EVA Travel

 I know that many members of the EVA Community are very seasoned travellers so my recent stint may not seem like much to everyone. But I’ve been away from home now since the middle of August and while there’s been so much excitement, you do long for a hot bath and a walk with the dogs occasionally. Actually I said I would mention the girls at Hunt Solicitors while I was away, so hello everyone. I think though that I have definitely left work this time!

So where can I start? I’ve been to Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Morocco, Tanzania again and finally Namibia. I set up a tour for Rwanda-Uganda that includes gorilla and chimp tracking and the places are filling up nicely so far, so both trips in February are likely to fill. I’ll be on both of those, so that’s exciting. Rwanda was a revelation for me- so clean, organised and forward looking. I’m well aware that there are other serious issues at play in Rwanda with the leadership but if I’ve learned one thing over the past few months is that Africa is intensely complicated and there are layers upon layers of factors in everything. So I look at Rwanda with the eyes of a tourist who wants to give back to a developing nation that is still recovering from a genocide.

Uganda was my first ever African country to visit and it’s an underdeveloped country sorely in need of infrastructure. Having said that, I’ve gone there with the same attitude that I approached Rwanda. What can we usefully do and where. That was an easy one though, I’ve been a supporter of Uganda Lodge since I started EVA Travel and it’s a delight to be going there to do our volunteering next year, In addition, we will track for mountain gorillas in Bwindi as well as chimps in Rwanda. A treat for lovers of primates but you need to start exercising now.

From there it was onwards to Tanzania where there were some tweaks to be made to the tour. That’s okay though- we are a community and all of the feedback is actively sought out and acted upon. We’ll move to a more suitable hotel in Moshi for our days there from February. In October the tour will undergo quite an overhaul as prompted by the groups that were there. We’ll extend it by 2 days so that we have an extra day volunteering and an extra day on safari. There might be rhinos involved in the extra safari so keep an eye out for those details.

Ethiopia was next on the list and that turned out to be an adventure and a half. Rough roads, long jeep rides, crushing my finger in the door of said jeep and hitting the mud inelegantly like one of the hippos. And all of that was before I slept in the mud hut on a mattress on the floor and peed in a hand basin in the middle of the night in the middle of the room. If ever there was a case of needs must, this was it. I am having a real internal debate about doing a tour in Ethiopia. The need is real, that’s for sure, but the Gurage Tribe need more than a coat of paint and a few schoolbooks. They don’t have running water, electricity, transport or adequate cooking facilities. And it’s not like they don’t know what they are missing- the village elders would do anything for a touch of progress in the village. The most touching part of my tour was when I said goodbye to the elders. They said that even if we don’t come back as a group, they were so happy that I came to see them. They have nothing in our material sense, but they had gone out and put together a bouquet of rosemary and presented it to me as a parting gift. I don’t know the right way to proceed here but we’ll talk about it and see what the next steps can be.

On from there in a middle seat in economy class to Morocco for many, many hours. Hey, I survived. My sciatica had been helped enormously from sleeping on the floor in Gurage so I was in excellent shape for that flight via Doha. You can’t fly direct over parts of Africa because you're flying over some dodgy areas but sure that’s all part of the adventure too. As was the fact Doha had been bombed the night before I arrived but all was quiet. There were 2 very important looking Sheiks on my flight so I figured we were safe enough.

Any account of Morocco would be incomplete without mentioning the amazing group of people I travelled with. It was another tweaking trip and while there were definitely a few little areas to improve on, the group took everything with enormous good humour and gusto. It was one of my favourite travel groups so far (It’s okay Northern Ireland, you’re still up there) and restored my belief that what we are doing can be fantastic if you come with an open heart and open mind. Nothing was too difficult, too far, too hard or too weird for this group. We renovated a classroom that had been damaged by the 2023 earthquake and celebrated with the mothers and children in the school before we left. That was an especially moving ceremony- terribly shy, veiled Islamic women feeding their incredibly delicious cakes to hot and sweaty westerners who gave of their time and resources to fix the school. We rode camels in the sunset, played cards, did synchronised swimming and had the most amazing time. The add-on was incredible too, a true deep dive into the culture and ancient history of Morocco. Even though it was my

4^th time to visit- Fes, Meknes and Volubilis were unimagined delights that I saw for the first time this time. It's a really great add-on and if you want to get 'under the skin' of Morocco this tour is a must.

And finally Namibia. I had no preconceptions, I had done no research and I arrived as a blank slate. Actually more than blank as my luggage hadn’t arrived so smelly and blank I guess. There aren’t enough words to do any kind of justice to Namibia. It’s vast- I mean its beyond vast. I grew up on a small farm in Ireland, it was about 15 acres while a small farm in Namibia is 15,000 acres. It hurts even trying to imagine that. We stayed on a farm that was about 40,000 acres where black and white rhinos are protected. We come back again to the layers of complexity in Africa when we start to talk about conservation. It’s a complex area and while we have some ideas from our western world about how things should work, you really need to go to see and understand the reality of the human wildlife conflict and the challenges of conservation. But that’s a definite trip and will include a visit to Botswana and the Delta. The main thrust of the tour will be conservation volunteering with Salmon Vermaak from Namibia Wildlife Protection and the Black Rhino Protection NGO but there will be more details of that before we launch the tour. Hopefully that will kick off in May, which is meant to be the best month to visit and I hope the itinerary will be available by the end of November,

So that’s my round up of Africa. Vast, complicated, enchanting, haunting, progressive in parts while ancient in others. They say you leave a piece of your heart behind every time. I just know I need to go back just to be sure. But for now it's on to the last part of my journey and I will be in Borneo tomorrow afternoon to review our tour there so the excitement continues.