Where do I even start?
Six months on it all seems very surreal to think it all came together in the end and I have just got back from my trip to Sierra Leone.
In January this year I was talking to my friend Tom who lives out in Sierra Leone working for the Craig Bellamy Foundation about how I desperately needed a new challenge. Typically with the start of a new year I had been evaluating my life and was concerned that time was passing me by without really achieving anything of any great importance.
Throughout these chats I learnt more about what the Craig Bellamy Foundation is all about and what they achieve (more on that later) and I was really impressed. As a volunteer member of St John Ambulance in England I wondered if there was anything I could do to offer assistance. Over the next few months a plan was born..
It took several emails and phone calls but eventually, with the agreement of my senior officers here in the UK, we planned for me to visit the Academy in Sierra Leone for just over two weeks to deliver First Aid Awareness to the volunteer staff members of the League and to take with me as much First Aid equipment as I could possibly lay my hands on.
Basic plans made now came about the task of getting me over to Sierra Leone! With flights not looking cheap my work colleagues at my main employment came up with the idea of a sponsored run to raise the funds needed. I couldn’t have done it without their help but over the space of the next few days we had received pledges for the amount needed, including a generous donation from Goldsmith Williams Solicitors.
With the run scheduled for just a few weeks later this was quite an achievement and I would like to thank you all once again!
The run went off without a hitch although I am ashamed to say I was left for dust by my work colleagues and the sponsorship money was duly collected and the flights booked for 22 May 2013, returning to England 09 June.
I wont bore you all with the details of my frantic panicking to get everything organised on time, including numerous vaccinations, anti malaria drugs and VISAs but it was definitely a challenge and kept me busy right up until the week before I flew. I’m sure Tom and everyone else at the Academy were wondering what they had let themselves in for as they were barraged with email after email from me!
I have never visited Africa before, never mind flown anywhere at all on my own before so this was definitely going to be an experience I would never forget!
