Namibia Bound

Monday, April 3rd, 2023

I’m off! Off to Namibia in southern Africa. Off to see my brother Nathan’s wedding. More about that later…

For now, I’ve made it as far as Doha, Qatar where at the moment I’m sitting in a lounge, sipping a beer and, well, lounging. From here it’s a 2:00 a.m. flight to Windhoek in Namibia. I’m traveling with Nathan’s close friend, and fellow Peace Corp alum, Brett. The two of them served in the Peace Corps together in Namibia back in the early 1990s and have been like brothers ever since. Brett and I are on the same Qatar Airways flight and will be greeted by Nathan about 10:00 a.m. Windhoek time Tuesday morning. From there it’s an overnight in Windhoek, one night in Emily’s village, one night in the small town where Nathan lived for two years, and then off to Emily’s family farm for the weekend where we’ll be sleeping in tents, eating food on the fire, and reveling in 3 days of wedding festivities. I can’t really begin to imagine what I’m getting myself into. But, I suspect, it’s all going to be an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience.

I’ll write more about the wedding in a future post, but to summarize… Nathan is marrying Emily, and the ceremony will be celebrated following the traditional cultural norms of the Herero people. Traditional dress, traditional customs, traditional marriage ceremony. I can hardly wait to be a part of all of it, and I feel extremely lucky that I can travel to Namibia to be there!

So far, in the lead up to the wedding weekend, one fateful event occurred as Emily and her brother were driving to the town of Otjinene to take care of some wedding business. They slammed into, and killed, a warthog on the road. Bad luck? Good luck? You be the judge. But you can imagine it led to some good pork ribs for some lucky person.

Ciao for now.