Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Hi All

 

I am from South Africa and on the beg. I have a young African, Sidwell, who helps out around the stables after school. I taught him to ride last year and this year he will be doing his first long distance in the form of 4 competitive trail rides on my mom's 20yr old retired arabian :-).

Due to circumstances few African's ever get an opportunity to ride competitively in any form be it dressage, jumping etc. and few will ever own a horse. Sidwell absolutely loves the horses and treats them like his own. He comes from a family of 9 children his step dad works but not his mom. They stay in a one room corrugated house, with no water (use a communal tap) or electricity and an outside "long drop" toilet at the Weiler's Farm squatter settlement south of Johannesburg (I am providing some links for you to see how truly unfortunate most of these people are, http://www.joburg.org.za/unicity/region12.stm; http://www.altawheed.org.za/weilers.html ). Even living in these circumstances Sidwell is the happiest person I have met in ages :-). He hopes after school to go into the field of computers and help his family into better surroundings, he is saving what he gets from me to pay his way through collage.

I recently saved an anglo arab colt off the abattoir truck and have promised him to Sidwell for endurance, we have started him slowly now as a 4 yr old and will introduce him to endurance in 2 yrs time at the moment he is doing LSD and hopefully a few competitive trail rides this year as well.

I have horses off my own and am a single mom who works full time, we are a large family living together on a plot and things can get expensive sometimes. I can carry the cost of feeding the colt and supporting Sidwell in his training and covering ride entries and gas to get him there, I do also have a saddle for him and have given him some jodhpurs as well, what I cannot supply is all the other essential that go with doing endurance and this is where my begging comes in, if any of you have any unwanted tack, riding boots, blankets, books etc. laying around that you could afford to send to Sidwell we would be most appreciative. We can offer in return a monthly rundown of his training, ride photos, regular results and mention of you as a sponsor.

 

I hope that any of you can support. Currently out of the more than 1000 registered riders we have here in SA we have only 4/5 African riders most of them riding as paid grooms for the horse owners, Sidwell will on the other hand be the "owner" of his own horse which will be a major boost for his confidence and an example to many other horse loving underprivileged children.

 

Kind Regards

 

Celeste Murray on behalf of Sidwell.

(South Africa)