This book is dedicated to my husband Evan who somehow gave me the courage to accompany him from one end of Africa to the other. His superb technical skills in driving and keeping our van mechanically sound was the key to our progress through the endless sands, jungles and bogs of Africa. 

This book is also in memory of Katy, our brave little 1974 Volkswagen Kombie campervan, registration number (GB) KTY494P. Despite her lack of 4-wheel drive and being grossly overloaded, she had the uncanny knack of rising up and over the deepest hole, the softest sand, the stickiest mud or the steepest incline like a ship rising above a wave. It broke our hearts after eight years of adventures with Katy to sell her and say goodbye.  

It is also dedicated to Johanna and Jürg, those other ‘crazy’ tourists who taught us so much about travel in Africa. This book has come about as the result of a reunion between Evan, Kae, Johanna and Jürg on a Swiss mountainside in August 2003, twenty years after we had first met beside a beautiful waterfall in the middle of Central African Republic in 1982.

And mostly it is dedicated to our son Craig in the hope that it will inspire him, not only to dream impossible dreams, but to actively and relentlessly carry them through.  In this way, and only in this way, will he be able to say at the end:

“I made the most of my life.” 

Kae Lewis              

© Copyright Kae & Evan Lewis 2019. All rights reserved.