The power of creative visualisation
Upon deciding to return to “my elephants”, I handed in my notice – to both my employer and my landlord. I no longer wanted to continue working for a chemical company, developing new materials for the industrialised world. I had been promoted to run a laboratory department. For me, it was never a nine-to-five job; more like 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., constantly racing to get everything done. I was tasked with developing new product recipes, testing materials, experimenting with chemicals – and then there were leadership issues, meetings, reports, client visits, endless calculations… my head was spinning.
I enjoyed the status of being department head. I was even proud, and the salary was excellent. Yet I was unfulfilled. I simply didn’t care about my work. The elephants on my wall and the desire to see them in the wild again gave me the courage to hand in my resignation. My colleagues thought I had lost my mind. Especially when I said I was going to give up my lovely apartment, sell my car, put my belongings in storage, and travel through Africa. “Africa?” they asked. “What if you get hurt, robbed, stranded, penniless?”
I travelled through Africa from Morocco to Mozambique with a motley crew of adventure seekers from Canada, the UK, Australia, and even Japan. What an adventure – a whole book could be written about it.
But I’ll fast-forward…
Eventually, we reached Zimbabwe – a kind of homecoming, as I had lived and worked at the University of Zimbabwe in my early twenties. But this time, I wanted to work in the wilderness, among wild animals, among free-roaming elephants.
After much hesitation, uncertainty, and self-doubt about whether I could truly follow my desire, I finally took the leap and applied for a job in Botswana, unsure of exactly what the role would entail. Within the first few months, I received full training and became a licensed professional safari guide. My dream had come true – the vision I had carried for so long was finally real.
It was, in my opinion, quite literally the best job in the world. Travelling overland with my guests from the frontier town of Maun to the iconic Victoria Falls, sharing the wild, untamed landscapes, was exhilarating – for both my guests and me.
It was at Victoria Falls that I met the man who would become my husband. A few years later, we married and had a baby boy – and I began a life more settled at home, trading constant travel through the untamed wilderness for family life, love, and a new kind of adventure.
We found an old farmhouse in Zambia and settled on the banks of the Zambezi – the mighty river that breathes life into this part of the continent. Africa’s fourth-largest river begins as a trickle in northern Zambia and then meanders 2,574 kilometres (1,599 miles) across the south-central plateau before finally releasing itself into the Indian Ocean through a wide, shimmering delta in Mozambique.
Our farm lay about 20 km out of town, bordered by a stretch of wilderness to the east, scattered rural settlements to the north, another farm to the west, and the great river flowing endlessly to the south.
The property came with a small cluster of red mud huts with thatched roofs – staff quarters. By renting the farm, we were essentially agreeing to take on the staff. A young woman named Eunice came to help me with the housework. Two men were tasked with watering the orange trees, maintaining the dirt track to the house, and keeping the grass short.
But after only a couple of nights, we woke to find the “lawn” mysteriously trimmed. Not by the men – it had been perfectly snipped during the night. Looking closer, we saw enormous round footprints pressed deep into the track leading to the river. Aha! We had a visitor. A hungry hippo had come up from the water to feast on the lush grass in front of our house. Cute, yes – but also famously unpredictable and dangerous. Night-time strolls in the garden were instantly off the list.
And the hippo wasn’t the only one roaming through our garden at night.
One night, I couldn’t sleep because a small herd of bachelor elephants had arrived and were devouring our mulberry bushes – literally right outside our bedroom window.
Another night, the lawn glimmered with hundreds of tiny lights… eyes reflecting our spotlight. A whole buffalo herd had surrounded the washing we’d forgotten on the line. That night we simply left it there. No thief in their right mind would go anywhere near our newly appointed “animal security guards.”
Life in this paradise could be tough. Power cuts were frequent, the water pump regularly choked with fine silt, and when it rained the dirt road turned into a slick ribbon of soap, demanding careful driving to avoid getting bogged down. But despite the challenges, the wilderness wrapped around us like a spell. We had a safari on our doorstep.
Soon after settling in, long after I had packed up my Swiss life and stored everything in boxes, the day finally came when my belongings were delivered to the farm. They had been loaded into two old Land Rovers in the UK, shipped from Southampton to Walvis Bay in Namibia, and then driven halfway across the continent to Zambia.
As I unpacked, box by box, I rediscovered things I had forgotten – crockery, linens, utensils, a few framed pictures… and then the picture: the photograph of five enormous bull elephants walking inches from the camera.
I studied it more closely. This time with a safari guide’s eyes. And suddenly my breath caught. I stared – stunned, unable to speak.
Now that I knew Botswana’s landscapes and a few safari areas more intimately, the truth hit me at once: I could see exactly where the picture had been taken. Botswana is a flat, sandy basin with only a few small hills – ancient dunes and a handful of rocky outcrops – and I recognised the one in the background immediately.
Those five elephants were walking the well-trodden elephant path to the Savuti waterhole in Chobe National Park.
For years, I had driven guests through Savuti and taken them to that exact waterhole, watching elephants brush past our vehicle on their way to drink – the same path, the same ancient route I was now seeing in the photograph from my old Swiss bedroom wall.
From my home in the Swiss countryside, I had once declared I was going back to “MY ELEPHANTS.”
And without knowing it, I had travelled to the EXACT place those elephants had walked.
I had lived there.
I had worked there.
I had guided safaris there.
Completely unaware that my words – my vision, my longing – had been uncannily, perfectly true.
It felt like recognising a star hidden between the twinkles.
I had gone back to where my elephants walked.
