The Curiosity Dividend Newsletter: No. 28

Under African Skies

Under African Skies

A year ago today I wrote in newsletter #19 that I think storytelling has the transformative power to connect us better than anything else.

I said:

“We have to do more of it. I don’t know if the insatiable desire for connection is uniquely human, I suspect not, but we can’t share stories with the apes and the monkeys and the dolphins, so we have to do it with each other. I’m told I’m obsessed with nostalgia. It’s true that I’m constantly drawn back to my childhood for inspiration. I think the truth is, this is when all the best stories were told. Under the oak tree at Hayes School with Mrs Drabble, around the fire at cub camp with Stuart Cheeseman, lying in Betts Mead with my best mate Alan Nowers in the late 70’s dreaming of flying spitfires. Stories are where our shared humanity resides, our shared meaning and our shared sense of belonging. 2025 will have more storytelling in it.”

So here we are at the end of another long year and I’ve decided to ditch the original writing plan for this edition, and to tell a story instead. A story with pictures. It’s actually a few interwoven stories if I’m honest. Let’s start in 1973.

I think I started dreaming about seeing huge, wild animals when I was four or five. I can’t remember exactly what the trigger was but I’m sure it had something to do with the T shirt my mum had bought me from C+A. The front of that T shirt was emblazoned with the sort of animals that a young boy from Croftleigh Avenue could only dream about. All the big African land mammals were on it – a bull elephant, a rhino, a lion and a giraffe. All in glorious technicolour. I can’t remember if there was a zebra and a leopard, I think so, and there may have been a crocodile. And an impala. I loved that T shirt more than I’ve loved any piece of clothing since, and I wore it until it was too small and too threadbare for mum to let me out of the house in it. You must remember this was the early 70’s and one of mum’s constant refrains was “what will the neighbours think!?” She said the same thing to Aldo when he tried to sneak out of the house for his first day at John Fisher school wearing his red and blue Crystal Palace scarf.

When I got into John Fisher many years later mum and dad bought me the hardback of David Attenborough’s brand-new TV series Life on Earth. It was magical. It was the series everyone remembers with him dressed like a Victorian reporter whispering as the big male gorilla paces around him. I leafed through that book over and over again. The dream intensified.

When I first met my wife CJ in 2004 she told me story after story about her barefoot childhood growing up in Africa. It involved all the big animals that featured on my C+A T shirt. She said she loved the running wild, barefoot bit the best so it was somewhat ironic when she eventually founded Sals Shoes in 2013 and dedicated her career to helping kids without decent shoes. She started by accident not knowing where good quality pre-worn kids shoes would end up if donated to a UK charity. With no clear answers CJ decided to send a bag of about 10 pairs of our first child’s outgrown shoes direct to Zambia which she knew would help some kids on a tobacco farm owned by friends of her mum and dad. The thing is the shoes didn’t stay there – Sandy, who owns the farm, decided that the need would be greater elsewhere. They ended up on the children’s oncology ward in the University hospital in Lusaka. When an unexpected email arrived weeks later, and there was our boy’s first ever pair of shoes on the feet of a very sick Zambian boy wearing a grin as wide as the Blackwall Tunnel, you can imagine the reaction in our house. Sals Shoes was born.

One of the first overseas charities Sals Shoes partnered with was The Winnie Mabaso Foundation in South Africa. In some important way my youngest two kids have grown up alongside the girls at Ilamula House. So it was to be a Christmas to remember this year with a stay at Ilamula, a Sals Shoes distribution at the informal settlement of Meriting, south of Johannesburg, and then a stay with grandparents in Nelspruit/Mbombela. And Nelspruit is right next door to Kruger National Park. The long-held dream within reach.

The welcome we received at Ilamula was so warm. The house is a beautiful, caring place that shelters abused, traumatised young girls, many with HIV. Love is everywhere, it shines through in everything the staff do. The house is full of toys, and energy and mischief. My kind of place. I’m approached by a curious little girl, lets call her A, who’s taken a shine to me and a fascination with my hairy arms and bald head. She insists I read her Donald Duck Goes to Mexico as she holds me tight with one hand and explores my hairy arms, stubbly face and shiny bald head with the other. The way she explores with such curiosity and trust makes me feel like golden treasure. Her little calloused fingers communicating better than any words ever could. I sit with her as I’m welling up a bit thinking how much work the staff must do to get these girls functioning, let alone trusting. It’s almost too painful to think what A and the other Ilamula girls have been through. All beaten, most raped, often as babies, often repeatedly, many now with HIV. And yet here they are. All of them smiling and laughing and full of wonder. This is equal parts awe inspiring and heartbreaking. Knowing what humans are capable of. Incredible horrors. Incredible kindness. Incredible resilience. Incredible trust. God only knows what irreparable damage and scarring lies beneath the fun-loving outward demeanours of these beautiful girls. But for a few hours on that first day in South Africa, in the house being hugged and cuddled and teased and endlessly questioned, I got to see clearly what it is to be human in all its complex and confusing colours.

The shoe distribution the next day at Meriting was a colourful and joyous occasion. The crush at the gates was an indication of just how much difference a good pair of shoes can make. When the rain came it was biblical. Spirits undimmed, the only part of CJ’s exceptional plan that needed to change was some hasty re-arranging of stock tables, and the temporary cessation of the booming dance music. 2,540 pairs of pre-loved shoes found new feet. The music started over and the dancing began. A young lady told me that you must dance to be South African, if you can’t dance you can’t be South African. Over 3,000 Meriting residents came and had some Christmas fun and a hot meal. Many smiled and it felt like all welcomed us into their community with open hearts. Meriting reiterated a belief I’ve had for a long time – those with the least are the most resourceful. When the only thing you have are your resilience and your imagination, resourcefulness becomes your resource. Inspiring and thought-provoking. Thank you Winnie Mabaso Foundation, thank you Meriting.

Too often the idea of making meaningful change is hamstrung by the scale of the problem one is trying to tackle. What I’ve learned watching CJ develop Sals Shoes, is that you simply have to start. One bag of shoes went to Zambia in 2013. 10 pairs. And then the next bag and then the next. As 2025 comes to an end, Sals Shoes has distributed 8,856,803 pairs across 65 countries.

Heading West

When I was a kid my mum used to say ‘good things come to those who wait.’ Like all the other mums I suppose, but I wasn’t renowned for my patience, caution or prudence so my mum had her work cut out getting my buy-in. But get it she did, and I’m grateful for her persistence.

The journey West was full of trepidation. I kept having those “are we there yet” moments and I’m transported back to Highcliffe in 1973 in my C+A T shirt. But I play it cool, of course I do, I’m driving and I’ve got two kids in the back.

Over the three and a half days in Kruger that followed, good things came in an almost continuous stream. I told Fanikie our guide, and a tracker of extraordinary skill, about my 53 year-long dream. He told me that in his native Tsonga Shanghaa language ‘Under African Skies my dreams came true” is:

Ehansi ka matilo ya Afrika. Milorho ya mina yi humelerile.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a natural historian. I vividly remember telling my mum about it when I was about 13 or 14. This was 1981 or 1982. I can remember the conversation like it was yesterday because she said the most wonderful thing. I said I’d like to be a natural historian. She said why not. I said I think the only natural historian who makes a good living is David Attenborough. She said well be the next David Attenborough then. I didn’t follow that dream, and maybe I should have. Who would have thought my 87 year old mum’s encouragement to follow your dreams and ambitions would still be so resonant 43 years later. And who would have thought that after all that time David Attenborough would still be the main man.

Finding the right words to explain the experience is beyond me. So hopefully the photographs that follow will do it for me.

I am certain of one thing as I reflect on the pot of memories as they marinade. Seeing five different leopards on a Christmas Day morning must be a natural world experience that I won’t ever top. And that feels exactly as it should be. This constant chase we have for more, for the next thing, the better thing, the ‘optimal’ thing, is so tiring and debilitating. I’m certain it’s where the core of our problems in the modern wealthy west lie. We know we don’t have to keep grasping for more, getting attached to what we have and what we don’t have. But still, we do it. Yes, I appreciate the irony of saying this having just been blessed with the opportunity to fulfil a life-long dream, and maybe I’m saying it for my own benefit first and foremost. I think the point is we all know the consumption game is rigged against us.

The funny thing is, I keep wondering what I’ve learned from the way the ecosystem in Kruger works. Is there a useful take-away about consumption? At first, I wondered whether Kruger was analogous to how a properly functioning capitalist system should work – Darwinian survival of the most adaptable to change, collaboration everywhere (watching vervet monkeys and impala hanging out together and communicating predator danger is a revelation), resource balance, zero waste. But that’s overly simplistic, maybe romantic, and it’s not right because the defining feature of capitalism is the accumulation of capital and the extraction of surplus value. This place is the antithesis of the extraction of surplus value for reinvestment into further growth. The Kruger ecosystem’s defining feature isn’t that at all – it’s about dynamic equilibrium through limitation. The lions don’t get to accumulate extra zebra for sale to other lions at a profit. In the bush nothing grows indefinitely, population booms trigger crashes elsewhere and predator numbers are inextricably linked to the availability of prey. The system self-regulates through feedback loops that constrain growth.

Maybe the truth is that as humans we escaped the natural ecosystem and now somehow think we can rig the rules. Why not, we’ve been doing it for centuries right? We escaped and developed agriculture, medicine, art, philosophy, abstract thought and TikTok. We jumped outside the predator-prey cycle and we’ve found a way, at least for now, to live beyond the Earth’s natural carrying capacity. We don’t accept environmental limits anymore, we try and engineer around them. Marc Andreesen and co keep telling us that’s the game - expand the possible. I don’t know. I’m not sure we can. Not like this. Maybe I’m just in the post safari euphoria stage, but something feels different to me now and the idea of systems that self-regulate through feedback loops that constrain growth, is starting to seem attractive.

But as always, the interesting stuff is predicated on paradox. On the one hand I know our capacity for imagination and intervention is precisely what separates human society from the dynamics of natural world ecosystems. On the other I can’t stop thinking about what benefits we could accrue as a society taking some of the things that happen in Kruger into our economic and social systems. Kruger is the demonstration of what happens in a system where no participant can alter the rules, where feedback is immediate and non-negotiable, and where there is no abstraction layer between action and consequence. The other thing it shows us is that nothing accumulates inviolable power across generations. I don’t suppose that would have many takers in modern culture. But in Kruger these are the very constraints that produce its spectacular beauty and function. They’re also the constraints we tell ourselves we evolved our consciousness specifically to transcend.

What Kruger magnifies with clarity, is the functional constraint that contemporary capitalism systematically seeks to dismantle through monopoly, regulatory capture, and the privatisation of gains while socialising losses.

What Kruger also demonstrates is what happens when every participant is forced to play by the same immutable rules and the game can’t be rigged. It’s compelling. There are no bail outs here, no rangers throwing carcasses off the back of pick-ups because the lions miscalculated and over-extended themselves. No rigged markets where the hyenas get to eat another predator’s kill without working for it, and no fluctuating tariffs because hey make rhinos great again.

I’m not sure what mum will make of it all when I get back. She’ll enjoy the pictures. She loved the big mammals as a little girl too, and drew them with precision and skill. She helped me do the same for a school project when I was about 10 and I got first prize and a Birds of Britain guidebook. I still have it. The birds of Kruger are incredible too.

I’m going to need a Birds of Kruger guidebook too.

The Convivium

I’m building something called The Convivium.

In ancient Rome the convivium was a kind of extended dinner party, but the emphasis was on exploration, debate and companionship rather than just eating together. The convivium was a space where food, wine, friendship, philosophy, art and conversation coalesced. It was how Romans expressed the art of living well together.

I’ve been fascinated with the idea of a cultural feast for all the senses far a long time.

Last year I gathered twelve people together at a 16th Century coaching inn in Sussex for a couple of days, and we told each other tales and pondered what we should be paying attention to. The second edition is in Perthshire in Scotland in May next year.

The Convivium is what comes next. The inaugural gathering for 8 people is at the Stirling Prize winning Astley Castle in Warwickshire in July 2026.

In so many different fields, there are vanishingly few spaces left that allow us to be all we really are, in the company of others, without performance. To just be ordinary. To leave the trapped feeling that prevails inside our increasingly transactional lives, to rediscover the bravery and creative edge of childhood or early career, to just trust that there is no expectation of us.

Spaces where we can talk openly and honestly, if we want to, about what we’re wrestling with, a space to find an answer to the question “who am I without the scoreboard’ and with no need to keep a game face on, are few and far between.

The Convivium isn’t about time with the ‘like-minded’ it’s about being with those who might just change our perspectives precisely because they see things differently. My dad taught me how important that is.

He used to manage a restaurant in Mayfair called The Tiberio. It was one of those iconic old school Italians that don’t exist anymore. The sort where the waiters used to smoke endless cigarettes while they played scopa out the back between service. It was a restaurant where you could have whatever you wanted regardless of whether it was on the menu. Dad made sure of that.

Dad was faithfully egalitarian. He treated everybody like royalty, whether it was actual royalty, Hollywood royalty like Frank Sinatra, or local regulars. His work was done in a uniquely playful, Neapolitan way. He spent his whole career in the convivium. He paid close attention and had a knack of seeing exactly what mattered. The Convivium can’t promise Frank Sinatra in person, but it can promise all the care and attention my dad used to give him.

If you’ve got this far and something more than polite interest is bubbling, then this might be for you.

The Convivium is for people who’ve built something, achieved something by conventional measures, and now find the questions changing. Not “how do I do more?” but “what actually matters now?” It’s not networking and it’s not personal development. The Convivium is sustained inquiry with peers who are asking the same uncomfortable questions.

If this makes you come alive a little bit more, email me at carlo@carlonavato.com and I’ll send details in the New Year.

Analogue Stories

I wrote nearly 68,000 words this year and a bunch of them ended up being typed on my old Olivetti Lettera 35 and made into a two volume artisan handmade book. I followed the wisdom of CS Lewis minus point 7:

Thank you to everyone who’s bought it. I’ve had some lovely feedback. I have about 20 copies left if you’re tempted.

Last words

Last words of 2025 to Joan Didion:

“It’s good to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.”

From on keeping a Notebook 1968

and Haruki Marakami:

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive... When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

From Kafka on the Shore 2002

Thanks for being here. I wish you all a very happy New Year. See you on the other side.