Birthday Week

Sometime over the last three years I started to feel old. I don’t know when it happened or how, but there it is. Worse than old, Brian and I have started to become serious people. My first month in Katima I went a whole month without laughing (I only became aware of this during my first serious laugh session in Katima, which happened to be at one in the morning while watching the Top Gear episode where they go to Vietnam – priceless). In fairness to us, it has been a serious few years. The last three years have been full of marriage contracts, mortgage contracts and building contracts, losing jobs and losing loved ones and most recently meeting the faces of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Last week we decided that enough was enough. We came here full of passion to create positive change. Turns out if you are not careful, passion can stop being fun. So, to celebrate my birthday week we decided to (try) to be young again by going to our nearest approximation to a city, Livingston in Zambia. Friday night we failed. Turns out being young is hard! After a long, hot day hiking (hitching) around the country we arrived at our accommodation late. We were in bed by ten.

The next day, however, we woke up feeling better, ready to see one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the world. The waters that run by Katima on the Zambezi River flow into Zambia and Zimbabwe to create their border and then rush over a gorge that is roughly 2 miles wide. We arrived at the falls, having passed a small herd of elephants hanging out by the side of the road, and went to the bridge spanning the gorge downriver of the falls. The midway point of the bridge represented the divide between the two countries, and Brian and I both jumped over the into Zimbabwe, giggling as if Mugabe was going to jump out of the crowd of tourists and grab us for trespassing. Back on the Zambian side, the falls even in low flow were impressive, if not for the volume of water at this time of year, then for the sheer size of the falls themselves. Even at low flow, we got drenched on the walk along the cliff while taking pictures. While we didn’t do the famous bungie jump off the bridge we did swim in the Devils Pool. Both one of the scariest and coolest things I have ever done, I don’t think I will do it again in a hurry but would definitely recommend it. Devils Pool is a pool of water just at the edge of the falls on the Zambian side. During the dry season the water flow is low enough that a natural rock ledge is formed, allowing people to flirt with death while not actually dying. That being said, every year one or two people do die going over the falls. After a little bargaining, for the princely sum of 75,000 kwacha ($16) we hired a guy to take us to the pool. Holding hands for balance, carefully sidestepping over moss covered rocks the 1.5 km trip took about 45 minutes. I don’t think I have ever focused so much on not falling, acutely aware that not too far away the world fell away. We were taken to a lookout point where we waved to the tourists on the other side of the gorge, took in the breathtaking view of the everlasting perfect rainbow created by the mist rising from the falls, and marveled at the force and scale of the falls that we were standing directly on top of. We then shimmied over to Devils Pool. A small waterfall rushed into the pool below before the water made its final drop, creating enough of a current in the pool to thoroughly thrill and terrify. I wasn’t graceful or particularly brave but I made it to the other side of the pool, where Brian and I both lowered ourselves into a natural depression in the rock which allowed us to safely look over the falls. It is something I will never forget. To my right and left water thundered around me and the red and orange top of the everlasting rainbow flickered like fire from the mist rising from below; I truly felt like a fly on the wall of greatness.

That night we were determined to have fun. After one of the best meals we have had in Africa (homemade pumpkin ravioli in a butter and sage sauce yum!) we went across the street to one of the backpacker bars we had heard was a good place to party. Three people sat scattered around the bar. We hung out there for about an hour and were about to concede defeat and go home when we heard the bartender talking about a live band she was going to after work. In the end this bartender, Anastasia, took us and the two guys to what was far from a touristy spot. The queue outside the bar was enormous and we almost got crushed in a mini-riot as we squeezed our way in before the police quelled the guy who started it with a heavy looking baton. Inside an apparently famous, award winning Zambian R&B band was playing on a stage made out of a lorry. It was a great night – the music was good, there was some white person dancing and attempts at black person dancing, we learned a little about Anastasia’s traditional culture, and I almost became the girlfriend of a rather large looking local (apparently if a guy comes up to you and shakes your hand and doesn’t let go and you don’t let go he is propositioning you and you are accepting. I, not knowing that, politely let him keep holding my hand thinking it was a cultural thing until Anastasia started yelling at him in a different language).

The next day we woke up, had breakfast and made the trip back to Katima. Looking out the window at the dry landscape and villages of fenced in compounds and mud huts, I was struck by just how different this place is to the one I grew up in, how lucky I am to get to go home knowing that a place like this exists, and reminded of the Africa I do like a whole lot. I know that Africa is a diverse and complex continent, that the relative wealth and development of Namibia is just as true and African experience as the stereotypical poverty of, say, Mozambique. But if living in the suburbs of an African town is just as ‘authentic’ an experience, it is not as nice a one. Hardship and poverty exist throughout Namibia, but some of this seems to be offset in the villages by land, nature, family and culture while there does not seem to be much to offset reality in a dusty town like Katima.

Last weekend also put this experience in a little bit more perspective. Once in the trenches, so to speak, placed in a situation where there is intense pressure to hurry up and achieve something, anything, positive in the fixed time period of one year, and where Brian and I do not know anyone except each other, I have developed a sort of tunnel vision where my reality, identity, and topics of conversation all converge on this single experience, and more specifically, The Project. Taking a break from all this, being a tourist and doing activities I would normally do in the real world, I was reminded of who I am. That I am a person who has friends all over the world, who has built and lived lives in two different countries, lives that have involved vacations and friends and nights out, and that this version of me – this girl with perpetually dirty feet, six outfits in the closet on continual rotation, and a drive to do something positive – is only one version of me that will eventually fit into my life story and, hopefully, change me for the better.