The Great Trek

120 kin from St Lucia, north to Lake Banghazi most of which is along the beach or through the sand forests. My companions would essentially be school kids with a ranger and a teacher.

These young adults had spent the past 10 days working in the local community at Mduku and had done a fine job setting up the library, running clinics and helping with tutoring. Let me add that they were generally from a well-off or privileged background and merely because they are slap in the middle of their teens would fall into the dinner time conversation slot called:
"Oh my God, the kids of today" - followed by a solemn shaking of heads.

It's early days yet but I think that these kids are different.

I arrived in Richards Bay on the Monday after a great Sunday spent with Rowan Gordon on the occasion of his 30th''. Some brief negotiations lined with cash eventually got me to Hluhluwe courtesy of Mhlongo from Imperial Motors. An inhabitant of the Nselane Township, Mhlongo had a wife and five children and when he emphatically agreed with something he would utter "A lot" repeatedly, accompanied by a definite nodding of the head. It wasn't dissimilar to the call of a Burchall's Coucal " Ah loot. Loot, loot, loot....!"

Kate Groch met me at the local Wimpy where between stock-piling for the trek, I received a call from Jono! It's a small world when a friend in the middle of London can chat to someone in the Wimpy at Hluhluwe and catch up on each other's lives - it's great, but no amount of technology will ever replace a ski together at St Francis, or a nutritious Guinness at the local. I'm looking forward to seeing them all at the Rugby World Cup in October.

After some extra provisions shopping at the next door SPAR, Kate and I arrived at Mduku, where the gang was scattered around near the clinic. The place looked something akin to a salvation army refugee camp - or maybe it was just that a bomb had gone off. There were socks and water bottles, groundsheets and rucksacks and a few make-shift tents scattered randomly around. The dividing fence had been well used as a clothes line, and everything else from the toilets to the Quarter Master's Store happened in side the main building.

I met most of the young barefooted young people during the late afternoon and saw some of the fruits of their labour - a fine job they'd done as well. They had evidently loved the experience and were pretty sad to leave. The community was certainly sad to see them go.

A little later Bruce Noziak arrived - a teacher from Saints, and in no time at all the intended 10 day detox had turned into a 9 day one as we visited the local shebeen for some cold castle bombers at R5 a pop - what a bargain!

It was immensely satisfying having a large cold beer round the fire surrounded by a community that was being uplifted and busy uplifting themselves.

I had been warned about Arthur the rooster, and sure enough he crowed right on cue at 5am. If his name changed to "Lunch" I wouldn't have been put out, and would certainly not question my moral standings.

Thabo Mbeki's dream of an African Renaissance remained in my mind as I remembered the picture of young Geoffrey from Kenya spending over two and a half hours under a gas lamp teaching and helping one of the community scholars. It was an awesome sight - and just one of many that I would witness over the next 10 days that would cement the fact that this is a remarkable chap.

Our bags were packed - we were ready to go and after a few wrong turnings we arrived at Iphira where Isabel, Andrew and Simon were waiting with instructions and food. Masses of food. Groups 1 and 2 divided everything up, and then began the process of deciding what would be needed. With minimal input from the rangers or teachers, Group 1, who I would start off with, seemed to have a very inclusive decision making process. Some seriously tempting delicacies were left behind - although a couple of tins of condensed milk were non-negotiable - small babies would not have been held closer to a young mother’s chest.

Group 1 comprised of Andrew, the Ranger, Bruce and Ilona, the teachers, then myself and 10 young people : Geoff from Kenya, Renier and Herman, Alistair, Reshma, Natasha X 2, Linda, Emma and Mari-Lyn. Quick good-byes were said as time pressures mounted and we needed to make our way north to Mission Rocks before sunset.

It was, a beautiful walk along the beach on a very pleasant day - interrupted only by the odd 4X4 fishing family.

Taking time to talk to people often renders remarkable results. Most were so interested in what we were doing. Some just shook their heads and muttered "madness", and a few were ready to pack up and come with. I was offered more than a few beers for my journey which I wisely declined - they would have been too heavy and too warm to really enjoy anyway. What I did take though were the good wishes of genuine strangers, and I thought just how easy it can be to add to and derive energy from a system.

We reached Mission Rocks in good time and set up our camp. The first cook-out was a little chaotic, but we ate in the end, and ate quite well. Emma had almost burnt herself badly and Geoff must have slept well after carrying a pack that weighed over 30 kgs!

I knew then that I was going to have a great time with Bruce. He truly lives by the philosophy of hiking which says :"Carry like a mule, live like a king."

The next 8 days cannot easily be divided into 24 hour slots - they flowed together and were linked by experiences just as the massive sand dunes linked the sea to the land. The experiences were not all bliss, but the tough times only served to highlight the good times.

It was an adventure into a real wilderness, with no set routes, just a destination in mind. Taken as a whole it proved to be a wonderful analogy of this extraordinary think called life. Moments of extreme beauty, were mingled with hardships and obstacles, and we get blistered and sore along the way. We get burnt and we get charged and attacked as we were by an angry hippo, and there are times when we need to tread most carefully around dangerous obstacles like snakes! We need also to look after those precious resources and treat them with utmost stewardship, for if we don't, either something dies or something within us dies. And most of all, we need to cherish and protect and enjoy relationships, for although the journey of the hike might be possible on one's own, the adventure of life is not, and I couldn't imagine not sharing those magical memories with people that you grow with, that arrive very different people than when we left. What would that hike have been without the card games and the wood gatherers. Alistair's oven baked bread and Andrew's bush knowledge, bush tea with Bruce, and Herman and Renier's tent. The pain of Emma's blisters and Reshma's sand dune wipeout. The way they handled that pain made some of our own aches seem irrelevant. That's perhaps the beauty of those relationships - that they increase the pleasures and decrease the pains.

To finally arrive at Lake Banghazi, washed only by the wind and the salt water, was to feel a freshness of achievement which was tangible. We had made it, and in many ways it had made us. Made us appreciate fresh water on tap, and a cold water swim. A cooked meal and a comfortable seat. Beauty and beasts.

When I flew back out of this World Heritage site of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park I was filled with a sense of blessing and hope.

• For our youth.
• For our country.
• For your future.

P.S. You never know where relationships might take you. Right now Geoffrey from Kenya is in Wisconsin USA studying a business degree. You can be sure that he is not reading under the light of a gas lamp, seated on a pile of bricks and surrounded by flying insects. To those that give, great things will be given. Good luck to you Geoff- you do yourself proud.