http://www.herald.ie/opinion/susan-daly-our-lucky-little-fighters-are-blessed-with-the-one-thing-money-cant-buy--the-love-of-amazing-parents-2092718.html
From today's Evening Herald
THE greatest accident of birth is that none of us get to choose our parents. Like it or lump it, they are who they are. Some parents love and cherish their offspring; some never take responsibility for them at all. If you're lucky, your folks might muddle along somewhere in the middle.
Then there are the exceptional parents. Those whose children turn out to have extra challenges beyond the basic trauma of being born and having to get to grips with the world. Parents like Angie and Azzedine Benhaffaf from Cork who are proud mum and dad to conjoined twins Hassan and Hussein.
Tiny babies are vulnerable on every level. The Benhaffaf boys have had a bigger battle than most. When their conjoined status was first spotted in the womb, it wasn't expected that they could survive. Now they are three months old and thriving, in part thanks to superb medical care, but also very clearly as a result of their amazing parents.
There hasn't been a set of conjoined twins born to Irish parents in five years. The level of interest in their extraordinary story was always going to be high. Angie and Azzedine -- on top of coping with the very specific needs of their little boys and their worries for their future -- have had to deal with that public spotlight.
How they have dealt with it is a measure of the kind of people they are: and how lucky the twins are to have them as their protectors. Angie revealed how a British tabloid wanted exclusive photo rights to the boys for f80,000. The offer could have been tempting. The boys will need surgery in the near future and their medical costs are soaring.
For the Benhaffafs, their children's dignity was paramount. They would not trade a second of their boys' time for money. Instead, they shared their "great gifts" with the Irish public, allowing all of the media access to their story for free. The whole family -- parents, boys and their big sisters Malika and Iman -- went on the Late Late to show off the gorgeous new arrivals.
"We may be broke but we are morally rich," said Angie of their decision to invite the country to share their joy, rather than sell it piecemeal to the highest bidder. "When the boys look back on it they will be proud we did not accept money for their story," she added.
Even had she never explained her motivation, it would have been clear to anyone who saw the couple on the Late Late Show. They were honest about their concerns for the boys'
health, and the impact on the family as a whole of the new pressures. But what outshone every other emotion in that studio was their tender love for the two tiny mites in Angie's arms.
On one level, the purely physical, those boys have been handed one of the toughest starts in life you could imagine. On every other level, they are blessed.
Most gratifyingly of all, the Benhaffafs have been given what they deliberately never asked for: financial support. Inspired by their devotion, fundraisers around the country have started to fill what has been dubbed 'The Little Fighters' Fund'.
TV chef Clodagh McKenna is just one person who has devoted time and effort to raising money towards the twins' medical expenses: at the weekend, more than 1,000 bikers took part in a charity motorcycle event in their name.
The outpouring of generosity will be helpful when the twins hopefully travel for surgery to separate them later this year. Hopes are high for them -- they do not share any major organs -- but it will be an intricate and tense operation.
But beyond money, Hassan and Hussein have the best support team in the world behind them. Mum and Dad.
Anyone wishing to donate to The Little Fighters' Fund can send a donation to the Permanent TSB branch in Patrick Street, Cork: sort code 99-07-03; a/c no: 16556196
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Global gifts
I would love if people would read this piece and consider giving one of Concern's Global Gifts as a stocking filler to loved ones this year - see the range at http://www.trocaire.org/globalgift
'Kindness is not a weakness'
Having seen the impact of Irish generosity in Africa, Lorraine Keane is on a mission to show that a little kindness goes a long way, both in charity and everyday life, writes Susan Daly (cover story from Irish Independent's Weekend magazine)
It's not often that Lorraine Keane is left struggling for words. But she is as she tries to explain how she felt when she met a five-week-old baby infected with the HIV virus.
"It was the saddest moment of the trip," says Keane. The TV presenter met the baby boy and his 29-year-old mother, Clara, when she travelled to Zimbabwe and Mozambique this month to publicise the work of Trócaire's Global Gifts campaign.
Clara had been very sick towards the end of her pregnancy and she didn't know why. "It turned out that Clara was HIV positive and, because she wasn't aware of it, she wasn't given drugs during the pregnancy to stop the virus passing to her baby. When her husband found out, he left. Now she's living back with her mother, the baby and her other three children."
These are the kind of heartbreaking stories that Keane has been haunted by since her return from the Trócaire projects. "But this is why we must keep giving. Clara's baby still weighs only five pounds, but he put on weight for the first time last week because of medicine and nutrition he received from Trócaire -- Irish people's money is literally keeping people alive here."
The last time I met Lorraine Keane was exactly one year ago in entirely contrasting circumstances. Back then, she was still the central presenter of the TV3 fluff-fest Xposé and posing with her colleagues for the cover of Weekend magazine's Christmas edition. The floor of a ballroom in the Shelbourne Hotel was covered with glittery gowns for the shoot, hair and make-up artists primping and powdering the girls for our photographer.
Keane had arrived with her hair and make-up already styled, courtesy of two of her younger sisters, Tori and Becky, "my A-team". While courteous and professional, she was clearly there to get the job done and get out. She managed -- pleasantly, mind -- to insert her own agenda into proceedings by making reference to her clothing line with designer Michelina Stacpoole.
She happily admits she's a PR person at heart. "My actual qualification is PR. I went to college and studied broadcasting and journalism, but my real qualification is PR, which I did at night."
But this isn't the red-carpet Keane the Irish public is accustomed to. Hair in plaits, in T-shirt and flat sandals, she toured mud huts and schools made of bamboo, seeing first-hand the effects that gifts of a goat, lunch for a schoolchild and clean water have had on lives there.
"We visited the Amazon school in Insiza, Zimbabwe, where the children get their only meal of the day from Trócaire's Global Gifts. It costs an Irish person just €10 to feed one African child for a year. Some of those children were walking up to 12km each way in their bare feet -- they wouldn't make it if they weren't being fed. It's difficult to put into words how heart-breaking they are."
A week earlier, sitting in the kitchen of her home in Dublin, she confessed that she wasn't expecting the trip to be a pleasant experience. "I'm just so scared," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to see."
Hands wrapped around a mug of tea, she said: "I'm not worried about me (physically)," she said, "but since I've had the girls, I'm a mess. I just can't handle sick babies or anything."
At this stage, with eldest daughter Emelia (now six) and Romy (three), her maternal instincts are finely tuned. She was dreading the latter half of the Trócaire trip, to Mozambique. "That's where we're going to be visiting orphanages and AIDS babies, moms and babies with HIV, and sick and vulnerable people," she said. "Those are the people that weren't helped by funding last year but are to be helped by funding this year. It's important to show both sides of it."
Even as she put on a defiant face -- "if we raise money, I don't care what it does to me" -- her speech came more haltingly than at any other point in the conversation. She was feeling particularly vulnerable after the death of her daughter Emelia's schoolfriend, Ruby Ayoub, the little Dublin girl whose meningitis was misdiagnosed twice as swine flu. When I first rang to arrange this interview, Keane and her daughters had just been releasing balloons in a ceremony to mark what should have been Ruby's sixth birthday.
"With Ruby dying, it just knocked all the stuffing out of me," she says. "I'm a friend of Ruby's mom. That Friday [before she died] Ruby ran up to me in the schoolyard wanting to pick Romy up because she just loves babies and it's just ... it frightens the life out of me. That made me fear this trip even more; I get really upset when I see children sick or dying."
Keane comes from a family that values industry. Her father was a member of The Indians showband (and still is; they celebrate 40 years performing next year). Her mother raised seven children and Keane, as second eldest, saw how hard her parents worked to make them happy, to educate them and occasionally to spoil them. "My parents separated 16, 17 years ago," says Keane. "I think they worked so hard that they didn't have time for each other. In the end, they lost what they started out with."
Keane has reiterated frequently since April that her departure from TV3 was a decision based on wanting to spend more time with her family and was something she had been talking about to her husband, Peter Devlin, for months. His new job as musical director on RTE's All Ireland Talent Show must have made any decision that might have affected the family finances a lot easier.
There is no doubt that, on a personal level, she is happier. Sometimes, when her daughters would call out at night she would say, "Oh no, Peter will you go in? I'm just so wrecked and I'm up early and I'm on the telly", then feel awful about it, "riddled" with the guilt of the career mum.
This candour makes Keane likeable -- "kindness is not a weakness" -- but she is clearly shrewd. Because her resignation from TV3 seemed sudden and she was reportedly unhappy with changes being imposed on Xposé from on high, it is understandable that people have been fascinated by the minutiae of her departure. When I ask if she realised that she was "missing out on more important things in life" after she left, rather than before, she shuts down with a definitive, "No. It's why I left".
She spent much of the summer away from Ireland with family -- she and Devlin have a holiday home in the south of France -- so Keane didn't see the Total Xposure! reality contest TV3 ran to find a new Xposé presenter. "Thank God," she says, laughing. "I believe I didn't miss much." She adds: "I always try to get the positive out of things, so I took it as flattery. They took an entire programme over a summer to try and find a replacement."
There's that PR instinct again; the positive spin. Asked about her future plans for TV she says that she "can't give too much away", but adds, "I like talking. You might have noticed, I like dealing with people; I like the idea of sitting down on a couch and being allowed to ask any question you want. Like you are now". So I take it that she's either got a chat show on the cards, or she's cultivating the idea that she would make a great talk-show host.
There is plenty to admire about Keane's personal motto that "just because you're nice, doesn't mean you're marshmallow". She's unapologetic about liking the finer things in life: she began collecting art as a young woman, paying for pieces in monthly instalments from her AA Roadwatch cheques.
Now, she has a small Guggi in her kitchen (a wedding present from the artist/musician who is a family friend) and a giant Graham Knuttel tapestry in her elegant living room.
On the other hand, the family sponsors a child in Nigeria called Clemence, and Emelia in particular is very sensitive to the world beyond the elegant front door of their Georgian home.
"Our children are privileged, as we all are, as my own childhood was. You have to let them know that it's not like that everywhere and to appreciate it," she says, using that as a cue to explain how half a million children in Mozambique don't have birth certs because their impoverished parents can't afford the €10 to register them.
"So as a result, the child's not entitled to anything. Medication, education, food; they can't avail of any of that. So €10 can make a child exist and therefore make them survive.
"I'm in the business a long time and I'm kind of hard to say 'No' to anyway," she laughs.
To purchase a Trócaire Global Gift this Christmas log onto www.trocaire.org/globalgift or call 1850 408 408 (ROI); 0800 912 1200 (NI)
- Susan Daly
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/kindness-is-not-a-weakness-1972399.html
'Kindness is not a weakness'
Having seen the impact of Irish generosity in Africa, Lorraine Keane is on a mission to show that a little kindness goes a long way, both in charity and everyday life, writes Susan Daly (cover story from Irish Independent's Weekend magazine)
It's not often that Lorraine Keane is left struggling for words. But she is as she tries to explain how she felt when she met a five-week-old baby infected with the HIV virus.
"It was the saddest moment of the trip," says Keane. The TV presenter met the baby boy and his 29-year-old mother, Clara, when she travelled to Zimbabwe and Mozambique this month to publicise the work of Trócaire's Global Gifts campaign.
Clara had been very sick towards the end of her pregnancy and she didn't know why. "It turned out that Clara was HIV positive and, because she wasn't aware of it, she wasn't given drugs during the pregnancy to stop the virus passing to her baby. When her husband found out, he left. Now she's living back with her mother, the baby and her other three children."
These are the kind of heartbreaking stories that Keane has been haunted by since her return from the Trócaire projects. "But this is why we must keep giving. Clara's baby still weighs only five pounds, but he put on weight for the first time last week because of medicine and nutrition he received from Trócaire -- Irish people's money is literally keeping people alive here."
The last time I met Lorraine Keane was exactly one year ago in entirely contrasting circumstances. Back then, she was still the central presenter of the TV3 fluff-fest Xposé and posing with her colleagues for the cover of Weekend magazine's Christmas edition. The floor of a ballroom in the Shelbourne Hotel was covered with glittery gowns for the shoot, hair and make-up artists primping and powdering the girls for our photographer.
Keane had arrived with her hair and make-up already styled, courtesy of two of her younger sisters, Tori and Becky, "my A-team". While courteous and professional, she was clearly there to get the job done and get out. She managed -- pleasantly, mind -- to insert her own agenda into proceedings by making reference to her clothing line with designer Michelina Stacpoole.
She happily admits she's a PR person at heart. "My actual qualification is PR. I went to college and studied broadcasting and journalism, but my real qualification is PR, which I did at night."
But this isn't the red-carpet Keane the Irish public is accustomed to. Hair in plaits, in T-shirt and flat sandals, she toured mud huts and schools made of bamboo, seeing first-hand the effects that gifts of a goat, lunch for a schoolchild and clean water have had on lives there.
"We visited the Amazon school in Insiza, Zimbabwe, where the children get their only meal of the day from Trócaire's Global Gifts. It costs an Irish person just €10 to feed one African child for a year. Some of those children were walking up to 12km each way in their bare feet -- they wouldn't make it if they weren't being fed. It's difficult to put into words how heart-breaking they are."
A week earlier, sitting in the kitchen of her home in Dublin, she confessed that she wasn't expecting the trip to be a pleasant experience. "I'm just so scared," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to see."
Hands wrapped around a mug of tea, she said: "I'm not worried about me (physically)," she said, "but since I've had the girls, I'm a mess. I just can't handle sick babies or anything."
At this stage, with eldest daughter Emelia (now six) and Romy (three), her maternal instincts are finely tuned. She was dreading the latter half of the Trócaire trip, to Mozambique. "That's where we're going to be visiting orphanages and AIDS babies, moms and babies with HIV, and sick and vulnerable people," she said. "Those are the people that weren't helped by funding last year but are to be helped by funding this year. It's important to show both sides of it."
Even as she put on a defiant face -- "if we raise money, I don't care what it does to me" -- her speech came more haltingly than at any other point in the conversation. She was feeling particularly vulnerable after the death of her daughter Emelia's schoolfriend, Ruby Ayoub, the little Dublin girl whose meningitis was misdiagnosed twice as swine flu. When I first rang to arrange this interview, Keane and her daughters had just been releasing balloons in a ceremony to mark what should have been Ruby's sixth birthday.
"With Ruby dying, it just knocked all the stuffing out of me," she says. "I'm a friend of Ruby's mom. That Friday [before she died] Ruby ran up to me in the schoolyard wanting to pick Romy up because she just loves babies and it's just ... it frightens the life out of me. That made me fear this trip even more; I get really upset when I see children sick or dying."
Keane comes from a family that values industry. Her father was a member of The Indians showband (and still is; they celebrate 40 years performing next year). Her mother raised seven children and Keane, as second eldest, saw how hard her parents worked to make them happy, to educate them and occasionally to spoil them. "My parents separated 16, 17 years ago," says Keane. "I think they worked so hard that they didn't have time for each other. In the end, they lost what they started out with."
Keane has reiterated frequently since April that her departure from TV3 was a decision based on wanting to spend more time with her family and was something she had been talking about to her husband, Peter Devlin, for months. His new job as musical director on RTE's All Ireland Talent Show must have made any decision that might have affected the family finances a lot easier.
There is no doubt that, on a personal level, she is happier. Sometimes, when her daughters would call out at night she would say, "Oh no, Peter will you go in? I'm just so wrecked and I'm up early and I'm on the telly", then feel awful about it, "riddled" with the guilt of the career mum.
This candour makes Keane likeable -- "kindness is not a weakness" -- but she is clearly shrewd. Because her resignation from TV3 seemed sudden and she was reportedly unhappy with changes being imposed on Xposé from on high, it is understandable that people have been fascinated by the minutiae of her departure. When I ask if she realised that she was "missing out on more important things in life" after she left, rather than before, she shuts down with a definitive, "No. It's why I left".
She spent much of the summer away from Ireland with family -- she and Devlin have a holiday home in the south of France -- so Keane didn't see the Total Xposure! reality contest TV3 ran to find a new Xposé presenter. "Thank God," she says, laughing. "I believe I didn't miss much." She adds: "I always try to get the positive out of things, so I took it as flattery. They took an entire programme over a summer to try and find a replacement."
There's that PR instinct again; the positive spin. Asked about her future plans for TV she says that she "can't give too much away", but adds, "I like talking. You might have noticed, I like dealing with people; I like the idea of sitting down on a couch and being allowed to ask any question you want. Like you are now". So I take it that she's either got a chat show on the cards, or she's cultivating the idea that she would make a great talk-show host.
There is plenty to admire about Keane's personal motto that "just because you're nice, doesn't mean you're marshmallow". She's unapologetic about liking the finer things in life: she began collecting art as a young woman, paying for pieces in monthly instalments from her AA Roadwatch cheques.
Now, she has a small Guggi in her kitchen (a wedding present from the artist/musician who is a family friend) and a giant Graham Knuttel tapestry in her elegant living room.
On the other hand, the family sponsors a child in Nigeria called Clemence, and Emelia in particular is very sensitive to the world beyond the elegant front door of their Georgian home.
"Our children are privileged, as we all are, as my own childhood was. You have to let them know that it's not like that everywhere and to appreciate it," she says, using that as a cue to explain how half a million children in Mozambique don't have birth certs because their impoverished parents can't afford the €10 to register them.
"So as a result, the child's not entitled to anything. Medication, education, food; they can't avail of any of that. So €10 can make a child exist and therefore make them survive.
"I'm in the business a long time and I'm kind of hard to say 'No' to anyway," she laughs.
To purchase a Trócaire Global Gift this Christmas log onto www.trocaire.org/globalgift or call 1850 408 408 (ROI); 0800 912 1200 (NI)
- Susan Daly
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/kindness-is-not-a-weakness-1972399.html
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A whole lot of Rosie
This amazing womans Rosie Swale-Pope, sat down on the side of the N11 to Dublin at 7am on Sunday morning to give me this interview. To find out more about her, go to her website, www.rosiearoundtheworld.co.uk
As published in the Independent last week...
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/naked-men-with-guns-and-wild-wolves--this-global-running-gran-has-seen-it-all-1892575.html
By Susan Daly
Tuesday September 22 2009
Round-the-world runner Rosie Swale-Pope has been chased by wolves and a gunman and has run on a fractured hip -- but says the Wicklow mountains have been one of her toughest challenges yet.
"I haven't been running for a month so it was a little hard," she says cheerfully. The 62-year-old grandmother is currently pounding her way to Antrim from Wexford in a novel bid to raise awareness of prostate cancer.
Her 236-mile run along the east coast of Ireland should be a stroll in the park compared to the five-year odyssey she completed this time last year. Rosie was 56 when her second husband Clive Pope died of prostate cancer in 2002.
"Neither of us knew anything about it," says Rosie, "If my husband had got a check-up and learned about his cancer earlier he would be here today."
Rosie, originally from Co Limerick, took up marathon-running at the age of 48. A few months after Clive passed away, she decided to run around the world, beginning and ending her trek at their home in Wales. Her aim was to raise awareness of prostate cancer but along the way she also generated about £250,000 in funds for orphaned children in Russia.
Rosie set out on October 2, 2003, pulling all her supplies, sleeping bag and tent in a cart behind her. "The idea was born out of my sorrow and grief and I suppose I didn't know if I was running away or towards something," she says.
Her epic journey took her through Europe, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, America, Greenland and Iceland, through extremes of heat and cold. She was hit by a truck, nearly starved to death in the Alaskan wasteland, broke ribs in Iceland and her hip in Canada, chased by a naked man bearing a gun and another who almost chopped her ear off with an axe as he tried to hug her.
When she finally returned to her home town of Tenby in Wales, she hobbled over the finishing line on crutches suffering from stress fractures. She laughs at the fact that this latest Irish trip was almost scuppered when she ripped a toenail off by accident while vacuuming at home.
But, she says brightly, the physical is the easiest part of the human experience to control. "I very strongly believe that the toughest mountains are in the mind. The most wonderful thing in the world is to see a child smile or fall in love, the worst is to see someone sick or in trouble. Life is an adventure to be appreciated."
It is a tenet she has lived her own extraordinary life by. She first attracted attention sailing around the world with her first husband Colin Swale and daughter Eve. She gave birth to their son James on board.
In 1983, she sailed solo across the Atlantic on a 17ft-plywood boat. She has trekked 3,000 miles through Chile on horseback and ran in the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert -- twice.
She takes her trip to Ireland no less seriously than any of those mind-boggling feats. "I had wanted to include it on my round-the-world run but I couldn't so this is a promise kept to myself. I am so proud to be here." Her brothers Nicolas and Gerald still live in her native Askeaton, Co Limerick, as does a woman she refers to as "my mother, although she's not really my mother", family friend Marianne Griffin.
"Ireland is responsible for all the good things in my life," Rosie says fondly. "My grandmother would send me off on my bicycle or a donkey and tell me not to come back until I had something to write about."
The road has taught her many things, but mainly it has shown her that the "magic" of life is in the kindness of strangers. In her Irish run so far, those have included a garda called John who insisted on escorting her over a dangerously narrow piece of road in Wicklow and a hotel owner who insisted she stay the night with them when he spotted her bedding down in her cart outside.
She paused in Dublin yesterday to call in to Tom Dunne in his Newstalk radio show, to acknowledge the support and encouragement he gave her to bring her run to Ireland. No doubt she will find many more admirers on the road to Belfast and the Giant's Causeway, where she hopes to end this trip on her 63rd birthday, October 2.
It isn't surprising that people are touched by Rosie. Her effusive joie de vivre and her modesty at her amazing achievements are highly attractive. It is clear that her choices have led to great personal sacrifice -- she likens her five-year trip to going to war, but her "wonderful" family is terribly proud of her. Her grandson is particularly enamoured of his unusual granny: "He loves wolves, and he's keen on camping!"
As for retiring from the road, Rosie has no intention of it. She is inspired by the heartening letters she received from people who have read her book, Just a Little Run Around the World. Her website, www.rosiearoundtheworld.co.uk, reprints a letter from a urologist who had a patient come to him to have his prostate checked after reading her story. The patient turned out to have early stage cancer, easily treatable.
"If I had stayed at home knitting and gardening, I would not have got the message out," she says.
As for easing up, she just doesn't believe in it. "It's easing off that kills you," she says. "Every day in life should be treated as an act of survival."
Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes by Rosie Swale-Pope is published by HarperCollins and available in bookstores now
As published in the Independent last week...
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/naked-men-with-guns-and-wild-wolves--this-global-running-gran-has-seen-it-all-1892575.html
By Susan Daly
Tuesday September 22 2009
Round-the-world runner Rosie Swale-Pope has been chased by wolves and a gunman and has run on a fractured hip -- but says the Wicklow mountains have been one of her toughest challenges yet.
"I haven't been running for a month so it was a little hard," she says cheerfully. The 62-year-old grandmother is currently pounding her way to Antrim from Wexford in a novel bid to raise awareness of prostate cancer.
Her 236-mile run along the east coast of Ireland should be a stroll in the park compared to the five-year odyssey she completed this time last year. Rosie was 56 when her second husband Clive Pope died of prostate cancer in 2002.
"Neither of us knew anything about it," says Rosie, "If my husband had got a check-up and learned about his cancer earlier he would be here today."
Rosie, originally from Co Limerick, took up marathon-running at the age of 48. A few months after Clive passed away, she decided to run around the world, beginning and ending her trek at their home in Wales. Her aim was to raise awareness of prostate cancer but along the way she also generated about £250,000 in funds for orphaned children in Russia.
Rosie set out on October 2, 2003, pulling all her supplies, sleeping bag and tent in a cart behind her. "The idea was born out of my sorrow and grief and I suppose I didn't know if I was running away or towards something," she says.
Her epic journey took her through Europe, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, America, Greenland and Iceland, through extremes of heat and cold. She was hit by a truck, nearly starved to death in the Alaskan wasteland, broke ribs in Iceland and her hip in Canada, chased by a naked man bearing a gun and another who almost chopped her ear off with an axe as he tried to hug her.
When she finally returned to her home town of Tenby in Wales, she hobbled over the finishing line on crutches suffering from stress fractures. She laughs at the fact that this latest Irish trip was almost scuppered when she ripped a toenail off by accident while vacuuming at home.
But, she says brightly, the physical is the easiest part of the human experience to control. "I very strongly believe that the toughest mountains are in the mind. The most wonderful thing in the world is to see a child smile or fall in love, the worst is to see someone sick or in trouble. Life is an adventure to be appreciated."
It is a tenet she has lived her own extraordinary life by. She first attracted attention sailing around the world with her first husband Colin Swale and daughter Eve. She gave birth to their son James on board.
In 1983, she sailed solo across the Atlantic on a 17ft-plywood boat. She has trekked 3,000 miles through Chile on horseback and ran in the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert -- twice.
She takes her trip to Ireland no less seriously than any of those mind-boggling feats. "I had wanted to include it on my round-the-world run but I couldn't so this is a promise kept to myself. I am so proud to be here." Her brothers Nicolas and Gerald still live in her native Askeaton, Co Limerick, as does a woman she refers to as "my mother, although she's not really my mother", family friend Marianne Griffin.
"Ireland is responsible for all the good things in my life," Rosie says fondly. "My grandmother would send me off on my bicycle or a donkey and tell me not to come back until I had something to write about."
The road has taught her many things, but mainly it has shown her that the "magic" of life is in the kindness of strangers. In her Irish run so far, those have included a garda called John who insisted on escorting her over a dangerously narrow piece of road in Wicklow and a hotel owner who insisted she stay the night with them when he spotted her bedding down in her cart outside.
She paused in Dublin yesterday to call in to Tom Dunne in his Newstalk radio show, to acknowledge the support and encouragement he gave her to bring her run to Ireland. No doubt she will find many more admirers on the road to Belfast and the Giant's Causeway, where she hopes to end this trip on her 63rd birthday, October 2.
It isn't surprising that people are touched by Rosie. Her effusive joie de vivre and her modesty at her amazing achievements are highly attractive. It is clear that her choices have led to great personal sacrifice -- she likens her five-year trip to going to war, but her "wonderful" family is terribly proud of her. Her grandson is particularly enamoured of his unusual granny: "He loves wolves, and he's keen on camping!"
As for retiring from the road, Rosie has no intention of it. She is inspired by the heartening letters she received from people who have read her book, Just a Little Run Around the World. Her website, www.rosiearoundtheworld.co.uk, reprints a letter from a urologist who had a patient come to him to have his prostate checked after reading her story. The patient turned out to have early stage cancer, easily treatable.
"If I had stayed at home knitting and gardening, I would not have got the message out," she says.
As for easing up, she just doesn't believe in it. "It's easing off that kills you," she says. "Every day in life should be treated as an act of survival."
Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes by Rosie Swale-Pope is published by HarperCollins and available in bookstores now
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