Pretoria to Madrid. Getting JoJo tanks into rural communities.
Meet Dr Cooper and Dr Oosthuizen.
Jean Cooper is a psychologist who plies his trade amongst businesses in the Pretoria region.
Dr De Witt Oosthuizen Is a South African emergency medical doctor who lives in Australia.
Both have hit the halfway mark in life and are on a mission to do something spectacular.
To this end, they have both bought Norden Expeditions from Trax Moto and are well on a life defining adventure ride. And, they have linked it all with something cool! They are on a mission to raise funds in order to get 100 JoJo tanks to rural communities in the Free State.
For anyone overseas, a JoJo Tank is a South African made water collecting tank.
It’s a great cause and, as most are aware – bar the Joburg Larnies who love to water their pavements every morning – water security in South Africa is a proper concern.
Whilst most urban folks can work around it – the rural guys really do have a hard time.
But The Lord gives us water off the roof – and thus, the JoJo tanks make sense. If you fit a gutter, you can catch the dew and rain off your roof – rather than losing it.
The boys are going it alone – no backup to speak off.
Roughly 18000 KMs from Pretoria, through Botswana, through Namibia – and the plan is to follow the coastline all the way up Africa…
And that in itself is not without challenges, given the interesting times Africa seems to constantly enjoy.
In case you missed it, you can catch the interview we had with them right here:
We went to see them off from Trax Moto on Saturday, a festive affair with family and friends wishing the boys “Bon Voyage!”
We’ll try to keep up to speed as they progress. We got news last night that all was well, they had a fairly uneventful trip through Botswana – lots of long, straight roads, Into Namibia – and as of last night they were already in Gobabis.
Borders were smooth, the bikes are running flawlessly.
The heat is going to play a massive role, they have already hit temperatures of 37 degrees – and even in the lightest gear, that takes it out of any rider.
Tar roads most of the way so far… except for the thick, sandy track to the lodge where they stayed last night…
“Tricky” they say, and there’s a lot more still to come.
At the moment the guys are trying to arrange to get more off-road tyres through to Luanda in Angola, but to ship them from SA is just insane…
So they will try to buy some when they are there.
If anyone knows of a bike tyre supplier that side, please let us know, we will pass the info along to them.
These are some pics of the adventure so far. To date they have raised 400 odd K and JoJo has donated a bunch of tanks to the effort.
Go and have a look on their socials – and comms permitting, we’ll follow the journey…
