Where in the World is Flick? (Home)

All over Northern Namibia the Jacaranda trees are in full bloom spilling their lavender blossoms like confetti in the breeze. The leaves of the low, flat acacia trees are turning dark green and the blossoms are about ready to pop like crimson fireworks. Recently the sky had its first clouds puff up like cotton candy and drift lazily by on the monsoon winds which will shortly be bringing us rain. The air is getting very hot and humid. It is as if everything is breathlessly waiting for those first rains, except the trees who are just showing off before the rains do arrive at the end of the month. Summer is here in Kavango.

We are several weeks into the third term, and final term of school for the 2011 school year and very busy working to make sure that the students will pass their end-of-year exams. Third term is somewhat of an anomaly as the 12^th graders have already begun to take their exams and started taking them 2 weeks ago. Apparently 12^th grade spends a month taking exams and finishes school sometime in late October, so all you students out there reading this (especially in Mrs. Distler’s class) be thankful for how things are in America! I have spent the last few weeks teaching my English class all about the various aspects of newspapers ­– from headline writing, summary writing, opinion formulation, etc. We are ending this topic on a week of writing (and typing) a letter to the editor to describe how they feel about Namibia’s stance towards the NTC government of Libya.

*Side Bar* The official stance of the government of Namibia is that they do not recognize the new NTC government in Libya and even made the Libyan embassy in Windhoek remove the new flag representing the new government in favor of the solid green flag that represents Gaddafi’s government. There are a variety of reasons, but the chief among them is that Gaddafi played a big role in supporting Namibian independence. I have learned that Namibia is very slow to tell its “friends” in other governments like Gaddafi and Mugabe in Zimbabwe when they are doing something that every other country in the world is condemning. However, I have seen that the younger generations, the “born frees” as they are called here, are less shackled to the old supporters of Namibia’s own fight for independence and are more willing to judge the merits of these leaders for what they are.

So far the letters have been a success. I am reading over each of them and trying to help them polish the language up, correct their verb tenses, correct word usage, and whatnot, while maintaining complete neutrality in the whole exercise. I do not want to impart my own opinions in this highly sensitive topic; only to play the devil’s advocate and try and get them to formulate their own opinions and beliefs.

Before the term started, and where my last posting left off, I had just gotten back from a Peace Corps IT conference in Luderitz. I went back to Windhoek after the conference and eagerly awaited the arrival of my friend Jeff from back in the states. Jeff and I first met around 12 years ago. He had just started working at Old Navy the week prior and I walked in for my interview. We bonded on our love of Blink 182 and punk-rock music, and have been great friends ever since. I checked into the Chameleon Hostel in Windhoek and waited patiently until the next morning when Jeff arrived, slightly bleary eyed from his 36 hours of traveling the globe.

It is very strange when friends come from America. Of course I love seeing them, it is such a refreshing breath of fresh air, like a little bubble of America, when they do. But it is the colliding of my now two, drastically distinct worlds that it is slightly strange. My first world is the one of my home, past life, and friends in America; where I could go to get a smoothie or burrito, of (God help me) the Chick-fil-a lemonade I have been craving for the past year. The world of my pre-African experiences. The world is that of Africa, the new friends and family I have built up for myself, and all these new and strange things that I have seen and done over the past year. These two spheres have only collided twice since I have been here (once with the visit of Stephen and John, and now with Jeff’s arrival), and every time I found myself doing double takes when I saw any of them out of the corner of my eye, as if my subconscious still wasn’t quite convinced that this was happening.

The first night in Windhoek I took Jeff to the top of the brand-new Windhoek Hilton for a sundowner and to watch the sun set over the city and country he was now in. As summer gets closer every evening the sun goes down and paints the landscapes in a kaleidoscope of colors and thousands upon thousands of birds come out. As the light fades it feels more like you are inside of an enormous, freshly shaken snow globe.

Over the next twenty four hours we made our way north to Rundu and then waited for the 2:30 am bus to take us to *surprise* Victoria Falls! I know that I have been there before and extensively explored both sides of the falls over the last break (not to mention shampooed my hair in the spray of the falls and scared off some tourists in the process), however there were two more things I really had to do before I could cross the Falls off my list: I had to go white water rafting down the Zambezi River and I had to swim in Angel’s Pool on the rim of the falls; both of which can only be accomplished during the low water seasons on the river.

The first day Jeff and I were there we spent a day exploring the falls. You would think that this would be a total rerun for me since I have been here before but you would be wrong! The falls are so different in August from what they are in April. The first striking difference is the fact that you can actually see the falls. In April the amount of water pouring over the falls is really mind-blowing. It is really hard to describe what that is like; the area around the falls is perpetually covered in shroud of mist that occasionally the wind opens and provides a glimpse of the wall of water behind it. The air is so full of the spray that the breeze carries with it the clean and slightly alkaline smell of the river, and the mist towers several hundred meters into the air. Then there is the sound; the constant, perpetual roar and thunder of the river that reverberates to your very core. This time around there is still the smell and the roar, but it is as if someone turned the volume down ten notches. There is also mist soaring into the sky - but since the falls are no longer one solid, 2.5 kilometer wide wall of water, but now dozens of smaller falls - you can see each and every one with clarity. There is still a roar, but you don’t have to shout over it to be heard, and the “mist” that was more of a constant torrential downpour when near the falls during the high-water season is nonexistent, causing the many waterfalls, streams, and rainforest-like foliage to have disappeared.

First we went to the Rhodes Bridge, where you may remember I bungee jumped off of last time. This is the perfect place to start when you arrive at the falls so as to attempt to gain a perspective of how big they are. We then entered the park and hiked to the Boiling Pot, a natural whirl pool formed from the river exiting the falls and flowing into the gorge. The difference between April to now was dramatic as the water level on the river had fallen by about 100 feet. Firstly it was weird to see all the tons and tons of boulders that were previously hidden by the fast-moving water. But it was amazing to realize how deep the river actually is. I was told that in this part it was over 150 feet deep at the low mark, meaning it was 250 feet deep when I was there in April. It is deeper than it is wide in some places.

The hike down to the Boiling Pot was different as well. In April it has been as if we were walking through a real-life version of Jurassic Park. There were groves of tall palm trees, vast and colorful undergrowth, toxic looking fungi grew on the wood of fallen trees, large streams of runoff water from the spray of the falls coursed down the valley to join the larger Zambezi, and butterflies were colorful confetti. This time around what has once been a lush and prehistoric looking jungle had now turned into a forest that looked more savannah than rainforest with the undergrowth shades of yellow and brown, the streams all but gone, and the trees dusty and looking forward to the time when the river flows and the spray refreshes the landscape back to life once again.

Like I said, there were two reasons I really had to come back to Victoria Falls and one of them was to white-water raft down the Zambezi River, which is famous for its world class rafting and filled with more Class 5 rapids than any other river in the world. I had never, ever white water rafted before and I was more nervous about this than I was about plummeting more than 300 feet when I bungee jumped. Where in bungee jumping the danger lasts for less than a few seconds, in white water rafting the danger lasts all day long with what felt like much more unpredictable ways of being dispatched from this earth.

I was picked up by the rafting company early in the morning and taken down to The Falls resort on the river by the entrance to Mosi oa Tunya National Park where the staff prepared the raft for us. We then walked down to the river to put our rafts in. I wondered where we would begin our journey and was unnerved to learn that we would be starting from the infamous Boiling Pot. The seven other adrenaline enthusiasts and I made small talk on the way down and I learned that they were all British doctors in town for a medical conference. So, at least if I were to suffer major bodily harm there was a team of surgeons there; my own floating preemptive ambulance. We scurried down the boulders to the water’s edge and hopped into the raft. I took my seat in the middle of the raft, which I thought would be best given my lack of rafting experience.

Our trusty guide Potato (I am not kidding) gave us instructions, we had to paddle as hard and fast as we could to attempt to cut across the current, which was driving straight into a sheer rock wall in order to make it out to the rest of the river. If we couldn’t cut across the current before the wall we would either be circled back around and have to try again, or the water hitting the rock wall would flip us sideways and dump us into the churning river. By the way The Boiling Pot is only a class 3 rapid. We let the current carry us up stream and on Potato’s mark began to paddle with all our might in our attempt to make it to the other side of the current before hitting the rocks. It was at this point when I was dismayed to see my compatriot’s paddling skills, or lack there of. As many of you know I am an Eagle Scout, and among my many merit badges I have several for things like canoeing and kayaking. In addition to this I have taken a kayaking class at Texas Tech, so I know that when you are paddling, especially paddling for your life across very fast moving water (that at this very moment looked more like the River Styxs than the Zambezi), and trying to avoid being flipped into the said river of death, you have make sure to put the entire oar blade into the water and use your upper body to torque it in order to get the most leverage and power. As we were paddling for our lives, and I am using ever ounce of strength I have, I see that my fellow rafters are paddling more in the fashion that I can describe as the “row, row, row your boat” style. Needless to say the wall of rock was coming very quickly on my left (I was on the left center of the boat). Potato was yelling to paddle harder and harder, and suddenly the order was given to get down. I got as low as I could on the boat and held on for dear life as the boat went vertical, dumping three of the four passengers over on the right side of the boat and into the water. Miraculously we did not flip and got spit back up stream to collect our freshly doused passengers from the river to try again.

This time around, Potato seeing that I, sadly, was the most experienced one on the boat moved me to the front right position of the boat. This worried me because it meant that I was now a leader of the boat; my stroked dictated the speed and rhythm of those behind me, and that I was now in the “splash zone” and most likely to be tossed overboard at the wall. I took my place showing as little of the trepidation that I was feeling as I could and waited for the order to paddle. When that order came I paddled as fast and hard as I could. This time we were spit back upstream only to have to attempt it again (luckily we did not hit the wall and go vertical, so everyone remained in the boat).

We coasted smoothly on the eddy of the river and were, once again given the order to paddle. I was getting tired of this; the stress of facing death over and over is draining, as is the humiliation of not being able to make it down the rest of the river. I did not want to spend my day of white water rafting going in circles as other groups paddled on. We were the first group on the river, and as more tour companies began to assemble on the bank we had a growing audience. I was determined to make it through the current this time come Hell or high water (pun intended). I paddled as hard as I could, throwing all my weight into it. We were rolling up and down the waves of the river and at one point, though I was still preforming the action of paddling the water was a good 5 feet below my oar as we surfed the top of a large, stationary wave. I kept up the motions, paddling the air in the hopes that I would soon feel the resistance of the water against my oar; the Wall looming ever closer. Within seconds we were being told to get down as the boat hit the wave up water being thrust up by the Wall. Then, as if in a dramatic slow-motion action sequence the boat went vertical and as I looked up I saw it slowly start falling back towards me. Suddenly I was in the water with the boat on top of me.

As soon as you are in the water you are stuck by two things: how dark it actually is, and the surprising difficulty of keeping your head above the surface to breath. As I was tossed by the current I was continually forced under the surface as if I was being dunked by a particularly ruthless 8th grader. Very quickly we were spit out of the rapids and the river, though moving very fast, was much calmer and we had time to right the raft and get back inside it. Through the violent drama of being churned in the water I did not realize until this moment that we had broken through the current and we now drifting down river, finally!

At one point we were told that we could jump out of the raft and enjoy a swim in the river to cool off. “What about the crocodiles?” I inquired. I was informed that in these sections of river, the bubbles that had been generated by the preceding rapids that were now percolating to the surface, scared off the crocodiles. This provided me with a very amusing metal picture as I jumped into the river. After about five minutes of swimming around the raft Potato said in a rather quiet but panicked voice, “Get back in the raft! There is a crocodile!” We swam as fast as we could and, with all the grace of a net of fish being dumped onto the deck of a ship, flopped back into the raft. There was indeed a crocodile sunning himself on a rock along the edge of the water. We guided the raft as close as we could and when we got within six feet the thing when it hissed at us and disappeared into the water. So much for the bubble theory.

Throughout the course of the day we traveled our way down the river on a journey that took us 25 kilometers down stream and dropped us 400 feet in elevation. There are 25 rapids that we traveled through, ranging from class threes to the a great deal of class fives; the most difficult. All of the twenty five rapids were given very colorful names to describe them, from The Devil’s Toilet, The Washing Machine, Gulliver’s Travels, and my favorite: The Three Ugly Sisters, which was followed immediately by The Mother. Here is a complete list of the rapid names.

The experience of rafting down one of the premier rivers of the world, surrounded on either side by the walls of the Songwe Gorge, which are very very steep, if not straight up cliffs was an awe inspiring experience. And all the while, in the back of my mind, was the thought that here on my left is Zambia and my right is Zimbabwe.

Towards the end we only had a class two rapid and we were invited to jump out and take on this rapid bobbing up and down with our life jackets. Everyone was a bit nervous but I was the first one leaping into the water. It was so much fun to float down the river bouncing on the waves and felt a bit like floating around in the ocean. There were no crocodiles in this section as the water was too rough for them.

The second thing I had to do while I was here at Victoria Falls, something that has been on my bucket list for many years, was to swim in either the Devil’s or Angel’s Pool. These pools are natural swimming spots right on the edge of the falls. Since they are on the edge they are inaccessible during the high-water season and this was the only time that I could do it. I heard that they just opened Devil’s Pool the day we arrived too! In the end we chose to do the Angel’s Pool because it was nearly free; we only had to pay a guide to take us across the river, where as Devil’s Pool costs $45 USD per person to go to.

To get to the Angel’s Pool I practically had to beg every member of the park staff to take us across as they did not seem to keen to do so. There are several “unofficial” guides at the river’s edge prepared to take people across, but we had heard stories of people being majorly ripped off by these men. We have also heard of them leading people to the pools too early or on a dangerous route which has caused people to fall off the edge of the falls. Sadly the week we arrived there we heard of an unofficial guide taking an American tourist to the Devil’s Pool too early and upon jumping into the pool the strong current pulled him over the edge. When this sort of thing happens the guide disappears and is not held accountable for their reckless behavior. It is for these reasons that we were only going to use a member of the park staff to take us.

Finally we found someone to take us across. Jeff and I had foolishly worn our sandals, which had to be removed so that we didn’t slip and fall into the river, and quickly discovered how sharp the river rocks are here. We all held hands and began to walk sideways in a single file line across the top of the falls. It took about 30 minutes and there were several places were we could walk right up to the edge of the falls and peer down into the abyss below, but eventually we made it to our destination. Water flowed into this pool from a 25 foot waterfall. The pool itself was about 10 feet deep and about 60 feet in circumference with a small stream that went left, made an L-turn and flowed over the edge of the falls. I stood on the cliff, leaped into the air, and splashed into the pool. It was exciting to be able to cross something off my list that I had wanted to do years before I thought of joining the Peace Corps, and my friends all said that I had a giant, goofy smile in my face as I disappeared below the surface of the water. We spent almost an hour jumping into and swimming around the pool as well as taking pictures on the edge. In the end I wish we would have had more time but the sun was starting to set and we wanted to get across to solid ground before it went down.