He's back!

IT got sick on Wednesday. Thursday - yesterday - was Thanksgiving, and we'd agreed with a friend family (another Finnish-American couple who live in Helsinki) that we'd celebrate it together. Obviously IT could not come. We left him some stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce - his favorite Thanksgiving foods - end headed over to our friends with the rest. 

 It hasn't been all bad though. PW returned on Tuesday from his three-week journey to Namibia. We had missed him, so it was lovely to have him back. To honor him, today I'm posting pictures from that trip. 

It's summer in Namibia and the rainy season is 
starting. This is how it looks. 

 PW got plenty of vitamin D and some of the vitamin L too. He started his trip in Windhoek and, during the first week and a half, met up with old friends in the compound we lived seven years ago, in the church we went to and also artists and professors he got to know when he worked at UNAM. 

 

Our friend MV, one of the funniest 
people in Namibia. He now has a
wife and kids. 

An Italian-Angolan family who used to be our neighbors. The 
boy in the middle was only four when we lived there! 

 PW:s research project took him up north into Owambo. He is doing some sort of work on the Finnish Mission Museum, now closed, and the Namibian Mission Museum, Nakambale. Fortunately, PW had plenty of time, so he drove north through the incomparable Etosha, Namibia's jewel of a national park. 

 

Hoopoe

Steenbock

Gnu! Or wildebeest

Hartebeest

Northern black Korhaan, or, as we call it, "the charismatic bird"

You know it. Ostrich. 

Kori bustard - almost the size of an ostrich

Our favorite: The oryx

Who doesn't love zeebras?

And yes, giraffes are cool in nature

 

PW managed to make it to Oshakati in the north and settled for a night at Bahay Susan's, where we stayed a couple of nights seven years ago. Susan looked at him and said "Where have you been?" PW suspected that she could not possibly remember, but then she asked about IT and his "Swedish" wife, so in fact she did. 

At Bahay Susan's we loved how the owner had made a lush little home - she was homesick for the Philippines, and Namibia is arid, but not her bed and breakfast! 

Bahay Susan's 

 The rest of the journey was a lot of research, some more bonding with old friends, and bearing with the heat. In the north it was relentless. I don't have all the pictures from PW:s journey, but it seems like it was a success. He missed us though. He told me that he decided he's not my dad - he doesn't like to travel alone. Which suits me just fine, since I like to travel with him.