"Out of service, out of Africa, I wouldn't hang about!"

And so we are outta here. No visa, no service. No service, no Africa. After four weeks hanging around Zambia we decided we couldn’t wait any longer for the visa process to work itself out. And, although generously offered, we decided we couldn’t commit to starting yet another new project in Zambia. To be honest, had we waited I think our visa would have been hanging in limbo-land indefinitely, word on the street is that for political reasons the government and the country is starting to turn a bit anti-foreigner. Not a great road to go down.

And so we ended our stay in Zambia with a Korean night reminiscent of the mountain, of course with delicious Korean food. After which we spent a fantastic and memorable week at Victoria Falls. Two days of relaxation in Livingston where we met a crazy Danish biker who is trying to break the world record of biking from Cairo to Cape Town by 40 days – we accidentally delayed him by one day due to our lovely personalities and an excess of drink but I am confident he will make up the time = ). Followed by three days of a proper backpacker holiday with Zach and Sammi who had come up from Mozambique, which was a blast, although it took me another three days to recover. Lots of laughs, lots of stories and one less than thought through incident where Sammi and I tried to ‘save’ a sex worker in a local pub who asked for our help while Zach and Brian tried to fend off the guys angry at the intruding white girls. We’ll chalk it up to an experience.

While I still think we could have done good work at the project in Katima, at the end of the day it was mentally exhausting holding onto a project while at the same time letting go of it, and so in the end I had to let go. And after having spent a few days at the project wrapping things up and handing things over, I feel okay in walking away. I think that all the frustrations, anger, and tears were worth it because during our last week in Katima I began to think that our time there had made a difference, and that, partly as a direct result of our presence, the project will continue to improve.

This wasn’t always the case. Had we left Namibia in September I would have considered our experience a failure. I would have had no confidence in the leaderships ability to implement the changes we had begun or to manage the project. However, in large part due to our pain-in-the-assery of constantly voicing (legitimate) concerns over the project, the head office has made some staffing changes. Anna, our project leader and Laimi the administrator have been relocated to a project closer to the head office and its direct supervision. Three new staff members, all with experience and all seemingly very competent have started working at the project. We were only able to work with them for a few days but I am very encouraged by their management skills, their organization, and their motivation. Melody, the new Project Leader, would have liked us to stay much longer, and was extremely open to our ideas and opinions. I have every confidence in her ability to start turning the project around. She got on board immediately to the new systems we had started to implement and I believe that, with the new staff at the project, the systematic and environmental changes that we struggled to make Anna see were necessary will stand a good chance of lasting. And so with this new development we were able to leave the project with a clear conscience and a feeling that our presence and our work at the project had been worthwhile and hopefully, sustainable.

At the moment I am transitioning, quite comfortably, back into the West. When we left Katima we left Africa behind. We are now spending our last week on the Namibian coast in Swakopmund, which reminds me more of Disney World’s version of Germany than anything African I have ever seen. The food is delicious, the beds are comfortable, the electricity and water works without fail, and the prices, to my culture shocked eyes, are astronomical. But we are enjoying ourselves. The dunes of the Namib Desert are beautiful in an other-worldy kind of way and we have enjoyed them in pretty much every way possible. I decided to jump out of a plane over them, we took a Living Desert Tour (spoken entirely in German) through them, and Brian is currently flying over them at breakneck speeds in a quad bike. Oh, the joys of nature. In addition, the other day we went sea kayaking amongst the dolphins, flamingos and seal colonies on the coast, which was a sheer privilege.

And so our African Adventure is drawing to a close. We are truly out of service, out of Africa, but in many ways I would love to hang about just a little longer…

See you at Thanksgiving!