Sleeping Around

Last night, I slept with a rather striking Icelandic girl.  Mid-twenties, I think.  Henry didn’t mind at all; he slept with an eighteen year old girl from Hamburg.  Why not, we thought – this trip is all about trying new experiences.

Altogether, we spent the night with thirteen woman and four other men.  All laid out in a circle, around a mellowing camp fire, beneath the Namibian stars.  We were each tightly wrapped in our own sleeping bag, gazing up at the galaxy of wonder above us, after a dinner of hot dogs and toasted marshmallows.  Our local guide, Rion, had rounded the evening off nicely with a masterclass in counting from one to ten in Khoisa.  Yes, I’ve camped out under the stars once or twice before (in Canada), but the intimacy of this communal experience was something that had reached me, finally, for the first time, at the age of 44. 

I popped on my glasses, to see the stars more clearly.  Another new bedroom experience.  But this time the bedroom was a parched river-bed in a south-west slice of Africa.


John