The Orange River

The beginning of a longer piece...orginally written in 2006, edited throughout 2007 and then reworked/rewrote in the summer of 2012.
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The ancient air conditioner sputtered and rumbled in the window, working far too hard to produce such little relief.  The room was still stifling hot, but Jo remained covered by the tangled sheet.  Without looking at me she whispered something that was lost in the gurgling of the artificial air.  She reached out and clicked off the air conditioner.  The room was oppressively silent and she spoke in the same whisper, this time looking me directly in the eyes.

“Come to Nairobi.”

I guffawed and almost immediately regretted my reaction as I sensed her shrink away from me. 

“I can’t.”

“You won’t.” She responded icily.

She was right.  In all honesty, I had considered Nairobi, both fleetingly and longingly, but never seriously.  Kenya?  Now?  Only five months before this I had boarded a plane to Cape Town, South Africa for a four month study abroad semester.  Five weeks ago I stood in the American Consulate in Cape Town attempting to extend my student travel visa for the rest of the summer.  Throughout it all, there was always an end date – June 19, my program ended; June 31, my visa expired; August 30, my new extended visa expired.  I was living a temporary fantasy.  But in her simple statement, Jo had challenged the temporary nature of my journey. 

Jo and I met three weeks ago, three very short and immensely long weeks ago in the Gruner Kanz hotel in Swakopmund, Namibia. 

That meeting almost never happened.  The bad luck and good luck I encountered to get me to the lounge of the Gruner Kanz made this whole thing even more unbelievable.  If I believed in fate, I would be struck by the profound butterfly effect this entire experience hinged upon.  Twenty-five days ago, my study abroad housemate Emily and I boarded a South African Airlines plane bound for Windhoek, Namibia.  Emily and I shared an adjoining room in a former bed and breakfast in Mowbray, a sub-section of Cape Town at the foot of Devil’s Peak where the University jutted out from its side.  Our study abroad program had bought the former bed and breakfast to set up as a housing unit for students.  There were twelve rooms in the house, a large kitchen and living area with a first floor patio and multiple balconies on the second floor facing Devil’s Peak.  The entire house was surrounded by a seven foot concrete wall topped with a foot of razor sharp curled barbed wire.  The windows of the home, although within the fortress walls were all adhered with white steel bars.  Bars and walls were hard to get used to at first. 

Both Emily and I grew up in New England.  Emily was a self-proclaimed hick from a rural section of New Hampshire.  Her family owned a farm and she just found out her sixteen year old sister was pregnant and subsequently engaged.  Her brother was active in the regional high school’s 4H club, "hicks, hillbillies, horses and hens."  I, on the other hand, grew up in a cookie cutter suburb close enough to travel into Boston by subway, but far enough away to feel like you’ve got some space to stretch your arms and legs.  Emily and I hit it off instantly.  She was a no maintenance, no bullshit kind of person always looking to seize the moment.  I was simply looking for adventure.  I could tell you all about our wild and crazy experiences in Cape Town because there were many, but this story is not so much about my adventures with Emily. 

After our semester at the University of Cape Town ended, Emily and I decided to extend our visas and join an 18 day trek down the western coast of southern Africa.  We signed up for the tour online and received an email saying we were to meet the Tours of Africa caravan in Swakopmund, Namibia (330 mile drive from Windhoek) on July 4, which was now only 48 hours away.  The Tours of Africa website was filled with pictures of smiling tourists on safari’s, riding ostriches, hiking mountains and making unforgettable memories.  The tour Emily and I were joining originated in Nairobi, Kenya nine weeks ago and ended its adventure in Cape Town on July 22.  Emily and I had no idea what to expect from this trip, but if we had learned anything over the course of the past four months, we knew to expect nothing short of the unexpected. 

As we took the short flight north to Windhoek, Emily and I were rather quiet.  I cannot speak for her, but I was reliving the last four months in my mind.  For the first time in a long time, who am I kidding, in forever; I was able to be myself.  No more lies, secrets or unexplainable behaviors that haunted me back at school and home.  It still remained a complete mystery to me why in a place thousands of miles away from home, in the opposite hemisphere and among a culture and people drastically different than what I knew, I felt more like myself than ever before.  Maybe this was all part of the growing process, or maybe I was not myself at all but another identity that I slowly created while in Africa.  Nonetheless, I was happy and happiness was not always easy to come by, so I tried to focus on enjoying my final moments in Africa instead of worrying about my transition back into my former life and quite possibly former self in the US. 

As I traveled down my African memory lane, the pilot interrupted my thoughts and noted that we were making our final decent into Windhoek.  My mind had been wrapped up in memories, hopes and fears that I nearly forgot I was flying.  But now I was brought painfully back into reality.  I hate flying.  As a fearful flyer, I hated the takeoff, landing and any semblance of turbulence or slight movement while in the air.  I anxiously peered out the window monitoring the approaching ground below.  If the trees in Namibia had been taller than ten feet, we would have been flying through the tops of them.  Out of nowhere, a small clearing in the low lying bushes and trees made itself visible to our left.  A faded gray strip of pavement stretched mildly through the clearing and a low rise building, resembling an elementary school hugged its left side.  Windhoek was the capital city of Namibia, but as of that moment there were no signs of a city, town or life at all for miles around.  Instantly, my stomach was in my throat as we dropped down into the clearing hitting the runway sharply.  I dug my fingernails into my armrests and squeezed my eyes shut; there was no way we were going to come to a stop before this long driveway they called a runway expired.  As the plane eased up on the brakes, I squinted open my left eye to find Emily covering a smile as she watched my panicked procedure.  We had never flown together but she found it remarkable funny that as a reckless thrill seeker, I was afraid of something as ordinary as flying. 

We disembarked the plane and crossed the runway to the customs entrance in the school-like building.  There was a slight breeze and the unobstructed sun made it feel warmer than I thought it would be.  July was the beginning of the “winter” season in the southern hemisphere, but it looked more like the rainy, spring season to me.  We had not booked a reservation in a hostel in Windhoek yet, but that was half the fun we thought.  Apparently, customs does not look kindly on this form of fun.  A stout middle aged woman with transparently blanched skin asked us to fill out the address of our intended location in Windhoek.  We looked blankly at her.  She leaned her mouth towards her radio and a in an instant, a man wearing a similar customs uniform took us into a holding room.  We were asked a series of questions about our intentions in Namibia.  The agents, realizing the only threat we posed was to ourselves, recommended a couple hostels and watched as we called and made a reservation.  For the hundredth time in the past four months, my Lost Planet guide book had failed to include this piece of vital information.  A heads up or recommendation in the side margins would have helped.  Maybe something like, “It is in your best interest to make reservations prior to arriving in another country seeing as customs do not take fondly to foreigners with large L.L. Bean backpacks exploding at the seams but no real travel plan to speak of.”

After nearly an hour, we departed the airport with reservations at a hostel, and a scolding from the customs agent about traveling alone that our parents would have been proud of.  We drove to the city; I exhaled hoping that would be our biggest hurdle of this leg of trip.  Looking back, that thought was laughable.  The landscape of Windhoek was vastly different from Cape Town.  The trees were short and harsh.  There was only a scattering of low bushes and plants throughout the parched, dirt ground.  The city itself consisted of a spattering of dwarfed skyscrapers surrounding by low lying buildings and homes.  West of Windhoek was the Namib Desert, an expansive land of sand that stretched along the entire Namibian coast and north to the southern part of Angola and south to the most northern part of South Africa.  That was our destination tomorrow.

 

 

Photo of the Orange River (natural border between Namibia and South Africa) - taken in April 2006.