The biggest day of my life during my once-in-a-lifetime adventure : Guest contribution from Orm

An Introduction – A big hello to all of Wilna’s fans and followers, my name is Joel but everyone calls me Orm, a middle name chosen by my parents out of a book they were reading around the time I was born. The title of the book is “The Longships” and I’m almost embarrassed to say that I can’t remember the authors name but I think he may have been Swedish, definitely Scandinavian. It’s a story about a young Viking named Orm and his best mate “Toke” and the adventures they go on. I think it was written in the 1950’s, I’ve read it a couple of times and I can honestly say it would be one of my all time favourites even if I wasn’t named after the main character... GREAT BOOK!! I want to take this opportunity to tell you about the biggest and best day of my life while on the trip of a life time...

A Bit Of Background – I grew up reading Willard Price books in my younger years before progressing to Wilbur Smith books in high school and i guess that’s where my interest in Africa may have started, that and my general love of animals and fascination with wild life documentaries. At first i was looking to take 5 or 6 weeks off work and spend the majority of that time in Botswana, Tanzania and Malawi but the more i read up the more i wanted to see and then a friend put me on to this 43 week “expedition” and i was sold. I was single at the time..

Enter Emy – I first met Emy at a music festival in Victoria. If i remember correctly she poked her head around a few people that were standing around me in the crowd and said “Orm”.. I turned around to see this tall, good looking brunette smiling at me. “How’s it going?” i asked, confused as to how this girl new my name. “You don’t know me do you? My name is Emy, i live in Roxby...” I didn’t know Emy and couldn’t even recall seeing her at the pub or running into her in the supermarket which is kind of surprising in a town of 4500 people most of which are men. I had heard her name mentioned by a couple of my mates tho, i can’t remember how exactly but the name Emy and the word “teacher” had come up once or twice.. No doubt the boys were discussing the good looking girls about town. And that was pretty much all i saw of Emy for a while apart from a couple of g’days and a drunken dancefloor conversation down at the local tavern we didn’t really run in to each other a lot but i knew that i liked her. She was tall, funny, had great taste in music and looked a treat... what wasn’t to like??

I guess the big moment came when i was invited to my mate Ricky’s birthday dinner at the one restaurant we have in Roxby. I had a feeling Emy was going to be there as Ricky had been seeing a girl (named Rikki funnily enough) for a few years who was also a teacher and i knew that her and Emy were friends. So i had a shave, put on my favourite shirt and my best pair of jeans and slapped on a generous amount of cologne and strolled down to dinner. I was feeling nervous but actually pretty stoked when i walked in and saw the only vacant seat at the table was the one next to Emy.. (I had no idea at the time but it turns out that Em and a couple of her teacher friends had arranged for it to be that way and there were a few sneaky smiles and chortles when i sat down). I tried to say something funny like “Oh great, i get to sit next the worse person here” but i don’t think it came off, no doubt she saw through my feigned sense of coolness. We had a nice meal and then went out for a few drinks and a dance and had a chance to talk for a bit more. A few weeks later we were officially dating.

The Ring– We’d been together for just over a year and living together for most of that before we left Australian shores to have a look at Africa and i already knew that Emy was the girl i was going to marry and that i was going to ask her to do that at some stage during the trip. We were a few weeks into the expedition when i told Wilna of my plans. Emy and I sit directly behind Wilna on the truck and feel extremely fortunate to do so. We’d become friends very quickly, often exchanging biscuits, peanuts or local treats while watching the country side go by, so i felt completely comfortable asking for her help to find me a ring. So separately we scoured the Moroccan stalls, keeping an eye out for something nice and something “Emy” without much luck. It wasn’t until we were in the Dogon country in Mali that i finally spied what i’d been looking for.. “Spied” is probably not the right word. .. in Mali that I finally had what i’d been looking for thrust in to my face and told i could have at a good price repeatedly by a persistent local man would be more apt. I was half way through saying “no thanks mate, I don’t want it” for the fourth or fifth time when i suddenly realised that i actually wanted it very much. What he had was a brass ring with what almost, but not quite, looked like a little berber teapot kind of welded on to the top of it.

“What is it?” i asked.

“A teapot, a berber teapot for making berber tea” was the mans reply.

I raised a suspicious eyebrow and looked at it again, squinted a bit and saw the berber teapot. The ring was big and chunky, old and dirty, kind of strange and it was perfect. Emy really enjoyed the whole berber tea experience while in that part of Africa and had bought a few different types of tea and her own teapot in Morocco and we’d talked about making it for friends and guests when we got home, so i was feeling pretty pleased with myself when i’d agreed on a price and had the ring in my pocket. Twenty minutes later i was strolling up the hill towards the groups meeting point when i had another man approach me. I was already saying “no thanks” before he’d shown me what he had to offer but was pleasantly surprised when he pulled out a little hand carved, wooden box/pot thing – perfect for putting something like a ring in. Once again i walked away feeling absolutely chuffed with myself and raced up the hill to show my purchases to Wilna who seemed just excited as i was and happily agreed to keep them hidden under her seat on the truck until the big moment arrived.

The Big Moment – At some point whilst travelling down the west coast of Africa i’d decided that i was going to ask Emy to marry me in the Etosha game park in Namibia. I’d heard that you could sit on a viewing platform overlooking a waterhole all night and watch the animals roll in. In my mind i pictured popping the question in the moonlight while lions and rhinos drank below us and all sorts of African animal noises went on around us. The closer we got to Namibia the more i excited i got but my plans were shot down in the Democratic Republic of Congo when several Angolan embassies, for several different reasons, denied us access to their country and we were forced to fly over Angola and join a different truck in Namibia.. the day they came out of Etosha! We were both pretty devastated about missing out on Etosha, as was the whole group, mainly because it was going to be our first real chance to see some of the animals Africa is famous for, but i also had other business there. With no plan B in mind i thought i’d just wait and see what came up..

After having a great time in Namibia and South Africa we were on our way to Botswana and a two night trip into the Okavango Delta. I didn’t really know what to expect there but while packing our bags for the trip i decided to throw my little package in just in case an opportunity presented itself.. It was on the second morning in the delta that we learnt there was to be a sunset mokoro ride that night and my heart skipped a beat, this was it.

We were lucky enough to have a fantastic day, seeing elephant and a few zebra during a walking safari (after seeing nothing but tracks the day before), taking a refreshing swim in the heat of the day and then relaxing around the campsite waiting for the sun to head downwards. I’d been playing cards with a few of the boys and thinking about how i was going to get the ring out of my tent and onto the mokoro without raising suspicion when Emy came out of the tent to see how i was going. I kind of lured her into sitting down to play and then immediately excused myself from the game somehow, i think i said i was going to read. The card game was going on well away from our tent and out of sight of the mokoros so my mission was a lot easier than it could have been.

I was just on my way to see our mokoro poler ‘Beauty’ a large sometimes friendly, often surly woman to ask her if it would be ok if i stashed the ring on the boat when i ran into Wilna and told her of my plans. She beamed a smile at me and then, as thoughtful as she always is, asked me if i had a bottle of wine to take out with me. Unfortunately i did not but Wilna went to fetch hers and then came with me to see Beauty. We put my case forward to Beauty asking her if she could find a nice spot away from the other boats as the sun was about to disappear over the horizon where i could ask my girlfriend to marry me. She seemed to understand what we were asking but didn’t show too much emotion about it, simply giving us an “ok... no problem”.

So i grabbed the box from out of the tent, filled it with some pretty and nice smelling white flowers from a nearby tree, dropped the ring on top of the flowers, closed the lid and then placed the box at the back of the mokoro along with the bottle of wine and a couple of plastic mugs.

When it was time for everybody to board the boats i made sure that Emy and I went and stood by ours to ensure we would be in the right one. Emy had sat on the front seat a couple of times but hadn’t liked being the first one through the many spider webs constructed in the reeds so that morning had asked me to sit up front. I assumed she would be happy to sit in the middle again that night but no, she’d decided she wanted to be back in the lead seat. I couldn’t really ask her hand in marriage with her back to me so before i sat down i spun her seat around to face mine. It turned out she wasn’t too happy with that and when she asked me why i’d done it i told her it was so that we could look at each other and talk while on the cruise.. I think she was a little bit mystified by my sudden romantic notions and more than a little annoyed that i had ruined her viewing as she complained for the next twenty minutes about having to twist her neck around to see anything and that the whole point of sitting in the front was to get an unspoilt view as we glided along.

I apologised profusely and tried to make her feel bad for being annoyed with me by calmly saying “i was just trying to do something nice” but i don’t think it totally worked.

She was on the verge of risking falling overboard to stand up and turn her seat around when out of despair i blurted “well before you do that, would you like some wine?”

“Where are you going to get wine from?”

“I brought some out with us..”

“Why?”

“I dunno, thought it would be nice”

“Where did you get wine from?”

“I bought it before we left to come into the Delta” I lied.

“No you didn’t... Wilna gave it to you didn’t she?”

“.......no” I lied again.

“Oh she did so, it’s already been opened”,

“....maybe, just shoosh and enjoy your wine”.

She smiled then, more out of catching me out than general happiness i think, but it was encouraging just the same. We sat and watched some hippos for a while, sipping Wilna's wine from our red plastic mugs and then got news that there was an elephant on the bank not far away.

I was a bit worried because i judged i had about 20 minutes or so before showtime and i really wanted to be in the boat. But we got out and had a nice close viewing of the elephant eating grass and just generally being an elephant before returning to our mokoros and the hippos.

The sun was just about on the horizon and the sky was a beautiful dark pink when the other boats started poling back to camp before it got to dark. Beauty, playing her role to perfection, asked if we wanted to get a photo of the sunset.

I said “yea, that’d be great, can we just stop here a minute?”

She pulled up the boat and as Emy took photos of the sky, heart racing i reached behind my seat for the little box. As Emy put the camera away i said to her “I brought out another little surprise for you”..

“What is it?” she asked me, smiling and laughing a little. Exact details of what transpired next are a little hazy, even laying in our tent that night recapping on the moment, neither of us could remember exactly what was said but it was something pretty close to this.. I showed Emy the box then removed the lid and handed it to her.

Peering inside and reaching for the ring she laughed and again asked what it was. I remember feeling surprisingly calm but also stupidly excited at the same time and replied “It’s a ring, and that’s a little berber teapot”... Emy had a massive smile on her face and couldn’t stop laughing while she was turning it over and over (probably trying to find the angle at which the teapot actually looked like a teapot).

I took the ring from her, did the mental calculations to make sure i was taking her left hand (not as easy as it sounds under extreme pressure) and slipping the ring on to her slender finger with a slight shake to my voice said “I know this ring hasn’t got any diamonds, but with it I’d like to ask you Emelia Mitchell to marry me”..

With tears starting to roll down her cheek she let out a nervous laugh, asked me if this was really happening then leaned forward to hug me and said yes! We stayed like that for what seemed like minutes, with Beauty screaming her African celebratory screams and tears now streaming down both of our cheeks. We eventually pulled back from each other and half crying, half laughing tried to think of things to say.. There was a lot of “I can’t believe this is happening” and “Are you okays” but not much more than that.

I remember us poling close to Wilnas boat and saying “she said yes!” and Wilna pointing her camera at us. Word spread fast and once we got back to the campsite there was a lot of hugging and handshaking and Dave poured a few celebratory whiskies.. It was very emotional.

That night we were treated to some African singing and dancing with Emy and I being plucked from the crowd to perform a newly wed dance/march around the fire. It was a perfect way to end a perfect day amongst all of our new found friends.

I was so pleased that Wilna got to be a part of the day after it seemed for a short time that she may not have been. She was the only person on the truck that i’d told and she did a great job keeping the secret and the ring safe, it really meant a lot to Emy and I that she was there. I can’t thank Wilna enough for the bottle of wine either.. without it i would have had no excuse to keep Emy seated where she was and things might not have panned out so perfectly, so CHEERS Wilna and thanks again for your thoughtfulness, it just wouldn’t have been the same without you! x x