PREFACE
Royal Challenge Accepted 1956-2006
This unedited reprint of my book, written when I was 23, celebrates the 50th anniversary of my 52,000 mile world trip in 1956.
My objective was clear: get around the world with only £5 in my pocket. I also had two related ambitions – to go up the Amazon and down the Congo rivers. Apart from that I had no fixed travel plans and moved around as opportunities arose. Flexibility, adaptability and determination became essential ingredients in my vocabulary and have remained with me in my subsequent career.
Looking back, six events highlighted the trip – getting 2800 miles up the Amazon, crossing magical Lake Titicaca, appearing on Art Linkletter’s TV House Party programme in LA, sleeping with great leather-back turtles on the East coast of Malaysia, meeting Sherpa Tensing in Darjeeling, paddle-steaming my way down the Congo. And there were tricky moments – smuggling whisky and nylon on the Amazon, changing a puncture at 15,000 feet in the Andes and sitting on the loo on a rusty cargo tub carrying grain, with an over-fed rat keeping guard.
Would the trip be repeatable today? Only with a huge amount of planning to cope with bureaucracy, gone even madder. And you would have had to be equipped with an over-stuffed wallet. But such a meticulously planned journey would lack spontaneity and there would be huge obstacles today in trying to pick up casual paid jobs. So, sadly, I have to admit that the challenge was probably only uniquely achievable in the 1950s. At least today the gap year at university provides a valuable opportunity for students to stretch their legs and minds in communities and projects elsewhere in the world.
After the trip, it was inevitable that the world would lure me back. The poverty of what was then described as the “third world” could not fail to touch an idealistic streak. There was another thing which fired my enthusiasm to work “overseas”. Despite the tough environment and the struggle people had to survive, there was always some music in the air, bossa nova in an Iquitos bar on the Amazon, taraab in a coastal bar in river road, Nairobi, lingala in the Congo: a zest for life in the warmth of the tropical sunshine – and laughter everywhere.
So perhaps it was not surprising that I landed a career with the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC), an organisation which seemed to me at the time to embrace all the right motives – helping people to help themselves out of poverty. Royal Challenge Accepted had shaped my desire to do something worthwhile “overseas”. It stimulated my interest in promoting economic development in South East Asia, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. It was time to participate.
CDC, with funds from the British Government, pioneered a number of exciting development projects.. Three activities have made a particularly contribution.
Firstly, although subsistence smallholder farming had been around for a very long time the challenge was to introduce cash crops whilst maintaining the traditional staple food production, thereby enriching local rural communities. That seemed a wholly desirable objective. Two, of the many successful smallholder agricultural programmes, were the Federal Land Development Authority in Malaysia and the Tea Development Authority in Kenya.
Secondly, bringing affordable home ownership, through low cost house construction and imaginative mortgage finance arrangements was surely a worthwhile endeavour in Malaysia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. And thirdly, developing finance initiatives in fourteen emerging economies, targetting small and medium-sized activities. That seemed an appropriate way of helping to diversify economies and spreading ownership. Unhappily today, maximising growth in emerging economies is hampered by “first world” protectionism, the cost of which far exceeds the quantum of aid flows.
I put down deep roots, particularly in Africa. These have nourished me after retiring
from CDC . Since then, I have maintained strong links with the three UK-based Africa business associations, the Africa Centre, the Royal African Society and the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF)
The key to sustainable development in any country revolves around education and health and the sense of ownership by local communities. That is why the work of AMREF in helping communities deal with water and sanitation problems and coping with malaria and HIV/Aids is so important and, happily, increasingly effective.
We now have little excuse to be ignorant about what is going on in the most remote corners of the globe. The internet and mobile phone have shrunk the world. They do not, however, make it any easier to get around on a fiver.
June 2006
