Trailblazer's curse

 There's a documented blueprint for the exploration of Australia I saw on YouTube. It was in 1830 by a man called Thomas J Maslen who thought Australia had an inland sea. For those who used to peruse atlases in their free time, you know that it's mostly barren outback and it's only habitable at the coastlines. Thomas led a team of his support staff into the outback in the pursuit led by his curiosity. The experience was quite different from what boots on the ground saw. Yes, Thomas only drew the map. 

I'm not however going to go into detail about this particular adventure but use it as a historical analogy for a phenomenon I have observed as I often do. His map was in a book called Friend of Australia and was, as I mentioned before, considered a blueprint for the exploration of inland Australia. He had reputable experience as a Military Officer in India prior which piled onto this perceived knowledge and expertise of Australasia. 

In the late 80s the world was very different from what we are experiencing right now. I assume in Kenya there was a shift from the traditional subsistence way of life we had known up to that time. I assume there was a surge in rural - urban migration as the Gen X had been educated by President Moi the despot. Most had stars in their eyes, they were presented with a chance to build a completely different life from scratch but still had massive communities back home. We came along at  time where they had settled in their various new homes in the metropolis that is Nairobi. We did not have the same community upbringing they had, we were brought about in a melting pot of various opinions and practices. It's the same premise but very different. The Gen X moved to Nairobi at a stage in their lives where most of their principles and personalities had been formed. They must have had simple but effective mental models that enabled them to operate in the city.

In 1844 A man called Sturt led an expedition to the center of the Australian mainland in the hopes of locating Maslen's inland sea. He travelled through the harsh Australian climate and came to the Simpson desert where he was forced to turn back in the wake of dwindling supplies and worsening conditions. He lost a good amount of his livestock and also one man got lost and was never found. Sturt also had health issues that worsened during this excursion. It was an astounding cost for being misinformed by a speculative map. We were given mental models by people who know little about the landscape we navigate nowadays. 

My sympathies go mostly to the first children brought up with ideals that they had to see crumble in real time due to incompatibility with the new environmental, technological and behavioral landscape. Formulating a new mental model requires a level of resilience and patience taught through nothing but struggle and acceptance. The struggle to try and place the 'new world' in your bearings while still trying to stay rooted to old and proven truths. Mr Sturt was a trailblazer who trusted in his source of information completely, I can only imagine his frame of mind when he had to turn his convoy around, when he lost all those animals and lost one of his men.

It was not a futile trip though, his exploration quelled the false reports of the inland sea and definitively proved Australia was mostly barren deserts and marsh. The first one to learn from experience. A shoe some of us can fill empathetically of course. I can imagine setting off with all the hopes of finding a new frontier and slowly having them stripped by his environment and observations. It came as a welcome observation for those who set after him. Today Sturt is remembered by a University in his name.