Travelling has been put on hold. In some places,
travel is slowly coming back. Some countries open borders again, others not. No
one knows what is going to happen next or what is best to do. The world remains
in the grip of the coronavirus. Will there be a vaccine? No one knows. Will
there be a cure? No one knows that either. It is still too soon to know how it
all works out. Epidemiologists are still searching for answers. For now, we
will have to accept that the virus is a reality. It is best to follow
recommendations given by experts, like physical distancing, and thorough hand washing and wearing a face cover to protect others. It is all we know for
now, and things might be different next week when there is more or again even
different evidence. We need to accept that we have to be flexible these days,
for now, to get on with life. What we can do is dreaming of travelling and plan
trips (be it in the near- or far future).
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| Johann Groenewald from Tracks4Africa |
Even in all the countries that are loosening
restrictions, or all the places that plan to loosen them, it does not mean that
the virus is gone. As much as everyone wants this to be. It does mean places
are reopening for economic reasons. Tourism and hospitality are important for
the travel industry and guarantee economic stability for many. In several
places in this world restaurants, hotels, and shops might be welcoming guests
again. It is then down to each individual to decide which risk they want to
take, and how responsible each individual plans to protect others.
A journey without a map?
I am a passionate self-drive tourist. You can
travel at your own pace, you can make as many photo-stops as you want, and
best, wherever you want them. You can sleep where you fancy. You can cook what
you want, sit around the campfire for as long as you want, and get up as early
in the morning as you want. I created many memories in South Africa and her
neighbouring countries. On many different trips, we drove over 60,000
kilometres through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, even if that
was only for a few kilometres to marvel at the Victoria Falls. So many places, so
many memories, no one can take these away. The kilometres sound a lot but there
are many places I dream of visiting still. It is a love that big.
While travelling through Southern Africa, there is
one thing that makes road trips so much easier. Tracks4Africa. I explain this
with a little travel story. I vividly remember that day in Botswana, when we
drove for seven hours up and down the same sand track since we could not find
the turn that would lead us to our camp for the night. We had been in Moremi
for several days already, we had been to Xakanaxa and to Khwai. Plains were
flooded, we were delighted every time we found a sandy track.
Seeing is believing
So, there is this one day. We were driving from
Khwai to Savuti. Tracks4Africa (the navigation system) told us over and over we
had to turn left at this particular point on the sand track. To us, it looked
as we would be driving straight into thick scrub if we would follow that
advice. It looked so wrong. So, we kept driving up and down and searching for
the right track. A full seven hours later a construction worker in his lorry
appeared out of nowhere. He stopped us, obviously as perplexed as we felt.
"Guys, what are you doing here?" I looked at him somewhat exhausted "We can't find the track to Savuti." He laughed, very loud
"Right, I can see that. I have been watching you for a few hours." We
had a little chat. Guess what happened. He pointed us exactly towards that
massive scrub where Tracks4Africa wanted to send us down. We drove
towards the scrub. It turned out that the scrub had simply heavily overgrown the track. Behind it lay our very own Shangri-La. Our very own
little paradise, a marvellous free sand track.
It is hilarious in hindsight and a good travel
memory. Tracks4Africa covers all tracks, big and small, I use it on a Garmin.
It also gives lots of helpful details of places which I would not find in any
other source of information. It is the ideal travel partner.
Make Africa visible and accessible to the world
Let us go back two decades, to the year 2000, when
there was a lack of maps for GPS navigation. Until then visitors to remote
parts of Africa had to travel solely with paper maps. With technology so many
more opportunities became possible. Soon, road trip enthusiasts started sharing
their GPS tracks and waypoints with each other. The passion of a few grew into
Tracks4Africa.
Many hours of hard work can be briefly described as
this. It sounds so easy and I am sure building a company from scratch is
anything but easy. They built Garmin compatible maps with user-generated
content. They started selling maps on CDs. They started creating routable maps
and later became the first to offer routable maps from Cape to Cairo. They then
added photo sharing of waypoints. They started publishing self-driving paper
guidebooks. Today their service is also available in the form of an app.
The company is owned and managed by Wouter Brand
and Johann Groenewald. We cannot go to South Africa right now, but we can ask
the locals about their country. Johann Groenewald lives in Stellenbosch in the
Western Cape of South Africa. I contact him to find out how life is in times of
the Coronavirus crisis.
Right now, we hear from different countries that
they opening-up travel and restaurants, and shops only after the numbers of new
infections remain low enough. The situation changes all the time. Would this be
the case in South Africa too? “We are currently in lockdown level 4 which still
requires extreme measures from all citizens. There is no regional
differentiation yet, but we expect it to be implemented at some stage. We are not allowed to have social visits and
you are only permitted to drive to shops or to seek medical assistance. Some industries, which are classified as essential
services may provide their employees with permits to travel from the home to
work and back or drive around for essential work. If you move around in public,
you are required to wear a face mask and practice social distancing. All
businesses who are allowed to be open must also have a strict set of measures
in place, e.g. only allow a certain number of shoppers into your building
(which leads to long queues outside!).
Non-essential businesses are by and large required
to remain closed, however, some concessions have been made. The retail sector
may sell essential goods but the government has a list of goods which may
not be sold such as cigarettes, alcohol, and a lot of everyday stuff which one
would expect to be for sale - such as t-shirts! It really is a silly
situation to walk into a shop and see certain items not for sale whereas you
are already exposed to the environment. Online sales of all goods except
cigarettes and alcohol are allowed under level 4. So, you can buy a t-shirt
online, but not in a shop.
Hospitality businesses are still closed.
Restaurants are only allowed to sell take away food, but many restaurants who
are not traditionally take away food suppliers find that the business they
generate through these sales does not justify opening up the business.”
Update, according to the official Twitter page of The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa "South Africa will be placed on alert level 3 from 1st June 2020. Public gatherings and other high-risk activities, especially those that involve close contact between large numbers of people, remain prohibited to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. ... All borders of the republic remain closed except for the transportation of goods and repatriation of citizens"
Unnecessary rules
I wonder how Johann personally experiences this
crisis, and how he experiences the situation at large. How people react depends
a great deal on how well informed they are in times of crisis. I wanted to know
how the situation in South Africa is. “Personally, I have two hats to wear,
first as a human being with a family and secondly as a small business owner
with employees. I support the idea of the lockdown and initially it had the
effect of allowing our country to prepare hospitals and testing equipment and
procedures to be put in place. Everyone rallied behind our president in the
first few weeks, however as the government was supposed to relax the lockdown,
we saw conflicting messages from the ministers involved. From what I can see as
a normal citizen it really does look like the government is having fun with
making rules and lists of things you can and cannot do. We are allowed to
exercise outside our homes from 6 am to 9 am. The effect is that streets are
filled with people and to be honest it is like a social event.
It has also become very clear that in informal
areas and poor communities, a lockdown is not practical and borders on being
inhumane. The reality is that social distancing is not practiced in these
areas. People are deprived of earning a living and forced into the hands of
government handouts which includes social grants for the lucky 17 million and
food parcels for all. The queues for food parcels are probably the best place
to spread any virus as thousands of people are forced together. On top of that
regulations state that charity organisations who have been feeding people for
years in these poor communities are now not allowed to hand out prepared food,
only food parcels. There is currently the ridiculous case over peanut butter
sandwiches which are not allowed to be handed out. The reaction from the
government is quite arrogant in that you can go to court, but no one wins a
court case against regulations. The real question everyone is asking now is if
the regulations are at all legal or at the very least practical.
There was a bit of panic buying but not really too
much. The government failed to mention before the lockdown that no cigarettes
or alcohol may be sold. That would have sparked panic buying. There is a
roaring underground trade in illegal alcohol and cigarettes, one just has to
ask around.
The feeling on the ground is that the government
has gone too far with making unnecessary rules. We have a nationwide curfew
from 8 pm to 5 am, we can only exercise between 6 am and 9 am, we are prescribed
what we can buy in shops, we are not allowed into parks or the beach and most
people in the informal sector cannot earn a living. Surfers are arrested for
going into the ocean and joggers for not being back in their homes by 9 am. If
you are caught, you are fined and if you pay the fine you have a criminal
record! Try to explain that on your next Schengen visa application. The
government is, in fact, making criminals of all its citizens.”
Being in it together
You can look where you want these days and find
that everybody is using their time as best as they can, be it with baking,
learning languages, exercising, or picking up one of these long-forgotten
hobbies. I see that is also true for Johann’s world when he tells me how he
gets through all this right now. “I actually work a lot as I am trying to
rescue my business. With our products not being sold in retail and no one
travelling we had to resort to aggressive online sales, and we spent a lot of
time interacting with our customers. Most of my staff can work from home and we
now have a small team in the office to fulfil online orders. We have regular
online meetings to keep us all in 'shape'.
But as a family, we are also baking a lot and we
prepare extensive meals. We are lucky to have food in a country where the
majority of people are now really wondering where their next meal will come
from.
We do zoom fitness classes with our regular fitness
instructor and our kids are attending online school. My daughter had music
lessons online as well as movie nights with their friends online. My wife is
reworking large parts of our garden. Our house has also never been so clean...
I have a few woodworking projects in the garage which gets me out of the house.
As a family we are used to being together, so we are all getting along very
well.”
I think of all my road trips and how often the sat
nav told me to 'turn right in 723 kilometres.' There is a lot of wide-open
space in Southern Africa. At times on a road trip, I would not meet a single
soul for hours. I see that Johann is not happy about staying put at home, but I
love that he is using his work to sweeten the house arrest. “Namibia and
Botswana are both open for local travel and it really does make me jealous. I
do understand that they have about 30 times fewer people than South Africa, but
it would have been nice to drive out for a weekend. I have the added
frustration of buying a new travel vehicle just before we went into lockdown
and cannot even take it for a test drive. I do however revisit a lot of my
travel photos and it brings back good memories. We are working on a Zambia
guidebook and I have spent three months in Zambia during 2019 to capture
information and photos, so I have a lot to process.”
Sharing travel experiences is just as good as a road trip
Tracks4Africa is based on user-generated content. I
wonder if the company already feels the consequences as people cannot road trip
and deliver tips and experiences for updates. Johann says “Yes and no.
Obviously, people are not actively travelling at the moment, but we do find
that we can now get their attention to send us information. When we ask for
help on certain areas, we get very good feedback. I think that most people are
just too happy to take part in any activity which resembles travel. We really
have a wonderful network of people, some just customers and other active data
members. The feedback during our lockdown newsletter has been very encouraging
to me as well as my staff who can see the relevance of what they are creating.”
Small business owners and freelancers are mostly on
their own in this crisis, there are some funds available depending on what your
line of work is and where you are based. It would be great if there would be
assistance for businesses in South Africa impacted due to the coronavirus
crisis available and Johann tells me “There is in the form of various
initiatives. Most of these are in real terms a loan of some sort. You will have
to face the music at some stage. You can under certain circumstances also claim
UIF (unemployment insurance fund) on behalf of your employees if they cannot
work or can only work reduced hours. But this is not much and is typically less
than 50% of what lower-paid employees earn. There are also many complaints
about how effective the application process is and there are huge delays in
receiving the funds.”
The corona crisis hits the economy hard. Even
experts struggle to foresee all the possible consequences. We see how large
companies simply ask governments for state aid, as for example, Lufthansa
negotiated with the Federal Government in Germany about EUR 9 billion (it is
obviously all bound to rules and regulations). I wonder how Johann and
Tracks4Africa are doing and I am surprised to hear they carry the burden all
alone “I have decided that we as shareholders of the business will pay the
shortfall for 2020 and see how it goes in 2021. Our staff have also taken a
salary reduction of 10 to 15%.”
How to prepare for Iron Man in lockdown
Times are strange, one can feel lost, so it is
always great to hear what others are up to, and I have to laugh when I picture
what Johann tells me “Under full lockdown, we exercised around our house. I
have videos of my wife jogging around our house. The neighbours came out to
watch on the first day and then we saw them also walking around their house
every morning. A friend of mine is training for the Iron Man triathlon and ran
50 km around his house which I think was pretty insane.” South Africa implemented the lockdown on the 27th
of March 2020, and it is still on. Will it normalize soon, I ask Johann and he
explains “I think the days of a lockdown should be over. As I said the
government had time to prepare and if they did not manage to do so then they
probably will never be able to either. We are seeing a growth in our infection
rate now and the inevitable will happen. Some provinces, renowned for their
lack of governance, are reporting very low numbers but we expect their death
toll to tell the real story in the months to come. The reality is that the
larger part of our society cannot practice social distancing and that South
Africa will probably see a peak in numbers in two or three months from now.
Many people are really scared of being infected and when all of us know someone
who is affected in some way then the real fear will set in.”
NGO's and charities should be allowed to do the good work they have been doing
Small businesses are the main pillars of
communities all over the world. They are a vital part of any well-functioning
community. I wonder what role individual business owners in South Africa will
play in re-starting the economy, and Johann says “I personally feel that our
unions who are now calling for the closure of large businesses and schools will
try to get the political upper hand and if they do, we will see the supply
chain come under huge strain. This is the time I expect panic buying to set in.
I may sound very pessimistic, but our country has a very bad record with
politicizing everything and if people on the street are scared then our
opportunistic politicians will have it their way.
Businesses should at this stage be allowed to get
what is left of our economy going again and people who now stand in queues for
food parcels should be allowed to earn a living. Business owners are normally
creative and resilient individuals with little regard for politics and I think
their role could be critical in pulling South Africa through this crisis. NGO's
and charities should be allowed to do the good work they have been doing, there
is enough misery as it is.
One can only hope that the worst will be over by
October. But the disruption of an extended lockdown will be felt well into
2021.”
Be more self-reliant in the future
Johann plans to do a few things differently in the
future, personally as well as with the Track4Africa business, and he tells me “I
think one is taught some very dear lessons in a time like this. Being more self-reliant
is one of my goals, but not in a way to live in the wild on my own vegetables.
I have been building up savings before this crisis and it is now carrying us through,
but these savings must become a way of life. I recall stories from my childhood
where my grandparents were farmers in very remote areas. They were self-reliant
and they bought everything cash and that meant not having that much either, but
they were happy people, nonetheless.
The same goes for Tracks4Africa, the business must
be made robust in terms of its cash flow and we will expand into some new product
offerings which will enable us to diversify and make more of the skills and
information we already have. For me, Tracks4Africa is a lifestyle, but I have
personally become complacent in the last few years. I am now working harder
than before and I am forced to leave complacency behind, be creative and to
believe that you cannot keep a good man down.”
Photography, bird watching, remote camping and challenging routes
Johann has very clear ideas of how the ideal road
trip looks and makes me dream when he explains in great detail “My vehicle is
well equipped with shelter, food, water, fuel, guidebooks, camera, and some
good company (or solo). As I drive out of my town, I see people going about
their business and I feel the freedom of leaving all the daily nonsense behind.
On the freeway, cars pass by and I just smile at them being in a hurry. In the
shade of a tree, I stop to make coffee and carry on till late in the afternoon.
I search around my location for a suitable place to camp and settle in for the
first night and make a list of what I forgot to pack (normally a towel for me).
I wake up in the morning and have the freedom to decide where I go today.
Some days just driving is the best part of the
journey while others the remoteness of a bush camp in a beautiful spot is the
attraction. With the right friends, I like to take on very challenging routes
whereas with the family, it is about seeing new places, meeting interesting
people, never being on the same spot more than three nights and being able to
sit at a waterhole watching game for as long as we want.
I like the combination of photography, bird
watching, remote camping and driving challenging routes to get to these places
and with good company. Sometimes a bit of luxury is also nice.
Then at some point, it is time to return home and
as I drive into my hometown, my car dirty from the trip, I look forward to the
luxuries of home. A good bed, my bathroom, and my dogs. I am not a perpetual
traveller. I tried it once and I think while I still have work to do there is
always something pulling you back. Maybe one day we sell the house and my wife
and I will take to the road for an unlimited time, but with the freedom to
return when we want to!”
People will always travel
Johann proves he is a true customer champion who believes
in customer engagement-and service when he tells me about his first aid on the
road while sharing a message with old and new Tracks4Africa customers and
friends. "We started Tracks4Africa nearly twenty years
ago and we still have some of our original data members and customers. That to
me is truly amazing, and I like to think that we are a big family of mad
mappers. I have met so many fellow travellers who use our products over the
years. Most of them are happy users of our products and some have given us
their honest opinion on where we can improve. To me, a map is never complete,
and we welcome all and every traveller to take part in our process to
continuously map Africa. I love meeting people on the road and when they
realise, I am from Tracks4Africa they haul out their GPS and tell me they are
stuck or this or that is not working. After a few moments of explaining they
get what went wrong and they are happy customers. Our support staff does this
daily, and it is very satisfying to see people engaging with them, leaving as
happy customers.
Of one thing I am very sure, people will always
travel. I hope that we will be there with them in one form or another.”
Start planning your road trip through Africa with all the articles I have written so far.
Looking for more stories from South Africa? Dream now - Travel later
From Berlin with love