Where’s My Alternator?

Five years ago I went on a trip to Namibia, Africa with 17 other people, nearly all of which were under 25 years old. We decided to visit the Etosha Game Reserve for a few days but prior to this little freestyle safari, we thought to ourselves, “Hm, this nation is a desert. Why don’t we pray that it will rain?” Well it did. It rained more in four winter days than it does in their entire rainy season put together.
Our equipment consisted of 2 VW Combies (vans), everything you can fit in those 2 vans for the next 8 weeks, more peanut butter and jelly sandwich fixings than you would normally want, not enough water, and 2 large plastic Ziploc bags filled with cooked vegetables.
The only problem with having more than one vehicle is the tendency to have a bit of sectarianism between introverts and extraverts… maybe a better way to say it is rivalry. Being the loud-mouths that we were, our van made collective claims of being superior to the quieter group, who had a rebuttal for our misguided beliefs (hold that thought).
We arrive at Etosha. A day into it and the rain has exploded to the earth, thereby leaving no predictability as to what kind of animals we’ll see since the normal watering holes aren’t all that necessary. So what do you do with 18 young people, two vans and lots of puddles? Well, drive through them of course!
Whoosh! Splash! GUSH! The puddles could’ve been registered as ponds, so we dove straight into all of them until… Extrovert Van idles and then… nothing. No turn of the key could get that sucker to wake up. Then Introvert Van follows suit. We chuckled until we realized that we were smack dab in between cheetah territory and elephant territory, neither of which are particularly comforting.
The icing on the cake is that curfew was only a few hours away. Being outside the heavily gated/guarded campsites that get locked down without exception at sundown not only means a large fine that we wouldn’t be able to pay, but that meant we could easily become dinner. Dusk was rapidly approaching, and we had no idea how far we are to the next campsite.
Against both wisdom and law, we all decide to get out of the vehicles and ponder our next move. For what seemed like an eternity, nothing could be done. Suddenly, Introvert Van starts! Praise the Lamb! But Extrovert Van is not going anywhere. The waterlogged alternator didn’t know what hit it. I looked up to the sky in helpless boredom when something caught my eye; buzzards. Buzzards were flying in a circle not far from where we were. They began to get closer to the ground; then closer. “There’s been a kill,” I announced, unheeded. Not cool.
“What is that smell?!” someone gasped. We gathered around the Introvert Van to find that those blasted cooked vegetables had been forgotten and kept underneath a seat, baking further in the desert heat. The odor we experienced that day was indescribable. Now we really had to get back. Someone chucked them into a thorn bush and we all groaned with the scent still lingering in our nostrils.
Thankfully, a German family on vacation passed by and gave us a rope. The limping Introvert Van became the tug of the mortally wounded Extrovert Van as the sun sink lower and lower in the sky. Only one problem still existed: the nausea that is created when nine people are crunched into a van that’s too small is an interesting wild card.
I heard a faint sound, as several of my companions look outside their window in unbelief. To my simultaneous amusement and dismay, my dear friend Brenda is loosing her lunch in the vehicle ahead of us. “Shut the windows!!” someone barked. It was a timely command. Eventually we arrived at our destination, moderately unscathed, but not a moment too soon. The last of sunlight dipped beyond the horizon as we dragged ourselves into the guarded camp just as the towering gates closed and locked for the night. I’d had better days.