Paddling against pollution
Three men in their kayaks face a gruelling 2500km on their own.
Oars, pots, cameras and anything else one might possibly need to survive a three-month, 2500km long river-journey cover the floor of the living room.
Amid this organised chaos, I find a South African, a Canadian and an Australian ready to embark on a journey to educate locals along the way on keeping our rivers healthy.
Based in Ermelo, the master brain behind this expedition, Franz Fuls, matriculated at the EHS and completed his degree at the Technicon of Pretoria.
Franz is an industrial engineer and has been practising in Ermelo for the past four years.
A keen rock climber, Franz complained to a friend one day about the state of the nearby river, to which his friend replied: “Stop complaining and do something about it.”
The idea for Triwaterstour was born.
Franz bought himself a kayak, learned to paddle and started the search for two companions to accompany him on his journey.
He first stumbled on a prospector from Adelaide, Brett Merchant.
A true adventurer at heart, Brett had done a solo expedition of similar length on the Murray River in Australia.
Brett’s the funny guy in the group and his Australian sense of humour will surely ease the tension after a long day’s paddling.
Canadian Troy Glover completes the trio. Passionate about experimental education and a B.Sc. in a water-related discipline, the teacher from Wemindji is no stranger to adventure.
Troy is a keen photographer and his favourite pastime in the spring is to get into his ocean kayak and dodge icebergs in James Bay.
The guys have never paddled together, so, after a two-day search and rescue training session together in Parys this week, they will be ready to start their journey on Friday after four years of planning.
Their journey starts off at the origin of the Vaal River near Breyten and will end on 16 April at the mouth of the Orange River at Alexander Bay in the Northern Cape.
With everything but the kitchen sink packed into and strapped onto their kayaks they’ll embark on their journey to empower riverside communities to become custodians of their own stretches of river.
They plan to introduce these communities to the Mini-SASS system, a tool that will enable them to monitor river health and report problems to the necessary authorities.
The Triwaters team will also take samples along the route that will be tested afterwards.
Their progress can be followed on the website www.triwaterstour.com.
Educators can also register their classes on the site for interactive updates. The program is linked to both the Canadian and South African curriculums.
Links to Twitter and Facebook can also be found on the website.
