The day that little Europe came to Windhoek

Claire and I thought we were about to have an easygoing, low-key kind of night. We had sat down at our hostel in Windhoek with some cider, and things seemed to be going ok. It was around 6pm. Little did we know what was going to go down. Bwa. ha. ha.

First, this random French dude we met sidled up to our table. He was nice, but earlier that day he'd started breakfast with the statement,"Namibians are just building their houses wrong. They're using tin, and they should be using thatch."

Claire and I tried to explain that due to the fact we live in the DESERT there isn't exactly a cache of magical wood around to build said rooves.

"But, the tin is so hot! Why are they doing it? We need to get in there and build thatch rooves. They're doing it wrong." He shrugged his 20 year old shoulders dramatically, as if accepting this new weight of the world with great ease.

I felt like buying him a copy of The Poisonwood Bible and then beating him over the head with it. He could read it later.

So now it was me, Claire, and pretentious problem-solving Merlin. Oh yes, his name is Merlin. Jealous? I thought so.

"It's kind of an odd name, you know, but I like odd things, who wants to fit in?" Merlin the magical french magician had stated earlier.

Just then, Cecil, a South African who works on oil rigs in Angola, rolled up, bought everyone at our table drinks for no apparent reason (awesome) and then gave us all watermelon?
Yes. Night definitely was getting better.

After Cecil's appearance, a Russian sailor sat down with us, a Greek Student, an Italian Student, and Eric, another Peace Corps volunteer also came to sit.

Who says you can't visit Europe in Africa?

Apparently, Cecil works a month on and then a month off on the oil rigs in Angola, and this was his month off, and he wanted to party it up, and was totally fine sharing this goal with fellow travellers. We had a kind of informal barbeque, the Greek guy made some taziki (spelling?) too, and Claire and I realized too later in our once-low key night that things were about to get not low key.

We ended up going to El Cubano with little Europe and the Southie, if you will. It's kind of an African-Spanish dance club. Cecil, the Southie, walks up to the bar tender, gives him his card, and then proceeds to order shots of who knows what for all 7 of us. What. the. crap. This continues for around three hours. Needless to say, our low key ended up high-key and kind of awesome. We head down to Hermanus Bay tonight, and we'll arrive in the morning.

Here's a brief lay-out of the next 3 weeks if you're following our travels:

Hermanus Bay
Gordon's Bay
Capetown
Stellenbosch
Jeffreys Bay (surfing!)
Lesotho (pony trekking:))
Swaziland
Jo'burg
Maputo, Mozambique....... and then up UP UP to Malawi and onwards.

Cheers