Monty, a white mongrel with black ears and a thoughtful expression, sat next to her owner at a Windhoek shopping center and enjoyed pats from small children, as their mothers shrieked in surprise.
The mums were paging through a calendar showing Monty posing with women, well, showing the full monty themselves, in the nude, discretely covered at strategic areas by dogs, cats and even a rabbit.
Desperate to raise funds for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), 12 mostly middle-aged Namibian pet lovers bared it all with furry models from an animal shelter — though most of these animals were since lucky enough to be adopted.
The outcome was a tasteful collection of professional black and white photos in a calendar with the motto: “Dare to go bare because we care.”
“We were extremely nervous at the first shooting session, but sipping some good wine helped, and photographer Tony Figueira was very understanding,” said Tatjana Rapp, an SPCA committee member in the Namibian capital.
What started as a joke, with an ambitious print run of 2,000 copies at 300 Namibian dollars each (US$40), became a money-maker in the Christmas shopping fever.
“We have sold just over half of the calendars now and hope all are gone by the end of the year,” said Rapp, a businesswoman with her own company who posed with Snoopy, who resembles a terrier.
The project was modeled on the original “Calendar Girls” in Britain, a group of women who produced a nude calendar in 1999 to raise funds for leukemia research after the husband of one of the women died of the disease.
Their story was told in a 2003 award-winning film of the same name and they still raise funds for medical research with their calendars every year, though they no longer bare it all.
The Namibia project was inadvertently launched by a radio joke.
“We were unaware of this, but a commercial radio station told listeners on April 1, April Fools Day this year, that the Windhoek SPCA would produce a nude calendar like the British originals,” said Monty’s owner Kirsten Drews, another SPCA committee member.
“People phoned the SPCA during that day asking if this was true. That is how we found out,” said Drews, who did October with a Siamese cat. “After talking to the ‘culprits’ at the radio station and having had a good laugh, we actually said: ‘Why not?’ and then seriously started to plan the project.”
A pediatric nurse, Drews recently started training dogs for use in therapy with elderly people and disabled children. Monty is set to become Namibia’s first qualified therapy dog, if he and Drews pass their exams in Germany.
The models — mainly SPCA committee women and volunteers, and a radio announcer from the station that started it all — hope to raise 600,000 Namibian dollars, about half of the annual SPCA budget.
“The SPCA has annual operating costs of about 1.5 million Namibian dollars and we depend entirely on donations, membership fees and fund raising projects,” Rapp said as she sold another calendar.
Calendar production costs were minimal, with professionals donating time for photo shoots, layout and art work, and companies sponsoring the cover and calendar pages.
The project also aims to raise awareness about the responsibilities of pet ownership, notably during the holidays when animals are often abandoned as owners head on vacation or hurt on pointy fences and walls in a panicky flight from the sound of New Year’s Eve fireworks.
“So many lost, frightened and injured pets are brought to our shelter then. Our staff and volunteers work in overdrive,” said “May girl” Ilga Gluck, the SPCA chairwoman who posed with Oscar, a Siamese cat.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the