le cock block.

Today’s discovery: MTC automatically disconnects after you spend an hour on the phone..

A bit presumptuous, I think.. 

What gives, o’dubious mobile provider of mine? I’ve got tango to burn. 

An aside. Automatically spelt behaviour with a ‘u’ …

Maybe it won’t be so hard to teach the King’s English after all.

British English at the very least. Namlish at best…

charlotte's web, this isn't..

Despite my attempts to be humane with the creepy crawlies with whom I share my room...
I bring sad tidings of the untimely demise of  the giant spider formerly residing with me.
The bloody idiot resisted my relocation efforts.
And as a mere mortal, I fear I could not get past her tearing along my walls at such a fevered pace.
It tends to unnerve... and draw one's eye..
Hard to focus and all that nonsense.

The poor soul met her end on the business end of a blue plastic cup.
I expect full retribution from her family at some point...

my day; a list...

Curse the existence of flies during morning walk to work.

Arrive five minutes late to morning staff meeting.

Find out it’s a three day weekend this week (Yippee).

Stare at scheme of work, willing brain to come up with effective teaching aid ideas.

Scribble notes for a couple of hours into journal.

Discover the 7 year age gap in my future 5^th grade class (Ouch).

Inadvertently instigate a draw-off between my HOD and (probably) future Rukwangali Tutor.

Get in a circular conversation about poverty in America versus Namibia w/ Namibian colleagues.

Remind them, again, I have never met the UK Volunteer who preceded me in the village. (If J. Butler is referred to as my colleague – as opposed to theirs – again, I may kick someone).

Carry home 40+ HIV/AIDS posters to the amusement of school secretary.

Grill up Hawaiian veggies and eggs.. Mmm.

Make mistake of spending time (ages) with eight year old host sister to get her to distinguish the difference in pronunciation of ‘heart’ and ‘hot’ (Success!).

Read two fluff crime novels.

Listen to a little jazz piano…

Nap.

Skip through a couple of episodes of Sherlock… Benedict Cumberbatch. ‘Nuff said.

Unroll yoga mat.

Attempt yoga [sober] for the first time in month.

Blast music..

Decide I needed to add a little wine into the mix.

Receive 20 distractions in form of texts.

Give up on yoga.

Do a little paperwork… (Little being the operative word)..

Gaze longingly at brand new shiny journal that I am not allowing myself to write in until I’ve finished the one I’m working on now.

Stash said temptation under a pile in my room.

Stare at the corner peeking out from under the pile.

Accidentally rip my mosquito net out of ceiling in effort to reposition new moleskine out of sight.

Teeter precariously on plastic chair to re-attach hook holding net into ceiling.

Get bitten by two mosquitos in the interim.

Re-reading this, it occurs to me that I may be becoming a bit cracked.  

Or it’s just Monday.

cuddly as a ball of razor wire..

There is a massive spider on my ceiling.

Am debating whether to remove the thing…

Or if I can avoid an encounter if I tuck in my bed net very, very carefully.

I asked my host sister what she learned in school on Tuesday.

“Nothing.”

“That’s a shame. Wait. … Did any teachers come to your class today?”

“Huh?”

“Did any teachers attend – show up to your class. … At any point … at all, during the day?”

“Oh. … No.”

I ask again to assure nothing is lost in translation. It isn’t.

I’ve spent the past few days oscillating between annoyance and seething infuriation.

For the above, and a many number of things.

I need to embrace the idea that control is an illusion.

I can only chart a path and hope for the best..

A happy accident, those things that lean my direction.

Still, Loosening my grasp on this delusion of reigning over my own fate may prove difficult.

Should've never have turned the light back on.

The eight-legged monster is now creeping down the wall.

The question is, will I sleep knowing it’s there… On the hunt...

I can do this.

White wine, a mosquito net and a few good books and this silly, cathartic, blog site..

I will ignore you, sir or madam.

Please don’t be venomous…

pro tip.

Never allow free reign of your hotel room to your colleagues in Africa.

They will forget they're not in Vegas..
Insult your playlist of mid-90's hip-hop.
Insist on playing Justin Timberlake. Insist. Multiple times.

Turn the aircon to frigid.. Which leaks all over the floor. Then walk through it with sandy feet.
Leave their empties everywhere.

And then when they depart... Look you straight in the face, and ask whose room just got annihilated..

Good thing I like most of these people...
What was I rambling on about last? Hmm...

family?

It is amazing the amount of trust one can place in a strangers when thrust in an unfamiliar situation. Outside your element.. Eight thousand miles, and an ocean, from home.

Even when you're apart. Sometimes hundreds of kilometres, sometimes thousands.. 
Communication primarily through texts..

In the event of an emergency, or an emotional breakdown..
They're only a ten hour combi ride away.

Dunno. Maybe have had too much of this gingerfizz...

namesake..

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. 

~ Dreams | Langston Hughes

click, click, click.

just a beetle I forced to endure a photo shoot.. 

am slightly embarrassed as to the number of photos that feature this little guy. 

I may be a bit touched.

just a suggestion..

21 songs | 1 hour 9 minutes
highly recommended.. by me.
a playlist, made one sleepless night, under the influence of mefloquine...
 
Bad Moon Rising | Creedence Clearwater Revival
Get Together | The Youngbloods
Time of the Season | The Zombies
Dream a Little Dream | The Mamas & the Papas
House of the Rising Sun | The Animals
California | Joni Mitchell
California Dreamin' | The Mamas & the Papas
This Will Be Our Year | The Zombies
The Letter | The Box Tops
Closer to Fine | Indigo Girls
Somebody to Love | Jefferson Airplane
Brown Eyed Girl | Van Morrison
Bus Stop | The Hollies
Big Yellow Taxi | Joni Mitchell
Five O'Clock World | The Vogues
Turn! Turn! Turn! | The Byrds
Black Is Black | Bravos
Layla (Unplugged) | Eric Clapton
Nothing Can Be Done | Joni Mitchell
The First Cut is the Deepest | Cat Stevens
Love Is All Around | The Troggs

late, late riser..

The waking is the troublesome part. By the time light floods my room, I know that rightly, I should have departed already, but I burrow deeper still into my sheets.  Then the waiting for my host mother and sister to cease their morning tête-à-tête.. My morning helping of familial avoidance. Mother is off to work, sister to bed.. I emerge from my little room in the back, slinking out the rear door. 

Trespassing a well-worn path through several yards – through a perpetually open livestock gate a few yards over I make my way carefully through the deep sand – one eye on the lookout for those slithering things I have been told to be aware of.  One of my neighbors is a man who has set up house in a tent in the backyard of the house adjacent to his previous residence. I don’t yet know his story, but we wave and mumble greeting to each other.

A family of goats – not quite a herd (for they have no herder) wander the brush across the sandy lane, content to stalk the yards of my little neighborhood, favoring a large outcropping of cactus planted by a previous tenant at one of the vacant houses..

The walk is a little more than a kilometer each morning, and as I am often late, I’m usually speed walking, as best as one can in deep sand… West, down and across the lane through another livestock gate, this one narrow – to prohibit the entry of undesirable livestock… and elephants, so I’m told. I try my best not to snag my turtle shell (this damned backpack) on the gate… am not always successful..

Just a bit farther, the path turns and cuts diagonally through the field to the northwest, and I barrel into my shadow as I pick up the pace, glancing at my mobile realizing the time. I tune out the sounds of the morning as I pass a giant flowering tree with purple blossoms – the tree houses a hive of … Bees? Wasps? I’m not sure exactly where, but it positively hums from within.

Finally to the sandy soccer field, with its skeletal goal posts missing their nets, the school is fully visible, and a steady stream of learners make their way from the ‘Location’ into the school yard. Nearer to the school yard, adjacent to the soccer field, I pick my way through a minor refuse patch, unnerving the chickens roaming around, sorting through the waste.

Finally, I arrive... A little winded – to the amusement of my fellow teachers who laugh at my obvious exertion... They don’t know I’ve practically been running to avoid being tardy (or at least even later than I might have been to the 6:45am daily meeting)… I work through the necessary and inevitable greetings... Then I retreat to the library… Trying to figure out where to begin.

this just might work..

I have crossed an ocean
I have lost my tongue
from the root of the old
one
a new one has sprung

~ Epilogue | Grace Nichols (Guyana)

if I'm being completely honest..

sometimes I do things against my better judgement..
because that 'better judgement' is often just fear.
unfortunately, such brave [honest]
and impulsive [brash] acts do not always work in my favor..

perhaps, next time.

wait. what's this?
never mind me.
perhaps it [life] is working in my favor after all. 
just this once.


[Edit: Turns out, nope.]