South African adventurer and explorer Kingsley Holgate is set to depart from Cape Town later this month on a pan-African trip to hand out educational aids to remote schools, including self-contained libraries packaged in trunks. The trip, which will end in 2008, will take Holgate around the continent’s coastline and up some of its rivers.
Three South African schools — Pecanwood at Hartbeespoort, and South Downs and Tiger Valley in the Pretoria area — have provided Holgate with a Land Rover to transport the libraries.
Children at about 300 other schools in South Africa will be able to follow the odyssey when Holgate and his team send regular letters to The Times I Am Living in and Die Tyd Waarin Ek Leef, email newspapers that carry news written in child-friendly language. The newspapers are sent free of charge to these schools as well as about 200 families in South Africa.
Holgate has written for the next issue, to go out after the Easter holidays: ”Hullo kids … Our next adventure is called ‘Africa, the Outside Edge’ and I shall be sending you exciting and sometimes dangerous stories from 33 countries around the coastline of Africa. Please get a big map of Africa and join this first, world Land Rover journey around Africa. This way you will learn lots about your wonderful continent.”
The trip will be a continuation of Holgate’s ”One Net One Life” campaign to distribute tens of thousands of mosquito nets to pregnant mothers and children under the age of five. He will also assist the poor-sighted with spectacles.
Films of Holgate’s expeditions have been screened on television all over the world, including on the National Geographic channel.
Previous expeditions included a journey along the tropic of Capricorn through Africa, South America, Australia and Madagascar, and ”Africa’s Longest Funeral March” — in the footsteps of the men who carried the body of missionary and explorer David Livingstone to the coast to be shipped back to Britain. — Sapa