I am now on holiday though, so later this week, I am popping up north to visit some friends, and then I’m back to Windhoek for a few days, before hopping on the Intercape to Cape Town next Wednesday. I’m then around the Cape for a few weeks, returning to the UK on 7th November. I will try to write a bit more before leaving isabelleinnamibia behind, but I warn you,…this is the beginning of the end.

I am also officially unemployed at the moment, so if anyone knows of any jobs going in international development based in London, please let me know and I will bring you home a small giraffe!

Having set up a last minute meeting with the Regional Councillor, so that he can meet my replacement and that I can say cheerio, we made the immediate decision to drive up that day and take our chances with having the room to stay at the school and that everyone we needed to meet would be there. I felt pretty groggy as I took the turn-off on to the gravel road to Ovitoto, trying to give my successor a crash-course in Herero customs and greetings, whilst choking on the dust that blew in through the broken cover of my friend’s Jeep I was borrowing.

As we pulled up at the ECO-C, Tjono was there, half-naked (a normal state for him when I arrive, for some reason) but expecting us at least. I had allowed three days for this final visit, to show the new girl around, introduce her to important and helpful people and so on. By mid-afternoon, we had covered the highlights of the area, and sat to wait for the Regional Councillor. Typically no one at his office knew where he was exactly, nor did they think he would come back for our meeting. They were right – he didn’t. We sat and waited and he didn’t turn up or answer his mobile phone.

“Eer, yeah, this is pretty standard for Ovitoto I’m afraid”, I try explaining to the new girl, who is taking it all in her stride. I do get the feeling that she is wondering exactly what I have been doing for the last year in this quiet dusty little community.

We trundled back to the room at the school at sunset. I was finding it a little strange to be sharing my Ovitoto with someone, and even more odd to be sharing the room at the school with someone as well. I have my own way of being in Ovitoto. I like the peace and quiet. I like to relax in the room. I like to go and chill outside with the kids, but only when I feel like it. I realised just how set in my ways I have become, and how hard I found it to adjust to another person being there. Not that there is anything wrong with my successor at all: she’s fab, but it is difficult to explain certain things and there were some important messages that I wasn’t sure how to relate to her.

 The children were quite overexcited by the presence of another shilumbu, and of the fire-engine-red Jeep I’m driving; small faces keep popping up at every window and little hand grip hold of us whenever we venture outside. Rather upsettingly, the children have taken on the Namibian habit that upsets me so much, of jabbing a hand out, demanding “Give me one dollar”. Only a rare cheeky kid has ever done this to me in Ovitoto, but on this visit, they were making a chorus out of it. This expectation that so many tourists fulfil of handing out spare change to kids that ask is encouraging a terrible mindset of complacency and the “gimme gimme” culture, and I was actually almost embarrassed that the children were behaving like this just because I was accompanied by the new girl.

That night, I developed the full-blown flu, not helped by the dry and dusty air. The following morning, I wasn’t sure whether my sinus would explode first before my scratchy throat caused me to cough up a lung. Depressed that I was sick, and worried that if I got any worse, I wouldn’t be able to drive us home, I set about finishing everything up that I could think of so that we could head back to Windhoek in the afternoon. Firstly, we headed to the ECO-C, where the new girl and Tjono could be acquainted, I could explain the objectives, aims and developments of the centre for one last time, and show off all the work we had achieved over the last year. It was strange to see how naturally ideas about recycling human waste, building shacks so they face north and the fatness of cattle have become to me. I realised how easily I can communicate with Tjono now, whilst the new girl and Tjono struggled to understand each other’s accents. I noticed how I knew every inch of the centre, what it once was and what it will be after I have gone. I realised how hard I must have worked for this whole place to make so much sense to me now, in comparison to when I arrived and everything felt it was upside down.

There wasn’t much time to reminisce however, as it was time to take the finally-purchased TV and VD player up to the school, which I had bought using the money that my parent’s church, St James’ of West Hampstead, had so kindly donated. We had been asked to come up during morning break, which of course caused a lot of energetic screaming, tugging and pushing from the sea of small children, just desperate to hold my hand or pull on my hair. As soon as I took out my camera, the situation escalated, with children fighting each other to get in the shot: “Take me one photo, Miss Isabella!”. Before I got crushed by the overzealous kids, another child ran around the yard ringing a bell, marking the end of play.

In order to formally accept the television set, the Principal arranged that a presentation would be made in front of the learners by their classrooms, just like they had when I delivered the books that my parents had brought over a few weeks before. All the children lined up in their classes, as the teachers stood on a concrete platform outside the classrooms. It took a while to get everyone quiet and for all the teachers to arrive from the staff room. Mr Kazombiaze, the Life Science teacher with whom I have enjoyed working with over the last year, introduced my arrival, explaining that it was time for me to leave, but before I do, I have brought them something. He then handed over to Mr Katuvesiruena, the school Principal. He shared some very heart-felt words about my work with the school over the year, about how I am a part of their family and will be forever remembered for all my work and help in my time here and about how the donation reflects the good nature of the community from which I come. He continued to explain to the children about how important it is to understand people from other places, as we are now part of a Global Village, and that my community back home and the Ovitoto community are now one community together, linked by the work I have succeeded with. I was even more touched by the fact he remembered that my name is Isabella and not Elizabeth.

It would be hard to share with you all of the warming and kind words that were shared with me by both Katuvesiruena and Kazombiaze, as Namibians do talk a lot at these type of events, given the chance. The bottom line however was that they are incredibly grateful for the TV, that they have appreciated the work I have done as much as I have enjoyed doing it, and that I really struggled to make my little thank-you-and-goodbye speech without my voice cracking and a tear creeping down my cheek.

Mr Kazombiaze then ordered the children to sing for me. They promptly burst into an Otjiherero song about education, followed by their school’s anthem, and finished with the Namibian National Anthem, which I joined in for the bits that I knew. It is terribly cliché to say, but there is something very moving about being sung to by children, particularly as they made their harmonies and sung in the round, so that waves of sounds undulated from the crowd of purple shirts and black faces. As the crowd dispersed and the children disappeared off to class, a few of them began a round of “We love you”, which just about finished the moment.

I was strangely distracted as I packed up the room for the last time and drove out of the school gates. I stopped off to see some friends at the Regional Councillor’s Office. There was a common question asked to me at each goodbye: “When are you coming back?”. No one seemed to grasp the fact that I was going home, for good. Whilst this leaving process is so hard and I would love to come back one day, I know it will never be the same, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to afford to for a few years. I tried to reassure them that the new girl is the new me, and to try not to call her Isabella, even if she is an oshilumbu.

Tjono wanted a lift to see his family in Windhoek so I went back past the ECO-C to collect him. As he packed up his stuff and switched off his little radio that was crackling out some Herero music, I wandered around the centre, trying to think what else I had to do before I left. Everything was more or less in place. I looked over to the vegetable gardens that I had worked so hard on planting a few weeks before, and noticed that the mealie and pumpkins are already sprouting through. I think it will be a good harvest this season, and have made the new girl promise to send me photos when it is fully grown.

Fluey and a little feverish, I drove out of the village towards the main road. There was no big farewell, or really anyone around on this hot and dusty afternoon. I noticed my successor kept glancing at me throughout the whole journey, as if expecting me to have a wee cry. Tjono and I had our last little disagreement, as he gave me very Namibian directions from the highway to his sister’s house in the township (“ah, it is in that place. Do you know that place? Oh it is near there. No, here.”). There was much excitement as we arrived at her house (I blame the bright red shiny Jeep), and I gave Tjono a quick hug before he got sucked into his family, and we drove off.

As I pulled in to my driveway back in Windhoek, I felt more dusty and full of flu-fog than sad to have visited the village for that one last time. I actually felt more frustrated and miserable that I was sick again, and had to cut my last ever visit to Ovitoto short. Whilst I’m sure the community did eventually notice my efforts and hard work, and they did enjoy the activities and workshops that I put together for them, tis their way to acknowledge this silently, barely noticeable to the untrained eye. If I had no faith in what I do, I would have thought the community were as indifferent to my departure as they were to my arrival. It has often been a thankless job, with little feedback on how my work or the project is perceived. They surely were not an easy bunch to work with, and I do despair sometimes over what the future holds for them, little neglected Ovitoto. However I am also optimistic that something good will come out of it, that I helped plant the seeds of something that will grow to a full harvest.

The last few weeks I have been plagued by huge anxieties about leaving: leaving behind the work I have so firmly dedicated myself to over the last year; leaving the friends I found over here; leaving my slow way of life; leaving the sun that shines everyday; leaving the frustrations and cultural confrontations that make life that little bit more complicated, but which makes me feel more alive. And not just about what and where I am leaving, but what I am going back to. Unemployment, uncertainty and a home that no longer feels familiar.

This is the first time that I haven’t had anything to move on to – I have always had the next step planned. I am facing a huge career crisis of “where am I going”, and the pressure of “argh, I’m skint, I need a job”. I started scrawling through job sites months ago, and am struggling to find anything that really grabs me. Having had so much responsibility in my job over here, I am reluctant to go back to being an office monkey, and so many of the skills needed for higher posted jobs seem so alien. Whilst I have hugely developed my skills and experience during this fantastic experience over here, I am wondering how my rural farming community experience will fit in in a London-based NGO. They are hardly going to need me to create a workshop under any trees with only a stick as a resource, or discuss with traditional authority leaders about how their love for cows is heavily degrading the environment. I wonder whether my now slow pace will leave me behind the rest of the eagerly competing development graduates, and how valuable my knowledge of cattle herding will be in the cut-throat world of development.

 I am lucky though, as there are plenty of worse places to be going back to than London and the comfort of my parents’ home; although after living in a country which has only just got their population over 2 million, I do fear that life in London will push me into developing the early symptoms of agoraphobia. People will push and shove me for walking too slowly (something that I have perfected over the last year), commuters will mutter and tut as I struggle to get the ticket machine to work at the Tube station, and when my cheery ‘Hallo, how are you?’s are met with blank stares by all, I will probably run home, crying at the soulless world I have returned to.

Home seems so distant to me right now, and so I am trying to relax and concentrate on my immediate plans: planning my last night out in Windhoek; arranging my trip up North to visit my friends there next week; planning my beach holiday in South Africa with my housemate. Nice things, that make me forget that I am going back to the cold, low grey skies of London, a fast pace of life cluttered with objects that I no longer see the purpose of and an ocean of anonymous faces.

Don’t get me wrong, I am ready to leave, for so many reasons. But it is always so difficult to say good bye. I really think that leaving to the unknown is so much easier than returning to the familiar.

And you can see, that through the instigation of one man, a community gathered together what they didn’t need to provide to others what they did. The decision that material gifts were not needed and that the resources could be spent elsewhere has touched the lives of many people here in Namibia, through the research and contacts of my old housemate, Matthias. I think this is something that we can all aspire towards, which is why I am writing about it.

The remaining money will help towards a selection of other projects in Namibia. N$3000 has gone to a fellow VSO volunteer, Sue, who works in a school Katima Mulilo, right up at the end of the Caprivi Strip on the borer with Zambia. The rest of the money will be used to pay for the board and school fees of two disadvantaged children, to buy materials for a pre-school in the northern town of Rundu and to help fund the annual VSO Orphans and Vulnerable Children Fun Day.

So you don’t get anything to unwrap on the special day – big deal. Do you really need that new album or the latest shoes? It is a matter of want versus need. When others need shelter, health care, an education or a way to make a living, things that we just take for granted, then I would certainly be willing to forego getting the Season 3 box set of Grey’s Anatomy or a new scarf.

With Christmas coming up, think: does this person really need a material gift, or would they equally appreciate an ethical gift instead?

Also check out Oxfam Unwrapped, Save the Children and Plan UK, as well as many others through web browsers for more ideas and information.

A few months before my parents came to visit, I asked them if they could do a collection of children’s books through the church, to donate to the school I work with in Ovitoto. Having seen the “library” at the school, and finding many of the few books were inappropriate for a school library (such as a travel book on how to travel by train across Central Asia), I was keen to try to make it better. Collecting from the community, the local primary school and using donated money to buy books online, they arrived laden down with a suitcase full of wonderful, colourful books, both old and brand new. In addition to this, the parish’s twin church, St James of West Hampstead, agreed to donate the collection from the annual St James’ Day celebration to the Ovitoto school – £165!

Receiving donated cash can be a little problematic, as I daren’t hand it straight to the school, as it could end up being pilfered away on who-knows-what. I was also wary about asking the school what they thought, as I was worried that they would take advantage of the situation, and again the money would be lost. I wanted to put the money to good use, that will benefit the children primarily, as well as the school itself, in an educational way. The K J Kapeua School isn’t too bad as far as African schools go: it has a solid, if not old and slightly battered, infrastructure; there is electricity and running water, and even 13 computers with a dubious internet connection (donated by some Finnish group 5 years ago); most of the desks and chairs are in one piece, and only a few windows per classroom are cracked or broken. The teachers are qualified and seem to enjoy their jobs, and whilst I may not agree on their teaching methods, they are making the most of what they know and the resources that they have.

So how to spend the money? Footballs and sports equipment is usually a winner, but with the thorny veld around, littered with broken glass, these are not sustainable options. Texts books are a good idea, but are expensive, so the money would only reach a handful of students. Something for the kids who live in the school hostels, like food rations or blankets, but what about the kids who don’t live in the hostel?

So finally I approached the Principal and the Life Science teacher and asked them. A computer printer or a television we decided. A printer would make it easier for printing out resources and work sheets for the learners, but to replace the ink is almost as much as the printer itself, and in this rural community, I doubt it would get replaced after it ran out. But a TV and DVD player could be used as a cop-out method of teaching, or be used just for entertainment purposes. However, if the TV and DVD player was offered with educational DVDs, then there is the full package right there. And so that is the decision. Courtesy of St James’ of West Hampstead, the K J Kapeua School will receive a brand new TV and DVD player to broaden their educational capacity. Hurrah. Sustainable, educational and beneficial to all. In theory. But this is the reality of donations in developing countries… you never know how the donation will end up being used, but you can hope for the best.

What warms me though is the charitable nature of the people in my community back home. Many of them don’t even know me, some know of me through my parents, but they are still willing to support the work I am doing. They heard about the cause and stepped up to help. Whether it is emptying your pocket of spare change, or throwing out the old books you no longer read, every little helps. And thanks to the collective generosity of the St Mary’s and St James’ congregations, a small rural village school in Namibia is going to benefit greatly.

So on behalf of the K J Kapeua School in Okandjira, Ovitoto, I would like to say a massive thank you to the St Mary’s and St James’ churches in NW6, London. And also to my parents who were so thoughtful in their selection of books that they sourced from charity shops and online stores, and who fought Air Namibia’s customs to bring the books over.

As the Hereros would say, OKUHEPA!

They are most wildly known for their nudity and their glowing red skin. The women wear little more than a loin cloth of leather and symbolic intricate jewellery from leather and metal, and cover themselves in a clay-like substance made from ochre powder and butter fat called otjize. The ochre is found only at one mountain in the Kaokoland area of Namibia, where the women go once a year to mine as much as their village will need. This ochre rock is ground up and mixed with butterfat and some herbs, and then smeared onto their skin and hair, giving them a red clay look. The importance of the otjize is that it protects the skin from the sun and insects, but is also a sign of beauty amongst Himbas. And I certainly agree, the women are the most beautiful in Namibia.

It is taboo for Himba women to wash with water, and so to cleanse themselves, they reapply a fresh layer of otjize each morning. They also use smoke from smouldering specific herbs and plants to “cleanse” and perfume themselves and their clothing. The smoke also helps to keep insects and animals from coming into their dung huts.

They also have very intricate hair styles, consisting of heavily braided dreadlocks, covered in the red clay. A Himba’s hairstyle will represent what level they are at in life, such as which women are fertile, who is married, who has children, and whose parents are still alive. In young children, boys and girls have distinctly different hair styles to separate the two. When a woman is married, her hair is rebraided, including animal hair and hair from her family members. She will have the same style until she is old.

As we walked around the village we saw how they recycle everything to some purpose. Each bit of an animal is used for eating, clothing or building. Old sacks are twisted in strips and turned into string. Every plant has a purpose. One woman was using cow leather to make a baby harness for her little boy (who was sat nearby chewing on a razor blade). One woman was swinging a calabash from a tree; the calabash was filled with cow milk, and the aim is to curdle the milk and make it sour, which is a Namibian delicacy. A child nearby was making the mid-morning pap in a small pot over a fire. Everyone was busy with something, in a calm and relaxed manner.

The “Queen Lady” of the village then took us into her main hut to demonstrate the different tools they use and how the women perform their beauty regime. It takes them 3 hours each morning to prepare themselves for the day, through the smoke and otjize ritual. She really was the most striking of women, and her nudity didn’t seem at all unnatural. She was incredibly elegant and gentle: a proper Queen.

The Himbas are actually related to the Victorian-dress-wearing, vigorously proud Hereros that I work with, and are wildly different and the same in many ways. They are both so vehemently proud of their traditions and cultures, and both share the same language, heritage and passion for bovines. I have even seen the odd Herero woman wearing the red ochre, “to protect the skin from the sun”. But I have been warned that their shared ancestory is not always something that they are proud of. My Herero colleagues explained how many Hereros find the Himbas embarrassing, like the poor relatives who won’t cover themselves up and insist in running around naked. Whilst the Himbas see the Hereros as the ones who gave up on their tradition in favour of a colonial influenced style. The Hereros are the Christianised Himbas, although many believe in both Christianity and the traditional Holy Fire. The Himbas are refusing to be modernised and “sell out”: they are true to their lifestyle, and whilst some discover alcohol and modernity in the towns, this behaviour is disapproved of.

The village we visited is not actually truly traditional, as it is an orphan project set up by a local farmer, where Himba orphans are adopted by infertile Himba women. But despite not being “traditional” and being visited by small groups of tourists who stay at the farmer’s lodge (such as ourselves), it seems to be a good project: orphans get a family within their traditional group, women get children they could not otherwise have, and the tourist visits allow for a small sustainable income which they get from the crafts and jewellery that they sell.

To see pictures of the village we visited, have a look at my Flickr photo account on the right.

As we continued towards the coast, the landscape shifted again, changing colour and shape within minutes. As we descended, we could see a glow of fog hanging over the Skeleton Coast, with the peaks of sand dunes just visible. The Skeleton Coast, aptly named for its unwelcoming and inhabitable environment, is a cross between desert and moonscape, with a roaring ocean pounding down one side. The billowing fog and sharp cold winds blast around deserted diamond mines and shipwrecks which litter the coast, giving us the distinct impression that we shouldn’t be there.

At the end of this desolate drive, we enter Swakopmund, a cheery German beach town, which is just the sharpest contrast to “African life” that can be found. Turn-of-the-century German architecture line the quiet manicured streets, a reminder of the German’s hey-day when they ruled this country. This is also where you find huge peaks of sand rolling down straight into the water, where desert meets ocean. Along with this truly unique ecosystem comes truly unique species of plant and animal, which have evolved to adapt to this inimitable landscape. In the same day, my parents rode of on a seal-dolphin-pelican-spotting boat trip, whilst I was just a few kilometres away, riding down sand dunes; we convened a few hours later for tea and cake underneath the red and white striped lighthouse.

As we proceeded south on our adventure, we crossed the Namib-Naukluft desert, where again the landscape twisted and turned in ways beyond our imagination. Who knew the desert could be so diverse. And it was here that we saw the sights for which Namibia is truly famous – the world’s highest sand dunes. Rich in oranges and reds, the perfect desert dunes rise out of the rocky desert like an old Arabian fable. Whilst Sossusvlei is the dramatic dune that people come to visit, the nearby Dead Vlei was the one that really blew my mind. Picture a 900-year-dead lake nestled between orange sand dunes, the bed of which is parched white and cracked. Scattered across this “lake” are perfect standing trees, which died when the last water came here almost a millennia ago. It is too dry here for the trees to decompose, so they stand rigid in the basking heat, flanked by the red ridges of the desert.

To put images to your imagination, you can see pictures from our adventure on the Flickr link on the right. But I warn you, after seeing them, you may be compelled to come and discover the Land of Contrasts for yourself.

I was standing atop Dune 7, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and the Namib Desert, and it was time to go down. I dug my front foot forward, shifted my weight angled downwards, and I was away. The sand was initially sticky against the snowboard that was strapped to my feet, but as the fog dampness burnt off, the sheer gradient of the dune and the wax on the board led me to fly straight down at top speeds.

I’d picked the perfect day to go sand boarding. With my parents safely off on a boat trip to see seals, dolphins, pelicans and the dunes from the sea, I snuck off for a little adrenaline-hunting. I was the only boarder wanting to go that day, so I had Wayne, aka Mr Sandboard, all to myself. This meant that he would zip me up the dune on his quad bike to slide down as many times as I liked.

After a year without surfing (doh!), this was the next best thing. The first few runs were a little messy, landing backwards and upside down on my first run (sand down my shorts), and getting a face-full on my second run (sand everywhere else). But soon I was shooting down, carving up the sand as I went. My stoke was officially back to play, and despite getting sand everywhere, it was certainly the rush I had been looking for.

That alone is worth a trip to Namibia.

This change happened overnight. One day it was sunny and cold, and now it is sunny and hot with all the trimmings of the beginning of summer. The sun sets at a more reasonable time, allowing us time to dash from the office to a decent bar to catch sundown. The burning sky over the mountains at the end of the day feels so much more powerful when the air is warm and the wine is cold.

What really gets me is the nature. Bougainvillea sprawls over fences and buildings, bright pink and red with fresh green leaves, clashing brightly with the purple jacarandas which have sprung into bloom. Jasmine headily fills the air, thick and sweet, encouraging me to bend over and smell all flowers that I pass. As I cruise around the neighbourhood on my scooter, parades of luminous yellow, blue and green birds burst out of trees and bushes; mongooses race along the street ahead of me before ducking into redundant rain pipes. Hornbills and fat doves chill together on the telephone wires, chattering away about their winter holidays.

I think Walt Disney might have had a hand in designing Windhoek in the springtime.

I woke up in the Bush Chalet at the Waterberg Plateau, with all sorts of clattering going on as my Godmum, Louise, friend Cynthia and my parents set about preparing breakfast for their first morning in Namibia. Considering we’d driven the women pretty much straight from the airport to the Waterberg Plateau, they had far too much energy. I stepped out bleary-eyed to a chorus of “Happy Birthday”, before being ushered out to the patio of our chalet, which had the most incredible view, positioned half way up the wall of this stunning plateau. For once, I had presents to open, and in the warm sunshine no less (it almost always rains on my birthday – British Bank Holiday timing!).

“So what do you want to do for your birthday?” enquired my Dad

“I want to climb up there”, pointing up to the top of the plateau, towering a good few hundred feet above us. “There is a walk – an hour up and an hour down they say.”

Looks were exchanged, before appropriate shoes were donned and water bottles refilled.

Namibia is not great for accurate maps. There are so few routes or roads in this country that people clearly do not see it as important to be accurate, and same goes for this hiking trail map. My friend and her sister got lost for 9 hours on this Plateau, after embarking on a supposed 3 hours hike, and had to be rescued (thank goodness for mobile coverage!). This was at the front of my mind as we set off up the escarpment. A group of Germans overtook us, so we sheepishly followed them. Halfway up, we stopped for a breather and I panic over what I have done. I had asked my city-dwelling parents, Daddy in his 70s, to climb a Namibian mountain, in mid-morning heat, at a higher altitude to what they are used to. They do not even climb the stairs to our apartment in London. I was suddenly alarmed to the possibility of what could happen, and check that they are willing to proceed. Red-faced and panting, they agree. We finally make it to the top of the plateau, which lords over the flat plains that stretch continuously over the border to Botswana.

The climb down was trickier, as the boulders and shrubbery were far from London pavements, and the fear of snakes and baboons was as high as the temperature. We did however make it down without incident, chuckled about how it was the most exercise most of them had done in years, and hopped into the car for the journey to our next destination.

We proceeded North towards Etosha, stopping at Oshikoto Lake for lunch. This is an underground lake whose roof caved in, leaving a 100m wide sink hole of bright blue water in the middle of the dry savannah. Apparently, the Germans dumped a load of munitions here when they were retreating in the early 1900 war, some of which has been retrieved by divers. A strange sight to find a scuba diving centre in the middle of the desert, but just one of the many wonders of the Namibian countryside. And even stranger still, there was a peacock and crocodile farm there too.

As the sun sank, we neared our luxury stint of our trip, at a private luxury tented camp in a game park just outside Etosha National Park. The tented camp was beyond my expectations – although I had booked it, advised by my parents to “splash out, it’s your birthday”, I wasn’t expecting a handful of private “tents” (en suite with king sized bed and perfectly decorated), restaurant, lounge and pool around a flood-lit watering hole. As the sun set, I had a bath whilst watching kudus and jackals mooch around the watering hole. This is the kind of place where you cannot walk around unassisted at night in the event a lion or leopard gets you. Each room is provided with a foghorn, in the event of an emergency.

Dinner was 4-courses of splendour, with local singing from the male staff, before we disappeared into the dark for our night drive. Groggy from driving and dinner’s wine, we huddled under blankets as we rode through the bush, spotting small dogs, cats and antelope, breathing in the acacia pollen that thickened the air sweetly.

As we arrived back at the camp, we were each led to our private tent by the manager. As I bounded off to mine, I saw that it was lit up by candles, with a bottle of champagne on ice lying on the petal-strewn bed. The staff had decided to act on the knowledge that it was my birthday. It was beautiful, but I was alone and not allowed to leave the tent, and hardly about to polish off a bottle of bubbly by myself (I’m not like Bridget Jones quite yet). I got a strange feeling of love and appreciation, coupled with the abject loneliness of celebrating in such a romantic and beautiful place, alone for yet another year. And 24 feels so much older than 23.

The next morning, my folks and I woke up at 4am to go on a game drive around Etosha. For those who don’t know, Etosha is set around a massive saltpan (which some say is the size of Switzerland), which is an ancient prehistoric lake. The area is entirely flat, and the bush is sparse, making game spotting much better and easier than other game parks. First stop, we found a pack of eight lions and cubs hanging out at the watering hole. And that was just the start. We saw kudus, springbok, oryx, impala, giraffe, blue wildebeest, zebra, warthog, jackal, lion, elephant, and more I cannot remember. Our guide shared with us information on the flora and fauna and pointed out some of the stunning birds and creatures that the park has. At the last watering hole, the elephants put on a great display for us, as they played and swam in the water.

Exhausted, we returned to the camp, and joined the girls by the pool.

Now that’s what I call a birthday!