Cape Town

Hi all

 

Well, with no small sense of achievement we reached Cape Town on Friday 12^th June. The objective of the trip was Cape via Cairo, and we did it! I can’t pretend we’re not a little sad that our gloriously happy time-out from life has drawn to an end, but we knew it couldn’t go on for ever. And yesterday (Saturday) we had a fabulous celebratory party with various assembled friends, hosted by Lucy and Loki, and the reality begun slowly to sink in. Against the odds, we took six months off, with our kids, and drove 33,000 kms across Africa. We had no major accidents, no major illnesses and no major disasters, and we all enjoyed every single moment of it, to the maximum. In your wildest dreams, you couldn’t hope for more than that! We also did something that we’ve never done before (and may never do again, although I REALLY hope we do!!). We spent six whole months solidly together as a family – all day, every day. In a way, that was more special than anything else. In the frenetic hurly-burly of our normal lives (in as much as our lives could ever have been described as “normal”!), we rarely spend an hour in each others’ company, let alone an entire day. To get the chance to spend six months together has been a real privilege, and none of us will ever be quite the same again.

 

Travelling with another family has added a further dimension to the trip, and it has been much the richer for it. Not only, on a very practical level, has it made it possible for us to go places we’d never dare go alone, but it has also created an additional set of social dynamics that have transformed the entire experience for everyone. The small boys have had friends to play with (and how they have played, turning the entire continent into one great big sandpit!), the big boys have had mates to share with, and the grown-ups have had other grown-ups with whom to laugh, cry and generally share the joys and the worries (such as they’ve been) along the way. We might have been able to do some of it without them, but we’ve done a lot more, and had a lot more fun, doing it with them.

 

Although the trip’s not technically over until we’re all back in Harare, it is now effectively over for Jangano as a team. The Harford-Adams family have a tighter deadline than us, and will drive straight back to Harare this week. We still have a couple more weeks ahead of us before we have to head home, and so we’ll amble up through Namibia and Botswana, winding gently down and preparing ourselves for the trauma of having to reintegrate ourselves into the world!

 

This isn’t the last from me, but it is a significant indicator that the end is nearly upon us…..

 

Gus