Last week in this post, I introduced you to Thando Cebekhulu, who will soon be introducing himself to you once his account is activated. I've now registered it and am waiting for the e-mail to say he's been accepted - as @scienceguy. He's sent me an #introduceyourself post which I'll format for him and post on his behalf...soon, I hope!
How is he sending this stuff? By Facebook Messenger. I kid you not. That's the only way we've been able to communicate since he left Earth, er, Cape Town. I'm still trying to figure out a secure way to send him his Steemit password. If any of you have ideas on how to do this, short of taking a photo of cut up pieces of paper with the password on and sending that back to him via Messenger (and no, I don't think carrier pigeons will fly there), I'm all ears. I wouldn't want his opportunity to earn compromised by poor security in the startup process!
As I explained in that post, Thando (pronounced Tan-doe for those not familiar with Zulu names) is a young South African zoologist researching birds (and seals on the side) on Marion Island, a cold, windswept, volcanic rock on the way to Antarctica from South Africa.
We, along with his mother and his sister, saw him off on his voyage with 70-odd other intrepid seapeople on the SA Agulhas II (pictured below) in early April of this year from Cape Town Harbour.
The sharp-eyed among you will see @tim-beck in there for scale and moral support. By the way, I learned a lot this morning trying to stitch five photos together to make a panorama. For those who do this for a living, I tip my hat to you. After hours of trying, I found an app on my phone (bimostitch) which did it in under a minute. Eish and oy vey. But I digress.
Some of you might have seen @marcel1965's post on the sights of Cape Town's V&A Waterfront (https://steemit.com/life/@marcel1965/v-and-a-waterfront-some-sights). He also picked out the venerable rust buckets you can see on the right!
We had a chance to say goodbye in person to Thando on the morning of Friday 7 April. That's him disembarking, then with his mum Geslina, then with Geslina again and his sister Zandi.
This is the next generation icebreaker - and an impressive vessel closeup.
Thando gave us each an expedition badge, sporting the logo the expedition team designed themselves - I'll let Thando tell you why the 4 is lying on its side, a story which will be worth reading.
...and then he had to go back on board. That was the last time we saw him before the ship finally sailed sometime the next day.
I hope we get approval for his account soon so you can start reading his stories in his voice, not mine. And yes, getting penguin pictures!