Except for the lightsabres, maybe.
The things you see when you take a different mode of transport...
Just a short post to thank everyone who sponsored me to take part in the LearnAsOne Founder’s Challenge yesterday, walking 26miles along the bank of the Thames and taking in 19 bridges along the way. While it may sound a bit weedy compared to, I don’t know, running the same distance, I was pretty astounded at how hard it was to walk that far in a day, with only one break, when you’re not really used to it. I can barely walk today, and the blisters are going to be there for weeks.
Not that I’m complaining. We covered less than two thirds the distance that Saviour and her friends cover in a week, just walking to school. Often they’ll do that barefoot and without water. Which makes me a giant pansy really.
The good news is that we raised about £600 in total, all of which will go towards the next classroom at Simakakata. There’s no admin costs involved with LearnAsOne – all the cash goes straight towards building materials for George. If you want to donate, you still can via my Just Giving page.
Many plasters were used in the process of this walk.
As a side point, I can also say that the walk was great fun. Not only were Steve and Claire excellent company, but as someone who mostly knows London via the underground network, I saw a lot of the city I’ve never seen before. Walking in from Richmond put a lot of the geography which I’m abstractly aware of into context for the first time. It was in turns surprising and beautiful, although it did leave me wondering who on Earth is buying apartments in all those super rich developments that are spreading out West. There’s clearly still a lot more money in the capital than people would have you believe.
A particularly odd newsletter from West Sussex County Council this week. Delivered via email, it looks like this in Mozilla Thunderbird.
Why is the council sending me a giant green button with a telephone in it? I genuinely have no idea. I think its something to do with the first story, which has been bumped off the page. This talks about supporting victims of hate crime and ends with a phone number. But there’s no suggestion that this is a story specifically about this phoneline.
The rest of the newsletter has lots of nice, smiling happy imagery of people enjoying council services. Why not lead on one of those?
While strolling around Amsterdam, randomly, we saw this.
Tabby’s school is asking for “2 litre plastic bottles to build a recycled greenhouse. We need 2000 of them… Hopefully we will have a hot summer and you will have lots of bottles to bring in…”
It’s part of a ‘conservation area’ project. I can’t help but think the better message to teach the kids is not to buy the sugary drinks that come in two litre plastic bottles in the first place, from the point of view of both their health and the environment.
Live over at LearnAsOne today. Enjoy.
Walking many kilometres down the Thames in aid of LearnAsOne… so please help out and sponsor me.
Here’s how I’ve described it over there.
In 2009 I visited a school in southern Zambia with the charity LearnAsOne. It’s a pretty astounding place, where an incredibly poor community is trying to make itself better off by building a school.
One of the most remarkable children I met was Saviour. That’s her in the bright green cardie on the left. Both her parents died when she was a baby. She’s not sure how old she is – somewhere between eight and eleven – and she lives with her Uncle and Aunt and their children in a tiny one room hut in Simakakata.
Every day, Saviour walks 7km to and from school. One day, two years ago, I walked it with her. We started at 7am. It took two hours to go one way, and by the time we arrived it was hot and I was parched. Saviour, used to the walk and going full days without water was ready to begin her day proper. I wanted to go back to bed.
This January I went back to Simakakata. The school has changed beyond all recognition thanks to help from LearnAsOne and other charities, like Care International. But they still have a lot of work to do.
When I met Saviour again, she was a changed girl. The first time I met her, she was quiet, shy, and barely spoke to adults. This time she was lively, outgoing, brilliantly funny and – best of all – top of her class in almost every subject.If it weren’t for the school, I’m convinced her destiny would have been little more than to continue the cycle of poverty that has trapped Simakakata for decades. Now, I’m sure she’ll go on to high school, and will have a varied and exciting career and life ahead of her.
I can’t believe the amount of effort it takes just for Saviour to get to class on time, but in the blazing sun or driving rains, she gets there every day. And I’m glad of it.
In order to help Saviour and all of her friends at Simakakata, I’m going to be putting myself in her shoes again. I’m taking part in the LearnAsOne Founder’s challenge. On the 13th August, myself and a group of others will walk the same distance Saviour covers in a week – 46km – in one day, and we’d like you to sponsor us.
We may be walking along the Thames, instead of through the bush. But I hope you can appreciate the sentiment, and help me to make sure that however hard it is for Saviour to get to school, there’s a school for her to go to.
Strange how little coverage this story got this week: Renault is planning on putting solar panels on the roof of its French factories and distribution centres that are capable of producing 60MW of electricity a year. I’ve no idea how that compares to the company’s total power requirements (their stated aim is 20% CO2 reductions by 2016, for which this is one contribution) but will try and find out more this week.
(Via Renewable Energy News)
Nikon has done the logical thing to promote its newest SLR capable of recording broadcast quality HD movies. It’s filmed its latest D5100 advert using a D5100. Link’s via DPReview, be warned it stars Ashton Kutcher.
I didn’t post it over the weekend when I first saw it on Warren Ellis‘ site, but it’s the kind of thing that needs to be replicated as often as possible for posterity. I watch this and think: I want to do more creative stuff. Also, Leonard Nimoy is completely forgiven for the godawful last Star Trek film.
Photorama
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