Storied Past: Namibia Volume 3

Read Volume 2 here

While the first part of the Namibia adventure was heavy on research and roughing it, the second half was essentially a three week vacation. Two vans packed full of college kids roamed Southwest Africa, stopping at major cities and resorts. Because I waited eight years to write any of this down, I don't remember location names. But my geriatric brain can recall most of what we did. The list includes:

Visiting wildlife parks, driving alongside zebras, elephants and lions.

Watching sunsets on the beach.

Hiking

Listening to the same CD with the same eight songs, over and over and over and over again in the van. One of those songs was Eminem's "Lose Yourself," and I have most of it memorized to this day. 

Trying to replace a flat tire while a group of men rode by in a donkey cart. They laughed at our misfortune.

Cleaning up after baboons broke into our hotel rooms and stole our bananas. SERIOUSLY.

Eating entire jars of Nutella and at least one magnum ice cream bar a day. I gained a significant amount of weight.

I can't believe I'm including this photo. I can't believe no one told me I had such an alarming eye makeup situation.

Getting braided hair extensions. Always an excellent idea for white girls. 

I assume this is some sort of traditional costume. Or our host family was punking us. 

Joining me in the above two photos is Katie, the very girl who said to me on our first encounter, "I'm not sure why I'm here." Katie and I were roommates the next school year, served missions at the same time, went to each other's weddings, had husbands who worked together, and I just met her brand new baby, Hanna. 

I mean...melt much?

I'm so grateful that both Katie and I, on a whim, decided to travel to the other side of the world with a group of complete strangers, and now we have a friendship spanning nearly a decade. 

While Katie is the one I keep in closest contact with, I have fond/hilarious memories of everyone else from that summer. We spent so much freaking time together, that by the end of our six weeks we were beyond family.  We got annoyed with each other, learned way too many intimate details about each other, and developed inside jokes that probably weren't funny at all. 

When it came time to fly home, I had a slightly offensive hairstyle, fifteen extra pounds, and a broken heart. I sat in JFK airport crying, because it was over. No more baboon break-ins. No more tight van quarters. No more buying Coke Lite at every corner store. I even looked back nostalgically on whacking scorpions beneath our tent at night. 

It was the best craziest decision I ever made that afternoon in the basement of the BYU Humanities building. 

Storied Past: Namibia Volume 2

Read Volume 1 here

Alright. Where was I? Ah yes, meeting the other students. 

I don't remember much because of the zero sleep I'd had the past 72 hours, but I do remember sitting next to a girl with curly brown hair who said, "I'm not really sure why I'm here." I suspected that all the rest of these people were impulsive and crazy like me. I was right. 

So the whole crazy lot of us headed to the bush where the Himba dwell. We got to work pitching a tent, digging a latrine (seriously), and a third thing that would make this sentence feel complete. My big, and likely only, contribution of the day was donating some reading material, my copy of the latest issue of Vogue, to the latrine.

I like camping just as much as the next guy, so long as the next guy doesn't really care for camping. Again, I'll remind you that I had merely a vague idea of what our adventure would entail, and failed to realize that three weeks in a sleeping bag on the ground was part of it. Three weeks is too many weeks in a sleeping bag.

Three weeks is also too long to eat the same breakfast, lunch and dinner every bloomin' day. Oatmeal for breakfast. Rice for lunch. Some sort of potato nonsense for dinner. Oh, also some crackers to be eaten at a rationed, steady pace. I polished mine off the first day. 

Toward the end of the three weeks things started getting a little Lord of the Flies, and when a Himba tribesman gifted us a goat, the men of the group (all four of them), immediately murdered the beast and we feasted for dinner. By "feasted" I mean took one bit and wished we hadn't because goat meat is not delicious.

But we did more than just toss and turn listening to the scorpions beneath our tent at night and complain about the food. We spent our days with translators, researching the Himba for the paper we were to write at the term's end. Research sometimes looked like building manure domes:

Or herding livestock:

Please note: This was not a high point for me ascetically. The strict starch-only diet and no-shower lifestyle really took a toll. 

Or whatever odd job a given member of the Himba tribe thought it might be entertaining to watch us try and accomplish. One day I spent two hours trying to carry three watermelons across a field. 

I hesitate to post too many pictures of the Himba because Himba women don't really wear clothes, and while that's fine, I'm not sure a snarky blog is the best place for photo evidence. 

But look at these adorable children who borrowed my glasses:

I wish I remembered more about the Himba. I remember being surprised by how content they seemed to be living in mud huts and eating only sour milk and corn. I remember thinking that not a lot happened day to day, but families spent the whole day together, sitting by the fire. Some Himba were really nice, some were not. Some wanted to ask us all the questions instead of answering ours. Some had stories of fighting off lions, and still others of witchcraft. It was a fascinating research project, but also three weeks of camping, so when it was time to leave the bush, I was definitely ready.  

DOT DOT DOT

Next week on Namibia Volume 3: A long-awaited shower and zebra spotting.