Introducing our traveling buddy, Zimbabwean born Kudzai Chifamba. As he embarks on an epic journey across the globe, Salt Magazine will be sharing his adventures each step of the way.
Who and what am I? I have been trying to figure out exactly what to tell people when I’m asked questions like “where are you from?” and “what do you do?”. In a nutshell, I am a Zimbabwean born Australian, and I am a fly in fly out (FIFO) backpacker.
Travelling is the one thing that I have always wanted to do my entire life. It is my passion, and I dare say it is what I live for. My father, who used to travel often for work when I was a child, inspired me. Though, I didn’t know at that time that travelling was going to be such a big part of my life.
As I grew up, I mistook my passion for travelling as a desire to become an airline pilot. I first flew an aircraft before I drove a car at the age of 15. Then I went on to study Aviation in University and concurrently did my flight training. After I became exposed to the airline industry at an early stage of my career, I lost the desire to become an airline pilot and decided to officially discontinue flying in April of 2014.
Now I just work part time at Perth Airport and travel every week, domestic and internationally. I am fortunate that I get a lot of time off with my position. Since my job is part time, it means I can spend more time doing what I love, travelling.
I first travelled by myself in June 2011, when I went to both Dubai and Hong Kong to see which airline I should work towards getting into as a pilot. I was tossing between Emirates or Cathay Pacific. At that time, I had decided that Emirates was where I eventually wanted to be, and had I continued pursuing my pilot career, I would still be striving to become an Emirates B777 pilot.
I had an amazing experience, although I naively spent a lot of money since I was new to solo travelling. Prior to this, I had travelled with my family a couple of times to visit Singapore/Malaysia and back home in Africa. We spent a week in Singapore and did a day trip to Malaysia, that was 11 years ago, but from what I remember, I had a good time. In 2009 we visited Africa for the first time since we had left Zimbabwe in 2001. We drove from South Africa to Zimbabwe via Botswana and I thoroughly enjoyed the 4 week holiday with my family. In between, I have travelled with my family around Australia to Gold Coast, Sydney, Canberra, Wagga Wagga, Margaret River and Port Lincoln to name a few. They live in South Australia, and I live in Perth, but I almost visit every month.
In September 2011 I visited the Philippines for just under a week, and I loved it. I spent most of my time on an island called Boracay. I was hooked on travelling and gained more confidence as a result. End of 2011 I went back to Africa with my family, I went only for a few days as I had to come back to Australia for work and my family stayed on without me. Unfortunately I couldn’t travel much after that as I was focusing on my flight training and university throughout 2012 and half of 2013.
November of 2013 my family and I went to Ethiopia for my wedding with my now ex-wife. I had an amazing time in Ethiopia and the wedding was a great success. Without getting into much detail, things unfortunately didn’t work out with my ex-wife and we split up early into our marriage July 2014.
After the split with my ex-wife, I decided that I will travel and make the most of my newfound singledom (travelling had absolutely no bearing on the demise of our marriage). I spent 3 months alone reevaluating my life and deciding what needed to be done to move forward with my life. I decided I wanted to visit all 196 countries and began with my first trip in October 2014. I’ll be sharing some of the most memorable moments of the past year of travels with you here in Salt Magazine.
Watch this space!
