The only drama that’s unfolded for me in the last few weeks
is that my laptop was briefly stolen.
I had a gang of PCVs staying at my house and all were fast asleep when
at about 1AM, a noise woke me. I
saw a guy standing at my bedroom window with his arm through my burglar bars
and something in his hand (turned out to be my MacBook that I love with all my
heart). I jumped up and tried to
grab him but he was a fast little thief.
Door locks here don’t allow you to exit your home quickly (hopefully
I’ll never have a fire), so by the time I got outside he was long gone. I scared the hell out of everybody
sleeping in my house, as they had no clue what had happened or what/who I was
cursing loudly at. I was able to track down the kid who stole it with the help of some
people in my neighborhood. The
look on the kid’s face when he answered his front door was pretty
priceless. Pure shock. I got it back in less than 24
hours. No damage. The police, his
mother, and I are orchestrating a scared straight style lesson for him. We’ll see how that goes.
In other news, I did a boat tour of the Kavango River near
Divundu (120 miles east of Rundu) last weekend with some of my PCV
friends. The most eye opening part
was seeing a large crocodile sunning itself on rocks that Nathan, Geri, and I
had hiked on just a few months ago.
We also saw a lot of hippos.
They’re huge. You never go
very far on the Kavango River without encountering a naked family bathing and
washing their clothes. Nudity
isn’t a big deal here. It was
unusual to see folks bathing just about 75 yards from a pack of about a dozen hippos. They kill more people than any other
animal in Africa and I often hear stories of attacks. I’m so used to rivers being a nice safe get away. It’s still unusual to me to feel like I
need to watch myself when hiking along the Kavango.
My belief that my mono issues were behind me has turned out
to be false. I knew I was being a
bit stupid when I started training aggressively for an ultra marathon so soon
after “recovering” from mono. What
I learned is that aggressive training can make mono right back if you haven’t
given yourself sufficient time to recover, which is where I am now. So, lesson learned. I’ll be putting my sneakers in my
closet and trying to find other ways to occupy my time for the next few
months. Shitty timing, but if
Peace Corps has done anything for me, it’s made me more patient.
I’ll spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day at the pediatric
unit of the local hospital. The
doctor that oversees the hospital’s operations told me it was fine to hand out
as much candy as I wanted. I’m not
sure if that’s wise, but I’m going to make it rain candy. New Year’s I’ll camp with some PCV friends
at a local campsite on the river.
It’s hard being so far from home during the holidays and all the down
time makes it that much more difficult, but I have made some good Namibian
friends that will make the days a bit less lonely. I also have some great travel and visitors next year to look
forward to.
