On all our expeditions, we fill a decorated traditional Zulu calabash at the beginning of each adventure and then empty it at the end. It’s our good luck talisman, a tradition that dates back to 1993 when we carried Cape Point seawater to Cairo, Alexandria and the Mouth of the Nile in open boats across Africa. Later, the same calabash carried water from the source to the mouth of the Zambezi in the footsteps of Livingstone. Other exciting calabash journeys followed: around the globe on the Tropic of Capricorn, expeditions in the footsteps of great explorers and a 449 day odyssey through 33 countries tracking the outside edge of Africa to be emptied back into the cold South Atlantic at the Cape of Good Hope on Madiba’s birthday.

It becomes the most travelled Zulu artefact in the world

Imagine the scene, the hands of the Ministers of Environmental Affairs and Tourism from across Southern Africa all holding the symbolic calabash filled with water from iconic wild places which as part of the ‘end of expedition’ ceremony now glugged from the calabash into the Mouth of the Orange River where it runs into the cold South Atlantic.

This time we had added small sip fills of water taken from iconic places on an expedition called Boundless Southern Africa, the purpose of which was to link nature, culture and community across Africa. There was Indian Ocean water from Durban and the start of the expedition, Tugela River water from the lip of Africa’s highest waterfall high up on the Drakensberg Mountains, there’s thimble fulls of water from the Bushman’s, the Senque, the Umhlatuze, the Umfolozi, Hluhluwe, uMkuze and Pongola Rivers in KZN and from lakes Bangazi, St Lucia and Sibaya, all part of the beautiful iSimangaliso Wetlands Park. There was Mozambican water from the Futi Corridor and a pan in the beautiful Reserva Especial De Maputo; water from the Usuthu River in Swaziland, the Crocodile, Sabi and the Olifants in the Kruger National Park. There was water from the Masangir Dam in Parque do Nacional do Limpopo and in Gonarezhou. What about the Runde, Save and Mwenezi. Too many to mention – the Luvubu at Crooks Corner, water from the flooded Shashe as we swam and wade across to Greater Mapungubwe. Then there was water gathered from the flooded Makgadikgadi Pans and from amongst the elephants and hippos of the Boteti River.

There were sip fills of water from Nxai Pan, the Chobe, Linyanti, Zambezi, Kafue, Kwando, the Okavango, the Talamakani, from a pan in the massive Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Khutse, Mabuasehube and from Eland Pan in the beautiful Kgalagadi Transfrontier Conservation Area. The list seems endless, symbolic water from the warm baths spring at Riemvasmaak, from Augrabies and the Fish River Canyon, from the Orange and the warm baths at /Ai-/Ais, and finally from Gabusib, a natural rock reservoir hidden deep in the mountains of the Sperrgebiet as Trygve Cooper, Chief Warden of the Sperrgebiet National Park, took us on a loop through this incredibly beautiful and untouched piece of Africa.

More recently, in an expedition called United Against Malaria 2010, the calabash took water from the Cradle of Humankind in a big loop through sub-Saharan Africa and now, on October 17^th 2010, the much travelled ‘igula’ leaves KZN to complete All Afrika – part of the rich symbolism that makes up our colourful continent.