Felicia Black
Felicia Black
South Africa 2011- 2012
VIEW FINAL REPORT
I am a recent Belmont graduate (Class of 2011) and I am going back to South Africa. I first went to South Africa in the fall of my junior year at Belmont and I had so much fun I decided to apply for the Lumos award and have been lucky enough to go again! Check out my previous blog at http://coming2sa.blogspot.com/ I will also be updating that blog as I return to South Africa so check ‘em out! Read More About Felicia →

Charity Challenge! (Days One and Two)

Most of you know because I tried to spread the word about it but in November I completed GVI’s Big 5 Charity Challenge. It was a 5 day challenge where we travelled 350km using non-motorized transport. It was over 200 miles! We raised money for Ikhayalethemba Village which is an orphanage close to the school where I work. I have visited the orphanage many times (as GVI also has volunteers there) and have been touched by all the amazing children that live there. Specifically, the money will be going towards remodeling buildings for new Grade R (Kindergarten) classrooms as part of the Village’s sustainability program. In addition, we raised money for the Hope Centre in Fish Hoek. The money will also be going to the Hope Centre to rebuild some classrooms. The Challenge was amazing and I enjoyed every minute of it. Here’s the first two days of the Challenge:
Saturday November 12th

I am so sore. I am beyond sore. I am in pain. Today was fun though. We started off the day early at 5 and then got ready, had breakfast and then after much to do travelled to Cape Agulhas the southern most tip of Africa and began the challenge. It started out really well. We were excited and even singing. This soon changed when we were met by hills (we weren’t expecting hills) and then the wind. The wind made it ten times worse than it would be normally. It was very difficult. I did well and pushed myself a lot. I found that if I sang even if it was to myself I was able to go farther then just focusing on what I am doing. So moral of story: sing. It helps, at least for me. We stopped a lot for breaks: pee breaks, food breaks which was good. We did however somehow lose or misplace the bike pump. Probably the most important thing you need on a biking challenge but whatever we pushed through. Then there was the punctuated tires. Somehow we managed to go through all our extra bikes because of punctured tires and since we didn’t have a bike pump we couldn’t really do anything. At one point, Nick decided to start running which was awesome. It turned out to not be necessary because soon after he started running, we saw two people with a bike pump and tires. God was definitely looking after us. Unfortunately because of wind and all the hills, we didn’t end up making it to Hermanus like we planned. So about 20km outside of Hermanus we had a team meeting and decided to push to Stranford which is a little ways outside of Hermanus. We all decided to push hard and we were all able to finish. It was very difficult though. I think we were all very tired at that point. I know I really want to stop then and there. I pushed myself hard on some hills and I definitely regretted it at that point. But I was able to finish. Ebonnie was also able to finish despite a knee injury. I think that’s all. I’m tired, going to bed. We start early again tomorrow!

Sunday November 13th

Day Two started out just as rough. My alarm went off at 5:15 but I refused to get up. No other alarms went off either so we had a late start. I could barely sleep last night because of the pain. I have never been so sore. It just felt like I was burning. That and the fact that I heard rain pouring outside my window didn’t exactly encourage me out of bed. But our program manager got us all up and we were jogging in the rain by 7. We spent the next few hours biking in the pouring rain, getting soaked completely. Lucky for us, the weather did clear and we ended up having some great weather. By the time we finished I was almost completely dry which was lovely. Today had lots of hills but we were all mentally prepared for them so that made it a lot easier. We even had a baboon sighting (something common in this area). I was pretty nervous myself because they are very crafty. They have been known to get into people’s cars and take food (I wish I was joking!). I think we all pretty nervous. Almost all of us had food in our bags. But they left us alone and we left them alone and we passed them with no problems. That was pretty much our day. We walked 15km because the road was too narrow to bike (and feel safe) but besides that we biked the entire time covering 90km which brings our total up to 170km. So we are halfway there. Our goal is to travel 350km by the end of Day 5. Tomorrow the hope is to sail (fingers crossed) to Fish Hoek which is 40km away then to bike 20km which makes for a pretty easy day compared to what we have been doing. We’re not sure if we’ll be able to sail because of weather. We finished today in Gordon’s Bay which means I get to sleep in my own bed tonight! It was great because all the volunteers and staff who weren’t participating in the full Challenge were there to cheer us on and they even made us dinner which was amazing

I’ll finish up the rest of the Challenge next week!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *