Kajol's Peace Corps Blog

Two years can feel as brief as a Namibian rolling stop at a busy 4-way, and as long as the 700 km drive from Windhoek to Fish River Canyon in a car that breaks down every 30 minutes. It’s short enough to remember the feeling of leaving like it was yesterday, yet long enough to challenge everything you thought you knew from your first 25 years of life. Short enough that the thought of leaving feels like a cruel surprise, but long enough for your heart to dive in and embrace the new life you’d build.

In two years, I’ve learned a Bantu language, found a sense of rhythm, and knocked two minutes off my mile time. I worked at the intersection of finance and social impact to help a social enterprise uplifting women in Namibia turn a healthy profit after years of operating at a loss. In two years, I made Namibia home and connected with people I now call family.

Two years ago my best friend Jenna and I were scrambling to maximize my most treasured belongings within my 115-pound bag allowance. I’m not usually a procrastinator, but I delayed packing in fear of facing reality; I was leaving my home, my family, my boyfriend of five years, and my cushy life behind to embark on a journey of unknowns with the Peace Corps.

In the end, several things didn’t make it in my bags. My Costco-sized goldfish and favorite toothpaste were left behind, but my resistance bands, 2 TB hard drive of movies, GMAT books, and journals filled with goodbye letters from loved ones made it safely.

I realized later, that packing my bags that night foreshadowed my new journey that would reveal the many things in life I can surrender. When I moved into my Namibian home, a tin-roof house built from glass bottles and cement, I learned I could live a comfortable life without many of the amenities with which I’d been raised. My “bottle house” taught me I could live without long hot showers, without central heating and cooling, without a washing machine, without high-speed internet and cellular data connections, and without a proper sealed foundation that kept the lizards, scorpions, and bright orange centipedes out.

To enforce integration, the Peace Corps requires you live at the means of and within the community of members you’re serving. For me, that meant leaving my six-figure job in consulting behind and learning how to live off $6 USD a day. It also meant adjusting my lifestyle to ensure I was living safely as a foreign woman in Namibia’s largest township. Once again, I learned I could live without many things: without financial freedom, without privacy, without control, and without independence.

Although the past two years have been marked by absence, I never truly felt the void. Rather that emptiness was filled with a much more powerful feeling. Through all the sacrifice, I always had love. 

Love for the strangers that turned family and made Namibia home for me.  Love for the work I got to accomplish during my service, even though sustainable solutioning felt defeating at times, like planting a tree for whose shade I’ll never sit under. Love for the Namibian culture, that does not promote waste of any kind, even though that sometimes meant trying mystery meat from a freshly slaughtered goat, knowing the blood, the intestines, and the tongue were all fair game for my plate. Love for the expansive landscapes and wildlife of my beautiful Namibia that bring me peace even on the hardest of days and remind me of the boundlessness of our world.

Love was the nightly check-in from Melanie stopping by just to ask, “You good, my love?” as I studied for the GMAT for hours on end for 9 months straight.

Love was Shilongo offering me his seatbelt when mine was broken during our hitchhike from the South, sensing my unease as we sped down the wide-open Namibian roads.

Love was Elmarie washing all my underwear at her home to give me a break from handwashing so that I could fully relax on my weekend.

Love was Makili spending hours helping me pack my bags and rearrange the weight in my luggage, just like Jenna did two years prior when I was packing to come here.

Love was Meme Kauna giving me the title of her last born and always treating me as such. 

Love was Lukas, my real-life hero, who did everything in his power to ensure I never struggled—killing every bug in my house, hanging a shade net over my hammock (without me asking) to protect me from the Namibian sun, reconnecting my power every time it went out, and running alongside me at my slower pace to keep me safe from all the gawking men. There’s not enough space to detail the unconditional love he showed me these past two years.

Love was Helena, my first Namibian friend, placed in my life as a coworker, but connected with me in a way that I know we’d be sisters in any lifetime and in any place in this world.

Love surrounded me these last two years and instilled in me an understanding that while you can live this life without many things, I never want to live it without love.

A person’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

When I return home, I do so with a stretched mind that I trust will guide me toward a life free from superficial desires. I hope to let love, and nothing else, be my North Star to a happy, fulfilled life. I will seek love out in the passion I have in my work, in the ways I romanticize the little things, in the glue that holds my family close, in the details I keep to make my house a home, in the energy I sift into the food I make to share. With love, I know I will always find happiness in the journey, and when one loves the journey, the destinations are endless.

Thank you to everyone who has read my blogs over the past two years, showing interest in my thoughts and life here in Namibia. I remember a moment from 5th grade English class when we started creative writing; for the first time, I felt something flow naturally within me. Nurturing that side of my mind has been a joy, using expressive writing to share my reflections and capture memories. Thank you for being my audience—it’s truly been an honor.

Cheers,

Kajol