Megan Our Way

If I think about it too much, I will lose my nerve to do these things.  The plane is in the air, almost at cruising altitude, and the consecutive bilingual announcements are under way.  To have this opportunity, this great fortune of sitting in this snug aisle seat after lugging a backpack full of linen frocks and small tubes of sunscreen through this skinny jet, I have had to move double-time for weeks, and triple-time in my head.  Grant sent me off with more enthusiasm than I can ever muster before a voluntary trip for joy, which I seem to need to remind myself this is.  One of the reasons I am with him is this excitement unspoiled by dark thoughts that my amygdala churns out at record speed in advance of any big journey.  If Grant has an amygdala, it is a pure almond-shaped diamond lodged deep in a very quiet corner of his otherwise very busy brain.  Its clarity makes its sole purpose to keep him safe in real times of danger, which have been fortuitously rare for him, and us all. Otherwise it offends no one. 

Megan is one of my oldest friends, and is one of three close crossovers from my life before the one I have now.  She knew my first husband well enough. She knew me just after I had lost a father, perhaps even when I still had a living one.  She knew me when the dream of being a doctor was born.  She has helped me pack and unpack for break-ups, medical school, residency, more break-ups, and starting a family twice. Over more than twenty years of friendship, we have exchanged hundreds of gifts. We do almost every time we see each other because we are always on each others minds. She has patiently and non-judgmentally listened to my stories, my disappointments, my excitements and hopes, and has always kept me close.  She loves Christmas more than anyone I know, and candy out of proportion to how good it tastes. Where I bring peanut butter and coffee in my backpack, her sole sustenance is a bag of Haribo Twin Snakes. I was the officiant at her wedding to Jeff, after our worlds collided long ago during marathon training, back when we had four to six hours every weekend to run like aimless fools.  She is my favorite companion at dinner because her love of food is one of my greatest joys to witness.  Her delight in flavors, ingredients, combinations, textures makes for a very entertaining restaurant date and is something we share so profoundly at our core.  Food is a love language for the both of us, and we have been speaking that to each other for years. Nevermind she has no body fat and legs till Sunday.  When you share a meal with Megan, it is believable that her food excitement is metabolically demanding.

A propos that we find ourselves on our first international trip headed to France.  We are going to skip right through the maelstrom of CDG to hop on a TGV to Montpellier, where we will connect with a new friend of mine who lives half the year in San Francisco and the other half in an oyster village along the Mediterranean.  Bouzigues is where we will be, surrounded by stone homes older than the United States, eating our way through southern France’s farm to seaside’s finest. Debbie reports that she swims every day until the middle of September, and it has been unseasonably warm this summer like everywhere else in the world.  Although this reality makes me want to cry when I think about it, I will be grateful to enjoy my daily baptism in the salty waters of my people, much like my parents did in Beirut until we and war were born. I am so very lucky that my ancestral blood passed down a sacred cherishing of travel, and I am beyond fortunate to have the resources and the partner who make it possible with no external stress.  I do not take this for granted ever, but nor can I ignore this part of me without compromising too much of what makes me whole. It’s not that I want to travel, it’s that I need it to be complete.  Grant knows that.  Shant and Mara know that.  My mother, who slipped hundred dollars bills she couldn’t afford into my palms at LAX when I sought off as a teen, has always known that. My friends not only know that, they come along for the ride.

I have left Mara two weeks into a new school, middle school.  Two weeks into a phone, two weeks into riding city buses with her friends. Two months out of elementary is feeling like a distant dream.  She was born for this moment of freedom, as evidenced by how quickly she abandoned me at the bus stop on day one.  “That’s good right there,” she said as she Heismanned me goodbye.  “Bye Mama.” Since that day I am realizing that the shock of her suddenly so grown is actually the order of things, and she is ready for it.  She has been studying the free wanderings of her brother for years, analyzing his every liberty and taking mental notes.  She is prepared to hold us accountable for every allowance he has ever gotten and to collect her due in the way of our trust of her.  Grant and I have always trusted Shant implicitly. He has been easy, afraid to disappoint both himself and us, and predictable more or less.  Mara is literally building the road she is walking on, one brick at a time.  She is creative, ambitious, bold and emotionally razor sharp.  She, like her brother, loves to win, but thus far it has come more or less with effort she can easily put forth.  But middle school and puberty and this time in her life has put her at the intersection of determination and self doubt, fear of failure and resilience, ambition and complacency.  She is hanging there for now, coming to terms with what she desires, and what it will require of her.  Raising these two children is not only my greatest privilege, it is my greatest curiosity and conundrum.  The scientist in me wants to observe, take notes, dissect how they feel.  The mother in me is learning that there is a fine line between protection, safety, and giving them agency.  It’s a beautiful restraint, the mothering of teens, which is also probably why a very good time for me to get up and go.  Harder to save the day from 8000 miles away, and anyway the only saving they need is from me it seems.

Learning who I am as the kids are peeling themselves off of me, as my career has entered its middle age where retirement is as close as the beginning is far, where our marriage is trying to reframe what a relationship without the preoccupation and convenient distraction of children looks like, calls for one big moment of pause.  Most days go by automatically, without much deliberation or effort. Doctoring is not as physically exhausting as it once was.  The pace of my current hospital job is a luxurious stroll down the halls most of the days.  But the satisfaction of medicine is not as easily discovered either.  Diagnoses made, cures rendered, good deaths assisted, bad ones avoided- all that is a siren song to a hospitalist.  But with it comes a slowly deafening grind of bearing witness intimately to others’ pain.  You eventually become so desensitized to suffering that you are not able to recognize your own when it finally arrives, as it must, in an untenable vocation in a broken system.  You either get sick yourself, or you make a desperate change.  And with that change comes the compromise. For me it was intellectual and collegial.  The patients I care for, be they Veterans or the safety net population of San Francisco, equally call me to service.  But the diseases are more social than they are medical, more of mind than of body, more undiagnosable, more untreatable, more relentlessly hopeless now. The glamour is gone, and what remains is the stunning realization that all humans do not have the same chances to thrive.  There is way more unfixable misfortune and the luck lies in the tightly gripped fists of the few who can afford to live well, or even humanely.

Medicine is at an inflection point, much like my career.  We need to decide as a society how we are going to balance the needs of our planet with the burdensome oppression of its massive population.  Climate Medicine is now a rapidly growing specialty, because we have to learn how to care for people and diseases that are a byproduct of a crowded overheated home. The P who shall not be named showed us first hand how nature will attempt to take care of the human problem.  The P who shall not biodegrade, is another floating island becoming its own troublesome continent on our collective psyches.  Homelessness in San Francisco and other big cities is becoming an accepted backdrop. The streets are full, hospitals are overflowing, and children like Mara and Shant will be bearing the brunt of the irresponsibility of generations before them. The loss of innocence they have had well before the exodus from childhood is being demanded of them. The shrinking of the world through technology has brought with it exposure, awareness, community, but profound isolation. They know too much, but their pre-frontal cortices are not ready for all they are tying to understand.  They are luckily far more awake and aware than I ever was in my self-absorbed teen years. Getting away with blue eye shadow was my loftiest goal when I was 12. I wasn’t dreaming up climate solutions for homework assignments or trying to explain my teachers gender pronouns to my confused parents.  

For a moment, I have laid all of these burdens down.  Life has become a beautiful simple song of the mama seagull protecting her nest on the rooftop across from Debbie’s terrace.  The running water of the fountains and spring well in her overgrown garden. The tinkling of wind-chimes in her outdoor kitchen. The clanging of glasses and plates at the set-up and take down of meal after fresh and simple meal.  The salty sea air is doing wonders for my skin, and scrubbing the deeper layers clean.  Visiting places where Popes vacationed, crusaders schemed, vines we enjoy were planted a hundred years ago, and aqueducts carried water across massive ravines, makes me again realize how insignificant any one person is in the grand story of human existence.  At the same time, being here reminds me how very important we all are to one another.

An important person

Al Fresco

Steps to the Sea

Bouzigues

I sea you

Night Beach

Oysters beds and bikes

Vine tasting

Pensant aux les miennes

The Palais des Papes vineyard

Sur le Pont d’Avignon

On y danse, On y danse…

1 century aqueduct

Le Pont du Gard

No Franzia

French Connection

I am sitting in my Uncle’s chair, its been unoccupied by him for a few years now, an empty throne in his humble castle, my home away from home in Ferney-Voltaire, France. I come here as often as I can, averaging about every two years, since before he died. What started as a summer stay for an internship at the World Health Organization has turned into a pilgrimage I used to make alone, and now continue with my kids to keep this important connection alive.  My aunt Diana lives by herself now, but her house is always full when we are here.  Her seven grandchildren, four in France and three from Boston, visit in sequence, filling her place with the energy of youth, activity, and giving her reason to organize her menus, her groceries, and set table after table of favorite meals.  Shant and Mara are part of the rotation now, and their preferred dishes make it on the calendar.  Tonight we are eating raclette, a personal request from Mara, exceptions made in the preparation of this heavy dish in the middle of summer when it usually graces a frosty winter table. Raclette is the ultimate comfort food of Switzerland, which is a kilometer away as the laughing cow flies.  It also has a special meaning to the kids and I, as we ate this meal high atop a Jurassian peak the last time we were here, on a memorial hike for our dear Juliane.

The meals are always memorable around Diana’s plastic outside table dressed in lively Provincial cloths nestled in her overgrown garden, not starting before dusk which can be eight or later in the summers.  When it’s finally cool enough to be outdoors, we set the table all together, whichever grandkid and we, while she prepares her plates.  The meals have simplified over the years, aligning with her general age-appropriate slowing, but the thought and effort remain consistent, as do the flavors and feelings of being at her table.  Every meal is a ritual, sometimes occurring twice a day as the French are fond of setting a table for a proper lunch. They end with an assortment of cheeses and a fresh fruit course, my aunt pushing one more slice of unctuous Beaufort or offering a juicy nectarine wedge straight off her glinting knife, impossible to refuse. We end sated, replete, content. And we repeat the nourishing ritual for the duration of our stay. My uncle used to preside over the meal like a benevolent king, reminding her to fetch my favorite wine, cut the fresh loaf, and unwrap the giant hunk of gruyere he remembered to buy for me.

This week we had three days in Paris, where we were lucky enough to have time with my cousin Levon, my cousin Maria’s daughter Soleen, and Levon and Sophie’s daughter Aida.  These are the French Cousins, the offspring and their offspring of my uncle Bared and aunt Diana.  Bared was my father’s only brother, and they were as close as can be, separated by continents after war struck Beirut.  Bared was at his younger brother’s deathbed in California when my father passed. It was an unbearable loss for him.  His passing was an equally painful loss for me.  Levon and Maria, and the four of us sisters are the legacy of this brotherhood, and our ties are stronger than we know on any given day.  We can go months without a word between us, but never seconds before we are able to synchronize feelings, tell and laugh at jokes, share the mundane and the profound, and walk together in silence with arms behind us, like our fathers did.

And they called him Levon

Soleen’s Shoebox of Love

An Eye Full

Sneaking around Le Marche aux Puces

Soleen so much

Louvre over, Baby.

I cherish this bond beyond words. It reminds me where I came from, who I came from,  My father and uncle were exceptional people, and not just to their families.  Deeply humane, profoundly generous, intellectual but un self-important, diligent and loyal, compassionate and also extremely exigent.  They were each larger than life in their own ways, or at least that’s how I remember them.  Not to say they each weren’t deeply flawed.  Anxiety runs deep in the DNA.  It comes from trauma and young loss, the imprints of civil war, genocidal memory. It showed up differently for my uncle than for my father.  Both suffered under its oppressive grip. And we also bore the trauma of a life of worry and the need to control that is a false antidote.  Thankfully they both married women, Diana and my mother, who balanced out their nervous energy with a relentless optimism and warm encouragement against bleaker thoughts.  I feel that a gnawing darkness that my father did not want to allow to surface became a cancer in his body that eventually took him. It is my lifelong quest not to be enslaved in the same way he probably was by an inquietude that stole much of his personal joy.  My sisters and cousins and I bond as well over this unspoken suffering.  We are able to understand without speaking what grief may just be being considered at all times, always in parallel with our celebrations.

Une fille et sa steak-frites

Smart Alec

Love is an adaptive act, and we too have chosen partners with lighter hearts and easier thoughts.  Our children are also declaring themselves to be swirl flavors of all emotional constitutions, on a spectrum from a stoic guarded cerebral to the gregarious and unencumbered fireball whose goals have goals.  The more time I spend with my cousins’ kids and mine, the more I can see these subtle family traits reveal themselves.  I also see the obvious cultural and personality difference between kids raised in France, kids raised in America with a French mindset, and kids raised as Americans first. Despite me wishing something different, Maria reminds me that we made a choice to raise them American, and American they are.  And the sooner we stop thinking of that as a mark against them, the better we can accept the whole people they can become, and celebrate who they are.  Some mistakes ought not be repeated.

The “vacation” is coming to a close.  Do I feel restored, rested, recharged? Not quite.  I also do not expect this from most, or any of my trips.  See paragraphs above for hints as to why.  But also see that for now I am seeking something else out of these journeys, for myself and for my children.  I am hoping that despite the exhaustion of long travel days and sleepless flights and long lines at security and customs and all the discomforts both physical and emotional that come with exploration of new places and people, something deep inside them begins to shape, carving slowly the edges and curves of who they are at their immutable cores. It is perhaps a gift that will not reveal its worth immediately, but has begun to imprint a slow but deep knowing within them of the connections that both ground and will free them.

Digital Diana

No One Won

Anvagh Asdghig- Fearless Little Star

Our last full day together in Yerevan, we decided to make a pilgrimmage to Yerevan’s military cemetery Yeraploor, where most recently thousands of  sacrificed soldiers of a senseless war with Azerbaijan over the ancient piece of land the Armenians call Artsakh and the rest of the world knows as Nagorno-Karabagh are buried.  My dear friend Sara, my lighthouse for all Armenian things that matter, had suggested it as a humbling opportunity for our kids, and perhaps a new way to reflect on how more grateful we all could be for life, secure borders, ethnic safety, land rights, shelter, freedom, democracy. True to the nature of our people, the lessons we choose to share with our children continue to come with sobering doses of tragic remembrance. Nearly perished once upon a time not long enough ago for civil society, we grip tightly to our endurance as a people, and letting go of any single person feels costly for our dwindling tribe.

Lining the hilltop above the city stood rows of shiny marble stones engraved with names and birthdates followed by death dates, the subtraction of one from the other hardly reaching 22 years of age for most. Each headstone with a larger than life glossy color portrait of the son and rare daughter buried under it, wearing camouflage like playing dress-up, britches too big to seem real. Dozens of Armenian flags, and those of Artsakh, waving futily in the breeze, the backdrop of Ararat on our clearest day yet tending over His lost children. My words could not get past my throat, unable to voice the feeling this beautiful graveyard evoked. It wasn’t pride.  It wasn’t pity.  It was a quiet horror.  A devastated resignation upon the realization of how pointless this and all other wars are.  We send our country’s young life forces to battle to the death over disagreements so muddied that we hardly know what we are fighting about, and we most certainly know the outcome will hurt more than any victory will feel triumphant.

Living far from this country, its easy to criticize the heads of state who most recently compromised and gave up most of Artsakh to the Azeris, despite it being long-time Armenian occupied lands.  The body count was unbearable, relentless, nothing worth the price of these children whose graves are being tended by mountain, nation, and a mourning mother washing her sons headstone and kissing his cold marble face till her tears run dry another day.

Monte Melkonian

Another Mother’s Shant

As I was trying to explain the Artsakh conflict to Mara, she asked me if Azeri’s died too, and who won.  I answered yes, and no one. That seemed to make perfect sense to my 11-year-old daughter.  That it continues to elude grown men in positions of power is shameful.

By the time we descended back to town it was time for yet another meal.  We have been dining our way through the city’s endless choice of eatery, each with ample tables outdoors, some with cool misters, and all surprisingly busy.  Sara warned me, “This isn’t your grandmama’s Yerevan, Dzov.  You need reservations.”  I scoffed at her suggestion, coming from a foodie’s town where with rare exception you can squeeze in somewhere if you want to wait.  With a large party (14 if we all choose to dine together), half of which are growing teens, reservations have been critical. But sometimes you don’t want to plan, and just want to pop in somewhere that you walk by, or you are suddenly so hungry you can eat your hair, or you need to use the toilet, or you just want to confuse and stress stoic Armenian service staff who are neither going to write down your long and complex order, nor hurry to fill it, nor get every one right. Let’s say by the time Amar got her frappucino and Arev got her Armenian breakfast, we were planning our next meal.  I admire the notion of the timeless meal.  So very much.  But there’s a time and a place for that.  In Yerevan it is always that time. And this is the place.

Silver Sisters

Sylva and Sisters

I love my Moug

My postings have been fewer because I am wary to repeat myself in my global observations. But a few sentiments cannot be expressed enough. My sisters Chaghig and Hasmig have herded human cats to share this experience and to make it possible for our mother. Wrangling work and teen schedules, coordinating comforts and dietary needs, temperature tolerances, hydration demands, bucket list items, instagrammable moments, along with the immense mental load it takes to just be here to shoulder the joy and the relentless psychological demand of being and raising Armenians. We have done this trip twice together now over the span of eight years. Both times it has felt important in an indescribable way. This time it also feels like we grabbed a moment from the sky that we knew was going to be hard to pull down and pull off but perhaps a last chance to have all these kids under the one roof of Hayastan.

Hasmig never stops surprising me with her energy and willingness to care for others. Her curiosity and engagement in the world around her. She is a teacher, but I also see her as the most gifted of students. She is ever-willing to open her heart and mind to understand more than she does. Her judgements are measured, thoughtful, deliberate. She reminds me of my father, whose words were rare, but worth their weight in gold. Chaghig manages people and situations, both which occur in abundance in her family, with skill and humor. She has a level of self assurance in her governance that makes me think she should run a company or a small country, because she just knows how to deal with a situation and she can put anyone in their place with a trusted love. Her family disagreements have humor, grace, acceptance of imperfection, and a profound expectations of herself and those she cares for. She mothers all our children indiscriminately and they mostly all listen because she has earned their respect. Traveling with her is a bit like traveling with a nurturing lieutenant.

About Last Night

Never near Never far

Cruising Altitude

Staying Seine

Our familiar Paris Alley- Cour Damoye

We have made it to Paris. Familiar but contrasting in ways that we are not rested enough to comprehend. For now, we will devour the tastes and sights and sounds of this beloved city, another home away from homeland.

The Slowing

Fists to Sky

It has taken me a moment to find my footing, but I have finally arrived.  The Armenia I know and love is still here, albeit a bit more crowded.  Amongst the throngs of tourists both in the city center and at the monuments perched on cliffs I once had to myself, there are the people I love so very much, right there, spilling open with generosity and a practical, positive spirit.  We have had countless moments that have made me proud here, of people being helpful, going exceedingly out of their way for no gains but to those of humanity.

On our way up to the Mother Armenia statue, Google Maps sent us on a footpath that became a curvy two-way incline with no shoulder. We backtracked treacherously and attempted to find another road up.  When that also left us stranded on the side of the road, Hasmig came upon a man standing on a driveway talking to a friend.  Behind resting unsmiling faces, deep set dark eyes, scruffy ancient features there is an authentic goodness that shames the plasticine smiles and have a good days of the American way. My people’s resting face does not include a smile. You have to be willing to approach someone staring square into your eyes, holding your gaze with a neutral expression.   But they are smiling on the inside. Through centuries of civilization, conquerings, plagues, persecution, massacre, rebuilding, and watching their massive lands that once stretched from sea to sea shrink to a tiny remaining refuge they revere every last of pebble of, they have been smiling by their hopeful spirits and actions.  Our friend to whom we asked if the road could take us to the statue responded that the road could not, but that he could.  Hasmig walked back to our group and reported, he says the road has no shoulder, but he’s going to take us.  When he pulled around the corner in a tiny cherry red Mercedes hatchback, realizing that only half of us would fit, he instantly said voch eench, -its not a thing- I will make two trips.  When I tried to offer him a couple dollars for his trouble, he took my hand with both of his and closed my fist and held it, looked into my eyes and said, you are our guest here. May you be well.  And then he kissed my hands like some scruffy frog prince and I threw my arms around him like he was my uncle.

Sisters and Mother

Imagine for a moment, getting in a car with a total unsanctioned stranger where you live.  With your children. Then imagine that in three minutes time you feel close enough for him to kiss your hand like a doting father would.  Then please imagine how quickly anyone would question your judgment, or your fitness for parenting. 

Birthday Stansi

Some version of this type of human exchange has happened here to us daily, frequently.  On our way up to the Genocide monument an elderly farmer was selling his apricots on the side of the road.  Shant and Mara wanted a sweet hit for the climb up so I went to grab a few.  When I offered him money, he declined, because it was for the children. Something about children needing fruit and not needing to pay.  It was not up for debate, and nor did he want to hear my effusive thanks.  He shooed me away with a wrinkled smile. May you be well, he said.

Maybe after centuries of existing, it boils down to this wish for one another.  May we be well.

Garni Girls

Karek and Sevan

We have filled our first ten days here, in Grant’s company, with adventure and discovery that looks quite different than our usual vacations.  Plans here are loose as mentioned, and so is the pace at which life happens.  There is a forced slowing at mealtimes, that includes waiting for water to be served, wine to be poured, orders to be taken, food to be cooked.  When you sit at a table, the last thing anyone is thinking of is how fast they can serve you. They assume you are settling in, in no absolute rush. This is an adjustment for a husband and children of mine who when hungry need sustenance like life depended on it. Meals here feed the body and soul in equal measure.  The service for one requires more deliberation than the fixing of the other.

The landscape outside of Yerevan is lush, verdant, more fertile looking than I remember it.  The peak of Ararat, who came out to grace our selfies, is thickly snow-capped.  The rivers are rushing. Everywhere there is a sign of life on these lands, agricultural abundance, fish farms, vineyards from terroirs before time. We have learned that the earliest evidence of winemaking in the world was found in Armenia, right near the world’s oldest shoe, used presumably to crush grapes.  We have tasted the wine from this Areni region, at a table set in the middle of a vineyard.  We have picked juicy apricots off the orchard trees, seeking shelter from a passing summer storm under their leafy umbrellas.  We have climbed dirt footpaths to dizzying cliffside monasteries.  We have lowered ourselves into gorges cutting jagged artistic rock faces along their path. We have submerged our bodies in the icy alpine lake of Sevan and defrosted ourselves on its sunny gravel shores with the locals. We have eaten handsome scrumptious meals and snacked on sweet flakey pastries and crusty breads peeled hot off the side of an underground oven. We have closed our eyes and sighed in collective euphoria at the sacred aromatic, perfectly spiced flavor of every bite.

This has been an inner banquet, sitting at the table for longer than I think I want to, but as long as it turns out that I need.

My favorite general

Fathers and Mothers

We landed in Yerevan near midnight a week ago tomorrow.  Since that time, Grant has been living mostly in the same clothes he arrived in, his luggage having lost its way via Belgium and CDG along with apparently 100,000 other pieces that were misplaced by Air France in the two days around our trip.  Starting with the Lost and Found at Zvartnots Airport and the Air France website, phone numbers that all lead to no answer, we had no idea if his luggage even existed anymore much less if it was en route.  My mother’s cousin here in Yerevan worked her Paris and Yerevan airport connections to do a mega search.  The kind woman at the local Air France office back-channelled her airport contact via a stern conversation in Russian on her private cell phone when nobody answered the public line.  Grant continued to hope against hope and modestly wore the replacement underwear I procured from an underground mall along with a couple poorly designed t-shirts.  He marveled at the inefficiency of it all.  Everyone who we spoke to nodded sympathetically when we mentioned Air France and lost luggage.  My friend Sara claimed its the reason she doesn’t fly them to Yerevan any more. And then yesterday, the skies parted, and his suitcase dropped on the inside of our locked courtyard mid-morning when we returned from a breakfast stroll.

Say hello to your mother

Mother Armenia

Many experiences tell you what kind of humans people are at the core.  Screaming babies on planes we have discussed. The loss of Western conveniences, such as clothes, personal effects, and the comforts we pack, is another major tell.  For five days Grant had nothing of his own but the clothes and pack on his back.  And although we are not stranded off the grid somewhere suffering in third-world destitution, it would be rather unsettling for most.  If he was upset by this, you would hardly know.  It certainly did not affect his outward demeanor, attitude, or ability to present himself to this long-awaited experience.  Whereas those tweens who shall not be named around us complained about the moderate heat, different taste of water, why the signs aren’t in English, and other such mundane irritations that makes a mother so proud, this man just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I hope it shows up soon.” It’s these moments that remind me why we chose one another, and namely, why he is so singularly unique in holding on to perspective, humility, and gratitude in the most dire of circumstances.  

Meat Cute

Daddy issues

This week has been a whirlwind of trying to understand a new Yerevan, despite the lack of newness in our daily clothing choices for some.  Our apartment is a few steps down an alley off the most central happening open space surrounded by restaurants and sculptures and hundreds of people gathering at all hours for a drink, an arm in arm stroll, or a climb up the 500 steps of the Cascade complex to catch a view of the city, and when the time is right, Mt Ararat. When we arrived at 11pm and wandered off for groceries, it was alive and swarming.  The Cascade has been that way every day and night since, and we have enjoyed its vibrant humanity.  The people are notably different.  Although there are still ample Armenians, the demographics have changed to include a very large proportion of young Russians who have fled Putin’s oppression and military service for a senseless war they can’t support.  They have money, ideas, tech talent, and hope for a different world than the one Russia is currently providing them, so they have sought refuge in the democratic rule of this country, and the more progressive ideals of its populace.  Armenia is a safe haven now, and place that allows for growth with eyes to Europe and the western world, and as a result of its open arms, it is also the fastest growing economy in this region, including Europe. I have mixed feelings about this change, and what it means for my homeland.  But it walks a tender line of the xenophobia I abhor towards immigrants in my own country right now.  It’s an opportunity to check my discomfort, and challenge my reactions to the sounds of Russian being spoken all around me instead of my mother tongue.

Pickle Me

The family has arrived in a trickle.  My mom landed, giddy, two nights ago.  Chaghig and Trey and their three kids, delirious after 27 straight hours of travel, yesterday morning.  The band is finally back together.  We are 14 strong.  And taller than when we were here last. My mom is also older, but heaven help help the soul who questions her ability to keep up with this lot.  In the last few days, she has not opted out of a single opportunity to venture in the direct sun and blazing heat of mid-day Yerevan, or a late evening stroll for ice cream in the Cascade.  She chatted up the gardeners at the Yerevan Botanical Gardens, and flirted with the Syrian waiter from the same village as she was born in at dinner.  She has a radiant smile that oozes the happiness and energy she draws from the kids and grandkids she adores.  And when the children approach me and express concern that we are leaving Medzmama alone to sit on the steps and wait by herself, I remind them that we inherited our sense of adventure from her, the original globe-trotter.  She’s in her element here, in comfortable shoes.

The Swallow and her nest

Our days have been a combination of urban exploration between mealtimes.  There is a lot of walking in this city, and the locals seem to be unfazed by the heat, the cobblestone, the kilometer long boulevards between blocks.  Luckily the green space is everywhere, gardens and trees peppered with statues and cafes, so you don’t travel far to find shade.  For someone who loves to walk, it’s a dream.  For my kids who would prefer to be airlifted from their bedrooms to the dinner table, it’s a stretch.  Enter Yerevan Ride.  The e-scooter rental that has taken over the city.  Download an app, enter your credit card info, and grab up to three scooters wherever you see them to roll instead of stroll.  Grant and the kids have been doing this as a preferred way to move.  I have been walking on average eight miles a day.  They have been scooting it and then some.  Grant and Mara have been taking to scooting to their favorite market in the mornings to pick up pastries.  Mara and the baker are on first name basis.  Grant looks adorable on a scooter, like one of those hipster dads in long shorts on the Santa Cruz boardwalk, minus calf tattoo and facial hair.  It’s a win-win.

Ararat 73+2

Hats off to Jesus

Shant and Levon

Your driver Hagop has arrived

Get Set Hayastan

The shadow of our triple seven over the rippling waters of San Francisco Bay looks like something out of a deluxe airline commercial.  But boarding this actual narrow hunk of metal felt more like an SNL skit.

 

Bye Bye Blue Bay

Bonjour, Bienvenue, said a succession of tight-slacks-wearing sinewy flight attendants, through red-painted pursed lips and heavy black spectacles. Zee bags are too big for zee compartment if you please.  We need to check zem. One by one hard shelled spinners that should have never dared the cabin went by way of Business Class to the luggage dungeon below. Buh-bye.  We packed this sardine tin full, including squeezing ourselves in middle row seats, an obvious oversight for this experienced traveler with long-legged children.  Shant gave me a flat line smile like that emoji, but the one he really meant was the face with no mouth.  The team player he is, he has settled in and ever-adjusting his pajama pants, likely regretting his choice of flannel for this sweatbox.  

It’s been a minute since an international flight with anyone but myself, Shant and Mara, occasionally Grant, or a bestie.  It’s been hours since one with my sister on board.  Hasmig and Susi, Sevan and Susi’s nephew Enrique The Intrepid are all aboard for the beginning of Homeland Redux, The Teen Edit, starring special guest, Grant.  It all feels familiar, and new.  As I was walking the terminal with Hasmig pre-flight, I had flashes of my parents a lifetime ago, carting us back and forth across oceans on TWA and Pan-Am, planting the seeds of this love of adventure, and gifting us the ease of finding home in this big world.

Flyaway Air

Never typical, Grant left yesterday to travel through Brussels and connect with us in Paris for the leg to Yerevan.  He leaves Armenia a few days before we do to return via Belgium, jetting to Uganda from there. Three continents in three weeks is light work for this man.  What he doesn’t fully realize is that Armenia will be his heavy lifting.

For reasons that took me years to understand and accept, Grant did not join the first trip to Armenia in 2015 with this very crew, minus Susi and Enrique.  It wasn’t the right time for us to have that experience together as a family, and instead I was able to introduce Shant and Mara to my sacred land with full presence of heart.  They cherished it, and since have also the memories of that first time with their grandmother and cousins.  This repeat journey with their father has been a long time coming, for all of us.

Grant seems truly ready, authentically interested and eager for this. But, his idea of fun is usually warm tropical places with ocean and jungles, rivers and fish, critters to catch, planned activities in nature, good meals, decent coffee, and card games in between.  He is a self-proclaimed simple guy with easy needs. And he loves a plan.

Ease does not describe my people nor their place. Neither does planning, per se. She has her own plans for you, Mother Hayastan. Armenia is land-locked.  Literally a large scale rock garden in the heart of the Caucasus Mountains. Rivers it has, and probably snakes.  Monasteries perched on treacherous cliffs, more than you can pray for.  Long sanguine strolls in the city and eternal evenings around an abundant table of earth’s bounty, for sure. It’s people love a strong cup of coffee as much as a tangential toast.  They can hold their liquor, often homemade.  They scale mountains off trail, usually in the wrong shoes.  They have endured an inordinate amount of suffering as a tribe over the centuries, and even now face the danger of extinction in a deliberately silent civil war.  They are a determined people. Highly literate, loyal to their history and driven for their futures. They are both very intense, and take true hardship in stride. Underneath their humor and sarcasm is a deep understanding of the fragility of life.  With that comes a knowing gratitude that makes for live-hard moments. Real talk. Heated debate. Truth bombs. Penetrating stares. Moments of silence. Explosive laughter. Instant friendships. Unfathomable generosity. Undying devotion to family. The messy stuff of love and living un-contained, and unfiltered.  Grant has had glimpses of this with his tenure in my family, so it will not feel unfamiliar.  But Armenia is the Minassian family on steroids, so it will be supernatural.  The right time for him and for us as a family is now, and we could not be more ready.

But first, I was promised a French kiss in Paris where we will meet next. I am looking forward to that, a coffee while civilized, seated with a ceramic cup, and perhaps a tartine.

The galley between our section and the way back of the plane has been where Hasmig and I have been those people, standing more than sitting, stretching in the Middle-Aged Olympics, and apparently docenting people to elusive toilets.  We are musing on how the camp of passengers is divided straight down the middle between those who eye roll and loud-sigh at the unconsolably screaming toddler in the aisle and those of us who barely hear her over the drumming of our empathic heartbeats for her weary parents. You know which camp you are in, and may also like to know there is a place in Heaven for only one of those groups.  Again, I think of my mother, with four daughters five and under, crossing sniper lines to get to the airport to flee a country to meet her husband to start all over in another place, repeat thrice more before we settled in California when I was five.  I know what I am capable of, but it is not what my mother was capable of, and managed, often alone. Her courage puts us all to shame, still. And this long flight with crying baby and narrow seating comes into crystal clear perspective. 

Everything is possible. This is the Armenian way.

Midnight Dolmas

Trying to Blend In

Worth the Wait

Yerevan Skyline-Having a Ball

Night Night Namibia

The final days of a vacation, certainly one that takes you so far out of your head and place, are a balance of trying to capture the last moments of freedom and exploration with the thought intrusions of the practical details that make up re-entry. How to pack, what to give away or leave behind, logistics of airport transfers and pick-ups as well as more frequent connections home make for one foot in each land, ever straddling the growing divide.  After our epic rhino approach with Tuly that seemed in so many ways a safari climax, we had really no more expectations but to enjoy our new friends at this precious lodge, and any lucky wildlife sightings we could come upon.  I opted for no more game drives, Marieke for one more sundowner in hopes of seeing lions.

The afternoon melted into a pastel evening at the watering hole, me in the shade of our portico while Marieke and two Germans ( a photographer and a travel writer on an aviation boondoggle) went with Tuly.  After about three hours and in the final blood orange light of day, she came back like a cat having eaten an antelope, belly full with the stunning experience of seeing an entire pride, with several cubs, lazing about with parents after dinner. She was thrilled.  As much by Tuly’s picnic spread that included beer and spicy biltong, the Namibian jerky, as in seeing the royalty of The Big Five.  I was only delighted for her, and had to be happy with seeing her epic photographs, as we had decided early on that there is no FOMO on safari.

By dinner, we noticed that our front porch had turned into a most spectacularly magical private dining platform complete with candlelit path in celebration of our last night at Ongava and the culmination of our joint birthdays that have delivered a most cherished lifetime memory.  The people at Ongava were as happy and warm as those at Kwesi Dunes, and we bonded with the small but capable staff effortlessly.  The four chefs churned out creative deliciousness that was thus far unparalleled in Namibia, and the front of the house tended to every question and need with humor and willingness.  The service was impeccable, but the people are what make this place, and Samuel and Tuly stopping by to chat made our perfect evening personal. 

yes there is ice in our wine

Each has a story which is charming, touching, inspiring and so very relatable in the most unlikely of ways.  Tuly was an airstrip attendant for years before he became a guide.  Between small plane arrivals he watched the animals on the reserve cross the runway.  He studied their behavior and dreamed of being a guide, which he told his boss.  He, in turn, gave Tuly a book and a challenge to study for the rigorous guide exam.  He took that to heart and devoured the knowledge, sat for the exam and unsurprisingly got top marks. He did the rifle training, which is yet another notch in his belt, which he has to keep up on his own with monthly target practice. Now he sees his work as an education, doing seven hours of arduous game drives a day, and waiting for an opportunity to take the next level exam, which has not yet presented itself.  On his off time he listens to birdsongs in the bush, and practices learning their calls.  Guiding is a very serious matter in the safari business, and the training is cutthroat and elusive. He will go far, but it will take time.

“These people are long suffering,” Domingo said of Namibians as he drove us to the airport.  He was referring to how long anyone in this country is willing to wait for a chance, a glimmer of hope, an interested customer at the roadside craft stall they have been camping at for months.  “They are patient.” It’s a humbling perspective for those of us who know not what it truly means to wait for a dream, but can set on our way the moment we dream it.

After a very charismatic send-off from Ongava which involved many permutations of photos with the entire staff, with laughter and embraces all around, we had one last long. hot. drive- thankfully on a tar road, to Windhoek.  We rolled in before dinner into our extremely sleek and out of place accommodation, and dined unknowingly at the only restaurant within walking distance that happened to be in the big five of Windhoek’s finest dining, and a favorite of the country’s president.  We talked about everything we had talked about, about the people and the land we loved here, all we felt and saw, and on the rooting and rebirth of self-knowing and friendship that happens when such an experience is intimately shared.

Windhoek hipsters

This journey with Marieke, my curious oryx, has been a love letter to our thirty-two year friendship.  The moments were rich, hard, deep, light, dark, dusty, clear, hot, dry, windy, cold, spicy and sullen and everything in between. The days were long and often uncomfortably beautiful. There was joy and simultaneous desolation when traveling through places that have stood for millions of years without the mark of humans. What always buoyed us was trust. Trust that your travel companion is also your guide, your shepherd when you need some steering, shade when you need to rest, comfort when you feel alone, and a wide ochre expanse when you need that space. I will thank her till the end of days for being an endlessly reaching heart, and a lifeline to mine.  There are no more questions. 

Only love.

Last African sunrise

miss you already

First Crush

Tulyaameni (“Tuly”) met us at our tent with his rifle just before dawn, as promised, ready to take us for a bush walk.  He was grateful for a morning off of driving on safari, and enthusiastic to show us his guiding skill and love of wildlife.  He is twenty-eight, tall and lean, with a Hollywood smile and boyish laugh.  He is from nearby Vamboland as are most people who work here, and Etosha has been his backyard.  He looks at everything with the wonder of first time, which quickly became apparent on our three and a half hour walk among the dense Mopane trees of the bush.  I have never seen someone so fascinated by an animal track, its scat, or the interpretation of its mood and behavior based on how aggressively it has marked the dirt with its foot or rump.  His marvel is contagious.

But first the safety talk, which included silence at most times, hand signals, a quick lesson on the rifle, and how to use the radio in case he became “incapacitated.” Marieke sighed, understanding she would have to refrain from her usual inquiry.  I daren’t not ask what an example of incapacitation was.  He also told us again, no running, no matter the urge, reminding us that runners get chased. With a hair more cortisol than five minutes prior, we ventured.

Tuly, which means “we should all be on the same side”

“Ahhh a very angry black rhino was here,” he delighted, looking at what seemed to be a tire track in the dirt.  “This elephant defecation is fresh,” he reported excitedly as he picked up a giant wad of scat and fingered it like topsoil.  “They are nearby, and we will find them.” “Listen to that beautiful bird call,” he pointed to the dolby surround of tweeting around us.  “It is the encouragement of the cape turtledove for us to work hard.”

Within a few minutes of walking we were immersed deep into the wild, dry grass crunching at our feet.  He noticed the tracks of all the animals, its right and left foot, its direction and speed, the numbers and ages of who was traveling, and with whom.

Dung beetle ball

He soon spotted two elephants in the way distance, and we began our gentle approach, assessing the direction of the wind and re-setting our tack so they did not pick up our scent and become more alert. Before you could clearly see them through the trees, you could hear the thunderous crack of trees breaking at the root, signaling the bark stripping breakfast they were having.  This tree felling is helpful to the ecosystem as well, as it instantly becomes food for shorter ungulate browsers and creates nesting ground and material for insects and birds, and high defecation places for the scatalogically insecure black-backed jackal. 

We got about fifty meters to one “sub-adult” male, stopped because his ears started to twitch with the knowledge of our presence.  He did not seem bothered otherwise, but very aware.  Apparently most animals, even lions, just want to know who is around.  They see us as competitors rather than predators, so they are sizing us up to see if we are into their bark granola or want to mate with their targets, neither which applied here.  Seeing a wild animal on foot, at its level, or in this case beneath it, is a completely unparalleled experience. You automatically feel who is more vulnerable, and in all honesty the gun is no consolation.

hand and foot

A group of rhinos is unironically called a crush.  When we finally turned from the elephants and made our way deeper across a very wide plain, Tuly spotted two white rhinoceroses, “there, over two kilometers away.”  So that’s about one mile, and even though the land stretched before us more than that distance, I was incredulous that he could notice them.  But as we walked ever closer, they appeared in relief, along with four others that completed their gang. We gave them wide berth, tracking the wind so they would not pick up our scents.  When we finally made our appearances known to them, we were the distance of a lap pool away, and stood still to give them time to size us up.  This game took about one hour, us moving closer, them moving towards us, us stopping, them stopping and staring.  Tuly remained ever delighted and calm, laughing at my expressions of uncertainty and reassuring me with a friendly mockery that all was in control.  Their ears were up, not back.  Their tails, especially the one with the very long and very pointy horn, were straight not curled.  All signs of curiosity over aggressiveness, which one can’t tell from the menacing horn that points directly to your heart no matter what their mood.  

Once we had our thrill and fill of rhino approach in the wild, we tried to walk away unsuspectingly, but they had other plans.  As we walked along, the group started to move, like linebackers in quick pace towards us.  We stopped.  They stopped.  Tuly laughed.  I asked a few questions out loud.  He said, “Take a picture! C’mon! It’s no problem.”  We moved again, and so did they, picking up the pace to a trot, which is a respectable quip for this massive beast. “They are playing!” he said, as my questions turned to pleas. “This is the first time in your life you have to completely trust someone.” (He knows me I think) . And I quick understood what he meant by resist the urge to run.  Fight or flight is internally programmed in all species, and in the Minassians that gene is upregulated. 

Crushing Hard

At some point, the game got old, and just like that we left our first crush behind, like a forgotten wallflower at the school dance.  A wave of relief washed over me along with the thrill of what we had just done.  A lecture on termite society, no matter how enthusiastic your guide is, did not seem to render my interest the way it was churning our guide’s, but a little let down after that excitement was a welcome calm.  

We did not find lions, but we came across two very menacing looking men, heavily armed, and not overly chatty.  After a brief exchange with Tuly, and onceing us over, they moved on.  They turned out to be part of the APU, the Anti-Poaching Unit, who patrol these areas in search of poachers who will kill a rhino for it’s tusk for the black market value of almost a million dollars a piece.  We spoke of poaching and the efforts to prevent it, which involve no one ever knowing the exact count of rhinos in any conservation land, and despicable people going undercover as animal lovers to track locations of rhino and send in poorly paid people to slaughter them.  There is much to say of this topic, but nothing that sheds light on humanity.  Suffice it to say we should all spend more thought towards saving these fantastic beasts.

Decoy nests of the sociable weaver. Only one is actually used.

Sisters of other Misters

Ganesh is Fresh#1

Ganesh is Fresh#2

Ganesh is Fresh#3

Be Dazzled

A long and hot days drive eastward to Etosha National Park marked the final long leg by car of this trip.  From Grootberg Lodge we descended down the 180 million-year old mountain pass into a landscape that quickly became the most mundane of all we have seen.  Grey trees, mid-height, a few green leaves welcoming spring on them, but mostly monochromatic hues in the yellows and beige variety.  Birds galore, of prey and not. The world’d heaviest bird of flight, with a forgettable name, a face like a roadrunner, and a story of being only worse at landing than it is at taking off. Farms with threadbare wire fences, enclosing thin goats and cattle, and the occasional farmer sitting in a shady corner somewhere, on a cellphone. The farm houses range from opulent and nostalgic to lean-to’s made of corrugated metal. We missed a turn off an unmarked dirt road and ended up going north instead of east for about 25 extra deserted kilometers.  Luckily Domingo sensed a subtle change in the landscape that had us backtracking and on the right path before long.

We pulled into the gates of the Ongava Nature Preserve, within which lies our home for three nights before our last night in Windhoek, pre-return.  After 30 more kilometers of driving through dense grey trees and shrubs we pulled into a dirt dead-end of the road, met by a young guy in khaki holding icy cold towels and a small glass of ginger ale with large ice cubes.  The duress of another hot road trip was immediately showered away by the refreshing vitality and enthusiasm of the staff here at Ongava Tented Camp.  There is something to be said for all-inclusive places.  Everything becomes about your experience, and nothing becomes about tallying up fees, which in our case were settled up many months ago from paychecks long forgotten.  Our tent, closest to the main lodge which is an open air lobby facing a watering hole on the preserve, is the canvas love-child of Restoration Hardware and REI.  It has an indoor and outdoor shower (this one faces the watering hole with a private view), a massive bed net canopy covering our two beds, and a small apartment’s worth of dark wood covered deck for gin and tonic sipping purposes.  As we sat there having a delicious fresh lunch of black bean and avocado salad, an elephant came through the shrubs and took a bath in the watering hole and then sipped from the swimming as if it were Shamu.  

The Splash Zone

Winding down with some sunset yoga on our deck a few hours later, a young female giraffe had snuck up and was studying us carefully as they are known to do, assessing whether it was safe to lower her head, and thereby her guard, to drink in our presence.  What this place lacks in landscape beauty, it makes up for in wildlife viewing, up close.  By the end of the evening we had seen a family of white rhinos, who were only named this after someone mispronounced “wide” mouth rhino enough times, and then named the other rhino a black one in contrast-although they are both grey- a host of water buck, springboks, a few more elephants, and no end of guinea fowl, who are the carefree kids in a public fountain on a hot day.

early to bed

We had a five hour game drive this morning in Etosha, saw the immense salt flat called the Etosha pan, which literally translates to “Great White Place,” and is visible from outer space and home to Walvis Bay flamingos when they get depressed there.  We found dazzles and dazzles of zebras, towers of giraffe, and a few other groups of game at watering holes, and followed one hyena to its hiding place under a natural bridge in the gravel road. The big cats eluded us, but there is always tomorrow.

early to rise

A dazzle of Zebras

Resting Zebra Face

The Black-faced Impala-only found in Namibia

The Hyena- One of “The Ugly Five”

The watering hole

a tiny portion of the great salt flat Etosha Pan

Curious white rhino and family

Pictures will not do this place justice.  But my words probably also will fail me, as does the heat exhaustion of relentless sun.  Tomorrow morning a safari walk, with our ever-smiling rifle-carrying guide Tuly, and nothing but miles of wildlife to find, and to shoot.

In pictures.

Lone Black Rhino

Arid Eden

Our second and third days atop this mountain in Grootberg, listening to myriad birds and watching kaleidoscopic lizards skitter along the footpaths.  Time has stood still while this massive landscape paints itself into our memory.  It is strange to be always on the move and then to suddenly come to a screeching halt in a place that is inhospitably wild and hotter than any place we have been.  If one does not choose to trek after rhinos and elephants, one chooses to sit still with a book, in perpetual search of shade and a few bars of connection.  I was able to send an email to post my  entry with the help of my devoted little sister who will answer my call at any time of day and do the thankless work a sister will only do- which includes trying all the passwords I have long forgotten, resetting them with inside jokes, and sending love and encouragement across what is left of wifi before it completely evaporates.

Let it go on the record that I am officially missing my family.  As much as I am soaking in every moment of this beauty, my heart is also aching with longing for the spontaneous side-hugs of my teen son and the untempered embrace of my daughter and the always willing shelter of Grant’s arms.  It is so good to love so much as to miss this much, but it is a special kind of pain that I am feeling acutely here, perhaps also because I am quite literally cut off.  Marieke is feeling it too, and thank goodness we have each other and endless humor as we brave one more night in sticky heat, under holey bed nets, with head lamps that are slowly fading.  Marieke has finished her second book.  I am done with an 800 page novel that gutted my heart. I have started The Sheltering Desert by Henno Martin, which is the quintessential read for any Namib desert wanderer.

I have been doing yoga to keep the blood flowing and the mind calm.  I marvel at how much work it is for me to actually do nothing, which my body does not remember and my mind never knew.  It’s a challenge for Marieke as well, who for as long as I have known has three separate careers and projects going on at once, but she is leaning in to her inner stillness and teaching me.  What helps is there is literally nothing to do.  Even going for a walk is an ill-advised life-threatening endeavor.

We watched the sun set and the moon rise near simultaneously on either side of the long deck of this lodge.  I do not want to mention the Disney movie anthropomorphizing wild African animals here, but cue the theme song as the sky turns blood red at sundown and we are perched on a cliff with our manes blowing in the wind.

We keep meeting lovely people.  Just when you think everyone amazing worth knowing is in your circle. Alistair and Helen are an English couple who are celebrating their 51-year wedding anniversary today.  They were instrumental in dissuading us from nine hours of rhino trekking, having shared the ardors of bumping along and then the photos of the de-horned Black Rhino they eventually found on Alistair’s amazing camera.  We spoke of their travels, which include both poles, and their views on the monarchy, our melting planet, and the British National Health Service where they met as a young doctor and nurse.  They are off to Etosha a day ahead of us, and I am hoping this is not our last encounter because their youthfulness and curiosity, kindness and ease is the stuff of best humans.

Alistair’s Gaze

This morning, one lucky guide named Walter won the lottery to be our companion on a walking safari we requested in the wild reserve around this property.  We wanted to move, swiftly, see some things, learn about nature, limited only by Marieke’s ability to hike and ask probing questions at the same time.  Walter earned his keep over six km of pondering on zebra society, elephant matriarchy, and how unfair it is for leopards because there is never such thing as an unsuspecting springbok.  We saw several herds of boks, one even gave us a bouncing show, and sadly I spent the entire forty seconds of them pronking trying to unlock my phone to get a video so it was a techtactular failure of presence on my part.  I was more attentive for the Hartmann’s zebras, who were curious about us too, and at raft attention when Walter pointed out fresh leopard tracks on our path.  

Hartmann’s Zebras

Springbok

Tracking For Justice!

Giving us some paws….

We have been here long enough to know many of the staff by name, and they our incessant need for refills of our water bottles.  In coming here I made a commitment to not use any single-use plastic, and Marieke took that challenge along with me from Cape Town.  Because clean drinking water is in ample supply from ground wells and cleaned by reverse osmosis, we have been able to ask for tap water and freely consume it everywhere.  But tap water doesn’t cost, and plastic bottles do, so on occasion our requests for refill do not particularly seem welcome.  I am a copious water drinker and likely over-hydrator in general, and the Namibians also seem mildly incredulous and horrified at my consumption.  In this dry hot place where I can feel the moisture being pulled out of my every pore, I am ok with that judgement, and my kidneys are too. As far as the plastic waste that we are all complicit in perpetuating, my efforts are like piss in the wind, which there is ample of.

Tomorrow we roll out on our khaki lorry, towards the end of this journey.  We will make camp for three days just outside Etosha National Park, from whence every tourist yet has reported nothing but wildlife.  After that we have a long drive back to the capital and a quick overnight before the day’s journey home.  This time next week I will with all luck be in my own home, reading the Sunday Times, and trying to access this very feeling of space between my thoughts and breath by arid breath, puzzling how I can hold on to nothing for just a while longer.

15,173 km From Home