Harry feeling the heat!
|
|
Unfortunately they often don’t get through to those who are most in need. It is no good providing medicines, antibiotics, vaccines, condoms and other supplies to treat AIDS, malaria and other fatal illnesses if those supplies sit in a warehouse. In countries with massive geographical distance between supply and those in need, care workers walk for hours every day to reach their patients. It is common for villages to be at least a 5-hour walk away from a medical station or Doctor?
How can we make help more accessible? Its simple - by mobilising the care workers and supplies! The aim of this rally is to supply at least 100 Yamaha AG200 motorcycles and £50,000 to the charity Riders for Health.
Enduro Africa is a unique and challenging motorbike adventure in aid of the charity Riders for Health. The trip involves bikers from all over the world tackling 14 days of dusty and demanding riding through some of South Africa's most rugged and isolated terrain.
In November 2007 bikers from all walks of life will leave their 'normal life' behind to take up the challenge to ride across some of the most remote scenery in South Africa and Lesotho. The participants will ride from dawn to dusk each day by ancient wagon trails and gravel roads - they'll take on high mountain passes and test their stamina on a daily basis. They will each ride approximately 3,000 km and finish by delivering their bike to Riders for Health.
Harry Rogers is one of the riders, we've helped him out with a few £s, every little helps, and if you can help him please visit his donations page at:
www.zakobyte.demon.co.uk/harry/
Good luck Harry!
Enduro Africa 2007 Update
Just some of the personal kit (note the essential SportFish and KOS Deodorant). Click to enlarge.
|
A great attitude! Click to enlarge.
|
Our route took us across the Transkei and up South Africa’s ‘Wild Coast’ from Port Elizabeth to Durban. Road conditions varied a lot – early on, we had shale and gravel where the main problem was dust. It was hot and energy sapping, and we were drinking 3 - 4 litres a day from the camelbacks. On occasions when it got late and you just wanted to get to the overnight stop we’d be riding flat out in top on the dust, virtually blind with just another rider’s crash helmet visible 20 yards ahead. It was in these conditions in 2006 that there’d been many spills and broken bones. We had all said ‘oh no, we wont do that this year', but you just get sucked in to keeping up and it was amazing there weren’t any serious offs.
We also rode on sand – which is ok on a beach but impossible on some of the sandy ‘paths’ through the scrub. I came off a few times because the front wheel just gets a life of its own. Ok it’s soft when you land but its also tiring getting out from under it and picking it up, only to grind to a halt 30 yards later when someone else fell off.
So just the ordinary scenery then. Click to enlarge.
|
Then there were the technical bits – rivers – wet and slippy rocks (doh! -obviously.!) so you just try and keep it going. And keep your feet down as a wet foot is better than a flooded motor and a complete soaking. We had steep climbs where the bikes can (and did) flip and rock descents where the front wheel just slides away on the scree. Sometimes we just turned the motors off on the steep rocky descents, left it in gear and dumped the clutch rather than use the front brake too hard.
In terms of distance some days were quite a long haul 300km+, which equates to severe back-ache on a 200cc bike! On other days the distance was irrelevant – one day was only 75km, but it took us over 11 hours!
Each night we were in motels, or backpacker dorms and even a couple of places with baths. Some were hovels, some were luxury. Some nights after a meal there’d be a few beers and the recounting of near misses and heroic saves, other nights it was straight to bed completely done in.
We had one rest day where we helped install new desks at a local school. My team was responsible for a 4mx4m classroom with an unbelievable 55 kids in it, no seats and a broken blackboard the size of a PC screen. There was one toilet at the bottom of the field for the whole school. There were a few damp eyes when my mates were thinking of their own children, but for the most part the kids were happy since they really didn’t know what they didn’t have. And they loved seeing their own photos on the digital camera screens!
Also on the trip was Andy McNab the adventure author. I found myself behind him once and he promptly got us all lost. SAS – Ha!, Of course I reminded him of this navigational faux-pas at regular intervals for the rest of the day.
Injury list (for the Yellow team only!) was one badly bruised leg where a metal foot peg landed precisely on the gap between boot and knee guard, one severe sprained wrist (possibly broken) from an off when riding on gravel and one broken tooth from an off going over a cattle grid (he banged his head and half the tooth came out in a mars bar 30 minutes later). Not much really considering the potential for injury. There were events each day to recount and not the space here, but overall there was a great sense of achievement amongst us all for getting through to the finish just north of Durban. It was here that the bikes were crated again for their onward journey to the Riders for Health depot in Zimbabwe.
We were all really pleased to hear that Riders for Health, after featuring in an episode of BBC’s ‘Long Way Down’ with Ewan and Charlie, has also been selected by the Times newspaper as the international charity for its 2007 Christmas appeal.
As a result of the November trip, Riders for Health has received 130 motorbikes and a cash sum in the region of £400,000. This will provide training, vehicle maintenance and support for medics in Africa. My own fund raising exceeded £9,000 and for that I say a big Thank You again to all those who sponsored me for both cash and kit.”
View Harry's photo's (recommended settings are ‘slideshow’ with an increased gap of 6 seconds) and make donations below:
For photos click here
For donations click here
Thanks for reading, H