Namibia Group 39 PCV: Christmas in July

SOO...as you know now, I am terrible at posts. I had 3 more unfinished posts about my adventures with Mom in Namibia, but figured I should get this uploaded since it is already 3 months late and almost real Christmas in December!

Poinsettias in Katima by Zambezi River

Can you believe it – poinsettias in Namibia?! It is our(America) Christmas plant, but since it is a winter plant it is blooming in Namibia now. What a way to remind me that I am celebrating Christmas in July this year. The first few days of this month, I was reunited with Peace Corps Namibia Group 39 at our mid-service conference. My mom arrived the 4th and I have had 24 memorable days with her and I will end the last days of this month in Khorixas, my Namibian home. A beautiful mix of all my loves in one month.

Hikers to Khorixas...Mother & Her Children

For more details about
my activities with my mom you can read my previous blogs, but the following are some highlights. We slept in 8 lodges, volunteer accommodation’s for 6 nights, camped 5 nights, slept in dormitory beds for 3 nights, and a castle for 1 night. We drove 4,654 km (2,891 miles) which is about 68 hours (almost 3 days) purely on the road within 3.5weeks. We have helped give rides to 7 strangers and 2 PCVs on 7 separate occasions. The 7 strangers composed of 3 women, 2 men and 2 children. I am very proud of Mom being open to pick up hikers and happy we were able to help out a handful of people. [For those nervous readers, the men sat in the back of the bakkie (truck) for the duration of their trip if that calms you any more. We also passed almost a hundred of those needing rides, but I wanted some alone time with my mom.]

Along the drive we have seen baboons, wart hogs, ostriches, various deer-like and antelope animals (oryx, springbok, kudu, eland, and other names I can't recall), elephants and zebras. This excludes the wild lions and leopard we saw in Etosha National Park and the tame cheetah we pet in Quiver Tree Forest. We walked through a canyon, touched ever so lightly a natural hot spring, slept in a castle in the middle of a desert, climbed red sand dunes, touched the Atlantic Ocean and tasted the great fish it produces, gave Mom an up close view of my work and life in Khorixas, witnessed a waterhole have no animal life to a plunder of 5 different animals (elephants, zebras, oryx, lions and a giraffe), saw the northern Nambian rivers (Kavango, Chobe, Zambezi), crossed Botswana into Zimbabwe where we escaped into the 7th Natural Wonder of the World (Victoria Falls) with the views and jumped in downstream we white water rafted the same river with fellow Texans (of all people in the World!), touched Zambia, “played” with elephants and walked with lions, received a ticket for a faulty taillight in Zimbabwe, relaxed on a boat ride in Zambezi Region and made our way back to Windhoek for some city adventures before Moms departure. Yes that was all just one sentence, but it depicts how fast these breathtaking events occurred following one after another.