It was risky but I still did it. Why was that?
As I write this it is the Muslim celebration of Eid and I’m in Tanzania. There’s a definite air of holidays about the day. Call to prayer started at the usual time of 5am but this time went on until 7am, with about four Mosques competing audibly within a square kilometre. In terms of denominations, […]
Motorbike riding improves your sixth sense, but you knew that, right?
Bikers are worldly. They’ve seen things, man. They have perspective, probably the result of always looking farther ahead than most people. Well, you know, the vanishing point and all that. It may seem like a tenuous connection, but it’s actually not. I mentioned in an earlier post that where you look is where you go.. […]
Maslow at work in Mwanza
Tanzania does not have much of a culture of prevention yet. This is what businesses are up against here, the ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ mindset. Trouble with that and motorcycle maintenance (or any kind of maintenance of course) is that to ignore a problem that is developing is to prepare yourself for […]
What would Bruce Lee do?
So, unfortunately the Pikilily project as it stands has to be shut down. I won’t go into details here, this video post – raw and totally unscripted – gives all the details. What it does not show you is the events of the last 48 hours which demonstrated the strength and resilience of the human spirit and the determination […]
From African Safari to Nuclear war
I had the privilege of joining a camping safari here in Tanzania with four strangers, at least that’s how they started out, now they’re good friends. That’s what happens when you rough it for a couple of nights – you’ll ether want to hug or stab your companions after sharing just a few hours in […]
Argue for your limitations and yep, they’re yours
I sometimes wonder if the hidden purpose of a long journey by plane or by train is not to get you to where you’re going but to give you some solid, unbroken thinking and reading time. Moments before leaving for Mwanza I chose a couple of books at random from the bookshelf and found myself […]
Two days to go..
Two. It’s a funny word. If you say it often enough it’s one of those that loses all meaning. I recently spent some time with my grandson who is learning Welsh. He kept saying ‘Die, Die, Die!’ to me while simultaneously attacking me with a couple of Paw Patrol figures. I thought it a bit […]
Getting tooled up – literally
I took a trip to Tool Aid in Ringwood, just outside of the New Forest, to pick up some refurbished tools for Khalid, a director of Pikilily but also a carpenter by trade. Tools are hard to come by in Africa so any donated tools to organisations such as Tool Aid and Tools for Self Reliance are a real […]
He doesn’t sleep.. he waits.
Home for the month is a wooden bungalow with a wide verandah and two guard dogs, Rafiki and Sasha. Around the house is a big garden with Mango, Lemon, Tangerine, Avocado trees (to name but a few) and pungent and colourful flowers of many varieties, attracting the most colourful birds. Black Kites are abundant and […]
I’m going to Mwanza – really?
It’s now just a few weeks till I leave for Mwanza to join Claire and help out for a while at Pikilily. But let me take you back a while to where the idea to volunteer for a Social Enterprise in Africa first took hold in me. Driving back from a visit to my daughter […]