Belgium

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To kick off my email hitchhiking project, I’ve submitted my own pictures of the clothes I’m wearing at the moment.

What are you wearing? In the picture above (left), you can see my banana socks! On the right, you can see I’m also wearing a jeans, a simple light-blue T-shirt and a black thermal long-sleeve shirt on top of that.

Why am I wearing these clothes? I picked the socks at random out of my closet, but it’s always fun to wear them as my girlfriend gave them to me as a birthday present. The bananas refer to a running gag in our friend group :). I’m wearing these pants and shirts because they’re comfortable and appropriate for wearing at home.

How did the weather/climate/season impact your clothing choice? It’s the tail end of Winter. Currently, it’s late in the afternoon, sunny, but still a bit chilly at 9°C. In the room I’m sitting in, I’m constantly turning the electrical heater on and off to get the right temperature. As such, I’m also wearing my long sleeved t-shirt which is easy to put on and take off if it get’s too cold/warm.

How did fashion come into play when choosing your clothes? As I’m at home, it didn’t really come into play. The black shirt on top of the blue shirt is a pretty bad fashion choice, to be honest.

Is there anything else that you believe impacted your clothing choice? These clothes weren’t too expensive. Other than that, I can’t think of anything else at the moment.

Let’s try again

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When someone sent my email to two mailing lists on my way to Mozambique, I thought I struck gold. Lot’s of people will see my message and surely someone will pick me up, right? Wrong!

My email never made it onto the public mailing lists. I suppose the moderators didn’t see my message as relevant to the lists. That’s ok. In this way, email hitchhiking feels similar to regular hitchhiking. You believe you found a great spot, but end up waiting for hours for no one to even pick you up that day.

Anyway, while I was waiting, I got some time to think the concept of email hitchhiking over. In its current installment, email hitchhiking might be a bit too complicated. The project’s goal is to collect data from a variety of places and hopefully exposing some unknowns. Picking a very specific type of person to collect data from sounds fun, but feels unnecessarily hard in this early stage of the project to reach the project’s goal.

So, let’s take this bump in the road and turn it into an opportunity. I will return to a previous iteration of email hitchhiking where I simply try to hitchhike to each country in the world. An update will follow soon, so stay tuned!

Stuck in Sudan

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I am stuck in Sudan! Unfortunately, no one from the two mailing lists replied yet. Perhaps the moderators blocked my email, as I don’t see it on the public repository.

Anyway, I’ll wait a bit more and then see how to continue further. Perhaps I’ll send a message to one of the mailing lists myself. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to get a new contact in Sudan and go from there.

If you know someone in Sudan who could help me out, please let me know!

From Omdurman, Sudan to two mailing lists

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Through my first email, I got in touch with someone from Omdurman, Sudan who very kindly sent my email to two mailing lists. Right now, I’m waiting/hoping for some replies.

In any case, I’ve reached the African continent and while it’s still technically far to Mozambique, I’m getting (geographically) closer to Mozambique. So that’s good!

I’ve currently stayed in an English bubble and language wasn’t a problem yet. However, people in Mozambique speak a variety of languages, none of which I speak. I can manage in English, Dutch, German and French, so we’ll see how it goes.

(Hopefully) On my way to Mozambique!

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I just got ‘picked up’ by someone from New York City, USA! The people I sent my first email to (for privacy reasons, I won’t mention names) were so kind to forward me to someone they think can help me reach my destination in Mozambique. I’m now eagerly waiting for the reply on the second email!

Started my first email hitchhiking trip!

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I just sent out the first email for my email hitchhiking project! The (randomly generated) destination is: someone from Mozambique working in environment and agriculture with a vision impairment.

Will someone ‘pick me up’? Will I reach the destination? I’m not sure, but this kind of feels like real hitchhiking (minus the endless walking and the cold).