Introduction

In late 1993, my husband Bernd and I (then age 47 and 41, respectvely) took stock of our lives.

We had good jobs, two great children, great friends, and a comfortable suburban life (house, cars, dog -- the works). But something felt hollow. We asked ourselves, as so many people do, "Is that all there is in life?"

We were feeling frustrated by America's me-me consumer-culture, by a lack of new challenges at work, by a deep inner drive for adventure and meaning. We wanted to make a difference in the lives of others, and to feel closer as a family. Bernd and I met each other on a camping trip in Iceland in 1978, so it was obvious that we shared a love of open, windswept, out-of-the-way places. But neither of us had ever lived in the developing world and our friends couldn't understand why we would voluntarily leave the "good life" in favor of relative hardship, risk and the unknown.

Of course, that is precisely what attracted us. Nevertheless, we thought we would start small, so we began in 1994 with a three-month sabbatical in Zimbabwe (in that country's good-old-days). Our children Sergio and Elsita -- then 6 and 8 years old respectively -- attended a local school while Bernd and I volunteered at a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), with which we had made contact through the American Jewish World Service (Volunteer Corps). On weekends we crisscrossed the country in search of elephants, exotic scenery, and African culture.

One Sunday, upon returning to the small cold-water apartment in which we lived in Harare, we noticed that our door was open and several people were bustling around inside. Omigod, I thought: it is a robbery and we are done-for. How wrong I was: It turns out that our kitchen tap had burst while we were away and our neighbors had tricked the lock so that they could shut the water off and clean up the mess before we got home. In most cases, we didn't even know our neighbors' names, but that hadn't dissuaded them. Welcome to African values.



Looking back, this experience changed us forever. After returning to the U.S., Bernd and I felt we had left our hearts in Southern Africa. Rather than solving our mid-life crisis, our Zimbabwe experience deepened it. Finally, we could stand it no longer. We examined our savings and decided we could live without earning money for a year.

We had no obligations in the United States or Europe anymore and our parents -- tragically -- had already passed on. So why not?

In 1996, it became my task to look for an opportunity that would allow us to live abroad for a year: We need a letter of invitation, a chance to do meaningful work (though not necessarily for pay), and someone to meet us at the airport. So I contacted everyone I knew and asked them to contact everyone else they knew.

Eventually one thing led to another and one day a fax arrived: We could come to Namibia, at that time Africa's newest independent country, where a volunteer social work position would await me with a new NGO.

Immediately, Bernd went on the internet and wrote to every address he could find on the web that ended with the letters ".na" He shared his credentials and asked
if anybody wanted his skills. Two weeks later he received a query about a computerized personnel-system he knew something about, and one week after that he was offered a job as an IT specialist at Namibia's Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Cutlure. Oh wow! We had a strong feeling of "beshert" -- that this was meant to be.

It still took some months to quit our jobs, sell our house, put our things in storage, and arrange for the trip. Finally we arrived in Namibia on our daughter's 11th birthday (our son had just turned 9). We planned to stay for one year, but one became two which became three which is now more than eleven. Many MANY adventures have taken place -- in our work, with our children, and in our interaction with this continent's people and nature.


Through it all, we have kept up with friends and family through occasional visits and periodic e-mail diaries. Some of our friends have circulated these diaries to others who have sent them to even more people, and from that process we have received requests by many people we have never even heard of, to get onto our list of diary-recipients. Our list currently contains almost a thousand names. Many times, people have asked us when we would compile our stories into a book. More recently, it was suggested that we should go global via our own blog. Both seem like good ideas to us. Although many of the stories have taken us beyond Namibia, that is where we have laid our roots: Thus, welcome to our NAMIBIA DIARIES.