Can't believe it's already nine years !

Remember ! The second day of our walk, our first hosts after the Cape Pinguins of Simon's Town, the man sticking out his head out of the boot of his car and answering us : " Looking for a breakfast ? You found it ! What about an egg on toasts !" Mike Hamblet and her wife Pat, relaxing from the rubbish going on already in Zim by looking at the whales go by their bungalow. Their daughter Andrea is the one that had hosted us later in Harare et whose husband, director of a bread factory, had just been invaded and threatened by Zanu-Pf thugs (He had already been tied naked to a chair for a night, so he knew who he was dealing with !) They are the ones who drove us back in Connemara for trout fishing, just above Juliasdale where we had stopped on the side of the road and spent time with a shona sculptor, Tanya Chipfundé.

A year after our meeting they had to leave everything behind. They lost almost all but not their high spirit and the strenght to rebuild themselves a life like in Rudyard Kipling's "If". Andie and Anthony live now in Cape Town with their children Cory and Amy. Andie remembers that Sonia had told her, very moved by a surprise birthday celebration the children had organised for her on that october the first 2001 : " I hope one day I'll also have such a darling Amy with her cute Mr Bunny". By seeing Philae with a dwarf rabbit in her arms, Andie couldn't refrain a tear ! " It's crazy ! She's Amy's spitting image ! Wishes are always granted one day !"

So it's nine year that we met and we meet again like on the first day. Life is just a blink of the eye. In their suitcase they were carrying a 5kg serpentine whale carving that we had bought on a harare street market, so beautiful it was. It had been carved by an artist that had never been to school and had never seen the sea... That whale travelled patiently for nine years around the world, was rescued from mayhem and chaos, but finally made it home. A beacon of our meeting under good auspices in Millar's point.