Perspective.

Tonight I am sleeping in a police station in a small town in rural Limpopo called Vuwani.

While I was waiting for the room I am staying in to clear, a boy of about 7 years old sat tentatively on the chair next to me and I greeted him in the little bit of Venda that I know. Quietly he looked up at me and nodded a badly bruised head. The combination of bruises and a police station can lead one to a pessamistic view on the origin of bruises, but I hoped that he had fallen while playing soccer or something and only looked so dazed because he didn't know quite how to react to this scruffy white guy sitting next to him. The lady who had greeted me earlier in English smiled and asked if I knew Venda, and I explained that I had just started learning. The little boy asked me something in Venda which she translated as, "Where is your car?!", I laughed and tried to explain what I was doing in English while the lady translated. He milled this over for some, then asked again, "But where is your car?!". The lady and myself just laughed...

The room cleared and I went down to where I would lay my sleeping mat on the floor and spend the night. The officer explained that the room I am staying in is used for counseling victims of domestic violence. We headed back to the main building of the station so that he could show me where the bathroom was. As we were walking I asked the officer if there is a big problem with domestic violence in the area, to which he replied, "A very big problem! This lady for instance is a [victim] of domestic violence." and pointed to a woman who was laying down her blankets, much like I was about to do, to spend the night on the concrete floor of the police station. She had one child strapped to her back and her oldest stood next to her with that dazed look that I had hoped was just out of suprise at seeing a white hobo in his small town. But the dazed look wasn't because of me and the bruises weren't from falling during soccer or some other fun thing. As I lay my sleeping mat down on the concrete floor in the counseling office I realised that I was doing it out of choice, that boy's mother was doing out of necessity.

That just added a little perspective to my night and my lifestyle in general. I suddenly have a far greater appreciation for my freedom of choice.

Feet are feeling better by the day and looking forward to another good days walking tomorrow! By choice.

Louis Trichardt... I mean Makhado... No wait... Louis Trichardt!

I must apologise for the lack of blogging, but I've not really been in the mood... So this is just a quick "I'm not dead yet" (Don't worry! I'm not planning to die on this trip but my eventual death is inevitable, hence the "yet").

I'm currently in Louis Trichardt, which was Makhado for a short while before officially changing back to being Louis Trichardt (though many of the local signage is as confused as I am). I am being accommodated by Carel, a local cyclist who found be on the road while training and I have had a fantastic 2 day rest (after not having a single rest day last week!) in the nature reserve and environmental education centre that he works at. I recently had a wonderful visit from some close friends (basically extended family) whose company did me a world of good!

Details and updates to follow soon... ish...

Also, check out the September issue of Go or Weg magazine, I'm on page 16!

QWERTY!!!

A QWERTY keyboard now lies beneath my fingers, much better than blogging from a cellphone!!! I'm sitting at an Internet cafe in Mafikeng, there are malls, restaurants, franchises and chain stores! All quite a change from what I've been walking through, but more of that later.

From Andriesvale where the Germans had found me and Johnny Depp dropped me off, I headed a short way to Askham. That's where the whole lightweight revolution happened which I've already mentioned. It's also where I met TJ who made the change possible by letting me leave Olive in his garage till I finish. It was great to meet TJ not only for that reason but also because he was a welcome change from the largely unfriendly, conservative population on the stretch between Noeniput and Askham. I was starting to wonder if there was any truth to the rumour that Kalahari people were friendly (aside from before Noeniput were people were incredibly friendly!), luckily TJ confirmed it. He seemed to get the ball rolling because after that I met the owners of Loch Broom Paradys who gave me a free night's stay and tried their best to load me with as much food as they could give me! I met Jaco and his family who ran a hunting lodge, they also had the coolest pet meerkat that they had rescued from someone dragging it around by a piece of wire. I thought I'd see more meerkats along the way because I was walking past the area where they filmed Meerkat Manor, an Animal Planet documentary series, but there were far more mongooses than meerkats along the way.

Entering Van Zylsrus there is a sign that says, "Relax, this is Van Zylsrus". The laid-back and quirky nature of the welcoming sign was echoed by the Van Zylsrus Hotel. A highly recommended stopover if you're in the Kalahari, the decor is really something and facilities are excellent! I am doubly glad that Erns (the journalist from Weg! Magazine) recommended I try the hotel because before Van Zylsrus I would see pretty girls here and there and wonder if they were really pretty or if they just seemed so because I had been in the bush for the past two months, far from the window of Drifters in Sandton where the other guys and I would goggle at the models walking past (a cry of "Muesli" or some other code word would alert all the staff that something worth looking at was walking past, I think the customers must have thought we were insane when the fashion shows were on because shouts of "Muesli!" were frequent enough to make anyone think we all had a health-food variety of tourettes), but a girl in Van Zylsrus set a new standard! Sjoe... Hopefully more to write about her one day...

Well, that's as far as I got on the QWERTY keyboard before the café closed. I left the hunt for an internet café till Saturday because I thought Mafikeng would be a big enough town for shops to stay open late on Saturdays... I was wrong. So back to the cell phone! Will carry on blogging to get back up to date but I'm not making any promises on a date, things tend not to go according to plan anyway.

For now though, this is my first day leaving Mafikeng after I rested there for a week. The idea was to let my feet recover and get them good and strong but they feel worse now than when I walked into Mafikeng!! This makes the week feel like a waste but at least I ate and slept well...

More to follow in the not too distant future...

Flying Teddy Bears and other Survival Strategies

Even more interesting than the people is the wildlife of the Kalahari, the smaller creatures that I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't been walking. Beetles with concave heads that pile sand on their shells for camouflage, beetles that disguise themselves as bok-drol (one did a poor but entertaining impression of a fresh springbok dropping as it buried its head in the sand when you disturbed it, but another did a spectacularly convincing impression of a month-or-so old steenbok dropping!), bugs that look like flying teddy bears (I still haven't worked out how that's a survival strategy), but the most convincing disguise was a rock edged with succulent leaves that, when you got close, pretended for a while to be a locust, just long enough to get a few feet away from you so that it could carry on being a rock edged in leaves.

The mice have also been entertaining, darting between tufts of grass where they survey the sky for predators before sprinting the next stretch of sand. One night, I happened to be standing in the way of one little mouse's nightly foraging routine. He looked surprised for a short while, then nibbled at my shoe and after deciding that at least that part of me wasn't edible, continued. Possibly the most spectacular thing has been the giant communal weaver nests, one single one as big as a Landy Defender 90 hanging from a telephone post. Some trees house bigger collections of nests though, a collection of 5 or so the size of small cars! Along with the multistory flats there were also the smaller modern style nests, where the nest was built on a telephone post but most of the next leaning out to one side supported by the wires as opposed to the pole. This gate those nests a distinct Jetsons look. There were also the loners, and communal weavers are pretty terrible at building single family nests! Functional though they are, they are anything but neat! This lends the odd tree scattered with smaller weaver nests the character of a colony of outcast hippies, all the more amusing when in their shade you find a poorly groomed sheep, sparing it's rastafarian style dreadlocks from the kalahari sun.

Heading towards Askham, the striking outline of the quiver trees long gone, the giant nests of the weavers started to give way to the rollercoaster flights of the hornbills and the spectacular colours of the lilac-breasted rollers. The grassland gave way to a more bush-like terrain with far more trees and the road (which wasn't great to start with) turned to silt, sucking the wheels of the cart down and doubling, tripling the force needed to pull my worldly possessions. Then a day before Askham I found tar again for the first time in two weeks. I also found a well supplied shop, and Germans.

They organised for me to leave Olive in the store room and we drove a few kilometres up the road to where they were camping for the night. On the way they tried to swing past the bottle store,"Ah man, it's closed..." one of them said, "But we don't care because we are in the f***ing Kalahari!!!!" to which everyone in the car replied with a loud cheer! This routine was repeated anytime something didn't go according to plan. 'Everyone' was Flo and Johnny (Be Good or Be Bad depending on what he was doing when his name was called) who were out from Germany working in the cape at a San educational centre along with Johnny (Depp) and the two other guys whose names I can't remember. Matza made three Germans, he was a friend of Flo's out to visit. We drove to Johnny Depp's father's farm, part of a communal farm area that had been given to the coloured and San community after they were evicted from the area where the Kgalagadi or Kalahari Gemsbok Park now exists. At first I envied the Flo and his two companions, mixing with the locals without having grown up with any racial tension, without anyone trying to blame them for whatever circumstance they find themselves in, but when the other two coloured guys got hopelessly drunk I sort of pittied them for perhaps seeing things out of context. The way they spoke about the 'boere' made me wish I could introduce them to all the friendly Afrikaaners that I had met that treated me and anyone of any colour with the utmost respect and welcoming hospitality. They did seem quite upset that their friends(and many people in the semi-integrated san community) were hopeless alcoholics though. They justified it as I've heard many people justify alcoholism in the coloured community, but their argument was flawed in that their sat Johnny Depp, a proud hardworking family man.

Mostly the evening was very enjoyable though, I particularly enjoyed the company of Flo with who I shared a passion for music and life (though we expressed them in quite different ways which was interesting). Perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening was when I realised where I recognised the name of the place they all worked: Khwattu... On the second night of my walk I had snuck into their gatehouse for a place to sleep! I told them this, apologised for trespassing, and we all had a good laugh...

I will hopefully get to an internet café soon where I can update the rest with a proper keyboard(hooray!)!! I am resting in Mafikeng at the moment so there are internet cafés, I was supposed to go today but it's a bit weathery and I'm a fair walk out of town. The forecast is good for tomorrow so I will hopefully get the blog completely up to date then. And thank you all for the comments! They are great to read!

Tough

Not the walking, although that's been tough too... What's tough now is trying to extract a small selection of moments from the last few weeks which I think someone reading this might find interesting. Not at all because there hasn't been much interesting happening but because so much interesting and strange things have happened that nothing is normal anymore! There is nothing with which to compare one day's experience to because each day is a standalone story, independent of the day before and the day after except maybe for the steady change in weight of food and water. Each moment in fact has become standalone and often I find myself so desensitised to the idea of walking that I forget where I'm going or why I'm going anywhere at all, drifting along in thought that both alienates me from and unifies me with everything withing the limits of the horizon. Being interrogated by a catholic missionary from Kenya who thinks I'm a spy provides an experience similar to being abducted by 3 crazy Germans and taken to a braai in the dunes with some alcoholic bushmen. A cold winters frost issues a rejection similar to an offensive stare from a disapproving local. A firm handshake and a friendly smile feels quite like the warmth of the morning sun. As hippy as that might sound it's hard to describe it in any other way! What is also tough is blogging from my phone, which is perhaps why I've been so reluctant to blog but here goes:

Actually, before I roll the highlights reel, I think I should share with anyone reading a simple yet ingenious (I believe) formula that I resort to when I begin to lose track of where I'm going and why I'm going there. I cannot claim to be the first to propose such an idea as I have not had time to research what the great minds of our time have concluded on the subject of walking but I think you'll find this quite a revolutionary concept; a formula for walking! Mathematical perhaps not, more of a biomechanical formula that I believe could help many people on long walks (most don't realise but there are actually many people doing very long walks at the moment all around the world) who tend to stray or overcomplicate things. So, here it is:
Step 1: Move left foot forward.
Step 2: Move right foot forward.
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 while breathing.

And that's it! After reducing the mechanics to something so simple, I find it strange when people find me strange. All I'm doing is putting one foot infront of the other and people can't seem to make sense of it. Of course I still need to do some testing on the formula, particularly the implications of starting with step 2 instead of step 1. I do worry that this may induce a bad day as the phrase 'to start off on the wrong foot' must have started somewhere! But on with the highlights...

Kakamas has amazing dates! Not the Friday night kind, but the kind that are grown in Pella from trees that Oom Gertjie Niemöller brought from Yuma in America. These dates are best bought from Die Pienk Padstal, a shop with serious character! Past Kakamas I headed to Noeniput. En route I was fortunate enough to be accommodated by the Myburgh family."Ons is lief vir mense!", were Koot's words and his son ,Willem, and his family who I stayed with, certainly shared the sentiment.

Just before the Myburgh family I had reached the 1000km mark! I was hoping to make some phone calls but the area had no reception so I quietly celebrated on my own by running back about a kilometre to try find one of my waterbottles that had fallen from Olive. No such luck. Instead I made some room in the other bottle and filled it with water from the dodgy dam next to my party stop. Thank goodness for water purification drops is all I can say!

Past the Myburghs the landscape was almost dream like; vast grassy fields that danced in silver and gold around the occassional abandoned house where a rusty old windmill would slowly turn over in the wind providing the perfect ambience for a bunch of cannibals to invite you with a southern 'States hillbilly twang to come in for 'dinner'. Further on, the dunes began to sprout from the grassy plains. Some a tawny colour but most that deep Kalahari red. There's something comforting about the dunes, perhaps its the distance that you can see when you stand on top, some basic programming deep in the primitive part of our brains that rewards us for getting to a high point, where we can easily see any predators coming for miles, with a euphoric sense of calm. Or perhaps its that the dunes are affected by the weather on a time scale that is far easier for us to identify with than that of a rock formation carved out over millions of years. Instead the ripples in the dunes could have been formed by a strong wind that left you sand-blasted two days ago. Just as majestic as the rock formations, but in their geological youth and delicate nature, the dunes seem almost more playful and accommodating.

The reborn missionaries in Noeniput are also accommodating but only, I think, because they wanted to try convert me. The Kalahari is hard core God country! But I have respect for anyone until they show a lack of respect for me, so when a grossly overweight missionary laughs at my beliefs I can't help but laugh when he mentions that gluttony is a sin. The Myburghs were also strong christians but had enough respect for me to not want to convert me, even showing interest in my beliefs. I think that's why I liked them so much, they were naturally good natured. Genuine.

It started with a stove...

I must apologise for my lack of blogging, I went through a patch without signal for two weeks and have since been deep in thought... There is so much to tell and I've had so many amazing experiences but after thinking and planning so much I'm pretty tired and it's quite late now so this will be a quick elaboration on my thought and its resulting effect on me and Olive.

It started when I couldn't find benzine at the shop (shortly before being abducted by crazy germans, but more of that in the next blog), and had to buy parafin to run my stove. I discovered that parafin is a dirty horrible fuel so I thought of making an alcohol stove to burn methylated spirits until I could find benzine. So I logged onto the net and researched alcohol stoves. I had briefly read one or two articles about a year ago on how to make simple yet very effective alcohol stoves out of 1 or more tin cans. On my way to discovering the Supercat stove (google it, very cool design and so easy to make!) I discovered tonnes of references to ultralight hiking which favour alcohol stoves. I always thought ultralight hiking was for a 3-5 day stint of absolute bare essentials, sleeping uncomfortably and eating terrible foods. Then came the food for thought...

I started to find accounts of people hiking for 1000km+ with backpacks under 10kg! One particularly impressive account was Ray Jardine and his wife hiking the Pacific Crest trail, which is over 2000 miles, with an 8 pound pack! Obviously you need a heavier pack if you're going solo or if water is not as readily available, but even then a 12 kg pack is not too shabby at all! So I've decided to go ultralight!

Tomorrow I will leave Askham without Olive. I will miss her as she has seen me through some long distances without water or food, but there are more farms here so I don't need to carry as much water. I'm also enjoying this walk so much that I feel I don't need luxuries like my guitar to have fun (though that took alot to conclude, I think it will be the hardest thing to go without). Other gear like my stove is great for expeditions, but I'm essentially doing mild weather hiking so I'll be fine with my tin can stove and will eventually do without my tent.

It's been a comparatively quick decision, but one that I'm excited to implement! I'm incredibly grateful to TJ, the owner of the local café, who has offered to store my gear in his garage for the duration of the trip! If it weren't for him I would have had to do some serious logistical planning!

I think going ultralight will radically alter my walk and offer me a greater freedom. This thought has had me filled with nervous excitement for the past few days! I hope that everyone who reads this is doing well in their own adventures and endeavors and is as or more excited about something than I am about this whole trip! It's an incredible feeling to be so free and live so simply... So much to write, but very tired and nervous and excited for tomorrow, so will update another day. Till then...

The week so nice I blogged it twice!

With the browser I'm using on my phone I can only type so much at one time so here's the rest! Don't worry, not too much longer...

The people here are generally very friendly! The weather is good, I'm feeling strong so I'm looking forward to the road ahead! My shoes aren't though, I've worn the heels down to the midsole! Hopefully Kakamas has a shoes store... Can't say for sure when I'll be able to blog as signal is dodge out here and without my solar panel, even when there is signal my battery on this phone doesn't last long out of towns. Fortunately for sms and call sake I have a basic phone that is bomb-proof! Also, I have a Vodacom sim card for when there's no MTN signal, will be interesting to see which network has the best coverage, so far Vodacom's winning... But there's still a long way to go. A very long way!