From Pretoria to Trumpland: My Life's Journey

Mississippi River  in St Paul, Minnesota   Since 2006 I have spent a large portion of my life in the USA. During that time it has been my good fortune to have visited 45 of the 50 states that comprise the USA, and while doing so I have crossed and walked the banks of the great Mississippi River a number of times. This river is the second longest river in the USA. Its source is at Lake Itasca in Minnesota, and it flows 2320 miles from there to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. It is also divided into what is known as the upper Mississippi, from its source south to the Ohio River, and the lower Mississippi, from the Ohio to its mouth near New Orleans, Louisiana This mighty river   runs through, or along 10 states, from Minnesota to Louisiana, and was used to define portions of these states' borders, with Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi along the east side of the river, and Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas and Louisiana along its west...

In August 2012 my travelling companion, Joan, and I embarked on a road trip to the north eastern states of the USA. We had been discussing a trip to Maine and Boston for some years, and now an opportunity presented itself. This time we agreed that we would do the trip in my old 2003 Hyundai Sonata, a vehicle with a fair amount of space and comfort and with 88627 miles on the clock. We eventually covered 3427 miles on this trip.   At 7 am on Saturday, 18th August, we left Atlanta with Sterling, Massachussetts, 1100 miles away, as our first destination. A longtime friend of Stephen’s had invited us to spend a few nights there at his house. At dusk we started looking out for somewhere to spend the night. At 8 pm we stopped at a Holiday Inn Express and Suites in Largo, Maryland, having driven 720 miles. During the day we had made a stop in Richmond to stroll through Hollywood Cemetery which is named for its holly trees, and is the resting place of the Confederate President Jefferso...

    On a hot, sunny, August day, my friend Joan Thomas and I set off at 1.30 pm from Peachtree City, Georgia, on the fourth of our road trips across the vast USA. Joan had harboured an inexplicable yearning to visit the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as Fargo in North Dakota. The Mall of America is purported to be the largest mall in the USA, and Fargo I associate with that 1996 Oscar award-winning movie with the same name. Despite my only memory of the movie, a dark comedy crime  thriller, being of snow and a flat landscape, I was happy to accompany her on this new adventure. Instead of her large old comfortable 1995 Buick, we packed our luggage into her 2006 red Volkswagen beetle, which had been acquired some months earlier as a replacement for the trusty old girl. Except for the two objectives mentioned above, we had no fixed plan or route, and the only constraint was that we had to be back in Peachtree City by 18th August so that I coul...