BORDER LAND

BORDER LAND

August 22, 2009

Airport Transit Lounge, Frankfurt, Germany

The experience of leaving one country, but not yet fully arriving in another country is odd. It is a zone of no-country, a place between the known and unknown, a domain of uncertainty and anticipation, an experience of being and becoming. Its unsettling.

When I was 23 years old, I lived outside of Livingstone, Zambia in a one room thatched roofed hut at the Rainbow Lodge within view of the hippo and crocodile laden Zambezi River and Musi O Tunya – the smoke that thunders – Victoria Falls. After widening to over a mile and plunging almost 500 feet over the world famous Falls, the Zambezi then snakes its way 200 km down the remote and desolate Batoka Gorge home to the world’s rarest falcon, the world’s biggest navigable rapids, and one of the world’s most natural borders. In 1985 and 1986 I was one of seven whitewater river guides working for Sobek, the company that had done the first descent of the river two years before (it was on the seven day expedition where I met my sweet wife Marci, but that is another story). Just below the Falls, within walking distance from my hut, the top of the gorge is almost a ½ mile across and with the churning river 500 feet below, it forms the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. In 1985, Zambia was poor and Zimbabwe was not. Petrol, bread, cheese, meat - almost everything - needed to be purchased in Zimbabwe. To do this, we needed to cross a big bridge, checking out of Zambia on one side, driving across the bridge often getting out to admire the view, and then checking into Zimbabwe on the other side. In 1985 given what we were doing, it was not totally clear if once you checked out of one country, whether or not they would let you into the other one. I used to imagine living on that bridge between two African countries, stuck forever in the borderland where none of the old or new rules applied. A developing world version of that movie Tom Hanks starred in not too long ago where he was stuck for months inside JFK.

Of course, that never happened. There were unsettling incidents: normally placid guards made irritable by 120 degree heat and our sloppy misprints in paperwork pulling our bread, cheese and provision laden land rover apart, fines and threats to take passports because of undeclared wheels of cheese; subtle but firm pressure for bribes. But we always made it out the other side.

As we sit physically in Germany, legally nowhere, bound for Southern Africa, a country so far away it will take us 32 hours of travel to get there, where we will drive 2000km up the west coast of South Africa and Namibia to near the Angolan border, I see how we are in collective and individual borderlands in our lives – walking across a bridge between the known and unknown. Skye most obviously of all. She bravely walks in the border land between childhood and puberty, between fantasy and ‘reality’, between reliance on parents and self-reliance. She has so much trust and resolve. We have been on the road for over 4 weeks in Bug-Z and not once has she complained despite all manner of circumstance – breakdowns, boring dinners with adults, heat, rain, being lost, no friends, and hours and hours of loud diesel engine drone. Skye is pretty much content to be here with us come what may. Marci has wrapped up all of her design projects, closed her business bank account, and for the first time since we’ve been together is unencumbered by projects and the numerous details she masterfully manages everyday. She is free. As for me, the everyday routine followed faithfully for the last five has disappeared. Building Blu Skye, obsessively serving our clients, innovating to raise the game, being a small part of a growing movement to transform the way business is conducted on planet earth – all the structure and devices that have allowed me to do this are gone. And as I stare out the transit lounge window waiting for our flight to Cape Town, I realize that when we return home, it will all be different. For me and for all of us.

Now I know why people don’t choose to do a trip like this more often. Its unsettling, unclear and unnerving. Its also what creates the possibility for something new to emerge. We often tell our busy clients that once the analysis is done, strategy consists of only three tangible things. Those current actions which you will Stop; future actions that you will Start; and current actions that you will Continue. The hardest, by far, is stopping. But this is the only place where the opening for new action is created. We’ve all stopped a lot of actions and are engaged in a whole lot of new actions. It will be interesting to see what happens when we emerge from this border land.