The rain is pouring down as I sit in the familiar sanctuary of the studio. I have been traveling through five African countries: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The journey covered over 5800kms over some of the most challenging road surfaces I've experiences, through hot, dry and dusty terrains. I was in a truck with 15 others from a diverse range of countries and a Zimbabwean driver and guide. It was a fabulous bunch of people. We pitched our heavy khaki tents each night, unpacked them each morning, ate our meals prepared by Blessing our guide out of the side of the truck. We ate each of our meals in a different place as we just kept moving, often for hours a day over stark and stunning places. It was intense yet surreal. With limited access to the internet, the outside world disappeared and in the place usually occupied by the attention of unsettled, haphazard and unpredictable demands of the news cycles, what returned was the sense of being grounded again.
The trip took me back to my childhood and propelled me forwards to a more present now. I became more aware of the complexity of the world, the reality of people that lived in environments that seemed challenging yet simpler to me. The nature of how we traveled unfortunately meant I wasn't able to be as immersed in these worlds as I would have liked. I truly was just a transient observer, separated by the body of a truck, or overnight stays in parks, or ducking into shops for supplies in tiny towns that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. But the breadth of the distances i covered and the complete immersion in this experience did, I feel, impart enough of a shift within my being, that it was more than a holiday, if indeed it was ever that, and more of an opportunity to meet myself again after having been dissociated from that core self for such a long time.
There are so many places that i cannot include them all. I had intended to do some drawings and sketches, but I didnt realise we would be bouncing and moving in a truck everyday and when we arrived at our destination each evening, we would have to erect our tents, grab a shower and then pull up a stool to eat before falling into the dark cave of the tent to sleep. So having the photographs are a godsend.
I had a few highlights of course. Being in a canoe in the Okavango Delta moments from an old elephant, being in Etosha with eTosha, seeing the rock art by the San people, flying in a helicopter over the Falls (Musi -Oa - Tunya Falls) and coming across my Grandfather's story and photograph in a Livingstone Museum as well as laughing as the troop of us, jumbled down Dune 45 in Namibia.
We spent our last few nights in Livingstone, Zambia in a strange twist of events, in a place called Fawlty Towers. It was an oasis. There is next to no power available in Zambia. The electricity runs between midnight and 4am. The heat was unbelievable. Around 39 degrees. no fridges, no air conditioning, no lights, no fans, no stove. The supermarket was even in absolute darkness. People walk around using their phone torches to find their groceries. So that experience made a huge impression.
Sitting in the shade and painting some ideas.
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