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Footing With Sir Richard's Ghost
In the footsteps of her ancestors and with her dog by her side, she walked 2 200 kilometres from Durban to the Victoria Falls.
Patricia’s journey shadowed that of her adventurer ancestors, Sir Richard Glyn and his brother Robert who came to Africa in 1863 because they’d read David Livingstone’s account of ‘The Smoke That Thunders’ and wanted to see this mighty cascade and to hunt Africa’s big game.
Using Richard’s diary about the old party’s trip, Patricia found and walked their route along the 19th-century wagon trails that once snaked along the great river systems of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. She crashed through thick bush and deep Kalahari sand, walked unarmed in Big Five territory and consorted with Zimbabwe’s notorious ‘war veterans’. When her ancestors’ wagons moved, so did she, where they stopped for provisions, so did she – eventually reaching The Falls on exactly the same day as they had, 142 years later.
The talk highlights how much the subcontinent has changed in the century-and-a-half between these expeditions, and is rich with illustrations and photographs from famous Victorian hunting and trading expeditions. It describes the wagon life of old, the great African leaders and eccentric Boer elephant hunters who helped Richard and Robert on their way to the Falls. The presentation also looks at the impact which the early guns had on the wildlife of Southern Africa, and the devastating impact which cattle farming is having on the land today. In many of the areas Patricia walked through, rivers are dammed, ravines are choked with alien vegetation and people no longer live with their culture and traditions intact. But like that of her forebears, Patricia’s story is about reaching her destination through the kindness and hospitality of Africa’s rural people.
It’s also the story of her little dog, Tapiwa, who walked by her side, and the puppy they found dying in Botswana’s bush. It’s a tale about personal development, as the woman who could hardly read a map learned how to navigate by GPS and lead her two-person back-up team through the thirst land on the peripheries of the Kalahari. It’s about the crew’s near disasters, their highs and their lows. It’s about the wonder and simple delights of camping in the great African outdoors. It’s a tale about meeting challenges, facing fear and being rewarded with great insights and even greater peace. The presentation is brutally honest, extremely funny in places and deeply moving.
Patricia’s talk has a strong conservation message and shows how profoundly her lifestyle changed after witnessing the environmental degradation of Africa which has occurred in the time between the two Glyn expeditions. It also demonstrates the great health benefits of walking, as this 46 year old woman managed the tremendous physical task of slaving through thick sand and thornveld for 25 to 40 kilometres per day.
The one-and-a-quarter hour presentation is illustrated by magnificent slides (a distillation of 8 000 taken on the trip) and wonderful video footage, as the journey was filmed for a television documentary. It is inspirational, entertaining and thought-provoking.
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