The 9 to 5 Alternative

In my book of travels, Zimbabwe exists in an elite group of countries-that-are-ridiculous. Since its hyperinflation made U.S. news back in 2008, Zimbabwe has piqued my curiosity.

Just a few years ago, Zimbabwe was in shambles. Unofficial figures put annual inflation at 516 quintillion per cent and prices were doubling every 1.3 days. A Z$100 trillion banknote was printed just before the country abandoned their own currency for the U.S. Dollar and South African Rand.

photo from drewgstephens

I had a wild nine days in and around Harare, the country’s capital. Below are some of my more memorable experiences.

Vampire Hunting

It was 12:15am, and I had almost given up. Etson, a taxi driver I had employed earlier in the day, was supposed to call me. We had planned to get drinks when work calmed down, around ten. Past midnight found me curled up, reading Blindness, my eyes heavy and weary, perfectly poised for a night of deep sleep. The phone rang.

ALAN! This is Etson. Yes, Etson. I am ready. I am coming to pick you up. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Oh, great. You can say that again!

We drive to Tipperary’s, a nightclub just outside the city center. Etson informs me that due to a special event, entry was $3, each ticket good for two beers at the bar. We navigated the crowd and walked through an outdoor patio. Inside, the bar was pulsating. African music, hard and hypnotic in one room, a billiards area in the center, jam-packed with scantily-clad prostitutes, the clinking of beer bottles and shuffling of feet around the pool table.

Etson and I found another room, in the back with a bar, and sat down, attracting a small crowd. Sporadic drunken approaches by a journalist for The Herald (a local paper) interrupted our conversation. Etson received a call from the hotel to return and pick up a client. My guess is that the hotel didn’t know he was drinking with me at the bar.

On the short drive home, Etson turns the other way, onto Chinamano Road.

Now it’s vampire time. Let’s go look for vampires.

The road was dark, quiet, full of shadows, tree branches slenderly draped toward the dirt, a thin layer of dust in the air. It took me a few seconds to figure it out. When I did, I asked Etson how much a “vampire” might cost. “$15 for short-term, $60 long-term. Oh! That one is waving, look!” I politely waved back, of course, asking Etson to drive away, back to the hotel. He was slow to the pedal. I glanced back and saw three girls, running toward the car, left behind in a late-night heap of dust.

City Touring

Rather than a trip to Victoria Falls, which would certainly have exhausted what little recreational money I had allotted for this survey, I opted for a Harare city tour. Below are a few pictures.

Kopje, a large granite hill just south of central Harare. There is a monument there that was built in 1936. It’s a great place to scout out downtown Harare.

The Chiremba Balancing Rocks, a field of precariously balanced rocks, some with art from the Zimbabwe bushmen of the early 20th century.

Luv dat chicken! Of all my options, this is where I decided to stop for food. This billboard reeled me right in.

At the Zimbabwe Museum of Human Sciences, images were not allowed, so I snapped this one from outside. Inside, I saw stuffed vervet and samango monkeys, a black rhinoceros skeleton, a Vulcanodon dinosaur foot and a replication of an indigenous Shona village. The museum itself was dilapidated, dark and grimy, but from what I was told it was the only museum in the city. There was an interesting exhibit on the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee, which began sending athletes to the Olympics in 1980, thirteen who were represented in the 2008 Beijing Games.

The Botanic Garden, at sixty eight hectares, has over nine hundred species of shrubs and wild trees from all over the country.

Chicken Farming

Today, farming and land ownership are two huge issues in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, disturbed by the imbalance of land ownership–in the 20th century, whites made up less than 1% of Zimbabwe’s population but held about 70% of the most arable land–initiated a land reform program that, in the eyes of many turned the country upside down. Beginning in 2000, Mugabe “redistributed” farmland, kicking some 4ooo-odd white farmers off their land. The country used to thrive agriculturally, exporting crops like tobacco and maize, but now with suboptimal management and a lack of proper knowledge, Zimbabwe imports more and more. It’s a sad story.

I heard this history firsthand, from a guy named Mark, a family member of a college friend. Mark and his wife, local Zimbabweans, were kind enough to let me into their home, feed me, introduce me to their friends and children and enlighten me on what life in Zimbabwe has been like for farmers over the last several years. We also snuck in a little golf.

Back in the mid-90s, Mark was kicked off of his farm in rural Zimbabwe. The chief of police, a friend of Mark’s, showed up to the farm one day and asked him to leave. Since they were friends, the police chief gave Mark’s family time to pack their things. There weren’t any guns involved, but many other farmers were not as fortunate.

I visited Mark’s new farm, where he raises chickens, 15,000 at a time, five times a year. He also grows passion fruit and has entertained the idea of raising crocodiles from Mozambique. He purposefully keeps the farm disheveled, in an effort to thwart any government employee in the market for redistribution.

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I could go on and on. Zimbabwe was a wild experience, definitely a place that I’ll be keeping tabs on. Who knows what will happen with new leadership–Mugabe is going on 90. I saw so much potential during my visit. With agriculture, with tourism, with all kinds of business. Given the right direction, Zimbabwe could turn itself around. It’s such a beautiful country.

Case Studies in the 9 to 5 alternative: No. 7

Welcome to a series of profiles on alternative lifestyles. If you think that you (or someone you know) would make for an interesting interview, drop me a line.

Meet Dr. Benedict G. Davies. He recently started Iconic Guides, a website that provides downloadable audio tours of world historic sites. While I tend to steer clear of endorsements for specific blogs or businesses, I’m a huge fan of Dr. Davies’ background and philosophy behind this particular idea.

I asked Dr. Davies to share his story—specifically what led him to start his own business, what choices he’s made so far and how he sees himself progressing. Dr. Davies provides us with a great case study in entrepreneurship. Read below to see how he followed his passions and “thirst for knowledge” to create Iconic Guides.

What is your background? What lead you to Iconic Guides?

I originally studied Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, receiving my PhD in 1996 with a study of the royal workmen who excavated and decorated the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Since then I pursued a career in investment management, where I specialized in smaller UK companies. Unfortunately, due to the financial meltdown in 2008 I was made redundant from my job in London. It was at that point, with markets collapsing all around us, that I decided to take some time out to travel to the Middle East and Far East.

I came up with the idea for Iconic Guides whilst I was traveling around Japan last year. The country is home to so many fantastic Buddhist and Shinto temple/shrine sites and mountain-top retreats. However, there is very little information available once you arrive at these sites (especially the most isolated ones). I actually got a bit fed up carrying an 800-odd page Fodor’s guide book around with me every day. As a historian, I have a great thirst for knowledge and really felt that I was not getting enough out of my visits to these fascinating temples. I thought how brilliant it would be to have an audio guide playing whilst one explored the different parts of the temple – explaining the historical background/context of the site, the purpose of each room/building as well as some information on the religious iconography that abounds in Japanese temples. This would mean that one could listen to the audio commentaries without having to continually have recourse to a traditional guide book each time you wanted to look something up. What a perfect solution! Another advantage to the audio guide is that it remains yours to keep – you can listen to it before, during and after a visit to these places – something you can’t do if you’re part of a traditional tour group. Users might also like to use the commentaries to enlighten family slide shows when they return from their travels.

The aim of Iconic Guides is to provide independent travelers with insightful, accurate and up to date commentaries to these destinations. It’s also a cheaper and more flexible alternative to joining a traditional tour group or, more importantly, hiring a local guide. I think that’s an important point to make about Iconic Guides in an era of great economic austerity. People will always travel to exotic destinations, but they may now be looking to do so in a more cost-efficient manner. I’ve met so many fellow travelers who have had bad experiences with local (and expensive) tour guides. I too have had my share of poor local guides, especially ones that I hired whilst at Xi’an and the Summer Palace in Beijing. Iconic Guides give one complete freedom to explore the ancient monuments, without the constraints of being part of a larger tour party.

How did you map out the business model?

Upon returning to the UK last summer I was still a bit skeptical about the concept of audio guides. I therefore set out initially to write guide books to the ancient monuments of both Japan and Egypt. Egypt was an obvious choice, given my academic background as well as the fact that I had just visited the country prior to arriving in Japan at the end of 2008. As I researched the material and spoke to other academics, friends and family, it was becoming apparent that the idea of audio guides to sites from the ancient world could indeed prove to be popular. I kept writing the guides to sites in Japan and Egypt, knowing that I could tailor them at a later date into a style more suitable to the spoken word of an audio guide.

Several months into the project I decided to abandon the written guides and solely concentrate on the audio version. By this point I had already covered the major sites of Kyoto and Nara in Japan and was making serious inroads into the Egyptian series. By now, the ambition was to try and build a unique website offering guides to sites from all the major ancient civilizations. However, I knew that this would not be possible, given time and financial constraints. In an ideal world, I would have continued to produce series after series of guides before launching the products onto the market. I decided that once I had completed the major Egyptian sites and made a start on ancient Greece, then I would be in a strong position to go live, having sufficient critical mass to try to attract a serious following.

Who designed your website?

I came up with the concept for the site as well as the graphical elements. Given the type of business, I wanted to go with an art-deco, 1930’s theme – representing the ‘Golden Age of Travel’. I just love those exotic looking travel posters advertising far flung places, which at that time must have seemed totally intoxicating to the public. I wanted to find a web designer who could also do the graphic design of the site for me. I didn’t want to take the project to a large agency so set about finding someone local to Liverpool who could take on the project for me. I was lucky to find Robb Owen, a freelancer who runs Kumori Media in Liverpool. It was an ideal choice and he offered me a very competitive rate.

How did you partner up with a professional voiceover artist?

Initially an academic colleague and I produced a couple of test guides. However, as we were recording from home, the quality came nowhere near to that of a professional and it soon dawned on me that if the business was to be taken seriously, then I would need to find a ‘trained’ and experienced voice for the narration. I came across Della Phillips after I advertised for a professional voice-over artist on the Internet. I received over 60 auditions from VOAs around the world, which made the decision particularly difficult given the quality of many of the frontrunners. I really liked Della’s audition and think she has a great tone to her voice for this style of work. It’s also not a voice that you can tire of easily – which is key with an audio guide. The last thing one wants is to lose the attention of the user as they chart their way around the ancient sites. I also wanted to use a single VOA so as to retain continuity throughout all the series of guides.

Della has shown superb professionalism throughout the entire process. She really believed in the business from the outset and consequently was kind enough to do the work on a substantially discounted basis.

What have been your biggest hurdles so far? Have you seen any short-term success?

Given my love of history, researching and writing, I was never going to be phased by the prospect of producing the scripts for the actual audio guides. I certainly feel confident enough that I can transpose these skills into other historical disciplines, without sacrificing quality along the way. One of the first hurdles that I encountered was ‘how was I going to produce the site maps and plans?’ I wanted them to have a professional look, seeing that they were a fundamental element to the product. Yet, I had absolutely no knowledge of any drawing programs. I did some research and eventually invested in a CAD program called Vectorworks. I then set about reading as many manuals, online forums posts and blogs on the subject so as to immerse myself in the technicalities of the program. After many months of study, trial and error, I am now able to produce professional looking plans both in 2D and 3D.

I’ve found that establishing the best keywords for the site in order to maximize Search Engine Optimization has been a considerable challenge and something that I am still refining even now. This is not an area in which I have any experience, but one that is essential to the future success of the site.

The website is in its infancy, being little more than a month old now. Until I am able to get more publicity for the product I am not expecting to make serious inroads into sales. However, the major hurdle is getting the concept of the audio tours more firmly embedded into the public conscience. I think right now, most people who may be considering traveling to these kinds of destinations just don’t appreciate that this type of product is out there in the marketplace. In these terms, there is a long road ahead. Ultimately, if we can educate the target market effectively enough, then I believe that IG has a good chance of a successful future.

What differentiates Iconic Guides from the oodles of other travel guides out there?

There certainly aren’t oodles of other audio guides out there that cover ancient destinations. Yes, there are some sites that specialize in one particular area or other, or the city guides (such as Athens) that cross-over into my material. However, there is no other site quite like mine currently that offers such a range of guides purely aimed at travelers who are going to be visiting archaeological sites and ancient monuments. Furthermore, I have yet to see anything in the audio arena on Egypt. The beauty of my product is that I have a strong academic background, having studied Egyptian and Greek history at a high level. I’ve also written many academic books and articles, which gives me an edge in terms of the preparation and presentation of the material. The guides are not only hugely informative, but they are intensely researched, using the most up-to-date source academic source material.

I’m not intending to compete with traditional guide books. My guides can be used as an accompaniment to a guide book. I really want to capture the imagination of travelers who are seriously interested in visiting these places. I want these guides to enliven and enrich their visits to the ancient world. I also think that my guides could be extremely beneficial to people who are more comfortable travelling as part of a tour party. They could listen to them either before or after they’ve been on their tour of a particular site.

Any plans for the future?

The main areas of focus going forward will be to complete the major sites of Greece (e.g., Epidaurus, Delphi, Olympia, Pylos, Corinth – all of which are currently in preparation) and to move next to ancient Rome and Turkey (e.g. Ephesus, Troy and Miletos). Personally I am working on a series of Aztec and Maya sites in Mesoamerica (Teotihuacan, Palenque, Chichen Itza and the Templo Mayor in Mexico City, to name but a few). I have begun to enlist the support of academics from other fields in writing future guides. The aim is for them to provide a written script. I will then produce that as audio in additional to drawing the required plans and maps. The guide will then be marketed on IG and any net revenues split equally between the business and the contributor. It’s certainly the best way to built the scale of the site, especially seeing that I am spending more time and energy on promotion. As I mentioned earlier, the ambition to turn IG into an ancient world audio guide library par excellence, a first port of call for all travelers when they begin to plan for a new adventure.

As I said earlier, my main target audience is really the informed and independent traveler. However, I would love to be able to do a licensing deal with one of the major Nile cruise tour operators for example. I do believe that the detailed information contained in my guides could prove to be an extremely useful adjunct to their own local tour guides on the ground.

Many people ask me whether I have developed an Apple App for the guides. I would love to move down this road, but my priorities now are to promote the product/website in order to generate a reasonable income, which can then be used for future initiatives such as an ‘App’ or a GPS-enabled audio guide.

Check out Iconic Guides. What do you think? Is this something you might use?

My first stop is Lusaka, Zambia. It’s a tame city, ever-sunny, sleepy in the evenings, amicable, the kind of place I’d be interested to shack up—did I phrase that right?—for a couple of years, the kind of place one could enjoy a nice, lazy meal. You could get some serious reading done here.

Greetings from the road, folks. I spent the first four nights of this survey in Lusaka, Zambia. It’s a calm city, easy to get around and an overall solid start to my African excursion.

In my last post, I had mentioned a new writing gig with Flightster. The quote above is from my most recent article over there, “From Zambia, With Love.”

Billboards

Zambia, like many other African countries, has oodles of billboards. Some of them are funny, like the one below. FYI: Zambezi Airlines has been on the EU blacklist since December 2009.

Mobile Phones

Walking off the plane, down onto the tarmac and through the long tunnel before immigration, I’m bombarded with advertisements. Zain and MTN, the two largest telecommunications operators in Zambia, hug the walls with their large, bright ads.

Throughout my stay in Lusaka, driving around and walking through its centralized shopping complexes, I see Zain and MTN, head-to-head, vying for consumers’ attention. It’s a familiar sight in the developing world, where telecommunications is a budding industry, highly opportunistic for bigwig investors.

Serbo-Croatian Lunch

My final afternoon finds me relaxed, lounging at a road-side café, book in hand, waiting on an ice cold Coke. Upon sitting down, I soon realized that I had snagged the last open table, as two gentlemen come up to me and ask if they can join.

We start chatting, and I learn that one of them is from Croatia, the other Serbia, and that the two of them had both traveled independently to Zambia nearly two decades ago. “Only Africa can bring our two countries together like this,” one of them told me.

We discussed dual-identities, various engineering and non-profit initiatives in Zambia and what kinds of changes they had both seen in the country over the last several years. It was a fantastic conversation, healthy, engaging, just the kind of experience I needed as a proper send-off. As I mentioned in my Australia write-up, these are the kind of random, chance encounters I live for on the road.

Cheers to the many more to come.

Greetings from Lusaka, Zambia. After mysteriously disappearing for 24 hours, my luggage has finally arrived, putting me in high spirits. It’s always nice to put on a fresh pair of undies. Sigh.

I’ll be in Lusaka until Friday. I then head to Harare, Zimbabwe for the next leg of my survey. More on that later.

Postcards

When I was younger, my grandfather would send the family postcards from his travels. I’d like to think that these notes-from-afar helped inspire my jet-setting proclivities, so, to honor his memory (and to engage future vagabonds) I’d like to carry on the tradition.

Want a postcard? Comment below with a fun fact about world travel, and I’ll send you an email asking for your address. I’m not sure what kind of response this will generate, but let’s limit this first exercise to 15 responses.

Flightster

I want to introduce you to Flightster, a new travel site that I’m writing for. They plan to launch a flight booking engine this fall, but in the meantime have asked me and three other writers to populate the site with content. So far I’ve enjoyed everyone’s posts and am happy to be part of such a fun and eclectic crowd.

Also, if you’re interested, Flightster is hiring a new writer to join the team. Want to apply? Check out Srinivas Rao’s post, “How to Become the Next Paid Writer For the Flightster Blog” for details.

Spanking New Look

In other news, I’ve been working out the kinks for a new look and approach here. I’ve enjoyed writing haphazardly about travel, business and lifestyle design, but it’s time to refocus my online presence. Here’s a sneak peak:

That’s it for now. Short and sweet, with more to report on Lusaka in the near future. For now, it’s back to war with the common cold. Nose..must..stop..running.

[photo credit to tpmorrow]

Australia! Land of kangaroos and aborigines and didgeridoos. A shell-shaped opera house. Pristine beaches, fish and chips, box jellyfish, breathtaking harbors and boomerangs. Oh, and we can’t forget the Outback! Australia’s own heart of darkness, a ghastly blank, wild, expansive and arid interior. The kind of rugged terrain only a well-rigged 4×4 should tackle. I hear there’s a large rock out there.

Australia is one of those countries that would take years to properly explore. As an American, exposed in my youth to the likes of Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee, I had my own idea of what Australia would be like. It wasn’t until I picked up Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country that I realized how ridiculous/remarkable/under-appreciated a country Australia was. Did you know that:

• the aborgines have the oldest continuously maintained culture on Earth? They inhabited Australia at least 40,000 years before the first Europeans arrived.
• of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian?
• five of its creatures (the box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stonefish) are the most lethal of their kind in the world?
• no other nation lost more men in WWI as a proportion of population?
• Australia boasts the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world, 297 miles without a hint of deviation?

I was exhilarated to visit such a fascinating country.

Perth

My first stop was Perth, capital of the Western Australia state and one of the world’s biggest exporters of minerals. Gold, nickel, alumina, iron ore, mineral sands, coal, diamonds–you name it. Also, due to its severely southwest geography, Perth is one of the most remote major cities in the world, over one thousand miles from Adelaide, the nearest notable city.

Perth is a city of suburbs. Fremantle and Cottesloe, Subiaco and Northbridge. This photograph was taken in the CBD (central business district). An entire outer-wall of potted herbs? Very cool.

While I didn’t have much free time in Perth, I snuck away one afternoon to Cottesloe, a western suburb famed for its pristine beaches, laid back atmosphere and fish and chips. On a Tuesday afternoon, there wasn’t much to see, but from what I’ve heard, Sundays are quite lively. I spent an hour or so on the beach, reading, listening to music, feasting on fish and chips like there was no tomorrow, eventually walking south to Fremantle.

Sydney

Sydney is, in a word, breathtaking. Certainly one of the world’s most impressive cities. With one third of its residents having been born in another country, Sydney is diverse in the finest sense of the word. All kinds of cuisine and people, neighborhoods and architecture. Oh, and both Darling Harbor and Circular Quay offer two of the coolest vantage points I’ve ever seen. Bill Bryson says it best:

Life cannot offer many places finer to stand at eight-thirty on a summery weekday morning than Circular Quay in Sydney. To begin with, it presents one of the world’s great views. To the right, almost painfully brilliant in the sunshine, stands the famous Opera House with its jaunty, severly angular roof. To the left, the stupendous and noble Harbour Bridge. Across the water, shiny and beckoning, is Luna Park, a Coney Island-style amusement park with a maniacally grinning head for an entrance (It’s been closed for many years, but some heroic soul keeps it spruce and gleaming.) Before you the spangly water is crowded with the harbor’s stout and old-fashioned ferries, looking for all the world as if they have been plucked from the pages of a 1940s children’s book with a title like Thomas the Tugboat, disgorging steams of tanned and lightly dressed office workers to fill the glass and concrete towers that loom behind.

Just working out the principles necessary to build the opera house roof took five years.

I spent an afternoon walking through the Royal Botanic Gardens, just east of Circular Quay. The Dragon Tree (Dracaena draco), native to the Canary Islands, was one of the more interesting trees I saw. This particular one is over 100 years old and actually fell over in May 2008, hence the protective barrier.

This shot was also taken in the Royal Botanic Garden, looking back at Sydney proper.

The aquarium, one of the largest in the world, attracts around 55% of the tourists that visit Sydney each year. While I wasn’t particularly impressed–it’s old, cramped, dim and there’s not enough emphasis on Australia’s dangerous sea life–I enjoyed the one crocodile they had on display.

A Conversation About Super Geeks

My last night in Sydney, I met up with Steve and Scott, both relatively new to Sydney (one from the U.K., the other from Melbourne). We grabbed food and drinks, listened to live music and chatted about business, academia, blogging, travel and music. It wasn’t until Scott brought up Intellectual Ventures, a conglomeration of super geeks that try to solve the world’s problems, that I realized how much fun I was having. Sure, call me a geek, but to be halfway around the world, chatting with complete strangers, quasi-inebriated with both alcohol and atmosphere–something hit me. This is what travel is about. Exploring. Meeting people. Engaging with the world around us. Growing.

Already looking forward to my next trip in a few weeks. Stay tuned.