Abake Babona Baza Bonana (The eye that has seen something will see it again)

I am 24 years old today. My life has been pretty conventional up to this point, and as my parents waste no time reminding me, I am lucky enough to have had a comfortable upbringing which enables me to be able to have "liberalised" attitudes. And do things I could not do if I was poor. Which in essence brings me back to unconventional thing I have done so far: quit my job I had enjoyed since I graduated from university, quit my home in Reading and travel thousands of miles to volunteer in the middle of a desert in Damaraland, Namibia, south west Africa.

Life sometimes throws up moments when you look back and realise they were sea-changes. Two paths open up in front of you and you have to decide which one to take. The difficulty being that at the time you aren't always aware a chasm has opened up before you and if you cross it at one point it will lead you in a totally different direction to another potential crossing point. It's only afterwards when you look back over a landscape and realise your life may have been completely different if you had chosen the other path. Some people claim destiny or fate because to be entirely responsible for making the wrong decision is perhaps too much to bear.

What made me want to quite everything I had achieved and go to Africa? It was something that grew up inside me I think, and now I feel like there is the Me before and the Me after. When I think of Damaraland, the desert and the Brandberg, a fist clenches within and I can't quite find the words. I can recall with perfect clarity waking up in the morning and watching as the Brandberg glowed pink to mark the sun's passage. The bitter cold mornings gradually turning into burning hot days. The clear stars shining so brightly you really could believe in the almighty wonder of the unknown galaxies, which had always seemed a strange dream to me as a town and city-dweller. Here in the desert I learnt to navigate by the Southern Cross. The desert lions which never revealed themselves except by a footprint, a mark in the sand to let us know we were stalked. The cooking over a fire, heating meat for hours and hours, knowing the truth of hunger. The shaping of the boma walls with wet mud, the technique shown to me by the Damara women. The men allowing what must have been strange and unusual - women sharing the mixing of cement and building a rock wall. And most of all the elephants, the beautiful grey ghosts which appeared and reappeared like a graceful dream.

How did I come to leave?