Happy Namiversary!

We celebrated our one-year anniversary this past Sunday in typical PCV fashion: on the side of the road, in the blazing hot sun, trying to thumb a ride.

It wasn’t a celebration, but still, it seemed, a moment to remember.

I’d spent Halloween with other volunteers in a town far to the south. We wore makeshift costumes, “carved” tin can jack-o-lanterns and reminisced over home-cooked meals about where we all were this time last year. (For the record: landing in Windhoek and wondering just what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into.)

We agreed, there'd been days that felt like they'd never end, bouts of homesickness, times of sadness and without a doubt, periods of frustration. Still, we said, there were few things we’d change. In the last year, it seems, we’ve experienced--and maybe even accomplished--more than we ever imagined possible.

I learned to click, plucked a chicken and carried water on my head. I slept in a hut, survived 120-degree heat and spent two weeks in a foreign country without any kind of luggage. I bought two-years worth of supplies in less than two hours and found a new place to live in less than 24. I rode 14-deep in a 6-person vehicle and sat shotgun in a homemade donkey cart. I taught health classes and started a girls club. I showed a dozen learners as many games and looked on as they taught their entire school how to play. I started an AIDS Awareness Club and facilitated Windows of Hope. I completed seven dental workshops at two schools and one orphanage, and provided nearly 300 kids with toothbrushes and toothpaste in the process. I read more than 75 books (including War and Peace) and started learning to play the harmonica. I was elected co-chair for Camp GLOW and helped organize and run a workshop for more than 100 out-of-school youth. I created an information resource center at my hospital and showed learners how they could be teachers in their communities. I developed an informal reading program and got a community garden off the ground. I marched in a World AIDS Day event, started a weekend sports and crafts program at the orphanage, wrote two manuals and a facilitator guide and partnered with the Red Cross on more than a dozen outreach events.

I hitchhiked around Namibia and Botswana, crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and walked over an international border. I visited 10 of Namibia’s 13 regions, saw elephants in the Chobe and hiked Table Mountain. I saw hippos, warthogs, crocodiles, water buffalo, kudu, giraffe, monkeys, baboons, whales, seals, penguins and dolphins in the wild. I learned to pitch a tent (in the rain, no less), went sky diving in the desert and kayaked on the other side of the Atlantic. I turned down hundreds of proposals and learned—at least somehow—what it feels like to be treated as a second-class citizen. I broke four cell phones and one ipod. I met the governor of Kunene and listened to the president speak. I visited the birthplace of Shilo and the southern-most tip of the continent.

And I realized that a person can be hundreds of miles from all that she knows and still be in a place she happily calls home.

Not bad for just 365 days…