This is a guest post from Claire Le Hur who is cycling to China with her fiancé Stuart Block. The couple will start their journey in East Africa where they will follow new ‘silk roads’ charting the journey of key natural resources as part of an exciting new education project. Claire will be riding a bamboo bike, built by an African social enterprise and Stuart will ride a tandem, keeping the back seat free for those they meet en route. They will also be raising money and awareness for two great educational charities. Find out more about Claire’s big adventure here.
It might be the middle of December but we confess it doesn’t feel all that ‘Christmassy’ here in Zambia. I think this has a lot to do with the heat, which is 35 degrees most days, and the also the high level of poverty around us. It makes us release how much we have to be thankful for, so this month we are celebrating gratitude.
These are some of the things we’re grateful for this month:
1.We sailed on a 100-year-old WW1 German Warship. We took the ship down Lake Tanganyika from Tanzania to get back to Zambia and were amazed to learn that it serves around 15 tiny lakeside villages, enabling travel, trade and communication, as well as helping refugees escape the political conflict in Burundi. Our voyage took 48 hours and we are extremely grateful to the ship, and its crew, for such a remarkable experience.
2.We made a new friend, David, and then managed to get him out of prison! He was arrested for ‘drug trafficking’ – yes, you read that right! He was only carrying one packet of the common antihistamine, Benadryl, for an allergy, but if you’ve ever seen Breaking Bad you will know that vast amounts of drugs like this can be used to make Meth. Fortunately David only spent one night in Zambian prison but his experience was quite extraordinary. You can read more about it, and our experience on the war ship, here.
3. Despite the horrific poverty in these Zambian communities real progress is being made by one of our charities – Beyond Ourselves. Spending time in the Copperbelt really brought home to me why we are doing this crazy cycling adventure, it is not just for fun and is something I will think about next time I get fed up when we have to cycle up another hill in blistering heat!
Our 10 day hiatus with the charity started with a small group ride with some pupils from Cranleigh School. The ride was fantastic with pupils and staff taking it in turns to ride a tough dirt and sand track for 70km battling against the Zambian heat and some very dodgy bikes (5 of the 12 we hired broke within the first 20km!). The pupils and staff showed impressive resilience and seemed to enjoy their day with us!
Riding with pupils from Cranleigh School
We finished at Janna School in Ndola where Stuart was reunited with old friends Festus and Blackson, who Stuart met back in 2011. Read about that here.
Stuart and I enjoyed the next week between Ndola and Kitwe, spending time in particular at Kawama School and community with the Cranleigh and Beyond Ourselves teams. In Ndola, we were very lucky to stay with Melissa and Dan at the Mechanics for Africa compound – another amazing initiative which trains orphaned street children to becomes mechanics.
At Kawama, Stuart was reunited with old friends like Cephas (School Director), Mary (head teacher) and Soldier (head tailor of the social enterprise Kawama Krafts). It was such a pleasure for me to meet these wonderful people and see the school, which Stuart helped transform from a dilapidated church hall serving 200 students, serving over 300 students. It was especially lovely to meet two of the three Kawama pupils (one of them, John, graduated last summer) who spoke so well in our promotional video. Wendy is 10 and loves English and sport especially Netball; she has high aspirations and wants to be a doctor when she is older. She lives in a home with 7 others. Joseph is 14 and wants to be a pilot, he also loves learning English. He lives with 3 adults and 5 other children. Let’s hope they can achieve their dreams…
We had an entertaining Sunday in church with the visiting pupils making the standard but no less true comment, that ‘if English church services were like that, no one would mind going’, a reference not just to the ‘entertainment’ but also the greater spirituality obvious in the congregation. The church turned into a market place after lunch with the annual clothes sale. Clothes brought over from the UK were being sold to the local community at knock down prices with all the money going back to the community. Last year’s sale went a long way to building the bore hole to give the school clean water. There were almost a few punch-ups over highly desirable items like football kits! Working at the sale was exhausting but a great way to get to know the local community. The following week we got the opportunity to interview pupils about their lives, help in lessons and assist in other school activities too.
School at Kawama
It was great to have Becs Gibson with us. Becs has just finished her Masters in International Development & Education, writing her thesis on absenteeism at Kawama. Most of these pupils are desperate to be educated and even with all the amazing work that Beyond Ourselves does, it is still an uphill struggle for many of them to attend school on a regular basis. They often have to help out at home or with their parents’ work, have problems travelling to school (particularly in the rainy season) and of course there are illness such as Malaria and HIV. The Jodie Collins and Beyond Ourselves teams are working so hard with the pupils, teachers and families to try to ensure these pupils stay in school. They are making great progress because they work in the whole community rather than just building a school and moving on.
Our time in Copper Belt really brought home the importance of the fundraising that Beyond the Bike is doing. The Kawama community is incredibly poor and in our interviews with the pupils it became clear that many students are orphaned, or have unemployed parents. Very few sleep under mosquito nets, even fewer have beds, and most do no have running water or electricity – things we take for granted. These problems are getting worse as Zambia heads towards financial crisis with the massive devaluing of the Kwacha, issues with power shortages and the global price of raw materials such as copper remaining low. in fact at the big mine just outside Kitwe we are told that 80-90% of the workers are being made redundant. Stuart talks more about this crisis in his Economic Cycle blog, here.
4. The money we have raised so far. We’re delighted that our ride from London to Amsterdam will enable 10 children from Kawama to continue their education at secondary school, giving pupils like Wendy and Joseph the opportunity to become doctors or pilots. Of course, there is still loads more to be done and the money raised from the whole Beyond the Bike project will go towards supporting these schools – the pupils and teachers and families. The wonderful thing about working with smaller charities is that you really can see where the money you raise is going.
For more information about Beyond Ourselves and United World Schools do check out their websites (www.beyondourselves.co.uk and www.unitedworldschools.org) and if you would like to donate to these wonderful charities by sponsoring our cycling trip you can do so here.
