Today is the day! I am starting my journey to Africa and flying to Namibia.

Emotionally, it’s a strange day.

I hardly slept last night, mostly thinking about my packing.

Did I forget something? How can I pack lighter when I need to bring my camera, sleeping bag, laptop, binoculars, a full medicine kit, and enough clothes for both winter and summer? Will the travel company let me board without extra charges?

This is about the third time I’ve repacked. I’m planning to leave for 8 months, and these bags will be my best friends. I’ve thought about the contents of these bags for months. My trip to Kenya helped me adjust my initial plans. I added a watch, binoculars, a travel phone, and waterproof bags.

I won’t have the opportunity to come back home and adjust my packing. It has to be as perfect as possible.

I’m also really scared of being absent-minded, losing something, or worse, getting robbed. I forget things all the time, everywhere. I need to be more focused.

As for my emotions, I have a hard time understanding them. It’s a mixture of sadness, excitement, joy, fear, and feeling lost. I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

The previous weeks have been very hectic since I last wrote on the blog.

The never ending visa suspense

First of all, the ongoing and endless visa story. I wrote to the South African embassy in mid-May, kindly asking for a status update after I appealed, setting my constraints, and hoping to get my student visa before May 30, 2024. I received no answer, no sign of life, no acknowledgment. Their landline is not working; I have tried many times. I’m still hoping to get it before heading to South Africa.

So, the conclusion of that whole story is that I will come back to Europe for the first two weeks of July to try to get it prior to my travel to South Africa. That was clearly not planned.

I will make the most of it by seeing friends and family and enjoying nice European capitals during summer. It also felt right to me; I felt I needed some time to rest in an environment I know and to reflect on the previous month of volunteering before heading to the safari guide training.

Empyting my flat

After the Kenyan safaris, I had to pack everything in my flat, find new owners for my cherished plants and remaining pieces of furniture, give away what I no longer needed, and drive a truck to France to bring what was left to my brother’s house.

That was purely exhausting. I started with everything at once, leaving all the cardboard boxes open until the very end—imagine the mess. A traditional move!

I kept some corporate clothes (just in case), some winter and summer casual clothes, and sorted some of them out to give to the Red Cross. I kept some kitchen tools, some books, and my photos and picture frames.

My former material life fits into 20 cardboard boxes, and I am not sure what I will do with them.

Going back to France was another opportunity to see family and friends from college. I remember clearly the evening when everything went berserk, and we ended up dancing in the living room until very late. It was one of those moments when you need to let go and just appreciate what’s at hand. There were a lot of laughs as I tried to explain what I had been experiencing over the past months to my friends and family. It had been a long time since I laughed that hard.

Returning the truck was another ordeal. During the check-out, some new bumps were identified on the inside of the truck. I have no idea how it happened and believe I wasn’t careful enough during the check-in. I’m quite certain I didn’t cause the damage, given how slowly I drive and that the load was only a third of the truck’s capacity. Nevertheless, they charged the full deposit, despite my objections. I couldn’t prove my case, and now I’m waiting for the evaluation of the damages, which should be far less than the deposit. As we speak, the issue is still unresolved despite my calls, emails, and visits. It’s something I would have liked to avoid—another administrative struggle ahead.

The Flors Festival

I do not know if you remember, I was part of the organisation of a 3-days music and art festival in Catalunya, next to Tarragona: the Flors Festival. It almost got canceled a few days before the planned date: we had a crisis meeting four days before the festival because we had only sold 20 tickets, far from our target of 150. At that moment, we took another leap of faith and decided to move on.

As soon as I got back to France, I headed to the festival site to continue preparations and arrange the final details with the team.

It was a lot of work:

• We finished the shade infrastructure
• Cleaned the dry toilets
• Finalized the volunteer planning with many last-minute changes
• Did all the grocery shopping
• Prepared the accommodation for the artists (the yurts)
• Arranged the flower decorations
• Adjusted the artist schedule due to last-minute changes
• Organized the arrivals of volunteers and artists
• Set up all the facilities (bathrooms, kitchen, stage)
• Tested the new brick oven for pizzas and adjusted the pizza team last minute
• Finished the food and beverage tickets
• Continued with publications and interviews the week before the festival

Having done a first edition already, we were much more relaxed than the previous year, but the to-do list was still impressive, and I hardly slept before 2 in the morning.

At some point, regardless of the fun, I really questioned why I was participating in the organization, given the journey I was on and how exhausted I was. I remembered that this was the activity I had planned from the very beginning; all the dates of my endeavours had been calculated having the Flors Festival in mind. I wanted to experience it again. I thought it would be the only activity left after I left my job. I was so wrong :).

In the end, the Flors Festival was a success from an organizational perspective, for the artists, the volunteers, and the organizing team. All the performances were high-quality, and the audience was thrilled and easy-going. The weather was great, the infrastructures were ready, and we had fantastic artists and volunteer teams.

We had a great time on Saturday night with lots of concerts, ending at 4:30 in the morning with jam sessions and improvisations by the artists. I even tried to mix some dub on an analog table. I had the chance to close the flors festival on the last day with a downtempo set.

I was also able to enjoy some of the workshops we organized, including a very energizing contemporary African dance. Continuing to get closer to Africa.

We clearly improved compared to last year. The creative minds of the organizing team introduced a story throughout the festival, prepared by our masters of ceremony, and we finished the festival with a proper closing act: sowing seeds and our dreams at the same time while humming one of the freshly learned African songs.

We received feedback from the public and acknowledged among ourselves what needs to be done for the coming year.

I have been so filled with love, excitement, joy, gratitude, satisfaction, friendship, and presence. I am very grateful to have had the chance to experience such a great moment that will clearly remain a cherished memory. People who experienced it felt privileged.

Here are some photos.

Then, back to reality.

Refurbishing my appartment

I had to prepare my flat, repaint the walls, clean, and empty the place. The garden was already done, thanks to the help of my friends and a gardener I hired at a fair price (thanks to life and random human connections again).

I couldn’t have done it without the help of my girlfriends, who came over for a few days with great knowledge, humor, paintbrushes, and white paint. We faced several issues but overcame them. We had such great moments, sharing it together—almost naked in the flat with a pregnant woman, an intermittent worker, and a complete novice (me).

It is such a nice feeling to be surrounded by such admirable human beings. I felt supported in that last sprint. Thanks to them, I enjoyed a night out in the Natural Park of Garraf and recovered my entire deposit. It’s the first time that has happened to me in Spain, as the national sport seems to be withholding deposits from foreigners.

I had a farewell party in Barcelona, and my friends came over. As usual, I didn’t have the chance to talk with everyone, but I felt supported and loved, which is priceless. A last night at X.’s place, who supported me until the very end, and here I am now, waiting for my connecting flight in Frankfurt…

Wish me the best of luck.