Eileen and I are going to walk the Moyle Way, 26 miles of mainly off road dandering in the Glens of Antrim on the 19th August this year. We may well will be joined by some of the "AVX Bog Faeries" and perhaps a couple of bods from ni-wild.org this will be a long hard dander for this old grumpy codger and I fully expect to be punctured at the end of it.
So why am I and the rest of the team here cap in hand looking for cash of my friends, colleagues and totaly strangers? Well for the past couple of days the news out of East Africa is getting pretty grim. Only last night I was in tears watching the 10 o'clock news as a child to weak from starvation and dehydration to scream was brought back from the brink by the doctors working the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Built to care for 90,000 it has swollen to 400,000 with 1000 new arrivals everyday each arrival brings chilling tales of horror and anguish like this...
I sit here at my desk, comfortable, warm , well fed and watered and I feel guilty as well I might that I am so well served by my lifestyle. Death does not sit as an un-invited guest at my table each evening I am never faced with making the choice as to which of my family will live and which will die ... I and you gentle reader are lucky, really really lucky!
...A mother of six was forced to decide today whether to leave behind her daughter, who is simply too sick to travel, in order to save the rest of her family. Suffering from malnutrition, her daughter wasn't strong enough to continue with their 30-day, 50-mile journey from Somalia into neighboring Kenya. The mother, who was so traumatized that she couldn’t continue describing her ordeal to the doctors or to even give her name, had to leave her child by the side of the road to die where she was left.
Eileen, I and our dandering friends will be walking a mere 26 miles, in comfy boots, well supplied with liquids and sandwiches. We will end up in a pub and raise a few glasses to our achievement but that achievement will be as nothing to those now on the road to the refugee camps right now. There are children dying NOW and we can help NOW.
If you know Eileen or myself and would buy us a pint at the bar at a LUG please please please buy us a pint now, buy us 2 or 3 or even 4, whatever you can manage. Visit our Just Giving page and click the DONATE button and give what you can ...
To quote Bob Geldolf at live aid "Give us your F***ing Money NOW!" :-)
Thank you for reading this far and thank for giving!
