The Curse of the Drunk Sailor

One of the most challenging periods in my professional career was unpacking and processing my travels.

I’d travel often and when I return, was bursting to share my intimate knowledge and practical experience with the hopes of injecting radical ideas into organisations, my practice and in the case of Africa, building for the next billion. Instead, I was met with some blank expressions, cold handshakes, timid titans and charlatans who’d want to parade me at their shindigs as the “Captain of Culture”

They loved the stories but not the discomfort that came with the sounding bell to execute real change. I admit, I was also drunk on the fanfare and this wouldn’t be the only time I would be drunk.

This carried on for a while and my edge turned blunt. The passion turned into frustration.

In despair, I eventually turned into that drunk sailor you find at a bar telling you of the many escapades & voyages he went on. The sailor that tells stories that momentarily rouse the imagination and lift the spirit from all dullness. In the end, the sailor is left lonely and tormented by his own thoughts when the lights are turned off and the chairs are stacked on the tables at the end of the night.

This is the curse of the drunk sailor: full of stories, starved of impact.

It’s taken me a while to revisit some of my photos, especially that Africa trip, for fear of igniting that disgruntlement again. For a while now I’ve been running away from a hand chasing me as my shadow trying to draw me back into that bitterness.

It won’t win because it is just that, a shadow, cast by me from a light shining on my face. I’ve seen Medusa’s eyes and am alive to tell this story.

Some photos I took between Malawi & Tanzania (Circa 2017)