being 23

Things I learned about Poloko (my translator) on our most recent field trip last week: he has been dating his girlfriend for 7 years (!), his name means salvation, his father is really sick and at the local clinic in Maun, and he calls meercats "mickey mouse". The first three I learned one evening at our campsite, as we sat in the back of the bakkie, eating our supper of tinned veggie biryani and feeling small as the nightly show of darkness and light above us unfolded. Its funny how even with a person whose life you cannot imagine to me more different from yours, you can still find common ground. Poloko goes to sleep every night in a village where there is no electricity, no stores apart from a tuck shop that sells some basic dry goods--really only a scattering of small huts with thatched roofs that fit usually a mattress, table and not much else. And I am from...well you know where I am from. But we are both 23 (well, me almost), ambitious, and trying to figure out how exactly in this big wide world to get to the place we want to be. Some things are universal I guess, like growing up, which I think is a nice thing to be reminded of, sometimes.