Access Africa
Hilary Bradt
I first ‘met’ Gordon Rattray, author of Access Africa, when judging one of the early Bradt travel-writing competitions. He won it with an engaging story of an incident that happened while working as a tour leader in Namibia. I later learned that he was now quadriplegic – and was about to head off on safari to Ethiopia. His name cropped up again when he was finalist in the Bradt/Independent on Sunday competition. It was at the award ceremony that the idea of his writing this book was first discussed.
Now I know about quadriplegia. In a previous existence I was an occupational therapist, and the job that took me to South Africa was in a hospital specialising in spinal cord injuries in Cape Town. It was South Africa’s answer to Stoke Mandeville, taking patients from a large catchment area in the Cape Province, and helping them towards independence. So my knowledge of southern Africa evolved alongside my understanding of the daunting task facing people who have suffered from spinal cord lesions. Paraplegics, who had the use of their arms, had it relatively easy. The quadriplegics that I was working with had no movement or sensation in their fingers.
This was in the 1970s, and I was working with ‘non-whites’ which meant that there some desperately sad stories along with the triumphs, but what I remember most is the fun and laughter (though most of the conversation was in Xhosa, so I can’t pretend to have followed it all). And the cliché, ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’, was proved true again and again.
Gordon makes light of his disability, but it takes a person of exceptional tenacity and enthusiasm to pursue his interests the way he has. For every Gordon Rattray there are twice as many quadriplegics who have settled for second best. To have achieved what he has achieved is remarkable, but to have written this book – and to have written it so well – to inspire others to follow in his wheelprints, is marvellous. It will change lives, and we at Bradt are proud to have published it.