How to begin?

I intend this blog to be the story of my travels with my husband, dog and cat around Africa, the things we see, the people we meet. However, I have a feeling that it may turn into a place for me to rant and rave a bit, which isn't always possible given our life style. Let me try and explain what that's like...

We live rather differently from most people we know, particularly people our age. For a start, we're married, which seems to be becoming more unusual by the day... our friends all seem to think we're crazy for that. We get divorce statistics thrown at us left, right and centre, but 6 months down the line, we seem to be doing alright!

My husband, Ian, is a geologist. We moved down to South Africa after sticking it out in Zimbabwe for a year, with absolutely nothing to our names except Ian's experience on a small gold mine, a rickety old car, some clothes, a dog and a cat. The Zimbabwean inflation rate had eaten away at any savings we'd made and we were getting desperate. It was hard to walk away from Zim, as we were very happy living there, even with all the trouble, and Ian's parents are still up there, but we'd reached breaking point.

Luckily my parents were good enough to put us up for a while. During that time we got married and started looking for work, with absolutely no concept of what our options were or what to look for. I am a linguist by training, which isn't the easiest field to find work in! So when Ian was made an offer with a small South African consultancy firm, which included part time work for me as a data processor, we jumped at it. Six months later, I find myself still working with geological databases and actually enjoying it! I've also come to enjoy the life that we lead, which I didn't think I would.

We don't know from week to week exactly where we'll be. Contracts come up very quickly and are always open to change, so we're not exactly settled. At the moment we're based in a bush camp outside of Francistown, in eastern Botswana. Will describe it more later.