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| Namibia |
Monday, December 24, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
I ran into an elevator in JFK wheeling one suitcase, a big backpack on my back and another smaller one slung out in front of me, a shoulder bag dragging behind me, and a purse dangling from one hand.
A man standing inside with a briefcase took one look at me and said, "Could you possibly be carrying any more stuff? Or you could be like an African woman, carry something on your head!"
And so I am back in the USA. In the odd hours in between jet lag induced naps, I spent the first few days enjoying the fact that I could walk around by myself after dark, looking for traffic on the wrong side of the road, and marvelling at all of the white people everywhere, how easy it is to slip back into blending in. Here I am just walking the streets, wallet still filled with Namibian and South African change, nobody asking me to repeat things, because of my thick American accent.
As sick of the five roommate and very rickety bunkbed situation as I was, I miss our house in Windhoek. The barbed wire fences and the guard dogs, that very vicious terrier around the corner near the Chinese ambassador's house that would always squeeze out of the fence, Tom Thumb's convenience store that reeked of fries (I mean chips) and sausauge starting around six in the morning, that dry desert heat, my second summer.
A man standing inside with a briefcase took one look at me and said, "Could you possibly be carrying any more stuff? Or you could be like an African woman, carry something on your head!"
And so I am back in the USA. In the odd hours in between jet lag induced naps, I spent the first few days enjoying the fact that I could walk around by myself after dark, looking for traffic on the wrong side of the road, and marvelling at all of the white people everywhere, how easy it is to slip back into blending in. Here I am just walking the streets, wallet still filled with Namibian and South African change, nobody asking me to repeat things, because of my thick American accent.
As sick of the five roommate and very rickety bunkbed situation as I was, I miss our house in Windhoek. The barbed wire fences and the guard dogs, that very vicious terrier around the corner near the Chinese ambassador's house that would always squeeze out of the fence, Tom Thumb's convenience store that reeked of fries (I mean chips) and sausauge starting around six in the morning, that dry desert heat, my second summer.
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