i am working for greatguides.org again– doing website design tweaks, user-experience designing, media production, and more. it’s good to be involved again after being out of the loop for most of the last year and it’s even better to get back to freelance work. i miss it a lot, and i certainly hope to never do retail again.

i will be here until june, and until then expect more adventures from me- its one of my goals for the year. others include cycle a lot to prepare for my 2012 aids/lifecycle ride to raise money for hiv/aids awareness, outreach, testing, and treatment. and to shoot a lot of film and photos. and to read more. and floss more. make more friends. to really fight to be the person i want to be. at the end of 2011 (a dull and rather un-enriching year) i had a feeling 2012 was going to be good. now it’s time to do just that.

.   .   .   .

the other night i took a hike, and thats where these photos come from. check out this video of me during the same hike…

it was amazing. a moment when you stop and think “THIS IS RIGHT”… “DO THIS MORE”. just what i needed. time to explore, feel the ground move beneath my feet, sun on my face, and wind in my hair.

its about getting back in touch with the things i know are good and listening, learning, and being open to the new things in my life.

the other day i went to sit in a garden and listen to a south african poet ian mccallum talk about his poetry and about working in collaboration with a sculpter on a project on display in kirstenbosch gardens. a lot of his work focuses on how we can get back to wilderness, channel wilderness, and the future of wilderness with climate change. it was great chewing on nuggets like

“the rising” by ian mccallum

one day your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
“rise up!” it will say…
“stand up inside your own skin.”
unmask your unlived life…feast on your animal heart.

unfasten your fist…let loose the medicine in your own hand.
show me the lines…I will show you the spoor of the ancestors.
show me the creases…I will show you the way to water.
show me the folds… I will show you the furrows for your healing.

“look!” it will say…the line of life has four paths -
one with a mirror,
one with a mask,
one with a fist,
one with a heart.

one day, your soul will call to you with a holy rage.

and

We have to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing. The Earth does not need healing. We do. Our task is to rediscover ourselves in Nature. It is an individual choice. And how or where do we begin? We begin exactly where we are right now, when we look at the world as a mirror, when we discover that our sense of freedom and authenticity is linked to the well being and authenticity of others – and that includes the animals, the trees and the land. - Ian McCallum

(above is one eight-hundred-year-old tree- for the most part- as it sprawls across the ground and up as it wishes. i had lunch here and took in my reflection on ian’s thoughts)

i am lucky to be here, but mainly to be reminded that if you want something in life you can get it if you fight like hell for it. back in baltimore, i never got outside into really natural spaces. that was because i let myself get caught up in it all. now that i flew from the cage, i can see the places i could have escaped to but lacked the energy to do so. there were times that i tried, but they were few and far between. i need this. this is right. i know it with every bone in my body.

and i can’t stop thinking of one of my favorite lines from calvin and hobbes – “if people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, i bet they’d live a lot differently”

anyway, i hope all is well, and cheers to another year of adventure blogging.

-tbk

this adventure is all about malnutrition— trying to understand how it happens and how to fix it. why? because it is by asking these two questions that foyibi (above) is alive today.

foyibi lives in a rural community outside of kigali. last august i was able to meet her when my hosts at gardens for health international decided to help her family and test out a new style of treating malnutrition. i went along during a house visit and when i saw her she was sad, without energy, and so sick she was unable to start school— even at the age of nine.

something a friend and volunteer here nicknamed “bns (aka bent neck syndrome)” comes to mind. once you see a child with “bns” it is almost haunting because it goes against the very nature of (healthy) children: energy, happiness, and play. while this is not a picture of foyibi below, the truth is that all children with “bns” look the same: hopeless.

gardens for health international gave foyibi’s family seeds, gardening tips, and some basic health education and she rebounded quickly. previously local clinics provided her family with food supplements that brought her back to healthy weight but she continuously relapsed into malnutrition and sickness.

when i visited foyibi this trip she was full of energy and climbing trees, attending school, and (most importantly) happy. the child i met last year is gone without any sign of coming back.

but even now as a healthy child, the chronic malnutrition she faced affects her life. foyibi is just a smidge taller than her five-year-old cousin. this physical developmental delay is frequently called stunting, and can also be accompanied by cognitive delays that challenge education and job potential for individuals throughout their lives. girls with developmental delays can also face complications while delivering children. mothers facing chronic malnutrition can pass on malnutrition to children in utero as well as when breastfeeding- leaving severe long-term impacts.

so how does this continue to happen when we live in a world more than capable of feeding our seven billion neighbors? and how can we go beyond treating symptoms of malnutrition and really get at it’s roots to eradicate it?

malnutrition is clearly a complicated topic. like i said before- it not only starts with not having enough food, but not having enough of the right food.

rwanda has one of the highest population densities in the world and small pieces of land mean not a lot to eat. this is very serious when you don’t have enough money to buy food and your garden is your kitchen.

no land or not enough land and you are forced to buy the cheapest foods and just like in the usa they are nutrient-void foods that leave you feeling full but empty in health.

poor education on nutrition and health leave people unequipped to understand basic illnesses or even the importance of hygiene.

restrictions on teaching family planning and gender inequality and violence bind women into unhealthy and unsafe relationships and withhold resources designed to empower them to be able to decide on their family size.

illnesses including hiv/aids keep families from being able to work for money or work in their own fields. it also frequently orphans children and places them as heads of households.

and the everyday realities of poverty— lack of access to any land, clean water, firewood, or clean living environments fuel the cycle that spirals families and children deeper into malnutrition.

but there is hope.

there are a lot of programs— from grassroots to united nations set to fix this. but we need to change how the prescription for malnutrition works. we need to fix food aid by addressing more of the causes and complications of malnutrition. and we need to change how we view the families looking for our help.

step one, the solution must be local. every child here that has been diagnosed with moderate malnutrition gets nothing from the government clinic as for food assistance. nothing. how is this possible? well, none of the corn-soy blend porridge from the usa has been shipped here. maybe it went to other places, maybe it was held up somewhere, maybe the prices changed. this porridge blend is crucial for getting children the nutrients they need to not slip into severe malnutrition. it also is in desperate need for those who just left being severe malnourished and are trying to make their way back to a healthy weight.

efforts are being made within rwanda to be able to make this fortified porridge and peanut butter supplements locally. challenges faced include a lack of capacity for storing large amounts of grain in such a humid, rainy, and hot climate as well as international patent law (lets not even talk about the asshat that patented food aid recipes). but let’s take it further and make things really local – what if people learned to grow their own solution in their back yard?

let’s recognize food as treatment to malnutrition and illness. sounds like common sense, but you’d be wrong. better food means better nutrition means better immune system means better health means better life. get it? it all starts with growing and cooking of healthier, more diverse foods. we could all look into what we eat a little closer when it comes to figuring out our own health.

but if it was as easy as “…teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” it’d be done. where are all these people that live on a lake and do not know how to fish? education goes a long way, but providing basic resources creates access to necessaries.

the solution must invest in families. take a long-term approach to equip families with the tools to be able to prevent and to treat malnutrition and other illness. educate on clean water, hygiene, family planning, hiv/aids, saving money and more to be able to tackle malnutrition at it’s roots. most families facing malnutrition are already subsistence farmers; let’s give them a boost in the right direction to improve their techniques and practices so that they are able to best care for their well-being.

all of these beliefs and ideas are incorporated into gardens for health international’s prescription against malnutrition. they have built a model that not only addresses many of the roots to malnutrition, but helps the local clinics to take on those roles to be able to treat malnutrition without any presence from gardens for health international (that’s what sustainability really means). it takes time to build the ability for clinics to treat malnutrition themselves this way, but the fact that everything is designed for gardens and health to leave shows the investment within communities that they strive to make.

if anyone reading is moved to make a small (tax deductible) contribution to their organization, you can do so on the gardens for health international global giving page. they really use small contributions from individuals to do so much, and the money goes to what you see— the more than 300 families enrolled since foyibi.

so thanks for reading- this has been what my ‘vacation’ has been filled with. mind maps of interrelated causes and effects of malnutrition, late night dinner conversations and a lot of coffee all to try to get a slight idea of some of these issues. please don’t take my word for it, read about it and research more. and i have to say— when tackling this issue means spending lots of time in the back of a pickup truck going to rural clinics and homes, chatting with and taking portraits of mamas and their babies, and walking through our local town, my vacation was perfect.

back to baltimore and celebrating autumn.

-tbk

this trip to africa was all so i could come to ndera, rwanda. it’s just outside of the capital city kigali and but is just like most of rwanda– full of subsistence farmers that live in small rural communities. this is the land of a thousand hills with long and bumpy dirt roads and green plants everywhere. the rains that continue throughout the entire year make the earth extremely fertile– spit something out and in all likelihood it will grow– but when you go to a local health clinic and spend all day weighing 50 kids from the area with severe and moderate malnutrition you have to ask why is this happening and how can we stop it.

this is what the face of a child with malnutrition can look like. you would think all the children would just get thinner and thinner until their skin and bones– but you would be wrong. many times children actually start collecting fluid in their skin because their body can no longer hold it in the bloodstream (a condition nicknamed kwash). puffiness forms right under the eyes, the checks become rounded and the hair thins from the head. the tummy enlarges into a potbelly and the arms and legs become larger but with a skin that is pulled tight by all the fluid being collected. at first glance, the child can look healthy- making it hard for many people to notice. it’s the children with malnutrition that never develop kwash that are so striking to see- and let me tell you, when you see a seven month old baby that weighs six pounds, it’s hard not to start looking out to blame.

so how does this still happen? it starts with not eating enough and/or not eating enough of the right things but leads to issues of desperate poverty, education, access to land, local, national, and international politics, and flaws with how food aid works globally. all of these issues could be seen when we were at the clinic weighing and measuring the heights of the children to calculate their weight for height and weight for age measurements.

what got me was that this clinic had been reporting zero cases of malnutrition to fall in line with a new push to completely eradicate it from rwanda- which left many families and children hidden from aid for the sake of politics. to change this, brad had gone out to many villages himself to find them and tell them to come to get help. for the ones with severe malnutrition they get a fortified peanut butter called plumpy nut. for the moderate malnutrition cases, they should get a fortified corn and soy blend porridge (called csb) but because none of the supply has left the united states in a while they will get nothing.

and when the severe cases of malnutrition are healthy enough to be considered moderately malnourished, they will then get nothing. when production or trade of food aid from the united states doesn’t work out properly, people here will loose the little ground they have gained to have healthier children. this shows the dependency and sole reliance on handouts to solve global malnutrition.

and this is why food aid is broken. no more just giving out food assistance without realizing the true solution to this issue lives in the hands of the very families that can’t feed their children. let’s invest in them, believe in them, love and cherish them.

-tbk

off the plane, the bus, the taxi and into the maasai country of kenya. we headed out with my friend to see his family, who i had met last year. the conditions of the area they live are hot, dry, dusty, and thorny. the landscape can be pretty dismal at first glance, but you learn to appreciate the bush conditions and to enjoy the views of open sky and dry earth. and plus- with my maasai family, cows, goats, chickens, dogs and wild birds to keep me company as i walked out to see mount kilimanjaro during the sunrise- what’s to really complain about?

i met joseph last year when he was living in lamu, kenya- part of the beautiful coast near somalia. he is working to build his own tourism company- leading and organizing trips all over east africa. we became friends and i visited his family near amboseli national park to get to know him and his family. his mother and family named  me “lemayian” (blessed) and this time alli and her family received their own names and were welcomed into the family. when it came time to leave it was very hard to say goodbye- especially after such a short stay.

then back to the craziness of nairobi – the traffic, noise, and crowds of people all mixed tighter together than you could think possible. if you think it is loud in new york, come here. if you think “pedestrians” in baltimore are bad, come here. if you think the driving is crazy- anywhere- come here to experience  a taxi or bus driver somehow squeeze between cars, people, and animals wandering through the thick of town.

it was good to only be there for hours before we headed to the outskirts of the city to the national park for the elephant sanctuary. this was something i passed going to last time because of the cost- but if you ever find yourself in nairobi- do yourself the favor and go. and please choose to adopt an animal like our lovely friend alli did!

it was so amazing to feed and play with the animals that i have dreamed of getting close to my entire life. elephants are incredibly intelligent and playful – to have them sniff you out, tease any loose items of clothing from you and then continue chewing on the bark of the branches. and they were only feet away! one untied jesse’s shoe and others played tug-o-war with a branch.

there were also two rhinos there- the giant dinosaur-like cows that are gentle if you get to know them (a little harder to do in the bush). we fed one and then enjoyed rubbing the tough leather/armor cloth of the larger rhino when it came by the door of her sleeping pen. as soon as we started to rub on her back and neck, her eyes glazed and shut just like a house cat or dog getting a belly rub. incredible… just absolutely mind blowing. lots of video that will have to wait until i get states-side again.

anyway- now i’m out of kenya- just crossed into uganda today. tomorrow brings rafting on the nile near jinja, and then to kampala and kigali, rwanda! i can’t believe i have only been here for a couple days– and that my trip still has over 26 days left! definitely looking forward to getting to rwanda and settling in there to really start the meat of my trip.

hope all is well and cheers to the five-year-old in all of us,

tbk

doha, qatar = longer layover next time. if you remember from my last blog, i had a surprise day-long layover in doha, qatar (or ‘cutter’). i wasn’t sure what to expect, and with the only people i knew that had ever visited this piece of the earth in the u.s. military, i was hesitant… but it was great- and here’s why…

out of anything i think i learned on this trip, it was to never ever judge anyone before you take the time to meet them on their level (of language, education, or interests) and to keep an open mind and heart for everyone around you. i can’t count how many times complete strangers have helped me along this trip. and then many of those strangers becoming friends (and thanks to facebook- continue to be so). if i had come out of the airport with thoughts about how this predominantly muslim area would treat me (an american of all!), i would have hidden in my hotel room and wasted the day. but i put my trust in people- the locals- to help me get around, find good food, and explore.

back to a muslim area- something i have had a taste of on the coast of kenya. the dhows are slightly different, but the call to prayer sounds the same. five times a day, the city ignites in song. you may hear the soft voice of the call start in the distance… then as more mosques start their calls to prayer, you become surrounded, engulfed in songs of praise to allah. it really is something beautiful and i wish i could have recorded it.

so i spent my day walking around the city, getting lost, getting coffee, and walking the streets as the city slept… until 4pm. my day in doha was a particularly quiet friday (a holy day like sunday for christians), a week after the announcement that doha will host the 2022 world cup, and a week before national day for qatar. it was like a celebration hangover and pre-dinner without the alcohol. so once the sun set sometime after 4pm, people flooded the markets, the sidewalks by the water, and the museum of islamic art. the museum was a beautiful building and housed many amazing works of art from all over the world (sadly none from afghanistan…). que stolen images. tnks google.

but after a day of fun, making friends, having local coffee, and hanging out with local falcon breeders, i had to board my plane for washington dc. i should mention that i had almost no sleep the two days leading up to my departure from cape town, none on my flight to doha, then two hours nap in doha, then none on the plane home. so after about 22hrs of sunlight (flyin with it makes long days) and 52 hrs of near constant travel, i was tired as hell. but excited to see my family and be … home.

well i was home for maybe 10 hrs then we headed to asheville, north carolina… a 10hr drive away (well worth it though)

8inches of snow when we got there, more snow the first two days there. a perfect place to get snowed in…

i thought i was going to die in the cold. a year in perfect, generally sunny, weather spoils you a bit. but damn i love winter too. cause how else are you going to make snow forts with your brother (who almost dresses in a snow burqa)?

.  .  .  .

now enter akaliza, an amazing little girl from rwanda. her favorite thing this day- automatic opening doors at the library. my favorite thing about her- her smile and her heart. but it’s her heart that brought her here. she’s come from an orphanage in rwanda (escorted by brad) to come to baltimore (jhu) for surgery to correct a heart condition. she’s six, loves the colors pink and purple, laughs a lot, and has her own little attitude. i love her. brad came back to america for the holidays, and brought her to stay with him so someone can look after her before and after the surgery.  im glad he’s back, and im glad akaliza has come, because she has given me all the confidence i needed to know i can handle adopting a child from africa. it’s something i always thought i would end up doing, but having her come, i was able to turn to my mother and say ‘this is what your grandkids will look like’ and she said she loves that.

home. it feels good. and now that christmas has past and new years is upon us, it’s time for fresh beginnings. and while i haven’t found a place to live in baltimore yet, i know i am back because i am already taking photos like this again. god i love baltimore.

happy new year, and i hope all is well,

tbk

last time i was in plett, i heard a story about a piano that was retired into the forests behind out hosts’ house- to return to nature and gradually fade away. it no longer plays (it apparently held out for a long time) and the dogs now eat the ivory from the keys.

there was a ceremony and procession to carry it into the woods (quite the feat) and then play it for it’s retiring song. walking down a little path through the woods and coming upon this piano was really something quintessentially south african. not exactly sure why, but it just feels it. and with more time, it will only become more magical as it peels, cracks, dissolves, and splinters slowly into the earth around it.

back through the karoo, the flat land with low bushes, hot sun, and mountains that always seem to rest in the distance. don’t think there are many areas so close to each other but so different as the garden route and the little karoo. cross over one mountain pass, and you’ve changed countries.

this area is huge for ostrich meat, leather, and feathers. when the women in france went crazy for these feathers, many south africans made fortunes as ostrich features were worth more money than gold be weight.

think ‘big dumb turkey’ because each eye is larger than it’s own brain.

feeding.

mimicking and making fun of it. don’t get upset peta people, they don’t mind. after this, we visited a nesting spot and i then learned they actually can get violent. our guide therefore haf to bravely walk first with a large thorn-covered stick… only in africa.

and there i was standing on the eggs, knowing they shouldn’t break, but feeling really nervous cause i would feel really sad if they did break. but even my animal friendly side relaxed enough for me to try to play cowboy on top of one! remember, big dumb turkey. they just run in circles most of the time when someone is on them.

montagu. didn’t know when we pulled into the camp site that i just stumbled into one of the great sport-climbing areas of south africa. it was good enough to drool over.

joined in with a bunch of climbers that all went to school at stellenbosch university. really fun people, good climbers, and don’t hate me because we didn’t use helmets. we did get to see ed february, a legend in south africa and known internationally.

climbing again for the first time in a year. coming back to it was amazing- you take yourself to the edge of your body’s ability, and throw your mind into a war with staying calm …whist trying to find that damn blind hand hold and clip into the rope before you fall.

i was woefully out of shape and couldn’t come to trust myself (are my feet sliding? this isnt working this isnt working this isnt working. why am i here???). this climb was physically easy to do (once you find the holds) but it was an absolute war mentally. damn, i miss climbing. ok, more shots, less words. this is going to be too long anyway.

and back to the cape winelands. cape dutch architecture, bright sun, fun wines, drives with curving mountain roads and free wine tastings.

we stayed at a historic b&b, lekkerwijn (good wine in afrikaans) with great company and many friendly animals. too many peacocks but no idea how to dispose of them.

and in other news, i am coming home- back to america! but first, i have a lovely day to myself in doha, qatar, thanks to flight delay. and thanks to sue (from kentucky – good to hear that accent again!) from cheaptickets.com (after hours on the phone) i have a free room at the la villa palace!

all i know is that it’s surrounded by sand or water, strictly conservative muslim in etiquette, and a place i never really planned on going to.

should be a good last step before i land in washington dc this saturday- cheers to the unexpected!

hope all is well,

tbk

after another great stay in johannesburg, we ventured out to the rural areas in the free state province of south africa. it was amazing. the photo above is the busiest street corner in rosendal, the small town we held up in near the lesotho border. i recommend the cake and coffee: to kill for.

its a tiny old town, full of farms, little houses with large porches, a church, police station/post office, and cafe/shop. the house we are in has creaky floorboards, old windows that need to be propped open (i use a part of a tent pole), and plenty of nick-knacks hidden in every cupboard.  the wind comes through the entire house, slamming doors shut and generously removing any lingering dust covering the furniture. love it. the summer thunderstorms that roll by outside keep it interesting, and the mountains and rolling grassy hills are a great foreground to the huge african sunsets.

the town is stuck in a lost period in time, filled with the artifacts of better years. i had to stop myself from buying too much enamel dining items, antique medium format cameras, or an accordion. i have too much enamel now anyway, too many cameras back home, and no idea how to play a piano, let alone an accordion. but this town is just saturated in nostalgia. i’m in heaven.

we then jumped the border and headed into lesotho- the mountainous, land-locked, hidden country hiding in the eastern side of south africa. it’s scenery is dramatic, the people fantastic, but the level of poverty crushing. with so little resources for industy or development, many of the basotos head to south africa (frequently down to the mines). but for our quick stay, we had perfect weather and great hiking conditions to explore the town and mountains, valleys, and river near our camp.

the valley was massive, and filled with the sounds of cow bells in the distance as well as the songs of the herdsboys as they watched their goats, cows, donkeys, or horses.

the people live off the land, and each other, so far from any sort of town with modern shops or hospitals. we discovered that white flags (made of scrap bag parts) on the roofs of houses meant they had beer made of maize or sorghum, and the yellow flags meant ginger beer. and where there were flags, there were people.

walking between the herds of sheep as we wound around the river, i made a promise to myself to return with a backpack and revisit much more of lesotho. it was a magical place, and the mountains, people, and remoteness of it all was too much to only experience for our time there. we sadly left, but the rain that was coming down as we were driving out was a sign that we made the right decision to move on.

and once back in south africa, we found ourselves in another bizarre corner of the freestate; bethulie. another small town, but this time, with a history that can get very grim. this town had a ‘concentration camp’, set up by the british while fighting the boers (south african farmers) and it was inhabited by the women and children of the local towns and farms. they were all put in the camps to prevent them from helping (food, etc) their husbands during the war, but the plans for running it never really came into place. disease and terrible living conditions ended up killing many of the women and children, and the field above was where they were originally buried. an unfinished monument now erirely stands on those grounds, but the graves themselves and the headstones were moved above a floodline to a new location, which still displays how young some of these kids were.

our host for this time is restoring the town’s old hotel, filling it with what quite possibly will be the largest book and vinyl collection in south africa, southern africa, or even all of africa. the hotel has a ‘the shining’ kind of feel to it, and has some ghost sighting stories to it as well. i look forward to coming back in time, to see his addiciton-filled hotel complete.

his house is where he keeps all his favorite pieces though, and it’s amazing being in a house with every foot of wallspace converted into shelving. i didn’t either bother to estimate the amount of books, and only after estimating one room to contain 21,000 records, did i find out there were another two ajoining rooms and more in the storage rooms in the roof space. addiction to a level i have never seen before.

our drive back down from the freestate, through the karoo, and to the western cape was dramatic- the first half filled with empty landscapes of scrub, the last half of huge mountain passes on a one-way dirt road winding the mountains. my ‘i-almost-died’ count for the trip got two more notches in it on this road.

and back to the familair view that i fell in love with early on our trip. it was our second stop on the road, within the first week of leaving cape town. and back to the indian ocean, which i haven’t seen since i left lamu in august. i miss the ocean so much after being through so many dry landscapes the past four months. those places almost made me forget that water this big really still exists.

i can feel cape town around the corner, just a few stops and a handful of days away. and home: 20 days… i can’t believe it. but i still haven’t figured out why christmas carols are already playing on the radios. whats up with that?

hope all is well,

tbk

… when roddy asked if there were any request on where we should be for my birthday, i said ‘ i’d like to be either somewhere i can go out hiking in the morning, or somewhere with internet so i can call home’. i got neither… i got a afrikaner’s club/resort out in the middle of no where. i was surrounded by tons of greying caravan-totting, heated- pool-loving, white south africans. it was a cultural experience to put it lightly…

example: rachel and i politely chatting to someone at the heated wading pool…
man: ‘ you’re all from cape town?’
rachel: ‘yes- it’s a great place’
man: ‘i have friends that say it’s getting really bad there now…’
rachel: ‘ …bad how?’

man: ‘they say it’s getting really gay.’
me: ‘terrible!’

but with two little girls that love preparing ‘secrets’, and rachel excited to prepare me for life back in the states, what more could i ask for?? …and really, i don’t have anything against afrikaners (even if the men walk around in speedos meant for smaller-shaped bodies and the women have ‘flattop‘ haircuts). the old couple staying next to my tent were amazing- when they heard ‘happy birthday’ being sung to me in the morning, the wife rushed over with some home-made chocolate romany creams. if she knew how to cook anything without meat at the center of it, i’m sure she would have wanted to make me a full meal!

so for my birthday, i was kitted out with garlic peri-peri sauce, two different types of marsala spices, and a set of enamel bowls and coffee mugs (very much like these). we had scones, yogurt and fruit salad (and chocolate romany creams) for breakfast, and ice cream and a chocolate swiss-roll covered in mashed bananas and strawberries for cake after lunch. i should also add the two-liter jug of tussenberg’s wine (aka ‘tussies’, the mix of left-over wines of wineries poured into one jug) to the list.

my gift to myself was watching the pirated copies of ‘fantastic mr fox’ and ‘up’ that i got in nairobi. if you haven’t seen both of these films, do so now…. right now.

and thank yous out to my family and many friends that emailed, facebooked, called, or otherwise sent me messages on my birthday… i owe you all the world.

and if you want a little video fun, give a look to the video i made for a friend for her birthday (in response to her video for me)

now in johannesburg, and i cannot believe how little of the grand adventure is left. but between jo’burg and cape town, i still have a lot of ground to cover and things to do!!!

cheers to 44 days!

hope all is well,

tbk

cheers to the country that keeps you on your toes. the history might be a lot to digest, the politics ugly, and the logic non-existent, but this country is beautiful and full of amazing people. i have to come back here to go to at least one place: mana pools. again and again, all of our great guides that are from zimbabwe can’t stop drooling over it. but i can see why it is so amazing, and i have promised myself to return.

it is a tough country though- it’s basically ruled by the a zimbabwean mob. pay-offs, huge trade deals, lawlessness and backward politics for personal gains. but for the people that have stayed, they all have
their reasons. namely: it’s home, and it’s beautiful.

let’s be honest… this is impressive bridge for an african country…and it was copied bolt for bolt from a bridge built in australia. we found it on our way to great zimbabwe, ‘great stone wall’, which is the earliest site of civilization of this scale in southern africa, and the namesake of the country. fun for archeology, but i just really like visiting this and reading lord of the rings.

back on safari for the first time in five months…. you forget what it’s like being in the back of an open vehicle on the highway… and add small children without any seat-belts, and rest assured that this
would never happen in america. sarita, the montster, lorien, the old woman.

bouldering trip anyone?

notice the ‘shadow paintings’ that can only be seen once covered in shadow… clever guys, those bushmen.

needless to say, we got out of our vehicle at a designated point. welcome to zimbabwe’s parks, with poaching as a huge problem. a new trend is spreading from south africa: poison the horns of your rhino
so that they aren’t poached. bad news for the chinese that end up consuming the horns as medicine, but when the fight against poaching can seem like a loosing battle, what else can be done? another sad
option tried here was to cut the horns off the rhino, making them ‘worthless’ to poachers. i wonder how rhino’s feel about that. and how is that suppose to make you feel when you are out on safari and all
the rhino’s have lost their horns? … at least we found the one that still had his.

but now back into south africa, the land of extremes. what a whole new world; cross a river, and watch the world spin. from seeing people on their hands and knees digging out water from a dry stream bed to water- parks with water slides, multiple pools, fountains, and hot tubs. the development is staggering from what i’ve seen the past six months… it’s nice, but i’m sure a part of your soul dies every time you are forced to listen to musac when you are shopping for groceries.

hope all is well,

tbk

so what’s happened since may? a lot… too much…. way too much.

my trip over land and water (malawi, zambia, tanzania) to see brad in bujumbura, burundi. our overland trip taking us through burundi, rwanda, uganda, and kenya. my departure from brad and reunion with rr&co. getting back to work with greatguides.org. heading south back towards cape town, south africa.

…too many people, places, stories, and not enough time to write them out. i will have to do it upon my return to america in december. for now, the photos are up on my flickr.

…so what’s new?

for one, i got a new house. the old one broke… about 50 times. then brad and i sold the another one for gin.

and i have enjoyed getting back into lodges (…only one yet) that would be too expensive for brad and i to even thinking of visiting. fire’s made for me at night with cookies and hot chocolate waiting nearby. delicious food during the day, all from the organic garden of the lodge. coffee, picked from the plantation of the lodge, hand-roasted daily over charcoal. see the entire process and taste it when it’s ready.

[click above for full size]

we have covered a lot of kilometers, and while the scenery changes as we go, the roads carry the same bumps. and roadside carnage (lots of 18-wheelers on the sides).

and cooking with rachel again. our food has never been better… we are exploring making lots of soups.

and visiting odd places that are old and forgotten- like in the mountains of zambia, a guest house that looks like it had been there forever. and even has an attack guinea foul. zambia also has a curious fact- the trees grow their leaves red, then they change to orange, yellow, and green as the season ‘wakes up’ to the rain. i did not believe this ‘autumn in reverse’ until i talked to a dozen or so people that swore it really happened.

and where am i now? in mutare, zimbabwe- back to the land of uncle bob. only one more week until i’m back into south africa…. and i don’t think i’m ready. i can feel the development, the politics, the chaos of south africa building. to be fair, i’ll love being back in the culture and being able to get things like pecan pies in the shops. and it’s one step closer to home.. only two months away.

and i promise- better blogs coming soon.

hope all is well,

tbk