Happy beneficiaries of Bellamy adventures meet their intrepid hero
High-five from a little girl who cried when her brave hero had to leave
A tiny child attaches herself to a muscular calf, squinting into the shimmering sun to see the man she and her school friends have all been told about.
This man has swum entire oceans and rowed icy seas to raise funds for her school.
SA’s ultra-endurance athlete Cameron Bellamy squats next to the little girl in the dust and they share a gentle high-five.
This week Bellamy toured some of the deep rural early childhood development (ECD) centres his charity, the Ubunye Challenge, supports.
The 37-year-old South African, who is now based in San Francisco, uses all his ultra-endurance, record-breaking swims and other feats to raise money for the charity which in turn supports early childhood and other education projects in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
He has been part of mind-boggling, bodysapping, record-breaking endurance endeavours over the past year to raise funds for, among others, the coincidentally named Ubunye Foundation in the Eastern Cape.
The foundation supports and assists 16 ECD centres with over 360 children in the province’s rural areas.
Braving the notorious stinging box jellyfish, currents and water so warm that it can dehydrate distance swimmers, Bellamy completed the longest channel swim in history in September, taking just 56 hours to swim the 151km from Barbados to St Lucia.
He barely gave his body time to recover from the arduous swim, which left him kilograms lighter and blighted by exhaustion and “salt mouth” a horrible condition in which the mouth swells and splits from the saltwater.
Just over two months later in December, he and a top team of world record-breakers chalked up another world first by rowing the more than 1,000km across the notoriously rough and icy Drake Passage from Cape Horn in South America to the Antarctica. They achieved the so-called #ImpossibleRow in just 13 days.
Cape Town-born Bellamy spent five years studying at Rhodes University, where he developed his love for the Eastern Cape and an appreciation of just how poor the province was.
But it was years later in 2009 on a 6,500km solo cycle from Beijing — where he had resigned his job as cyber security specialist — to India that he hatched the plan for a charity.
His passion had always been education and this is where he wanted to direct his efforts. He touched base with ECD specialists Di Hornby and Lucy O’Keefe in Makhanda who directed his attention to the dearth of ECD facilities in the Eastern Cape.
“We decided that is where our focus would be in the Eastern Cape. Ubunye Foundation is remarkable as they know what is happening on the ground and is in touch with communities and what they need.”
Bellamy said he was amazed by the tour of the ECD facilities in the rural areas around Peddie this week.
He gazed over the drought stricken interior as Ubunye Foundation programme director Mzi Badi skilfully directed the foundation bakkie over the pitted gravel roads.
“Just seeing how far these centres have come and what they can do with the funds makes us want to do more and more to raise more money in the future. It is very satisfying.”
His charity has funded many of the brightly painted edu-trainers at some of the sites as well as internet and tablet learning.
The little girl does not want her hero to leave. ECD practitioner Noluthando Bhengu peels her off Bellamy’s leg and swings her onto her back as she weeps and stretches towards him.
“I’ll be back,” he said.