BEYOND BOUNDARIES
Beyond Boundaries is back. The second series will hit our screens in October, with a new team undertaking an even more demanding trek. Able magazine spoke to one of the adventurers who took part in the breathtaking African expedition.
Last year’s BBC television series Beyond Boundaries attracted more than two million viewers per episode. Because of its phenomenal success, the show’s producers decided it was popular enough to make another series and began recruiting participants immediately after the final programme was broadcast. But this time the expedition was even longer and more dangerous. Eleven disabled daredevils took on nature to attempt an adventure that even David Livingstone failed to complete.
With five weeks to travel 2,000km, the team ventured from Victoria Falls to the Skeleton Coast by foot, crutch and specially designed wheelchair, as well as more unfamiliar forms of transport including a donkey cart, kayaks and elephants. This year’s adventurers included a man born with no arms, several amputees, a woman with achondroplasia, two hearing impaired people, two wheelchair users and a man with Tourette’s Syndrome – all of whom faced their own individual challenges and had different reasons for going; and each of whom brought something special to the team. Taking in savannah, scrubland, white water rapids and the Earth’s oldest desert, they were assisted by expedition leader Ken Hames, who helped Sophie, Amar, Charlie, Ade and the rest through Nicaragua in the last series. The challenges this year were greater, with the participants facing the threat of predatory animals and searing temperatures, along with a longer trek through near-untouched land.
Kim Williams, a 22-year-old Cambridge graduate and social work assistant with children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent, decided to take on this challenge of a lifetime. She applied for the second series on a whim, having watched the first series and seen an advert after the show to recruit participants for a second expedition. Kim has Cerebral Palsy (CP), which affects her ability to coordinate her muscles, leading to problems with mobility. Given that Kim relies heavily on her car in her everyday urban life, leaving the comforts of home and trekking across the wilds of Africa may seem a strange decision. Kim told us: “After seeing the show, I just thought ‘I could do that’. I didn’t have disabled friends before I did Beyond Boundaries so I’m always the only person with a disability. That can be a real struggle when you’re doing very physical things, although it’s not an issue when you’re going shopping and spending time with your friends. I thought the trek offered a chance to really test out what I was physically able to do in a situation where I wasn’t the only disabled person.”
PREPARATION IS EVERYTHING
Kim explained that there wasn’t much time between being told she’d been selected and leaving for Africa – “It was weeks rather than months. I was so excited to be offered a place, but there’s a lot to do, a lot of preparation – immunisations to get, equipment to get. You start to ask yourself how you’re going to manage. There were so many practical things that I didn’t really think about, and the emotional side of it all – I didn’t prepare myself mentally, I was just running on adrenaline.” The adrenaline really kicked in when the adventurers faced their first major trial – white water rafting down the rapids of the Zambezi River, in an extreme bonding exercise just days into the expedition. Ken told his team: “For you, the challenge really begins here. To bond as a team, I challenge you to run the Zambezi River gorge in rafts.” Enduring ten hours on the water, after rocks, a hair-raising woman-overboard moment and more than seven miles of rapids, the team made it through one of the most challenging river gorges in the world.
Yet that was only the first challenge. Days of trekking over deserts, up mountains and through swamps were still to come. “There were some amazing moments,” explains Kim. “I remember being out there with Brian – one of our guides – looking back over this wide open space and seeing the rest of the guys following us. It felt really nice just being there, having the independence. I was proud of myself.” For Kim, one of the other most memorable aspects of the journey was the company of the many locals the team encountered along the way. “In Zambia we met loads of school children which was amazing. Meeting the local people and having them do nice things for us made me remember that I was so lucky to be where I was and to do what I was doing. Getting near the last sand dune and seeing the sea in the distance was amazing. In fact, I can’t wait to see the programme so I can look at the scenery on the telly because I spent half the time looking at my feet!”
Alongside breathtaking views and rewarding experiences, the trip did have its difficult moments. As with the Nicaraguan adventure, some members of the team were sent home or chose to leave the expedition. The heat caused problems, as did the frequent torrential rain, as Kim explains: “I used crutches on the trek and I don’t normally use them. If you fall over in the mud when you’re using crutches you can’t just get up quickly like you usually do and pretend it never happened. You’ve got to summon help to get up, which is hard when you’re not used to depending on people like that.”
Teamwork is, of course, vital in an environment like the African bush, but with a number of strong personalities in the team this year, getting along wasn’t always easy. “I was quite dominated by some members of the team,” says Kim. “There were moments when I thought it was really difficult and I was surprised at how I wasn’t able to say ‘wait for me; slow down.’ I didn’t stick up for myself as much as I thought I would. We did need a balanced team – with nice little me saying ‘Can we all slow down?’ and the scary people saying ‘No, go faster!’ We needed those people driving us on even if we didn’t enjoy it.” Kim turned out to be something of a peacemaker, and that wasn’t the only positive contribution that she made to the group – her cooking abilities also came in handy: “There were a lot of casseroles but it wasn’t gourmet at all. My principle was to use a maximum of two pots – one vegetarian and one meat – and that was it!”
ENDURANCE TEST
Working as a team in an environment where the limitations of human endurance were pushed to the extreme, the trek certainly taught its participants a lot about each other. Kim explains: “It became apparent that I was seeing quite a difference in attitude and approach between people with acquired disabilities and people who were born with their disabilities. For people who have amputations or paralysis, what’s gone wrong is more clear-cut – pardon the pun. They know what they are and aren’t able to do, and that their disability was caused by a specific event. Whereas with me, it’s not one thing that’s gone wrong, it’s a systemic thing that isn’t quite right. It’s always been there as something to deal with emotionally but I don’t have to deal with one trauma that caused my disability. In that sense I don’t feel angry or have the same kind of emotions around finding things difficult or not being able to do things like other people.” However, Kim’s Cerebral Palsy affected her participation in the expedition far more than she anticipated: “With CP it’s quite difficult because it’s not a case of you can or you can’t do something, it’s just that it’s more difficult. I could walk but not very quickly for very long. What was really frustrating for me was presenting that in such a way that people could understand that it wasn’t that I was being lazy, it’s just it’s a lot harder when nothing works particularly well.”
The challenges Kim faced on the African expedition have made her reassess her abilities and her life. She predicts that “Whenever anything else is hard in the future I can look back and say well, actually, it’s not as hard as…”
She is interested in travelling more and the trip has inspired her to get involved in disability sport, something that hadn’t really interested her in the past: “I’d never wanted to get involved in sport before because I went to a mainstream school where I was expected to take part with the rest of the class so sport was always a negative experience for me. The African expedition has made me feel more comfortable about it.”
Kim is looking forward to the broadcast of Beyond Boundaries: Africa and hopes that the series will stimulate discussion and encourage understanding: “I hope that viewers learn that disability doesn’t define people – we were just a group of individuals on a trip. It’s not about saying disabled people should all be out there pulling themselves up sand dunes and crossing deserts. It’s more about saying that if an individual has an aspiration – and that might be dangerous or adventurous – then there’s no reason why their disability should stop them from achieving that.”
More Information available at www.bbc.co.uk/ouch.
September/October 2006
