In this story on my solo safari into the South-east of Angola, I travel through the Middle World. In Africa, across most of the more remote countryside, one finds ever fewer signs of the Modern World as we know it. Even the few artifacts that could be recognised as “modern” may be adapted to different purposes, and look different. This story is about my observations while travelling through the Middle World on my way to the wilderness. You can watch the video here Enjoy!...
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I stare down at the mirror-smooth surface of the pool with its eclectic decorations of fallen leaves. They could mean almost anything I want them to. The water is clear as polished glass, right down to the bottom. A few tadpoles cling to the edge like a row of suckling piglets. It is almost a choreographed picture of stillness and peace. Clean water that we don’t need to dig for, or that is not hoof-churned soup with bits of dung floating in it, is rare. The swathes of shade around it from trees growing verdant in the moisture, is...
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My four companions on this sojourn, ready for the day’s trek. “The day’s trek,” would be a meander in a general direction, say north, but easily deviated from to investigate bush phenomena we might notice, or to search for water, or to explore stories we might pick up from local bush people, and the like. On the right is Jacqui, whom I recruited as bush medium. He spoke a few words of English and a few of Fanagolo. Fanagolo is a pidgin language based on Zulu that developed on the South African gold mines as a kind of lingua...
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Once you have liberated yourself from the roads, and finally also from the uncertain little tracks that you might have found meandering through the bush to isolated clusters of huts where a few bush people huddle together for some human fellowship, you are truly like Alice, alone in Wonderland and… “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—so long as...
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