Who are these people?
Hi! We are Derek and Georgina. We currently live in South Africa, a country on the southern-most tip of Africa, a country of large expanses, extra-ordinary natural beauty and friendly people of all walks of life. We are a Gen X and Millennial couple taking to the roads(sometimes terribly potholed roads) and through-fares of this extra-ordinary country. The plan? We don’t actually have one... Africa, simply beckons.
You are invited to join us on this journey where we intend to share the natural beauty, the people, the food, the culture and the issues... as well as our journey towards getting ready to hit the road. Here we intend to share the ups and downs. Teaching Derek, a Gen X man that didn’t grow up with technology in his palm, how to shoot and edit video footage from an iPhone, how to learn to use TikTok, Instagram and Youtube at the grand age of 53.
A real, unvarnished look at Digital Nomacy, finding an ATM (and workarounds South Africans have developed for the dearth of such in more remote places), a place to find hopefully good food, internet options and changing a tyre on a vehicle a year older than Georgina in the middle of nowhere and working while on the move... also where exactly to stash a ring light where it will not expire. We expect there to be the fairly normal minutia of life, arguments, getting lost, cooking, enjoying a sunset with a glass of wine (or rum in Derek’s case) and trying to get a streaming service of some description to work out in the bush and boonies. Hopefully there will be laughter and some romance in the mix.
So, why are we doing this? Choosing to be entirely mobile and without a fixed domicile, dragging a dog and two motorcycles across the plains, mountains and basins of Africa? The landscape of life has changed significantly over the last few years. We’re looking at you 2020. Derek for his part has lived through quite a few nasty recessions(2008 and 2016 being the most detrimental), tanked dreams and hopes for the future, he even lived through a military coup in Guinea circa 2008? He has essentially aged out of the profession he has the most valuable experience in, 30 or 40 years ago the professional landscape didn’t really require millions of bits of paper and a degree with your name on it. So he learned on the job and expanded his knowledge that way. Those days are well and truly gone and competition is fierce with ever evolving progress dragging us all in its slip stream, the world and its population is, after all expanding madly. Georgina essentially did the same thing 20 years ago, travelled, learned new cultures and people, picking up skills that were odd together in the greater scheme of things. She even collected a few disparate certifications and whatnot. And then... she got ill. The kind of ill that creates chronic heart failure and strokes, the kind of ill triggered by stress and working up to 15 hour days out in the world when others where locked down and not allowed to walk the streets without a permission slip from Cyril... In a time of plague and well... riots.. The doctor’s words: “Quit or die”.
These changes have required of us to look at various categories in our lives and thinking rather seriously about how we could make sustainable changes that would work for both of us AND respect our HUMANITY. A paradigm shift had to occur where we had to look at ourselves as something other than the automaton that late stage capitalism has inculcated us with.
Follow along with us as we build Classic Dust. The Camper is a classic vehicle, Derek is probably considered vintage, Georgina still lands in the classic classification though, so he is sadly out numbered. Hence the name chosen.
