The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
If you could relive one year of your life, which one would it be?

December 2007 to December 2008 was monumental ‘year’ for me (it’s 13 months).

December 2007 I was finishing my third year living in South Korea, teaching ESL at a tuition centre (in Korean, the term is hagwon). For this last year, I’d transferred to a new branch opening in Busan. Seoul is a big, active city, and you can do almost anything, except live by the sea. My apartment in Busan overlooked Haeundae beach from a distance, the Sea of Japan with the Oryukdo islands on the horizon. I’ve got to admit it was comfortable.

There were big changes coming to my life; “comfortable” was about to get a reality check. The last week of December would find me en route to Namibia. First I’d be going home to Canada to spend some time with family before heading off for a planned two-year stint as a volunteer teacher in a secondary school in rural Namibia.

Then it would be a long journey via London and Johannesburg to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, and a week of training. So Christmas in Canada, New Years Eve in Namibia. The end of the year would have a parallel.

My first year in Africa was one of wonder, confusion, and occasionally fear.

There’s no way to sugar coat how different so many aspects of life were. So 2008 meant learning a new culture, although English was widely spoken, and the language of instruction. Where Korea was incredibly safe (give or take drunk people on weekend nights), Namibia was much more dangerous.

The wildlife wasn’t too much of a risk (side note, in 2009, a black mamba – a very deadly snake – tried to get into my house). The people could be dangerous. Drunk driving was so common. My first weekend at my school, I had to drive the other teachers home from the bar because I was the most sober (and hey, knowing how to drive manual came in very handy.)

Most of the people I met were actually proud that their community had a Canadian volunteer. Not true for all volunteers. I shared a house with a Japanese volunteer, and his treatment was much more racist (there’s a lot of Chinese investment/exploitation occurring in Namibia. The locals hate it, and don’t distinguish between Japanese and Chinese).

Having saved money while teaching in Korea, I was able to buy a car in Namibia. This not only meant that I could go on safari in Etosha National Park whenever I wanted. It also meant I could take friends to Ruacana, the waterfall that marks the Namibia-Angola border.

It also meant that I could, once or twice a semester, drive the 750km to Windhoek with all my clothes and get them machine washed. I never got good at hand washing.

That first year in Namibia was challenging, adjusting to a culture with only a loose acceptance of time management. (My principal called a teachers’ meeting for Saturday, 9:00 am. I arrived 9:00 am. Most of the teachers arrived before 10:00 am. The Principal arrived at noon). Namibia, especially rural Namibia, is one of the places where nothing is open on Sundays. You need your Saturdays to do anything.

Friendships were intense but fleeting. Fellow volunteers came and went, sometimes without much notice. Local friendships were harder to judge, and you’d often discover that a friend saw you more as a bank than a person. But, to give an opposing example, my local friends insisted that I was to never go to the border town of Oshikango alone because it was too lawless for an unacommpanied white person. The hardest part about fleeting friendships was when it ended due to death. Not this year, but 2009, next year, two of my friends would succumb to “unnamed illnesses” which usually meant AIDS.

And you never understand just how sanitized western culture has made death until you live in a place where people die much younger and much more frequently. Twice in my life I’ve seen a dead body just lying on the ground. Both times it was Namibia. A government official coming to our school to give a presentation died when his car hit a wild animal. In 2009, one of our volunteers would be in a vehicle/cow collision that killed three people and left her to be airlifted to Windhoek for comprehensive medical aid.

And yet, and yet, and yet… That first confusing year in Namibia was brilliant and vibrant.

And when the school year ended, I capped 2008 off with a safari in the Serengeti. For those of you geographically challenged, Namibia is not close to the Serengeti, which spans western parts of Kenya and Tanzania. My tour dates meant I spent Christmas on the Serengeti and New Year’s Eve on a beach on the island of Zanzibar.

Truly an amazing year, starting in Korea, then briefly in Canada, then off to Namibia, with a strong finish in Kenya and Tanzania.