This week marks the passing of our halfway point of the time we have left in Namibia. It’s gone by so fast, and yet it feels as though we’ve been here forever. It’s strange to think that 45 days ago, none of us had even met each other.
We’ve grown accustomed to the routine of our lives in Namibia; the chilly early mornings and monstrously hot afternoons, the sounds of jackals and hyenas howling in the night and the hundreds of springbok, oryx, and zebra we pass in our cars every day. We’ve also gotten familiar with our little neighbors:
Window Payne the striped mouse eating lunch in his compost bucket.
We are now always vigilant of the bugs that threaten to sneak into our tents when we aren’t looking, particularly of the scorpions that we are convinced have made their homes at the bottom of our sleeping bags (our evening routine before we go to sleep here includes: eating dinner, drinking some tea, going to the bathroom, washing our face, brushing our teeth, writing in our journal, checking our sleeping bag thoroughly for death bugs, and then, finally, sleep). We are on higher alert now after coming across one of the most horrifying creatures to ever walk this planet.
The Red Roman Solifuge, also known as Deathy McKill Pants
We have discovered man’s greatest enemy: the mopane flies. It is truly hard to appreciate life as 50 moops circle your head like vultures over a carcass, one has drowned in your eyeball and receded into the depths of nothingness where you can’t reach it, several have already been consumed, and one is proceeding to enter your ear hole. No orifice is safe.
We have learned patience in teaching game guards how to us the GPS, and understand that even if you have told them 5 times not to press that button, they will press it anyway. I have also learned not to be surprised when you ask a game guard if they want chutney, and they proceed to shovel plain spoonfuls of it into their mouth like ice cream. We have discovered the glory of chutney here, don’t get me wrong, but not that much.
We have accepted our stinky, shower-less, desert smells.
We know to expect the unexpected at all times. Especially when you buy an inflatable pool for 6 US dollars at a drug store in Outjo.
It was a little too small
And we also know to expect the awesome.
Aw yeah