I spent one retreat morning on horseback at a vineyard in Stanford, about 10 miles from Bodhi Khaya. I wish I could have bottled the green and brought it back to Maun with me.
Letting my curiosity guide me, I left the horse and wandered down little Stanford's main street, where I happened upon a dream come true: an art gallery/espresso cafe/restaurant/community cultural hub. The Stanford Galleries had it all, including newspapers!
I also got lucky. The owner hardly ever comes in, I'm told, but that morning he did. He's Peter Younghusband, who turned out to be a retired journalist and author, including of one successful children's book that chronicled the real-life wanderings of a hippo across Africa. (Some of you know that I was late to the party with my children's book about a baby hippo befriending a 120-year-old tortoise in Kenya after the tsunami. My book arrived at the publishers two weeks after a book on the same topic had been accepted. That OTHER book went on to become number one on the Amazon children's bestseller list. All I can say for myself is I was two weeks late and many dollars short!)
A South African, Peter worked for Newsweek and for the London Daily Mail, with a 3-year-stint as its Washington correspondent during the LBJ years. He had to begin working 2 weeks early because Bobby Kennedy was shot. He covered the Vietnam War. He counted as one of his great friends in Vietnam David Halberstam. He told me how he was ready to go on break and told his paper he couldn't possibly do an assignment on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the truth. But he told his buddy Halberstam about it, and Halberstam said no problem, I've got contacts that can help you get the story. Peter really needed the break, but Halberstam provided no excuses for him to go on vacation. He stayed and got the story. I got to share with Peter how Halberstam was one of our most generous guests during our Nieman Fellowship year at Harvard. He went so far as to pass around his notebook to our class of Nieman Fellows so that we could see how he conducted his interviews and took notes. On this occasion, he was working on a baseball book.
The connections continued. Peter turned out to be the previous owner of the farm where I was staying. He had a rough bout of health and couldn't keep up with the labor on the place. He sold it to journalist/filmmaker Georgina Hamilton, who made it Bodhi Khaya because, as she told me, there needs to be more meditation in the world. The farm is very old and has been home to authors besides Peter. Georgina's late father made the purchase possible. He was Gavin Relly, active in the anti-apartheid movement, among the first white South Africans to meet with the ANC in exile. (I haven't double-checked my facts on this, but this is what I was told by one of the managers at the farm.)
The Overberg region -- my getaway into the middle of nowhere -- turned out to be rich in characters and in story.
