All posts by Claire

About Claire

Wandering (and wondering) development professional and aspiring aid worker. Contact me on anticipationofwonder[at]gmail[dot]com

Skies

Travel

Flying. Clouds like a field of cotton wool below. Hills dotted with toy-houses. Forests patchworked with sugar-cane fields. Coal-stacks small as pepper pots. Past thunderstorms piled on top of each other like tired puppies.

Betwixt and between, leaving and arriving, going and coming. A strange, soaring limbo at hundreds of miles an hour.

35 000 feet. I wait for that strange settled moment in motion. That strange peacefulness. I feel anchored, secure, home, in this little seat 500km from the ground. As far as Joburg is from Durban.

This is my place. After the early morning wake up and the misty drive to the airport. After the almost-missed check-in thanks to Joburg traffic. This is my resting place, where things stop for a moment and I can take a breathe and read a book and have a quiet glass of wine.

While  a pilot I’ve never met flies me through these foreign, familiar every changing skies.

Zambia – but not really

Adventures, Travelling in Africa, Zambia,

Zambia. A first visit to a country I’ve never seen before. Under normal circumstances, this would be a momentous occasion for me. It would occupy my thoughts and writing for weeks. This trip has been different, not because Zambia is not a fascinating and exciting place to visit but because so much is going on that there is limited space in my brain to celebrate the experience. I haven’t even used the free time I’ve had to explore the country. In fact, I have barely left the hotel. It’s a nice hotel, one of the nicest places I’ve stayed in a while, but I’m fairly certain I’m not getting to see the real Zambia. I keep wishing there was more time, less stuff happening, so that I could get a proper sense of the place.

Instead, I seem to be spending all my time working and stressing and worrying about the next adventure. Work has occupied an awful lot of time this week – being at a workshop always seems to result in things that simply cannot wait until I get home. I’ve also been trying to write a piece that refused to get written. And sneaking in a little time to catch up with an old friend I haven’t seen properly in years.

So, it seems, sadly, that Zambia will have to wait until next time. Yet, knowing how way leads on to way (with apologies to Robert Frost), I wonder if there will be a ‘next time’. With so many places to see, so much amazing continent to explore, will I be back here any time soon? Am I sacrificing the chance to see this amazing country because I am too caught up in anticipating the next one – in this case Uganda. Is Zambia any less worthy of my attention and time and awe than Uganda or the DRC? Or is this just the way life goes – that some places are fleeting moments without ever really understanding, so that other places can be true experiences of wonder?

I’ll be visiting rural Zambia over the next two days and I plan to do my best to focus on Zambia and understanding this place but it’s really quite hard to focus with the Uganda and DRC trip looming so large. Three weeks from today, I’ll be at the airport in Johannesburg, checking in for a flight to Uganda.

A month and four days

Admin, Travelling in Africa, , ,

In a little over a month, I fly to Uganda for three weeks of adventuring in central Africa. I start the malaria meds today (I also have another trip in between).

I’ve reached that stage of cautious excitement – almost really believing that it might actually happen but trying not to get too attached to the idea in case it falls through and we’re all disappointed.

I want to go now. For a while there, I was really uncertain. I’m still nervous of what we’ll find there but I have no doubt – assuming the last few bits fall into place – that it will be the trip of a lifetime and one we will never forget. In a good way, I hope.

So each day is a day of hope and nerves, waiting for things to come together. This week is visa week. Perhaps the most nerve-wrecking for a while. Particularly because I fly to Zambia next Sunday, so things really need to work out on time.

I’m nervous and excited and hopeful and scared, but I’m not frustrated. This bit – when it looks like it might just work out and you know if it does it’ll blow your mind – this is anticipation of wonder.