Coming Home

So 18 June 2015 was Swearing-in Day – or Graduation Day – and, for me, Coming Home Day.  Home for the first time, that is; I hadn’t been near my new town before, nor ever lived in a desert.  I’d been told I’d have a big, yellow-walled, concrete house to myself in a small, desert town in mining country, and I could expect a fridge and oven and three-quarter size bed.  The Peace Corps combi had picked me up at Wilhelmina’s house early that morning so I could transport my giant suitcase, big backpack, medium duffle, small suitcase, knapsack and sleeping bag to the training center, and Lou, my supervisor, and I loaded all of that, plus my new, PC-issued water filter and mosquito net, into the Foundation bakkie (pick-up truck), and headed west.  For about three minutes, and then Lou had to stop at a well-regarded biltong (dried meat; like jerky) shop.  He said his daughter had requested it, but I’d guess she didn’t have to ask.  He looks like a biltong guy to me.

Farewell, Okahandja!  Thanks for everything!

We traveled a four-lane, well-paved highway with 120kph speed limit that soon narrowed to two lanes, still fast and well-maintained.  Lorries (big trucks for transcontinental transport) can only go 80kph, so we would occasionally overtake one, which was usually easy given long sightlines and limited traffic.  The scenery outside was the semi-arid savannah of Okahandja for the first hundred kilometers or so, with grasses, lots of big bushes (say 3-5 meters tall), and plenty of trees (up to 10 meters tall, I’d guess; maybe some even a bit taller), in shades of green and yellow.  Mountains heave up intermittently, though the road is mostly flat.

Semi-arid savannah, about three months after rainy season ended.  It was
a lot greener two months earlier, and would get a lot yellower and browner
before the rains came again six or so months later.

As we traveled, seeing very few signs of human habitation for scores of kilometers at a time – you could be in South Dakota, maybe – the landscape gradually grew scrubbier.  Over the next hundred kilometers or so, the trees got shorter, and eventually pretty much stopped; the bushes got smaller, and the grass sparser and yellower.  The sandy soil was more exposed and looked rockier.  There were a few small towns right on the highway, with filling stations that offered gas, clean restrooms with toilet paper for $2, bottled water, snacks and energy drinks.  Or you could just refill your water bottle in the restroom, since tap water is safe to drink all over Namibia.  Yay Namibia!  This is, of course, not even vaguely true in much of the developing world and parts of Washington, DC.  (There was a big arsenic problem a few years ago that cut water supplies to several neighborhoods there.)

Desert at dusk, with town in the distance

Outside the town of Usakos, we stopped at the Ûiba Ôas Crystals Market, one of the small businesses my foundation works to support.  The market is a project of a small-scale miners’ cooperative; the miners are mostly men, and their wives, mothers, daughters – and some men – sell the stones they mine locally at the market.  Ten years ago they had some rickety tables by the side of the highway; with the help of the Foundation and various grant-makers (the EU, the US Embassy, the Namibian Social Security and others), they’ve expanded to a solidly constructed, three-room showcase with mostly open roof.  Lou introduced me to the sellers, and many of them invited me to buy stones, which I had to decline with regret.  I am bewitched by the aquamarines – maybe that’s related to my fascination with water – and I like the deep purple of an amethyst.  Amethyst, incidentally, is from the ancient Greek for ‘not intoxicated’ and the stones, per those Greeks, was believed to prevent drunkenness.  They don’t really.  The miners also find garnets in the local rocks and mountains, which are supposed to support solitude.  I am not bewitched by garnets; solitude seems to come easily to me.

They also mine many colors of quartz, topaz and other stones.  I’ll write more about Ûiba Ôas in a later post.  There’s a lot to say.

Crystal seller

Eventually we made it to my new town.  We stopped by the office; the building also houses the town library and I met one of the librarians, a lovely woman.  I was so excited to have a library right next to my office!  There was also a custodian/janitor/handyman, whose handiness would become highly meaningful to me over the next few weeks.  We then traveled on to my house, where I met a local plumber who was putting the finishing touches on my toilet, and my Foundation coworker Anna.  Anna had been putting the finishing touches on my furnishings, and brand new sheets on my bed.  “It’s inhuman to ask you to come here and not even give you sheets,” she told me the next day.

She had also provided silk flowers in a shining vase, sweets and chips on a golden platter, a welcome card, and a bottle of sparkling apple juice to toast my new home.  Lou and Anna and I sat together at my new table and wished each other joy and success in our coming collaboration, and they promised to see me bright and early the next morning.  After they left, I kicked a few suitcases out of my way and went, somewhat gingerly, to bed in my soft lilac sheets – with my sleeping bag on top for much needed warmth!