Holiday Hitch
If you were leaving Oxford by the Abingdon bypass on Monday of 9th week last term, you may have seen hoards of hitchhikers at the roundabout. These were the brave Morocco hikers as they started their 1600-mile trawl through France and Spain in aid of Link Community Development. All 47 Oxford hitchers made it in the end. Of the ten universities which do the charity hitch, we had both the fastest and slowest hitch pair: Ed Davey (Brasenose) and Tina Tolonen (Merton) made it in a staggering 44 hours, while Boris Lau (St. John's) and Nathaniel Charlton (Balliol) took 13 days!
Hitching is an emotional rollercoaster. One minute you are flying high, cruising the motorway at 110mph in the coolest car you have ever been in; the next you have been stuck in a lay-by for 3hrs outside industrial wasteland and it starts to rain. It is such a good feeling when you finally see the Mediterranean Sea. Over the ten years the hitch has been running hundreds have probably felt the same. One week after the set off date there was a meet-up of the Oxford massive in the main square, Djemaa El Fna in Marrakesh, amongst the snake charmers, musicians and acrobats, to sip sweet mint tea and swap stories. Tom Wainwright and Nabeel Irshad's bags were frozen and meaty-fragranced when they took a lift with a sausage roll van. Chris Pell and Oliver Dommett's were first to be picked by an Oxford Don, who took them back for tea and cakes, but their smug grins were soon removed when they were forced to spend the night wrapped in cardboard in a storm drain and, you've guessed it, it started to pour with rain. Tom Rowlands-Rees, Rhiannon John, Tom Wagstaff and myself got an unexpected ride with the Spanish police, when on a routine road check, the officer noticed three sets of knees poking out from under a blanket (five people in a lorry cab is not strictly legal). "In Portugal found some people to hang out with and did karaoke, so I did have a laugh and by the end was quite drunk. Slept on a park bench," said Tom Ross (LMH). "We did France in four days including being fed by a French farmer (four-course meal with the duck his wife killed that morning)," said Andrew Hepburn (Brasenose).
There is a serious purpose behind all this. The money raised goes to Link Community Development, which works in partnership with the local authorities in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda, to improve their education provisions: mainly through teacher training but also installing water and electricity supplies to country schools or providing essential restores, like paper and pencils. It is good teachers that inspire children and, to paraphrase Mandela, drive a farm worker's son to go on to rule a country. So far the Oxford hitchers have raised £11,874 in sponsorship, but we plan to carry on raising money until 1st June. For the last two years the top fundraiser in the country has been from Oxford and a couple of this year's bunch look in the running to make it a hat trick.
The charity was started ten years ago by four Cambridge students who were fed up of the disparity of education in South Africa and decided to do something positive. The programme now improves the lives of over 240,000 children in over 470 schools. Definitely not just an excuse to swan about on a camel in the Sahara!
So next Easter, why not put your trust in your thumb? It is an exciting challenge and a test of endurance and all for an incredibly worthwhile cause.
25th Apr 2002