FEEL GOOD
A walk to remember Noluvuyo Bacela
At five cents per step three guys walk through South Africa, from Jo’burg to Cape Town in a bid to raise funds for orphans
E
ight days after setting off on a trip that was initially supposed to take 16 days in conjunction with the 16 days of Activism against Women and Child Abuse, Sello Motau, Thabang Nkuna and Mike Ntsibane arrived in Cape Town. Exhausted, sunburnt and a bit delusional the three had just completed a strenuous walk through South Africa from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
to- little by little we do a lot and falls under the Wits student structure, United Africa Youth Movement Improvement Organisation. The idea is that each person would contribute five cents per step. For example 1km would equal R100 rand which is equivalent to 2000 steps to raise a million rand for an education fund for orphans. Because the Karoo was dangerous during night time Sello would walk towards his fellow travellers and seek shelter. “I’d make them drive 10 km ahead at night because it wasn’t safe but because of dehydration and the heat, it was a logistical nightmare,” he says.
the road is harder with no support
a team makes all the difference Sello Motau was accompanied by the two Witwatersrand University students Thabang and Mike who respectively acted as “physiotherapist” and administrator. With not much of a budget and medical assistance he depended on these two to keep him sane, hydrated and on track. “It was so exhilarating; especially with the right team - the one time I hurt my muscles because I forgot to eat and was walking too much and they had to remind me,” says Sello.
bitjie bitjie maak meer The drive behind the campaign was “Bitjie bitjie maak meer” – which directly translates
you are losing our mind- it’s underneath you, surrounds you, it’s everywhere!”
training is essential Training for the walk meant going uphill, walking fast on the road to obtain about five km on the street and eight in the gym because there are no obstacles. “If I hadn’t gotten my mind around how some people would want to run me over on the road, I would’ve gotten hurt. Some trucks would actually swerve and every little grain would hit me. I had to literally walk on the yellow lane all the way to Cape Town and only one person stopped to ask why I was walking alone - I was 30 km away from the mark,” he says. “With literally no life for 100km at a time in the Karoo, when I think about it I wouldn’t have stopped for myself either. The whole time I kept wondering how it looked from behind. At some point I thought I was losing dehydrated with no medical assistance. But now that we’ve done it once we definitely want to do it again.”
to support the initiative please go check out their page on facebook – Uayio Alkebulan
Because their student structure is independent of SRC, they lost out on sponsorship due to the new Wits SRC body and had to fund their walk from their own pockets. From boycotting compiling applications for every precinct they had to walk through, to ducking hail for eight km and sleeping three of the eight days on the road in the car and one on a golf field in Kalkfontein were just the tip of the iceberg for Sello. “The Karoo is heavy, it’s so hot and at some point you feel
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