Living for Disco

You awake from what was barely a doze, a disturbing dream of strangers seeing you naked, and laughing. You examine the strange ceiling tiles for damp spots, and mentally catalogue the bruises, the places that are stiff and sore from unaccustomed exercise. Your throat constricts, and you try desperately to swallow that itch, that rough morning scratch. Your mouth is as dry as dust, and tastes of smoke, and of stale beer.

Outside the window, thunder grumbles, the clean smell of rain drifts in through the open window, moving the curtain and it makes you realize how grubby you feel. Beside you, someone takes deep, slow, sleeping breaths. You look at his smooth, soft back, his tousled, tow-coloured hair, and you try to remember what he looks like. He is less than a foot away, but the space between you may as well be a mile.

You told yourself that you wouldn’t do this again. Of the few one night stands you have had, not one has been satisfying. The sex is usually mediocre, the morning after goodbye perfunctory – you are already gone from his mind, he from yours. You have nothing else to say. The evening may as well never have happened for all the emotion either of you invested, and even had you lain there and gazed into each others’ eyes, it would have meant nothing.

The man next to you doesn’t know you – what makes you laugh, or cry. He doesn’t know your body, or where and how you like to be touched. It amazes you how many men believe that the more aggressively you manhandle a woman’s clitoris, the more pleasurable it is for her. “Be gentle” means “be gentle”, not “Oh yeah, baby, do me like your playstation”. You wince, and sigh, and reflect that you know just as little about him, and what he is like. He seems kind; you feel like a bitch.

You reflect ruefully that even had the sex been great, it still wasn’t what you were really looking for. After months being more lonely than you care to admit even to yourself (because being single is supposed to be fun, isn’t it? A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, right?), you eventually just wanted someone to laugh with you, to tell you you’re pretty, to kiss you as if he cared, to put his arms around you while you sleep. What made you think that empty sex with a total stranger might provide comforting physical contact or the illusion of closeness eludes you right now, as you lie like an island in bed, wondering what he is thinking, what he wanted, half-wishing that he would just make believe for five minutes and hold you.

But you both lie there, saying nothing, completely alone, and nothing is any different from how it was yesterday.

2.21am I awake after approximately two hours of sleep (it having taken me over two hours from the time I went to bed to actually fall asleep). I can hear something scraping ominously in the kitchen. I hope it is the cats, trying to eke the last of the gravy out of the cat food bowls. I start to ruminate on the nature of cat food. Why, for example, does it smell so disgusting? How exactly do they make the meat into those little pellets? Is it, in fact, made of tofu and sawdust shavings, with flavouring added? How do people in the cat food factories cope with smelling like the breath of Satan’s minions when they go home?

3.10am I try yet another sleeping position, but my feet feel like they are made of tin foil, and I can’t get comfortable. The lines “if you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same” run repeatedly around the inside of my head, a train of words on a perpetual circuit. I start to feel murderous towards Rudyard Kipling and his ilk.

3.25am A cat jumps through the open window of my bedroom, and lands squarely with its paw in my groin. I sit up with a speed that astonishes my stomach muscles, and throw the cat at the door. I lie down. It does it again.

3.30am I get up, and put the cat in the kitchen. It looks mournfully at its empty bowl. I sit at the kitchen table and read People magazine for a while. Cameron Diaz really doesn’t look that great in scarlet lipstick, I muse. Then I eat a piece of chocolate.

3.50am I begin to compile an ‘Alphabet of Namibia’: A is for aeroplanes, from whence babies come. B is for banana trees. C is for chicken, that well known vegetable. D is for donkeys, lining the roadsides. E is for employment crisis. I get as far as O, when the sheer overabundance of Nambia-related words beginning with O makes my brain leak from my ears.

4.30am I decide to write a novel. I wonder whether anyone has ever written a novel about someone who works in a cat food factory before. Should it be a Cinderella, rags-to-riches tale of true love in the face of icky odiferousness? Or should my heroine leave the factory behind her in search of a better life, only to find that everything she calls home resides amongst the Whiskas tins?

4.45am I move my pillow and quilt to the sofa, in the hope that if my feet are elevated, they will stop feeling like tin foil, and allow me to sleep in peace. My arms begin to feel unnaturally large, and will not fit where I want them to fit. I wonder if I have clogged up my arteries permanently, and now all the blood is pooling in my feet and arms, leaving me looking like a balloon animal. I picture the headlines. “multiple amputee wins nobel prize for literature”.

4.50am The first two lines of ‘One is the loneliest number’ replace Rudyard Kipling in my head, and set up camp.

5am. I watch the sun come up. I examine my toenails and wonder whether I should get a pedicure. I come to the conclusion that I would be ashamed to let anyone see my toenails in this state.

5.30am I fall asleep, fitfully, with a cat sitting on my shoulder. It is purring loudly in my ear and dribbling.

6.30 amMy alarm goes off.

This was my night last night. It was not vastly different from Friday night, or Saturday night, except that I believe I got three hours sleep last night, whereas on each of the previous two nights, I got perhaps one.

I am so tired I am cross eyed. When I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, a pale, crazy-eyed person stared back at me, her pupils so wide that you’d think her eyes were black. God damn these bloody anti-depressants. They’re supposed to make you all happy and lift you from the depths of an inescapable emotional hole, but instead, they deprive you of sleep, and have you pondering extraordinary inanities at stupid o’clock in the morning.

About my novel though. Do you think the idea has legs?

My colleagues Lesly and Charmaine seem to be less than confident about my ability to find my way in and out of places. Over the last couple of days, many jokes have been made, along the lines of “If she goes in there, she will never find her way out, hahahahaha.”

Lesly asked me to take him to the location, where he is staying, promising to show me an easy way in and out.  I assured them that I have a remarkably good sense of direction, and would be fine, no matter how many twists and turns he wants to take getting home.  The way to the location was easy, but the place was crowded, largely with cheerful looking men in dark blue overalls.  Charmaine made a disapproving noise.  “Tsch, these Ovambos, they are everywhere”.

I was mystified.  “How can you tell they are Ovambos?” 

“Eish, because only those people work in the fisheries.  If you greet them, they will only greet you in Oshiwambo, they will say ‘ngapi tate’, to show you that they are Ovambo.” 

When I droped them off amidst the crowd of milling men, shouting women and gesticulating taxi drivers, Lesly shouted “Don’t get lost, Rachael” in farewell.  As if.  I am direction queen, and besides, the way was pretty much straight there and back.

Ten minutes later, I find myself in a twilight zone of low-rise pastel coloured housing.  There is not a single soul to be seen, and a clingy sea mist shrouds everything in ambiguity.  The place seems to have been designed by a team of architects with an abiding affection for twee portholes and ceiling-to-floor windows, and every house has a small family car and a 4×4 parked outside.  I have driven unwittingly in to a Barrett Homes nightmare – one of those places you see on tv, that feature lawns peopled with happy families in sports jackets and floral prints, whose children always look overly brushed and abnormally perky.  What you don’t see is the part where after they’ve moved in, the bright, perky children become dead-eyed and creepy, garden gnomes mysteriously move positions in the night, and when Mummy tries to drive her Toyota Hilux through the perpetual fog that leads to Town, she finds herself driving straight back in to suburbia again.  I am not driving a Hilux, but still I cannot find my way out.

I’m not sure how I could have become so completely lost. I am starting to become alarmed, and then I find a road that leads only into pale desert.  I can’t see much because of the swirling cloud rolling off the sea.  An eerie wind howls against the car. I decide not to drive that way because there might be giant flesh-eating worms down there.  You hear strange stories about the coastal section of the desert.

My only solution is to find the sea and drive along next to it until I reach a civilisation more suited to my taste - i.e. one with pubs in it, where I can also buy dinner, and be stared at by people.  Pink hair is somewhat of a trial in this department, but I’m consoling myself with the fact that this is what it must be like to be Angelina Jolie. 

I do eventually find the sea, and I am astounded to find that I have driven about 15 miles the wrong way.

I have decided that I shall not embarass Lesly and Charmaine tomorrow by letting them know that their directions were less than adequate. 

I tend not to write about work or emotional stuff too much on here, because it’s easy enough to find out who I am. Blogging about work is a risky business as many bloggers know, and these days I don’t find it easy to share my innermost angst with the internet.  Anyway, saying that, this post is about both work, and my emotional health, shaky as it has been at times.  Just FYI.

It’s been a tough year for me (oh woe, drama etc. Wish list on the right, thanks.).  There have been days, often many consecutive ones, when I’ve lain in the bath for hours, unable to move, or to stop crying, completely incapable of either understanding or getting rid of the cloud of despair that hovered around my head all day, every day for about three months.

There have been a few reasons for this: my break up and subsequent attempt to be friends with my ex-bloke has been particularly tough, and although I hate to admit it, almost six months on I still ache about it from time to time, even though I wouldn’t have him back now if the deal involved a lifetime’s supply of jaffa cakes and a beach house in the Caribbean.

Work is another reason.  I’ve felt consistently that I’m not achieving what I set out to do here, that I’ve set myself too big a task, and that I am being sucked into the quicksand of permanent unemployability because in the face of the biggest challenge I have ever faced, I have been sinking.   To say it’s been a blow to my self-confidence is an understatement.

For a while, I was desperately homesick, and lonely, and confused about the future, despite my wonderful friends, and an experience that most people would kill for.

And to top it off, I have had to work in close proximity with one of the laziest, most irritating and deeply unpleasant individuals you could ever have the misfortune to meet.  Imagine coming into work every morning to be greeted by such gems as “Don’t you think it would be fun to pick a fight with a paraplegic?”, or “You look like a cross between a 12 year old and a 40 year old woman in those stupid clothes”.  That’s not to mention the unwanted physical attention, the hair stroking, the head-kissing; the other things about him that made me feel physically sick.

This blog has saved me in so many ways.  Without it, I wouldn’t have had the incentive to get up every morning, and to try and find something to laugh about.  I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of writing to fall back on.  I can’t express how much I enjoy it, even though often I’m stuck for words, and feel about as interesting as a plate of semolina. I know that it’s probably silly to invest so much in a something so small, but I honestly feel that without it, I would have been so lost.

It got to the point, about six weeks ago, when I was ready to throw in the towel and go home, tail between my legs.  An argument with my dickhead colleague about an email I’d sent my boss concerning his behaviour resulted in death threats and talk of revenge, and two days of blessed silence.  When it all began again I went to VSO for the first time since I got here.

I spent so many months thinking that I should be able to do this on my own, that by the time it was almost too late, I did what I should have done in the beginning.  I sat in their office, and I tried to talk about my problems in a rational, and controlled manner, as befitting the professional person that I strive to be.  But in the end I just sat and cried.

Now, after only the second sexual harassment case to be brought in Namibia, I am free of my nemesis.  The experience was deeply unpleasant, particularly the hearing, where I had to sit next to him and elaborate on the many demeaning and sickening comments he has consistently subjected me to over the last five months; where I had to endure the questions he asked me that were designed to humiliate and discredit me.  Fortunately I had nothing to hide, and I’m glad that I went through with it.  I hope it encourages others to do the same.

As far as work is concerned, I’ve managed to complete the task that scared me the most.  I might still have fucked it up, but at least it’s done.  From here on in, it can only get better.

And as for my personal life, the fact remains that there seem to be no eligible men whatsoever in Namibia.  The prospect of a year of celibacy doesn’t exactly fill me with joy, but I expect there are positive things I can take from it, not least that by the time I do eventually have sex again, I’ll be so completely delighted that it’s bound to be mind-blowing.

So, things are looking up.  I’m not going home, even though many of my friends are, and some have already left.  I will miss them, but not as much as I would miss Namibia if I left now, before I am ready.

‘There’ll be ups and downs’, VSO said, when we were preparing for a departure, eager and excited, and all convinced that our time abroad was going to be a bed of delightful smelling roses.  ‘It’s going to be tough sometimes’, they said, ‘but it will be worth it in the end.’

I had no idea how right they would be.

I’m homesick.  Desperately, miserably so.  I don’t know why – I don’t usually get homesick, but then I haven’t been out of the UK for more than about five months at a time since I was twenty. 

I’ve had twinges of missing home for a few months.  I’ve occasionally sat in my flat, cosy and relaxed, a book on one hand, a glass of chilled white wine in the other, and suddenly I feel a deep longing for home.  I think how perfect it would be if I could be transported, Harry Potter like, my glass still in hand, to a pub where my friends sit laughing about men, and work, and people we know. 

Recently, though, in the last three or four weeks, I’ve been plagued with rosy visions of summer in England – you know, village greens that aren’t marred by vandalized bus-stops and piles of dog shit; pimms and lemonade; strawberries and cream; real ale; 99s; the crack of leather on willow: all that stuff.  I love summer in England.  It’s just wonderful.

I dream of spending a Sunday lying in Hyde Park with my best friend, slightly hungover, and getting slowly stoned and drunk while reading the papers in the sun.  I know that Hyde Park is full of inconsiderate wankers who kick footballs into your idyllic reverie, and shout a lot, and you can never find anywhere quiet to sit, but I still love it.

I also dream of having a job that actually stimulates me, and doesn’t make me feel as if my brain has stagnated to the point where it’s dribbling out of my ears, and where I don’t have to deal with comments like “I thought about you every night while I was away.  The last night, I threw up” from the person I share my office space with.  Then I remember that any job I have is going to be fraught with irritations, and my rose-tinted spectacles are getting darker, and more opaque with every day that passes. 

Namibia is beautiful, and challenging.  Often, I love it.  I’m lucky to travel as much as I do, and even in Windhoek, the light on the mountains is so magical that it takes my breath away every single morning, and every evening when I go home. I have learned so much; I dont’ think I’ll realise how much until I leave.  I also feel I’ve still got alot to achieve here. 

But I miss my friends.  I miss my family.  I miss home.  And it’s going to be another 14 months before I go back. 

Sometimes, I’m not sure I can last that long.