Roojin Habibi: Turning Every Stone in Windhoek, Namibia

Roojin interned at the Legal Assistance Center (LAC) in Windhoek, Namibia

Scarcely two weeks after finishing my first year of law school, I left Canada for an internship at the Legal Assistance Center (LAC) in Windhoek, Namibia. Between scrambling to finish  exams, securing a Namibian work visa, tying up loose ends with projects back home and saying farewells for the second summer in a row to friends and family, I’d had little time to reflect on the journey I was about to embark on. That moment of pause finally came during my 12-hour layover in London, where I started scribbling thoughts in my journal, shaded by a tree in Hyde Park. What would the next few months be like? What kind of work would I be doing? Would I do it well? Would I change? For better or for worse?

In case you haven’t noticed, I have this pesky habit of  asking a million and one vague, unanswerable questions in a day.

But travelling has a way of bending your habits beyond recognition. By the time I arrived at Hosea Kutako International on a Tuesday afternoon, rumination had thoroughly exhausted me. I had no idea what would come next and I was okay with it. I had to be okay with it.

So I found comfort in the gentle breeze and breathtakingly beautiful sunset that I had landed into. And of course, in knowing that someone was expecting me. On the other side of the gate was Katie, a Canadian lawyer who began interning at the LAC four months earlier. We had settled on becoming roommates a few weeks earlier, after a few emails and a finicky Skype call that left both of us with little idea of what it would be like to live with the other. Such is the risky business you undertake as a traveller.

As it turns out, getting to know Katie  and sharing part of my experiences in Namibia with a fellow Canadian has been an adventure of its own. On most week days, Katie and I commute to and from the office while bantering about unique legal issues we’d learned throughout the week. We have gone out on weekend trips with locals and expats to prehistoric plateaus and caught sundowners at the back of a truck in a friend’s cattle farm. We have seen Namibian game being hunted in its natural habitat and hosted an international group of friends over for a makeshift Persian dinner soirée. And all of this while maintaining a 9-to-5 work-life balance as full-time legal interns.

See, the best part about living and working outside of your comfort zone is that, whether you realize it or not, you start to say “yes” to everything. It’s by turning every stone out there that the answers slowly start to reveal themselves. And the irony of it all? By then, you have forgotten the questions.