Category Archives: Travel
Madagascar 5: more schools again – this time by ox-cart and pirogue
How to get to Lamboara school…
On day two we have two schools to visit. To reach Ankotapiky we drive though spiny forest (euphorbia), mangrove swamps, and arid plains. In the rainy season there’s lots of flooding on this road rendering it impassable so people are cut off.
Madagascar 4: visiting UWS schools in the remote south west
So here we are on our way to visit eight schools, the training centre and a local hub in three days! For the first 130 kms we whizz along on the best road we’ve seen, built by the Chinese. We pass a repair gang with its Chinese supervisor in his blue Mao suit. Once we leave this anomaly, we enter the world of truly awful roads – nothing we have experienced so far compares to this. A mixture of sand, rocks, ruts, 4WD-compulsory for the next three days. Progress is agonisingly slow. There is no other traffic apart from ox-carts and a mini bus once or twice a day. It’s too difficult for bicycles, and motorbikes are challenging – a dim European employed by UWS bought one and got horribly lost and had to be rescued. Of course there are no road signs!
Madagascar 3: Ranomafana to Toliara – and more lemurs
We leave early, driving through the flood plain again. The paddy is interrupted by what can only be described as brick kilns in factory proportions. We have seen these earlier on the roads, huge stacks of bricks, with room for wood to fire them. The practice is to sacrifice some of the clay in the paddy field to make bricks, either for personal use or for sale. It’s a big decision – eat or diversify. Here we see all family members working together on both activities!
Madagascar 2: from Antsirabe to Ranomafana National Park
Blue-leg chameleon and small bamboo lemur
Another long journey today, ten hours to Ranomafana. But we are never bored as the countryside is stunning, consisting of fertile terraces and valleys, interspersed with huge granite boulders. There is a stretch of indigenous forest, the last remaining in this area; Madagascar has lost 80% of its forest thanks to mankind. It has been replaced with fast-growing eucalyptus and pines for building and firewood. Colourful lantana line the way. Everyone is working in the fields, preparing for planting, watering potatoes by hand in their geometric raised-bed rows. Ducks and geese waddle round all villages – apparently they return every night, a natural homing instinct.
Madagascar 1 – Tana to Antsirabe with some background thrown in!
We are in Madagascar to visit the UWS project to build schools and provide education to some of the world’s poorest children. We started discussing this in 2020 during Covid while I was still a trustee (nine years!) of UWS. Covid obviously had a big impact on our plans and indeed Madagascar as you will see.
Cultural weekend in Vienna
Klimt’s Beethoven frieze at the Succession Museum
To complete my heritage journey, we hop on a train to Vienna, a mere 1.30 hrs away from Brno. As a small child, I spent a couple of summer holidays with my Czech grandmother, who rented a small flat somewhere. It was heaven: knedlíky dumplings for breakfast every day, crème fraiche with mandarin slices, visits to the eponymous hotel for Sacher torte with her various cousins, the Prater (the big wheel was a favourite) and to her old boyfriend, Alois Podhajsky, then director of the Spanish riding school! I’m afraid we did none of these things!
VIP visit to Boskovice!
The day after the colloquium, the organiser Mojmír Jeřábek and Táňa Klementová have organised a trip to Boskovice to visit Hermann Ungar’s birthplace and tour the old Jewish ghetto. We are accompanied by a group of elderly members of the German Club from Brno. A number of the older generation still have German as a first language (as did my family and most assimilated Jews) – a legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Continue reading
The Ungar/Kafka Colloquium in Brno, Czech Republic
Sunrise over Brno
I have been invited to give the keynote speech at a symposium in Brno on Hermann Ungar and Frantz Kafka, where leading experts will gather to discuss their lives and work. It’s pretty daunting, 80 people, and will involve simultaneous Czech translation. In addition there will be an interview in the Malý Mehrin, a small Jewish cultural centre which is planning to build a museum near the station, chaired by Táňa Klementová, a local historian. Then there will be a VIP visit to Boskovice where we will be hosted by the mayor. Wow! And all because I’m Herman Ungar’s granddaughter! Continue reading
Big cats galore in Ruaha: Tanzania’s gem
A typical Ruaha vista
I have never been here before, although it is the second-largest National Park in Tanzania. Much more famous and frequently visited are Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Manyara but, having spent so much time in small tented camps like Goliath in Mana Pools, Zimbabwe, I have no desire to go backwards in my safari experiences. So we pick Nomad, which is owned and run by Bimb Theobald, a business partner of our great tea-broking/growing friend Robin H. We made the best choice! This outfit really understands the balance between sustainability and luxury and invests in their staff. A winning combination. On our way in we come across two wild dogs, far from home – the den is miles away. They haven’t been seen for six weeks so we are very lucky. Continue reading
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