Never give in

If I have ever been pushed to the limit continuously, its this journey. From the beginning there have been huge hurdles with funding, this project took off during the global financial melt-down and 4 sponsors pulled out due to budget constraints. With all of this going on, many around me said I should pull the plug on it, but I refused to give in. I continued to do all the ground work and planning, self funding the project as I felt that it was not just about attempting something impossible. The biggest impossibility that stood ahead of me was to raise funding for the children, that was the biggest drive. When I look back at many a problem that arises, who ends up suffering the most, the ones who are most impoverished needing help most, that’s where the cuts are made first. Ultimately its the children that suffer. I had made a commitment and I was not going back on this.
There has been the constant physical battle with the elements terrain and tropical disease that is all around me. Injury and just general physical depletion of my body, now 10kg of weight loss, but on I push as my goal is clear although at the moment my path is very clouded with problems arising every day.

We have taken a massive step forward with the media out put on this project, developing a first reality website which keeps you in contact with the journey on a daily basis by using social media networks. To service this little monster is a massive task. There is only Nick and myself generating all the footage, picks and blogs on a daily basis, then sending it back to our team in South Africa to upload.

To get this footage out there is the biggest problem on a daily basis, some days to the extent that we just want to throw the technology against the nearest tree, but we have never given in. We have come up with innovative ways, sometimes bluetoothing footage between 3 devices until we can eventually get it to one which has connectivity. Filming on the run, sitting down editing, then uploading all the same day.

Now to top it all our little HD camera which is one of our cornerstones of our media platform has broken , we are 600km from Antananarivo where they might be able to fix it. On top of this we are now alone for 2 weeks no crew, no laptops or power. We have sat for hours working through all the gear, we have to solve this problem, we are adamant to keep the footage flowing. Finally we have come up with a solution and a way to edit and film on our phones, and keep it going.

So often we throw our hand up in despair and give up saying I can’t. Don’t give in to yourself, push on, you have the ability to overcome anything, you just have to want it bad enough.