Croatia

36

Forbidden Land of Namibia

I’m standing on a dusty road, in a windswept desert, and it feels like the edge of the earth. I’m about to cross the invisible border into the Sperrgebiet – or forbidden zone – an act which, for the last hundred years, would have got me arrested, beaten or shot.

A lanner falcon wheels above me in the silence of the African wilderness. Nothing else happens, so I carry on walking.

The Sperrgebiet, a 20,000-square-kilometre region of southwest Namibia, has been closed to visitors since 1908 to protect the region’s vital and lucrative diamond industry from smugglers. As of this month, however, the area has become the world’s newest and possibly most amazing national park.

The opening of the Sperrgebiet has been a long time coming. Owned jointly by diamond companies and the Namibian government, much of the zone has already been mined out but an element of paranoia – and bureaucratic lethargy – has nonetheless prevented tourists exploring this region, until now.

Why is the Sperrgebiet so tempting for adventurous travellers? There are many reasons: its ecology, history, culture and its extraordinary landscapes – as well as some truly exquisite seafood. Thanks to its forbidden status, the Sperrgebiet is one of the most unspoilt tracts of land on the wildest continent on earth. Even if it were just meadow, it would be a curiosity but this isn’t just your average park.

The Sperrgebeit is a very unusual environment. Much of it is a desert where the unique flora is watered by fog which rolls in from the Atlantic Ocean, caused by the icy Benguela current flowing from the Antarctic. I can feel a fierce wind even now, as I stand on glittering Diaz Point, 20km south of Lüderitz.

Lüderitz is where most people will begin their Sperrgebiet adventures. This former German colonial town has its own odd and desolate airport (occasionally overwhelmed by sand dunes) which you can fly to from Windhoek, the Namibian capital. I drove north from Cape Town: it took two days, through some of the starkest scenery on God’s earth, but the journey was well worth it.

Diaz Point is spectacularly austere. The promontory is named after the 15th-century Portuguese explorer, Bartholomew Diaz, who landed here on his famous journey south, when he became the first European to voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean. When he first stepped ashore in 1487 he must have thought he had landed in a waterless, windswept, cruelly beautiful corner of hell.

But that unhappy wind, apparently so hostile and bitter, actually carries some noises more encouraging to man: I can also hear barks and calls of life. The islands offshore are home to pungent cities of jackass penguins; the beaches are draped with thousands of fur seals, which in turn support a bloodthirsty predator, the strandwolf – a ruffian local version of the brown hyena - that devours vulnerable seal pups whenever it gets the chance.

There are plenty of other faunal and floral oddities in the Forbidden Zone. Right in front of me, the beach is littered with the corpses of gelatinous scarlet aliens – or rather, that’s what they resemble. In fact, they are huge Namibian sea-nettles, one of the world’s biggest jellyfish. Similarly unique insects, plants and reptiles all thrive in this But that unhappy wind, apparently so hostile and bitter, actually carries some noises more encouraging to man: I can also hear barks and calls of life. The islands offshore are home to pungent cities of jackass penguins; the beaches are draped with thousands of fur seals, which in turn support a bloodthirsty predator, the strandwolf – a ruffian local version of the brown hyena - that devours vulnerable seal pups whenever it gets the chance.

There are plenty of other faunal and floral oddities in the Forbidden Zone. Right in front of me, the beach is littered with the corpses of gelatinous scarlet aliens – or rather, that’s what they resemble. In fact, they are huge Namibian sea-nettles, one of the world’s biggest jellyfish. Similarly unique insects, plants and reptiles all thrive in this harsh environment: misshapen cacti that feed off the sea-mist; trees so poisonous the smoke from the burning wood can kill you; beetles that stand on their legs to suck the lifegiving moisture from the air.

Then there are the real stars: the famous wild horses of the Namib – remarkable animals that wander between the shifting Barchan sand dunes, the peculiar quiver trees and the looming violet inselbergs, the ethereal and dreamy mountains that rise with eerie abruptness from the Sperrgebiet’s yellow dust.

As I travel inland, towards Aus, I spot my first horse, wild and lonesome and loping across the dirt road. Then I see more – dozens, then entire herds. Kicking and rolling in the sandy heat-haze, they look like the ghosts of ordinary horses, roaming free in the afterlife. It’s a strangely haunting sight.

No one is sure how these horses arrived here. Some think they were released by an eccentric German, Captain von Wolf back in 1907, from the thoroughbred stables that he kept at Duwisib, a castle built at enormous expense in the nearby Naukluft desert. Another suggestion is that they originally escaped from British Army vessels shipwrecked off the Skeleton Coast: the boats foundered, but the hardiest horses swam ashore.

The most likely idea is that they are the last remnants of the Schutztruppe – the German colonial army, that once ruled supreme over SudWest Afrika - until it was defeated by the South African forces of the British Empire in 1915. Whatever the horses’ provenance, they are slowly evolving, and adapting to the dry conditions.
Reluctantly, I turn away from the mesmerising sight of these wild animals and head south. Several hours of bumpy driving along dirt roads – many of them deliberately unmarked on maps, some of them almost lost to the drifting sands (you will need a vehicle with good ground clearance if not a 4x4) takes me into one of the world’s greatest wildernesses. This is Fish River Canyon, now a national park – as well as an impressive geological phenomenon – that is linked to the Richtersveld Park across the border in South Africa.

And wow. I’m fortunate enough to have done some remarkable drives in my time: across the deserts of the south-western US, through the jungles of Vietnam, around the rainforests of Madagascar. But none of them – not one – can hold a candle to the drive between Aus and the South African border, along the gorgeous green ribbon nourished by the Fish River. It’s a vivid and winding oasis of life amidst the utter desolation of one of the driest countries south of the equator.

The loneliness is part of the canyon’s hypnotic appeal: at one point I step out of my air-conditioned car, into the 40C heat (wherever you go in Namibia, take a hat, sunblock and many litres of water) and the silence stuns me. I can see African fish eagles soaring in the infinity of blue, desert baboons are squatting under a camel thorn tree just 10m away, but I’m possibly the only human being for 50km in any direction.

It’s slightly scary and rather humbling – and it gets better. The road ducks and twists through gorges, along wooded cliffs and, at one point, nearly tips into the mighty river. Then, suddenly, it climbs out of the canyon and out onto a desolate plateau, dotted with the occasional square of greenery indicating a vineyard (this lost corner of Namibia, it seems, even supports its own vineyards).

Yet if all of this makes the Forbidden Zone sound too daunting for a holiday, don’t worry. There are outposts of luxury – halfway down the Aus road to Richtersveld is the bizarre mining town of Rosh Pinah: I say bizarre because it so opulent in such an unlikely setting. It’s like a well-to-do Arizona resort town dumped in the African desert: the supermarkets are shaded with elegant palms, there are pubs and internet cafes and restaurants serving eland (antelope) steaks in pepper sauce. Even the garages stock bottles of fine South African pinotage.

Where does this prosperity come from? The many forbidding signs denoting the Namdeb Diamond Corporation give the game away. Diamond Zone 1, as Sperrgebiet is also known, may be opening up to tourists but gems are still big business here - two million carats of fine diamonds are mined in the region annually, and Rosh Pinah is one of Namdeb’s more significant towns.

The most important diamond city of all is Oranjemund, on the Atlantic coast, 90km away down a gravel road. But don’t bother taking this road unless you have a very good reason, plus a permit from the police and an invitation from a resident. Oranjemund is one of the most restricted cities in the free world. Only those in the diamond trade are allowed in. Namdeb take their security so seriously that even pigeons aren’t allowed – they are shot out of the sky just in case someone uses them to smuggle gems.

A better bet than being shot is to keep going until you reach the South African frontier, then loop around on the main road back to Aus. This road is tarmacked and the going fast so you can make the journey in a few hours. But do take some time to view the scenery: springbok run wild here, likewise oryx, zebra, ostrich and klipspringers - these cute little antelopes bound across the rocky hillsides with the grace of female Russian gymnasts.

Aus is a good base for travellers because it has one of the most alluring hotels in Namibia, the Klein-Aus Vista. The chalets near the hotel restaurant are clean and comfy, and the food in the restaurant is excellent (game meats like kudu come highly recommended) but what makes Klein aus Vista so amazing are the self-catering lodges high up in the hills, about 10 minutes’ drive from reception.

The Afrikaans owners of Klein-Aus Vista have tried to make these luxury huts as inconspicuous as possible: lodges like the Eagle’s Nest are literally built out of boulders, with rocks emerging in the sitting room. Each comes equipped with a braai area, where you can barbecue your own boerwurst if you don’t fancy the drive down to the restaurant. The kitchens sparkle with equipment, there are fine wines in the cupboard, and the views across the veld and the desert, where the Succulent Karoo meets the dunes of the Namib-Naukluft, are incomparable.

The nights are, if anything, even more magnificent. The total lack of pollution makes these skies some of the clearest on Earth: you can see the stars as my African ancestors saw them. And when the sun eventually wakes over the Karas Mountains, you may spot mongoose or hyrax sipping from the water dishes placed on the terrace of every lodge. I was actually woken by a large desert hare and a bat-eared fox, right outside my window, squabbling over the remains of my al fresco supper.

The last leg of any Sperrgebiet journey will probably take you back to Lüderitz, and to the airport out in the wilderness. But it’s well worth lingering in Lüderitz itself. This seaport, with its lofty Lutheran churches and gingerbread Bavarian houses standing stark against the dust of the encroaching desert, has a surreal charm, surrounded as it is by intriguing ghost towns, slowly drowning under lemon-yellow dunes.

The nightlife here isn’t up to much – though diamond miners do get boisterous in downtown bars such as Rumours or Kapps – so the best thing to do in the evening is to enjoy the fabulous seafood in the town’s finest hotel, the Swiss-run Lüderitz Nest, with its neat little swimming pool sheltered from the winds.

The hake and the kingclip are always good, the rock lobster is excellent but my favourite was oysters. I had a dozen on the half-shell every night, fresh from the cold sea right outside. So accommodating was the Lüderitz Nest after the rigours of travelling around Sperrgebiet that I came for three days and ended up staying for 10.

On the last day, I drove once more across the yellow sands to the dunes where the wild horses roam. I sat there for several hours, staring at these strange feral creatures wandering gaunt and alone through the endless, hazy deserts like shades of a long-lost cavalry. It occurred to me that they were a suitably poetic symbol for one of the world’s strangest and possibly most remarkable of national parks.

How Our Bodies Age (And What You Can Do About It)

Mount Sinai

The Egyptian tourism machine swallows 12 million visitors a year and has turned Mount Sinai, one of the world’s most spiritual places, into one of the world’s biggest tourist traps. Each year about 230,000 people sign up for the usual tour; this involves waking in the middle of the night, getting into a bus in Dahab or Sharm el Sheikh, and climbing Egypt’s highest peak – where Moses is believed to have received the Ten Commandments – to share the sunrise with a crowd of tourists in inappropriate clothes and footwear clutching plastic water bottles, guidebooks and even howling babies. Back at the foot of the holy mountain, you cram into St Catherine’s Monastery, glance at its collection of icons, and wait for people to get out of the way so you can take an ironic picture of the “No Smoking” sign next to a giant desert bramble purported to be the original burning bush.

When I go on holiday a crowd is the last thing I want to see. And so, when the monastery closes at noon, and the convoy of vehicles speeding to the Red Sea coast and its world of sunbathing, snorkelling and discos clears out, I stay behind in the town of St Catherine, population 800. It turns out that it’s now possible to disappear into the mountains for days with a local Bedouin guide and connect with the Sinai’s spectacular landscape, ancient history, and indigenous culture.

My first stop is the office of Sheikh Sina, a European Union-funded tour company founded in 2006 to help the southern Sinai’s Bedouin tribes organise and professionalise the wilderness-guiding industry which dates back to the era of camel caravans. It later served early European explorers and got another kick-start when Israel occupied Sinai and brought with it settlers and tourists after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Regarded by many Egyptians from the Nile Valley as primitives who collaborated with Israel, the 20,000 strong Bedouin population has been marginalised from the beach resort industry that developed after Egypt regained full possession of the Sinai in 1982 and which now employs 400,000 people.

“Trekking has existed for a long time, but we’re trying to introduce a business model that has a future,” says Dave Lucas, Sheikh Sina’s 31-year old British operations manager. In addition to organising treks lasting for as long as one month, Sheikh Sina provides language education and emergency medical training to guides; is establishing mountain rescue protocols using GPS and aircraft from Sharm el Sheikh; and is teaching locals how to use computers for reservations and marketing. Sheikh Sina’s mandate – part of a US$83 million (Dh305m) EU initiative to improve infrastructure and socio-economic development in the Southern Sinai – is to hand the trekking operation over to Bedouin guides and managers by next year. It is also committed to expanding hiking programmes outside of the 4,350-square-kilometre St Catherine’s Protectorate, which is dominated by the Jabaliya tribe, and into the territories of the Tarabin, Muzeina, Howeitat, Tiyaha, Garasha, Sawalha and Awlad Said peoples. Given tribal politics, Egyptian government paranoia about security, opium growers, and the series of Red Sea Coast hotel bombings between 2004 and 2006, which north Sinai Bedouin were suspected of having carried out, that’s a hard plan to live up to.

Already, however, Sheikh Sina is attracting clients including Cairo residents on weekend trips like me, hard-core rock climbers, nature lovers who also want easy access to sun and fun in Egypt’s beach towns, and culture buffs who want to understand why Unesco designated St Catherine’s a World Heritage site in 2002.

“Oman and even Jordan have become Land Cruiser cultures whose people just want to drive you around in air-conditioned vehicles and entertain you between meals,” says Geoff Hornsby, 50, a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society who has surveyed rock-climbing routes in Oman for that country’s tourism board. In 2007, Hornby hired Sheikh Sina to organise a 275km trek between Taba and El Tor that passed through Tarabin, Muzeina, Jabaliya and Awlad Said traditional lands. He saw tarmac just twice and changed guides and camels as he crossed each tribal boundary. “The Sinai is not an unexplored environment but it’s still one where you can experience the culture on an honest and basic level,” he tells me later, by phone from his home in Derbyshire, England, “It’s the rare place in the Middle East where you will find working camels and people still capable of walking many miles per day.”

Lucas introduces me to my guide for the next three days, Ragab Gabalah, 33, a former cameleer who used to spend all his mornings at the monastery trolling for tourists willing to pay $15 (Dh56) for an uphill camel ride. “On Gebel Mousa, it’s always up, down, hurry, hurry, hurry,” he sighs, using the Bedouin name for Mount Sinai. “I prefer trekking. You walk, sleep, eat with people and get to know them. Inshallah, Sheikh Sina will succeed. Many families will have work, and people who come from such a long way away to visit the Sinai can see the best part.”

A member of the Jabaliya tribe – which is made up of descendants of soldiers and farmers sent in the sixth century by the Byzantine emperor Justinian to support the monks of St Catherine – Ragab was born in a cave on the mountain where his pregnant mother tended goats. Having lived as a nomad until he was eight, he now lives in a house in St Catherine’s with his wife and two young children. Yet he remembers the old ways and promises to show me Bedouin “wedding places”, rock pools and a network of walled gardens hidden from the outside world. Carrying daypacks (a camel with more baggage and a guide will rendezvous with us later), we walk out of town up a steep, zigzagging path between pink granite cliffs, wind-sculpted sandstone and huge boulders. At the top of the first hill, Ragab shows me a mound of large stones over a pit – an old leopard trap. The big cats haven’t been seen in the Sinai since the 1980s, but ibex, hyenas, foxes and wolves – biological relics from the geological era when the Sinai Peninsula was joined to Africa and Asia – remain.

Our trail was laid in the 19th century by the soldiers of the tubercular Sultan Abbas Pasha, who ordered a palace built on the fresh-aired summit of Mount Tinya, but who died in 1854 (some say of poison) before it was completed. In the wadi beneath the palace ruins we pass the first in a network of gardens each protected from flash floods and grazing animals by high stone walls, sometimes surrounding a single, precious tree. From an aeroplane or from the motorway to Sharm el Sheikh, these mountains look barren, but suddenly there are almond trees pink with blooms, white-barked wild figs, carob, peach, pear, apple and quince. Lines of black plastic piping link the deep wells and cisterns from which the Jabaliya used to draw water with a shadoof and goatskins.

The Jabaliya or mountain people, Ragab tells me, descend from 200 families sent from Alexandria and Macedonia by the Byzantine emperor Justinian to protect, grow food for and provide manual labour for the monks of St Catherine; the monks in turn had followed the early Christian ascetics who moved into caves to escape persecution when Rome was still pagan. It was this group who, according to Ragab, began identifying the highest peaks with Old Testament stories about Moses’ flight from Egypt. The Jabaliya converted to Islam in the seventh century, a fact that did not lead to animosity with the monks, whose working relationship with the Jabaliya continues to this day. Indeed, the survival of the world’s oldest continuously functioning monastery, which was never looted, owes much to a gesture of tolerance from the Prophet Mohammed, who issued a letter of protection (signed with his handprint) that has been respected by subsequent invaders, including the Ottomans, Napoleon, the British and the Israelis.

The Jabaliya eventually intermarried with other tribes who fled Mameluke political strife in Cairo in the 15th to 17th centuries. The Egyptian government policy of settling Bedouin in towns has broken the old seasonal way of life, in which Jabaliya families lived in goat hair tents and moved with their herds from November to May, and spent the summer in the cooler mountains harvesting grain and fruit, which they traded for dried fish produced by Bedouin tribes on the Red Sea coast. Today, just 25 of the 400 or so known gardens are regularly maintained. Sheikh Sina staff, who are building two eco-lodges, hope an eventual network of eco-lodges will provide shelter for a hikers and an incentive for Jabaliya families to return to the 100 or so gardens whose fruit trees are still viable despite the decades of neglect.

Already, gardens provide a de facto infrastructure for hikers, offering springs and wells with clean drinking water and places to stop for lunch or spend the night. Ragab and I break for lunch in Wadi Zawatiin, where single-room stone houses are built against the boulders, and the olive trees are over 700 years old. Rubbish from last summer’s growing season is strewn in the deepest part of the wadi – abandoned rubber sandals, empty glass bottles and rags.

But when Ragab uses a fire-blackened sardine can to boil tea, and an old glass bottle to roll out a round loaf of bread that he bakes in the ashes of a fire, I see that what I consider rubbish is in fact a recyclable resource. “When you don’t have money to buy things, you use what you have, or invent new uses,” Ragab explains.

At the valley neck, we climb a col connecting Zawatiin to Wadi Itlah, where we’ll spend the night. It’s late January, and the cool daytime air is perfect for long-distance walking, but summer is also a popular time for treks; the col conceals a series of clear pools where hikers can take a refreshing dip. Sinai granite is among the oldest rock on earth; volcanic activity, which led to the separation of the Asian and Africa continents, left seams of porous black basalt, dykes that became catchments for winter rain and snowfall. Though the Sinai has been in a drought for the last six years, and many old wells have run dry, it’s possible to find water if you dig deep enough. We also see places, marked by greenery, where water springs like magic, dripping from bare rock.

Our stop for the night is a garden belonging to Ahmed Mansour, one of the last traditional doctors in the Sinai, who learnt to identify 270 medicinal plants from his grandfather. With EU help, he has installed a composting toilet for hikers and launched a gardening school to pass on his knowledge to local children. Not everything is going smoothly: the funding covered just five students, and Mansour has had to dig deep into his own pockets to support others, desperate for future employment, who arrived thanks to word of mouth. Mohammed, an 18-year old cameleer from St Catherine, arrives with our sleeping bags and firewood; and for dinner, Ragab makes a stew of chicken, tomatoes and rice seasoned with wild thyme plucked along the trail. We drink spring water boiled with crushed almonds and carob. It’s a sweet, milky concoction thought to be good for memory and eyesight. Night falls, and we turn in for bed, laying our sleeping bags on top of woven rugs and under thick blankets around the fire pit embers. I look up at the moonless night sky and see more stars than I have seen anywhere in my life, thanks to the absence of electric city lights and, perhaps, that Bedouin potion.

The next day’s walk takes us down the romantically named (or not) Naqb al Hoda or Pass of the Winds, part of the old caravan route linking Cairo, St Catherine’s and Mecca. In the shade of a giant boulder shaped like a crocodile’s gaping mouth, we meet a woman embroidering a red-beaded pouch for Fansina, a Bedouin-run women’s crafts collective in St Catherine. “It gives me something to do and a way to make money for my family,” Hoda Ibrahim tells us.

In the past women embroidered their own dresses and veils in bright colours and patterns, a product of tradition, nature, observation, and imagination, a visual code that revealed the wearer’s family, marital status and even, number of children. Hoda is wearing the plain black hijab and abaya of Cairo; she lives just down the valley in the village of Abu Sila. Above us, her three small girls wear bright red smocks and tracksuit bottoms as they tend three black goats and one white sheep. All stand out like jewels against the rock.

The pass descends and opens up onto a broad plain that leads us to Wadi Gharaba, named after its carob trees, and the six-room Al Karm eco-lodge, built in 2002 by a French-Egyptian architect inspired by round Neolithic stone structures called nawami that are scattered across the Sinai. There is an elegant solar-heated stone shower, but no electricity. The walls of my room have windows to let in daylight, candles set in niches, and while the only furniture consists of a wooden table, a thin mattress, mosquito netting pillows and heavy blankets, the place manages to achieve a less-is-more style more trendy than many so-called minimalist boutique hotels costing hundreds of dollars per night.

A room here costs less than US$7, (Dh26) per night. Even more unbelievably, I am the only guest and to make me feel more at home, the lodge owner and host, Gamil Attiya Hossein, who has gone into partnership with Sheikh Sina to attract more customers, invites Ragab and I to visit him in his house, only a 20-minute walk away. Gamil’s wife Firzena is sitting on the floor, brewing goats milk tea on a charcoal brazier for their five children, who are fighting over the remote control of the satellite TV that tourism has paid for. Made from breeze block, theirs is the largest house in the small village of Sheikh Awad, and soon cousins, sisters and uncles drop in to chat, sitting around the glowing brazier. “Today we no longer live in tents,” the 50-year old Gamil says. “But we still have a room called the maga’ad for people to sit around and talk.”

The Egyptian government supplies the village with six hours of electricity every day and tankers bring drinking water – adequate for basic family needs but far from enough for meaningful economic development. I ask Gamil about another EU project that will soon pipe Nile water from Ismaliya to St Catherine where, local rumour has it, a luxury hotel company wants to build a hotel in the plain below Mount Sinai. How will a regular water supply affect the old garden culture? “Just because we have new things, or more things, doesn’t make life easier,” he answers. “The carob trees near Al Karm have survived all this time because we Bedouin know how to conserve water. Our world has changed and is still changing. I tell my children and my guests that people who forget the past are lost.”

Back in Cairo, I feel lost myself, breathing in the polluted air, battling car traffic, grabbing money from a cashpoint. I cling to my memory of the mountain people and hope more outsiders will visit them.

Cooking Eggs

Cooking hard boiled eggs can be a hassle because you have to kor hui (jaga api) or kor chui (jaga air). this method of cooking the eggs whereby you don't have to worry whether they are over-cooked or under-cooked.

1) Place two pieces of tissue paper inside the rice cooker and sprinkle them with water.
2) Put in the eggs.

3) Close the lid and press "Cook" button.

4) Wait till the button jumps up. When it does, TURN OFF THE ELECTRICITY POWER. Do not leave them too long inside the rice cooker after cooked ...only do so if you prefer a harder egg yolk.

5) The eggs are ready.

The speed is faster than using ordinary boiling method. This is because the water sprinkled on the tissue will turn into steam and compressed inside the rice cooker to cook the eggs. You can peel the egg shells off very easily. The egg yolks will turn out just nice, not too dry. And the best part is -you don't have to do any washing nor cleaning at all.

Subject: Catholic Schools

Little Zachary was doing quite badly in math. His parents had tried everything; Tutors, mentors, flash cards, Special Learning Centers. In short, everything they could think of to help his math.

Finally, in a last ditch effort, they took Zachary down and enrolled him in the local Catholic school. After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn't even kiss his mother Hello. Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying.

Books and papers were spread out all over the room and little Zachary was hard at work. His mother was amazed. She called him down to dinner. To her shock, the minute he was done, he marched back to his room without a word, and in no time, he was back hitting the books as hard as before. This went on for some time, day after day, while the mother tried to understand what made all the difference.

Finally, little Zachary brought home his report card. He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books. With great trepidation, his Mom looked at it and to her great surprise Little Zachary got an 'A' in math. She could no longer hold her curiosity. She went to his room and said, 'Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?' Little Zachary looked at her and shook his head, no. 'Well, then,' she replied, 'was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms?'

Little Zachary looked at her and said, 'On the first day of school when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around.'