In the beginning, you visit all the waterholes and explore all the tracks … and then once you have considered all the options … to focus and hunt one animal.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the name of the person to credit with this African saying, but it was generously given to me by a colleague in the early days of my PhD. It is good advice for a student, and up to this week it was scribbled messily on a scrap of reused paper and pinned haphazardly above my desk for motivation. In keeping with this saying, I’ve attempted to read widely and deeply, following the lines of evidence. But with my candidature recently confirmed and 3 months of field work about to commence, the phrase has taken on a new resonance and has been visually spruced up to reflect its heightened relevance and importance. I am very lucky that my supervisory panel has supported an initial exploratory data collection phase, with a second more focussed research phase to take place next year. So, on Saturday I depart for Zimbabwe to visit a small-scale irrigation scheme to hear the experiences and perspectives of young people, parents, and development practitioners about young peoples’ pathways into work: visiting the waterhole and following the tracks with notebook in hand. A big thank you to all of you who have expressed encouragement and support for this next step in my PhD journey. I hope you will check in occasionally to see what has caught my eye and stirred my soul … with some PhD progress snippets thrown in along the journey. Impilo enhle!