After a 6-month long home assignment and more visits and speaking engagements than I can count, it was time to go back to Namibia. I crammed two suitcases full of all my possessions, new purchases, and some donated items I’d been given along the way. I had an afternoon flight so it gave me all morning to finish packing and weighing my bags and wrapping up all the last minute details.
My first flight was just a little jump up to NYC, then next was the long leg of the itinerary: 12 hours from New York to Doha, Qatar. I managed to catch a few hours of sleep on that flight, along with a few new movies. We landed in Doha around 6pm, but my next flight wouldn’t leave again until 3am. So because I had a 9 hour layover, Qatar Airways put me up in a hotel for free. As we were waiting in the long line to get a hotel voucher, I struck up a conversation with a young, Pakistani guy who was headed back to the States for his second semester at George Washington University. We both feared we would spend our entire layover waiting in that line, but we were eventually helped, so I wished him well and went on to find my hotel.
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| Doha skyline at night |
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| My hotel in Doha |
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I was booked at a fancy, upscale place in the city which meant catching a shuttle for the 20-minute drive from the airport to the hotel. Now well after dark, the gorgeously lit skyline grew progressively bigger in the window as we approached. I was given a room on the ninth floor which offered a nice view of some of the high-rises, but the bay beyond looked black in the night. By the time I got there, I only had about 2 and a half hours, but it was still enough time to catch a shower and a nap before I would need to head back to the airport. As I’m sure you can imagine, that bed was far more comfortable than an airplane seat!
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| My hotel room in Doha |
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| 9th floor view from my hotel room in Doha |
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I got the wake-up call at 11:30pm to catch the midnight shuttle back to the airport. The 3am flight to Windhoek was only half-full so I moved up to where there were three empty seats and had the whole row to myself. It was nice to put up the armrests and lay down to sleep. Not as comfortable as the hotel bed, but better than sleeping sitting up.
Finally back in Windhoek, they managed to lose one of my bags (no surprise there!), but fortunately it showed up within 3 days. Now comes the process of reacclimating back into this once familiar culture. It’s like when you wake up from a super intense dream and it takes you a few moments to remember what is real life. Experiences here are like long forgotten memories being drawn back to the surface. But I’m sure it won’t last long, and once again it will just feel . . . normal.
