A quest in the footsteps of John Ross
From iced water at Nkandla to drinking with cattle owners
THAT rough tar, which sticks out like gravel, is awfully hard on the feet. Feeling “like stepping on needles every footstep,” Thommo Hart believes he is getting some idea of what cancer sufferers go through as he and his friend, Siphiwe Ngcobo, make their way to Maputo to raise funds for cancer charities.
“It’s probably much the same,” Hart said this week before the duo were to enter Swaziland.
He lost his mother to the disease and remembers her describing the feeling of “pins in the head” and “slow pulsating pain in the muscle and the bone” while undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy.
The nastiest of the tar was after Kranskop, while dropping down into the Thukela Valley, which was countryside he remembered fondly on pottery collecting expeditions with his mother, Juliet Armstrong, in her red Beetle Volkswagen. She was a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre of Visual Arts.
Hart and Ngcobo have planned their journey to be more or less in the footsteps of John Ross, the intrepid Scottish teenager who, in 1827, walked from Port Natal (now Durban) to Delagoa Bay (now Maputo) to fetch medical supplies. However, to enter it as a world record, Hart was not allowed to go over the same route twice, hence their starting from the provincial capital and veering inland for the up run.
Ross himself may have done much of his journey barefoot, said Hart.
At Kranskop they deviated from the intended route.
“The police station commander told us not to take the shortcut we planned to take to Eshowe. She said there were lots of people with guns around,” said Hart.
As a result they took the road with awful tar, which led them past President Jacob Zuma’s controversial Nkandla residence.
“We saw it before us as the heat of the day was setting in at 11.30am.”
Around the same time a car pulled up, the driver wanting to find out what they were up to.
“He said he was the director of spousal relations at Nkandla. He was very interested in what we were doing and pulled R400 out of his wallet to support our charities.”
Hart is raising funds for the PinkDrive and Ngcobo is fundraising for the Empilweni for Physically Challenged Community Centre at kwaNdengezi, near Durban.
Outside the presidential residence, guards greeted them with curiosity and gave them iced water.
The KwaZulu-Natal leg of the trip has also given the two the chance to have an in-depth look at life in South Africa along the road.
Outside Empangeni they encountered a group of cattle owners, an Afrikaner and four Zulus, all herding their cattle.
“We sat down and spoke about things like the state of the country,” said Ngcobo.
“The level of interaction was quite an eye opener. You might think that in a rural area the white farmer would have had the upper hand and the others would have treated him with more deference, but they were all on the same level.”
It turned out they were coowners of the herd.
“They spoke about how we are all South Africans, regardless of colour. All that mattered was that people treated one another with respect.”
What further surprised Ngcobo was that they spoke to one another in a mixture of Afrikaans and Zulu.
Over a number of alcoholic drinks he heard them address a topic they had in common.
“They all complained about their wives,” Ngcobo chuckled.
Near Eshowe, a single mother who was a farm worker offered them shelter for the night and eagerly gathered her five children to hear them talk about cancer, John Ross and their journey.
She was in deep financial trouble as her daughter had failed a semester at a college near Eshowe, prompting her sponsors to demand that she pay them back, said Hart.
“We gave her some advice about student financing.”
Hart has university qualifications in anthropology, fine art and media studies and has launched the African explorers and adventurers’ club, Expeditionists, to help likeminded people with publicity and fund-raising and Ngcobo is a freelance film-maker.
At Seven Oaks, they met farmer Andrew Braithwaite who, along with the State’s 50/50 Policy Framework programme, supports a farming scheme in which 24 farm workers are beneficiaries.
According to reports, the programme was introduced to help workers and owners become co-owners of farms.
At a roadside garage shop in Mkuze, they had a chance meeting with adventurer Kingsley Holgate.
“He had heard of us,” said Hart. “It was great to meet up with him.”
In Greytown, when Hart experienced his first real aches and pains, an internet search led to him receiving massage treatment from none other than a local biokineticist who had done her internships with the Sharks main squad and the Sharks Academy, Kelly Rottcher.
Hart’s muscles had seized up when Rottcher saw him.
“We loosened everything up and strapped him to get his feet in a better position for his walk,” she said.
“As he carries on he will get stronger and more used it.”
Rottcher then put the two on to her cousin Kate English, who works at Phinda Private Game Reserve, where they enjoyed a break from their hardships, taking game drives.
They were able to give moral support to English, whose mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in January and is now having radiation treatment.
“They were very encouraging,” said English. “It made me very happy getting involved in awareness and encouraging people to donate to their cause.”
The two hope to reach the Mozambique capital in about two weeks’ time before starting their home run, along the coast to Durban. They left Pietermaritzburg two weeks ago.
For more info visit https://expeditionists.org/expeditions/