A little introduction to why I need to climb mountains!

 A little introduction to why I need to climb mountains....

Simply put, I like to climb mountains. I like to dream about mountains and I like to stand on the summit of mountains. This is a blog about mountain climbing and…

“A woman’s quest to climb 1 million metres by conquering the worlds 7 highest peaks on each continent, 7 highest Islands and 7 highest Volcanoes for a cause: to feed 1 million children through creating sustained community projects.”

For those who know me, know that I possess a passion for adventure and a mission to push out the boundaries to inspire others to reach out and be a hero in the life of someone less fortunate or in need. I have endless amounts of energy and tire people out with my energizer life. When my husband married me 28 years ago he did not know what adventure he would be signing up for, nor did my three beautiful children know what a crazy mother they had decided to take on.

 I love the outdoors, changing lives, inspiring others to reach their full potential and beyond, I love my animals and grew up mostly within the midlands farming community of Kwa-Zulu Natal.  Growing up on farms and having the mountains on my doorstep allowed me to fall in love with these majestic beautiful monsters that capture our human quest for adventure, our will to conquer the unknown, to explore and to discover.  I had a bit of a tough time growing up so taking my horse and my many dogs with me, I would head for the mountains, to escape and dream of freedom, a new world and a different life that I would make for myself.

Now as I work as a full-time advanced life support paramedic, I find the thrill of the climb, the adventure and the tranquility of the summit an escape from the pain of losing a patient or when I cannot change the outcome of what I have witnessed.  In a way the ghosts of my patients are left on top of the summit. I come back down with new dreams, refreshed and free of the burden of failure.

In 2005 I founded a team of ladies called Team Zodwa. At the time I was a reservist with the local fire department.  I put a team of ladies together to take part in 2 World Extrication and Rescue championships one Cape Town, South Africa and the other in Barcelona, Spain.  We also put together a team of girls that competed in the National Champs in Pretoria, South Africa. It was a huge challenge not only to find the right girls, but sponsorship and we also sadly had very little support from the men.  It was something new and different having a bunch of female medics and fire-fighters walking out onto the competition platform wearing pink and black extrication gear. This was a man’s world, how dare we as females come and take part, we were breaking sacred ground and the men were not happy with us. 

This feat attracted a lot of media coverage and it was during this that I realized we could use this to our advantage and give back to the communities we serve.  Unfortunately the other ladies in the group did not feel the same and the extrication team slowly fell away leaving Khabo and myself who wanted to climb mountains and save the world.  

This was actually Robby Kojetin’s fault that the 7 summits dream came about.  I was happy just to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, then I met Robby.  Robby said to me; “why stop at kili, why not the 7 summits”. At the time I did not have any idea what the 7 summits was about, my interest and my curiosity was spiked.  I researched it and the Team Zodwa Fire and Ice was born. Over the years we have assisted many of the needy through donations of food, furniture, supplies and money donations. Not sure quite when this notion occurred but somewhere in an interview I jubilantly stated that I was going to climb 1 million metres to feed 1 million children in South Africa. Sheez! I was not thinking very well. Once I had finished the interview, I went home to add up the 7 summits and the metres involved. Oops! they did not come to 1 million metres, nowhere close in fact. I then had to get my brain working overtime to fix this one.  


Another brain-wave 
I would climb the 7 highest points on each of the 7 continents, 7 highest islands and the 7 highest volcanoes. This was now starting to add up now.  The biggest challenge would be to find the right mix of ladies and the sponsorships needed to achieve such a feat. Back in April 2010 I lost my climbing partner, Khabo Maduna Legote to her policeman husband, upon our return from a successful summit of Kilimanjaro, her husband shot her 7 times, killing her and killing our dream.  Khabo wanted to be the first Black South African Woman to summit Mt Everest and the first to complete our Team Zodwa 777 Summits. Fire and Ice was our idea as fire fighters and paramedics – fire (the fire fighter) and ice (the high mountain summits). I was devastated and lay low for some time. This year I aim to get the serious mountain climbing back on track.

If you have ever taken part or watched the 702 walk the talk and seen those crazy chicks dragging pink car tyres behind, well I’m afraid that’s me. Over the past 8 years Team Zodwa has evolved into a group of women firefighters and paramedics to women who help to create sustained community projects which will not only help with employment and social enterprise but will feed the little kids that I so wanted to help. We climb mountains; take part in extreme events and crazy challenges to raise money, sponsorships and awareness for our community projects. We no longer hand out food and money as the lines of those in need just seem to get longer. Now we look at creating sustained projects, training the community in skills, social enterprise which leads to the communities in supporting themselves and not relying on handouts.

We also facilitate our Mentoring Mountains programme on Leadership, including our Metaphoric walks and climbs.  These entail taking a group of people on walks, hikes and climbs around Africa and overseas. We also assist in using Transient walks as a profiling tool for investors and social enterprise projects. We are currently scouting various walks and hike in and around South Africa and will blog our findings.

Over the next couple of months I will blog about our climbs and the projects around the climbs. We have many exciting events from dragging out pink car tyres at various runs, to adventure runs and climbs.

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