When I was working in Mozambique with my family in 2002 when I left someone told me “you can leave Africa, but Africa does not leaves you” and while for me that rings a bigger bell with the Pacific (instead of Africa). I have to admit that I was quite happy when I was asked to come to Namibia, even if it was to run a workshop on an area that I become a reluctant specialist… the EU Catch Certification Scheme.
The cold and grey Atlantic… where my fishing life started
It is organised by SADC, WWF and my friends at Stop Illegal Fishing, so is good to work with people one likes.
I have a couple of rules in my job, one is to do at least two jobs outside the pacific every year and the other is to go to new places, and even if I was in Namibia in 97 during a Orange Roughie foray with a NZ fishing company and is a beautiful country. It must look very different after 21 years and I already did work in Asia and the US this year… besides I also miss the cold and grey Atlantic (as you see in the picture) which is my first ocean love. Also one of my favourite songs ever is called Namibia.
Yet Swakopmund where I’ll be working is a rather strange city since has a lot of German colonial architecture. It was founded in 1892 as the main harbour for German South West Africa, and a small part of its population is still German-speaking today, and the local supermarkets are full of germat type food
Interestingly is a capacity development workshop on the EU IUU Regulation in the South West Indian Ocean but done by the Atlantic… there you go with development logics…
Is a 21 hrs flight from Waiheke, but it just feels right to do some work here and meet new people that may get some benefit from my work based on these two documents (MCS for CDS and EU Market Access) I wrote in the last couple of years.
