On the morning of my 60th birthday, Aug 24, 2024, I woke up alone, yet more held than I’d ever been.
The day before, after we dropped off my companion guest, my sister of the soul for this week at Okavango Origins camp, Christy, at the airstrip, and after a wonderful safari drive, I had asked Dix if, for my birthday, the camp could sleep in. A large party was set to arrive later that afternoon of my birthday. But in that soft pause between visitors, I was the only guest in the camp. Could we all rest a little longer, and let the morning rise without hurry? He said yes, with one condition: I must not leave my tent until the sun had risen.
When I stepped out of my tent, the sun was just rising, the air was light and damp in a misty way, like the land had just exhaled. The fire had already been lit, no one in sight, but it was there, glowing, waiting. I sat alone, wrapped in the warmth of the place that feels most like home to me: the camp in the middle of the Okavango Delta, the camp named Origins for good reason.
I watched the sun rise over the edge of the world, listening to birdcall and rustling brush and the soft stirrings of life returning to the camp. I sat full of gratefulness, tenderly embraced by the most wonderful place on earth.
Later, after breakfast, Dix’s wife, Lehutsana, came to me. She carried a lovely basket, no, a bowl, woven by her mother. It had been meant as a gift for my mother, but my mother was unable to make this return trip to them. And now, with tears in her eyes, Lehutsana gave it to me, to carry home to my mother.
A sacred gift, given across generations, across families, across oceans. Not in ceremony, but in truth.
That afternoon, I was whisked away in a tiny two-man helicopter (my first time flying in one). The pilot was young and charming, and when I found out he loved video games, we laughed and shared stories as the golden delta stretched below us like a dream. I was lifted from stillness into motion, from roots into air.
When I arrived at the second camp, a place of luxury, I had my own pool and a palace of a room... And what I felt was home sick for Okavango Origins camp: the land, the people, the family there. With my whole being: I am grateful to know these people and to have been allowed to be present in this place that feels like home.
I’m not from Okavango Delta, but some part of me remembers it. My DNA echoes that this is Home. Home sick for this place every day since I left. If I could find my way back there, to live out my life there, I would.
And so I turned sixty in the First Home.
Forever grateful,
Reba
