If you were in the vicinity of African or New Street on Tuesday evening you may have noticed a large group of students following five donkey carts from pub to pub.
If you were in the vicinity of African or New Street on Tuesday evening you may have noticed a large group of students following five donkey carts from pub to pub.
The Donkey Pub Crawl this Tuesday evening – which included washing, feeding and grooming the donkeys at Fiddlers' Green – was part of the No Danger Diaries (NDD) initiative, a project started by four friends in 2012.
Capetonians Sebastian Davies, Frederick Ross, Daniel Becker and Travis Stedman describe themselves as a group of four young guys who enjoy having a great time and using it to “share the joy.”
“We started making a list of all the things we would love to do, almost like a Bucket List, in 2012 and managed to complete 30 tasks in one year,” says Davies.
These included zip-lining in the Transkei, running down Table Mountain naked and many others.
In 2013 the group approached sponsors and extended the reach of the project by adding charitable tasks to their to-do list.
“We realised that you don’t have to be an NGO to help people or make a difference. So for every two tasks we complete on our list, we do one charitable act," says Stedman.
“There are many people who do not have the opportunity and resources to lead the lifestyle we do,” emphasised Becker.
“Our aim with the charitable acts is to acknowledge our privilege, and afford people who do not have the same opportunities, a fun time with us while we complete our tasks.”
Showing the beach to someone for the first time was the charitable act for the Grahamstown leg of their week-long national trip, taking Nombuyiselo Ngqisha and Ntombekhaya Notyhawa from Joza for a relaxing morning on Port Alfred’s beach. “I enjoyed it, but I was scared of the waves,” says Ngqisha.
“It was good to have a day off. My friends are going to be so jealous, and next time I come I might swim, when the water isn’t this cold,” says Notyhawa.
