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| TX: 10.10.05 - Disabled Adventurers PRESENTER: PETER WHITE |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE Beyond Boundaries is a new TV series starting tomorrow night on BBC2. It follows 11 physically disabled people as they trek through Nicaragua from the Mosquito Coast on the Atlantic, to the Pacific - a journey last attempted and only half completed by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Well the Paralympian basketball player Ade Adepitan is going, he's one of the 11, he contracted polio when he was two. And also a wheelchair user Colin Jevans is - next month he's planning to drive through Europe and across Africa back to his home city of Cape Town. Now apart from the personal challenge he's hoping to raise money for Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, that's the hospital which treated him after his car accident five years ago. So why do people feel the need to undertake these challenges and, as I asked Ade, why so publicly? ADEPITAN I'm the sort of person that loves challenges, you know, I love to push myself and find my edges. And the chance to cross the Nicaraguan jungle I just thought - I mean it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. WHITE But you're already a high achiever with your basketball achievements, you're a burgeoning broadcaster, so what did you think you were going to get out of this? ADEPITAN Basketball and the TV, you're in a controlled environment, you know what's going to happen but this was just basically taking me out of my comfort zone. WHITE Some people would say that your disability takes away enough control, I mean why would you want to take away anymore? ADEPITAN I've had a disability since I was six months and I always think I'm in total control of everything I do. WHITE Let me bring in Colin at this point because your life experience is very different because you had a driving accident five years ago which led you to become a wheelchair user. So would you have thought of driving home if you hadn't had the accident? JEVANS Being born and brought up in Kenya I've always had the dream of doing a trans-African expedition and after my accident and after finishing university I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to do it and also to raise a lot of awareness of what is possible and raise some funds towards spinal injury. ADEPITAN I think people tend to assume when you have a disability everything is over, you know, because people are so used to living in their able-bodied world, we're all on this earth to kind of explore and take ourselves to another level, whether you've got a disability or not. JEVANS Someone said to me in the hospital when you've had an accident you're the same person as you were before your accident and what motivates you and drives you then is still the same after an accident. WHITE Ade, just to talk to you a little about the expedition and the programme that we're going to see. I mean for you how much did the reality of that chime with what you were expecting? ADEPITAN What you're told and the reality and what's in your mind are completely different things. It was extremely tough. WHITE So what - what was tough about it? ADEPITAN Well it was tough - the terrain. We crossed through primary rainforest, you couldn't move more than four foot in front of you without there being serious growth of trees and mud, the average distance we travelled a day I think was something like 26, 27 kilometres, on most days it was close to 40 degrees and 75% humidity. And at the end of the day we had to also set up camp. WHITE Did you not ever just sometimes ask yourself what on earth am I doing here? ADEPITAN Yeah, it started like the two week period, a few people had dropped out with some quite nasty injuries, we hadn't washed for two weeks and you were absolutely cream crackered. WHITE So there was nothing cosmetic about this, people may watch this and say ah well this was a controlled experiment, it was done for a television programme, therefore they were probably well looked after. ADEPITAN We were taken care of - I mean the TV company weren't going to let us completely - to kill ourselves but when you see some of the injuries that people suffered then you know it wasn't controlled. WHITE And what kind of injuries did people have? ADEPITAN One of the guys who's an amputee got a wound in his stump and it became infected, swelled up so much that he couldn't get it back into his prosthetic leg. WHITE I'd like to put this to both of you, perhaps Ade first. What do you think this kind of thing, so the Beyond Boundaries series, what will that say to other disabled people who perhaps find even cleaning the house or negotiating public transport really enough of a challenge? ADEPITAN I don't think people should bracket us all in the same group just because we have a disability. JEVANS What I'm keen to do is just to illustrate what can be achieved. ADEPITAN If people say well hold on this is inspiring me and this makes me want to go out and do something then I think it's great. WHITE But do you understand the people who fasten on this kind of thing and then they think oh disability, job done? ADEPITAN Well I think that's seriously naïve because nothing in life is that simple. And I think our expedition in Nicaragua is probably a stepping stone, it's a start and it's going to open people's eyes and it's going to get people to look at disability in a different way and it's going to get people talking. JEVANS I know when I had my accident I lost an incredible amount of confidence in just doing the simplest things. The same during my accident, somebody sent me a book who'd just had a similar accident to me and he'd flown an aeroplane over the Channel and that really inspired me. WHITE And just give us a sense of your route - exactly where you're going. JEVANS When we leave Stoke Mandeville hospital we'll be going through France, down to Italy and then get the boat across to Tunisia and then hang a left in Tunisia and go through Libya. Once we get to Libya we'll follow the Nile Valley down through into Sudan and then through Sudan we cross to Ethiopia and then into Kenya - my country where I was born, which I can't wait for - and then into Tanzania where we visit our first project. And from there Zambia, Botswana and then South Africa and Cape Town. WHITE And can I just explore perhaps, Colin in particular, a bit more what was your motivation? JEVANS It was after my accident, I'd finished my agricultural degree and it was at that point that I was unsure what I was going to do and I thought right this will be the chance of a lifetime I'm waiting for and get the balls rolling really. WHITE So I mean did you in a sense need a big project, if you like, at that point? JEVANS It's kept me going in the last few years, you don't think about your disability because you are busy and motivated and active. I think if I'd come home from university unable to get the farm manager's job that I wanted because I was unable to do crop walking and everything else required might have got a bit of cabin fever sitting at home. So I think it is a way to keep the mind going really. WHITE And Ade, are you going to carry on pushing boundaries do you think? ADEPITAN Yeah I hope so and I think, as Colin is saying, you need to keep pushing the boundaries and I wouldn't like the cabin fever of being bored and I think I'm always looking for the next challenge. I think definitely expeditions are the way forward. WHITE You can see Ade on Beyond Boundaries tomorrow night on BBC2 at 9 o'clock and we will be following Colin's trip to Cape Town on this programme as well. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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