Dawn at Okapuka Lodge

The Kalahari Morning Star's pixellated printing presses will be shut down for the next several days as we board the Jewel of the Desert for our journey through Namibia. But our stay at the Okapuka Lodge is worth reporting, however briefly. 

Our arrival last evening was in time to watch several dozen warthogs graze in the field just outside the dining room. They're a lot cuter in person than you'd expect, and they graze on their elbows, if that's the proper term, paying us little mind. 

But as it turns out, they're just the first shift. At dusk, they head off into the sunset, to be replaced by a herd of wildebeests and blesbok antelope, who stay until nightfall.

The dawn brings even more unexpected delights. A beautiful vista of shadows that gradually give way to morning sun, just for starters, and then the first of what we hope will be many more wonderful visitors. Well, more than one, actually. Six giraffes grazing nearby watch us as they move from tree to tree -- big, beautiful hints to what will come on our Namibian safari.

"Apartheid is Exactly Where It Belongs - In a Museum"

Our team of twenty-three Road Scholars embarks on our first adventure,  a visit to The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. We are a diverse group; there are doctors, chemical engineers, a physics teacher, a history professor, a town clerk, a geologist, a lawyer, a travel write, an oil industry executive, a medical researcher, and a weaver. And that's just for starters.

For six of us, this is the ninth in a thirteen-year series of Road Scholar adventures shared as a group, and their laughs and spirited conversation are a hint of what's in store for us all in the next two weeks.

Bianca Preusker, our Program Leader, takes us to the gates of the museum. We arrive fifteen minutes early, enough time to admire the seven Pillars of the South African Constitution before we meet Mduduzi Tshabalala, the museum's Tourist Guide, who takes us through exhibits spanning one hundred and twenty-five years of the country's history. It's a gripping story, particularly the time from the 1960s through the present. 

For many of us, it brings back memories of our own youthful idealism, but with much more drama, and fortunately with a rewarding happy ending. Mduduzi is too young to remember much of what he shows us, but his optimism for the future, and his admiration of Nelson Mandela's leadership, is inspirational. 




The Apartheid Museum is a perfect transition from our busy day-to-day lives at home to the wonders of Africa we are about to see first-hand. That unique combination of education, inspiration, and anticipation -- shared with a friendly group of soon-not-to-be-strangers -- just might be something of a trademark for the entire Road Scholar organization.