Baobab Tree, Okavango Delta, Botswana
The sun rises behind a Baobab Tree on Chief’s Island within the Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Baobab trees occur in seasonally arid habitats and are deciduous. They can store more than 25,000 gallons of water in their trunks, allowing them to endure harsh droughts.
My Time in Africa
I rarely get to Africa anymore, although it was an important and always welcome part of my academic life. I taught in Eritrea and South Africa in between the various conflicts, produced dozens of Special Olympics stories across the Continent, half a dozen major student documentary projects and had the privilege of photographing its peoples and animals in more than a dozen countries. Now it is too expensive and too long and difficult a trip. Most of my colleagues from the region have moved on or retired, frustrated with the corruption, low wages, political instability, crime and loss of academic freedoms.
The free-roaming wildlife populations are greatly decreased, and access has been greatly restricted except for wealthy international tourists. Decades ago, we stayed in local villages or bush camps, not at luxury safari camps. We hired local guides who lived their lives in harmony and conflict with the animals and there were no fences or borders preventing great migrations. It was a different time, not necessarily better or worse, just different. It seemed so much more romantic, although it probably wasn’t.
The land mass of Africa is more than 75 percent larger than the United States, is made up of more than 50 countries and is home to more than 1/3 of the Earth’s human inhabitants, so I never knew Africa. I just experienced small vignettes over three decades, avoided the most serious genocides and conflicts and stayed as apolitical as possible. The most I accomplished was sharing it with some of my students. It changed many of them and they are better people and journalists for the experience.
Many thanks to Dean Guy Berger, Professor Brian Garman and their students at Rhodes University in Grahamstown (now Makhanda), RSA for working on so many projects together.
