From the back of our Nissan
Navara wagon I’m watching the world flash by from behind black tinted windows;
safe inside.
Really, safe from what??
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| Travelling across the Equator - can you spot the elephant deterrent wires hanging down? |
Safe to be invisible as I
gaze out and allow myself to be carried along by our driver, along a road to a
place that right now means nothing to me.
Safe from the need to respond
to the swarms of Nairobi street sellers who nudge around our car when we slow
down, their eyes pleading with us to buy, buy, buy!!
But, more than that I request safety from heaven itself, that we don’t end up in some treacherous ditch, on the chewed edge of the shambolic and nightmarish roads, as we head north past Kenyan’s equator and into the heart of the country.
The fact is I want everything
and everyone to keep me safe, but to be honest my safety feels more in the hands
of a dice and the other loonies on the road.
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| The entrance road to our new training site, Simba farm - here they grow, pick & process 120,000 roses every day |
On the verge I suddenly
notice a goat tethered to a stake by a piece of tatty rope, its world is only
as big as the arc it can nibble from. Then in a flash the poor animal and its
tiny grazing world is out of sight. But I start mulling on how much of life
actually calls out for us to take risks, break ropes and flirt with danger?
And
it’s got me thinking about the whole issue of SAFETY….and whether any of us are
ever really ‘safe’?
Maslow did a lot of thinking
about this subject too. He enlightened us about our inbuilt craving for safety
and our instinctual aversions to anything that might whiff of danger. Well, it
makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Why would we put ourselves at risk? Why would
you play chicken on life’s electric rails? But then again why not? How do we
get the balance right so we can cheer ourselves on to embrace change, take
risks and dare greatly? Coz we’re only here once!
Apparently, it’s a fact that
as we get older we become less adventurous and more focussed on getting
ourselves as ‘safe’ as possible for old age; snugged-up for retirement and an
undemanding cocoa’n’slippers life.
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| Hit by a dust storm on day one of our training. |
Taking risks is not the same as being reckless. I got BUPA health insurance sorted today because I’m not reckless but I want to squeeze the juice from the orange of my life (gosh…naff analogy…sorry).
As William drives our car through
monsoon downpours, through squalid shanty towns, around stray cows and navigates
disintegrating tarmac and roads that are more like river beds… battling on hour
and hour, lurching me as I type like a pea in a pod and scaring the life out of
me on some occasions when I lift my eyes.
And as all this happens I
keep thinking about what life would be like without the ‘joy’ of risk and
without the willingness to strap oneself in and delight in the ride – scary
moments being a part of the deal.
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| Frank explains the whole process, from harvesting the roses to express delivery into our UK shops |
The quest for safety could
see us missing out on some lush pastures and thrilling views.
At the beginning of Brene
Brown’s book DARING GREATLY, she quotes
from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt, in which he says.
‘….The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly....because there is no effort without error or shortcoming….and if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly’
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| Bath process: 1. secure plug with big toe 2. Hold slow trickling shower - head 3. Keep yourself busy for 30 mins and hope you don't get a power cut |
- JB
