A Sense of Wonder

A friend wrote recently to say, among other things, “I hope you’re having lots of adventures,” and I thought, ‘Boy, has she misunderstood my situation.’ (She’s not a blog-watcher.) And then I thought back to October 2015, in Oshana, and a revelation I had then, or at least a reminder.

I was staying at a guest house in Oshakati with three friendly colleagues, and it was hot, which reminded me of my three un-air-conditioned apartments in the Fenway, where for several days every summer all I could do was lie very still and sweat, or run a cool bath and stay in it until I was something far beyond prune-y. There were mosquitoes, which reminded me of almost everywhere I've lived except my current desert home, and a small possibility of malaria, kind of like the possibility of West Nile virus or Lyme disease in the mid-Atlantic states. There were pigs wandering the yard; one of my Irish friends brought the pigs into the family kitchen if the weather was bad when she was a girl. So, you know, nothing’s that different from anything else; what in any of that would you call an ‘adventure’? My Namibian friends wanted to go for a walk. Yay! I love to walk.

Also goats wandering about.  We kept Toggenburgs when I was a kid.

It’s a small town; there are a few strip malls, but where we were the houses were nicely spaced. We strolled (few people ever seem to want to walk as briskly as I prefer) through what the others call ‘the bush.’ We had sand underfoot, and various bushes and trees around us, which E. would stop to touch, name and describe. There’s one that, when – burned, maybe? – becomes an excellent hair relaxer. “Just as good as Revlon, my dear, and smells just the same.”

We came to a pond – a shallow pool of water in a deep hole – with an egret-looking bird standing in it, and I clambered down the edge of that hole to get as close as I could to the water. Water! It was just sitting there, very full of green furry scuzz. Then I scrambled back up and we strolled some more. E. picked up a clot of clay and said, “In my village, the pregnant ladies, they eat this.” L. said, “No, not that. That’s too hard.” E. said, “Oh, my dear, these ladies, they eat this like fatcake,” and mimed chomping on it. “Like fatcake, my dears.” We crossed a field, and carefully watched some dogs for signs of hostility, and wandered along a dirt road. And I reflected again that this really is a very quotidian experience, and people who think this is some grand adventure, or extraordinary life-changing two years, are really just sentimentalizing Peace Corps service, or romanticizing Africa or poverty or rural life. It’s just not that different from anything else you do.

About that point, I realized that the person who had shouted, “Victoria,” twice was shouting it at us, and my PC friend V. who lives in Oshakati is compulsively gregarious, introducing herself to everyone she sees. So I turned and walked toward him, and indeed this guy thinks I am V. Who is 22 and has very short hair. I explained to him that I am not she.

We all look the same, apparently.

So that, and the clay eaten like fatcakes, my dears, is maybe just a bit outside the norm, and made me laugh. And I always smile when I think of lovely, friendly V. And I grabbed myself by the brain, and shook myself a bit, and reminded myself that it is right and proper, sometimes, to be amazed.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t been blasé since adolescence, and then I was faking it. Probably quite obviously. And I find plentiful joy and amazement in all kinds of ordinary experience – looking out an airplane window and seeing trees or highways or tidy little farms; seeing cows by the road, or purplish flowers or autumn leaves; eating a big bowl of cornflakes with cold milk. For whatever reason, though, I tend to temper that amazed joyousness with the reminder that this is nothing unusual. It’s hardly an adventure. It’s just, y’know, life, and life sometimes catches your breath or your pulse with a troop of baboons by the highway or a couple of warthogs; a really cute baby or a cool evening with a light breeze and dark sky.

Standing in the sandy bush, though, that October evening, I recognized that I miss out when I deny myself what I thought of, right then, as a sense of wonder. There’s some value in drawing parallels, in seeing the connections between people, events, customs. But that’s my default, so surely I can benefit by acknowledging the uniqueness inherent in landscapes, moments, experiences. I can benefit by allowing myself that sense of something undeniably, venturesomely wondrous.

So. I’m standing in the Oshana bush, learning about the toxic qualities of some spiky tree, and I realize: I am in the second-most sparsely-populated country in the world. I am with an Owamba, of whom there are maybe 600,000 in the whole world, and two Kavanga, of whom there are fewer. How many people in this world ever even meet a Kavanga? And I’m with one who calls me ‘sister.’ And the other one is wearing a large, fluffy, yellow bath towel and silver slides.

Euro-American mixed breed, Kavanga, Owamba, Kavanga

Yup. Really. We walked for about an hour, over very mixed surfaces, past strangers’ homes and alongside a major roadway, and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and hiking boots, and the Owamba was wearing, maybe, jeans and a t-shirt and low-heeled pumps, and one Kavanga was wearing pajama pants and a blouse and flip-flops, and the other had wrapped the towel around herself, tucked it into itself, and slid her feet into those silver shoes. And only had to re-tuck it two or three times. Please, do tell me how often you have gone for a suburban walk with a friend wearing nothing but a towel. And silver slides.

It’s five months later, and as I type this and remember, I am once again enraptured by a sense of wonder. And of gratitude. Okuhepa.