FINDING MY LIMITS

As many of you know, I manage a charity which I founded in the south of Nigeria about 12 years ago. We have an orphanage and a trained team that rescues and look after children who are stigmatised as witches and ostracised by their families and communities.

Today we have close to 40 kids in our centre and we have witnessed their amazing success over these years, especially in the education. We have a girl who has reached university level and is already completing her second year; a boy in college studying public administration and many other of our kids are constantly the best students of their classes.

Unfortunately, it is always a challenge to raise funds to keep our project going considering we are 100% non-profit. I count on my friends who became a team of volunteers to help me and we raise funds in our spare time.

With the pandemic what was difficult became even harder and we have accumulated some arrears in our project. To try to resolve the situation and get our finances back on track we need to raise £4000. So, after a long consideration this coming Saturday I am going to do a long bike ride around Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire to try to raise as much funds as I can. I was registered to try to repeat “Chase the Sun” which I did four years ago, cycling 200 miles in a day, from sunrise (4:30am) to sunset (10pm) from the East coast to the West coast. This time I would do the North version from Newcastle to Ayr in Scotland. However, I have had to reconsider it as I have not managed to train enough and with all the challenges and cost of logistics, support car with volunteers, I thought it would be a bad idea to go up north with a good chance to fail and do it so far from home. Hence why I have transferred it to do several different loops in Herts/Beds and put the money I was going to spend to travel up north towards our target.

I will set to try to beat my own record, 330km but, if there is any chance I can do it again, the only way I would manage to do it would be finding cyclists friends to lead me in segments of this distance shielding me from the wind so I can save some energy. So, if you are a cyclist, have a gap on your calendar (I know it is a bit of a short notice) and could help me with that please get in touch and this week we will plan your support.

On top of it, I would be forever grateful, if you all could consider donating any amount toward our cause. We are also looking for people to become financial partners of the project by donating monthly £10, £20 or £30 so we can build up a regular income to the project and focus our energy and spare time to solve other important issues that often rise in our child centre.

To get to know more about the work we do in Africa, please visit our website www.waytothenations.org

I want to anticipate that I am not sure how far I can make. Four years ago (and 4kg ago) I did 320km within 20min for the sunset. This time I am setting to 330km but may not even make 200km. But, as I said in the title, I will find my current limit and I will push it.

. Please also don’t forget to follow our Instagram ‘waytothenations_org’ or facebook page ‘way to the nations’.

Wishing you all a blessed week and see you around!