And we’re back!

_{Artie explores her new yard}

We are back in the US for Nate’s next several tours. I’ve been hesitant to write about it because honestly I didn’t want to jinx our PCS here.

When we arrived in Namibia it was like “oh look how great this is!” and then Athena died and it was horrible and we vowed to never put ourselves in that situation ever again.

This time, we had to leave our dog behind again. Yes, again. It made me so upset and stressed out, and I cried about it on a practically daily basis as we were preparing to leave Namibia. After everything we went through with Athena how could we possibly be finding ourselves in the same position all over again?!

The CDC rabies dog ban, that’s how. What a clusterfuck.

Artie stayed with some good friends rather than at a kennel. While we had a kennel in Windhoek that we liked, we just couldn’t leave her there for who-knows-how-long. Thankfully several friends stepped up and offered to let her stay with them, and she stayed with a family that has several kids, another dog, and lax rules about dogs on beds and sofas. I think she enjoyed her time there.

So, back to the CDC rabies dog ban. There are a lot of steps, a lot of rules, and this is absolutely not a post explaining any of it. Suffice to say, we sent Artie’s sample to the lab in South Africa over a month before we left, thinking it would be enough time for her to arrive in the US shortly after we did. HA!

We didn’t get her serology result from the lab until mid-October. Then we had to apply for the CDC import permit and arrange her travel. Thankfully we had a pet shipper in Namibia who actually made all the bookings, made sure her kennel was set, took her to the vet for her export visit, etc. They also recommended a customs clearing agent, an awesome fellow named Mike, who turned out to be worth his weight in gold.

After a lot of waiting, lies from the lab, back-and-forth communications, and money, I finally picked up Artie a few weeks ago at the cargo area at Dulles! It was a very fraught experience. 

Initially they told me she hadn’t cleared a customs hold and she would have to spend the night someplace else because the USDA customs people had already left for the day. Or something like that. Honestly I was too busy trying to not scream bloody murder to follow whatever convuluted yarn the Qatar air cargo guy was spinning. I just kept saying “But we have all the required paperwork and our clearing agent cleared her through customs.” Apparently getting cleared through customs is not the same as clearing a customs hold. 

At this point I was crying and it was not a great situation. I definitely looked like a crazy lady, holding a leash no dog and wiping my tears/snot on my sleeves. They told me to call Pender Air, which I did. A very helpful guy named Logan gave me detailed, albeit complicated, instructions for what to do if Artie had not in fact cleared the customs hold. 

But before embarking on the literal journey that Logan’s instructions involved, I called Mike, our customs agent. He assured me that she had cleared the hold and spoke with the very unhelpful Qatar air cargo guy. Mike kindly stayed on the line with me until the Qatar dude checked his computer and sure enough, she had in fact cleared the hold!

Fast forward to about 45 minutes later, they tell me that, despite flying cargo, Artie had been sent to the baggage claim rather than the cargo bay. So they were sending some people to baggage claim to get her and bring her back to the cargo area. Well, at this point, “Your dog is at baggage claim, oops” was loads better than “You don’t get your dog today,” and I continued to wait. Thirty minutes later, they came to tell me my dog had arrived. 

They opened the huge garage door into the cargo facility and there was Artie in her crate. She saw me and immediately started whining and wagging her tail, and they couldn’t get the zip ties off the crate fast enough. I got her leash on her and took her to pee, while the cargo guys put her crate and document folder in the car, and then we headed home!

She was so excited to see all of us. M gave her the longest, tightest, full-body hug imaginable and she soaked it all in. I took her for a walk around the block, and she started to settle in.

Her first night back, she had doggy jetlag. She woke up at 1:30 am ready to play and go outside. We were all just so glad to finally have her here, we didn’t mind one bit. 

Artie was clingy for the first couple of days, but eventually she felt comfortable going outside into the yard by herself and exploring. Now she’s fully adjusted and it seems that she loves living here. It’s not too hot, she has a massive grassy yard full of squirrels to run around in, there are no vehicles with barky dogs driving by, and she gets to greet dogs when we go on walks. She’s making friends with our friends’ dogs, including some of Athena’s besties. It makes me just so happy.

_{Artie and Mika, Athena’s OG BFF}

Life is good. Our family is whole again and we have all settled into the easy rhythm of life here. It involves more cleaning, chores, and yard work than any of us are used to but for now I actually enjoy it. We love our house and we take pride that it’s ours.

Right now I am embracing the calm before the storm. “What storm?” you might be wondering.

The HHE storm! It arrives tomorrow! Gulp. How we will fit five crates of stuff into our 1000 square foot house I don’t know.

_{Happy dog}

Here we go again, yet again

Lying in wait

A few months ago I wrote about how lucky we were to be in Namibia during these covid times. Well, the tides have changed, as I expected they eventually would.

Namibia is solidly in its third wave of COVID-19 and things here are worse than ever before. Everyone either knows someone with covid or has it themselves. Hospitals are overwhelmed and full to capacity, there isn’t enough oxygen at medical facilities, and not enough people are vaccinated. It seems like every day a new record number of cases are being confirmed and more and more people are dying. It’s abysmal.

Nate’s mom visited for about three weeks in May, and we travelled through the Caprivi Strip with her. It was an awesome trip, and a perfect last hurrah before the shit hit the fan. She left just in the knick of time before things got truly terrible.

This picture is hilarious. I call it “Landing, reconsidered.”

We pulled M out of school weeks ago, before the President mandated that schools be closed. So he’s once again bored at home, watching too much tv, with “school” consisting of him playing ABC Mouse on his kindle. Luckily I still had some sticker and painting books to keep him busy, and I’m once again glad I stocked up on those when I had a chance.

Mission Windhoek is now also on Authorized Departure. Been there, done that; there’s no way we’re going down that road again. But emotions are running high in the community as friends ponder what’s right for their families or are finding out that their summer travel plans have been shot to hell. It’s just not an easy time for anyone.

We were supposed to go to Swakopmund for Father’s Day weekend, but, watching the case numbers, it was becoming abundantly clear that going to Swakopmund was a bad idea. Several weeks ago, I rescheduled the reservation for late-July and we planned to go camping instead. Then the President of Namibia announced a lockdown for Windhoek and two surrounding towns, and we weren’t sure if we’d be able to leave the city, even if the campsite was in the same region as Windhoek. So we spent the weekend at home, cooking, playing board games, putting together Legos, and enjoying quiet family time. It was a fun, pleasant weekend, for the most part.

On Friday evening Nate had to go to the airport to meet a family that was newly arriving to post, so I had to take M with me on Artie’s evening walk. We were walking along and I noticed a car pulling into a driveway, and when the compound gate opened, two dogs came running out. We stopped and waited until the car and dogs were inside the gate and the gate was closed. Once the coast was clear, we started walking again and after we’d passed the house with the previously-open gate, I discovered the gate wasn’t actually closed all the way when one of their dogs (the littler of the two) came out through the gate. It stood there and stared at us for a few seconds while in my head I rapidly trying to figure out how to keep M safe if this dog attacks Artie since there was no sidewalk or curb just a really steep ditch cliff, how was I going to keep holding M’s hand if I had to keep Artie safe too, maybe I should pick M up?, Artie had surgery recently and what if the dog rips open her incision, then WHOOSH BAM.

A car came flying down the hill and hit the loose dog. It lay there on the ground twitching, and its owners did NOTHING. I screamed “that car just hit your dog” and a man came walking out and he picked the dog up. Poor thing. There’s no way it survived.

We kept walking until we reached an area with a sidewalk where we could safely stop, and while M hugged Artie, I cried.

Then the questions started. “Why did those people not close their gate?” “Why was the dog twitching?” “Why did that dog want to come after Artie?” “How do you die when you get hit by a car?” “Why did that car hit that dog?”

Ugh, it was terrible.

Sometimes life just keeps kicking you while you’re down.

Artie in the wild!

We are glad that we’ve spent the last year exploring Namibia, camping, road-tripping, making new friends, and living life here to its fullest. It certainly makes times like these a little easier, knowing that if for some reason we had to leave tomorrow and never come back, I’d have zero regrets. Also, honestly it is kind of nice to just stay at home and relax after all the traveling and camping we’ve been doing.

No one knows what the future holds, but looking at the experiences of other countries, cases will probably continue to increase for the next week or so before they gradually (very very gradually, I’m expecting) start to come down. We might have to reschedule our 4th of July plans also, but you know what, worse things could happen. In the meantime, we’ll play board games, cook through the food in the freezer, watch all the Star Wars movies, and be grateful for what we have.

Namibia: there’s no place quite like it

How to make camping less complicated

^{Camping sunset views}

I’m sure there is LOADS of information on the internet about this. In fact, I’m not even going to check because it would make the past 30 minutes I’ve spent writing seem useless. I realize that sounds strange; I usually work backwards when I’m blogging and write the first paragraph last. So, let’s just roll with it! Besides, I think my advice is actually pretty good.

Our entire family loves camping and we camp quite a bit. Camping in Namibia is easier than camping was in Oman because there are far more campgrounds with varying levels of infrastructure. So unless you really try, chances are you are not wild camping if you go camping in Namibia. You will have, at the bare minimum, a drop toilet, a braai space and a garbage can. Or if you go fancy you’ll have electricity, hot and cold running water, a shaded area, table and sink, and full bathroom facilities.

Some people think that camping is hard or logistically complicated, but it’s not! Here are some of our family’s best tips to make camping less stressful and less of a production:

Have a checklist 
The key to a successful camping experience is to be prepared. Having a checklist is essential to being prepared.

Be organized
Camping is a lot easier when you know where things are. We have most of our camping gear divided into boxes 6 heavy-duty boxes that we just leave packed in between camping trips. Our boxes are pantry, gas fire cooking, braai, dishes, tent, cold weather gear, and miscellaneous. So when I’m setting up the tent, I grab our tent and the tent box, and that’s all I need to get the tent and mats ready to go (plus obviously our sleeping bags). We keep most of our camping gear in the garage, but we also have a shelf by the kitchen where we put the random bits of camping gear (laundered dish towels, clean camping dishes that we needed to rewash, flashlights, etc) that make their way upstairs. So when we’re getting ready to start going through our checklist, we just carry all those things downstairs and put them in the appropriate box. If you’re organized, it’ll make going through your checklist really easy!

^{Camping gear storage area in the garage}

Start prepping several days in advance 
The day before our most recent camping trip, we started going through our checklist. I opened the “dishes” box and everything was COVERED in mold. We had to wash absolutely everything in the box, and we discovered that a few things were ruined. Normally the “dishes” box is the best-prepared of all our boxes because we have absolutely no need for any of the things in it when we’re not camping, so we just keep it in the garage between trips and don’t even open it (obviously… or we might not have had the mold problem). Thank goodness we had time to wash, dry and repack everything. It’s also good to do some of your food prep in advance, if you have time. It’s not 100% necessary, but if you’re planning to make something that calls for diced chicken breast, it’s way easier to chop it up at home and then to just have a ziplock full of diced chicken ready when you need it. The one thing to consider is that some things, once you chop them up, should be refrigerated, like onions and potatoes. So you may need to take into account the amount of coldbox space that you have.

Only bring what you’ll need
If we don’t plan on making a stew, we leave the potjie pot at home. If it’s the middle of summer, we don’t bring our cold weather box (which contains blankets, hats, gloves, and scarves). If we’re not going to the beach, we don’t bring our beach tent. If we know there will be someplace to easily make a fire, we don’t bring our little grill. You know, common sense things.

_{^{The campsite at Farm Godeis has deep shelves that are perfect for storing our camping boxes. We were more organized that usual that weekend because we could so easily put everything away.}}

Be prepared for the weather
Check the forecast for wherever you’re camping. If it looks like it might be cold, bring the cold weather gear. If you’re camping along the coast of Namibia, make sure your tent is waterproof. We learned the hard way that our previous tent was, in fact, not waterproof when we were camping along the coast and Nate woke me up at 1:30 am because water was dripping onto his face from a leaky tent seam. The next day we jury-rigged a rain fly out of a random tarp to keep out the moisture. It worked. If you think it’ll be windy, bring extra tent stakes and guy lines.

^{Our camping boxes also help keep tent stakes in the ground in extremely windy conditions}

Have a good plan to keep food cold
In the US this isn’t really as much of an issue because you can find ice almost anywhere. In the rest of the world, this can be a real problem. In Oman we froze water bottles to keep our cooler cold for several days, and then as they defrosted we also had drinking water. In Namibia we’ve solved this quandary by installing a camping fridge in the back of our Hilux. Best decision ever.

^{Campsites with electrical outlets make life a lot easier!}

Know how to use your equipment
Maybe this means you put up your tent in the driveway before you first go camping with it. Trust me, it’s good to know how to assemble your tent before you try to do it in the sand and wind. Both Nate and I are able to easily assemble and use all of our camping gear, although he is better at chopping wood than I am.

You don’t need new or fancy things
If something works, and you are familiar with it, use it. We still use Nate’s dad’s 30-year old aluminum cooking gear. 

Don’t bank on getting the best sleep of your life
Sometimes I sleep well when we’re camping, sometimes I sleep like complete crap. Maybe it’s hotter than hell, or maybe you have noisy neighbors that play loud music until 3 am. Maybe it’s really cold out and you have to pee but you don’t want to get bundled up so you have to hold it all night. Maybe you’re learning the hard way that your camping mat is not as comfy as you’d hoped. The two most important things you can do to ensure comfort while sleeping in a tent are to have a good mat and to…

^{Hammocks are the perfect place to catch up on a bad night of sleep while camping}

Wear earplugs
Earplugs are a complete game-changer. I can’t count the number of sleepless nights I’ve had due to the wind. Also, in a tent, when someone gets up to go to the bathroom, there is a tremendous amount of noise. I only started wearing earplugs recently and I wish I’d started years ago. 

Don’t expect perfect
Things never work out 100% as planned. They just don’t; that’s life! Maybe you forgot the coffee, baboons raided your garbage and there’s trash everywhere, you ran out of aluminum foil, you forgot to pack underwear, or you broke a rotten egg into a bunch of good eggs. Roll with it and just make it work. It’ll be fine! This is why we pack one bottle of wine per person per night. I mean, if it’s really that terrible you can always just pack up and leave or go stay in a lodge/hotel. The whole idea is to have fun!

^{Not pictured: birds pooping all over the “kitchen,” a squirrel nearly chewing open the peanut butter jar, and strong winds that kept blowing the fire out}

Last, but not least, a few extra tips if you are camping with kids:

Make camping special
M knows he’s going to get to drink all the chocolate milk he wants when we go camping and that he’ll get to stay up later than normal. Plus, he’ll get to eat s’mores! These things usually don’t happen in our day-to-day life.

Bring reward toys
Maybe your kids will have a harder time than you’re expecting. Perhaps because they didn’t get enough sleep. In that case, we turn to bribery. No, really. Bring a new book or a new toy (but nothing small that can get easily buried or lost). This has worked wonders for us. 

Most kids naturally like camping
Keep this fact in mind and help nurture this. It’s an amazing adventure! Chances are you’re camping someplace vastly different from where you normally live, which brings a sense of wonder. Then, on top of that, they get to sleep in a tent! They get to explore, look for insects, climb rocks, roast marshmallows. They love that camping is messy and that’s okay. They love getting wrapped up in blankets when it’s cold, sitting around the campfire and listening to stories. We really enjoy camping with M, and he has so much fun.

^{Home, sweet home!}

I could go on. In fact, I know I’m excluding things from the list above, like making sure you have water, a way to charge your electronic devices, and a first aid kit. But you’ll find that advice anywhere. The tips I’ve listed are the ones that are perhaps unique to our experiences that I think are the most helpful. Happy camping!

Adventure blogging in covid times

First sunset of 2021! Taken while camping at Steinheim Farm

I’ve had some major writer’s block lately. There are literally at least 10 blog posts sitting in draft form. Honestly, I think a big part of it is guilt. I feel guilty that we are able to get out and explore Namibia when so many people are stuck at home and/or have lost their jobs and/or are mourning the deaths of family members and/or friends.

What makes me so special that I should get to go on adventures and have fun when so much of the world can’t? 

I’m not special; I’m lucky. And I know very well that our luck could change at any minute. 

We are lucky to be in Namibia, with its abundance of wide open spaces, camping opportunities, and outdoor culture, during the covid era. We are lucky to both be healthy and have stable government employment. We are lucky to be right here, right now.

That said, we’ve had gloomy moments, our share of lockdowns and restrictions here in Windhoek, COVID-19 symptoms and SARS-CoV-2 swabbing, so it hasn’t all been cupcakes and rainbows. 

Sunset/moonrise at Madisa Camp in Damaraland

But I’m going to rip off the bandaid, start writing, and pressing “publish” again. I have a lot to tell you about! And pictures to share! After receiving a ton of rain in January and February, most of Namibia is currently spectacularly green and beautiful. There’s even water in Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert!

Water at Sossusvlei. So wild.

We are eagerly waiting for our families and friends to come visit us in Namibia. Until then, we will continue to explore and have adventures. And I will write.

Sunsets in Namibia never fail to impress

Etosha trip reports and accommodation advice

^{Baby elephants at Rietfontein watering hole (October 2020)}

For us, the best thing about visiting Etosha is that each trip is different. It’s like one of those “Choose You Own Adventure” books playing out in real time. It’s fascinating, fun, and thrilling. But different climates and seasons result in different animal behaviors and can impact what you are able to see.

My last blog post was all about tips for making the most of your trip to Etosha. Trip reports and some advice on picking accommodation below!

When: Late December (summer)
Stayed: Gondwana Safari Lodge (because we didn’t know better)
Saw: Some lions snoozing under trees along the road driving to the main drag from Gemsbokvlakte, and lots of zebra/antelope. No elephant or rhino. Went on a Gondwana game drive and saw a lion with a zebra kill.
Over-all impressions: If you stay outside of the park, it’s harder to get in as the gates open (there is a line) and you have to be careful to ensure you leave before the gates close. There was a good amount of rain by this point so the watering holes were less populated. 

^{This dude had the meat sweats}

^{Hazy skies and grass during the rainy season}

When: Mid-July (winter)
Stayed: Okaukuejo
Saw:  At the Okaukuejo watering hole: lots of elephant, rhino, and lions nightly. Driving around: lots of fat and happy zebra/antelope and secretary birds, several hyena at dusk/dawn around Nebrowni, one elephant and two rhino. Monitor lizard on the Salvadora/Sueda loop.
Over-all impressions: After a solid rainy season ending in April/May, the grass is too tall to easily spot snoozing predators or anything else low-lying. Watering holes started to become populated around mid-day.

^{Plain zebra and tall grass in the afternoon sun}

^Springbok!

^{We saw so many secretary birds on this trip}

When: Mid-October (spring)
Stayed: Okaukuejo and Namutoni
Saw: Rhino, elephants, zebra, giraffe, bustards, and antelope galore. Lions in the morning near Nebrowni, a leopard resting in the cave at Ngobib. Spotted hyenas by Nebrowni, Klein Namutoni and Chudop. All the herbivores congregate at watering holes. Snakes and banded mongooses at Namutoni watering hole.
Over-all impressions: Best animal sightings yet. Literally hundreds of elephants at watering holes. Amazing sightings took almost zero effort on our part. Watering hole at Namutoni is nothing special.

^OMG

^{Watering hole buddies}

Animals galore: elephant, giraffe, zebra, and springbok

There is a glut of accommodation around Etosha, and it can be hard to decide where to stay. To make a choice, first you have to pick your #1 priority. The table below will help you to work through your options.

If your #1 goal is to…	…Then you should…	… Keeping in mind that…
Have a fancy, indulgent lodging experience	Stay outside the park	The NWR lodging in the park doesn’t suck. It’s just not fancy and the food isn’t amazing.
See Etosha on a shoe-string budget	Camp outside the park	Campsites outside the park are probably less expensive than those in the park.
See all the animals	Stay inside the park	Through NWR you can book night and early morning game drives, plus there’s the watering holes at night at the rest camps.
Have fancy lodging and still see all the animals including big cats (and you have an unlimited budget)	Stay at Onguma	We haven’t been there but it’s supposedly the best place to stay in/near Etosha.
Have a pleasant camping experience	Camp outside the park	Just about any campsite outside of the park gates will be a better experience than camping at the NWR facilities.
Save some money and still see animals	Camp inside the park	Camping inside the park can be crowded, noisy, and messy.
Go to Etosha during the high season at the last minute	Stay outside the park, or camp inside the park	Chances are NWR facilities will be fully booked unless you want to camp

From Windhoek, the closest gate is the Andersson Gate, which is about a 4-hour drive. Okaukuejo is the closest rest camp to Andersson, which is convenient since the watering hole is amazing and we can arrive on a Friday afternoon and still have time for a short game drive before the gates close. For these reasons Okaukuejo is also the busiest rest camp and is most likely to be fully booked. The vibe there is much more frenetic than at Namutoni, for instance.

We are heading back to Etosha again next month, and I’m already so excited! You never know what lies ahead, and that is the best part.

Tips for visiting Etosha National Park

Classic Etosha: springbok and zebra

First of all let me say that WordPress has been a huge pain in the butt lately and I have no idea if this post is going to publish the way I want it to. Text keeps disappearing, photos reorder themselves, and it’s general choas. I’ve spent 30 minutes trying to fix the photo captions and I’m giving up. Maybe they’re trying to get me to start paying to use their platform. HA.

Moving on.

One of our favorite things to do in Namibia is to go to Etosha National Park. We’ve been enough times now we basically know what we’re doing (Kind of? Maybe? We haven’t seen a cheetah yet so who knows.) There’s a massive amount of info on the internet about visiting Etosha, but I think I actually have some meaningful contributions to make!

I’m not going to tell you where to go to find the big cats or where the elephants like to hang out because frankly I have no clue. Each time we’ve gone they’ve all be somewhere different and Etosha is almost the size of New Hampshire so there is some wiggle room.

Spotted hyena in the morning

Here are our tips for making the most out of your trip to Etosha:

Get out the gate as soon as it opens. 
Yes, sometimes that’s quite early and yes sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed. But most of our favorite sightings have been early in the morning, and the light is great for photos. Similarly…

Black-backed jackal family near Okaukuejo

The Etosha morning commute

Exit the park right before the gates close. 
More great photography lighting and the animals are finally coming out of their shaded hidey holes. Pack a cooler with some beverages, find a watering hole, turn the car off, have a sundowner and just watch the animals emerge. 

Pack your meals to go.  
Or at least pack enough nourishing food to sustain you between meals if you get up early and plan on eating breakfast around 9 at your rest camp. On our most recent evening at Okaukuejo we made sandwiches for dinner while sitting alongside the Okaukuejo watering hole because we only had one night there and I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss an amazing sighting to go eat a mediocre expensive pork schnitzel at the restaurant. Some of our favorite meals-to-go: cold quiche, hard boiled eggs, hummus and pre-sliced veg, cold pizza, and of course sandwich fixings.

Bring lots of game drive snacks. 
I’m talking cookies, popcorn, gummy bears, chips, biltong, apples, granola bars, and more cookies. Everyone has their kryptonite snacks; bring those. Things that will make everyone forget their sore butts from enduring bumpy roads, keep whiny children and grownups from losing it, and generally make things more enjoyable. 

Bring a way to make coffee and large to-go mugs.
If you stay at an NWR facility there will be a water kettle; we bring ground coffee, a french press, and thermoses, and we are good to go.

Have everyone go to the bathroom whenever the opportunity presents itself. 
Toilets are few and far between. The LAST thing you want to hear when you’ve found the perfect watering hole, turned off the car, and cracked open a beverage is, “Mommy, Daddy, I REALLY have to poop.” Trust me.

Share information with other tourists whenever you can.  
If we hadn’t told a truck full of Namibians where we had our lion and rhino sightings, they never would have told us about their leopard sighting. And we never would have seen a leopard. Relatedly…

We never would have spotted this beauty without a tip-off and good binoculars

If you’re staying somewhere new and you don’t know where to go to find the big game, ask or look in the sightings book. 
If you can find a game driver they might help you, or maybe not, who knows, they can be proprietary about their info. Every NWR reception has a sightings book; take a look and go to those watering holes.

Buy a map (or several) before you start driving around the park. 
M gets one in the back seat, we have one in the front seat. They also function as an animal guide, which is helpful when you see things like the bird below, which is a puffed out male kori bustard.

Pay at once for as many consecutive days as you’ll be in the park.
You can pay for as many consecutive days as you want, and this will save you time each day. You don’t need to fill out the paperwork or go back in to pay, and sometimes the queues can be terrible.

Don’t get jealous when other people see things that you didn’t. 
There’s ALWAYS that guy that brags about how he saw a lion take down a zebra, but when you ask where exactly he saw this, he won’t/doesn’t want to give you a straight answer. It’s stupid. People are territorial about their sightings and it’s childish. But that’s life.

Lower your tire pressure, keep your vehicle in 4WD-high, and don’t drive too quickly.
The dirt roads in Etosha aren’t great, verging on really bad. We lower our tire pressure to 1.5 bar and take it slow and steady. After all how else will you see animals. The first time we went we saw a flipped over rented vehicle, probably some tourist who didn’t know how to properly drive on gravel roads. Don’t be that tourist.

Bring binoculars.
Good ones. This is not the time to figure out that your binoculars actually suck.

Take the advice on travel blogs with a grain of salt.
Most of them are written by tourists who went to Etosha for two days during the dry season, happened to get lucky with their sightings and now think they know everything. Have zero expectations: the only things you are truly guaranteed to see are zebra and springbok. Don’t waste your time researching where to find animals at Etosha on the internet because, speaking from experience, it never pans out. Instead look in the sightings book or ask.

Springbok for days

Whew. Well that’s more than I expected to write. In the next post I’ll cover our Etosha trip reports and go over some advice on how to pick where to stay!

This baby giraffe just couldn’t handle the morning traffic

Back to Swakopmund

Swakopmund sunset

One of our favorite places in Namibia is Swakopmund, an odd and eclectic town along the coast in the Erongo region. It has fantastic restaurants (the bar in Namibia is quite low), good shopping, and lots of things to do. It’s where most of Namibia goes to get away. It’s about 4 hours from Windhoek, depending on how many slow-moving semis you get stuck behind.

Initially, the epicenter of COVID-19 in Namibia was in Walvis Bay, the town next to Swakopmund. The entire Erongo region was put on lock-down on May 28, basically two weeks after the initial lock-down had been lifted (which had been put in place in the second half of March). Then the Erongo lockdown was lifted, but by then Windhoek was also in a lockdown. Then, on September 17, the State of Emergency expired, COVID-19 was magically gone from Namibia, and all lockdowns were over.

Many businesses in Erongo haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 lockdown, and I don’t know if they ever will

We went to Swakopmund as soon as we could. M got to go to the Snake Park and the aquarium, Nate went fishing, I went shopping, and we all chased guinea fowl, slept in, played on the beach and ate ourselves silly. It was delightful.

The Snake Park’s Very Dangerous Wall: black mambas, cape cobras and a puff adder

A Namaqua chameleon enjoying a worm snack

We went back to the best pizza restaurant in Namibia, Gabriele’s Pizza, and one of our favorite German restaurants, the Brauhaus. I was reminded why I don’t like eating oysters at The Tug: they don’t cut the muscle away from the shell. I once asked about this and was told “That’s why you have the little fork.” Um ok. Sadly the Jetty hasn’t reopened yet and hopefully it’s not gone for good.

Delicious pizza at Gabriele’s

The Jetty restaurant is, surprise surprise, at the end of the jetty

The Strand Hotel, which has the best views in town, was having a really great special so we stayed there. It’s hard to beat the convenience of having a restaurant with its own microbrewery and fantastic oysters downstairs. HOWEVER. Breakfast was an utter mess. No one was wearing a mask actually covering their nose and mouth, the tables were too close together, and the head chef was standing over the (uncovered) pancakes with no mask on, talking to everyone. We kept our masks on when we weren’t actively eating or drinking, and tried to eat foods that were covered, prepared fresh, or behind a plastic barrier. The first morning was terrible and the second morning we went down earlier when there were less people. Even then, we sat inthe most out-of-the-way table available, but when people came and sat next to us, we got up and left. Normally we would have sat outside but it was freezing cold and windy.

Lesson learned: next time don’t eat the free breakfast. 

Oysters at Brewer & Butcher

It’s nice to have the freedom to travel wherever we want around Namibia again. Tourism to more crowded places (which sounds like an oxymoron in Namibia) in the time of COVID-19 is tricky, but possible. You just have to make more calculated choices. Swakopmund: we’ll be back; the Strand: nope.

I love this little blue house so much

One of many buildings in Swakopmund with German-inspired architecture.

Things that are bringing me joy right now

After some of my recent blog posts, you might think that things here are all doom and gloom. But they aren’t! There are some bright spots.

I love nothing more than a good list. So here’s what’s making me happy these days, in no particular order:

• Cooking dinner. Really. Working from home gifts me an extra hour at least to make dinner. That means I can have a glass of wine, listen to a LP and leisurely spend some quality time in the kitchen by myself. And these days, my weekday dinner game is on fire.
  

  My favorite corner of our house

• Listening to audio books. Specifically Calypso, written/read by David Sedaris. Wow is this book hilarious. The essays “The Perfect Fit” and “I’m Still Standing” particularly were my favorites. It’s poignant, funny and just awesome, exactly what you’d expect from David Sedaris. Other good ones include Children of Blood and Bone, The Song of Achilles, Bad Blood, and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.
• When Artie poops right by a house where a dog is barking at her. I don’t pick it up. One good turn deserves another. There’s this one house where there are three dogs that just go ape-shit every time we walk by. I wish she’d drop a big one there but she hasn’t yet.
• Emptying out the vacuum cleaner canister. There are few things that make me feel more accomplished than getting visual confirmation of all the cleaning I’ve just done. It’s an obsession.
• My “wine cellar.” I could call it our wine cellar, but I’m the one who, a) picked out all the wine, b) cares about it, and c) drinks most of it (Nate prefers beer). With our last lockdown, the sale of alcohol was prohibited. I wasn’t about to go through another lockdown rationing wine, hesitant to give it to friends in need lest I run out. So we currently have more than 150 bottles of wine in the garage. It’s glorious.
  

  Divided into boxes of red, white, rose, white bubbly and rose bubbly. I ran out of wine boxes so I used an empty camping gear box.

• Dinnertime. We light candles, set the table and spend at least 30 minutes together, chitchatting. We listen to an LP, M tells us about the monsters he’s trained (he genuinely believes he is a monster trainer, and we’ve learned the hard way not to joke about it) and we tell stories or have a dinnertime poetry slam. M is surprisingly good at putting together fairly long rhyming poems on the fly. We talk about the gods (yes, plural) and more monsters, and we negotiate how many more bites he has to take before he gets dessert. It might not sound like much, but I do enjoy it.
  

  When we can’t go to restaurants, we create one at home

• Care packages. A friend from Muscat recently sent us a box full of Trader Joes goodies and I almost cried. And the other day I was talking to my mom and I mentioned how much M has been drawing lately, and then two weeks later we got a care package full of sketchbooks and new markers.
• Scouting out all the strange/ostentatious houses in our neighborhood. We live in a fancy part of Windhoek. This was actually one of the strangest things about our first Foreign Service tour: our house was in the rich neighborhood. This was not something I was used to. We can’t afford that shit. But most embassy housing is in the nicest neighborhoods because they are generally the safest. So I enjoy wandering the neighborhood, looking at the ridiculous houses and wondering how people have enough money to build houses like that. Or why exactly they’d want a house like that.
  

  Where did they get the money to build this?!

  

  What the heck?

• Not wearing socks. Winter in Namibia is COLD. Surprisingly so. And despite being technically from Wisconsin, I am a child of the tropics. I grew up wearing flip-flops and my feet don’t like socks. They make my toenails, no matter how short they are, uncomfortable and they smell awful.  Hurray for summer (spring doesn’t exist here) and a happy sock-free existence.
• Playing Gloomhaven. The box is enormous and super-heavy and the game costs nearly $100. But we bought it with Amazon gift cards, anticipating a day when we wouldn’t be able to leave the house much and it’d would be just the two of us. Let me tell you, Gloomhaven is SO WORTH IT. It’s like a choose-your-own adventure game with each round being completely different from the last. We each play two characters and at this point I am emotionally attached to mine (I named them Samantha the Scoundrel and Isaspella the Orchid Spellweaver). We set the game up on Saturday afternoons and play as many rounds as we can before putting it all way on Sunday night. It takes up the entire dinner table.
• Planning future trips. We still have two R&Rs to take in the next 22 months, plus a lot of travel in Namibia that we want to do. Figuring out itineraries, the best places to stay, etc is my happy place.

Wow, that’s more than I expected, honestly.

The State of Emergency in Namibia has been lifted and things here are heading back towards “normal,” not because it’s epidemiologically warranted but because there’s no more public or political will for restrictions. Things were starting to improve but then they loosened all the restrictions at once and this past week kids went back to school. I hope there won’t be an increase in cases and that things were under control enough beforehand for it to not be a complete disaster, but we’ll see. In the meantime we wear our masks, take calculated risks and try to make the most of it. We are glad we can finally leave Windhoek again!

Highlights of our first year in Namibia

One of our first sunsets in Windhoek

It’s hard to believe that we have already spent a year here in Namibia. Even harder to believe is how much the world has changed since we first arrived. It’s so insane, it’s almost funny.

Despite all the heartache and uncertainty, there have been some really great moments. Here, in no particular order, are my favorite things from our last turn around the sun in Namibia:

• Our house: This is the first time in the Foreign Service that our house has truly felt like home. It’s not as big as our last house, and the space is much more usable and I love it. We’ve also reached “peak kitchen” with this house; I will never live in another house with a kitchen this big or with this much storage. Sure the range is electric rather than gas, but I honestly don’t even care because everything else is so great. This entire house has so much built-in storage it’s amazing. And it has a GARAGE!
  

  Once you accept the bars on the windows, it’s a delightful place to be. My favorite spot is the corner of windows on the left.

  

  The patio space off the living room. We spend a LOT of time out here!

• Oysters along the coast: Yes, you can also get oysters in Windhoek, but there’s something about the sea air and the sound of the waves when you’re eating oysters along the coast that just makes them that much more enjoyable. I had no idea that oysters were a thing in Namibia. It’s glorious.
  

  So delicious and so inexpensive.

• Visits to Etosha National Park: Whether it’s seeing lions out the car window, rhinos crossing the road in front of us, or elephants at the watering hole at sunset, Etosha never disappoints. I will never forget the first time we saw lions in Etosha. We were driving along a quiet dirt road and I said “Go slowly, this looks like the perfect spot for lions.” Then, I kid you not, one minute later I saw a lion snoozing under a tree. I literally screamed. It was so incredible.
  

  Just another day at Etosha.

• The sundowner game drive at Gocheganas: If there’s anything better than drinking gin and tonics with white rhinos, giraffes, and wildebeest, with the sun setting over the mountains in the background, I honestly don’t know what it could possibly be. We did our first Gocheganas sundowner game drive about a week after arriving. It was our first “holy shit wow” moment in Namibia. We did the same drive a few months later with our first visitor and it was just as incredible. More so, even, since we were sharing it with one of our best friends.
  

  Just some G&T with the rhinos and giraffes

• Sammy the giraffe at Omaruru Game Lodge: The style of conservation at this lodge is a little different from other places in Namibia and the wild animals are somewhat…. tame. You can feed apples to the elephants on game drives and you can pet Sammy the giraffe. Whether or not you agree with this strategy, I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot of fun and M absolutely loved it.
  

  Elephants mobbing the game drive truck at Omaruru Game Lodge

• The birds in Namibia: I’ve always enjoyed watching birds, but before moving to Namibia I’d never gone out of my way to take a picture of one. (Except for maybe a bald eagle here or there). The birds here are amazing. Colorful, interesting, noisy, enormous, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s incredible. And I have some decent photos of them.
  

  A hornbill eating an armored bush cricket at Mt. Etjo

• Learning how to braai: I had no idea that grilling could be such a cultural phenomenon. But it is! And it’s awesome.  A traditional braai is done with wood; you get the fire going in a box-thing and then you rake the coals under the grate, the height of which is usually adjustable. Plus most braais have a hook for your potjie (pronounced “POY-key;” it’s essentially a spherical cast iron pot with legs). When we get our braai going we usually cook a lot of food because it’s more labor intensive than grilling in a Weber. We have several potjie pots of varying sizes and we’re always on the lookout for new recipes.
  

  We started out a small cast iron potjie pot, which worked well for camping when it was just the three of us

  

  Then as we started camping with friends we upgraded to a larger enameled cast iron potjie pot. It’s so pretty!

• Camping at Spitzkoppe: Spitzkoppe was the first place we camped in Namibia, and it’s the only place we’ve camped at more than once. It’s stunningly beautiful and so much fun to explore. The campsites are more minimalist than most other campsites, with no running water, electricity, tables or shade, but it’s just the best.
  

  Tents at the base of Spitzkoppe

  

  The arch at Spitzkoppe

I could keep going. But these are the things that are unique to Namibia or that I found surprising/unexpected. We’ve done a ton during our first year here, but it also feels like so much was cancelled, rescheduled or cut short. I’m just glad we have another two years to keep exploring!

A spotted hyena and a wary springbok at Etosha

Life lately (or Welcome to the Shit Show!)

I have so much to blog about. So many feelings, emotions, thoughts, random crap I want to capture for posterity. But getting it all out in written form has been a first rate chore. And you know what. I DON’T NEED MORE CHORES RIGHT NOW. So here is my ineloquent (ha who am I kidding, I’ve never been eloquent) word vomit.

Things here are a real mess.

A few weeks ago we sent our housekeeper home a few hours after she arrived because she kept coughing. Um no thank you.

After she left I wiped down everything she could have possibly touched with Lysol spray, and we carried about our daily business. By which I mean Nate and I kept working and M watched television all day.

A few days later, two to be exact, M got a fever and our housekeeper called to tell us she was hospitalized, needed supplemental oxygen and had been swabbed for COVID. Well FUCK.

We immediately starting quarantining ourselves. At that point the president had announced a lockdown for Windhoek and we couldn’t go anywhere anyways. The biggest issue was that we couldn’t walk Artie and she went crazy with energy/resentment and felt the need to pee everywhere.

Luckily our housekeeper got her test results back eventually and she was negative. Whew.

As I’m writing this the president of Namibia is giving an address, undoubtedly announcing that Windhoek’s restrictions aren’t being lifted, as case numbers continue to rise and the situation deteriorates further. The funny thing is that there are a number of mitigation measures in place which SHOULD have prevented/decreased the spread of COVID-19. Like mandatory mask wearing, social distancing, hand hygiene, limiting of gatherings, etc. HA. I suppose maybe it would have worked if people were actually following the rules. It seems like most people here are relatively fatalistic about the whole thing and figure they’re going to get it anyway so why should they try to delay it.

Um, because hospitals will be overcrowded, there’s no vaccine yet, and the longer you can put off getting COVID-19 the more we’ll know about it and the safer you’ll be???

And then there’s other people  that think it’s all because of 5G or some scam by the government of Namibia to get money from the WHO. That’s just laughable.

I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve left the house in the past 15 days, other than to walk the dog. Every time I’m struck by the number of people without masks, pushing their way into someone else’s space. I want to shout “Don’t you know there’s a pandemic you goddamn idiot? Are you trying to kill your grandma?”

Exactly three weeks ago, I was at E.A.T., a little place that sells coffee, prepared food and some other stuff, basically Society Fair in Windhoek, by a gas station. I was buying sandwiches for our camping road trip that afternoon. Some jerk without a mask pushed me out of the way at the cashier to ask about his coffee order. I looked around and realized everyone was crowded by the cashier waiting for their coffee, no masks like the entitled assholes that they were.

I got home and announced that I didn’t think we should go to E.A.T. anymore until people get more serious about disease prevention. Then the lockdown was proclaimed and it was a moot point.

I’ve heard some people say “We have to learn to live with this disease.” Yes that’s true. We do. But does that mean we throw all caution to the wind and pretend it’s not there?

Ugh.

Every day I’m grateful that we took advantage of the time between lockdowns. That I went to the bookstore and bought M literally bags full of activity and sticker books. That I splurged on a new Dutch oven at the Le Creuset store, knowing I’d be spending a lot more time in the kitchen in the months to come (omg it was so totally worth it). That we let things get disorganized and messy at home while we went off camping and exploring. That I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies for a game night we hosted and froze half the dough. That I ordered a bunch of two-player board games on Amazon a month ago.

I remember thinking “When we’re stuck at home during the next lockdown, I’ll won’t regret a minute of this.” And it’s true. I’ve always felt that it’s important to go and do all the things while you can, and this pandemic has really reinforced that. Go visit that new city, go explore, if you see something you really want BUY IT (within reason of course), go to that fancy restaurant.

Live your best life now goddamnit. You never know when things will change.