I tweeted about it.

Here’s the funny thing
Potential Fire in a library? One of the world’s greatest? With three of the four courtyard exits closed tue to improvement works? Surely there should be some panic? Some worry?

Nope. Mostly eye-rolling, looks of disbelief, checking of watches to make sure it’s not just time for a drill.

Our modern life has made us feel incredibly safe. Usually.
I experienced much the same thing about ten years ago in Victoria station. This was before Sept 11th, but after London bombings had pretty much faded away. The IRA and ETA had gone fairly quiet. But still.

The odd thing, to me, is that act irrationally in these sorts of cases, where we may be in actual danger, but we personalise false dangers.

Most people are convinced that crime, and in particular, violent crime, is on the rise in Britain, but it’s been falling steadily.

The chances of an American being killed (or even endangered) by a terrorist attack are approximately the same as being eaten by a shark whilst simultaneously hit by lightning, but we still ran out of duct tape that one time.

The “best experts” provide a good image that they’re providing airport security, but fail to deliver improved security, again and again.

Why is this?
We seem to be rational in the face of danger– no fire, no smoke, no fear. But we’re irrational when facing the unknown. We rely on questionable expert opinion rather than analysing the problems ourselves and coming up with workable solutions, we give in to FUD, which, far from solving problems, creates hidden problems.

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An excellent post by Valeria Maltoni discusses the importance of realising when you’ve lost sight of your customers’ interests and feelings. This reminded me of an ongoing struggle I’ve had with United Airlines, and how they’ve shifted significantly over the last ten years– to their employees as well as to their end users.

The United Experience – 1990s
To be fair, it’s hard running an airline. I wouldn’t do it, but someone does. I flew United a lot in the 1990s, and the experience was as I recall a pretty good experience out of a series of terrible alternatives– the difference seemed to be in the individual pride and power of United employees– they answered the phone as “employee-owners” and would often go the extra mile for you, particularly if something had gone wrong that was clearly their fault.

United in the 2000s
The Noughties brought some slippage– and, to be fair, we had an enormous overall price hike in oil, the troubled aftermath of 9/11, and the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Depending on when and what desk you called, you were likely to be handed over to an outsourced call centre which would have mixed rates of effectiveness. I had a couple of really miserable experiences when I missed flights, but– and here’s the interesting bit– the employees at the gate still had the visibility and ability to make the right changes and sort things out. If you got a bad agent on the phone, you could turn up at the airport 30 minutes or so early and get things sorted.

That, unfortunately, is no longer the case.

United at the start of 2010
I recently flew United from London to Sydney via LAX, four flights in all. I booked upgrades on three of them, and was re-downgraded on two of those. Two of the four flights had bad entertainment systems, and the flights had different baggage allowances (I had 2 bags from Sydney to LAX, but then had to pay USD$50 for my second bag from LAX to London).

Now, there was a terrorist attack. I am 6’3″, so flying in regular coach is a bit of a nightmare, but it’s not the end of the world. I spoke to everyone I could– the boarding agent, the gate agent, the ticket desk, the reservations desk, and the phone-in reservation system, spending, all in all, several hours trying to figure out how to simply get the upgrade difference refunded.

Several of the older United employees were very nice and understanding, but they had neither the time nor the ability to effect the refund. The general feeling was rushed and overworked, and in every United queue I’ve been in there’s been low staffing levels, so everyone is a bit overwhelmed. The only interface to refund this money is a web portal, which promises a 7-10 day working time (at this point, it’s been six weeks for two different requests with no return contact. I’ve contacted my credit card company to request a refund from them).

The dangerous side of customer aversion
1) You alienate your customers — you make it less likely to keep customers coming back. I have a lot of miles on United and generally would book through them on US-based flights. Keeping customers should be easy, unless you kick them out.

2) You undervalue (and devalue) your employees — I’m sure that each anti-customer decision made economic sense when doing it– outsourcing, driving customers to the web, etc.– but the employees– especially the ones who are on the front lines– are the ones who your customers think of you as. When they don’t have the tools to do the right thing, are disempowered, and are the ones that the angry customer will shout at (something I try really hard to do, as I know what it’s like to be an exposed cog).

3) You stop being able to hear your customers — The biggest danger of becoming customer tolerant (rather than customer seeking), is that you cannot engage your customers in a conversation and you stop knowing what’s going on. Once you route calls through an external call centre, you have to spend more time, money, and energy to understand your customers, and you lose some organisational memory and networks which inform you about how your customers feel towards you. You’re probably going to forget to do it (as outsourcing is often cost-driven rather than customer-focus-driven).

If you’re an airline, you’re likely one of the few games in town, and you’ll still get customers. It’s funny, however, how Southwest, JetBlue, and Virgin America can come up from nowhere and gain so many customers so quickly– mostly by listening to customers and treating their employees well.

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On the way, we had a stopover in Milan. And they had an interesting thing there (as we were transferring from international to internal flights we had to pass through the baggage claim area). And this is what I noticed on the way out

You can see when your flight arrived and when the bags should be out.

This was an incredible revelation to me– sometimes it takes 5 minutes for bags to start rolling out while other times it’s more along the lines of 20 minutes. Someone at the Milan airport noticed this and did something about it. Now you can decide if you want to run to the restroom or queue right at the conveyor belt for your bag. If you want to get a coffee from the vending machine or sit down and wait.

Alitalia bag handling at Heathrow
On the other hand, when I returned to Heathrow, Alitalia’s ground crew (they were handling the bags as well as the flight in this case), notified us the bags would be delayed 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, they said 20-30 minutes.

After 25 minutes, they said another 20-30 minutes. At which point I went to the counter to inquire. I got the most amazing story.

What had happened was this: The computer indicated that there were about 20 bags missing from the flight. As the baggage barcodes are read automatically in a baggage sort centre, someone was poking at the computer (probably without the appropriate permissions or something) trying to figure out which bags were missing and which weren’t. Meanwhile, no one was taking the bags off of the aircraft– the plane and passengers sat for over an hour before they got the crew together to unload the bags.

Of course, if they’d done this in the first place, then they would have avoided annoying the 120 or so passengers whose bags weren’t lost. And focussed on fixing it for the 20 people whose bags were lost.

Because of this inability to handle the situation at the time, the ground crew was off unloading another flight and they coudln’t unload the bags for the longest time. Me? My bag was fine. The delay, however, made me the last train from Victoria and had to decide to take three buses home or a £25 taxi.

Terrible handling of expectations, Alitalia.

Zeitgeist, biker bar, San Francisco
This is a bar that probably has the worst customer experience ever– if you use typical views of service. There’s a sign saying that regulars (friends of the bar staff) get preferential service. The hamburger counter is open at odd times, and when they have too many orders they shut down– and they’ll shout at you if you hang out waiting for it to reopen.

Why? They pour great vats of beer and cook a damn good $5 burger. It screws them up to have too many orders pile up, get lost, get greasy. The only can make so many burgers, and their back garden ensures that they’re packed 180 days a year.

They provide pitchers of a wide variety of great beer at decent prices, amazing bloody marys, and good burgers and home fries. They provide a great environment to hang out, drink, and meet people. The experience is what matters. If you’re rude or slow, they’ll shout at you.

Experience and expectations and brands
The Zeitgeist experience is what you want, though. They know who they are and provide exactly that.

Alitalia, of course, doesn’t care. Air ticket purchases are based on price. Once you’re receiving your baggage you’re locked in. Still, though, this is the level of screw-up that puts people off of airlines. Almost every frequent traveller I know has one or two airlines they just won’t fly. Alitalia’s on mine until I see how they respond to my note.

*update* To top it off, the customer service emails they gave me three days ago all bounce.

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Without, hopefully, making strong generalizations, (Africa is, after all a continent comprised of 53 countries, larger in area than the USA and all of Western Europe combined, with over a thousand languages, spread over six distinct language groups-by contrast, the Indo-European languages span all of Europe, through half of Asia.), Africa is a land full of very spiritual people-you see it everywhere, from the surfaces of Mtatus (combi-taxis) and Boda-Bodas (100cc motorcycle taxis), to the ever-present music and dance, to the rise of evangelical “Born-again” Christianity and Mormonism.

President-elect Barack Obama
is, as you might imagine, enormous across Africa. Kenya took off the day after the election. Nigeria (with much less connection) took off three or four days. Uganda, less so, but there’s an Obama club in Kitintale, a shop in Makindye, and. People who speak only Luganda or KiSwahili here offer me a fist bump, chanting “Obama” as I walk to work.

(I’m one of the few Mzungus here who walks anywhere over 500m. Everyone else takes taxis…)

Aside from the obvious link with the neighbouring country and the African origon, there’s no apparent direct reason to support Obama. Additional aid is a possibility, but not a certainty, particularly in this global economic climate.

Which brings us to religion
As many of you know, while I’m interested in religion generally and historically, I’m not a particularly religious person; I used to describe myself as an atheist, but that seems almost like a religion to too many people– very anti-lots of things, and not really worth the energy. I’d rather do things with my energy. I don’t really think I’m much of anything, to be quite honest. However, my view of religion is changing after seeing it operate in Africa.

Religion and spirituality cut across much of daily life in Africa. Family and religion are the centres of people’s lives, and it shows, whether Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or traditional/animist.

The Christian religions have adopted many of the traditional ceremonies– the Baganda wedding ceremony is now the “father’s giving-away” ceremony, for instance, and takes place a week or so before the Christian wedding.

There is strong take-up of Mormonism and Pentecostal or Evangelical Christianity (referred to locally as Born Again Christianity) in recent years, much of which is in the wake of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Mormonism’s strong sense of community aligns itself well with traditional community values– where, for instance, children are often adopted by locals or the extended family if something happens to the family. Islam also promotes strong community and family bonds.

The rise of the Born Again movements coincides both with the rise of the same movements in the United States as well as the coming to a head of the HIV/AIDS problems (including government’s finally recognising these as problems) and economic problems over the last twenty years.

…and its role in society
For many people, the coming of the church (or the church-based NGO) means the buliding of a community centre, or a kitchen, or mosquito nets, improved stoves, or an actual school.

One man that I met, Moses, is the head of a programme that has been building schools in Mbale for a decade. At the below school, when he arrived, “The mango tree was the headmaster’s office, the primary school was the Magnolia…”

A school built by a community, a community built heavily on religion.

Alcoholism
Alcoholism is an enormous problem in much of Africa, whether it manifests in fathers drinking away their problems in cities while their children starve or “Evening Class”– where men gather at the end of the day and drink locally brewed beer made from Sorghum, Millet, or Cassava, sold in buckets, and drunk in the last light of the night until it runs out– typically resulting in falling-down-drunkness.

Alcohol is linked in many minds as equivalent to idleness, lack of development, crops failing, insufficient rain, malnutrition, and a whole host of other problems.

The puzzle of Sub Saharan Africa
Economists are pretty good, over the long-term, at figuring out what will happen. They’re often even better at figuring out what happened and why (especially when they were wrong in the first place). The Solow model would have most of Africa in better shape than it is.

Sub Saharan Africa, however, resists all of the Macroeconomic models. There are many issues that point to reasons for these problems– HIV/AIDS (and other disease), changing weather patterns, distorted effects of aid (often brought in in incomplete packages, so building less Capital Stock than expected), corruption, etc.

Sociologists point to arbitrary land barriers, the difficulty of integrating cultures (Tanzania, with its dozens of tribal groups) seems to have had an easier time than places like Nigeria or Uganda, which have a few distinct groups), corruption, etc.

African Ingenuity and entrepreneurialism
Africans as a whole are amazingly adaptable and ingenious. The uses of trash- plastic bottles and bags– for other purposes is something that people see here regularly. Much of this is driven by necessity. Anyone who’s seen a bush mechanic work knows how much he can do to fix a 30 year old Land Rover with only a ball peen hammer and a pair of pliers.

I passed a guy just yesterday who’d rigged up a grinding wheel to his bicycle, with a stand, so that he could be a mobile knife grinder.

A little loud, but it works…

…and if you can’t fix it, live with it
Also, if you absolutely can’t fix something, then you live with it in its broken state. This applies to being on time for (or even remembering) appointments as well as selling parts off of your broken down car.

Huge swaths of Africa live on used things– whether it’s shopping for used American clothes (with goodwill tags attached) at Owino Market or importing vehicles from Japan (who have to get rid of them at 100,000 km on the odometer), Africans make do with a lot of things, passing them down and down until they’re completely used up.

The role of hope and opportunity
At the risk of sounding a bit too pie-in-the-sky, I would suggest that hope and opportunity play important roles in development.

Religion provides hope. It may not work for everyone, but it works for some people– and for many, it’s the strength (or community pressure) they need to keep out of the bar and go home to their kids. Religion also provides a thought for future planning– important in a country with a life expectancy of 47. Many of the poorer people I’ve met here who are religious are looking at their children’s welfare, trying to get them through Secondary, their Highers, or University– at the very least, a step beyond where they went.

The critical things that religion provides are hope, community, and opportunity. The role of a direct link with God breaks down sociological and tribal barriers, while allowing pride of self to remain. All over Rwanda I see people from Kenya, Ethiopia, and other tribes working– whether for religious or secular NGOs, for the betterment of the country and region.

Opportunity is interlinked with hope. For many people, scraping out a living is the best they can do, and they find opportunity everwhere, whether it’s driving people around on a motorcycle, selling phone cards in traffic, or buying and selling whatever you can.

These guys spent all day to make about $2.50 for this wood. They said it wasn’t worth it, but they had to do something.

Business and government
If you’re a government minister, you’re in good shape. You have access to a car, driver, a house, and cash beyond the dreams of nearly anyone else in your country. There’s nowhere up to go, except to PM/President or head of the Army. There’s also no reason to leave office.

If you’re the President, it’s even worse. To step out of office is to step into relative poverty from Armani suits, limousines, and private jets.

Large businesses, in Uganda at least, are run by foreigners. The situation was the same in Mozambique during the revolution, and the economy was crippled when the management skills left. Zimbabwe, similarly, has a shortage of management skills.

The role of entrepreneurship and aid
There’s a growing trend thinking that aid is Africa’s problem. I personally don’t agree, although it has been (and in some cases continues to be) part of the problem. My colleague down here Arthur and I talked about the difference between MIT thinking and Local thinking. You have these MIT engineers who design some widget that will help the local people, without taking into consideration the habits and adjustment factors that need to change, without looking at the problem as a whole and finding a whole solution (which may be less effective on paper).

Aid workers must do sonmething beyond just coming to a country and hoping to find a solution. Throwing resources at a problem can often make things worse over the long run.

Tntrepreneurship will be critical to Africa’s development– growing businesses from the ground up, building management skills, and honing the skills that people have into thinking bigger about problems, approaching them in a structured way, and solving them for themselves. Businesses need to learn how to hold money, track what they’re doing, and market effectively.

My step now is to spend the next five months (one down! Five to go!) figuring out how to support that kind of work, how (and if) I can do it on a large scale, and how I can make lives better while doing it.

Postscript: Just as I was struggling to get this posted over sketchy Internet, one of our partners sent me this, which seems to support much of what I’m thinking…

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And it’s “real” Africa. This is not South Africa or even Botswana. The power goes out all the time. The Internet is spotty at best. The hot water works randomly. Prices of things are all over the map– from the excellent cafe where I get $1US lunch to the $20US curries. Many, many things are used– at Owino Market you can buy goodwill clothes– the ones the hipsters didn’t buy (but probably wish they did) and nearly anything else.

Of some interest and enlightenment is the auto supply: In Japan, cars cannot operate past some small number of km on the odometer– like 80-100,000, which is a huge boon to developing countries– they are imported en masse such that nearly all “new” cars here are Japanese “used” cars, well taken care of. Much of Uganda operates like this.

What I’m doing, in detail
Working with carbon finance to fund projects, NGOs, and entrepreneurs. An awful lot of what I’m focused on here is cookstoves. About half of the world’s population cooks on biomass cookstoves (wood, charcoal, crop residue, dung, anything that burns), often indoors, and typically on a three stone fire. This means a fire with three stones around it– you know how you chant “I hate rabbits” to get rid of the smoke blowing in your face? Imagine that 6-8 hours a day, often indoors (during the rainy season).

And imagine that, to do that, you have to walk 4 or more km to get your wood. Or buy a bunch of charcoal. You can’t afford to buy in bulk; you can barely afford to buy the food, and you have to choose between Matoke or Posho (Pap, mealie pap, basically a porridge of cornmeal) and charcoal.

It’s a rough situation. What I’m doing is working with NGOs and local entrepreneurs to finance the distribution of energy saving technologies– improved cookstoves, Solar LED lanterns (to replace kerosene) so far, but there are other things as well. The UN IPCCC estimates that 500Bn (!) tonnes of CO2 equivalent can be mitigated in the developing world– and each tonne has a significant impact on people’s day to day lives. One project that I’m working on will directly impact somewhere between 750,000 and 1mm people. This means even if we hit half our targets– it’s a Good Thing.

This woman will cook for these children, every day, with only farm income.

No one smiles, dances, laughs, or sings like Africans…

The Work
The work is exciting, interesting, and fascinating. I recently got back in touch with an old friend, who is looking for work (if you’re looking for an excellent, seasoned marketer and bizdev person who can do most other things, you wouldn’t go far wrong with him). He spoke recently on his blog about making sure that you pick up skills you can take with you. It hit me right away, because, although I’ve taken a complete shift, and could be making more money, the life and business experience that I’m gaining here is invaluable. I don’t know anyone from my class who’s using quite so much of the “MBA stuff” that I am… and I’m happy about it. Plus, I get to live in Uganda!

The laundry list of sklls I get to apply is:

• Operations strategy
• Product strategy
• Company strategy
• Marketing strategy
• Financial reporting
• Financial controls and management
• Financial planning
• Corporate strategy
• Sales
• Consulting

The list goes on– and this is positioning me perfectly to execute the business that I’ve been working on for some time– and to do it in a better way. This is exciting stuff.

This blog
I started out setting up this blog as my “MBA journey”… and I’d intended to finish it when I got a job. As time goes on, however, I enjoy the work that I put into writing it– it’s helped me, at times, capture and concretise some of the thoughts that I’ve been having. It will focus more, in the future, on my analysis of what I’m doing rather than listing my travels and posting photos. You’re going to have to look me up on Facebook or Flickr or whatever to see what’s going on. Hopefully, some lessons can be learned– either that, or I’ll get dozens of comments demanding that I shut up!

Please, go right ahead.

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And we found someone who has no issue whatsoever with pollution, global warming, or much of anything else…

The other sign said “Yes, we have Anthracite”… Just in case you want to run your black-smoke spewing steamship.

kwaZulu-Natal
He used us as an excuse to go and visit his father in kwaZulu-Natal, close to where he grew up. Keith’s father is a fascinating character who left (then) Rhodesia ahead of the revolution and works as an artist in bronze sculptures, doing highly realistic animals. The house is a garden of artly delights. His artist-name is Llewellyn.

Birds by Llewellyn

In Natal, we went to Keith’s old rambling school which was styled after UK public schools, but with much more land and a game reserve. On a drive down to the river, we came across four giraffes sitting down who just stared at us for quite some time– within about 15m of us. It was, actually, really really cool.

The Golden Gate & the Free State
After the brits landed and took over, many of the Dutch settlers headed off into the hinterlands of what would become South Africa to set up their own states. One of these, still remaining as a province, was the Orange Free State. It’s one of the areas with good farmland and which mostly surrounds the country of Lesotho.

Hartman and I hired a car and headed towards Lesotho, but not before spending a night in the Golden Gate park. This was an area where Voortrekkers, Brits, Zulus, and San passed through, as it offered water, shelter, farmland, cover, and all the things that a people need. It’s also stunningly beautiful– Probably the Free State equivalent of the Yosemite Valley.

The other Golden Gate, (minus San Francisco)

Lesotho
A stunning, gorgeous, rough, subsistence-based country entirely surrounded by South Africa. The mountains are so high here that the British and Dutch settlers and even Shaka Zulu pretty much left it alone. After the Difaqane the Basotho people migrated in and Shaka didn’t think it worth it to move in. Their loss.

There’s not a whole lot in Lesotho (pronounced “Le-soo-thoo”)– gem diamonds and water, pretty much. They grow a fair amount of food and sheep, goats, and cows. Wild animals are pretty much nonexistent (although on a hike I’m pretty sure I found a hyena print, and if anything could survive, it’d be the hyena) as everything is cultivated.

They do have water, though. Lots of it. It rained quite a bit while I was there (including one serious 50k/hr wind with huge raindrops for the last 2km of that aforementioned hike– I got seriously wet, though my back was bone dry, such was the wind) and you can easily see the places where the water washes the rich topsoil away– they call them Dongas. A man named Fanuel Musi filled in the ends of the dongas with stones– creating rough stone walls which catch the rich topsoil– a remarkable, simple, elegant, low-tech way of land conservation. His wife or his firstborn son takes you and shows you the work for a small donation, and you get the impression that Mr. Musi was a fascinating character– and stubborn!

Our second and third day was in Malealea, also known as the Gateway to Paradise. one of the many collective-style projects that dot the country. Malealea has a lovely backpackers who nightly host an excellent chorus, and a band who made thier own instruments from oil cans and whatnot, who were also excellent. Unfortunately, they made a CD whose quality is really bad… I’ll have to live it through memories.

Give me that big booming bass, in your face.

What’s that about a job?
After leaving Lesotho (for far too short of a time– I’m itching to go back with a proper tent, water filter, during hopefully the slightly-less-rainy season to do some significant hikes or possibly pony trekking– we headed back to Jo-burg, where I got the results of my my job interview–

I got it!

I’ll be moving to Kampala, Uganda after just a few days back in London for six months. There’s a nonprofit called CEIHD (Centre for Entrepreneurship in International Health and Development) allied closely with UC Berkeley who is leveraging carbon finance to fund efficient cookstove production in Uganda (and elsewhere). I’ll be working closely with their partner (who’s actually developing the stoves) to develop a comprehensive marketing/sales strategy, organisational & operational controls, financing packages, and sales initiatives to drive these things– basically, I’ll be using all the “MBA stuff”, and doing exactly what I went to business school to do, while fleshing out my experience, management skills to do the work that I want to do.

Which rocks. I’m quite excited. If you read this on my blog and you haven’t had an email from me, please excuse me– I haven’t had a decent Internet connection for a couple of months now and am very behind on my email.

The thing most worth doing in Jo-burg…
is the Apartheid museum. It’s even worth spending an hour lost (road signs and maps don’t seem to match too well…) finding the place. This museum traces the situations that gave rise to Apartheid, its history, and its fall. It does so in a very fair way, without needless blame on the parties involved, including self-criticism where appropriate.

Museums filled with nation-building have an effect on me, and this legacy is so close and real to us today– most of us can remember at least part of it, and the legacies of Apartheid are very visible all over South Africa. It’s very moving. They say it’ll take about 2 1/2 hours, but we spent four there, and could have spent longer.

The most difficult to enter room for me– one noose for each “official” political execution. How many unknown Mandelas or Bikos died before they could flourish?

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This elephant is very old and very excited.

Maybe he was watching the young whippersnappers?

Lots of babies, the teeniest to the right.

Fish eagle mating pair with prey.

What are you lookin’ at, punk? You making fun of me?

Zen baboon, zen wannabe baby

Kingfishers in tree

Camo-croc.

Yet another African sunset…

Economic collapse
I have very few photos in Zimbabwe, save of the Falls themselves. It hurts to see the kind of desperation and economic collapse that exists there. Vic Falls’ position as a tourist destination makes even more surreal: Within a few hundred metres of people paying $150 a pop to bungee jump, white water raft, abseil, skydive, etc, there are grocery stores who have nothing on their shelves– even if they have the money. The local restaurants have hand-lettered menus with prices crossed out, and more often than not, your choice of meal rests on what’s available.

Outside of each backpacker’s or hotel there are five or more men with Zimbabwean curios who wait to sell or trade their wares to you. Outside of ours, there were a total of ten people who left. People traded socks, sunglasses, tank tops, towels; nearly anything has value. I asked a few people and the way this works is there’s a wholesale-style craft market outside of town which will also trade for goods. Then, there is a secondary barter market where the traded goods are exchanged again, sometimes for food. All along, things can go to families.

Foreigners are required to pay for accommodation and meals in foreign currency, though locals must buy in Zim dollars at markets (when there is anything to buy). Banks are required to submit all forex cash to the central bank each night, which means that they will loan money indiscriminately, especially later in the day. This keeps a flow of currency and goods coming in, and keeps a flow of money going to the government via the central bank. The central bank sets the official exchange rate, which is somewhere between 25% and 30% of the market rate.

Meanwhile, the finance ministry prints Zim dollars as fast as it can.

Set prices, and chalk for the Z$ price

It’s a terrible cycle, and one that no one knows how to break, if it can be broken at all. It’s set up a horrible system whose lynchpin is Mugabe. The alternative would be a power vacuum, in which anyone, someone who could be worse (yes, we have seen worse than Mugabe, and probably will again) could fill that role.

The people
The Zimbabwean people, however, are quick with music, with laughter, with wit and with knowledge and understanding of the world around them– People could and did speak intelligently about the US elections, the South African ANC split, moves for land redistribution in South Africa (and fears that it would go similarly to the way it did in Zimbabwe, without learning lessons from their own past mistakes). Many people in Africa consider their primary and secondary (pre-university) education better than any in Africa. (This is one of the few areas in which Mugabe has to be recognised as doing something good– he maintained the top-tier education system that he inherited from Rhodesia). Smiles are everywhere, and they come quickly. The tribal differences between Shona and Ndebele have been put aside– there is no longer the violence that has been very recently seen even in ‘civilised’ South Africa.

If people can fix it, they will, if not, they seem to live with it– and not to complain or worry too much about things outside of their control.

The Falls
David Livingstone named everything he could after Queen Victoria. The falls were originally called “Mosi-a-Tunya”, which means “smoke that thunders” in Shona. They’re pretty cool, even at low water season (like now).

Gerit takes photos of the falls

Smoke that thunders– in high water season, one can’t even see down the falls, the mist is so thick.

Ruud gets close to the edge with his magic camera. Ruud was like Macgyver– with binoculars, nightvision goggles, and a supafly Canon D30.

Hartman “goes beyond this point” (where it was decidedly not slippery)

The bridge from which the foolhardy bungee jump. More from the Zam side than the Zim, unfortunately.

Water buffalo stare-down, from 10m or so. All of Vic Falls is in a national park & game reserve. There are elephants & baboons, too. One is advised to not have a shiny camera out all the time.

End of the (truck) journey
Mariah and I had planned to travel through Zim, to Great Zimbabwe, a medieval-era fortified city, on our way to Malawi and Mozambique, but the situation in Zim has given us pause. We’re going to transit back with the truck for 2 days back to Jo-burg, see Keith, I’m going to interview for a job there, and then see what we’ll see. Probably Mozambique, but maybe just the eastern side of South Africa.

The overland truck tour was, I think, a pretty good– and relatively inexpensive– way to see a lot of stuff in a reasonable time. It was roughly US$1250 for 21 days, including (almost) all meals, accommodation (18 nights in tents, 3 in lodges), park fees, etc. There were a couple of other things we had to pay for– the Zim visa, for instance (they change the fee all the time).

It’s a good way to also get a fairly safe intro to traveling overland in Africa, and some slices of information (depending on your guide– I think we were very lucky here) that otherwise might be missed. And there were interesting people to meet, which was nice.

It was, however, a little bit isolating at times. Much of traveling in Africa as a white, comparably wealthy, foreigner, however, will always have an element of this. Most of the campsites and backpackers are gated & fenced, for security reasons. Most of the time you’re riding on trucks with the other extranationals. This protects you from petty thieves and touts, but also means less interaction and less understanding. I might do second trip like this, but it would have to be something or somewhere that I needed to see, or be on my way somewhere– transit with a bonus, more or less.

Farewells, and on to the next thing!

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Here, the Okavango river splits into five “fingers” of smaller rivers that make up the delta. There are loads of wildlife here– Zebras, Giraffes, Wildebeest, Storks, Eagles, Cranes, and especially Hippos.

Hippos are incredibly cute and also quite terrifying. To explain why is to explain first what a Makoro is.

A Makoro is kind of a cross between a Punt and a canoe. It’s poled along by polers (see below) but it’s very tippy. I tried it and fell in once, but only whilst turning around in the grass.

Hans, poling Holger and Silvia.

You take a truck (a WWII-era Daimler) to the edge of the Delta where you get into a Makoro, and then you have a very sunny (25th-ish parallel) but very relaxing Makoro ride to your camp.

Gladman chilling before cooking– a lot.

Camping is pretty primitive– bush toilets (short-drop), spaces cleared, boiling water to drink, etc. Then you go on nature walks to see what you can see. This can be a number of things. Ours included: Hyena tracks, Hippo tracks and scat, Giraffes, Zebra, Wildebeest at 20m, baboons at 100m, and, eventually, hippos at about 10m.

Hippos are terrifying– to repeat myself. To see one showing you its teeth from about 10m away, when you’re sitting in a fibreglass makoro is quite scary– especially when you see them move through the water– fast.

I’m big. No, really, I’m big. I have big teeth, and I will F*$@ you up. Seriously. Don’t tempt me.

They don’t really mess around. The guides– who are quite smart and educated– are rightfully terrified of them.

But they’re cool as well. And seriously impressive.

We spent most of our time in the water, and me reading Steinbeck’s East of Eden, when we weren’t taunting the hippos.

It was good. Peaceful. Quiet.

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Think of the Black Rock Desert, not nearly as hard, far more salty, and surrounded by arid savannah with a few water holes. Here there are a wide variety of antelopes, from teeny tiny Steenboks up to the Oryx and Eland Antelopes, Lions, Hyenas, Leopards, Wildebeest (AKA Gnu or Nature’s Nachos), Black and White Rhinos, Giraffe, Elephants, a variety of great African Eagles, Owls, and more.

And we saw loads. Much of the game in Etosha has adapted to the local environment and don’t migrate as game in other areas do. The game is focused around the watering holes, which means that lots of it can be seen, along with fascinating interactions. Additionally, there are floodlit water holes at all of the major campsites, which means that, although there is a lot of game driving, much of the big game comes to you.

Nature documentary fans will know what the water hole means– action! although I didn’t see anything get eaten, I did get to see a bit of interaction!

Unfortunately, the USB ports on my machine have become pooped, and I can’t get the photos off for Etosha, so you’ll have to make do with descriptions.

Lions
Our guide tells us we were lucky– we saw lions on each game drive and on the second night at the campsite. Mostly males, but we did see nine lions, including six lionesses on the final morning game drive out. The first time we had a Near Dark-style run for the gate at sunset– they lock the gates to the campgrounds at sunset, and woe betide the traveler who doesn’t make it– apparently, you sleep in your car at the gate.

Black Rhinos
One of the only things that doesn’t fear the lion– quite the opposite in fact. We saw rhinos several times, but they were most interesting at the watering holes– they came by late at night. The last time we saw them, there was a family of three (bull, cow, pup) joined by another cow. The second cow left, and then a lion came up to drink.

The Rhino has little to fear from any predator save man. They are huge, thick-skinned, fast, and strong. The old, the infirm, and the young, however, do. And they are protected fiercely by their parents.

When the lion came to drink, at first, he was ignoring the rhinos, who formed a defensive ring with the bull between the pup and the lion, snorting at it. The lion drank for a while and then finally stopped, staring at the rhinos. After some time and more snorting, the bull rhino did a mock charge– ran about 10m towards the lion, who turned and walked away. Amazing.

Elephants
Elephants are one of southern Africa’s success stories. A huge group of these giant beasts hogged the watering hole one evening, playing, drinking, and spraying themselves in the 40 degree heat while the other animals waited, very patiently, to drink. Elephants get to do whatever they want to do.

Hyenas
Unusually, we got to see a couple of hyenas, both the brown and the spotted variety. These guys typically hide away from everyone, but in Etosha, the lack of human hunters has them somewhat less fearful. Elsewhere, they’re considered pests and killed on sight, as they will hunt and eat anything, pretty indiscriminately, and are quite fierce.

The Pan
The Etosha Pan itself is the remnant of a prehistoric lake bed. It’s a salt pan that coveres nearly 5000 square kilometers (110×60 at its widest point). The name of the park comes from the pan itself, which means “Great White Place”.

Next
Onwards and upwards– to the Okavango Delta, hippos, water buffalos, more elephants, and who knows what all…

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The Score, so far

So far, we have:

Springbok (a tasty little deer-like creature)
Gemsbok
Oryx
Mountain Zebra
Ostrich
Baboons
Great White Sharks
Southern Right Whales
and countless types of lizards (including the ones that switch feet on the hot hot sand), beetles (including ones that stand on their heads to catch moisture & ones that drum the ground to call mates), scorpions, ants, ant lions, turtles, and more…

And have spent most of our time on the coasts and in the desert. We have more desert tomorrow (we head from the Namib into the Kalahari, which stretches from here to Angola. We have (today) crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, so it is officially hot. Unlike in the subtropic climate we were in before, which was, um, hot.

For real.

Current thoughts and reflections
I’ve had a lot of time on the truck to think. I mean a *lot* of time, and it’s been good, overall. I did listen to a couple of audiobooks and definitely did some zoning out dozing while staring at the side of the road passing by… But a lot of what’s come out is my career thoughts and directions, some of which has to do with the current market climate and some of which just has to do with lessons learned, strategies for getting where I want to go using what I have, etc.

Today, I decided to revisit Matt from (Re)Bar‘s List. As he told me at Ra & Xtna’s wedding, he got to making a living running (Re)Bar by making this list. I made a list, which spanned big things (I want to create positive chagne in the world) to little things (I want to ride my bike to work), and that’s what got me to Oxford. I kept thinking that I should revisit it, and I have. It’s been enlightening to look at some of the positions I’d applied for but hadn’t really wanted (and have turned down, in some cases… perhaps not the right thing to do in this market, but I am little if not goal-oriented) with my new list in mind. It’s also been very good to re-examine some of what I do want to do and start to re-think my own “value proposition” in terms of my list. So that’s good.

The Photos
What’s one of my blog posts without some photos, preferably without me in them?

Sunrise, sunset… Sunrise, Sunset. Many early mornings. This is the sunrise from Dune 45 in the Namib Desert. A rough and *cold* 130m dune climb before the sunrise, but worth it.

Another Canyon, another sunet, this time Nick & I climbed back up…

The next of the weaverbird. They keep building these until they collapse, and then they start over. There’s a whole ecosystem going on in here with a small hawk and some wasps that live here, protecting the weaverbird from snakes.