I remember one trail with German, Swiss and Austrian exchange students: they were all young adults at university who were brought out by The South Africa Foundation to spend three months in our country and see what makes us tick. In the eighties the only ticking was that of the time bomb waiting to destroy…
On Trail: Leave only Footprints, Take only Memories
This picture shows the Wilderness Leadership School camp on Driefontein in the Pilanesberg. The big rock is on the north of the camp. Whenever we left camp we would bury the ash away from the camp, cleared all equipment and then sweep the site with branches of Euclea. We always left the camp the way…
On Trail: Spring in Pilanesberg
I took a trail into Pilanesberg on 24 September 1984. It must have been varsity holidays and I was three quarters of the way through second year medicine. It was a joy to leave the dissecting halls and the ingrained smell of formalin for the bush. Fortunately I kept copies of the trail reports I…
Gl’Uomini Degli Dei – The People of the Gods 4 July 2011
Last year we did an amazing walk above the Amalfi coast, Il Sentiero Degli Dei, “The Path of the Gods”. This ancient path was used by shepherds and traders from a mountain top village called Agerola (where, you ask?) to Positano (everybody knows where), a picturesque seaside village on the Amalfi coast and setting of…
Conversations about Work and Corners
The Greeks use the word work to mean labour as well as to mean trying to pull a fast one. They say the only work left in Greece is the work where you pull a fast one on your neighbour. Sitting in the lounge at Oliver Tambo Airport after an intercontinental flight is far removed…
Conversations: Five Things My Father Taught Me
My father did not actively teach, but reinforced ideas. This is what I learnt from him: Have faith. Act now. Be punctual. Be prepared. Have compassion. For all the trials and tribulations he faced, and he faced as much as any of us and sometimes more, he kept his faith. It was a complex religion…
Conversations about Photo Albums
Who would have thought in those days of Polaroids and slides, when a film roll came with 20 or 36 pictures, that we would be looking at photographs on a computer screen? I have two computer folders of old photographs my father had scanned in, some from slides and some from prints. Each folder has…
The Lost Immigrants 6 September 2002
Edinburgh's late summer was beautiful. The festival was over and a lazy peace enveloped the city. It was warm and the people were warm. The crowd of orthopaedic surgeons from South Africa were great fun albeit that a large part of the fun involved trying as many pubs as possible. This all culminated with the…
Conversations about Paraskevidekatriaphobia
My father was superstitious and spiritual. Sometimes the two became blurred and no logic or belief was evident. He would never sit at a table with thirteen guests. It is an easy superstition to explain: Judas was the thirteenth guest at the last supper, and it was he who betrayed Jesus Christ and tagged the…
Conversations about Syntagma Square
I was reading a book about a garden in Helekion outside Athens and the horticultural intern mentioned a day trip to Athens and Syntagma Square. That brought back a flood of memories, since it has been well over twenty years since that I walked on that marble paving. When we first used to visit Greece…
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