Wild Africa with Diwa Zambezi

2012 had been a tough year for our family and in need of recovery, my brothers and I decided to return to our spiritual home, the Zambezi Valley. As children and prior to immigrating to Australia in 2003,

we spent over two months of every year in the Zimbabwean bush and during that trip in 2012 we rediscovered the freedom and splendour we enjoyed as children. Upon returning to the capital city, Harare, we said goodbye to my grandfather who had introduced my own father to the Zambezi Valley. He was in the late stages of terminal cancer and we didn’t expect to see him again. Some of his last words to me were along the lines of, ‘That Zambezi will always be a curse for you.’

‘Why is that?’ I asked.

‘Because it’s the most remarkable place I’ve visited and you’ve discovered it while so young.’ he replied.

I didn’t think his words too profound at the time but how things have changed since then. My wife and I have had the privilege of travelling to roughly fifty countries in the intervening period and all the many travel and family moments crystallised into the realisation that the Zambezi Valley is indeed extraordinary. I sense I always knew it but I felt that proclaiming it publicly without having visited other wild destinations such as Alaska and Siberia would lack credence. I’ve finally been able to make sense of what my grandfather meant that day. That I’ll always be comparing new places I visit with my pinnacle, the Zambezi.

To pay homage to this Zambezi passion, my wife and I founded a charity and tour company by the name of Diwa Zambezi in 2015. We like to think that its structure will be a mechanism that ensures that safari and tour dollars are reinvested into the conservation of the very areas our clients visit with us. The concept of responsible tourism has begun to emerge over the last few years and especially when it comes to African holidays.

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