Where I live, in the wild, wild, way-out west of Tanzania, Katavi is a relative spit away. Relative being the keyword here. If you lived on the moon - and the wild, wild, way-out west of Tanzania with its dearth of asphalt roads that only serve to exacerbate an isolation born of geography, and the ups and downs of a national air carrier with only a single fickle competitor - it sometimes feels like living on the moon, then a neighboring planet might have seemed like a spit away.

Relative in our case is a bone-shaking, bladder-agitating, nine-hour drive of dust through miombo so thick that the tsetse flies can barely get through without snagging their wings. But for us, in the wild, wild, way-out west of Tanzania, Katavi is - given the scarcity of anything else approximating escape - the closest thing we get to a weekend away. And, as weekends away go, it's a pretty good one. It might even be the only reason to live where we do. That and the fact that there isn't a single matatu around here!