Coddiwomple - S.E. Harmon Page 0,2

was complete. Those desert lions were the ultimate conservation story. They’d survived in a place where little else did. A rare sighting of the desert lion was photography gold. I cut the engine on my ATV, and Suva knew better than to argue.

The stew would have to wait.

*

Back at camp, I took the time to charge my camera batteries and downloaded the photographs. No matter how much I wanted to relax, those things went at the top of my list. Then I showered all the dust of the day off. The communal showers were clean and serviceable, which was more than I’d had access to at other campsites, so I couldn’t complain—aloud. But my muscles and I wholeheartedly thought I deserved a few hours in my jetted tub right about now.

By the time I got out and dressed in some beat-up khakis and a black T-shirt, dinner was being served by the campfire. I hustled to join them. A woman in colorful tribe wear ladled out servings of the Potjiekos. My stomach growled ferociously as she handed me a wooden bowl, even as I opened my mouth to thank her. I grinned sheepishly as her brown eyes danced.

I sat in a camp chair next to Karl, a young photographer just starting out. I regretted my choice almost immediately. He spent a large portion of our dinner griping about losing a perfect shot because of a rogue shifting wind.

“It happens, kid.” The guy on our left didn’t hesitate to add to the one-sided discussion. He was tanned beyond tanned, well on his way from original recipe and approaching extra crispy—which was strange since I hadn’t seen him without a hat the entire time we’d been here.

“I’ve been in the business over thirty years,” he said, giving Karl a pitying look. “You’re green now, but you’ll learn. You’re gonna miss more shots than you catch. And what does it matter anyway? You’ve been on one safari, you’ve been on them all.”

Karl looked offended and angled his body toward me as he started going on about his plans for the next day. I listened with half an ear, eating my stew languidly. It was like sitting between two extremes—the kid wet behind his ears with too much fucking energy to even contemplate, and the old-timer to my left who couldn’t be bothered to glance at the spectacle of Brandberg Mountain behind us. I guess my placement between them was perfect. Maybe I wasn’t wet behind the ears anymore, but I planned to hang up my Canon 7D long before I was too jaded to appreciate a natural wonder.

I knew I had to get to bed soon because the days were long, but I wasn’t quite ready to turn it yet, so I sat around the campfire a little longer. At one point, Nalani served us a local drinking brew that was dark and spicy. I wasn’t sure of the ingredients, and to be honest, I wasn’t too eager for the recipe. But it was cold and mellowed me even further as I sat around listening to stories, the hot air blowing my hair gently. Namibia was about as far from Coral Cove as I could get. My hometown was nice, with its seaside ambiance and tropical weather, but this… this was truly something special.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to find a young man dressed in all khaki. It took me a moment to recognize him as one of the employees of the campground. “Are you Jugahney?” he asked, his accent thick.

It took me a few seconds to realize he’d said my name. “Journey.” I nodded. “Yes, that’s me.”

He smiled. “My apologies.”

“No worries.” Frankly, it was only fair because I’d been butchering their language for days. I may be a world-class traveler, but a linguist, I was not. My tongue saw letters placed in unfamiliar ways and started tying itself immediately. “Is there something wrong?”

“You have a call.”

I widened my eyes. An international call made me nervous. It could only be from my family, and they wouldn’t call if it wasn’t mission critical. “Who is it?”

“A man named John. He said it was very important.”

My brother. That only cemented the feeling in my gut. I was seven years older than John, and we’d been the closest growing up. There had been a lot of hero worship from his direction, and a lot of big-brother-protective mode from mine. Somewhere along the way, he’d grown distant. I knew he wasn’t calling me