The Arrival

After a 15 hour flight, on which I only managed to catch about 10 minutes of sleep, the WorldTeach group landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. A quick 2-hour hop to Windhoek, Namibia's capital, followed. We landed, and I walked down the portable flight of stairs, stopped, took a deep breath, and thought, "Hmm...it's toasty."
An unseasonably hot sun, our Namibia field director, and the proprietor of the hostel in which we have been staying greeted us at the airport. The trip was not short, and it was not easy. Here is a short list of some small misfortunes I encountered:

1)I was delayed in JFK airport's security after my carry-on luggage set off some alarm. The security woman shouted at me as I grabbed for my bag, and then proceeded to inspect it's contents (my medicine, toothbrush, bug spray) thoroughly.
2)Our group got conflicting directions from employees in the Johannesburg international terminal, and the ensuing zig-zags and line switches resulted in us all missing our connecting flight to Namibia.
3)In the 15 hours of travel one of my shoes came untied, and a loose lace caught itself in the machinery at the top of a nearly 30 ft. high escalator in Johannesburg.
4)Of all the 26 bags checked by the WorldTeach group, the only one not waiting in the baggage claim in Windhoek upon our arrival was my biggest, 50lb. bag.

Since I now had the least luggage, I was one of three volunteers to catch a ride with Tangeni, our hostel's owner, in his CRV. After we hopped in and buckled up, he rolled down the windows, pressed play on his stereo, and we took off. As Jack Black once penned, "The journey was long and arduous." But it's pretty damn hard to be bummed as you hurtle down a two-lane highway to a steady stream of Michael Jackson's greatest hits, while baboons and wild boars chill by the road and the stark and extraordinary Namibian bush whizzes passed on both sides.