JHB North - April 24

RISK & REWARD
We get up to speed with Gaven Sinclair’s action-packed life and adventurous spirit, all
driven by raising awareness for causes, from missing children to chronic disease.
Gaven Sinclair is cycling down a dirt
road between villages, somewhere
in Africa. With pedestrians, cyclists
and people on Pikipiki’s (small
motorbikes) passing by in throngs,
the little sand road bustles like a
highway, even though it’s lit by
cooking fires rather than street
lights. There’s a full moon out,
making it a beautiful night – when,
suddenly, Gaven’s bicycle light
snuffs out. From the rising darkness,
he can just make out the white of a
fellow road user’s eyes as he veers,
panicked, to avoid a collision.
It's not the first time Gaven has
come close to death. Far from it.
The adventure athlete has wended
his way from Cape to Cairo on bike,
swum solo from Ilha (an island off the
Mozambique coast) to the mainland,
run 388km up the Mozambique
coast in six days, and run from
Qherberha to Cape Town in 30 days
– and at different times, he has faced
danger in the form of flooding rivers,
torrential rain, malaria, and even
murderous bandits. He’s run out of
food and money, and found himself
all but crippled by blisters. He’s slept
in backpackers, campsites, police
stations and on the side of the road.
So, what drives him to take on
challenges that would leave most
people clinging to their couch? It’s
simple, really. He uses each extreme
adventure as a platform to raise
awareness for causes, from missing
children to chronic disease.
This is especially important for Gaven
who, as a child, was diagnosed with
dyslexia and ADHD. Later in life, a
diagnosis of chronic fatigue was
added to this list. “I was labelled a
problem child because I couldn’t
focus. My hands would sweat every
time I met someone new, and I
battled to communicate. This is
something that many kids today
struggling with the same issues can
identify with. The problem is that
when you’re treated differently, your
self-confidence plummets, and
you begin to take what people say
very personally. These kids need
to learn that they have been given
a beautiful gift, and they must be
shown how to tap into it.”
Gaven’s compassion for kids recently
led him to pen a teen’s adventure
book, The Golden Skull of Peru.
As a child, Gaven found that one of
his own coping mechanisms was
to immerse himself in sport – which
was the first step towards his current
action-packed life. He has a hunch
that his adventurous spirit is the
legacy of his grandfather, who used
to build boats. “As a kid, I expressed
this by hopping on my BMX and
exploring the world around me.”
As he grew up, tried his hand at
corporate life and launched his own
start-ups, that craving to see what
lay beyond the bend didn’t leave
him. And after watching The Long
Way Around, a documentary about
actor Ewan MacGregor’s attempts
to motorbike from London to New
York, Gaven realised that the key to
his own lack of fulfilment may lie
in pushing himself to his limits. “My
body struggles to produce dopamine
(a hormone which helps produce
feelings of satisfaction), so I need to
challenge constantly. That’s when I’m
at my most alive.”
That can’t be easy for someone
who lives with chronic fatigue – but
Gaven approaches this condition
pragmatically, carefully calculating
how many calories he needs each
day, working out rest and exercise
requirements and, most importantly,
crashing when his body tells him it’s
time to do so.
And it’s all worth it. Gaven says the
lessons he has learned, and the
memories he has made, are beyond
anything he could have imagined.
“One of my favourite occasions to
think back on is the time I arrived at
Lake Turkana in Malawi, sunburnt,
out of money and food, and with a
broken bike. The nomadic tribe living
in the area advised me to board a
boat with one of the locals – along
with a herd of goats. The motor
stopped working after a few hours,
so we were all given buckets made
from cut off milk bottles and told to
bail out water. A little later, we had to
get out on an island so that the goats
could eat. I wasn’t at all sure what was
happening by this point – but, then,
my skipper got out a fishing line, and
soon we were all eating fish caught
just minutes ago.”
That generosity is pretty typical
of the spirit that pervades
our continent, Gaven says.
“Wherever I have gone,
I have met the most
amazing people,
who have been all
too eager to help
me – especially
when they find out
I’m doing this for a
cause. They’re a big
part of what keeps
me going when things
get tough.”
Gaven’s next venture sees
him taking other intrepid
adventurers on slack packing
tours through the Transkei, while
he prepares for another challenge:
climbing K2 or rowing across the
Atlantic. “I’ve run, cycled and swum,
so it makes sense that the next
chapter involves climbing or rowing!”
Details: vip.beepdsmart.com/card/
gaven-sinclair-adventures
14 Get It Magazine April 24