Where to from here?

Where to now?

Well, many people have been asking me the “big question”: where am I going after Maru-a-Pula?

The answer is not particularly simple or well-thought out, but I am beginning to form some more realistic plans. Most schools in the region are on holiday from the middle of April to the middle of May, which means that this time of year is going to be a traveling time for me. I am thinking of heading north to Zambia (with HQ’s permission, of course). There are some pros and cons of this tactic… the pros being that I haven’t been there and it’s a completely different marimba culture. The major drawback is that I don’t have any connections there yet… although I am working on it. My thought was to go north to Lusaka for a couple of weeks to see if I could dig up any schools or marimba players in person. After that, or maybe sooner than later if it turns out to be unproductive, I want to head even farther north to Tanzania. I don’t actually know a lot about that area yet, but I would sure love to visit there and I know there is some marimba to be found. So… that’s the holiday. Hopefully I would get to swing back down from the North through Namibia and celebrate my and Jaimie Adelson’s birthdays with Jaimie at Gobabeb.

From there it is very likely that I will go back to Johannesburg to visit a school there for a month or possibly two. One of the former marimba teachers from Gaborone has moved to a ritzy private school there. He is reputed to be a very good teacher, so I would probably enjoy his teaching.

From there I plan to hit a marimba festival in mid-June in Mafikeng—the International School of South Africa has invited Maru-a-Pula to participate and it would be a fun event to attend. From there it’s on to Grahamstown, SA to visit Andrew Tracey at Rhoades University and hit the Grahamstown Festival at the end of June.

From the 1^st of July my lovely friends Samantha Worzalla and Julie Edwards are visiting and we’ll be doing some traveling until the end of the month. Conveniently there is the South African National Marimba Festival in Johannesburg on the 25^th of July, and my flight home leaves on the 29^th. So that’s the year in a wrap! Although, it is interesting to me that the majority of my plans for the near future are up in the air while the farther off plans are much more concrete! But that’s life sometimes.

The only other wrench that has been thrown in the wheels is the uneasy political situation in Zimbabwe. I was planning to visit there beginning in April for one or two months, but it looks as if there will be a travel warning issued for the duration of my stay in Africa. Oh, well! The irony is that I now have contacts and everything that would make a visit there a complete breeze from my end… providing that I don’t get shot at the border J. But I am still hoping that the travel warning is lifted. I would much rather go there than Johannesburg!!

So that's something to chew on for a while....

over and out1