Out of Africa

We have arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam after a wonderful and enlightening road trip up the West Coast of South Africa, into Namibia; followed by a small plane flight into the Okovango Swamps, Botswana; onward to Victoria Falls and then to a remote village in Malawai; before time on the beach in Plettenberg Bay and a couple of days in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia en route to Asia...

along the way we've seen amazing wild animals, met with inspirational people, experienced inspirational examples of positive deviance, and reconnected with Africa the place where Marci and I met 24 years ago.

Its beauty, tragedy and uniqueness is astounding.

No Internet in the Bush

Sorry to be out of touch.

We've been traveling extensively in the bush - as they say here - with no internet access. Now we're in Johannesburg, South Africa, but only briefly as we leave in 2 hours to fly to Blantyre, Malawi where we will spend the day with leaders from Millennium Promise and UNEP visiting one of their Millennium Village Clusters exploring how to create market-based economic inputs that will sustain the progress they have made in eradicating extreme poverty.

We just spent the last few days in Zimbabwe and Zambia on either side of The Smoke That Thunders, Victoria Falls. We stayed in Vic Falls with friends from 24 years ago. Zimbabwe is just emerging from a complete economic collapse - their currency, just after printing 10 Quadrillion (yes, quadrillion) Dollar bank notes, totally collapsed and now they use only US Dollars. Meanwhile, the funky, isolated Zambia of 1985 - where you couldn't enter the country if you had a South African stamp in your passport - has become one of the new economic darlings of the region, with a 5 star hotel sitting directly on top of the grass roofed huts where us Sobek guides lived at the Rainbow Lodge. We had the pleasure of hooking up with two Zambians with whom I worked - Rachel and Dominic - who took us on the grand tour of Livingstone to see Nanda's Mini Market, Dombwa street Market, the Boat Club and Nakatindi the ghetto where all the Africans who worked with Sobek lived. After dinner we crossed the border from Zambia to Zimbabwe the other night at immigration the lights were out (black out that had started the morning we left) so we entered the ramshackle immigration building in total darkness saying ‘hello? Hello?’ and then all of a sudden a cell phone LCD light come on and a polite voice says, ‘yes, can I help you?’ as if nothing was unusual… It was surreal, but classic - everyone was relating to that as if nothing was unusual in any way... those LCD lights in the cell phones are very popular in Zimbabwe.

There is so much more: lions, leopards, elephants and hundreds of other species in Namibia and Botswana; road trips through the coastal desert mountains where we didn't see another car for 5 hours; hiking to the top of the world's tallest dune and then skiing down the face skye burning the bottom of her bare feet; meeting with the leader of a most practical and innovative approach to land/biodiversity conservation in Africa; feeding running orphaned cheetah's 2 kg slabs of donkey meat from the back of a careening truck... After we return from Malawi I will put together a proper travel log and share it. I also, will encourage Marci and Skye to begin to post.

Now off to meet the executives from South Africa's largest retailer before getting on an Air Malawi flight to Blantyre.