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Welcome to the Grit Reapers, the podcast for aspiring online entrepreneurs that cut through all the crap in the online business world and dishes out the raw and real truth about what it really takes to have a successful online business.

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No sugar coating, no get rich quick schemes, just honest advice with a healthy dose of humor and hope. We're your hosts, Gayle and Candice, two online entrepreneurs who've been there, done that, and lived together.

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Tell the tale. So if you're looking for straight talk, practical tips, and the occasional reality check to get your online business moving, you're in the right place. Let's get down to business. So welcome everybody, to this episode of the Grit Reapers.

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Hey, Cans, how are you doing? Good, good, thank you. That's good. And I'd love to introduce our guest today, Michael Ogg, who just happens to be my big brother. Hello, Michael, how are you?

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Hi there, guys. Yeah, good to be. Good to be here. So let me tell you a little bit about Michael. So Michael is in the sust development and if there's one thing that I just know about Mickey, is that he is the most amazing community builder.

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Everywhere Michael goes, it doesn't matter whether it is in his personal life, in his business life, there are always people around him and he is always either organizing an event or taking part in an event and getting people, you know, taking part in that event.

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And the reason why I thought he would be great to come on the the show today is because a little while ago he took part in an event called the Tour de Afrique, which was a cycle race, if you can believe, from Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa, about 12 and a half thousand kilometers.

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And yeah, I remember when he was doing it and when we chatted about it, you know, afterwards, it just sounded like the most amazing event, but it took a lot of grit and determination, so I thought he would be perfect for our podcast.

[02:30.6]
And so, Mickey, let me hand it over to you. I know you've got a good story to tell us, so take it away. Thanks, Gail. Thanks. Thanks, Katniss. Yeah, interesting to be doing this type of thing. It was a while ago, so you said the other day.

[02:47.5]
It was a while ago. I think I still. I think I still had hair when we did it, so. But yeah, the memories live on and I think the lessons live on. So I'm going to start the year before the actual race. We were living in Swaziland at the time.

[03:06.3]
It's now called Eswatini and as you say, full of adventure, doing adventure racing, doing cycling in the area that we live in, and really having an opportunity to, apart from my work, see other areas of Swaziland and meet communities and understand the dynamics.

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I think it was 2003, there was a fairly severe drought in the country. And the country and the people are very much subsistence farmers, so their livelihoods very much rely on good climatic conditions for agriculture.

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And there was a number of years of drought and not much of a social safety net in the country, and people started to suffer. And one of the cycle routes that we did quite often was went through an area called Maula.

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And Makula is a bit of A forgotten valley in the, in the country and started noticing homesteads and, and people beginning to get really hungry and beginning to starve. And I, I've, as you say, I've always been involved in these things from, from university, from Rag, from and you know, what can you do?

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You're never going to save the world but you can do your little bit. So with a group of other people who had started providing food into the Mafat Koula Valley, I decided to do a cycle to raise money.

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So doing my bit to help but also enjoying a bit of cycling. And I looked at the map of Eswatini and I thought well hey, there's a thing, let's go from the easternmost border to the westernmost border in a day.

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So about 150km and we will raise money for, for these people in Mafukula. And I got a few people together. I don't think anyone really knew how tough the day was going to be.

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So I got a couple of people together and 4 o'clock in the morning we set off. We actually had the press there, we had the television there because it's quite easy. There's not much news in Eswatini so anything like that is newsworthy.

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And we set off down the hill. Now Eswatini is a very, very small country. As I say, we were doing 150, 160ks to get across the country and it's, it's, there's a mountain range that runs along the east and a mountain range, that one runs along the west.

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So you bomb off the eastern mountain range down into the valley, travel along the valley floor and then climb up the western mountain range. So we left at 4 in the morning, it was dark, bombing down the, the hill probably got up to 40 or 50 kilometers an hour.

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One of the things you don't do in Eswatini is, is drive at night because of the cattle. And suddenly we were in a herd of cattle and, and I just remember horns and, and bums and, and, and lycra and, and we all stayed upright.

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Thank goodness because that could have put it, put an end to, to the, the trip right there. Anyway, it was a long day, a lot longer than we thought but a very satisfactory day. We completed our objective. Sorry Mickey. Yeah, Can I just interject there?

[06:39.4]
I must just tell you that this is a pattern with Michael. You go for a cycle and he says, oh, it will be, I don't know, maybe 20ks and 50ks later, you still wondering where the 20k Markle is. Sorry Vicki?

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Yeah, no, no problem. So, yeah, it was, it was very successful and we raised some money. We actually got some really good sponsorship, some of the maize distribution and some of the big wholesalers.

[07:10.1]
So it was, it was very successful and it was, it was a single day and, and good stuff. Anyway, a couple of months later, I got an email from one of the people that was helping distribute the food that we raised and she's Canadian and her sister had followed us and her sister in Canada had given a donation.

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And the email said, hey, Mike, you've traveled from east to west in Eswatini. How about going from north to south in Cape Town? And sent a picture of the Tour d'afrique and a description of the Tour d'afrique.

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And of course I was in. Immediately I saw this thing and I was, I was, I was in because, yeah, what, what a better way to spend. Spend your life. And then, and then slowly the realization started to come about that it's not so easy at that stage.

[08:15.2]
It was $5,600 entry fee. It was three and a half months away from work. Suddenly the reality of the dream started, started biting. But I was pretty determined. I wanted to, I wanted to get involved.

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At that time, the company that I was working for had been bought out by a large, a larger international company. That international company wanted to develop some sort of corporate social responsibility program in Africa, which was, which was great.

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And they were particularly looking at the support of people living with hiv because at that time it was a, it was a big issue. And Eswatini had a big issue with that. And they decided in their wisdom that the way they were going to launch this trust, this orphan trust, was by sending the 3,000 people that were part of the company a Christmas card and say, hey, Happy Christmas.

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And by the way, we starting the Gold Trust for Orphans and we'd like everyone to donate $10 a month. And, and I looked at this and I saw an opportunity and I thought, no, no, no, no, no, listen, if you want to launch the Golda Trust for Orphans, why don't we put a Golda team together to ride from, from Cairo to Cape Town and we will get eight riders because the eight legs on the ride we'll get a rider from each country that Golda works works in and then we will put up, put out a bit of a social media campaign.

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Believe it or not, social media wasn't a big thing in, in those days. And, and we will, we will use that as the platform to raise money. Much better idea. So Anyway, I pitched it to the company.

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It was about in the October and the race started on the 14th of January in 2004. And to their credit, they came to me and they said, well, listen, if you can get a team together, we will support it and we will use the ride to, to launch the Golda Trust.

[10:41.3]
So then I was scrambling. I, I decided that I would do the first leg because that would give me another six weeks to find people for the, for the later legs. I got one or two other people interested and then I, just before the close in the December, I sent a message to the, to the company.

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I said, I've got my team together, even though it had a few gaps in it and we're going to go for it. And they were great, they supported it and we were able to do it. So the interesting thing was, as you can imagine, October, November, there wasn't much time to organize.

[11:28.8]
We got our entry in, we got our entry fee in, we got one or two emails from the organizers and then the next thing we were on the plane to Cairo and not we, it was just, just me because obviously I was going to be handing over to someone in, in Khartoum.

[11:48.1]
Anyway, we, I got to Cairo and got told to go to the hotel that the organizers told us to go to and there were other people that were doing the tour at Afrique there. Not many, not as many as I thought.

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And there were no race organizers. So it was just us at the hotel. And the day went and the night went and the next day went and the next night went and it was just us at the hotel and we were convinced we were meant to be doing something.

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One or two other people arrived anyway. Eventually the, the organizers arrived. They had, they had got a bit stuck. They needed to get some logistics sorted. They needed, they had a South African crew that was going to support from Sudan that needed to get through Sudan.

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So all's well that ends well. And we set off from, from Cairo. There was a group of 32 cyclists. Some of those cyclists were doing the whole route from, from Cairo to Cape Town and some like me were doing.

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There was no other relay team, but some were just doing the first leg to Khartoum. And, and that's the thing about the race is you can do the whole thing or you can just do a leg. It was, it was, it was great. It was, it was fantastic. You can imagine driving out of Cairo.

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Cairo has 16 million people on a bicycle. We were well looked after by the military. They didn't really want anything to happen to tourists. So they looked after us very, very well, but we still had a lot of traffic and stuff to, to contend with.

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The, the trip itself was interesting in that we didn't particularly stay in any campsites or anything. We just rode 100, 150 kilometers and then just camped on the side of the road. So in the desert there's not much water, so no such thing as a shower.

[14:00.7]
The wind was really strong, so down we, we, we went out to, to the, the Suez Canal and then headed south down the Red Sea and the wind was really howling from behind us, so luckily behind us from a cycling perspective.

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But when we camped, then everything just blew away. I think that one of the, one of the things on a, on a trip like that is obviously health and hygiene.

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So when you're in close proximity to people, you've got to be really careful not to spread diseases and germs, especially in Africa. And I think very quickly that wasn't really heeded and very quickly a stomach bug started going through the group and, and I think when that happens, you just know it's, it's your, your terms come your turns coming up in.

[15:00.2]
I was extremely lucky that when the, when the stomach bug hit me, we were actually camping in a, in a parking lot of the tour buses use on, on when they going up the Red Sea from, from, from the Nile up to, to Cairo.

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So you have hundreds of tour buses. Obviously Egypt is, is full of tourists and they stop at these, at these sort of rest rest houses. And I remember running into the toilet to go and do my thing and thinking, well, thank goodness we here because I'm not joking.

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There must have been a line of 40 toilets. So it was, it was the, it was the best, the best place to have any stomach problems. Yeah, we, yeah, it's, it's amazing story.

[15:51.0]
I just wanted to ask you because I'm sure people would be wondering. So, so you had, so you had people like supporting you as you rode and then providing you with food and whatever. Like how much of the stuff did you have to carry?

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How much of the stuff was provided to you? Like, everybody obviously didn't ride at the same pace. So how did, how did the actual logistics of the race work now? Good question. So, yeah, so you got given a little box and that was your life and everything that you had to take.

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Your tent, your clothes, any spares went into your box, your box got loaded up. In the morning, there was a race briefing. A race briefing in, in the morning, which essentially gave directions and and bearing in mind there were no Google Maps and stuff. So it was.

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It was a written sort of. And then the truck, then we would leave and then halfway through the morning the truck would come past and overtake us. We didn't travel in groups particularly, but we did tend to sort of get into rider groups that riding of a similar pace, although you didn't have to.

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Some people decided, you know, just did it by themselves. There was always a designated lunch stop, so they would give us lunch and then a designated. We would find them on the side of the road, a designated camping site. So.

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So you were basically self sufficient during the day, except for a lunch stop. And then at night you take your box out, put your tent up in Egypt if you could with the wind. Otherwise you'd just have to dig a hole and hope for the best because it really was windy.

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So, yeah, we had a lovely trip down the Red Sea at a place called Port Safargo. We cut inland, so we went over a set of mountains. The first time we'd been into mountains, which was quite nice, A bit of change of scenery and then we popped out on the other side on the Nile.

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And basically from that point the route all the way to Khartoum followed the Nile. So that was quite nice to see how the Nile was the source of sort of life in the area. From the desert really down the Red Sea and very deserty to sort of understand the people living next to the Nile, why they did that and the agriculture that the Nile supported.

[18:30.8]
So it wasn't all about cycling. We managed to see the temples at Luxor. We went to the Valley of Kings. We went on the various tours and made our way down to Lake Aswan and so to Abu Simbel, which was really nice on Lake Aswan.

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Abu Simbel is an interesting temple in that when they flooded the lake, they actually moved the whole temple. So they actually, piece by piece, they moved the temple five meters up and aligned it and did everything.

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So that was really, really nice to see. We then jumped on the ferry because they are at that point in time there were no border crossings, no land border crossings between Egypt and Sudan. We then jumped on the ferry and went through to Wadi Halfa in Sudan.

[19:38.6]
Now I know that that Sudan has had many issues, many political issues. Right now Sudan is very, very unstable. But even in those days, Sudan was a bit of an unknown. I'd been very lucky that I'd done some work in Sudan.

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So I knew Sudan. But it was really interesting to see those people that didn't Some people were quite apprehensive, especially the Americans on the group were quite apprehensive about going into Sudan. But it was absolutely fantastic and I mean I knew that it would, the people there were absolutely fantastic.

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They would come out, offer us water, offer us food if, if, if we needed. And, and those two weeks in Sudan were, were, were definitely a highlight. They were a tough two weeks. So we had come off tar roads in, in, in, in Egypt into some really Quite heavy sand, 4x4 type of country in Khartoum.

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So the riding definitely went up a level. I was quite glad in a way because I couldn't keep up with especially the Dutch riders and the Belgium riders on the, on the tar. But as soon as we got a bit bumpy then the African rider was able to come into his own.

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So it, it wasn't a competition, but it's always a competition. So yeah, each leg had a winner and yeah, I really wanted to win one leg because I had visions that one day this thing was going to be like the Tour de France and then I could claim that I'd won a leg of the Tour Afriq.

[21:24.7]
But I managed to get, I remember it was on the, on the 14th of February I managed to get a second price and the only reason I, I remember to the 14th, sorry, the 7th of February is because it's Lauren's birthday, Lauren's birthday.

[21:40.3]
I managed to get a second place. But that was the, but anyway, I, I, I, I digress. So sorry Mickey. That's amazing. And just talking about like how it got quite a lot tougher. I know what it's like riding in sand and toughness and then you said, so it was two weeks and it's two weeks of riding every single day.

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Well, I mean you've just come off. How long did the, did your leg take you? It took about six weeks altogether. Okay. And did you ride pretty much every single day? We had a rest day once a week. So there was one, one race day and yeah, so the rest day we had in Sudan was in the place called Dongola, which was, which is famous for its zoo, believe it or not.

[22:30.3]
So Dongola has a, has a world famous zoo. You don't, you don't believe these things until you go and experience them. Sorry, carry on, cat. I'm just curious like on average how many K's were you riding a day?

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So in Egypt probably a hundred, which wasn't too bad most of the time In Sudan probably 50 or 60. So quite doable. You know, it was, it Was quite doable. It adds up.

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But you, you fit at the end. Yeah, you are fit at the end. But you know what? It must just be. It must be such a mind game because I know what it's like. There are times that you're feeling absolutely great and you loving it.

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And there are times like when you were talking about the wind. Like, for me, wind on a bicycle is just. It's just miserable. Especially you said, luckily it was coming from the back. But then I guess when you're trying to sleep and it's just windy and dusty and like, it must be a real mind game to just say, right, I'm going to put my clothes on.

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They're probably still dirty from the day before, you know, like, definitely still dirty. Not probably. No, no, no. Not often. Like proper ablutions. As you said, no place to have a shower. Like, how did you. Yeah, that kind of aspect of it for six weeks.

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So I think, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one and it sort of goes to some of the things I said in the introduction is, why, why are you doing this? I think any of these things, they, they. They're basically two drivers in there.

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There's an internal driver. I set myself a task, I set myself a goal. We going to ride every single inch from Cairo to Cape Town. And there was a prize called the EFI prize.

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Every frigging inch. So that was a big internal goal. You've set yourself that goal. In my. In, in. In our team, it was quite interesting because while I could do that for my leg, everyone else had to have the same internal drivers. And we did.

[24:56.4]
And we did as a team. We did every inch. Wow. But so, so, yeah, it was that internal, internal. Set yourself a goal. I'm going to do it. And yes, it is going to be tough, but it's also going to be fun. I think the other thing that struck me is this external purpose.

[25:15.9]
So I knew that we were doing this for the Golden Trust for Orphans. We knew that a lot of people had our backs and a lot of people had really put their head on a block a bit for us to be able to do it.

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I mean, there was a leap of faith from me, but there was also a leap of faith on the company that this thing was going to. Was going to happen. I mean, just as an aside, you can imagine the risk assessment. So even in those days, it wasn't quite as. As severe as nowadays, but trying to fill in the risk assessment, you know, what form of transport are you going to be using?

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What countries are you going to be going through? Can you name the hotels you'll be staying in? It's like. No. So, so, but, yeah, so a lot of people have done a lot to get us there, but I think, I think the bigger prize, and I'll talk sort of the outcome at the end, but the bigger prize was knowing that you're doing this for a good reason.

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Yeah, and, and, and, and quite frankly, if you hadn't got up every morning and if you hadn't done every inch, that goal would have been realized, but that was really the overarching purpose that there. So, I mean, I think, you know, defining your purpose really helps to build the resilience and, and, yeah, make sure that you, you can do it.

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Michael, were there any people on this race that weren't like, experienced riders or was there like a quality? Like, did you have to qualify to ride? Not at all, no. No. So this was totally a fun ride in inverted commas.

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And obviously there were people that were really, really, really good cyclists and there were people that were, were just there for a good time and, and some people would do the 100ks in three hours and some guys, people would take 10 hours to do the 100ks, but they would stop, they would have coffee stops, they would, you know, so, so, you know, they were different people.

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I mean, just talking about some of the people, there was one guy from Switzerland that had lost both of his legs, so he was riding as a double amputee. And that was really quite something that was really, really interesting to see.

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Just very simple things that we take for granted, like going to squat in the middle of the desert to do your stuff. If you don't have lower limbs, you can't squat. So how do you do your stuff? I mean, it's like, you know, just a very simple sort of thing. So, so he was, he was very, very inspiring there.

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There was another big American guy, really big guy that, that obviously wasn't a cyclist, but he was doing the whole thing. I met him at the end in Cape Town and he wasn't such a big American guy anymore, but he was the whole way through and he, he would battle to finish every day, but he would come in with a smile and a broad American accent.

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And so, yeah, we had, we had a lot of different characters. We had some. We had a couple of youngsters, but mainly older type people. So, yeah, interesting, interesting mix.

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And was there, like a lot of camaraderie amongst the group, like helping each other and encouraging each other and like, what Was the vibe like amongst, amongst the cyclists? Definitely. I mean, you can't do that. You can't do that without getting that group dynamic.

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You, you, I mean, you know, that group encouragement. You, you just can't. And it goes from everything. It goes from sort of helping with the cooking, helping with the washing, helping people that are battling to put up their tents, helping fix bikes on the side of the road. No, there was. So I, I think, I think that, you know, things did change.

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I think, you know, I was only there for six weeks, but the. Were there for three and a half months. There were definitely some sort of irritations that started developing and I did hear when we met the group at the end that there had been a few incidents, but I mean, that's kind of to be expected.

[29:45.0]
But, but generally, no, generally it was very, very good. Anyway, so we, we carried on. We had one interesting time in the desert. As I say, we were following the Nile and navigation was quite interesting. But there was one turn off that we.

[30:02.8]
And I, I had looked at the map and I kind of knew this was the right turnoff that we had to take. But a lot of people weren't convinced because essentially we had been next to the river, which was a bit like a comfort blanket.

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You can't get lost and then suddenly you disappearing, you're taking a right turn and you're going 30Ks in the desert where the river took a loop. So you could have followed the desert but it would have been a 60, 70K loop as opposed to a 30K straight.

[30:34.7]
And I made the call with a couple of guys and I, once I'd made that call, I didn't doubt myself. It was really important and I think it was from the adventure racing days. When you make a call, you can't doubt yourself. You can't get, you can't get 20ks into the desert and then turn around and go back.

[30:53.5]
You've got to, you've got to carry on. So, so a couple of people followed me. They were really glad a couple of people didn't. We saw them that evening. Actually. That was the one evening that, that the guys had to go out and, and rescue people. So that was, that was quite fun.

[31:09.4]
And then we arrived in Khartoum and I know Khartoum quite well. We finished and we camped for, for two nights in Khartoum at the Khartoum Yacht Club. There is a yacht club in, in Khartoum.

[31:25.5]
It's on the confluence of the Blue and the, and the White Nile. So where the Blue and the White Nile meet and handed over to a chap by the name of Bill Berry. Gail, you might know Bill. Yes.

[31:41.5]
And Howex, I handed over to Bill who, who did the next leg to, to Addis Ababa in, in Ethiopia. Bill was a bit. Bill also knew Sudan. He was a bit. And he was a runner.

[31:58.0]
He wasn't a cyclist, so the cycling thing was a bit foreign to him. And he, he probably had the toughest leg because Ethiopia was tough. Climbing up to Addis Ababa is a, is, is. Is a lot of uphill.

[32:14.6]
Going through the Blue Nile Gorge is a massive day, day in the saddle. But also it started heating up. So he, you know, I left in the middle of January, Northern Hemisphere winter, quite cool.

[32:30.0]
If anything, I, I was cold rather than hot. As we started getting to Khartoum, it started heating up, but poor Bill got the real brunt of the heat. So he was, he was heading south as it, as it was heating up. Yeah.

[32:45.6]
And then we, we basically had people from the rest of the company, right? We had a couple from Australia, a couple from the uk, another girl from, from South Africa, and we've, we continued down and then we, we met up for the last couple of days and cycled with the group into Cape Town.

[33:16.3]
So that was, that, that, that was, that was good fun. So, yeah, I mean, all the others had had various stories to tell about their trials and tribulations, but as I said, we did, we did the EFI as a group. Amazing. We had a little mascot on the, on our handlebars, a little elephant.

[33:34.4]
That was our mascot. And so the elephant rode on the handlebars all the way down. He was a bit. Bit of. He was a fluffy toy, but he was a bit of a shredded toy when he got to. But yeah, he, he went all the way down. And, and yeah, I mean, the great outcome of that was Golda launched the Trust and because it had been rooted in Eswatini in a way, they were very keen on finding projects in Eswatini.

[34:09.0]
And when we did the first cycle from east to west in Eswatini, we ended up in a place called Bulembu. And Bulembu was an old asbestos mine. And what happened over the, over the years is a group of NGOs got their hands on this old asbestos mine and all of the infrastructure and turn it into a massive village to support orphaned and vulnerable children in the country, many of them affected by hiv.

[34:42.5]
It was a massive undertaking and is probably one of the biggest and most successful social transformation projects around that I know of. So they have this whole village schools. They, they, they rooting it in, in entrepreneurship.

[35:01.5]
So they're trying to get some sort of income generation which then looks after the social side of it. So very much what Golda was, was set up to do. And the very first check that gold distributed as part of the Gold Trust for Orphans was to Bulembu.

[35:21.6]
And a year, probably a year after I'd finished, I organized another ride from east to west and cycled into Bulimbu and handed them a check. At that stage, it was for a million emolangini, so a million rand.

[35:40.8]
Wow, that's amazing. And, and I'd say that. And they still, to this day, 20 years later, still supporting Bulembu. And I would hazard a guess that probably 20 to 30 million Emolangeni has been given to Bulembu from, from Golda.

[36:02.6]
That's a guess because I haven't been too involved. But I, I do get their social media and I have seen all the, the, the operations they're involved with since then. So while it wasn't directly linked to the ride in a, in a way, in a way the ride definitely helped.

[36:22.1]
So that's the story. And what an amazing story. Just, just sitting here listening to it again, Mickey, I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten parts of it, but it really is just an amazing undertaking. Like, yeah, and as, I think, as you said, like, and just as you were talking, it just, it reminded me on this business side, you know, so often when you in a slump or like, things are tough, people will say to you, like, what is your why?

[36:53.8]
You know, and you really do have to put that down. You kind of have to wake up each day and be like, okay, this is, this is why I'm doing it. And then when you can remember that why, it just makes those tough times a little easier.

[37:11.2]
You know, I was thinking. Sorry, sorry. No, I was thinking between you and Gail, because Gail also tells me, oh, I'm just going for a ride this morning, we'll meet at 10. I'm just doing like 40ks or whatever she says to me.

[37:30.4]
And I'm like, I think you guys have a very different definition of like, what is. And then they had to go rescue people that night, which was fun. And I'm like, oh, my God, this does not sound like fun at all.

[37:49.1]
No, no. So I mean, it's interesting that, I mean, we obviously really enjoy it. And I was just going to say that, you know, basically now cycling and these type of adventures are part of our life. So, I mean, I Think since then we've done.

[38:06.4]
Not necessarily to raise money, but more, I mean as Gail was saying right in the beginning, just to get people around and, and have fun. But we've done, we've done some amazing cycles in South Africa, we've done the whole of Namibia, we've been to Sri Lanka, we've been to Sweden, we've been to.

[38:22.2]
We've seen the gorillas in Uganda into Scotland. So yeah, it's really taken us places. And Gail, just to let you know that Eswatini is flat and in a couple of weeks time when you come and cycle here, you'll have no, no, no problem.

[38:38.1]
On the flat planes of Eswatini. We're doing a, what's it like a seven or eight day cycle through Eswatini in April. So. Looking forward to that. Yeah.

[38:54.6]
Okay. Well, Mickey, that was amazing. Thank you so much, Kenz. I don't know if you have any other questions. Was just, it was like, I just kept visualizing like the actual like roads and you know, and the people and the weather and then the wind and.

[39:12.7]
And I mean I do think like you saying, you know, you and your family, maybe this is like your adventurous spirits, you know. So like you're used to this kind of thing, you know. But I do think you have to have a certain like, disposition in like, even if you're used to that kind of thing, there are days where like the wind also gets to you and like the not bathing and the.

[39:37.2]
And you know, and that if you. And I really loved what you said about just like there are going to be those days. But you had a double whammy, like motivation, you know, you had the internal one and the external one, which I think if you've got both of those, just like your chances of finishing what you've started on are really in your favor, you know.

[40:00.5]
And I just also love how casually Michael speaks about it. Like it's like also casual. And I would be like, oh my God, this is so heat. We did it and then we did this and it's like, it's an, it's just an incredible thing.

[40:16.7]
I like love, I told you at the beginning, I love stories. I love listening to people's stories. It just sounds incredible. Like, wow, well done. Great. Well, thank you very much. Okay, well, we'll link all of Michael's info.

[40:32.8]
Maybe if people want to see about the project, Michael, you know, like maybe you can send us some links, people can have a look at what actually happened with that. Sure, yeah. I mean that, that, that, that would be great. Yeah. Especially around Bulimbu. And, and. Yeah. And that. Yeah. So. So they, they.

[40:48.3]
I'm pretty sure there is a web page, so I'll, I'll send something to you. Awesome stuff. Okay. We'll link that all for our listeners. Okay. Well, thanks very much again, Michael. And it was lovely to hear that story again. And, yeah, it really is just, it is quite an amazing story when you think about Africa and sort of the conflicts through Africa and, you know, just. Yeah.

[41:14.2]
Just everything about something like that is just incredible to have done. So thank you again for the story, and we will chat to everybody again next week. Yeah, thanks. Bye.