Month: August 2015

Before Paula’s thought provoking guest blog on her life in Africa, I had started to do a guest post about my tourist view during a ‘Safari Lite’ of four different countries in Southern Africa.   Paula’s experiences made me feel so inadequate I shelved the project.  People like Paula and Sheila make me feel quite humble by the amount of energy they put into helping others in need while I spend great chunks of my life travelling for my own pleasure.  And then I thought back to the key themes about which I had planned to write – education and opportunity.

During our travels in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, we encountered many people who looked after us in hotels,  Safari Lodges, or in the various shops where we bought colourful and beautifully crafted souvenirs.  Almost without exception they were all delightful, friendly and talkative people, keen to ask about our life and also to tell us of their hopes and aspirations.  They admitted that they were desperately trying to improve their English as that was a requirement for just about all the better paying jobs.  I found it really heartening how anxious people were to get on, at the same time, especially in Zimbabwe where unemployment is 80%. I was saddened by the thought that ‘getting on’ would mean most of them leaving their homes and families.

Our safari guides, drivers and trackers were especially enthusiastic about the opportunities ‘Safari Tourism’ has given them.  Just as Exodus Travels train their porters and guides for the Kilimanjaro climb, good safari companies or reserves also train their people.  One of our guides told us how outwith the Safari season, he is sent to school where he learns about nature conservancy and how to protect the animals on his patch.  His ambition was to go to work in a special reserve for rhinoceros – an animal rapidly heading for extinction in Southern Africa.  The breed has been hunted more of less to extinction in Asia, where there is still the ridiculous idea that rhino horn restores potency.  Our guide laughed when he said that the Asian men would be as well collecting their nail clippings.  Ugh!

Another senior guide was busy studying for exams that would let him become a wildlife instructor and possibly lead to research projects.  A driver, who was already a trained guide, was working as a driver simply to improve his English and driving skills; his ambition was to form his own safari company.  He was engaged to a girl who cooked for a safari lodge, with a younger sister a housekeeper there.  They, with help from their families, were building their own lodge that his wife-to-be and sister in law would run to western standards.  All that was needed to make their dream a reality was another season of driving to provide enough money to buy their own Toyota “animal viewer”.   I think Leslie (17 July) would be proud of their ‘dream’.  There were so many more stories of hope and ambition in the Safari industry,  that I ended the holiday feeling not too bad about being a well off tourist in a poor country.

There was however, another side to this desire to get an education and get on.  In Namibia, we were lucky enough to visit a small, traditional village of about eighty people, where nearly everybody was related to each other; sensibly, the young men were sent to other villages to bring back wives.  The age profile was noticeable.  There were quite a few elderly women (possibly about fifty but that is old given the toughness of their lives).  The ‘Village Elder’ was in his early forties and there were no elderly men to be seen as most had died, and most of the younger men were away from the village – either working the land or if very lucky working for one of the Safari Companies, the most sought after work.  The younger women about the village had young families – the unmarried ones being away working in shops and hotels. Everybody lived in traditional mud huts, increasingly with corrugated iron roofs, as the elephants – carefully conserved on the reserves – had destroyed the reed beds that traditionally gave them the insulating thatching for the mud huts.  So that was one downside of animal conservation.  Our Head Man showed us around and told us about village life.  Children from the age of six go to school in the nearest village about four miles away, where they ‘board’ with friends or relations during the week, and then some move to the towns or cities for secondary education.  Our Elder was very proud that his two daughters (but not his sons) were in the town.  His greatest wish was that his daughters should go to University.  I thought,  “What an amazingly liberated, and far-sighted man, pushing his daughters to an education”.   I just about exploded with laughter when he said that if his daughters got degrees, he would get twice as many cows when a suitor came a-courting!

Come to think about it, we never had a female guide, tracker or driver.  Maybe Sheila and Jae will help inspire a generation of females round Kilimanjaro.

 

When US President Barack Obama was in Kenya at the end of July, he mentioned in an interview with Capital FM that climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the 5895 meter (19,341 foot) peak, Africa’s highest mountain, just over the border in Tanzania, was on his bucket list for after his presidency.  He said:

“I know that there are places in this beautiful nation that I haven’t discovered, so I am gonna make sure I get back, and it is not just Kenya, it is an ecosystem connected from Uganda to Tanzania.  Climbing Kilimanjaro seems like something that should be on my list of things to do once I get out of here. The Secret Service generally doesn’t like me climbing mountains, but as a private citizen hopefully I can get away with something like that.”

So Jae, Oscar and I can consider that we are pretty lucky to be getting the chance to do something that the American President can’t at present.  When I think about it, it must be quite scary doing something you might fail at in the public eye, when you are a famous person.  At least if the 3G climbers don’t quite make it, the whole world won’t know – just our few hundred loyal supporters, who, I am sure, will all comfort us with kind words.

There have been some very famous people on Kilimanjaro. Radio One DJ Chris Moyles famously made it to Uhuru Peak in 2009 along with a team of celebrities including Gary Barlow and Cheryl Cole, to raise money for Comic Relief.  Weighing 20-stone, Chris was certainly not in top-condition for the climb, but he made it all the same!  That makes me wonder why we have bothered about keeping fit and getting our BMI’s into the lower part of the healthy scale.

Just going to prove that money cannot buy everything, Billionaire and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, did not make it all the way to the Roof of Africa, and had to abandon his attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro after suffering breathing problems…

As did tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who set out to conquer Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010.  Hoping the climb would help her overcome a tough year, the nine-time Wimbledon winner was overcome by a combination of altitude sickness and a stomach infection, which led to her being carried down the mountain on a makeshift stretcher and hospitalised.

Money, fame, and physical fitness may not help you get to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.  Let’s hope that willpower, determination and the knowledge that all of our family and friends back home are supporting us, may just do the trick!

Today’s guest post comes from Jae’s Exodus colleague, Thidara. She has her own adventure travel blog and you can read about her Kilimanjaro summit climb earlier this year here. Thidara has done the below photo blog post just for us – to give us a taste of the different climates we’ll go through on the Lemosho route.

Kilimanjaro is a rare place in the world where you trek through four climatic zones in under a week.

From a humid African rainforest to a volcanic crater filled with snow and ice, I started the journey with shorts and a t-shirt and I ended it wearing 5 layers of clothing beneath a down jacket. It’s a surreal experience and the Lemosho Route is an unspoilt and crowd-free route up to the summit.

It is a breath-taking journey. Trekkers will pass through:

• Rainforest 800-2800m
• Heather and Moorland 2800-4000m:
• Alpine Desert 4000-5000m
• Summit Zone 5000-5895m

Below are some photos of the scenery you will encounter in each of the climate zones.

Rainforest 800-2800m (Day 1 – 2)

Heather and Moorland 2800-4000m (Day 3 – 5)

Alpine Desert 4000-5000m, Day 5 – 6

Summit Zone Day 7

All of the photos are Thidara’s own.

Thidara has lent us her gloves for our climb – they’ve already been to the top so maybe they’ll help lead us up!?

Stew and I had an outing to the Kent (CAMRA) Beer Festival on a farm near Canterbury one weekend recently with Jae, Oscar and Ivor, when they came for a visit.  We have been going there pretty much annually for more than 20 years, as our collection of beer glasses attests.  I am quite surprised we have glasses that old, given that they are in regular use in our house.  I don’t drink beer, but am quite partial to an occasional glass of cider, and that is served up too.  I especially enjoy going because it is a very pleasant walk across a few fields for us to get there from home, and there is usually good food – including excellent curries – and entertainment too.

This time, there was an extra attraction: we could practise our circus skills.  Jae, Oscar and Ivor had fun trying out various activities.  Jae is a great juggler, and the boys are pretty skilled too.  I decided – in the interests of maintaining my fitness for the Kiliclimb – that I should have a go at a hula hoop, and was extremely gratified to discover that I can still whirl it as well as ever.

I had not tried a hula hoop since 1958.  I thought that was the year of the hoop and have since looked it up on Wikipedia, which states:-

“A hula hoop is a toy hoop that is twirled around the waist, limbs or neck. The modern hula hoop was invented in 1958 by Arthur K. “Spud” Melin and Richard Knerr, but children and adults around the world have played with hoops, twirling, rolling and throwing them throughout history.”

So 1958 it clearly was!  That must have been about the time we got television at home in Hawick – the south of Scotland was not first off the mark in that respect.  Every day we saw news about this exciting hoop craze rolling across the United States, and due to hit the UK imminently.  My little brother Robbie became absolutely obsessed with the idea of having one, despite only being 7 years old.

He set out to do his research and discovered which shop in our town was going to be the first to get hula hoops and on what date.  At that time we got 3d a week pocket money – slightly more than a modern 1p – but worth much more. However, it certainly wasn’t enough to buy a hula hoop: they cost almost £1.  He had to make a visit to the Post Office to withdraw this enormous sum, saved up from money given to him on his birthdays and at Christmas by our Grandparents (£1 each time) and Yanos, our great aunt (10/-  or 50p, on each occasion).

He and I headed off across town on the great morning when the hula hoops arrived, to a shop across from the station (now long gone) where he chose a bright yellow hoop, the minute the shop opened – which resulted in his first moment of fame!  The local Hawick newspaper ran a feature about this exciting new craze sweeping the world, with a photograph of Robbie holding his hoop – the first in town!  We all quickly became proficient at doing the spin, and the article also mentioned that I claimed to have spun it round me over 2565 times without stopping.  I remember being quite upset by the word “claimed”, given that I had had four witnesses counting.

Robbie has always had a keen eye for innovation, particularly in the music industry.  He didn’t attend school any more after the age of 14, but got himself established in the music world while while still a teenager – soon after the Beatles and all that followed them, burst on to the scene.

He has had quite a few moments of fame since then.  His firm – Sound Technology Ltd – is one of the largest independent distributors of music instruments and professional audio products in the UK.  He has also for many years been the Director of Music for Youth – a national music education charity for young people.

Robbie is still a keep fit fanatic.  I am quite certain that he too can still swing a hula hoop.  He is also a big supporter of the 3G Kili Climb, both as far as keeping up morale is concerned and by making the biggest donation yet to our fund raising effort.  Thanks little brother!

Note from Jae: Despite having almost 200 posts on this blog, we haven’t yet had a single one from a man. Well, today that changes as my lovely Da has put the following together for us. Thanks Da (for joining in with the blog – although I’m not sure I’m thanking you for the pics!!).

You never know what you’ll come across in our house these days. The other weekend we have Jae, Oscar and his young brother Ivor to stay. We’re sitting in the living room in all apparent normality when Jae, who has been deep in iPhonery, jumps up and cries, ‘Oscar! Mum! 7-minute workout!’

Oscar immediately gets up and assumes the position (whatever the initial position was). Sheila assumes an approximation of same. (Ivor is nowhere to be seen.) There then begins a volley of instructions from the phone –

‘Shoulder rolls!’

‘Step-ups!’

‘Plank!’

‘High knees!’

‘Push-up and rotation!’

‘Crunch!’

– and a great deal of leaping about, sitting or lying down, standing up and twisting in various directions, accompanied by cries of ‘Is it nearly finished?’, ‘This is still the warm-up’, and the like.

I’ve been instructed to get out the camera to take 3G tee-shirt snaps, so am able to record these girations for posterity, or at least for the blog and the family album – see the below action shots.

I must say, in our youth we didn’t find it necessary to prepare so assiduously for assaults on, say, the formidable slopes of Cathkin Braes or, as has been mentioned, the mighty North Berwick Law. Mind you, we weren’t being sponsored then, so I suppose the burden of responsibility was less. In fact, I am glad to have the opportunity of reassuring backers that no opportunity is being missed to hone our Kilimanjarists to a fine point of dynamic sharpness.

Which reminds me, Sheila and I said we’d mount an expedition this afternoon, through the foothills of the East Kent range. Excuse me.

NB. The app we were using is the Johnson & Johnson 7-minute workout

In June of this year a beautiful tapestry, “The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn”, the final one in a set of seven tapestries, entitled The Unicorn Tapestries, was hung in the royal apartments of  Stirling Castle in Scotland. This brought to an end an incredibly complex and difficult project which took 14 years to complete. These tapestries were all woven by hand using techniques dating back to the 1400s that require highly skilled, complex, and painstaking work – a labour of love, just like the daily writing of the 3G blog. All seven were commissioned specially for Stirling Castle in 2001 as part of a scheme to restore the interiors of the palace to how they looked in the 1540s when it was home to James V of Scotland, his wife and their young daughter, Mary Queen of Scots.

Four of the seven tapestries were woven in a purpose-built studio within Stirling Castle. Over the years when I went to Scotland to see our step-sister Jan, who lived in Stirling, she took me to see the weavers at work. As she paid council tax she was eligible to pop into the Castle whenever she wanted, free of charge, and this she did and so she saw the progress of the project and pictures gradually appearing.  Sadly Jan died just before Christmas last year and Sheila and I both miss her very much.

After James V’s marriage to a Frenchwoman, Mary of Guise, his palace in Stirling began to change as she introduced Renaissance refinement into the predominantly medieval Scottish way of life. Soon French fashion and ideas arrived in the Scottish court as messengers came back from France bringing Mary bolts of fine cloth, plant cuttings, masons and probably tapestries. We know from inventories that James owned over 100 tapestries; hanging them on stone walls was the only way to keep the huge rooms even remotely warm. We also know that at least two of the tapestries featured “The historie of the unicorne”.  At that time the unicorn was to be seen in the Scottish royal coat of arms and later, in 1603,  it came to England, to take its place in the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom when James VI, son of Mary Queen of Scots, became King James 1 of England. By the way, since according to legend a free unicorn was considered a very dangerous and powerful beast, the poor heraldic unicorn is always portrayed in chains. But he could by tamed by a virgin, so they say.

Inspiration and know-how for the unicorn tapestries came from the Metropolitan Museum of New York (which has a set of seven tapestries woven in the early 1500s in the Low Countries) and from West Dean Tapestry Studios in West Sussex where some of the weavers teach.  This was the biggest weaving project undertaken in the UK for 100 years and brought together an international team of 18 weavers. It reminds me a little of the daily 3G Kili Climb blog that Jae and Sheila have been writing for over five months now; a big project that is hard work. Fortunately they are supported by friends and family, with guest blogs like this one helping to keep the project going.  Jae, Sheila and team, keep going. The end is in sight!

All regular readers of this blog will know that Sheila, Jae and Oscar are going on a big journey.  They will be travelling well over four thousand miles and climbing 5,895 metres.  However, they are not the only ones taking a journey.  Thanks to Sheila’s efforts, I know that many of the regular readers are taking their own personal journeys stimulated by Sheila’s posts.  At least one – Megan (who blogged about the butterfly effect) – was so inspired that she has booked a Kili climb for her honeymoon; that is enthusiasm!  Others have been inspired to get fit and I believe that more than a few have risen to the challenge of volunteering.  The work that Sheila is doing with Catching Lives is truly inspiring.

I too have taken several journeys with Sheila, many years ago and over the last few months.  Some of you may have read an early guest post I wrote about how Sheila and I ended up sharing a bed-sit and then a flat while at University.  With hindsight, I realise that this was a major journey for both of us, our first, sometimes faltering steps, to independence and adulthood.  Belatedly I must give Sheila my grateful thanks for being there – she was much more practical and resourceful than I, the best possible companion when times were tough.  And these times were tough. Like Leslie and Sheila I had very unhappy times in my teens (the death of my mother and the rapid introduction of a stepmother). These bad memories (and some that followed) had crowded out my memories of earlier times.  Now, after reading Sheila’s entertaining blogs, especially about ‘the olden days’, my own memories have surfaced.  My childhood was not all bad; I feel as if I have regained my childhood.  So I have another reason to be grateful to Sheila.

As a lighthearted example, I have been a bit of a foodie since as far back as I can remember, always keen to taste new food and collecting recipes from all round the world.  My mother was a dreadful cook – even allowing for the post WW2 period and on-going rationing.  Everything she produced was brown, beige or grey.  As far as I can make out no one else in my family has any interest in food apart from listening for the ‘ping’ of the microwave. So where did I get this obsession with food?

Sheila’s recent post that mentioned the food department of Lewis’s (a large department store in Glasgow in our childhood) took me right back to there.  The mystery was solved.  My dad was the Foodie – possibly one of the original.  From when I was about three or four until I was seven or eight, we made a weekly pilgrimage to Lewis’s.  Dad wasn’t particularly well off at that time and yet he was determined to learn about the delicacies he read of in books.  I remember him smooth-talking the young ladies to let us try a tiny taste of this and that. We both agreed that we really liked smoked salmon but it was far too expensive. Instead he bought a large tube of “Primula” processed cheese with smoked salmon.  And then he bough a jar of pimento stuffed olives.  Such luxury.  We went home as excited as two children and immediately piped the salmon flavoured cheese (there was a built in star nozzle) on to little biscuits and placed an olive on top.  Mum and Dad were expecting some friends that evening and my mother was planning her standby of cocktail sausages on sticks – keeping up the brown theme.  She was displeased.  I thought the biscuits – and my dad – wonderful.

So I have had my ‘journeys’ with Sheila.  I do hope that the 3G journey will be as happy and rewarding.   We all can see that it will be physically testing.  Altitude sickness is pretty grim, as I and other guest posters have attested,  as can be physical tiredness, insomnia and cold. However, they will also be on an emotional journey.  How will Sheila, Jae and Oscar feel about each other at the end of their trial?  Sheila’s family always seem close knit and devoted to each other.  Very often, strong friendship is based on respect for the ‘space’ of the others and having a sixth sense of when to back off.  It doesn’t sound as if there will be the luxury of physical or metaphorical space in this trip without the option to go for a walk, take the dog out, or even delve into cyber space. But from what we have read in Sheila’s blog posts, I think if any family can do it, it will be Sheila, Jae and Oscar.