Throwback Third Thursday - March 2014

Right now, I am in Africa trekking through the African wilderness, so, for this month's Throwback Third Thursday (#tbtt) I am throwing back to July 16th, 2005 when I experienced an unexpected side of Africa and upgraded to a Pretty Pretty German African Princess (see #tbtt February 2014).  This is an excerpt from the journal I kept while at CCF:

      I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be like any other day.  I was scheduled to go to Ballebino with Jessica so I set my alarm for 5:30am.  I would need to a cup of coffee with breakfast to stay awake that early since I still hadn’t recovered from Thursday’s German Festival party.  Dressed in my long shorts and sneakers with my “Check Point Charlie, Berlin” t-shirt covered by my scruffy fleece, I was ready to get messy throwing the girls donkey meat after a cold morning of observations in the bakkie.

      Jess and Alicia drove up as close to 6:00am as they could but when they both got out of the bakkie and slinked through the kitchen slider, I was a bit curious.

      “How do you feel about going to a parade rather than going to Ballebino?” Jess asked with an excited inquiring undertone.  Two nights before at the German Festival we had a nice conversation with this boy named Pieter who knocked on our window looking for Trix as we were leaving the parking lot.  Aside from wishing us a save drive home, he invited us to come to a parade on Saturday morning, which, by strange coincidence, was today!

      After about 5 minutes of contemplating how much trouble I would get in and how to prevent that trouble from happening, we made our way over to the office and wrote Lorraine a nice note saying we are going to a parade.  After a quick stop at Boskop followed by a short bakkie ride we found ourselves at a very empty Ojiwarongo.... We decided our best bet was to venture aimlessly around Otjiwarongo looking for a party.  We figured it would be easy to find a bunch of drunken Germans building floats.  I mean these people do have a special word for beer before breakfast.

Jess, Alicia and I were never able to find Pieter and his friends but we were able to make new friends with the 'King' and 'Queen' of Windhoek who invited us onto their float with open arms and plenty of beer.  We rode through the streets of Otjiwarongo dancing, singing, drinking and cheering until we reached the party where we danced, sang and drank some more.  It was a side of Africa I wasn't expecting and a day I will never forget!