sawubona! today was my first day on the field. the drive to swayimane took about an hour from maritzburg and despite the (very) limited space, i could not have asked for a better arrangement than to be sitting alongside audrey and daphne. audrey is zimele’s manager of social development and brings a tremendous wealth of [...]

earlier today, miranda and i ate lunch out on the veranda overlooking the village of swayimane – where i will be spending most of my working days, about a hundred miles from the guesthouse. i very much enjoyed listening to her story, her involvement with zimele, her family history – and also sharing a bit [...]

i arrived safely in pietermaritzburg last night and was warmly greeted by audrey and her husband, along with her brother and her 2 adorable children. the airport was very small and almost felt like the entire terminal could be someone’s backyard. it was pretty chilly and windy when i deplaned, and i had just loaded [...]

the flight over to Johannesburg from JFK went rather smoothly. there was an unexpected systems failure that led to an hour delay, but once we left for the skies, the airbus was pretty calm and pleasant. as i suspected, i wasn’t able to pull off the 15 hour pass-out-until-you-get-there ride, but i did manage to [...]