The first working day: early in the morning we went to the centre of distribution to organise ourselves and the five Amaroks, standing there in a row waiting for the big tour to start. But first we have to pack everything into the back of the cars: food, kitchen stuff, water, tools, spare parts, advertising material and all our personal belongings from clothes to a sleeping bag for everybody. We manage to get every Amarok filled to the roof, but there is still some space left for driver and co-pilot.

At 2pm the first official meeting. Mark Warsaba, VW manager for the West of Canada, the German Consul General Hermann Sitz, the representative of the IHK Sascha Bardens and media representatives from Vancouver are present to welcome the team at the VW representation in Vancouver. Also the working force of the distribution centre is present and Joachim Franz explains the expedition and the motives lying behind the awareness tour.

After some interviews we drive back to town, just to experience that taking Diesel is not the usual thing to do in Canada. Petrol station after petrol station offers everything except Diesel. At the same time, the hunt for a suitable petrol station gives us the opportunity to test the cars with a full load.

Finally we head to the popular Stanley Park to do some film and photo shooting – and experience many people taking note of our cars, taking flyers and asking for more information about the expedition.

At the end of the day we head back to the VW distribution centre to park the cars for one more night – tomorrow we will be back early, to leave Vancouver and head towards the USA.

Filed under: Uncategorized, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Move the world, stefan hippler

Today is the day: we commence our long way to “move the world“, the AIDS awareness expedition 2011. The starting day is also a day to bid farewell in Wolfsburg and Berlin, in Bad Camberg, Nizza, Cape Town and Norway. For almost four months we will live and work apart from our life partners, children, families and friends, for all of us not an easy decision and a daily challenge.

In Birkenfeld the mayor, Mr. Schebler, bids farewell to Sandra and Uwe from Unterfranken, a part of Bavaria. The parish priest, Rev Fr Possmayer wishes us well, luck and he bestows a blessing on us and the whole team. And last but not least a word of greeting from Rudolf Wukovich, president of “be your own hero e. V.“ concludes the farewell cermoney.

The day continues to be a long one: two hours flight from Frankfurt to London, followed by another 10 hours of flying to Vancouver. With the stop over of two hours we need more than 14 hours to reach our first goal.  Our emotions are a mixture of excitement, melancholy and the feeling of responsibility. We would like to succeed in adding to the fight against HIV and AIDS in a meaningful way.  Not easy to catch some sleep while flying against the time, but most of us are simply lost in different thoughts, interrupted from some dozing away in between.

It is late afternoon when we arrive in Canada, Lothar and Gudio are our welcome team, having been here since Friday to do some preparation for the cars. They are waiting for us at the VW centre of distribution in Canada.

We arrive at our hostel in the middle of the old part of Vancouver; take a bite before falling into bed and hanging on a last thought before dozing away: We have completed the first step in our adventure to “move the world”.

Filed under: Uncategorized, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Move the world, stefan hippler

Move the world means also making a detour

That is not how we did imagine it: We introduced the theme of our expedition for 2011 „move the world“ – but never imagined that people take this literally in many parts of the world.
The constant flow of new crisis areas is forcing us to reorganise the route of our tour. The imaginary „W“-route  (standing for world) which we wanted to follow received some cracks, but that is life We want to safe lives by doing our awareness expedition, but not put at risk unnecessary our lives.

In the moment we are really sometimes don’t know where to start with reorganisation. And it affects not only Arabic countries. One example is Mexico: A travel warning was issued while there is an ongoing drug war. Or Colombia: When we started planning, it was an easy job. But now it seems FARC and drug cartels restarting their fight against the government. In Ecuador we will arrive on the day of a referendum regarding the new constitution – unrest and violence is expected and there is a ban on gatherings.  So how about gathering for a „Round Table“?
Regarding the Americas we have no chance but to get through, partly with the assistance of police and military.

And have a look to the top of Africa. We had to skip Tunisia and Algeria for the danger of being abducted during route through the West-Saharan countries. We now go via Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso and Nigeria knowing of the risk of Al Quaida and various militias. How the situation is in Sudan and Egypt when we arrive there nobody knows. Add Jordanian and Syria – lots of open question marks in the moment.

Well, last but not least the disaster in Japan. We were aimed to go from Vladivostok to South Korea and then continue flying to Australia. In the moment it will only remain a plan. Experts speak about the risk of more radiation in the area – so there is the only solution to plan and to hope for the best.

So at the end we will go with plan A, plan B and sometimes plan C in the pocket – what this means for the logistics you can only imagine. New visa applications and the organisation of new „Round Tables“are keeping us busy

At the end, we pan and will see how it works out – a sort of excitement we don’t really need seeing all the usual commotions planning such a tour.

Why take we on this challenge?
The answer is simple: We know that moving the world is a huge task and we can’t run away when the first difficulties arise. 1.8 million people have died as the consequence of HIV and AIDS in 2009, 14 millions kids have no parents in Southern Africa due to the pandemic. 33 million people carry the HI virus. That is simply not acceptable. So we will return to the drawing tables as many times as we have to do to change the route, always having our aim in front of our eyes.

We keep you informed…

Filed under: Uncategorized, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Move the world, stefan hippler