 I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech, and at Think Tech, we feel that we ought to raise public awareness about matters that have an effect on Hawaii, but matters of interest to the people of Hawaii. And one of the things we think people ought to be thinking about is the global. That's why we try to raise public awareness about global things. And that's why we have shows ranging from India to Japan to Europe, everywhere. Because we think that people in Hawaii ought to think about those things. And therefore, that people who go to Africa, they don't have a show from Africa, but we know that Tim Appichella goes to Africa. Every year he goes to Africa, and he goes to look around. He's the only person I know who makes regular trips to Africa, and we're not talking about those safari trips where you pay a fortune and sleep in a fancy tent under the stars and have champagne delivered to you. Nothing like that. He actually goes, and he goes by himself, he goes in the outback of Africa, and we really need to know what that's like. I mean, how many people in the world really know what it's like to travel in Africa on the ground? So, Tim agreed to do this show with us, to talk about a recent trip he took. He goes every year, this would be his, what, 2017 trip or early 2018? No, it's not quite. Not quite. I've been there many times, but not every year. Okay. I've been there quite a few times. Okay. And you went just a month or two ago. And you had another successful trip in the sense you learned a lot and came back alive. This is very important. Well, coming back alive is really important, but coming back and enriched is even better. Every time I go to Africa or even anywhere, you really appreciate that what you have, because you do see people, and you see neighborhoods, and you see a country that's either been decimated by poverty or decimated by civil war, and the civil war could have been 20 years ago, and they're still trying to grow out of the carnage of war. And so, when you come back, you have an appreciation, I think, of just how good we have it. Yeah. You also have an appreciation of, I guess, European history and imperialism and what imperialism can do to a country. When you finally let them go, liberate them, usually because they demand to be liberated, and you find there's not a lot of, I wouldn't call it, political infrastructure left behind that can keep the place orderly. And the result is it's chaos in a lot of those countries. A lot of them are failing countries. And that's why I admire you so much for going to those places, because there's always a certain amount of risk. I mean, it'd be risky for a businessman, but it's also very risky for a tourist on the ground. So, you have a map, and let's play the map. And you can tell us, looking at the map, where you went on this trip, Ted. I've covered a lot of North Africa, being Egypt, being Tunisia, Morocco. Then I've hit some of the eastern African countries of Tanzania and Mozambique, and then southern Africa of South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. My next, hopefully my next trip is going to be Zambia and Malawi. But West Africa is very difficult because my French is horrible. My Arabic is actually better than my French. So, most of West Africa is limiting that way because you just have a language barrier, and it makes it three times harder to go the local route and try to make ends meet and make connections. It's just so hard when you just don't speak the language. So eastern Africa, you can get along on English? Well, that's where the British colonized a lot of East Africa. Tanzania was a bit of an exception because it was just inhospitable as far as environment, the Tetsi fly, disease, malaria. So the British tried it for a time, and the Germans did back in the early 1900s, and both said we can't have colonization here in Tanzania. Kenya worked out very well for the British, you know, mother England. Mother England's out of the region now. There's no British colony left. In government, yes. But in cultural, no, the Kenyans, the Tanzanians, they still put their arms around what they think are the better points of the colonization times. They're very proud of their English, and they really go to great lengths to learn proper English and speak proper English, and it's, you know, you can just tell us a source of pride for Africans and how they treat their language and the old vestiges of colonialism, I think. So why do you go to Africa, Tim? I don't know anybody else who does what you do. That's a philosophical question, and it's also, for me, I answered this on a previous show, the philosophical answer is, you know, what we get here on Earth is we don't get that anywhere in the universe. I mean, this is it. I mean, if you don't get it here, and I mean experience, you won't get it anywhere because we experience things in this flesh and blood that we won't experience anywhere in the universe. So we're only here for a short while. We only dance on this Earth for 50, if we're lucky, 50 years, 60, 70, 70 years, and so what is, why are we here? I mean, is it to just acquire assets and accumulate possessions, or is it to meet other people, other cultures, other experiences of commonality? Why are we here? And so, where do you find that? You find that in the entire world, so that means you have to go throughout the entire world. And you don't mind if there's risk. There's a lot of risk. Some of them is known, and a lot of it's unknown. I think every time you get on a vehicle in Africa, you take great risk. And it's that old thing where you see a car coming straight for you, and you just don't look. You just say, what will be, will be, you know, either it's a head on or it's not. You know, it's disconcerting to go down a windy road for hours and hours and hours in a third-world bus where there's no tread on the tires, it looks like a smooth inner tube, and you know, it's bouncing up and down, there's no shocks, and you're going around hairpin turns, and every three, five, ten miles you'll see a burned-out shell of a bus. And you know that no one survived that accident. And so, you see this as you're traveling. Not comforting. You have to blind yourself. You basically have to say, ignorance is bliss. What other risks? Let's talk about disease. You make a trip like this, inevitably you're going to run into some kind of disease, aren't you? Well, yeah. And I've had a few, my fair shares of, you know, close calls with, you know, things that are airborne through insects and malaria and things of that nature. And you try to take precautions, but even in the best of situations, they don't always work. You could take methicline for malaria. But that's a short-term drug. It's only, you know, a couple of weeks. And you use mosquito nettings, and you try to wear, you know, very thin clothing at night. So, but, you know, it's hot. It's very hot. Sometimes, you know, you're wearing a thin, long-sleeved shirt and long pants so that the mosquitoes don't get you. And sometimes you start kicking blankets off and sheets off and... Boy, you know when you get bit. Before you know it, the mosquito's gotten through the netting and you know, you have a mosquito bite. Not all mosquito bites are going to result in malaria, but, you know, your chances are your chances. How was it having malaria? The malaria wasn't so bad. It was the cure. And what you do for the cure is you double-dose the weekly intake of this methicline, and you literally are out of your mind. You're just out of your mind. You have hallucinations. I, you know, I thought, I saw elephants peeking into the tent, which in fact they were. But I really thought... So, it's not like being out of your mind is not out of your mind. No, exactly. Exactly. You know, they're looking down at you, you know, when you're sleeping into three in the morning, and they just want to see who's in there. What else? What other kind of diseases did you run into? You know, there's bahartsia, you know, things you pick up from the soles of your feet if you're in, you know, like lakes, lake Tanganika and things like that. You, you can pick up a whole bunch of critters. You know, there's a show on reality TV called the, oh, for lack of the critters inside me or something like that. But there's all sorts of tapeworms and horrible, nasty things. So, is there medical, you know, care available that would help you deal with these things? Back in the early days when I traveled, the medical system kind of looked like the late 1930s in maybe some parts of other countries. So they were very antiquated, but they were very proud of the equipment they had. And, you know, it was a different style of medicine. In fact, instead of sitting across from the table, they would, you would sit next to the doctor and he would, he would hold your hand like this and talk to you. Make you feel better. Yeah. And then say, oh, you're sweaty. Are you nervous? Are you nervous because you're talking to me or do you have malaria? So that was, it was a kind of a ladder of inquiry. Were they knowledgeable? Were they helpful? Yes, they were. Did they actually give you care that worked? Well, some of it you would take under advisement and some of it you wouldn't. You know, they wanted to offer you diuretics and, you know, that means you're going to be going to the restroom every five minutes, but you're on a 14-hour bus ride. That's not the best. That's not going to work for an hour. That's not the best of ideas. So. So with the map, with the map, back to the map, where did you first land in Africa? How did you get there? And how did you travel between the countries that you listed? Well, what I try to do is just stay within one country on one trip. And that way you kind of get a feel for the particular culture of that particular, you know, nation. And so I try not to travel around to too many other places other than just the country I'm in. A lot of it for me is just a local bus. Sometimes you're lucky and you can get on a train. Some of the trains are pretty antiquated and pretty broken down. Well, if you take a, I always say, if you're going to take a seven-hour bus ride, plan on about 18 hours, because inevitably the tires are going to go flat and you're going to have maybe two or three of those happen, you know, along the way, and then something else happens. So it's just, it's always something. So never, never say, okay, I'll, I'll be from this point A to point B in six hours. Plan 14 or 15 hours. So you went up to Travelocity and got all these four-star hotels. Is that what you, you did to find a place to stay, Tim? Most places have no hotels. You're lucky to get a cheap pension or sometimes it's the local bordello. That's where you stay. Interesting. You know you're in a bordello because there might be a small dresser and you open one of the drawers and there's maybe 50 or 60 condoms in, in the front drawer of, you know, but that's the only place available. They really took themselves off. Yeah. And you know, and then there's, you know, late night ruckus going on and, and people going in and out of doorways. But that's where you're going to stay because there's nothing else available. And so it's just the way it is. You can't reserve it. I mean, they don't have a website. Things are changing. Things are changing. Now it used to be rolling in a town and you go, maybe you find a couple of places and you try to negotiate the overnight rate. But now even the smallest of the little pensions, they have a website. And so people are making reservations. So traveling on the fly is getting much, much more difficult. It's not like, it's almost like here in the United States. You remember car camping? You just get in a car and off you go and you're pulling a little, you know, little town somewhere and you say, okay, put me up. We're booked up. There's a, there's a softball tournament. Sorry. And so those days are, they're even disappearing from the United States. So how do you, oh, how about the food? You, you, you just, you, you know what restaurants you're going to eat and I think I know the answer to this. You know what restaurant you're going to eat at in advance or do you just find it on the fly? Find it on the fly. And rule number one for me is stay off the street. I mean, no food on the street in the markets. The open markets. Yeah. I mean, Anthony Bourdain will tell you it's the best place to eat. Not if you don't want to have, you know, a stomach issue for the next three weeks. Because remember, if you get sick, let's say you only have a month. If you get sick for a week, there's, there's 25% of your trip in bed. So you really have to think very carefully before your appetite exceeds your, your, your, your wisdom. They take credit cards? In some of the big city. Yeah. And the bigger cities, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But when you get out into the rural areas, you, you better have local money and you better have planned your cash well throughout your whole trip because, you know, you might land in a large city, but then you will not see a major, a major city for three weeks. So how do you plan your money? And then that's a whole new science of how do you basically stash your money away? So that in case you are robbed or it's stolen, did they get the whole entire amount? So you have to, like a squirrel, place things in strategic places so that that doesn't happen to you. Yeah. Have you been robbed? Close. Very close. Yeah. Ooh, interesting. Yeah. There's a marketplace where I was getting late and the person pulled a machete and I don't know Swahili, but you know, I don't know what forces from nature put in some Swahili words in me and I was able to utter them to the person with the machete and it worked. I said, hattari, hattari means danger, danger. Mazungu is the word for, like, white person and quichua is crazy. So I said, hattari, mazungu, quichua. That was it. He put it back. He goes, I think so. That was it. That was the end of it. You talking about yourself with someone else? I was talking to the person that was ready to rob me and I don't know where those words came from. I really don't. I mean, you do try to learn some of the basic words before you go any country in Tanzania with Swahili. You should know Swahili. So now everybody speaks English, then? Yeah. Well, you have a mix. You have a mix. You don't know. If you're way on the countryside, Swahili is the predominant word spoken and, you know, sometimes English because of the level of education may not be order of the day. Take pictures? I try to, but I try not to. You know, your experience sometimes can be narrowly focused into the lens, right? And this is your best photography. This is your best computer. I find that doing this and this with a journal sometimes is a lot more enriching to me when I come back and read it years later or even, you know, shortly after the trip. I think when we live through a lens it really limits why you're there in the first place. Yeah. But you did take some. Yes. Yes. And it's those pictures we're going to take a look at when we come back especially a picture or two about a lion who was not too far away from where you were standing. There's a few of them out there. Okay. We're going to see some really interesting pictures when we come back. We'll be right back after this short break with Tim Apichella. Hey, baby. That's you. I want to know will you watch my show? I hope you do. Live the comfort zone and I'll be your host, R.E.B. Kelly. See you there. Hey, Aloha. Standard energy man here on Think Tech, Hawaii where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy in transportation, energy in maritime, energy in aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Standard Energy Man and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. Aloha. Okay, we're back with our host, Tim Apichella, who returned not too long ago from his regular sojourn in Africa, went to several countries in East Africa. And he came back with stories and memories and a fantastic expansion of his consciousness. That's why he goes. And that's why we want to talk to him about it. And although he believes that your memory is the best photograph, he did take some pictures and we're going to see him now. So let's play the pictures and Tim will describe what's on the picture. I love this shot because this is a typical gathering place for everyone. They're trying to get on transportation. There may or may not be a bus available for a few days or a week. So sometimes you'll see these little vans, and you'll get, normally with six people, you'll get 12 people in there. It's a long eight-hour ride, you know? But I love that because everyone, this is the gathering point for every community. They talk to each other? Oh, yeah. A lot of times, though, it is quiet. It's very quiet during the trip. And then if they bring out and singing, I love that. It's beautiful. Sing along? Beautiful. I don't know. You can hum along. What else do we got? All right. Now, this gentleman was, we retained his services to go through the Okavango. Those are fake bullets because he believed that lions smell metal. They know to recognize guns, spears. So when we were walking on foot for a day and a half, we had no machetes, no spears, no rifles, no pistols, nothing because the lions are intelligent. They think that you want to hurt them, and that's what he said to us. That's KK. Again, there was times where I was able to go on a little safari, and so wild dogs are very, very rare, almost extinct at the time, and so to actually spot a wild dog is quite a rare thing to do. Are they dangerous? When you're being hunted by them. If you're an antelope, yes. How about a human being person? No, they won't go out. They wouldn't bring one home. There's an animal in Africa. Is that right? It's a rhino. No, it's a hippopotamus. Pardon me, what do I know? If you look at his gaping maw, that's only half of what he's all about. This thing weighs over two tons and can run 35 miles an hour. So what's the fastest human? Not 35 miles an hour. So more people are killed by a hippopotamus than lions you name it. What sets them off? It's a very ill mannered temper. Very a bad disposition. But we're not going to have any of them as hosts on our show. We shall not. What else you got? Jaguars are very, very, excuse me, leopards are very, very rare and if you see one you're really fortunate. See the coloring? It just kind of blends right into that large tree limb. Beautiful. You're lucky if you can get a photo of them. Elephants. I love elephants. They're in pride of the world as elephants. They're family. They're all around the infant. That's beautiful. This is a mod. We hired him to basically, I was in the Sahara with a mod for a few nights and it was the desert a few scorpions and whatever he's going to cook for you that night. We would sing and he would sing The Camel of the Sleep and my best addition of Frank Sinatra or not and we had a great time. What did he cook for you? Usually some type of floured tortilla with goat meat or something. Just for interest, what did you have to pay a mod to come along? You know, you negotiate this. If you don't go through a guided tour they'll stack the profit margins exponentially. You can do something like that for maybe $40. To have him one day or for a week? Or for a number of days? That's pretty good. Once you go to the website tour companies that's going to be a $400, $500 excursion. What's next? I love this shot. He's tinning his camels and this was in Tunisia and for me taking pictures of people although it's very difficult to offend them that's why I'm going. I'm going there to see people and kind of see their environment how they're taking care of their families and how they're making a living and what their life experience is like. Did you get permission for the shot? I did not on this particular one and he didn't seem to mind. You were not very far away from him. Well sometimes the help of a telephoto does work. I have a very small telephoto and it's a very gentle direction It's a beautiful picture and I like the camel just to the left of the man. He's looking directly at the camels. He's probably the watchdog of all the camels. They spit by the way and they bite. They're not pleasant animals. Did you ride one? I have, I've ridden quite a few. They're just a tough animal. You wouldn't take them home? I wouldn't. When you're in Northern Africa you are constantly reminded of the Roman Empire because remember in Tunisia and all the Mediterranean aspects of North Africa was the bread basket of Rome and the Roman Empire. It's lovely to be in Africa and then you get to go through some of the Roman ruins. This is in Tunisia? Beautiful. This is one of my favorite now. This shot is probably one of the rarest shots you'll see. The gentleman who I hired for this even on his vacation he goes out in the bush with his family. That's what he does for a living for the last 35 years. What he did is we were lucky. We just paid, you go through a lottery system and he happened to be one of the premier safari guides at all the posh five-star hotels. We decided to branch out on his own and so he was a one-man operation so what would normally have been a $2,000 safari price tag. He's $75. That's fabulous. What he said this was that's a male cape buffalo one of the toughest animals to bring down and the bottom line is he'd been waiting all his life to see this one particular event and you'll see many lions and by the way females do all the heavy lifting. They're the ones that hunt. The male lion just sits around and they mate and protect his border but they do all the hard work so these lions it took about seven females to bring this down and also it took about a half hour. You shot this, how far away were you? About 75 feet. You used a telephoto lens? Yeah, but we were moving at the time so trying to stand hold it up and take the shot was really difficult. They're too busy. You have to be careful because they will divert their attention from what they're trying to do and say another piece of meat. Were you armed? No, you don't bring any arms. In South Africa they used to carry rifles for charging elephants and things again depending on the country and your guide if he has a philosophy that we will bring no weapons because that will offend the lions and he means offend them. That's what you're doing. You're on foot. You just hope for the best. Were you worried at all? Yeah. We have a tape now. I saw a footprint of a lion footprint and there was a wet spot next to it that means it was urine and when it's 80 degrees you figure I'm not a science major but the power of the evaporation takes about what 15 minutes in sand for was to dry out. That meant that lion left that urine and his paw print and was probably within the vicinity of 100 yards of us but there's brush and so you don't know if he's hanging out to avoid the midday sun and the brush and you're standing right in front of him and you don't know. Now this lion or lioness that's bringing the buffalo down that was one. I can't see more than one. There's one on his right leg and there's left behind and there's more coming in. They were all working on the buffalo. It took quite a bit for them to bring it down and here's the rare thing when they finally brought it down and were eating it they usually call them the male because the male needs protein to defend the whole boundaries and territory. They didn't call them in. That told me they were very hungry and they said eh. Okay. I love the colors in Africa. I love the clothing. You have the traditional wear. You have just pants that are just multicolored. That's just someone's laundry line. What country was this? That would have been Mozambique. Is that French? Portugal. This was also Mozambique. Fishing because Mozambique is on the coast you have a lot of the old sailing dowels that's your primary source of art. It looks like art. There's a little shadow of the sail and there's the sail. All your pictures are beautiful. I try not to spend more than 10 seconds to line up the shots. Real quick, real fast and if you can get it, put it away. It works. This one too, another beautiful picture. This is how a lot of people get around on construction lorries. Transportation is hard to find buses are usually privately run from companies and they may maintain a schedule, they may not. You may be expecting the bus on a Tuesday and it just doesn't show so now you're there until Thursday. People find creative ways of getting from point A to point B. They pay for this? They'll probably pay about 10 shillings and that's why the more the merrier. We're 20 cents or something? Yeah, it's not much. Let's try some more. I just saw the opportunity. She just seemed to be in a state of contemplation and I loved her headscarf and I just loved how the shot came out. Contemplative. Typical village in Botswana out in the rural parts. You'll see the fence line that's just keep out, literally keep out lions and hyenas and things of that nature. Love these guys. This was Tunisia. I don't remember what village we were traveling into but the guy with the scarf he just had a way about him and he was a bit touched I think. I don't know if it was too much sun in his life but he had some issues and he would turn on the Arabic music on the cassette tape and start swinging that cane wildly almost missing the driver several times and the driver's becoming very irritated. Finally he said something in Arabic and he pulled over and the two guys just got out and danced for about five minutes he was exhausted, got back in closed the door, it was silent for the next three hours. He was exhausted. We only have a minute more so take a couple more pictures and we'll be done. No matter what age you are you're going to be working you're going to try to help the family help them bring revenue into the household and these young girls I knew you were taking the picture. One of the few times I actually gave them a donation for the opportunity. And this is more food? This is just down by the docks. Notice she's doing all the work and all the guys are standing around. I love it, she's a great culture. And the last one now Ah, there it is. I love when children play they have very little resources they really don't have that's his choice for that day and I just love watching kids play. So my last question is you could turn to camera one for a moment Tim, what's your advice to people about going and if they decide to go what's your advice about how they should conduct themselves? Well, if you go conduct yourself that you are there for a reason that is to basically learn from their culture, experience their culture and so try not to be ethnocentric and bring your home place and what you do at home to the nation in which you're visiting. Enjoy the culture enjoy the comradery of meeting new people and having them show you things that you would never see in your whole life and try not to basically bring an agenda from home and just go with it and have a great time. Thank you. Tim Appichella What a guy you are, no kidding. We're going to look at more of your photographs and behind the scenes in a minute. We're on our other play list which is called Behind the Scenes and people can see it there. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Jay. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much.