Leading Expeditions

Leading expeditions overseas can be a complicated business.

You can prepare for everything; changes in itinerary, flight cancellations, no electricity, where to get drinking water from, what not to eat, what to eat, where to find the best clinics and how to say thank you in the local language. The list is endless but it can all be planned into your day. What can not be planned, and at times not even predicted, are the actions of your clients. These could range from often weird and wonderful requests (day trips to the beach in a land locked country) to wanting to go home on the first day of an expedition. At this point I must stress that the latter request was not on a Sense Africa trip.

So, as an expedition leader, how do you cope with it all? My first bit of advice is to never assume that the client has has any prior knowledge about the destination country or their surroundings. More often than not, clients leave their common sense in the UK. And I have done this too whilst on holiday this year, we all do it. And the second, and most important thing to remember, is to never assume that the client wants what you would like. This has happened to me recently. I thought that the girls I took to Africa this summer would be really interested in the wildlife, but this was not the case.  They were much more interested in the local culture, the people and the project they were involved with.  I was astounded that they got bored looking at wildlife.  But as an ecologist the wildlife fascinates me and it took me a long time to adjust to the fact that the girls were not as interested as I was.  To start off I was mortified, but as the expedition progressed I realised that they were much more interested in things that I could have given a miss.

Every person is different, and that is why leading expeditions never quite pans out as you expect it to.  Life is a roller coaster, enjoy it, especially those that are on the same ride.