Prep Day

The groceries have been brought. The bags have been packed. The itinerary is coming together. The Landy has been loaded. Now all we have to do is get going.

Sounds simple, but there’s no hand book that says what each country rules are. We found out just a week ago that if you don’t have a Namibia vehicle identification sticker on your car, you’ll end up getting a fine from the police. It was one of those random posts on Facebook that will save the day.

So, we downloaded some designs and sent them off to the printer. Simple instructions, print one each. A few days later we get back 5 of each sticker and two with major errors. On one of them Tanzania was places in Zambia and Namibia was spelt incorrectly. The printing company said they would redo them, but to date, still no word.

We’ll use what we can and see what we can find on the road.

Check out the video below on what else we had to do to the landy to make sure we don’t get pulled up by the police in different countries.

Big News!

When we started BeyondWater in 2007, we established a Board of Directors. Their job is to set up policies, procedures and as much as possible, ensure our future. This is not always easy when we’re based in Kenya and they in Aussie.

All of our boards are hand picked business men and women who have a passion for bringing about positive change through our work. We’re all in this together.

A couple of years ago, our Aussie board asked us to consider taking 6 months off for a sabbatical/long service leave. Can you imagine Pete sitting around for 6 months? Not only is he a sanguine, he has ADD and needs to be doing something practical, otherwise we all suffer. I get what they were saying, it’s time we took time out to refresh our batteries for the next season of the work.

We managed to whittle it down to 3 months. It’s still a long time and also means we can’t do fundraising when we go. We normally travel a few months a year in the US, Australia or New Zealand but if we were to take three months off, this wouldn’t happen.

We looked at doing short courses but nothing came up. Going back to Australia to see the family would’ve cost $10,000 just in flights – and it’s very expensive being there. Would’ve been great to go back and see them but this will have to wait until the end of 2025.

So, we’ve decided to take 12 weeks leave and drive in our landy all the way down to Namibia and back. That means going through Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and maybe even Malawi. We’ve all got things we want to see, the big one being Victoria Falls and the deserts of Namibia.

We were going to leave at the beginning of May but because we got back from New Zealand later than intended, we’ve delayed it. We might go at the beginning of June but we’ve a few things to wrap up in the office – like taxes first.

Check out our announcement here: