At the beginning of the year I wrote a new blog whenever something compelled me to write, and I posted the blog immediately thereafter. Sometimes I posted two or three times a week, and once or twice my posts were so long that I divided them into sections. Midway through the year I settled into the routine of posting a new piece once a week. You may or may not have noticed that I have not uploaded any new material for almost a month. Indeed, when our volunteer group met last weekend and a friend inquired how my blog was doing I responded only-half joking with, “Its dead.” Most of the volunteers present agreed that they had not written anything new in quite some time.
The thoughts “I need to write this down!” or “No one is going to believe this!” no longer occur to me. Each day is just another day. Over the course of ten months has Namibia grown less beautiful? Have the situations that arise become less absurd? The two answers are, “Objectively: no, but relatively: yes.” A friend recently told me that she was intrigued by the fact that when she thinks about things after-the-fact she knows that just as many ridiculous things happen to her as at the start of the year, but in the moment everything seems normal.
The stars are just as mesmerizing. In fact, living in a place with no light pollution for a whole year has allowed me one of my first opportunities to observe a complete cycle of the night sky. Animals are as present and surprising as ever. I rode a donkey for the first time a few weeks ago, and I freed a dog from barbed wire just a couple days before learning that the region was experiencing a rabies outbreak. Absolutely insane things still happen. One volunteer had her principal confide in her that he has killed a man. Also, a recent educational circular informed teachers that at a nearby school learners found a large object in the ground and began to play with it. Upon seeing the learners handling this object, the school’s science teacher joined them. Eventually the object was identified as a land mine, and the bomb squad had to be called. They detonated the active mine several kilometers away from the school, and windows were still shattered by the blast. It was only sheer luck that the bomb did not explode earlier.
In January I wrote a post about a boy I saw on the side of the road. Later in term 1 I wrote a piece about walking to a watering hole with learners. This term a school almost blows up, and my response barely exceeds, “Geez.”
It’s said that familiarity breeds contempt. I only dislike my situation and surroundings when I am some combination of exhausted, hot, and hungry. It seems to me that familiarity simply breeds familiarity. It is true that emotional responses might be subdued, but they depend on more factors. When I see male colleagues on a Sunday evening or coming back from the road on another school night I know they are probably drunk. I hate that. I hate that more each week. When my principal still has not furnished my computer lab with an iron burglar door after four months of assuring me that it will be done soon, I am not surprised. I am frustrated, and I hope always to be so because anything else is acquiescence to the general apathy, but it doesn’t ruin my day like it did the first few weeks of disappointment. When I climb in the back of a truck with 10 other people I know my legs and back will be in pain, but for some reason it still gives me a faint grin. And when I fetch water at night I know that it takes my container a little less than 2 minutes to fill. That makes things easier in the darkness, and it allows me a bit more time to look skywards, where I now know where to find all of my favorite constellations. If you’re familiar with my blog, you will know I like that.
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