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Get on board - African voices need to be heard!
After three months of travelling, the 'Get on board' bus made it all the way to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, the final stop for thousands of messages collected from across southern Africa.
On the 31 March 2005 ActionAid embarked on an epic journey across Africa in a small bus — a matatu, the most common form of public transport in Africa. The journey started in Johannesburg and ended in Scotland on 8 July at the G8 summit. Along the way it has visited people in the poorest parts of South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.
You can follow this amazing journey on a special Get on board website which is full of pictures, reports and weblogs direct from the Bus. You can also add your message to that of thousands of people in Africa and read the messages picked up along the way.
While in the UK the bus visited 10 Downing street where the team with Emma Thompson, gave the messages from Africa to Tony Blair. Emma had her own message for the G8:
"The lack of action, after all the hot air, is appalling," she said, "it shows that our leaders do not, after all, consider these issues important and that they are therefore blind to the unnecessary and brutal conditions in which most people live."
On the 8 July the bus drove all the way up to the security gates of the G8 summit where Brendan O’Donnell and Ivy Maina, who have been on the bus for the whole journey, gave the G8 their messages. Of this momentous journey from Jo'burg to G8 Brendan said: "Driving a bus from Jo’Burg to Gleneagles may not be an immediate solution to Africa’s problems but it must give them hope. It gives us hope."
photo : ©David San Millan/ ActionAid
Jo'burg to g8
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