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I spent my holiday doing citizen science in South Africa: Part I

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What draws us to elephants is a mystery. Or is it? They represent wisdom and strength and empathy. They are revered in Thailand and in India and elsewhere in Asia. Ganesh is the Hindu elephant god of new beginnings, the remover of obstacles and bringer of wisdom and luck. His name in Thailand is Phra Phikanet.

line drawing of ganesha

Across Asia and Africa, these magical and mystical creatures are worshipped in temples and simultaneously loathed in the fields, where their land is being encroached upon by farms and development. A mere “drive by” by a herd can decimate a family’s crops in minutes.

I think I’ve always been charmed by the magic of elephants, intrigued by their human-like behaviours, disgusted by humans’ treatment of them and their habitat. My first visit to Africa gave me a up-close look into those long-eyelashed orbs and I was smitten. It’s not a secret that Ganesh is something of my patron saint, and it’s certainly no surprise that I’m something of a wildlife freak. So when an opportunity to participate in Bring the Elephant Home’s volunteer program, assisting scientists with crucial behavioral research to learn more about social structure, welfare and habitat usage, I couldn’t apply fast enough.

Fast-forward 8 or 9 months, and I’m beginning to pen this on my flight home, coming down from the elephant high that has been my status quo for the last couple of weeks.

I joined the group in Port Elizabeth (recently renamed to Gqeberha), on the Eastern Cape of South Africa: a couple from the UK, a handful of Californians, and a student studying ele behaviour at a University in Johannesburg. From PE, we went up to our post at the Kariega Conservation Center at the Kariega Game Reserve. I posted a blog at the beginning of our time there called What Happens When You Drop a Fence, outlining our initial observations and the main research objectives.

What was it like?

So the 8 of us volunteers, 2 PhD researchers, and a local ecologist ventured out into the thicket of Kariega Game Reserve each day looking for elephants. While like something out of a dream, it also felt much harder than it seemed like it should have been. One might think elephants are so big, and how could you miss them, right? Well, crazy ele fact #1: they move silently. I mean, so silently that you could be sitting in a spot for a while and see or hear nothing, but a moment later, you could glance over your shoulder and see an animal the size of a Land Cruiser standing just metres away, trunk curled, sniffing in your general direction. While you’d think they’d make themselves known by heavy footsteps, their massive feet are so cushioned that they walk as if clad in slippers. In fact, more often than not, we’d know they were nearby only from the branches snapping rather than anything else (the tracking collars, when working, didn’t hurt either 😉).

Day 1

That first afternoon we went out on a game drive to get our sea legs, as it were… we saw zebra and white rhinos and giraffes and warthogs (Pumba!) and of course a few elephants. Even though it was just a couple of hours on the reserve, and we got a flat tire just before dusk and had to wait a while for another vehicle to come and bring us a spare and a new jack, it didn’t feel like a harbinger of doom for the week. Instead, it felt like the beginning of a cool adventure. Especially when I looked up and realised that the giraffes we had been watching on the other side of a hill began to creep in closer to get a peek at what we were up to out there in the scrubby thicket.

The first full day was a series of lectures on why we were there, classes on how to do elephant identification, exercises in what to look for, behaviour-wise, and a slew of what to do when things around age and sex and different behaviours and dung sampling and using the Zoomonitor app to record said behaviours. It felt like a lot.

I mentioned to my manager that we had elephant school that first day. He replied that he had heard they are good learners. Us humans, though… the jury was still out.

One of the first lessons was ageing elephants. It’s done by relative size, facial features, and behavioral characteristics. Calves (<1) can walk underneath an adult cow. Juveniles (1-4) are still suckling but may or may not have tusk buds (squeee!!!). While Intermediates (5-8) may or may not look like sub-adults (9-15), they are weaned and the females take on more and more “big sister” duties. Sub-adult bulls spend less and less time in the center of the herd as they mature and become more independent (and, you know, more like naughty teenage boys!). Adults (15 and up) come in different shapes and sizes, depending on whether they are bull or cow. I learnt so much just this first day on these different stages, not least that bulls don’t even come into their first musth until they are about 25, while cows can start having their own calves by about 11.

Once we had a decent grasp on ageing, we moved on to sexing (size, head shape, body configuration, rear view). About half-way through this lesson I felt like I might fail elephant school altogether, so I was glad that the professionals would be with us in the vehicle to help out with our ID follies!

The team uses the SEEK (System for Elephant Ear Knowledge) system which incorporates a set of features and markings in addition to body condition on a scale from 1 (emaciated) to 5 (chubbo) to identify and code the targets of our observations. I’m grateful for the visual aids we were given, as well as the Elephant Voices ethogram website which we were encouraged to review prior to arriving. This was beginning to feel like work.

The last part of our training day was to review the different behaviours we were to observe and track: continuous behaviours like locomotion, grazing, browsing (and identifying the differences therein), and all-occurrence behaviours like head shake, sniff, play spar, trunk curl, trunk to face (and whose trunk to or from whose face)… again I was appreciative of the technology at hand – the app into which we were to record said behaviours and the myriad PowerPoint decks and references that had been prepared for us novices.

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As the long day wound down, we received our marching orders: review the materials and get ready for an early wake up call. We were going into the field in the morning, then breaking up into groups of 3, one to observe behaviour, one to do elephant ID, and one to be the photographer.

One can only guess which role I was more than glad to take on.

Stay tuned for more adventures from a citizen-scientist perspective. And be sure to take a look at Bring the Elephant Home’s updates page for more stories from our time at Kariega.

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Madagascar marvels part IV: The most horrible thing in Madagascar, and why you need shoes.

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After Amber Mountain, I arrived at my lodging, nestled nicely in the forest on the edges of the Réserve Spéciale d’Ankarana. Compared with the previous night’s lodge where I felt like an over-catered-to tourist, the Ankarana Lodge felt homey and perfect in its unassuming way. After checking in, the first thing I was asked was what I wanted for dinner. And though I had become used to this courtesy, it continued to strike me as brilliant simplicity. For most of the meals I took here, one had to order ahead, sometimes up to a day in advance. It made perfect sense because they are using local ingredients and buying only what’s needed on each day. For me it was also an opportunity to do some quiet self-reflection on both sustainability and privilege. Excess food is a privilege. Refrigeration is a privilege. The magnitude of choices available in the developed world is a privilege (and, frankly, also somewhat absurd IMHO). At one point during the trip, I commented on the generous meals served and was assured that “nothing goes to waste here.”

I had a few hours to kill in the heat of the day between that morning’s hike in Amber Mountain and the evening night walk I had scheduled with one of the lodge’s naturalists. Ankarana sits at a lower elevation than Amber Mountain. That, combined with the heat absorbed by the nearby Tsingy formations plus the unseasonable heat here, left the air tropical and thick and the ground feeling like it could melt your feet, tested and confirmed by my walking barefoot to read by the pool, only realising too late that my only saving grace would be to dunk the feet in said pool and either wait out the heat or hopscotch back to my room as quickly as possible while chanting the local remedy mantra: “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ouch! FFS! Oof…” Read this recent article in The Guardian on the October Madagascar heatwave.

In which I meet the thing I like least about Madagascar.

That evening, I met up with a kind local guide who led me through the trails in and around the lodge. We hiked around for an hour or so in search of night chameleons and the very cute and very nocturnal mouse lemur. As we came around one corner of the trail, he excitedly called me over to look closely at a palm frond. In it is resting a ginormous insect with too many legs and too-long antenna things. I am noticeably horrified and ask if it is going to fly at or jump on me. Grinning, the guide says something to the effect of non, il n’a pas des ailles. It doesn’t really matter that it doesn’t have wings, more that it just exists is a problem was my response. This, my guide tells me, is the cockroach (the Madagascar hissing cockroach to be exact). And my brain flashes on the fact that people in my part of the world keep these things as PETS! Gah! This, I tell him, is the most horrible thing about Madagascar. As he tries to explain to me their purpose: they are recyclers – they eat rotting plants and bugs to help break down organic matter in the forests, I agree their role is important but wonder to myself if this role could be filled by something much less terrifying.

I’m eager to move on and spot some less-frightening critters. Which we did: we saw some sleeping magpie-robins, some skittering mouse lemurs, and a humongous panther chameleon sleeping in the big tree near the entrance of the lodge.

I got into bed that night thankful that hissing cockroaches prefer to sleep in travellers palms and not traveller’s beds!

Tsingy Rary: Défense de tomber.

A note about the tsingy: I am sorry to report that Tsingy Rouge is, apparently, an imposter. Or, rather, a geologic novelty with aspirations of tsingy grandeur. So while I’m loath to call Tsingy Rouge not-a-tsingy, I think just maybe it’s riding the coattails of its sharper and more massif (sic) national park cousins. I say this because the real tsingy is actually a limestone karst landscape, and is organised in formations, some of which UNESCO calls a “forest of limestone needles” in the Andrefana Dry Forests on its World Heritage Sites list.

Apropos, in Malagasy, tsingy means “the place where one cannot walk barefoot”.

And so as we set out for Ankarana early the following morning, I had firm instructions: bring a hat and sun cream; wear hiking boots. We were going to see Tsingy Rary.

While rocks were our primary objective for the day, we found ourselves on several kilometres of beautiful trails beforehand, and saw a few Sandford’s brown lemurs and the wide-eyed Ankarana sportive lemur, as well as a pair of beautiful Madagascar Scops-owls. Despite the efforts of a group of Italian tourists to chat up the forest, it was really a spectacular hike… I could have marched around this place for days!

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After a while in the forest, we arrive at a clearing where my guide signals we should stop, as he makes sure I’ve got my hat and sun cream on and gives me some words of caution: défense de tomber. In other words, there is only one rule: no falling. On that note, we continue over boulders that are becoming markedly more razor-like with every step. This is where I understand why one cannot walk barefoot here. The forest of limestone needles has begun. It is as spiny as it is vast, with the weird gray rock formations as far as the eye can see.

We traverse the exposed tsingy field, arriving at a long wooden footbridge that crosses a tsingy gorge. While I am not particularly afraid of heights per se, I am particularly uneasy around high and precarious situations that I might fall off of, backwards. And so, hands gripping the rails, I tuck in my fears and cross the bridge. Only to find another one, shorter but more precarious, waiting for me at the end of the next narrow and quite sharp stretch of tsingy. Défense de tomber indeed. This mantra will play in my head for the next 3 days.

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We exit the Tsingy Rary via another really nice, forested trail, my guide pointing out the baobabs and other endangered flora as we walk to our outdoor picnic spot. We had ordered lunch from a woman in a little house earlier in the morning, and as we waited for the food to arrive we were entertained by a cheeky family of crowned lemurs honing in on a German family’s mangoes. One sassy lemur would hop down on the table and do the distraction dance while one or two of the others would come around the back and grab their objects of desire (baguettes and mangoes appeared to be their favourite). Note the baby in a couple of the photos (and its little hand jutting out from below its mother while in a tree nursing):

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Luckily, the lemurs appeared to be mangoed-out by the time we had our lunch, so I got great photo opps and we were able to keep our mangoes for ourselves.

While it was blazing hot out (I think the thermometer read 38 in the shade that day), this didn’t dissuade me from wanting to explore more tsingys! Good call, because the next day we’d be going to what would turn out to be one of the most delightful lodges I’d ever stayed at: Iharana Bush Camp, and with it their own private tsingy.

Stay tuned for more stories and thoughts from Madagascar!

Madagascar marvels part II: Idyllic islands and land-based critters

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As if spending a week spotting whale sharks wasn’t enough!

Another aspect of the first half of the itinerary was to experience some of the other flora and fauna in and around Nosy Be. So one morning we set off to see Nosy Tanikely, a marine reserve with a lovely, preserved reef. We snorkeled there for a bit before heading farther out to look for more whale sharks.

Back at Sakatia, afternoons were for napping or swimming with giant green sea turtles in the sea grasses by the lodge. Alternately, there was a lot of nothing to do if one was so inclined. In hindsight, I’m meshing together days here and calling out highlights because I stopped trying to keep track of sightings and particulars as the days melted into one under the hot sun. There was the afternoon I was sitting on the porch of my bungalow when two chickens very deliberately climbed the steps to have some water from my foot pail. There were brilliant sunsets overlooking the little sacred forest. There were early morning walks in the mangroves at low tide.

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On another morning, we were up and out early to get to a remote island called Nosy Iranja, a 3-hour boat ride out into the waters of the Mozambique Channel. We spotted fewer whale sharks as we entered the deeper (and choppier) water, but as we travelled, a pod of spinner dolphins joined us to play in the boat’s wake. And as we approached Iranja, we watched as a humpback whale family (mom, brand new calf, and dad) slowly cruised through the water, making their way out to sea (and apparently towards Antarctica); the baby getting used to its giant fins, slapping and playing in the water as they swam.

As if the magic of the sea creatures wasn’t sublime enough, we approached the beach where we were to spend the night in beachside “tents”. Pictures cannot do the setting justice, but close your eyes and imagine the whitest sand beach you can conjure, the warm turquoise waters painted in a rainbow of blues. We walked through a small village, up to the phare (lighthouse) at the top of the island, then down the other side to watch the sunset by a spit where at low tide one could walk across to yet another teeny island to hide away from the world. The mojito on the beach felt like an indulgent cherry on top.

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Our last day was spent on dry land, taking a walk through the paths in Parc National de Lokobe. Lokobe occupies most of the southern tip of Nosy Be and is home to 72 species of amphibians and reptiles, 48 species of birds, and even 2 species of lemurs that are considered microendemic to Nosy Be: the Nosy Be sportive lemur (you can see them in the photos below), and the Nosy Be mouse lemur.

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After a (frankly, unexpectedly hard) paddle out to the entrance via local wooden canoe called a pirogue, we entered the park to find more flora and fauna. Here, we saw a tree boa and other snakes, a variety of chameleons, and lemurs – including the very little and very adorable mouse lemur, who we saw curled up and sleeping in some palm fronds. Plied with a local lunch and plenty of fresh, ripe, mangoes (and jackfruit!), the group unanimously determined the outing (as well as the sea tow back to where we started) a roaring success.

Did you miss Part I of this adventure? Click here. Next stop: the mainland!

Madagascar marvels Part I: Sharks and palms

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About 6 years ago, before the world went sideways and back when I had a regular habit of diving in far-flung places, I stumbled upon a post by a marine biologist with the Marine Megafauna Foundation talking about research he was doing on whale sharks in general, and in Madagascar in particular. The Mozambique channel is a whale shark hotspot, and apparently it was discovered that a particular stretch of ocean around Nosy Be had similarly attracted a large and healthy population. With whale sharks, both fortunately and unfortunately, comes tourism. So I was happy to see that an environmentally-aware wildlife travel company called Aqua-Firma partnered with MMF scientists to mix research with eco-conscious travel and came up with a formula to respectfully send willing adventurers to watch (and play) while the scientists did some of their work. I wanted in! It took 6 years, 2-1/2 of which Madagascar was closed to foreigners due to Covid, but I made it happen (and then some…).

I was to learn that locally, the Madagascar Whale Shark Project was well under weigh. Founded by the amazing Stella Diamant, the Project is leading research, education, and conservation efforts on the ground (and in the water) to study and protect these amazing creatures in and around Nosy Be and other areas of Madagascar.

Overall, I was in Madagascar for about 3 weeks. Here’s my telling of the adventure in several parts.

Sharks and palms: A fine line between ecotourism and impact

It starts on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean called Nosy Sakatia. Sakatia is just off Nosy Be, which is off the north-westerly end of Madagascar (which is in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa). The northwest of the country is littered with these idyllic white-sand tropical islands. It’s on one of these that Part I of my adventure was to start: 10 days at a little oasis called Sakatia Lodge for the above-mentioned whale shark trip.

Nosy Sakatia has its own sacred forest in which black lemurs, fruit bats, chameleons and other critters live. There are no cars…and an unwritten no shoes policy. In other words, my kind of place. So I arrived there a couple days before the itinerary was to begin in earnest to shut the rest of the world out, get some dives in, and take much-needed naps in the tropical air. Sakatia lies roughly 13° below the equator, so it’s late spring here, the opposite of the impending dreariness of autumn back home. The lodge resides in a small bay that opens to the waters between Nosy Be and the Mozambique channel proper.

A portent to the days to follow came in the form of a sighting of a small humpback whale greeting us in that little bay to say good morning before our first dive. Getting back in the water after not diving for nearly 4 years was like coming home.

It’s hard to explain diving to a non-diver, but it was like reinflating something within myself that had dried out. Just making bubbles underwater again felt like a gift. I’m happy to report that the corals are in remarkable shape, and although warming, the waters and its denizens seem to have withstood many of the fates of much of the (over-) developing world. So I spent 2 days diving: small reefs and sandy plateaus and even a small wreck that gave way to one of the most gorgeous coral gardens I’ve ever seen. I clocked my 200th dive on this trip, so it felt significant to dive with a team that appreciated the sheer joy of diving and natural wonder more than just delivering a guest experience. During the week, I’d do a couple more: a night dive and a final early morning dive on an exquisite reef that could double as a work of art. Back on the boat, I remarked to another diver that it looked like someone painted what a reef should look like.

On the evening of my 3rd day there, the rest of the group arrived: our fearful trip leader, an assortment of Brits, Scots, and Americans, and Stella, our whale shark researcher for the week. A genial group, some divers, some not, and even a couple on their honeymoon! Fingers crossed that the shark gods would deliver.

Lights out came early for me and I slept like a log, the dreamless sleep of recovery from 6 months of going non-stop. I woke most mornings with the sun. I was beginning to feel more human.

That’s me. Photo courtesy of Stephen Burgess @UW_Burgess

How to hunt for sharks

The daily plan was to head out into the sea after breakfast, in search of circling seabirds and tuna leaping on the surface, a froth that indicates bait balls of sardines and other tiny fish schooling in the waters below. In this part of the world, whale sharks feed on these tiny fish, so where there’s a bait ball there’s usually a whale shark.

ID: Each shark has a unique pattern, like a fingerprint. So for research, they are looking to identify resident and new sharks against the sharks in the Sharkbook international database. This is done by observing an area just over the left fin. Part of the process is easing into the water near the shark in order to get close enough to get an ID photo (the experts freedive), and when possible, the researchers attach tags: flagging and tagging, as it were. The wonder of it all is the work between the boat driver, the guide and the scientist to spot the bait balls and spot the shark and position the boat (quickly and safely) so we have the best chance to get in the water and see the animal. It’s all done quite orderly and safely, but seems a tad chaotic with the excitement never seeming to wane as we find shark after shark each day. We’d locate a shark, enter the water gently, and swim to (and with) the animal, in awe of each giant mouthful of teeny fish, of every elegant swim-by. It is breathtaking to watch the grace of these massive fish – and the ones here by Nosy Be are small in comparison (5-10 metres vs. more mature whale sharks that can be up to 15-20+ metres long).

Over the 5 days we were at sea, we spotted a total of 15 unique whale sharks (all male, as they trend in these waters) and a whopping 7 that the Project hadn’t previously identified. Fun fact: 9 of our sighted sharks were the first sighted this year (yay, us!). One shark, Ernest, has been a regular here for years…he was first identified in 2015.

To throw in bonus critters, we also saw mobula rays, two mantas, turtles, and schools and schools of the tiny baitfish that are so critical to the food chain for these marine giants. To date, and through the Project, there have been over 500 individual whale sharks identified in the waters off Nosy Be. When tags are deployed, they can be tracked and monitored for feeding and migration activity. It feels like they are doing important work to protect these gentle giants. I’m glad to have contributed minorly to the efforts.

I am so grateful to have spent this time here, but I’ll be honest, I’m worried about the sharks. Because if we were 10 people on a boat doing things the right and responsible way, there are or will be 10 boats that don’t. Research is important. So is education and conscious action and leaving soft footprints in the sand rather than the harsher kind. People like Stella and the Madagascar Whale Shark Project and the caring folks at Les Baleines Rand’eau are leading efforts to ensure this goes the right way. Read more about what they’re doing here.

I’ll be back there, of that I’m sure. It’s one of these places that works its way into your heart, delivering turquoise-infused dreams. Or maybe it was just the rhum arrangé.

Shameless plug for conservation sake: via the Madagascar Whale Shark Project’s website you can make a donation, adopt a whale shark, or even name a whale shark!

I’ll close Part I here for now. Stay tuned for the rest of the aquatic (and land) adventures!

L’Afrique: Réflexions après coup.

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I didn’t know how to write about this trip. It’s been 5 years since I’ve been on a proper tour and half of those were spent while my life was sideways, treading water in an upside-down world changed forever by a plague and other mishaps. So in trying to compare and contrast my experiences, it dawned on me yet again that places have spirits or souls or essences that invite you in or spit you out, like Rajasthan or Istanbul or Botswana or Sardinia or Belize or Aachen or Marrakech or Amsterdam or wherever you call home…each has left its mark on me in a different way.

In Rwanda, I felt held. I felt fed – with local foods, recent history, a collective passion; with knowledge about conservation and community, with a shared compassion and humanitarian heart, eyes towards the future.

In Kenya, I felt sold-to, as if consumerism and capitalism and commercialism had woven its way into the fibers of existence there. It felt like a place that wanted to be so much of what my country stands for that they have shed their own identity. And while the pockets of the natural world there are being protected and nurtured, the delicate balance between selling eco-tourism as a commodity and believing that conservation is the right thing to do felt like a grand fuzzy line.

That said, I still had two days on my own at the end of the trip. So I spent my last couple of days in Nairobi learning more about how the country came to be, and seeing some of Nairobi’s conservation efforts for the Rothschild’s giraffe.

Stop #1 was the National Museums of Kenya (and snake house). The museum itself was a pictorial and diorama-ish narration of the country’s history from essentially prehistoric man to the present. If nothing else, the snake house was an opportunity to see their deadly (“a bite from this snake is considered a major medical emergency”) reptiles in a controlled environment.

The most disturbingly fascinating part of the museum, though, was the Birds of East Africa gallery. I wandered in, completely unaware, and was presented with what was functionally a life-sized Field Guide to the Birds, but instead of photos, each Kenyan bird was represented as a taxidermied example, meticulously arranged in plexiglass cases, labelled and numbered as in a bird book.

Stop #2 was the Giraffe Centre. What I thought would be a serene giraffe sanctuary turned out to be a breeding center and chatty tourist attraction. You are given a coconut shell full of snack pellets when you enter. Then you walk up to the viewing platform, where you can hand-feed and interact with the giraffes. It is a legitimate reintroduction program, as there are only approx. 1600 Rothschild’s giraffes remaining. They are at the centre to be bred, then released into the wild in protected parks throughout the country.

Looming large (and lovely) in the background was the renowned Giraffe Manor, where for $1000 USD a night (or more) you can stay in an enchanting stone manor that sits within the sanctuary’s grounds, as you commune with the resident long-necks. It was a weird but oddly satisfying visit, giving me hope that perhaps the commercialism of this place would help its natural beauty thrive.

Flying back home, I had a couple of distinct thoughts: I left Kenya with more things bought. I left Rwanda with more experiences sought. Yet it’s the little memories that pop into my mind as I digest my experiences:

The night I stood along the fencing separating the Lake Nakuru lodge from the reserve proper, watching a mass of dark hulking beasts make their way to the watering hole, grumbling and chatting amongst themselves in a low snuffling murmur. It was only once I shined my flashlight on the herd and saw 50 eyes staring back at me in the black night that I realised they were buffalo.

The night I went out to look for rhino in the weird Lake Naivasha camp, instead finding bushbabies skittering about (baby tree, said the night watchman). And maribou storks, dozens of the immense and bizarre creatures, using the half-dead and waterlogged trees as their base camp.

A lunchtime impromptu tour of the bush camp in the Maasai Mara, spotting hippos and monkeys and crocodiles, guided by a kind and eager Maasai warrior.

An exploration of the little paths along the park fence in Akagera National Park, wondering what might be stirring in the long grasses or what critters lurked just beyond the wires. I had a staring contest with a baboon in a nearby tree and spotted a family with the tiniest baboon baby (babette?) I’ve ever seen.

That night the Land Cruiser broke down on a long stretch of road between the Northern Province and Kigali and we were rescued (luggage and all) by a park ranger (and a veritable stranger) on his way back to Kigali.

The bicycles piled high with sugar cane. The lush hillsides. The milky way and the Southern Cross. The shoebills and hornbills and storks and kingfishers…brightly-coloured birds of all shapes and sizes.

A flash of history: We drove back from Giraffe-land past the new president’s house at about the same time the Kenyan supreme court awarded Ruto the win. The street outside his gates was lined with cars and photographers.

And the food…Dinner in the gardens at Hôtel des Mille Collines, staring out over the pool and pondering what Kigali’s people went through during the 90s. A homemade Rwandan lunch in the cook’s own kitchen, probably the best meal I had in the 2 weeks there. Dinner on my last night at an Eritrean restaurant in Nairobi, complete with injera.

I’ll come back to Africa. There’s so much more of this amazingly diverse land to experience. I want to see the Serengeti and Amboselli and Madagascar and Uganda…and return to Rwanda to hike more in the Virungas and return to Botswana and camp for longer, deeper in the Okavango. I want to eat injera in Ethiopia, and I want to see Deadvlei and Sossusvlei in Namibia. There’s probably more, not to mention the East African coast, that I don’t even know I want to see yet!

Travel is a privilege and an education. And for me, it is a prescription for the part of my soul that feels lost and wild and homeless and restless much of the time.

Jusqu’à la prochaine fois, l’Afrique !

Read about the whole trip: [Part I: Rwanda] [Part II: Jambo Kenya] [Part III: Maasai Mara]