I take a pause on tales of my now 4-month-old Namibian life for a little reminiscence.

Over the last few months, particularly those where I have been going to school with not much more to do than help teachers with their busy work, and distracting my colleagues from said busy work by socializing and asking questions about how Namibia and the school is run (I’m sure the pauses that precede the answers are just my colleagues thinking to themselves, “Wow. You really are quite dumb.”) with many escapist measures. These measures have varied from reading books to watching movies and TV shows from the vast collection I have accumulated on my external hard drive and received from compassionate and pitying friends and relatives.

Many of these measures have left me feeling homesick…or at the very least, thinking of home. I find myself halfway through the second season of Prison Break, watching escaped convicts scurry across America in search of a hiding places in such places as Defiance, Ohio (a word to the wise for escaped convicts: not a good place to hide). Since buying a 3G adapter for my laptop and taking advantage of the 1-5am free internet time, I have become nocturnal due to hours spent longing for the snow depicted in the Facebook statuses of my friends. Moving to the southern hemisphere in August has left me with 7 months straight of summer, and many more months of heat to look forward to. Rainy season, where are you?

Literary criticism (or rather, praise) is never something I would consider only 84 pages into a 299 page book, but Bill Bryson’s “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America” has left me with little choice. I find myself wondering why “A Walk in the Woods” was a book I chose to skip on high school summer reading lists (luckily, it’s waiting patiently on my bookshelf). This morning in the staff room, I had to stifle fits of giggling as I read. My colleagues, whose literary exploits rarely veer far from a Danielle Steele or a trashy romance novel glance sideways at me as they complete their CASS marks. I tell them that I would explain what’s so funny, but they wouldn’t get it. I’m surprised I didn’t get slapped, as that excuse is one of my biggest pet peeves. But seriously. They wouldn’t.

In the book, Bill Bryson, a Des Moines native (“WELCOME TO DES MOINES: THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE”) who jetted out to England as soon as was humanly possible, returns to the homeland to drive around the small towns his father dragged him through in his childhood. Since reading, I have followed him through Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and into the south in search of the perfect Americana described only in Hardy Boys novels and depicted in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. His mockery of the small towns he visit’s attempts at this are what gets me. Then, some descriptions come too close to home. His portrayal of college towns, for example. “They are the only places in America that manage to combine the benefits of a small town pace of life with a dash of big-city sophistication.” Oxford, Ohio, I miss you so.

Eventually, I had to put it down. It was becoming too painful. He describes walking through beautiful Charleston, South Carolina, which bring to mind my own adventures there with my best friend Kelsey. I’m tempted to skip forward to when he will inevitably reach and ridicule Ohio, but I resist. The mockery would surely match my own.

I think what’s most painful is that I have been stuck in Okahandja, Namibia since August 22. Sure, I’ve made short visits to Windhoek and Otjiwarongo, but getting placed in the same city where I had training has left me feeling like the friend who watches all her friends go to college while she stays and works at the grocery store (NOTE: Nau-aib PS is far from a grocery store. I love my placement) and eventually gets pregnant at 19, buys a wedding dress that hides the bump and marries the manager of Walmart (NOTE: Don’t worry Mom and Dad, that’s not going to happen either). I long to travel around Namibia and enjoy, but also mock my friends’ sites as I now enjoy, but also mock Okahandja. Cities like Rundu, Katima, and Luderitz call my name the same way Americana calls out to Bryson. Except I’ll be Kerouac-ing it, as I don’t have a car and hitchhiking is the mode-du-transport in Namibia.