The Way Is The Goal

Category: Work (Page 1 of 3)

Africa on my horizon

Africa is one of those continents that I still haven’t visited. I hope the time comes soon that I can. I would love to travel by bus and train from South Africa to Kenya, for example. Furthermore, I wanted to go last year, but it didn’t happen. Too many unfortunate events kept me from going. But I would love to visit soon.

But how come Africa is on my horizon? Well, it started a year and a half ago with a new project that I was helping to build. For that financial website, we needed new authors, and we found them in Africa, in Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya. From one thing came another, and I delved into the world of sub-sahara Africa. One of the topics that I started getting into was money transfers.

I still remember very well the old days of international payments and money transfers. Sending money abroad used to be cumbersome, slow, and expensive. How different that is from today. It is generally fast, cheap, and reliable.

The authors and editors need to be sent money for the work they do. What really struck me is that sending money to Africa, in this case Kenya, is simply faster than sending money between my bank accounts. Within 10 minutes, the money arrives. Sending the money doesn’t even cost much, often only €3 to send, around €200. That’s the same as a price of a coffee here.

And even then, it can be faster and cheaper, so we discovered. For example, if people use the same digital wallet. It doesn’t even matter which currency you use, whether it’s Euros, Shilling, Dollars or new cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. You receive it at once, and you send it from anywhere. For this reason, I took the initiative to start a new Africa money transfer website.

So, who knows how much longer it will take for me to visit Africa. Hopefully, in the new year.

Cooking for *a lot* of People

Ha, talking about having fun with food. On this photo you can see me talking to an audience that is just about to eat the food that I rescued from the bins. We are in a theatre in Leiden, during a theater-talk-show on sustainability where we served our dumpster-dinner ( “No Waste Dinner”) for just over 80 people.

It was great fun to give my statement in front of such a wide audience. Most of them didn’t see it coming: that I actually got the food that’s on their plates from bins, but we got some great feed-back. And most importantly, people loved the food we made.

More photos.

Somewhere in Portugal

Hundred-and-fifty people and amazing fun in Paris two years ago, just over a hundred in Odesa last year (a lot harder to get to, see video) and non-stop hitching adventures. The ones gathered are hitchhikers, first-timers and hardcore travelers. Nice reunions of friends and contacts, of people who share-alike.

Both times I helped (un)organising the events. And this year again I do my part, setting up the website hitchgathering.org and helping out with communications and outreach.

I am not so much of a scouter and both last years the location of where to meet was pretty much left to the last minute, literally. And again for this year, we have no clue yet where to meet, except for “somewhere” in Portugal. Fantastic, and perfectly alligned with a hitchhiking attitude.

It ain’t easy for people to embark on quite a big trip to Portugal if they never hitched before, and especially if people have to hitch through Spain (which can be a bit of an adventure). So there is a challenge for many of us to inspire and motivate them.

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