Tag Archives: wild spaces

Africa, Girl Empowerment, Mindfulness, Nature, Reflection, Travel

Journey With Purpose: Finding A Tribe

A map of the original journey. Our itinerary had to change after Cyclone Idai hit the Mozambique coast in March 2019.

It’s been a month since one of the most profound travel experiences of my life so far began.  For my last blog post on May 4th I couldn’t even find the words I was so excited about the upcoming adventure and so just posted a pic of a recent painting.  But here I am at the other end of it and still processing. And while I have been posting photo highlights in Instagram @dragonfly.travelling, it is taking time to reflect in writing.

In the days since I got home and back into my “life as usual” routine, I have also spent a lot of time writing about this journey.  This writing has been with the hope of being published on a few different travel platforms that help champion Blue Sky Society’s Journeys with Purpose.  Now that task is mostly complete, I have time to shift focus to reflecting in my Pure Spaces way.

To be honest I did not have any real expectations about this trip.  Rare for me but I decided to just be in the flow of the moment, so utterly grateful for an opportunity to set foot on African soil again.

Now as I continue to reflect on these past weeks, I am starting to put pieces of a much bigger picture together.  I have decided the universe works in some mysterious ways. It will take a couple of posts over the coming weeks to show what I mean by this.

Let’s start with introducing Carla Geyser, the founder of the Blue Sky Society Trust.  The organiser and leader of our expedition and the brains behind Journeys with Purpose. In 2016 I’d read about the Elephant Ignite Expedition, the first of Carla Geyser’s epic African journeys – an all-female crew travelling 10 000 km through 10 African countries raising money for conservation NGOs, raising awareness for the plight of African wildlife and raising the profile of women working with wildlife.  At the time I wrote in the margin of my journal “blue sky society trust”.  Then life happened.  Fast forward to November 2018 and Carla opens applications for JWP01 May 2019 – fundraising for Elephants Alive and the expedition being to collar elephants in Gilé National Reserve, Mozambique.  Without hesitation I applied.

On 15 March 2019 Cyclone Idai hit the Mozambique coast making landfall at Beira and causing devastation up and the down the coast as well as inland.  JWP01 going ahead in May seemed doomed.  But Carla got straight onto Plan B and JWP01 South eventuated.

I now have the honour of calling Carla a friend and kindred spirit.  Sharing the road with her, Dora and the rest of our small crew was infinitely rewarding and so so much fun.  And that is saying something for this introverted wanderer who travels alone most often.

Dora is Carla’s 22 year old TDi Defender short wheelbase landy well kitted out and beautifully branded with her pink accessories.  She has oodles of character just like proud “mom”, Carla. 

JWP01 South Day 1 – Dora & Charles at OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg

So we couldn’t get to Gilé to help with the elephant collaring project.  But it turns out a new purpose was playing itself out…

And so on a cool, clear May day five adventurous ladies set out on an overland expedition to visit some out of the way places in north eastern South Africa, northern eSwatini and southern Mozambique over 14 days.  Our Journey with Purpose was to immerse ourselves in the African bush to soak up some Mama Africa time…. Oh so good for the soul!

The next 14 days held so many delightful wildlife moments and new landscapes to explore. The mixed bushwillow plains around the Hoedspruit area with its stunning escarpment backdrop providing dramatic vistas at every turn.  The autumn colours of the Mopane bush around the Letaba area in Kruger National Park.  The top of the world rocky outcrops of the Lebombo Mountains in eSwatini.  The coastal plains, undulating grassy dunes and tangled forest of the Maputo Special Reserve in Mozambique.  The clear, blue waters of Maputo Bay edged in mangrove.  We saw so many species – insects, reptiles, birds and of course all the iconic mammals.  Special moments with elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard, spotted hyena, giraffe, zebra, impala, nyala, kudu, hippo, a pod of endangered humpback dolphins and so much more.  I think our leopard count was 5!  The one lion sighting was this lioness up a tree!  For me the rhino sightings were extra special as they are my spirit animal.  I think Cat was okay with our cat count as they are her favourites.  Remke loved the ellies and the monkeys.  And I think Carla and Bella got a kick out of everything wild we saw.  All of us aware of the privilege to encounter this wildlife at all.

A stunning moment with this beauty who took very little notice of us as she went about her day.

I felt so at home travelling with these amazing women from the very beginning.  If I had any trepidation in the lead up to a trip like this it would be how five strangers would get along in such close quarters.  I don’t think that was a problem for us at all.  In fact it was the evening of day 3 and we were sitting round the fire at the end of an incredible day in the bush tracking elephant when I voiced to the group that I felt I was among my tribe.  That evening proved quite profound for me.  A feeling of absolute peace like I haven’t felt since I was a child.  Feeling truly at home and among my tribe.  And all this to the soundtrack of the Fiery-necked Nightjars and the calls of the Black-backed Jackal.  Bliss…

The Tribe from left Remmie, me, Bella, Cat and Carla outside the Elephant Museum, Letaba Camp, Kruger National Park
Education, Gratitude, Reflection, Wildlife Conservation

The conservationist

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Very introspective at the moment…. a middle age thing perhaps? Today I have been thinking about the label “conservationist”. I have thought of myself as a wildlife conservationist since I was probably 10 or 11 years old.

At 3 maybe 4 years old, sitting on the back steps by the kitchen door looking out over this part of the Highveld that would one day soon be taken over by the southern suburbs of Johannesburg.  Our house was one of the first in the new subdivision, still surrounded by the grassland and mixed acacia bushveld typical of this area.

It’s May on the Highveld and everything is tinder dry.  A black patchwork shows where the veld fires have been this season in the Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve just across the road from our house.  Walking through one of these patches bits of burnt grass crackling underfoot.  Then the dull thud of footsteps on dry, baked red earth.  But always life – the titter of a group of red-faced mousebirds in the acacia, the screech of the fiscal shrike, the various species of dove cooing, the flash of red from the black collared barbet darting by, a rustle in the grass maybe a snake or the flash of a tail as a mongoose disappears deeper into the bush and, of course, the black-shouldered kite sitting on the powerline surveying all.

As I got older we ventured further afield, driving during family holidays to protected spaces to witness this life, to immerse ourselves in it temporarily.  The most natural thing in the world, where else would you want to just BE? Kruger National Park, the Soutpansberg, the Drakensberg, Umfolozi, Mkuze, Karoo National Park, Tsitsikama National Park to name a few.

By the time I was a teenager being back at home in the big smoggy city felt strained.  I felt cut off from the natural world where I belonged.  Even in a city like Johannesburg where the wildness of Africa still finds its way in to the urban space, I still felt uneasy. And so I came to understand the fragmentation of wild spaces and how I would want to spend the rest of my life speaking for the voiceless.

What a strange journey it has been and continues to be… my conservationist journey.  It certainly hasn’t been a linear career path and there have been many times when I thought I had lost my way completely.  Thinking how could where I am and what I am doing right now possibly be about following my passion.  But what I have realised recently is that every apparent detour I have had along the way has equipped me with a rather unique world view.

It quickly became clear that my work was not going to be that of the traditional conservation ecologist.  I have had to come to terms with the educator within.  To work through the discomfort I feel as an introvert to relate to people of all ages and stages in the course of sharing one all important message – wild lives and wild spaces matter.

The upshot of all this is that the model of conservation I was immersed in as a child is no longer valid, if it ever was.  We cannot hope to make a difference for wildlife and wild spaces by putting fences up and keeping human communities out of the picture.  Wildlife conservation should be an everyday practice for all of us wherever we find ourselves on this planet.  We need to learn to live in harmony with the other living beings we share this planet with.

Sometimes in my more selfish moments I think over the incredible moments I have had in wild spaces and those magical close encounters with elephant, hippo, leopard, and cheetah – wild ones in wild habitat.  Not ones that I had to pay an awful lot of money for in a contrived 5 star luxury safari setting.

But more often I want people to have these sorts of magical encounters with wildlife in their own backyards so to speak.  Let it be a normal, everyday occurrence – reconnecting humanity back with nature.

These days my original passion for wildlife conservation feels closer, my course more true…. My journey as a conservationist continues…

Part of the journey – no entry road, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, 2007