expat adventure

Are your plans for exotic adventures abroad in ruins? Don’t you dare get on a plane? Won’t the country let you out or in? I once found a bizarre exotic adventure nearby.

Once upon a time, before the year 2020, in a land far away, I found myself trapped, stuck in a tiny space and desperate to escape, but . . .

I’m hoping nobody is going to get hurt by this reptile that is taking on gargantuan proportions in my imagination. I see all four poised over the sink hole with sticks raised. I’m staying out of the way, no stick handy. No one seems to expect me, the useless expat, to take part in this, and I love them for it.

I had planned to eat mopane worms tonight, but instead I’m facing a hamburger and fries. I am not amused. Having traveled thousands of miles across the African continent I have arrived in a country with the exotic and lyrical name of Zimbabwe, land of the fabled Shona chiefs. And now see me sit here in a restaurant called the Silver Spur.

“I want to go abroad,” I told my husband one steamy tropical day after we’d been living in Ghana, West Africa for what seemed like ages and I was beginning…