By: Rob Hart,
on 6/10/2015
My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet.My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet. So I wanted to include a picture of Apocalypse Lounge, a bar in Alphabet City I began to frequent right after college. [...]
By: Rob Hart,
on 6/10/2015
My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet.My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet. So I wanted to include a picture of Apocalypse Lounge, a bar in Alphabet City I began to frequent right after college. [...]
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By: Dianne Hofmeyr,
on 6/17/2011
There are some incredible athletes amongst our ABBA bloggers but if scaling Everest only happens in your dreams, read on – Just a few weeks ago on 14th May, a friend of mine, Rob Hart, made the summit and raised $15 000 in sponsorship for the Room to Read Project in South Africa and for building a school in Nepal. The trip took seven weeks, starting in Kathmandu on March 30th, and ending there on May 17th.
The ‘getting down alive’ part is brought grimly home when they came across a Japanese climber who’d died two days before. ‘Apparently he had got hypothemia, become disorientated and when his sherpa tried to help him, he became aggressive and pulled off his goggles, and so they had to leave him. He was still attached to the rope, looking like a wax model, and just a few meters off that path, so we cut him loose and retied the rope so that climbers could continue to use the fixed line.’
‘A quick 9 hour slog up the mountain and I am on top of the world. As you can see I was tired enough to want to sit down. With only 2 of us up there it was impossible to hold the flag out properly - Mike took 3 photo's of me with my flag with his hands out of the gloves in -20C, and this is
I'm fascinated by mountain climbers, while being a complete wuss who's terrified of heights myself. And what a brilliant cause! Awful, the story of the disorientated Japanese climber. Thanks, Di!
Refreshing! You always bring us amazing high skies, pure waves and nature at her most uncontaminated and challenging, Dianne. I can tell it's one of your blogs just from the picture. Your friend, and Room to Read, are wonderful.
Thanks Sue and Michelle... sorry not to have followed up before but a few hours ago flew over your home city Michelle lying like a jasper stone in the midst of all that water. I've been in Le Marche & the flight back flies directly over Venice. Incredible to see such detail from the air... tried to imagine you there! And then found youe comment on return.
Wow!
Leslie
What a beautiful account of an extraordinary event. The last picture makes me cry. Thank you Di. xx Vanessa
One of my very favorite programs at RtR, is their “Local Language Publishing.” They found, after having built many schools and libraries around the poorest countries in the developing world, that the literacy rate was not improving as much as they expected. By digging deeper, they realized that it was because of the books! A child in a rural, poor, mountain region of Nepal (or Sri Lanka, Vietnam, etc…) does not identify with “Curious George Goes to The Fire Station” or “Cat in the Hat”. The storybooks that filled the newly built libraries had no cultural relevance to these children and also, they were in English. Now, RtR is the LARGEST publisher of local language children’s books – they have more than 553 original titles – in languages that no one else would ever publish in – and they use local artisans, authors, in order to create new, culturally-relevant children’s book and it also helps fuel the local economy – The LLP program operates in eight RtR countries (Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Vietnam and so far publishes in 25 different languages.
I have many of these books at home as I use them to show potential donors when talking about RtR. If you have children, or have ever read to a child, you will know what pure joy reading can be when a child has a favorite book. In my home, “The Gruffalo” by Julia Donaldson is a book we ALL love and reading it with our children is a amazingly fun! It is great that RtR lets us give children who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity, the ability to have a favorite book too!
ps - Thank you Di! xx