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Wild, wild seas and massive storm damage in recent days has prompted fresh debate about issues of global warming and the need to protect Spaceship Earth on which we are all travelling. Of course, some folks still argue against seemingly overwhelming evidence presented by environmentalists and scientists. My answer is simple: “Yeah, global warming is a myth and the earth is flat!”
What is heartening is that there seems to be an increased awareness and a shift in consciousness. More and more people we meet along the way share urgent concerns for our environment and attribute the extreme weather conditions to global warming and the attendant climate change it brings on.
Seeing waves breaking over the N2 highway on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth certainly brought home the enormity of the crisis we could all be facing along the coast of South Africa.
Rising sea levels will disrupt communications, flooding roads and railway lines and will cause massive damage to some of the country’s most prize real estate. One study I’ve seen shows how my home in the Kommetjie-Noordhoek area of Cape Town will become part of an island cut off from the rest of the Mother City.
I guess that’s good and bad: up until now I haven’t been able to afford a seafront home. But that’s most likely still a few years ago so I won’t plan on commuting in my kayak just yet.
Meanwhile we continue to celebrate our good fortune on the Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge, enjoying the most remarkable places, many of them being well-kept secrets.
Today, thanks to the generosity of Ian Crawford we find ourselves at Crawfords Beach Lodge and Cabins at Chintsa East, around 40km from East London along the legendary Transkei Wild Coast. We’re staying in two three-bedroomed cottages overlooking the beach that forms part of the popular five-day Wild Coast Amble. The team joined our two action heroes, Braam and David, for the last part of their day’s run and happily they slowed to a pace we could keep up with.
It was a taste of the sort of fun possible when you book a place on one of the major hikes in this area, the best known of which are the Amble and Wild Coast Meander. Both are five-night delights in which you hike from one resort hotel to another, with porters hefting your main luggage.
If you haven’t tried this sort of outdoor holiday, it needs to go to the top of your To Do list. Being addicted to hiking beaches, I’ve twice sampled this stretch of coastline in the past couple of years and loved every second of it.
This time, I’m providing 4x4 backup for Braam and David, but hope to get in some beach-time in between stints in the Toyota Fortuner, which is my faithful companion on this three-and-half month adventure. I’ll have good things to report in a couple of days.
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A little girl has ambushed my emotions and stolen my heart.
Five-year-old Zama, the daughter of a cleaner from the Free State town of Vrede, came into my life unexpectedly this past week and has taught me so much about myself.
I’d driven Braam and David more than 600km to the Madzikane ka-Zulu Memorial Hospital in Mt Frere, in the former Transkei homeland, to meet with children due to undergo facial operations – but had done so with mixed feelings. I couldn’t bear to look at photographs of similar children before their ops, and wasn’t sure I really wanted to be around little people with such dreadful disfigurements.
On arrival I’d volunteered my services and that of my Miles for Smiles team Toyota Fortuner, so it was no surprise when I was asked to respond to a distress call. Little Zama and her mum, Nompumelelo ‘Mpumi’ Makhubo, were stranded at the roadside after the bus they were travelling in had caught fire.
David accompanied me and after a series of telephone calls (thank goodness for cellphones) we located each other and were greeted by grateful hugs.
Despite her disfigurement, Zama’s personality immediately shone through. By nature she is friendly and outgoing, although some days she’s begged not to go to pre-school because the other children laughed and mocked her.
Over the next couple of days in the build-up to the operation, which reconstructed her mouth and nose, we saw her often and were awed by her sunny personality. Once I stepped into the corridor and she came from nowhere, rushing towards me and leaping into my arms. I hugged this little bundle of joy and wondered how anybody could have ostracised her for her looks. Her inner light shines so brightly!
We were with her as she was wheeled into the theatre and for the first time she looked frightened although child psychologists had played with her beforehand and tried to prepare her, even playing with the anaesthesia mask she’d have to breathe through to put her under.
Normally I’m rather squeamish and didn’t think I’d be capable of watching the surgeons at work on her, but in the end I did, trying to send her positive loving energy. It also gave me time to appreciate the ‘dream team’ of medical professionals that surrounded her, working tirelessly and skilfully to change another young life. They are a remarkable group of volunteers from throughout South Africa and around the world.
Sadly we couldn’t be there to welcome her after the op, but we’re told she has been helping all the other children, covering them and making sure they’re snug beneath blankets.
She really is an angel and we’re all richer for having met her.
If you’d like to help children like her, online donations can be made on the Operation Smile SA website where the runners’ daily progress can also be charted
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 One of our most precious gifts in life is being able to breathe unpolluted air and to drink pure, clean water drawn from a pristine environment – but how many of the six billion inhabitants on Planet Earth can claim that?
The well-being of countless millions of humans is seriously compromised by contaminated environments, while numerous species of fauna and flora join the extinction list every week. During the Olympics we saw the extreme measures the Chinese were forced to adopt to reduce pollution levels, taking millions of cars off the road and shutting down industries – just so athletes could function normally without damaging their health in the filth that Beijingers breathe day in and day out.
It will ultimately take that kind of drastic action, and a complete rethink of priorities, to ensure our survival and to safeguard the planet that is our only home.
Happily we are blessed with role models who care deeply about the earth, like Braam and David, who are spotlighting the environmental issues during the Cipla Spar Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge.
Human ingenuity is also on our side with the Smiles team having had the chance to sample a product called Eco Aqua. Put simply you can feed in sea water or water from a stream or river through an inlet hosepipe and seconds later enjoy pure, clean water that is absolutely safe to drink.
Developed by Jan Olivier at his engineering works in Strand, near Cape Town, it is attracting widespread interest and is clearly a device with a bright future as the world’s supply of fresh water becomes ever more critical.
A bonus with this unit is that it has a high capacity although the unit is somewhat bulky and heavy, also requiring mains electricity or a portable generator for its power supply.
What’s really exciting for 4x4 adventurers is the news that Jan is applying the innovative technology to a compact and portable unit that makes extensive use of light mass plastics and will be able to run off a car’s 12-volt battery through a cigarette lighter.
I remember all-too vividly an international Camel Trophy expedition in the 1990s when we spent more than an hour a day using a hand-pump to force polluted river water through a filter to ensure adequate drinking water for the following day. It was exhausting and time-consuming.
Soon I hope to put Jan’s compact Eco Aqua machine to the test.
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Runners ride rollercoaster of pain |
Extreme athletes David Grier and Braam Malherbe are “riding a rollercoaster of pain, pleasure, exhaustion and exhilaration” during the Toyota-supported Cipla Spar Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge 2008.
“Sometimes the exhaustion threatens to overwhelm you, but every time you have one of those moments you are lifted up by a message or smile of encouragement, or wowed by the scenery,” David admits.
“You round a bend in the trail or run down the most dazzlingly beautiful beach and you feel exhilarated, realising how blessed you are – and you remember that what we are doing is helping to change the lives of young children.”
But the last week in which the two runners passed the halfway mark - clocking up over 1 700km, more than seven weeks on the trail and the equivalent of six marathons on successive days - has been unusually punishing.
On one of those days the two determined Capetonians ran the Otter Trail to Storms River Mouth in 12 gruelling hours that nearly ended in disaster for David, with the possibility of a broken ankle. The world renowned hiking trail is normally a five-day adventure,
“Our bodies are on the ragged edge and our minds have to drag us through,” he said. “We started the Otter Trail in heat, enjoying the sunshine with our shirts off and were soon in a deluge and freezing cold, slipping and tumbling a number of times in the treacherously muddy darkness towards the end of the day.”
Disaster nearly struck when David fell heavily; his ankle wedging between two rocks that could easily have snapped bones. With the quick help of Braam they prised his foot out of the shoe and then levered the shoe out from the rocks. “I was very, very lucky!”
That incident ended a nightmarish week in which they raised the stakes from running 40km daily, six days a week, to 45km, with both athletes reporting that they are shedding further weight and eating into their bodies’ reserves -something that happened to an alarming degree when they ran the 4 218km Great Wall of China in 2006.
Braam, who is nicknamed the ‘Wild Child,’ posed the question: “At what point does the body give up? Are there limits? Mind over matter is what matters,” he insisted. “I believe there are no limits except the ones we create in our minds.”
The determined duo has settled into a relentless pattern, running and hiking six days a week, and resting on the seventh.
But both are adamant that they are ordinary human beings – David a celebrity chef and Braam a motivational speaker and environmentalist – who are simply maximising the potential we all have.
“We are not the sons of Olympians and don’t have special genes. I am an ordinary guy who embraces life and has grown from the challenge it offers,” Braam insisted.
But somehow neither expected the South African coast to be quite so tough, the difficulty levels soaring recently as the relatively flat and undulating West Coast has given way to towering cliffs intercepted by deep gorges along the spectacular Eastern Cape coastline.
“The last section has been the toughest but also hugely inspiring,” David enthused. “Descending into Nature’s Valley you become enveloped in an ancient indigenous forest with yellowwood trees hundreds of years old that stand proud with tufts of beard moss hanging from their branches. You try to imagine the centuries that have passed and the changes that have gone on around these majestic trees.”
The goal of the Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge, which is supported by Toyota South Africa, is to help change young lives forever by raising R3.5-million for reconstructive surgery for more than 600 children with facial disfigurements.
The first in a series of operations will be performed this week at the hamlet of Mount Frere with members of the Miles for Smiles team planning to be present to encourage the children.
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Mini-heroine boost the Smiles team |
Meet Sammy Jo, the youngest fund raiser for the Toyota-supported Cipla Spar Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge 2008.
The enthusiastic seven-year-old from the International School of Helderberg in Somerset West has raised nearly R20 000 towards Operation Smile South Africa, a non-profit organisation funding corrective surgery for children with facial disfigurements.
Her heroes are extreme athletes Braam Malherbe and David Grier who established a world first by running The Great Wall of China in 2006, and are nearing the halfway mark in a mammoth fund-raising run around the entire coastline of South Africa.
As a special treat Sammy Jo and proud mum Amanda Nortje were invited to join the Miles for Smiles team for a day, travelling in the 4x4 Toyota Fortuner used to scout routes for the two runners.
“It was fun,” Sammy Jo enthused. “David is really nice although he doesn’t really talk a lot to me like Braam does. He’s a chatterbox and he’s like a big child!”
Amanda recalls: “We first met Braam at a holiday camp where he gave a star talk to the children and Sammy Jo volunteered to be a planet.”
Later they followed Braam and David’s progress on the Internet during their incredible 4 218km China epic, responding when the two appealed for donations to the Miles for Smiles charity.
“What can I do to help,” Sammy Jo asked?
“Her initial idea was to sell orange juice outside a major fruit and vegetable supplier which probably wasn’t a good idea, so she decided to sell homemade fairy cakes at school.
“She helped with the baking and started selling to friends and then friends of friends until the cup cakes were in demand for children’s parties, and then for Christmas. R2 700 was raised.”
Braam telephoned Sammy Jo from The Great Wall and told her what a blessing she’d been and how much her effort was appreciated, which encouraged her to come up with another plan.
A bicycle rally arranged by the school at Monkeytown near Cape Town recently raised a massive R15 700, while four Miles for Smiles caps were sold for R150 each, with a fifth cap, featuring signatures from all the team members, fetching more than R1 000 on auction.
Each week she gives her class an update on the progress of the two runners, which can also be followed on the Internet.
The goal of the Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge, which is supported by Toyota South Africa, is to help change young lives forever by raising R3.5-million for reconstructive surgery for more than 600 children with facial disfigurements.
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