All at once: summer, christmas, vacation.

                Christmas.  It occurs in December. 

Summer.  It occurs during the months of June, July, & August but only if you live in the northern hemisphere.

For the first time in my life, the Christmas I experienced coincided with summer.  Sure I have experienced Christmas in warm places but never during summer.  And this synchronization of two previously binary events was more pronounced being that it occurred during the school’s ‘summer break;’ A time previously marked by freedom, swimming pools, and mischief and appropriately enshrined through Alice Cooper’s yelling “school’s out for summer.” 

Vacation.  I just returned from mine.  Vacations generally are pleasurable events.  Recent vacations, at least from my experience, have typically been marked by discovery of something new – a chance to see new places and live outside the environment of the everyday.  The best vacations for me have provided a unique opportunity to spike the everyday routine.  I can remember certain years of my life by the vacations I took during those years.

Although vacation while serving in Peace Corps was unequivocally pleasurable, it differed from any vacation I have previously taken.  For starters, it was the longest vacation I have taken in my adult life.  Furthermore, I didn’t feel like I was vacationing from anything.  While certainly, the opportunity to see areas of South Africa, Mozambique, & Swaziland qualify as getting out to new areas, the contrast of leaving something everyday and routine was not present prior to this vacation.  I realized that I am still experiencing something new and seemingly unordinary everyday so to leave that freshness only to travel further to new areas and new experiences definitely provided the backdrop for a unique vacation.

I traveled with 7 of my friends who are all South Africa Peace Corps Volunteers.  We all work in the rural public schools so we are allotted some time off for ‘summer break’ as the schools close for the majority of December and half of January.  The trip was months in planning.   We had perused backpacker guides (backpackers are basically hostels) and mapped our route & activities.  We all wanted to see as much as we could in the 2-3 weeks of traveling but we were constrained by the fact that we were all spending saved money since our Peace Corps ‘salary’ is around $250 a month.  We decided that we would cram 4 people into each of 2 small rented cars with all of our luggage and tents.  Oh yes.  Very early on we decided that we would camp as often as possible in an effort to save money (and sleep outside!).  It costs around $5-$8 a night to camp at the various backpackers whereas dorm rooms would typically cost $10-$15 a night.  The difference would add up over the course of ~20 nights.  The cars were both VW’s running on manual transmission.  In South Africa, it is exponentially cheaper to rent a manual transmission automobile rather than an automatic.  This is fine but it should be noted that everything about driving here is reversed.  Not only does driving occur on the opposite side of the road, but the drivers’ seat (and hence the stick shift itself) is reversed.  Therefore, the left hand went from a state of non-use by US auto standards to the main player in the South African automobile.

As one would imagine, the trip was insanely hilarious, exhausting, exhilarating, refreshing, intense, and truly memorable.  In short, I had one of the best times of my life.  If you pack 8 20-somethings who met only 5 months prior into 2 small cars to drive around 3 African countries camping out and visiting collectively entirely new and exciting places, you are bound to have some wicked crazy adventures.  We did.  Undoubtedly a healthy portion of the hilarity and novelty are intertwined within the jokes and interpersonal chemistries of those involved.  The warm feeling of inclusiveness that arises from inside jokes, shared novel experiences, and chance occurrences is not surprising and constitutes the totality of the experience.  If anything though, the desire to share experiences with other people who share your background & culture is indicative of Peace Corps and it certainly manifested itself during our trip.

Over the course of ~20 days, we zip-lined over a gaping canyon, caved by candle, white-water rafted without the raft (“canyoning”), devoured incredibly fresh fish straight from the Indian ocean, ate mangoes straight from the tree above the tent, bought African beadwork, glasswork, clothing, and art, swam in the turquoise Indian ocean off the Mozambique coast, karaoke’d to MC Hammer in front of a South African audience, read while reclining in numerous hammocks, cooked out (braai) over an open fire, lost a hubcap, drank copious amounts of African beer, bloody maries, martini’s, and margaritas, camped out on a Swazi game reserve among giraffes, zebras, and lions, drove unauthorized through the game reserve in the VW, went to a reptile house and held a python, fried the car CD player with overuse of the Shins, saw wild hippos on Christmas day, exchanged rare gifts with each other, had fresh brewed beer with Zulu men, saw Batman in an Imax, broke and fixed my Osman’s luggage bag twice, went to the largest mall in the Southern hemisphere, drank the freshest lime milkshake ever, took a boogie board out to combat the rocky ocean, walked an aerial forest boardwalk, climbed the world’s highest indoor rock climbing wall, donned fedoras and danced like mad to bring in the new year, drank Tobasco sauce straight from the bottle, swam naked in rock pools, and played more charades than I have ever cumulatively attempted in my life.                           

One night while sitting atop the “sun-worshipping” deck at a backpackers south of Durban, we had a discussion about what we wanted to be/do when we were older.  Although I have never and do not have a clear answer to this question, it occurred to me that so far, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing.  I couldn’t then and cannot now think of anything I would rather be doing than serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Life in the villages has thus far been eye-opening and incredibly rewarding.  By volunteering through Peace Corps, I have now been fortunate enough to take one of the most unique and memorable vacations of my life.

So Christmas was enjoyed in summer for the first time in my life.  I loved it. 

 

Christmas Morning

 

~ by bernish on January 6, 2009.