My dear friend, Corina, is doing a wonderful thing this summer: She will climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and raise funds for a worthy charity, the Amani Children’s Home, a safe haven for street children in Tanzania. She is setting up a website that will describe her preparations, the trek itself, and her visit to the home at the end … Continue reading
A late afternoon at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve was another welcome escape during my busy work week in Gaborone. Only 15 km south of town, the Reserve was a short, beautiful ride away from my hotel. We drove under Botswana’s endless sky, red, rugged earth stretching to infinity, and I felt all my worries, and meetings, … Continue reading
“I got down from the wagon and beheld the distant view of the beautiful mountain of Stellenbosch, Jonkershoek and Drakenstein; before me lay a spacious valley planted with vineyards and plantations, and in its centre was the village of Stellenbosch. At that distance it looked like Paradise. I felt a surge of nostalgia, I thought … Continue reading
A staple of many a far-off destination: the pigeon, always there to provide the familiar grey, the endearing vermin that keeps on spreading. I usually try not to catch one in a photograph, but they do sneak in. I will count them today. In London, I caught the beginning of the end of the pigeon domination … Continue reading
In Gaborone for a week, working, I had an afternoon free. For months before, I must confess, I devoured the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book series, set mostly in Gaborone and following the wise and “traditionally built” Mma Precious Ramotswe. The novels, escapist, sunny, and depicting a good-old-world-that-never-was, made me feel vaguely homesick and soothed. … Continue reading
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