPSMEAR CAMPAIGN 23rd and 24th of MAY AT THE WATERFRONT.

ROSH PINAH PAPSMEAR CAMPAIGN 10th and 11th OF MAY AT
THE CLINIC.

Thank you for your support.

Office hours:

Monday to Friday.
09h00 —– 16h00

204252/0812753013