Wandering thru Southern Africa, 1986-87

  In 1985, I was having a mid-life crisis.   I was about to turn 40, I'd been laid off from a very interesting writing and editing job (more on that someday), and I was getting divorced.   A summer class in Journalism Writing Enrichment at Metropolitan State University of Denver taught by Greg Pearson, a former Rocky Mountain News reporter and inspiring lecturer, got me thinking about a career as a "gonzo journalist" in the mold of Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, who wrote first-person, subjective documentaries.      With ideas and encouragement from my close friend, Jim Bachman, with whom I was living at the time, I came up with a plan to do freelance journalism and photography in South Africa during the waning years of Apartheid.  There were some impediments to this idea.  It was dangerous for foreign journalists to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in South Africa, but mainly the paranoid white South African government wasn't to...

                   Photo by Will Mahoney                                                                 Lawn bowling is popular among older white South Africans.  These gentlement are enjoying their "bowls" at a private club in Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State.   Photo by Will Mahoney                                                                                           Photos by Will Mahoney                                      ...

My "Perspectives of a Wandering Geographer" blog includes stories that were written and posted since 2012.  However, I'd like to post some of the stories, essays, and reports that I wrote prior to that time.  I think it would be too confusing to post "old stuff" with my contemporary writings.  So, this new blog will feature blasts from the past.   I had thought of publishing stories in chronological order over the course of my life.  I'm not going to do that and will lead off with stories and letters written from southern Africa in 1986-87.  During that time, I travelled extensively (mostly by train) in South Africa with side trips in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Lesotho.  I also had a one-year teaching position in the Environmental Science Department at the University of Botswana.  Your comments are encouraged! 5 May 1987.  Watching the sunset at Sowa Pan, Botswana in front of Hugh Gordon's Toyota HiAce van.  L to R: Will, Jonat...