Getting into Adventure Green

AFRICA WITH AUTISM
THEY SAY FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE. NO MORE SO IN THE CASE OF MEL AND
SOFIA COWPLAND, WHO TOGETHER CONQUERED THE LENGTH OF AFRICA
Sofia has Autism. Autism
means you don’t have the
ability to process information
about your environment. Before
the trip she wasn’t going outside,
and getting her out the house
when it wasn’t for school was
like starting WW3.
The idea with this ride from
London to Cape Town was to open
her eyes to the world and allow
her to see it for herself. Of course
there are safety issues with taking a
child with autism, or any child for
that matter down through Africa.
But the need to keep safe shouldn’t
always prevent you from doing
things.
Sofia had mixed feelings. She was
part excited and part nervous. The
same really for anyone going on
a big trip. You don’t know what’s
going to happen. All you can do
is prepare yourself for the time
on the road and so during the
planning stages I kept her really
involved. I’d told her that when
driving through Europe the first bit
was going to be horrible; wet and
windy, but that we’d just have to get
through it. By the time we made it
to Austria it was so cold, but Sofia
wanted to carry on.
“IT WAS LIKE
SHE EMBRACED
THE IDENTITY
OF BEING ON
THE ROAD”
The trip was from our home in
England all the way down to South
Africa. We spent two weeks getting
from the UK to Athens in Greece
where the bike was sea freighted
across to Egypt, whilst we flew.
From there we took a steady pace
down through Sudan into Ethiopia,
where a few problems with the bike
slowed us down a bit.
Kenya followed, then Tanzania on
a transit visa. It’s here we began
to see giraffe, wildebeest, zebra,
buffalo and impala along the
roadside. Into Zambia, Zimbabwe
and finally down into South Africa.
The trip was approximately 25000
kilometres and exactly 9 months.
Mid way through Africa I’d noticed
some change in Sofia. She’d started
to pay more attention to her
environment. That was a really
big thing to witness. She’d notice
when it was a beautiful view. She
started to become more confident
and began to communicate with
people. It was like she embraced
the identity of being on the road.
Her confidence level had really
gone up.
In terms of danger on the road,
it helped that the bike’s a real eye
catcher. If everyone’s looking at
the bike it makes it very difficult
for someone to come up and do
something bad to us. But people
were so nice the whole way and we
never had any problems, especially
when they realised it was a mother
and a child travelling together.
The biggest problem was with the
bike. We had countless breakdowns,
at one point leaving us stationary in
Zimbabwe for three months waiting
to get it fixed. It was a combination
of factors that caused the problems
with it. Possibly a bit of poor
maintenance, poor road surfaces
and probably just a bit of bad luck
thrown in for good measure. But it
made it.
The bike is a Ural Sportsman, built
in 2003 and had 14,800 km on the
clock when we set off. The changes
we made to it before the trip were
minor. We fitted an extra battery
in the boot as well as fixings for a
spare tyre. A new stronger driveshaft
was fitted to the side car as
the Ural is two wheeled drive. We
removed the rear seat from the
back of the bike to make room
for a storage rack and two 20-litre
jerry cans. We also fitted a roll bar
to the sidecar for added safety.
Before this trip I’d never ridden
a bike before and passed my test
4 Find out more at www.gettingintoadventure.com