The People We Meet

Sometimes you meet someone who lingers in your mind, whose encounter you never forget. A while ago, when I was on safari, we came to a campsite completely empty - except for the Sarahs. The Sarahs were two researchers, one Zimbabwean and one Namibian, doing work on the black mongoose, a species never before studied. They came by our campfire, hungry for human contact after a week in solitude.

Sarah from Zimbabwe was from a farming family. We chatted a bit about politics (I can never resist!) and she told me that her family was one of the first to be evicted from their land when Mugabe undertook his misguided land reallocation scheme in the late 1990s. That's not to say that the system was all right - it wasn't and wealth lay almost solely in the hands of the white farmers. But to forcibly evict people from their homes, without compensation - not to mention without a plan for the use of that land - ignores the fact that this was, for better or worse, their home too.

She had much grace and a twinkle in the eye, and spoke with great fondness for the people she grew up with and the animals she raised. I listened to this woman, forced from her home, declared an Enemy of the State, and could not help but wonder where her optimism and acceptance came from. And then I told her that I was tempted to visit Zimbabwe, to do a multi-day canoe trip in Mana Pools National Park, and her eyes lit up and she started speaking about the beauty of that trip, and that I must contact old friends of her family's and then she said -

"I do wish I could go home. Just for one week."

It nearly broke my heart. I could go on about the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons, but if you are interested, check out www.unhcr.org for stories of people forced from their homes.

Day 3, Tour of Namibia: Should have been a movie Moment

After spending yesterday exploring the absolutely amazing sand dunes (wonderful to climb up so high without fear of falling or hurting yourself), digging our toes deep into warm, red sands, we left Sossusvlei yesterday morning to head towards Swakopmund, our current stop. But our poor Jeep, jumping through ruts and spinning through sand, decided it had had enough. So it stopped working on us, and marooned us for 6 hours (they told us it would be 2 hours) in a place called - I'm not kidding - Solitaire. A petrol station in the middle of desert, with a couple of lone trees and a dingy little shop, in the heat of the day.

I think I have definitely been welcomed to Africa.

What will days 4 -10 bring?!?!

Day 2, Tour of Namibia: Little Miss Sunshine moment

Rising at 4 a.m. to catch the sunrise from the infamous sand dunes at Sossusvlei, our poor Jeep gets stuck in the sand less than 1 km from the dunes. And stuck deep. So out we all come to help push and shovel for 10 minutes, but because we are still on sand and unwilling to stop the car lest we get stuck again, we then all RUN for the door one by one and slide in, as triumphantly as Steve Carrell did in the movie.

We still caught a beautiful sunrise.

Day 1, Tour of Namibia: Listen to Mom moment

Driving in a Jeep along unpaved roads in Namibia, when we hit a dip in the road, and go flying a metre in the air, because none of us have bothered to put on our seatbelts. Why does second nature in Canada become nary a thought in Namibia?

Banged heads and minor car problems aside, no real harm done, we thought...

Why Running Internships was the Greatest Job in the World

So you have lovely friends like these when you travel...

Say hi to Xu, Jess and Simona in Windhoek...

...and to Rian and Jonathan in Cape Town... (Rian was a friend of a former intern of mine!)

...and to Robert and Mariam, two of the boyfriend's good friends in Cape Town. Here we are for memory's sake, in front of Robert and Andrew's old house.

Colonialism and food

I know colonialism was generally not a good thing, but...

I really, really love food and I really enjoyed the fact that I could get cheese and croissants in Cape Town, and that here in Namibia (a former German colony) you can get those dense German seed breads, ginger cookies and yummy baked goods.

So much guilt, but I love that the Europeans exported their sweets to the colonies. So I can nibble on goodness at my whim. What indulgence.

T-4 hours

"If I know a song of Africa...does Africa know a song of me?"

~Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

For years I have been prepping interns to go abroad, calming their nerves, confident they'll have the time of their lives.

Where is that confidence now? It has been a long time since I did this myself. Five years since I lived abroad, and this will be my first time in Africa. What will I feel? Will I even begin to understand the people, the cultures I will be living and travelling in? What will I miss? Will I indeed come to know a song of Africa?

Methinks and mehopes the answer is yes! Excitement is mounting!