A whole new continent!
I've seen 4 total solar eclipses before and one annular eclipse. Yet, I am excited about seeing another one, the first total solar eclipse of the new millennium and an eclipse on the solstice.
In addition, I've never been to Africa before, and I am looking forward to going meeting people and seeing the local geology, fauna and flora.
I've been preparing for months, searching the Internet and books for information on Zambia. I have my shots and my medicines, my clothes and my teaching tools and I am ready to go.
First I fly from San Francisco to Heathrow. Then after a "refreshing" six hour layover, I fly to Johannesburg South Africa, where another layover, this time overnight, allows me to prepare to fly to Livingstone Zambia near Victoria Falls.
We'll stay at Tongabezi resort and after recovering from our flight I look forward to working at the local schools and museum using locally available materials to allow the students, their families and their teachers to explore and learn science with me. Lowell Robinson will follow me with a camera as I shop the markets of Livingstone looking for science teaching materials. Noel Wanner who arranged this trip will be with us. Lowell Noel and I will prepare daily dispatches from the field reporting the progress of our trip. After a few days the rest of the team from: NASA, Smash TV, and the Exploratorium will arrive to join us.
Then it is off by small airplane to Sausage Tree Camp on the banks of the Zambezi river in Lower Zambezi National Park. This will be our base where we will observe, and broadcast the eclipse.
Here we will rendezvous with our satellite engineers. Who will bring with them electrical generators and a complete satellite transmission system.
It is going to be an adventure.
Come share it with me.
Paul Doherty
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Scientific Explorations with Paul Doherty |
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6 June 2001 |