My travels

01-10-10

While in Ghana, I'll be doing a 3-month journalism internship through projects-abroad, a for-profit volunteer and internship organisation that enlists thousands of participants every year.

After a 5-day stop over in Johannesburg, I arrive in Ghana to spend two months at the Business and Financial Times in Accra, Ghana. The newspaper is published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and "provides in-depth coverage of the relevant issues in major sectors of the economy". This coverage ranges from mining to stock markets to aviation. I will be shadowing professional journalists and my overall responsibilities will depend on how well I prove myself while there.

I'm looking forward to this. The problems synonymous with Africa, from disease to poverty to corruption to civil conflict, are inexplicably tied into economic leadership and business is increasingly becoming the focus in many African nations, especially Ghana. The B&FT promotes itself as being the "longest-running and most authoritative business paper in Ghana". I hope that by working there, I'll learn how the business echelon of Ghanaian leadership operates and what it sees for the country's future, as well as the rest of Africa.

Once my business paper stint is up, I spend a month with the sports department of the TV3 Network, also in Accra. Again, I know Soccer to be very big in Ghana and I hope that my time here will provide a more social look at the country's direction. The Black Stars performed well in the World Cup too, so I expect the mood will be an excited one that I will be able to learn a lot from.

After my internships are over, I travel independently around East Africa for 4 weeks. I start out in Nairobi, Kenya and beyond this, I don't know yet, but I would love to see Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania.

Sydney and lost belongings

21-09-10

I lost only one thing in Sydney over three days. As this was my first trip anywhere far away in a long time, I was pleased with this result. Coming home, I thought to myself, how good would it be if I could achieve that while in Africa?! Well, after some calculations, I'm not so happy about it anymore.

Numbers of items I lost: one, my return sky-bus ticket.

Numbers of items I took to Sydney: approximately 30 (Clothes, books, travel documents, toiletries, a pack of cards, wallet, mobile phone, etc - all together it weighed less than 10kg and fit into one backpack).

Number of days I spent in Sydney: three

1/30 is 3.333 items per hundred. In Africa, I'm hoping to travel light but it's a much bigger trip and so I expect that I will carrying close to 60 items.

The math: With a losing rate of 3.33 items per 100 every 72 hours, I'll lose 60
items or all of my belongings by day 100 of my trip. This is the 22nd of January 2010, which just happens to be the day I finish up in Ghana and fly to Kenya to start four weeks of independent travel.

I panicked after coming to this result, as the prospect of traveling around East Africa with nothing except for the clothes on my back(I didn't count them in my calculations - they're very hard to lose) is a frightening one. However, I pride myself on being able to solve any problem, from easy soduku to the hodge conjecture to difficult soduku. So, I came up with a solution. There are two parts to it.

The first is a losing schedule. Rather than lose items randomly that might be integral to what I want to do on a particular day of my trip, I'll devise a schedule for which item I'll lose when.

I've written up a quick summary of what such a schedule will look like:

October 2009

13th: Fly out from Australia
16th: Leave my toothbrush in a Johannesburg hostel
19: Forget to take a book I'm reading out of the seat pocket in the plane.
21: Leave my mobile phone on a bus.

... and so on.

It might look a little bleak but if I know what I'm going to lose when, I can plan accordingly, minimizing the overall harm to my trip.

The second part of my solution is something I'll term Focusing my losses. As I lose my belongings, I'll buy cheap replacements so that I am not left with a situation where all I have left to lose are my more expensive items, i.e. my Passport.

If I lose my toothbrush, I'll buy a new one that day. Same goes for socks, pens and books. I'll roster these replacements into my losing schedule right away, along with the occasional bigger item, like my mobile phone, and if I'm lucky, my forgetfulness will fall for it.

If I'm successful, when I return home on the 20th of Feb 2010, I'll be carrying the same passport, wallet and laptop that I left Melbourne with.

Wish me luck!