Good evening all!
On Monday evening I returned safely, happy, healthy and very exhausted from Morocco!
First of all I would like to thank everyone who donated to FACING AFRICA to help fight the terrible disease called NOMA and as far as I can see, donations are still coming in, wow!
In the desert it was a great joy and motivation to receive your emails with all your encouraging and inspiring words. Every afternoon around 5 p.m. the postwoman came around with a bunch of emails – how little do you need to happy! Knowing that there are people who care for you!
Also many thanks again to my ever active little sister Tanya who kept my homepage and you updated on my daily progress. And progress was mighty tough out there I can tell you that!!
Secretly I was aiming for an average of maybe 7km/h but after the first 30km were completed everybodys hopes were crushed into the sand and humbly we all returned to the main goal of managing to complete this hardest desert run on earth.
Oh of course, the Moroccans and others who are used to this climate do have advantages but that’s just one of the difficulties the average westerner had to face: Not only manage your water, food and equipment, but manage the weather, the sand, the stones. Whatever your preparation it’s nearly impossible to avoid blisters. Somewhere your body or you feet will start to hurt after a while. Then you automatically avoid that pain and you shift your weight. What happens then? That part of the body hurts next, you shift again until you get the first of many blisters. And the game continues on the next level… J
But we all knew this beforehand, so we bravely took it on, a usual question at the doc trotters clinic was: Hey doc, are my 8 blisters on one foot an MdS record? J
Or: I’ve just cut away the third layer of skin doc, when do I reach the bone? J
But seriously: It was far tougher than I had thought. I ran (hobbled, stumbled, plodded, totted) whenever I could, the rest of the time I walked. Luckily I never quite came close enough to the ground to actually crawl, but at times I wasn’t far from it…
There were 7 of us in an open tent at night time it was freezing cold in daytime temperatures rose to 43 degrees, but there always was a nice sandy breeze, so you never really felt the heat…
Water supply was sufficient, I had 2600 kcals per day but I didn’t eat it all. Neither did the others, in fact after the second day we were starting to get fed up with the energy bars, so we opened up a bar bazaar. Everybody chucked their surplus stuff in the middle of the tent and whoever wanted anything could just take it.
