Jo'berg to Windhoek

Johannesburg airport, awaiting a domestic flight to Windhoek. Sat in a basic, simple flight gate by an open door to the outside world, which is beautiful, glorious, and the vivid blue of not-England. The official on gate duty is singing in a beautiful, operatic voice. Strange thought that I am truly an alien here. Sat with two girls on the flight, one an excitable American going to Durban to volunteer for a Church group, the other a beautiful German medical student who was working her way around the world's hospitals (Sydney, Switzerland, Cape Town). The German asked me what D-Day is, referring to an in-flight programme. The American glowingly quoted passages from the bible. I am light-headed and wobbly-limbed. In a small amount of shock that here I am in South Africa, about to be transported to the Namibian desert.

Later. Namibia. In transition. A night in Windhoek and then a bus to Swakopmund to meet the volunteer leaders. Taxi ride into the city through starkly beautiful hill ranges, greens and browns and red. Brightly painted buildings. Mix of German, African and English in the landscape and architecture. Windhoek is very run-down and bleak. A hostel which horribly reminds me of school: groups of young beautiful people flirting and laughing in their cliques, whilst I hover between them, feeling excluded, too gauche. Feel strangely under- and overwhelmed by the alien nature of everything, the fact that I know no-one and nothing, the early dark (it is winter in Nambia). Homesick. Waiting for the desert.