Manon Ossevoort is a theatre maker and actor from the Netherlands who is travelling from the Netherlands to South Africa by tractor. Along the way, she is collecting the dreams of people she meets (on pieces of paper).
From South Africa, she will travel by boat to Antarctica, where she will continue on foot or by tractor to the South Pole. Here, she plans to build a snowman and place the pieces of paper containing people’s dreams in the belly of the snowman. She is also raising money for War Child.
Southpole is a journey by tractor. A journey through Europe, through the Balkan, and through Africa. And from South-Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, by boat to the South pole. On the South pole by tractor or on foot to the Pole itself.
Her book ‘On a tractor to the South Pole’ was published by De Geus publishers in 2007. More than 8.000 copies have been sold to date! Though only available in dutch she is still looking for an English publisher!
You can read more about her adventures by visiting her website: www.tractortractor.org
The following exerts from her blog give you a flavour of this extrodinary woman.
Doing, many people talk about it, but few actualy do it. Fear holds people back, held-back people have regrets. Fear and regrets are damaging to peoples lives, are damaging to the world. Governed by fear and regrets theres no room for happiness. Southpole challenges those fears. It tries to encourage. Southpole is about the will to face the world with an open minded attitude. The will to face the worlds beauty. Southpole does not want to be afraid. Southpole asks what is it you fear? What is it that makes you happy? What gives you courage? As a child I mount a tractor and head for the southpole, as an adult I’ll make sure I make it home safely.
As a theatre maker I came up with a plan for a journey. A journey of a girl on a tractor. A journey to the end of the world, and back. But what is the end of the world? If I was a child, I would say: the South pole! As an adult I said: the worst war-country I can imagine. Both voices, the one of the child and the one of the adult, said: We want to go! Then I thought: All right, we’ll just dó that.
End of October (2008) I arrived in Cape Town, South-Africa. After more than 3,4 years and travelling over 38.000km’s with the tractor and a dog. Searching for beautiful projects, initiatives and stories. Stories that give courage, that tell and prove that ’sometimes you just have to do it!’
Coming November (2009) I want to start the last leg of this epic journey to and through the ‘end of the world’: the South Pole expedition, with the tractor. To create a stage voor the beautiful stories of this world, and for ‘engagement’!
Southpole, besides a journey and expedition, is also a document. Above all, Southpole wants to give attention to special projects of NGO’s. (Non Governmental Organisations like WarChild and The Hunger Project, but also small local projects..) Initiatives which deserve attention because they show faith, courage, endurance and love.
A performance as a means of communication for the girl on the tractor, and a gift. With the performance I collect dreams of people (written down on little pieces of paper). These dreams travel with me on the back of my tractor, all the way to the South Pole… Where I hope to build a big snowman with the ‘dreams of the world’ in it’s belly.
‘DO’ is a poetic and slightly slapstick performance about the realization of dreams, concuerring fears, and about a developping friendship between a girl and a tractor…It tells the story of a dream literally coming out (of the ground) looking for the courage to realize itself. It’s a symbolique story about the process in your head, from the moment you are caught by an idea, untill you choose and decide: let’s do it! (or at least try;)
Summer of 2002, by example of pre-study for her plans, Manon made a test drive on a tractor to Paris, to drink a cup of coffee under the Eiffel tower. What started as an experiment became a project enthusiastically followed by radio, television and the writing press. The journey to Paris raised money and attention for Unicef and War Child. On the tractor through the fields, driving round and around the Arc de Triomphe, eye-to-eye with the French gendarmerie, waltzing with a eighty-year old Frenchman and his chicken, smoking a cigarette with an Arabic sheik in his limousine on the camping in Bois du Boulogne, and bumping into a legion of about 400 children on 25 tractors..
Another thing. Three years of continuous travel have basically exhausted any remote chance of original thought. Not a single bit of personal history that needs to be dug up again, dealt with, buried again. I’m quite through with all of that. I would really, really like to get on with my life please. Like, the rest of my life? Unfortunately I still have a long way to go before I even begin contemplating THAT. I spot a piramid-shaped mountain, and I sincerely wish for some kind of milestone, like the piramids, lightening the load of this slow, wobbly trek. Instead of feeling better, my thoughts are heading for a steep drop. The last mile is the longest, as they say. Whoever ‘they’ may be, I’m starting to think they might be right.
So I’ve learned some independance along the way (and to look for help in the right places). Friendship complicates some issues, business being interpreted as personal matters etc. Had to learn to seek out the people who actually admit it when they’re not sure of something.Which has been a rather valuable and simple lesson!
The stranger I meet is very inspiring to me because he seems to have learned the ‘art of doing’. To have dreams and persecute them. To know that’s possible, even here…He has traveled several African nations and always found himself a job. Now he’s come to Rundu (a rapidly expanding little town) and set up its first internet cafe. In a simple nice space are two desks with a computer on them. One can work at the desks as if one was at home. When he makes more money, there’ll be more computers, that much is obvious. A very tight and good plan. A clear concept. And he just went and did it. Great. Great place!
The training made me kinda nervous. I’d been joking for 3 years that, before taking on the polar expedition, I’d just ‘warm up a bit’ in Africa. Double true. By now, I’ve become more shivery than ever before. Even in South Africa I’m the first to climb into a sweater when others are still fine in their T-shirts at night. The transmission from +35C to -35C appears to be stupendously enormous. I have some doubts.
Amazement, after having worked towards one goal for so long, about getting a peek of the last phase, standing in the snow. It gives so much energy. This dream is about to get real, finishing this project in a unique way.
Around the corner there’s Cape Town. With the tractor it takes me 4 hours driving to get there, but that’s also because people tend to stop me at the side of the road. I’m a bit of a celebrity here. People who have worked on the Pole for the Sanae base (SA), politicians from the new political party, mothers who want to take pictures with their children and the tractor, UN counsellors, motor couriers, everything stops me to have a chat. And that is something wonderful. And quit handy as well, those contacts. I don’t get time to feel lonely ánd I find inspiration or help.
But suddenly somebody put a phone in my hands. On the line: Mom, dad, and Grandma!!! Well, they thought the connection was bad because they couldn’t hear me speak. But it was just the enormous lump in the back of my throat that prevented me from speaking. I wanted to speak but then found myself sobbing to hard. ‘I am here. It is so beautiful.’ After the phone call I talked to the crowd from the hood of the tractor. And then I also saw rain falling on faces of the people around me. Tears of being touched, that was my arrival. And the sun shone brightly that day! As if a fairytale had come true.
It was as magically perfect as the day I set of from the Island of Terschelling in Holland (June 2005)……As if a beautiful circle was made round. Well, almost. But this gives courage!
Matty (her polar guide) is tired after 10 days of driving with the tractor. And that also had something to do with the people. People everywhere, every moment of the day, also when you think your just setting up camp or taking a break. People that interrupt you, stop you at the side of the road and ask questions. All the time questions. I eventually got quit used to it. I see it as a sport to make people laugh. But that took some training, to be able to always be open for contact, or at least say in a friendly manner that it’s not very convenient at the moment. But for Matty, somebody who’s used to the rough and deserted nature, who lives close to the North Pole circle with her sledge dogs and in a small community of Inuit a.o. that know one another since years, it was quit an ordeal!
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I love her writing about doing, not being scared to reach out and follow our dreams. So often we live life in a place of fear. Her writing and actions speak volumes for her ability to put fear to one side and take a step forward. I hope that I too can live my life with the same simplicity.
OMG! I met her in Botswana, September 2008. In a dusty lost road hours away from any lodge. Our ranger was friends with her. It looked pretty insane to me to see a woman by herself in such a wild and dry place. I remember that he told me she was around Africa at that time but heading South.