Ready to Go

It was great to see how many friends and colleagues expressed their support for my sabbatical and were interested in my time in Mayana since learning about it. Many people have been asking if I was nervous at all or excited about leaving soon. To be honest, since the last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful with saying my goodbyes to friends and family, visiting doctors and getting my last shots, applying for visas, finishing up at work, getting my apartment ready there was hardly any time to get nervous. But yesterday when I got up for work it suddenly hit me: my last day at work had finally come. I had a great last week at work and I am pretty confident that all the projects will run smoothly while I am gone.

I did have a little fallout midweek though because I felt like I just couldn’t get things done at work or at home. Wednesday I was freaking out a little about packing and my luggage since I hadn’t done much besides watching my “Namibia Pile” growing next to my bed. Over the last few weeks more and more parcels from MCP had been arriving with football shirts, kids games, laptop batteries or water testing kits. Also I have acquired a nice little collection of travel gadgets which hopefully will come in handy in the wild. I had inquired with Air Namibia about their baggage allowance but sadly they don’t make exceptions for volunteers. So I am stuck with 23kg for my checked bag, 10kg for carry on plus a camera, a laptop and a purse. This was going to be interesting…
In order to keep it together I decided to start packing on Thursday night. I relocated the “Namibia Pile” from my bedroom to the living room and spread everything out – I was sure there was no way I could fit everything. Three hours later I had packed everything up and only had to leave a few things behind.

At this point I have to admit, that luckily I had bought some vaccum bags, otherwise there would have been no way. Desi, I promise never to make fun of you again 😉

Last weekend I was able to skype with the board of MCP at their annual meeting. It felt like we have known each other for ever and I am still so happy that they are giving me the chance to do this! I told them, that I am already thinking about going back and being a little mad that I will have used up my 90 days for Namibia for this year already which is probably a good sign.

Also Joseph friended me on facebook and I was very happy to find out that with the provider MTC in certain locations you do get an internet connection in Mayana – probably not 4G but oh well. Actually it was the first time my perspective changed because Joseph wrote “if you have a smartphone” and I thought “who doesn’t – I got two…” but I guess what’s normal here just isn’t at the other end of the world.

I feel well prepared for my time in Mayana and I am so excited to finally leave. I can’t believe that in 24hrs I’ll be heading to the airport and off to Namibia I go. I already filled in my arrival card 🙂