Part school desk, part food tray and, more importantly, a container to take a couple of litres of fresh water back home. The Lifeboard!
Around a lot of Indian cities, towns and villages, groups of itinerant families camp by the roadside near construction sites. The kids are itinerant so don’t go to school – indeed they are ‘economic assets’ from an early age (running errands, fetching water, childcare, hawking…) So how do you persuade the mums to let their kids get a few hours of schooling? One way is to ‘bribe’ them with the lure of fresh water each day taken home by their child after he or she has studied under a tree or in a bus that is a classroom.
Developed originally for use in the South African townships where children walked miles to school and used to dehydrate, these lifeboards acted as travelling hydrators. In India they have been used slightly differently but equally successfully.
On our challenge it is hugely important for us to drink litres of fresh water and our support vehicle will be carry that for us! It’s easy for us isn’t it?