DAY 115 - SIROKI BRIJEG TO IMOTISKI, CROATIA: 23.2 MILES (46,400 STEPS)

13 August, 2011—Wobble on the Way…..

23.2 miles (Total:  1087.5 miles) 46,400 steps (Total: 2,108,291 steps)

‘If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.’ Proverb

It is one of those unwritten rules of my life and my walk that I tend not to look back, but to look forward. I am an optimist by nature and by choice.  I often say that my blood group is ‘B-positive’, but at the same time I am critical, even dismissive of what I have done in the past. When I look back, I get depressed as I think of all the things I should have done, but haven’t and all the things I shouldn’t have done, but did.  If that is your nature then you can see why the hope of things to come, is so much better than the things that are or have been.

Probably for a whole host of reasons, I found the time in Mostar caused me to ‘wobble’ on my walk like nowhere else had. There were the stories and visible signs of war and atrocities that were like ghosts, trapped spirits in chains, unable to find rest in eternity. There was the stand-off between the great religions in the divided city. There was the encounter with Ivan Bagaric, which exposed (albeit in an inspiring way) my own inadequacies for the task on which I am embarked.

Most of all I had a rare treat in that I had satellite TV channels in my room and so was able to catch up on Al Jazeera— and I saw the full extent of the horrors unfolding on the Horn of Africa. As I lay on my bed watching the TV screen, which was placed at a near impossible angle, I saw the scale of the human tragedy unfolding in Somalia and I was moved to tears. I lay awake and wondered what on earth I was doing wasting my time on working for a truce to come into force next year, when the need of the hour was so acute.

I convinced myself that I needed to do something and thought that I should abandon my walk for truce and instead do a more traditional sponsored walk to help raise funds for the impressive international effort to aid the victims of this famine. Next morning I wrote to my support team back in the UK and tell them of my decision and ask for their thoughts – fully expecting them to see this as a positive shift of focus from a ‘distant dream’ to an immediate need. I was wrong. The responses were that I should stick to the cause of truce—others were mobilising very effectively, especially our own government, to respond to the crisis and they would do their bit, but I should stick to the mission. There is a Proverb that declared ‘faithful are the wounds of a friend’ and I found the faithfulness of this small group of friends utterly affirming and uplifting, and not for the first time.

I recalled advice I received from an experienced Conservative Party Agent in my early twenties who schooled me in what he termed ‘Postage stamp politics’, which meant ‘Stick to one thing until it is delivered.’  I decided to donate my daily budget that day to the Disasters Emergency Committee www.dec.org.uk and to continue on as planned.  I had looked back and wobbled, but then thanks to intervention of others, my eyes were fixed again on the goal of seeing the Olympic Truce widely implemented for the first time. I regained my balance and walked on.