Round River’s base camp, our home for the next 3 months. Round River’s base camp, our home for the next 3 months.[/caption]

week 1 pic 3 week 1 pic 4February 24, 2013

Today is my 21st birthday, but the nearest bar is over 4 hours away. Even if I were to somehow get to this bar, the owner would probably just stare if I tried to show my ID. Today I am thinking of my family and friends back in the States. One week ago, I was listening to my mom, dad, and sister sing me happy birthday in our tiny kitchen the night before I left. I held back tears as they told me to make a wish. No one said it, but we all knew that this trip would be the biggest adventure of my life so far, maybe ever. That night, I brought left over cake to a friend’s house. We sat on her front porch and I watched them eat. Face ringed with chocolate, my friend Nick pointed his fork at me. “Everything’s going to be different when you come back, you know.” I looked at him and thought about how unprepared I was to be leaving the ones I love.

As I write this, my family and friends are likely asleep. They will wake up in a few hours in their same beds and look at the date on their same alarm clocks and perhaps they will think of me. I, however, am not the same. Not really because I am now one year older, but more because of this extraordinary country I will call home for the next 3 months. In one week, Namibia has proven to be a living fairy tale. A hot and sweaty one, yes, but a fantasy nonetheless.

The drive alone from Windhoek to Werelsend could have satisfied the urge for adventure that attracted me to this dry land. The views went on for days with no signs of human life. Here, aside from the dusty gravel road, it is as if all human beings are gone from the world, maybe never even existed at all. But then, suddenly and impossibly, we would pass through a town. The towns here, though, are different— a continuation of the land that seem to arise out of somewhere deep in the sand. We are shocked to find that there are still people in this world. Because Namibia truly is a different world for someone like me, someone who has lived in a New Jersey suburb her whole life. I’m reminded of these differences constantly as we pass by forts made of hardened clay and black garbage bags, a set of 3 walls held up by sticks that someone—at least I’m guessing—calls home. Or, a little later, when we pass by old men with backpacks wielding sticks and herding skinny donkeys, no other signs of civilization for miles. Where do these people come from? Where are they going? I’ve learned that these questions aren’t really all that important to the people of Namibia.

I am ashamed to write that, once again, I was holding back tears as we reached Werelsend. This time, it was the sight of the camp’s bathroom. Although clean and with running water, there are no walls, just 3 pieces of cloth tacked to the bathroom’s wooden frame. I know for a fact there is no way most of my friends from back home would go near such a bathroom, and the initial shock of it all almost had me asking my mom for a plane ticket back. I steered clear of that bathroom the whole first night and for a good part of our 2nd day, but I knew I would, at some point, have to use the bathroom in the next three months. Right around sunset, I stepped inside. I stared at the lack of walls and felt a mounting sense of dread until I tilted my head up towards the sky. Out over the savannah, I saw pinks and purples and reds that I never knew could exist in our world. I stood by the sink, mouth wide open, as I had a thought that not many other people can have: the view from the toilet is spectacular.