Conwy to Baku

A portion of the funds raised so far towards “Baku or Bust” have made their first contribution. On Saturday the charity Gôl did a bank transfer of $1000 to help build a kitchen at the Saray orphanage in the city of Sumqayit, Azerbaijan. We will be shown progress when we visit in June.

The project will entail creating a kitchen where the mentally and physically challenged orphans will learn how to help themselves and help others in the institution of the orphanage Saray, which houses approximately 200 such youth and children of both genders. Presently they do not have any access to a kitchen so are unable to supplement their very poor diet, they do not have a place to learn ergonomical skills such as feeding themselves or even preparing a nutritious fruit salad or ordinary salad. Additionally this place will be used to make play-doh and similar things which help those completely bedridden children to improve their motoric skills. It will also serve as an informal meeting point where they can prepare a meal together and have it together in a civilised and welcoming atmosphere. This kitchen focal point will help inculcate skills of caring for each other and for themselves.  The time for this project in terms of setting up the kitchen will take 2 months and the project itself could continue for at least 1 year and one can reassess it after that.

Sumqayit is often (always) amongst lists of “Top 10 Most polluted cities on earth”, and often ahead of a city which has had a nuclear meltdown, Chernobyl. In 2007 it made #1 of the Blacksmith Institutes list; full list here.

The orphanage, which has 22 rooms (sleeping 8 to a room), was built in 1974 after concerns about the high number of children being born with conditions like cerebral palsy, spina bifida and Down’s sydrome. Most of the children are from the nearby town of Sumqayit, which stands on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Sumqayit was once the biggest petro-chemical centre in the Soviet Union. It was built on the orders of Stalin in the 1930s and increased from a population of just 6,000 to around 350,000. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the country’s independence in 1991 opened Sumqayit to the outside world and environmentalists revealed the high levels of pollution. In 1992, the government of Azerbaijan declared Sumqayit “an ecological disaster zone”.  The World Health Organisation has tried to establish a more definite link between the pollution levels and the health of people living in Sumqayit. One report estimated there were 200,000 tonnes of “mercury sludge” dumped around Sumqayit. Source: Azerbaijans Poisoned Legacy, http://www.nigelgreenmedia.com/

It’s alive! I have just had the call that the Saab is now firing, all-be-it mis-firing, but firing! The fault “was” the electric coil. Many thanks to Universal Auto Electrics of Llandudno for their work on the car.

Today the car goes back to the mechanic for a full service to stop those mis-fires. All filters, spark plugs, oil change, and a few pumps and belts replaced, and hopefully the car will be back to me this weekend in it’s best working order for years. Thinking of celebrating with producing a short-film of the car actually moving (un-aided by tow rope or recovery truck)…

Got my jabs done for the trip this week, they included; a large helping of the Hepatitis alphabet, a spoonful of Diphtheria and Typhoid, a joust-like needle of Tetanus booster, all washed down with a Polio boost jab. Think i’m over the worst of the effects, arms still swollen.

Whilst looking up Azerbaijan on the NHS site, the nurse warned of Malaria risk in the country. Valleys in the north-west and south-west of the country are high-risk areas, where anti-malarials are advised. The print-out she handed me tells of 2,311 malaria cases in Azerbaijan in 1999, but has steadily been declining since, Baku is Malaria free.

"This map is just a guide as mosquitoes do not respect boundaries"

Press coverage in the last week includes; Azeri Sport Magazine (article here), North Wales Weekly News, and i’ve done a couple of short telephone interviews with local radio stations Marcher Coast and Tudno FM. Me and Rich are scheduled to be on-air at Tudno FM this Saturday afternoon during their sports show, i’m sure audio and photos will be on here shortly afterwards.

Our visa forms are filled out and on their way to the Azerbaijan embassy in London. Oh, and I got a speeding ticket on the weekend in Wrexham - I just hope it’s processed “very” quickly…

Last weekend took me, and twenty odd thousand other Wales supporters, to Cardiffs Millennium Stadium to watch Wales v Finland in their World Cup Qualifier. Played out before us was possibly the most frustrating international football match i’ve ever witnessed. Players uninterested, tactics not working; 4-5-1, Bellamy lone striker v 6ft6 vikings, Robinson on for Fletcher? Wales lost 0-2. Leaving it there.

Before the game I managed to get a quick chat outside the famous City Arms with our very own Neil Dymock; organiser of “Baku or Bust”, Gôl trustee, and all round busy man. Concerned for my brokendown car he went on to reveal that he has already gone through 2 cars of his own in the last 3 months, both engines blown. Slightly concerning, but adds to the tapestry of the trip. Unperterbed I handed over cash for my visas, and listened to his exploits of driving Dean Saunders and Chris Gunter around the team hotel grounds in the London taxi, a car which will be a part of the drive. These photos need to be seen Neil.

The Visa Exchange, City Arms, Cardiff

Photos outside The City Arms by good friend, David Jones (@DMJones79).

Big thank you to work colleague Joel Bradbury (@joelbradbury), who introduced me to Sanoodi (or @sanoodi) earlier in the week. Sanoodi are a GPS tracking company based on Bangors Menai estate. Within an hour of sending a quick email to my contact there, they were on board and offering hardware in the form of a Blackberry phone for the trip with GPS  hooking up to Google Maps. I am picking up the equipment next week, i’m sure a blog post will be dedicated to testing this technology soon.

This website, “Conwy to Baku”, was published in Wednesday nights official matchday programme Wales v Germany, as well as a name check (hope to have a scan of this on here shortly - i’ve not seen it myself yet). Seems me and Rich have a couple of press calls next week. Daily Post, North Wales Weekly News (thanks to @debjam and @danowen), photoshoot with @jashergilbert and mention of some radio too…

Quick update on the car; it’s still out of action, but hopefully back on the road Monday.

More thanks to everybody who has made a donation over the last week on our justgiving page.