OR HOW I CLIMBED Mt. KEISKAMMA ON £2000 A DAY
There’s almost nothing more tedious than someone wittering on endlessly about an experience personal to them that means nothing to anyone else, however fabulous they might’ve found it, so I’ll keep this journal as short and sweet as possible. Having said which I’ll immediately contradict this oath of self-restraint by (a) stating upfront that what follows is an account of one of the most uplifting experiences of my life, and (b) as it’s aimed primarily at people who had the generosity to sponsor me on this charity trek, I think they damn well ought to get something substantial back for their money.
So some 26 of us de-planed into the bright sunshine of Jo’burg airport on March 21st after a rather bumpy and sleepless overnight flight on one of Air Branson’s finest Airbus 340s with some 90 mins to spare before catching an internal flight to East London. We had begun acquainting ourselves with each other during these travel arrangements, though of course to varying extents I was already friendly with several of my co-trekkers, most notably Nick Alexander, Jane Charteris, Piers Russell-Cobb and of course John Brown, the organiser of this enterprise, and his assistant, Sarah Aniston. The mood was pleasantly jocular with none of the determined one-upmanship that perhaps might’ve been expected from such a bunch of media luvvies, but by the time we finally arrived at East London we could all have used some more sleep. But there was no letting up from the transport arrangements as we clambered aboard two large minibuses for the 90 minute drive to the Hogsback region where we were due to spend the night, a trip punctuated only by a nice lunch in Port Elizabeth, and a toilet-stop stop at a rather incongruous service station-cum-Wimpy Bar (yes, honest) where we picked up Bernie Spratt, late of Chop ‘Em Out in London who now spends half his year tending his small property empire in Cape Town.
The last few kilometers of the journey were along a potholed, unmetalled ‘road’ which was a little challenging to the minibuses’ suspension if not my kidneys… reminding me not a little of trailriding back home in Wales. Anyway, we spent the night at the Arminel Inn which was pretty damn luxurious to one expecting little more than breeze-block accommodations, and before dinner were introduced to Carol Hofmyer and the first half of a film showing the work she was doing with the Keiskamma Aids Treatment programme (KAT) which was, after all, why we were there. More, much more, on which later…
There was quite a bit of groaning when John B. cheerily, but with a hint of menace told us that we’d be getting 5.45am alarm calls as we had to start walking as soon as possibly before the day’s heat did its worst. So bleary-eyed and fragile after rather too many bottles of excellent South African wine – well at just £2 a pop, what d’you expect ? – we struggled down some breakfast and were bussed off to the start of our trail along 45 more minutes-worth of kidney-juddering forest roads. There was something rather salutary finding oneself in the midst of Zingcuka, a village so far removed off from civilization as we, (but not its residents) know it, to witness neatly uniformed children walking several kilometers to school. So at about 8.30 we stumbled out of the buses and, led by local guide, Ralph Speirs with his father Rob bringing up the rear, we filed into the forest and began our ascent.
Now I’m not going to overplay the strenuous nature of our trek, or indeed bore you with every twist, turn, washed-out pathway or unexpected quagmire on our route, but let’s just say that even as the oldest on the expedition I wasn’t alone in finding it rather more arduous than anticipated. Initially we strode single file tracks through the dense Wolf River Forest… so dense in fact that the bulk of our party were lost within ten minutes, Ralph and an ultra fit advance guard having left us at a rapid clip, whereas we just followed Leotine Haas, possibly because she was tall, young and blonde and looked like she knew where she was going.
Fortunately Ralph realized he was missing twenty odd bodies, so turned back and after finding us made sure thereafter that he wasn’t walking too fast and we weren’t walking too slow. This first few kilometers took in some steep banks made tricky by mossy tree roots, low branches and the odd crossing of streams across small, lichen covered boulders. As we came out of the forest to wild, grassy uplands a Landrover had miraculously brought us packed lunches, although we weren’t to consume them until a couple of hours later, by which time the sun was beating down harshly as we reached a fabulous waterfall-cum-pool at about 1200metres. Many of our number chose this fuel stop to cool off in the pool, which was in fact bloody freezing to the point where I chickened out and learnt to live with my sweat. But this wasn’t in fact the Keiskamma as advertised, but the Wolf River, one of the many tributaries from which it draws.
After lunch we rose through several wide, stunningly beautiful upland hills and valleys, culminating in a particularly difficult haul up a series of massive boulders – not the first time it was a hands’n’knees job. Poor Lyn Hughes, editor of Wanderlust magazine, whose serious fall of a horse a few weeks earlier hadn’t deterred her from making the trip nevertheless had more difficulty than some managing this, but all were agreed it was the hardest ascent of the lot. And immediately afterwards, and again not for the first time, Ralph found that this little used track had become lost to vegetation since he last used it and we found ourselves squelching through bogs and scrabbling through thick, scratchy gorse-type bushes as we followed his compass. (For once I’d erred wisely by not wearing the shorts favoured by most of our number, all of whom had the cuts and grazes to show for it).
By now most of us were getting tired, all of us getting very hot and thus relieved when Ralph told us we’d reached the apex of our hike at some 1700metres – that’s about 5400feet in old money – but my own relief was marred by a growing headache and painfully swollen hands as we began trekking down into the Hogsback Plantation. Suffering as I do from moderately high blood pressure, I’d foolishly left my pills at the inn but figured it wouldn’t matter as I’d occasionally missed a day’s medication in the past without any harm. But when Mark, the medic who’d been assigned to our expedition heard about this, he whipped out a blood pressure monitor he handily had in his rucksack and ordered me to stop immediately as my levels proved to be in the danger zone. So after some 16kms, no more walkies for Mark. And as we’d now fallen so far behind the others, along with Charlotte Jarvis (who’d given me a couple of anti-histamine pills when I’d started flagging a klick or so earlier), the hobbling Lyn, Piers Russell-Cobb with his swollen knees, Ed Bye (who rather amusingly related the entire episode via mobile to his wife back in Blighty) and rearguardsman Rob Spiers, I was obliged to wait half an hour for a forest ranger to find us in a Land Rover.
Rob eventually managed to text his son to warn them of my mishap and that they should not turn back to find us, and we negotiated a treacherous, washed out track with an ex-signwriter from Devon behind the wheel expertly negotiating massive potholes and frightening cambers. So my particular trek had come to an ignominious end and by the time we’d rendezvoused with the buses, the first group of even more weary trekkers had just emerged from what by all accounts was a frighteningly steep descent over tree-rooted rocks and loose screed.
Our party didn’t stop to commiserate but instead whisked me back to the hotel where I swallowed my pills and felt my blood pressure quickly ease so that by dinner time I felt right as rain, if somewhat sheepish, and in need of more wine. We watched more of Carol’s film that evening and learnt even more sobering facts about the AIDS pandemic and the work she was doing to save some of its victims. More, as I keep saying, later.
But not before a quick scamper along the beach the next day. Frankly, the second day was a bit of a doodle and reveals the façade I unwittingly presented to all of you who thought I’d be sleeping in mud huts and trudging relentlessly along perilous, snake-infested terrain for three solid days. (Moral: never trust an ex-journalist with money on his mind). In fact as noted above, there’s not one, but several sources of the Kieskamma River, and to follow any of them right to the coast would’ve taken a good week, so the second day was spent at a fast clip along the beach towards Hamburg where the river does indeed make its exit into the Indian Ocean. We were bussed there after another 6am wake up call and luckily had the wind behind us, but even so the 14km. hike was a tad strenuous, not least due to the heat. As we got closer to our destination the sight of a few police officers on the beach was a bit perplexing (or worse, depending on one’s history), but we later learnt that they were there to protect us from any chancers who’d been given to believe that this rich Brits were actually carrying big bags of cash en route to the KAT centre ! (I kid you not).
We stopped at a lagoon just a kilo or so from Hamburg where more swimming took place and a police pick-up appeared with cases of beer and wine (I kid you not, again) to refresh us further, and then we were carried on aboard a small convoy of cop carriers for the last leg of the journey to the outskirts of Hamburg. And that’s when it started to get both moving and serious.
I don’t think any of us – even John B. who’d been there several times before – were quite ready for the reception which began with a huge troupe of dancing, chanting, brightly clad and painted women and neatly uniformed schoolkids. At this point I should explain that although Hamburg is technically a small town, like all such burghs in the Eastern Cape it was basically a far-flung collection of tiny dwellings separated by enough land to house a privy (running water is a rarity) and a few goats and/or cows (essential to the family’s welfare). These huts – usually little bigger than an average British garage – often have to sleep up ten or more family members making it all the more remarkable how placid and friendly they all seemed.
We walked the last kilo or so along the heavily rutted tracks that pass for roads and up to Eunice Mangwaye’s house atop a hill overlooking the estuary where an extraordinary celebration had been arranged. Speaking in Xhosa (the local language as well as the name of the predominant tribe), a tribal elder welcomed us as some kind of heroes and two choirs, dance troupes and various spokespersons entertained us before we were served a scrumptious feast of local dishes (and disgusting home brewed ‘beer’ which tasted like runny porridge laced with creosote). I think we were all very moved by this, some like Sarah who’d done much of the organising on John B’s behalf, literally to tears, and I must say I felt pretty guilty that we were eating so lavishly when the people who’d cooked for us were probably on subsistence rations. Which brings me neatly to the serious stuff:
The £80,000 we’d collectively raised equates to over a million Rand, which is enough to keep the KAT going for another year. In an area where there is 90% unemployment and an average wage – when it exists – is the equivalent of £30/month, KAT is not only doing some amazing work against considerable odds, but has also become the biggest single employer in the area (even so that’s just 30 employees). KAT’s work is to try and save the lives of as many of the approx 25% of some 100,000 people who live in the area between Port Elizabeth and East London and are HIV positive. Read that again, will you.
The driving force behind KAT is Carol Hofmyer, a white doctor who moved to the area in 2002 to retire and paint but having met Eunice, a tiny, rotound and relentlessly jovial AIDS counselor based in Cape Town who’d been visiting her family in Hamburg, was compelled to do something about the AIDS situation. Cutting to the chase, Carol used her energy and contacts to secure scarce supplies of anti retro viral drugs (ARVs) and with Eunice devised a system whereby these would be supplied, initially mainly to the children of mothers who were also HIV positive, which a team of ‘adherence monitors’ (AMs) made sure they would take. Prejudice, and a government in denial about AIDS – it was widely broadcast that the virus was dropped from foreign aircraft and could only be cured by folk medicine – meant that many mothers were unwilling to employ the discipline vital to maintain their children’s welfare. And of course with many of those mothers themselves dying from AIDS, grandparents and siblings couldn’t always be relied on to maintain the treatments.
The film Carol had shown us was a harrowing indictment of the prejudice and inertia they’d initially had to deal with, but now with a slow change in government attitudes and regular supplies of (still expensive) ARVs becoming available, KAT’s reach has expanded to parents and a wider constituency, with patients as far away as Peddie (30kms) where we visited a hospital serious cases were sent to. ‘Serious cases’ being those who’ve suffered the all-too-common consequences of AIDS such as TB and cancer – remember no-one dies of AIDS itself.
Unbelievably, or perhaps not, there was considerable resistance and even physical fisticuffs with certain parties who feared that an AIDS centre would harm putative efforts to develop local tourism but KAT now leases its own building in Hamburg, which we also inspected. Sufferers are initially bought there for diagnosis (by Carol) and in severe cases housed for a week or so whilst the drug reactions to ARVs are monitored before going back into the community under the AM system. With such great distances involved, this causes problems and more monitors have to be trained all the time, ditto the need for more vehicles to ferry patients to and from the KAT centre and Peddie, along often atrocious tracks. There is also a day centre for children at the former, an arts centre where local women do (fabulous) tapestry work which was the original source of funds for KAT’s efforts whilst also providing employment, and other aid workers are helping the population to improve diet and contraceptive methods… all funded via KAT. So it’s all of these and the cost of ARVs that our donations are desperately needed for (e.g. they’d run out of money to pay the AMs earlier this year, but still they carried on).
I won’t bother you with any more details of our schedule here, except to say it was undertaken at breakneck speed and, again movingly, took in a visit to a tiny tin shack in which twenty-one HIV positive family members – and a couple of chickens – somehow lived. (How they could exude such delight at meeting us – apparently unannounced – puts to shame those of us who get mighty riled when we suffer the minor discomfort of, say, a delay on the tube or running out of Sancerre at our amusing little dinner parties). Oh, and yrs. trly, got his luggage taken apart and by Heathrow Customs, apparently on suspicion of bringing skunk into the country. Conspiracy theorists enjoy yourselves now…
But what I will end by asking is that if you haven’t already given to my KAT appeal, please, please do so. At John B’s suggestion, we told Eunice and Carol we’d try and bring our total up to £100k, further securing KAT’s future and the saving of perhaps hundreds more lives. Which in turn has galvanised me to raise a further grand and reach my personal goal of £3000.
The Eastern Cape is an area rich in South Africa’s history (e.g. Rourke’s Drift and home to most of the nation’s great black leaders including Nelson Mandella and Desmond Tutu) and of extraordinary natural beauty and I’m determined to go back and have a proper holiday there one day, perhaps combined with some volunteer work (driving a battered old pick-up at high speed cross country sounds good to me), but it is in dire need of support in the battle against AIDS. I know the world is full of gross social injustice and political malevolence and we relatively rich westerners are often bewildered as to what, if anything, we can do about it. But having seen firsthand what two brave and committed women have already achieved from almost nothing, I feel morally obliged to make an effort in at least one corner of a shitty world. And if you’ve already helped me, the people of Hamburg and outlying areas will already be thanking you. If you haven’t, then I hope you now will.
So don’t forget my webpage, where your donations will be increased even further by Gift Aid, is at www.justgiving.com/markswilliams or if you’re web-averse, please send a cheque made out to COMMUNITY PROJECTS AFRICA to me at 42 St. Mary’s Mansions, St. Mary’s Terrace, London W2 1SH.
Just. Do. It. NOW !
