#beware baobabs ahead

[wiley-treehouse-gardens]

Beware baobabs ahead.

[roswellroamer]

Gobobas to Tsumkwe, Namibia. 4/23/19

We had another fairly big (kilometer wise) day ahead so we had breakfast just after 7 and hit the road. Today was mostly all on "C" roads. That means unpaved but in good condition. Everyone stayed upright today! Leaving Gobobas there were lots of horses, donkey and miles along the roadside requiring extra caution. Especially with the bulls. Some horses ran in front of us for maybe a mile before we passed them thinking they would just run until they were exhausted. We saw in the distance a sprawling shack city. Most of them are metal and maybe 8'x8'. So many folks here live like that. At our first 50km stop (we stop every 50k to meet up and wait for the support truck to be sure everyone is OK), we waited a while because Sean and John went shopping for some things in town. There was for the first time significant cloud cover and we all geared up for rain. We had recently passed a few families of guinea fowl and also our first beware warthog signs! In fact just before we left that first rest stop there were two warthogs that crossed the road two hundred yards from us but I was too late to spy them. We made a couple more stops and today the grassland/savannah was really evident. We passed our first baobab trees (the massive ones like the centerpiece of Disney's Animal Kingdom). We passed flowers that stood thin and taller than me along the road and looked like orchids. Termite mounds up to 9' tall and I have a picture of one here in town. Donkey carts, more horses and loads of cows along the roads the entire day today. We stopped for the second time at a road junction. We are now firmly in "Bush" country. Not the US presidential type but the home and heartland of what I am told are really the only indigenous people in Southern Africa. For 250,000 years they have been here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people

They are losing their culture to westernization. More about that later. After another stretch of road, we slowed down. It became apparent Gavin was looking for something. A road? Some wildlife? We pulled over at a big shade tree and dismounted. Turns out the truck crew had organized a "braai" (S African term for BBQ) and while the charcoal was burning down, some of us emptied the 60 liters of gas we had been carrying into the bikes with a siphon and funnel. Nothing in between about 600km of distance in terms of gas today. ⛽️ So remote. With the coals hot, the sausages were captured in an I tenuous "U-braai" contraption that held and flipped the sausage and also was adjustable to height. Rolls and vegetable along with sweet chili sauce rounded out a very tasty roadside lunch in the bush.

One of the really nice things about havinbrg a support vehicle is when they roll up to meet us on board the bed, they carry a camping cooler with coke, beer, water and Red Bull for anyone who wants it at every stop. Pretty sweet. Even drinking something at every stop I find I am still dehydrated every day. 33° again today and sunny the whole days after that half hour of overcast in the mid morning. When we pulled in for the overdue gas stop here in Tsumkwe there was a Range Rover next to us. It was a guy named David Bruce. He is an artist who has lived in the bush, in villages, sleeping on the ground for something like 27 years. From what I heard (and I should get the more extensive story tonight) he has dedicated himself to preserving the bushman culture and villages around here. It seems they are a dying breed and he is and has been working to prevent that from happening. Wanted to go for a swim but only 3" of water in the pool. No hot water, no A/C but a really cool outpost in the bush, surrounded by natural beauty and lots of cows! A great day and it sure feels good to strip off your gear that is just coated in dust and get into the shower and some fresh clothes. Heading to the Caprivi (sp) tomorrow which is supposed to be beautiful. Apparently the best insult in Afrikaans is "jou ma se poes" just don't say it to anyone who understand it!

[jollyfoxanimations2]

AX2001 30 second poem adaptation.

For my poem adaption assignment for Mark we were asked to pick a poem from random and adapt it into an animation, Originally i wanted to use a poem called The Cookie Thief by Valera Cox but i felt that this poem had far to much narrative and potential to be an awesome different project i have decided to choose a different poem which ended up being Spike Milligan’s Poem a lion is fierce. I actually thought that because it was such a small poem that it would have been easier to recreate it into a poem but i slowly started to realise how wrong i was. Because the poem is quite adjective and doesn't really have any narrative i have been struggling to create an exciting and captivating script.  

My first idea was to have an African scene with long grass a postbox, baobab trees in the background and a postman walking across the screen, next a lion would jump out and scare the postman and he would run away. but after discussing the idea with my tutor we both agree that the idea was very boring.

My next idea was to scrap the postman and lion characters and replace them with a milkman and as cat in a 1970′s style, i envisioned a somewhat style similar to the film Kes by Barry Hines, where there is a colour washed camera style to the scenes with a very northern feel to it. I had the idea to have a milkman turning up to deliver milk to a house, when he gets there he notices a cat curled up asleep next to a white milk crate and a small bowl, he grabs 3 bottles of the float and enters the garden to the front of the house, he replaces the two empty milk bottles from the crate and goes to stroke the cat to which it randomly scratches his hand and after a bit of cursing the milkman returns to his float and drives off leaving no milk for the cat. After i pitched this idea to my tutor he still didn't like the idea, he said that it has no character to the plot, its very predictable and quite boring, so back to the drawing board i went.

I finally have come up with an idea which he has to like, returning to the lion and the postman idea i have decided to have a scene within a suburban area where there are a few houses with lovely neat gardens and this one house with really long grass, a postman appears and he goes to enter the house with the long grass and on the front of the gate there is a sign ‘beware the lion’, the postman chuckles at the ridiculous sign and enters, he walks along the small path to get to the front door but with a rustling in the grass he stops and looks at where the noise was coming from, all of a sudden a lion pops its head from out/ over the grass and the postman shrieks and runs away, the front door opens and an safari explore looking man looks at the lion while shaking his head in disapproval, the lion slinks from the grass into the house and the man say to the lion “that’s why we don't get any mail”. hopefully my tutor will approve but to be honest im drastically running out of time before the deadline so i have to go ahead with it regardless.

I have decided to keep this animation simple, so I want to not be too fixated on the complexity of the style, so I have been looking at the art styles of Sir Qwentin Blake and Horst Sambo (red bull artist) or even a stop motion style like Parsley the Lion.               

[wiley-treehouse-gardens]

This is the baobab you're supposed to beware, based on the sign at the arboretum...