Time is moving on

Well it's been awhile since my last news but I haven't been idle; I haven't been cycling either but thats another story.

Our team or seven have been meeting regularly and we are on for the 26th April 2009 and we have gone bigger!!!!. We are holding cycling events across Warwickshire and to date we have six events planned for that date around the county.

I said at our last meeting lets float some boats and see how we get on (perhaps there is an equivalent cycling phrase but I don't know it). And get on I did, everyone I have spoken to has been enthusiastic and encouraging.

Wait till you see the flyer that Pentagon Press (Warwick CV34 6TJ) have done for us. It's fabulous. Once we finish the changes I will put it up on the site.

If you're intersted in supporting an event in Leamington Spa, Warwick, Nuneaton, Rugby or you want to be another hub location get in touch and we'll talk!!

Children cycling for Children is on!!!!

September event delayed till March 2009

Since my last update I have been at work getting together a new team and together we are building a foundation to support the level of potential that I had hoped for. We are now holding regular monthly meetings and building a bigger team so we can go forward powerfully.

I can see that having the structure of a committed team pulls me into action, enables others to fulfil on their values and together we are going forward in a constructed and informed way.It is very exciting!!

The delay enables us to have the time to create the resources that will enable others to join in and participate in other locations in the UK and globally without having to reinvent the wheel.

It has been so exciting to have a team inasmuch as it is not just about me saying hey let's do this cycle ride and raise money for children I now have other people who are saying we think this is a good idea too and instead of two or three or five on the day we now have around 13 people who want to come onboard and so now we can have a constitution, a chair, a secretary and a treasurer as we take the right actions to have charitable status. It wasn't something I actually wanted to do but it appears it could have advantages in getting funding to reach further into the community.

I intend to get onto this blog more regularly as it is a great way to keep all of you who are interested better informed.

'Rocking, rolling, riding all along bay all bound for morning town many miles away' Okay I know its a train but it just popped into my head and I loved the Seekers when I was a kid and I get so happy when I move this project along - so you hum, I'll sing!

Happy, smiling faces

Our 2008 event in September is in the diary and we invite you and your family, community,towns, schools, churches or youth groups to join us to ride and make a difference as we fund raise for children's charities around the world. In New Zealand, my daughter Emma in Dunedin is talking to teacher friends about creating an event there, Tania in Wellington, is talking to friends there and in Australia to create an event. Another friend in the UK, Kemi is talking to her family to create an event in London and so it goes on. We intend to have rides in Ireland, Israel, America and Canada.

Today three more people joined our organising team and now we can get the organisation side handled. We intend to have a website that links all the participants, schools, charities together as an educational resource.
We'd love you to join us and as soon as I can figure out how to do it I will put up last years brochure a resource - watch this space.

Together we raised over £12,500

I have just realised that we didn't put up the final figure as we had our final event, The Bohemian's playing at the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington Spa where over 400 people had a rocking night out, in February a month after our Just Giving site went off line. It really was quite fantastic to reach that amount as we didn't know it was possible when we started.

So thank you everyone who contributed and supported us. It was a stunning, magnificent effort and a thoroughly enjoyable and memorable year. It did make turning 52 a year to remember after all.

Back to the blog

It is nearly a year since the first adventure got started. Time has romped forward and no I am not cycling in India with the International Childcare this year but I am back in the fund raising business.

I am taking on a new adventure but with hopefully less physical activity. One of our most fun events that came out of the fund raising was our Cycling for Children event where over 60 children and their parents cycled up to 10 kms in Victoria Park one cold November morning and raised over £1200 for children in need. Everyone said how much they enjoyed it and looked forward to doing it again.

So on the strength of that and the goodwill of local sponsors we have scheduled the 27th September to cycle again. Inside of a context of having fun and creating a big game I am on a quest to find children, schools and communities around the globe who want to join us on that date and do the same thing in their towns and raise funds for a children's charity of their choice.

If your children, school community would like to participate contact me and lets cause children choosing charity and helping others.

The wheels are turning again!

Asante sana!

Friday 16th November: The project at Mumias. If cycling through Kenya had been a rollercoaster of one kind, visiting the project ICT was supporting at Mumias was a whole other experience. We left Kakamega late and rather the worse for wear after the previous night's celebrations, but the Kenyans had prepared about the best hangover cure imaginable. As we arrived at the project site in Mumias we were met by hundreds of children singing, beating drums, and waving flags and banners. It was a wonderful, moving and quite overwhelming experience. I don't think there was a dry eye on the bus. As we disembarked we were met by a host child (or more likely a group of children) who took our hands and led us to the entrance to the project, where we queued to sign the visitors book and then were guided to our seats for what followed.

The project we visited is a collaboration between ICT and WEAEP - Western Education, Advocacy and Empowerment Project, a Kenya-based, child-centred NGO. It is estimated that there are around 800,000 orphaned and vulnerable children in Kenya's Western Province. The aim of the Mumias project is to build a Child Protection and Community Centre, in ICT's words

to provide care and improve quality of life for orphans and vulnerable children suffering from extreme poverty, disease, abuse and neglect. When complete, the centre will provide access to basic rights and protection to 500 children and young people per year by offering: consultation and assessment of needs and aspirations; psychological therapy; legal advice and child protection; rescue services for girls abused by violence; linking orphans to foster parents/guardians; community training in child rights and protection; and integrate/place orphans and street children in formal education. The centre will provide vocational training to vulnerable youngsters at risk and provide toolkits for those who successfully complete their courses, enabling them to find work or become self-employed.

It sounds really worthwhile in the abstract, but to experience it is something else again. The shell and ground floor of the building have already been completed, helped by some of the money raised from ICT's Cycle Cambodia ride the previous year. Without doubt it will be the best building in the area - a real beacon of what is possible. But the project is so much more than just a building. Many of the children had T-shirts that had obviously been printed for our visit. On the back they said " Cycle Kenya Team 2007 - International Childcare Trust, and then below that "Thank you for giving me back my life". Needless to say that had us blinking away the tears again, because it wasn't hyperbole, it was true. The project and the Centre are an absolute lifeline for these children.

Our visit coincided with the official opening of the Centre, at which we were among the honoured guests. The centrepiece was a set of performances by children and women that the project had supported: a mix of songs, poetry and drama expressing aspects of their lives and their hopes for the future. Richard, ICT's wonderful chairman and our constant support and companion over the event planted a tree - a symbol of the project as a place of shelter - and then we were given a tour of the new building. Throughout the morning of our visit we continued to be moved by our experience of the children, the little boy with the big smile who had scarred himself by cutting words into the flesh of his arms and legs. Wonderful Valentine, a 14 year old AIDS orphan who lived with her aunt and dreamt of becoming a doctor. There were so many stories, and now so many memories that still have the power to move me to tears.

In the end it was all over too quickly. Another (foreshortened) game of soccer, a quick lunch and then on the bus to take us to our flight back to Nairobi. This turned into a very different kind of experience. Simon had worked out that our scheduled bus trip to Nairobi could easily take nine or ten hours, limiting our available time at the project and wiping out our plans for a celebration dinner on the last night that we would be all together, so we had agreed to pay the extra to charter a bus to the nearest airport and then take the half hour flight to Nairobi. The bus arrived on time, and we set off, with the driver assuring us that he would take us on a shortcut away from the main road that would have us at the airport in an hour. Yeah right as we Kiwis say. What followed was the hairiest hour and three-quarters you would want to experience on four wheels as we flew over dirt roads going through god knows where. At one point we stopped in a village and a package was unloaded off the bus and a group of locals tried to get on to our already full bus, while Simon went ballistic and physically barred the door! It was pretty clear that, hire or no hire, the bus crew had their own agenda as well - another example of the differences between the African and Eurpean way! We did finally make the airport, with about twenty minutes to spare. Simon and Kate sprinted off to get our tickets... and found that the flight had been delayed by half an hour.

The rest of the journey back to Nairobi and our hotel was uneventful. By 9.30pm we were settled in "Carnivore" - a bit of a Nairobi landmark - but probably not the first choice of restaurant for two vegetarians :-). We finally collapsed into bed at about 2.00am, conscious that we had another early start on Saturday, as we had signed up to spend our last morning in Africa on safari in Nairobi National Park - 64 square kms of reserve just 20 minutes outside the city.

We have gained so much from this challenge. We’ve made great new friends, developed muscles that we never knew existed, and above all experienced being in Kenya, the joy of the children, and the generous welcome of so many people who stopped to wave and shout "jambo" as we cycled past. We’ve been contributed to by our many friends and supporters here in England and abroad. We’ve held fun fund raising events and now we are exploring how to create a legacy for the future, by creating a trust after our first annual ‘Cycling for children’ event, where children from 5years old to 11 came out with their parents on a sponsored cycle ride. Its been an extraordinary journey - both physically and emotionally. Asante sana Kenya! Thank you very much ICT!

The final stretch

Thursday 15th November - Eldoret to Kakamega (105 kms) Our last day in the saddle started on the busiest roads so far, but it also meant that the riding was fast and we were through the first twenty kms in not much over the hour. Julian was back on his bike but it looked like his run of bad luck might continue, as a bee got caught in his helmet and stung him on the forehead just before the first stop! (In fact his was just the first - Andrew and Ash both got stung on the next section.)

After the break we continued on the main road, which was now carrying quite a lot of traffic, particularly the infamous matutus - local minbuses which act as a cheap taxi service - some of them were really friendly but others tended to drive like they are the only ones on the road. Worse though were the lorries whose drivers seemed to have very little regard for human life at all. If you were where they wanted to be that was your problem. Fortunately no one was really injured, but a couple of the team ended up coming off their bikes as lorries brushed against them or forced them off the tarmac.

There was another unexpected challenge on the last big hill before lunch. On the up side the tarmac had melted and the weight of lorries pressing into it had created deep vertical grooves up the hill. These were smooth enough to ride in, but in some places too deep to get out of easily if a lorry decided it wanted your bit of space - which is what happened to me! As I tried to pull over, my pedal hit the rim of one of these grooves, and I was tipped off - sideways towards the edge of the road fortunately - and without too much damage to me or the bike. Once you got over the top of the hill, however, another surprise presented itself: here the tarmac had also melted and then reformed in waves and ripples down a stretch of the hill. Julian had been riding in peleton with some of the guys and hit this patch at speed. He is still not sure how he and the bike stayed together!

Shortly afterwards we turned off the main road, with some relief, and started down a quieter road towards Kakamega and the rainforest. But still Cycle Kenya wasn't going to relent; we now had to contend with nearly 40 kms of broken asphalt. Imagine a road that has had the top layer skimmed off and replaced, and then half of that top layer has broken away, leaving a bumpy and uneven surface. The sensation started off as unpleasant and just got worse - wrists and bum took on a relentless ache; fingers started to tingle with the vibration. You started to search out the better patches of road, or look for ridable stretches of dirt at the roadside - anything for a bit of relief. Finally we hit the outskirts of Kakamega - more traffic but a better surface again! And suddenly it was all over - a group of cyclists at a road junction, hugging each other and cheering each new arrival. Then a ragged peleton of 37 riders up the last short stretch of road to our hotel. We arrived and someone spotted the swimming pool. Soon - much to the bemusement of the local welcoming committee - we were all in the pool, fully clothed, laughing and cheering each jump, bomb or collapse into the water. Then the first round of the inevitable Tuskers arrived, before dinner, when we discovered we were all kings and queens of something, and then the partying really began... We'd done it!