Ben Swanepoel

I was born in South Africa very close to the Southernmost tip of Africa. My formative years were spent on lighthouse stations along the South African and Namibian coastline until we moved into the city for schooling. It was a struggle for me to settle into city life, feeling restless and out of place in the built-up environment. My mom read to us when we were young, and this, coupled with my dad’s animated story telling, contributed to developing in me a vivid imagination and a sense of adventure. 

 For reasons I never fully understood then, I grew up painfully unconfident, particularly when dealing with authority figures, a situation reenforced through an incident at school. On the flip side, I developed an insatiable appetite and longing for adventure and independence. It has been this internal tension, this yin and yang, that has made every adventure or minor incident in my life stand out as something special, something worthy of note.   

 From my early primary school years, I was involved with a small group of friends, and together we explored the mountains of the Cape Peninsula, the caves of Kalk Bay and, later, the mountain ranges of the Western Cape. During my later senior high school, I discovered surfing, and was completely taken over by the experience. Once a surfer, always a surfer. 

 Two years of military service, first in Cape Town then later up north, in Namibia, guided my transition from innocence to young adult, and on re-entering civilian life, I fell headlong into the dazed and confused years of my early 20s. With no opportunity to study further, or any real career guidance, I took on a series of dead-end jobs, and although I was conscientious and moved quickly up the ladder, I must confess that I was motivated purely by the need to fund my surfing and social life. 

 Eventually things fell apart, and I reached the point where I could say, “Not another day!” From that point on, my life was transformed. I sailed across the ocean to St Helena, met and married my wife, and finally found the career I was destined for, Nature Conservation.

 As a nature reserve manager, I worked on some of the most iconic reserves in the Western Cape of South Africa, and my family grew and flourished in the freedom that the environment provided. Living inside the parks away from the city, my children experienced a childhood few can dream of now days. It was during this time that I picked up on my studies, and through distance learning, received first my National Diploma in Nature Conservation, then later a BA degree in Environmental Management.

 As a family, we took a few detours during this time, and I left conservation for 5 years, during which I started my own small construction and maintenance business, briefly ran a youth group, managed a sheep farm, and later, a poultry hatchery. When I finally got back into conservation, things had changed, and I found myself in a mountain catchment area where wildfires and alien vegetation control were the primary conservation activities. 

 In 1994, the political situation in South Africa changed for the better and I soon found myself at the forefront of the reconstruction and development program within the context of conservation in the new South Africa. I had much to learn and was perfectly placed to do so. After being a key part of a very successful community conservation project in the Western Cape, my reward was an offer to management one of the flagship conservation areas in the Western Cape where we lived and worked for many years among the animals on land and the Southern Right whales along the coastline. Instead of leaving for the city when the children were old enough for school, we home-schooled our 3 children for a major part of their schooling life. This enabled us to live on the best reserves, which were a long way from any formal education institutions.

 All good things must eventually come to an end, and so we moved to a mountain catchment reserve in distant view of the ocean. Here, up against the mountains, the children completed their schooling. My wife and children then packed up and left for the city to continue their post school education, and at that point, I found myself, once again, alone.  

 Alone has never been a negative for me. For the next few years, I focused on re-building my confidence, and rediscovering myself, which had somehow got lost in the whirlwind of the past years. I competed in 2 ultra-long (2,300km) unsupported mountain bike races across South Africa, trained for and completed 2 ironman events, cycled across South Africa from North to South, and competed in a series of local running and cycling events. 

 Out of necessity, I needed to earn more money to cope with the family debt that accumulated while educating our children. It was at this point I discovered I had a talent for photography and could pay off a sizeable chunk of my immediate short-term debt through working on photos for an academic book publisher. I also re-discovered my love of motorcycling and explored the dirt roads around the country.

 An e-mail that arrived in my inbox at work one-day provided the key that unlocked the next stage of my life. The stage was a small landlocked country of Southeast Asia called Lao PDR, or Laos. Initially, I was to provide technical support to the government of Laos for the management of a protected area. It was a one-year contract. It’s now been 12 years since I arrived, and I am still here, offering management and technical support to the Lao Government for an amazing conservation area, Nam Et-Phou Louey NP, having worked hard as part of a team to have it finally declared as the first National Park in Laos. 

 During my time here in Laos, I realised that, unlike South Africa, affordable international travel was an option, with at least a dozen countries within a few hours' flight from Laos. I dusted off my travel gear, oiled my bicycle and cycled long trips in Thailand, Malaysia and China before cycling clear across Bhutan and into India and Nepal with my son. 

 I realise that I have been fortunate to experience life in the ways that I have and am grateful for the opportunities that have so far come my way. The reason that I write and photograph is to encourage others who, possibly like me, didn’t have the resources or confidence to own the opportunities that came their way, doubting themselves, or believing that only amazing people can do amazing things. Of course, this is just not true.