Call of the White (4 page)

I left the cafe and walked back across Hungerford Bridge to make my way home. I stopped halfway and looked out across London, feeling totally overwhelmed. In just six days I was due to start a journey to seven different countries, one after the other, spending just a week in each. I'd made all the arrangements for the journey but it had been like organising seven mini-trips, not just one. As I stood there watching the wobbly reflections of tower blocks in the Thames, my mind wandered through all the issues I had to tackle in the next week. Cyprus was my first destination, but I still had nowhere to stay and nowhere to hold the interviews. From Cyprus I would travel to Ghana, but I only had three applications from there. India and Singapore were next and, although most of the arrangements had been made, I had also agreed to give several talks about Antarctica during my flying visits. I would travel to Brunei the following week, where I had no accommodation and little else had been organised. I had no venue in New Zealand to hold the interviews and in Jamaica I had hardly any applications and nowhere to stay. On top of that, I had no money. I'd been refused two credit cards and had no idea how I was going to manage financially when I got back from the trip. Organising the expedition and my recruitment journey had left me with no time to earn a living.

It was a lot to digest.

The next morning I moped around my flat lacking the will to do anything. I was still miserably drinking coffee when I was called to the door to sign for a parcel. Inside was a copy of Robert Swan's book
Icewalk
, an account of an expedition he led to the North Pole in 1989 with an international eight-man team. There was no card but I knew exactly who it was from: my motivation guru, Paul Deegan. Even for Paul, this was timing of the finest order. With the
wrapping still on my lap, I read the entire book in one sitting.

Robert Swan's expedition had not been an easy experience for him. Right from the outset, money had been short and finding additional finance had been his primary preoccupation. The members of his team were mostly experienced explorers but the dynamics were tense even before they'd reached the ice, with one member in particular frequently undermining his leadership. The vivid demonstration of the pitfalls and challenges of leading such a complex team was, I was sure, the reason Paul had sent me the book. It was a cautionary tale that I was later to recall ruefully. But for the moment, it was the boost I needed. If Robert Swan could make such an expedition possible in 1989, then surely I could do the same 20 years later. As I switched on my laptop and looked again at my to-do list, I remembered a passage in the book that I'd underlined in pencil, ‘it seemed to me important to rekindle interest […] in our planet and to show by example that high adventure was still at hand, that quite ordinary people without advanced skills can realise the most astonishing and ambitious of goals if they set their minds to it.'

What is Skiing?

Cyprus

Arriving in Cyprus, I was blasted by the heat as I left the airport. On the bus into the capital, parched Mediterranean scenes flicked past the window as I tried desperately to stay awake. The juddering of the bus, the enveloping heat of the sun and the chatter of my fellow passengers conspired to lull me to sleep. Safely delivered to the right hotel, I decided to go for a run in the cooling breeze of the early evening. The sun was dissolving into a white sky and crickets filled the air with their vibrations. I was staying in a small, family-run hotel tucked away deep in the suburbs of Nicosia and, although I'd been checked in by the father, the son now sat behind the front desk. I asked him which way I should go for my run. ‘Well, don't go too far that way,' he said, pointing right, ‘otherwise you'll need your passport.' I must have looked blank because he added an explanation, ‘Turkey is just over there, so don't go jumping over any barbed wire.'

Running to the end of the road, I saw what he meant. A tall white wall topped with rolls of razor wire and fringed with a neat curb-stoned lawn stretched across my path. To the left was a squat watchtower and beyond were a number of official-looking buildings bristling with antennae and satellite dishes. I turned right and ran along the wall for a while. Eventually, it was replaced by a wire fence allowing a glimpse of the buffer zone; a broad swathe of scrubland scattered with rubble, rusting debris and abandoned houses. This was the physical evidence of Cyprus' complex political history. In 1974 the Turkish Army occupied the northern third of the island in an intervention that lasted barely a month but left some 200,000 people displaced. While politicians argued over the validity of Turkey's actions in the months and years that followed, the front line, cutting right through the centre of the capital, became entrenched. Nicosia remains the only divided capital in Europe, split in half by a wall and a stretch of no-man's-land known as the Green Line. The division left deeper scars on the psyche of the Cypriots than it did on the land. You don't have to be in Nicosia for long before you tune in to the underlying fizz of resentment and anger that rattles down through the generations, as if the fighting had stopped just last week rather than over three decades ago.

My first meeting in Cyprus was at the Cypriot Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The desk officer for Commonwealth affairs met me in reception and began apologising for the state of his office as we walked through the building.

‘I always apologise,' he confided, ‘because it is always messy.' He showed me into a room that was more landfill than workspace. I perched myself on a tiny chair amid drifts of paperwork overhung by bundles of notices pinned to the wall and began to give him an overview of the expedition. He was enthusiastic but seemed confused about how he could help. I wanted to know if there was any opportunity of obtaining funding, but first I needed a message of support from the president of Cyprus. The desk officer explained that he would personally write the letter and that the president would sign it if he liked the expedition, but there was a problem. ‘I'm not saying that I have too much work,' he started (although I suspected that what he really meant was that he had far too much work), ‘and I'm not saying that it isn't important,' (although what he probably meant was that he had much more important things to do), ‘but the Commonwealth isn't very high on our priority list.' I considered the irony of his statement in light of his position as the desk officer for Commonwealth affairs. He peered at me for a moment over his spectacles before sighing in resignation and began to move piles of papers from one end of his desk to another, as if looking for something. I imagined that he must spend the majority of his day moving piles of paper around his office just to make space to work. ‘I'll need to know the names of the candidates you choose,' he said, still moving paper. ‘Not that it will matter if they are Turkish Cypriots,' he added a little hastily (indicating that what he really meant was that it would be a big problem). ‘I will do my best to get you a letter of support.' Having moved several more piles of paper he found what he was looking for – a notepad – and together we began composing what the letter from the president should say. As we constructed sentences, I felt mildly fraudulent. I hadn't expected to have this much involvement in the process. At the end of the meeting the desk officer promised to notify me if any funding became available. I couldn't really ask for more than that. He was young, busy and under pressure. ‘I now have to go and talk about big ships arriving in Cyprus next week,' he said as he saw me out into a lobby full of navy captains with big hats and shiny buckles.

Feeling buoyed by such a positive meeting, I returned to the hotel and started to prepare for the interviews the following day. Media coverage of the expedition in Cyprus, although slow to start, had been substantial and, as a result, I'd received just under 85 applications from Cypriots. In each country I planned to interview a shortlist of ten candidates, but found deciding who should be on that shortlist an agonising process. Most applicants made it clear how badly they wanted this opportunity and I hated the fact that I would have to turn most of them away. The first round of selections was made instinctively. There had to be something in the form that struck a chord with me, a sentiment that I recognised or a reflection of some aspect of my own enthusiasm and purpose. The second round of selections was more robust. I looked for people who seemed clear about their own motivations and who were driven by more than a desire for fame or a sentimental draw to Antarctica (such as a desperate craving to see penguins). I was sure that many of the applicants had the determination to ski to the South Pole but what was harder to ascertain was whether they had the tenacity to help me make the expedition happen in the first place. It is the months of training, the endless evenings of sponsorship proposals and media phone calls that take the real effort. I needed practical people that wouldn't shy away from the mundane jobs, who had the strength of mind to shrug off the inevitable rejections and keep plodding away regardless.

I was extremely grateful not to be alone in making these decisions; I had enlisted the help of a group of friends who had considerable expedition knowledge between them, so I had confidence in their opinions. The group formed mini assessment panels for each country, sharing their thoughts with me about the applications. My eventual shortlist for Cyprus included a ski champion hoping to represent Cyprus in the Winter Olympics, the leader of a volunteer group working to clean the seabeds around the island, a member of the Cyprus State Youth Orchestra and the logistics manager of the Cyprus World Rally Championships. I printed out each application form and wrote myself a checklist in capital letters on the cover of my notepad to refer to during the interviews: Were they physically capable of completing the expedition? Would they contribute to fundraising efforts before the expedition and outreach after it? Would other women be able to identify with them? Could I imagine living with them in a tent for six weeks? (This last point was known as the ‘tent test', and was the most important criteria of all.) However, it had occurred to me that no matter how probing my questions, choosing a single candidate from each country on the basis of an interview would give me little idea of how all seven women would get along when they met. Instead, I'd decided to select two women from each country and to organise a training event in Norway during the coming spring. This would be a chance for me to see who worked well together in order to select the best group from among them.

The University of Cyprus had kindly agreed to let me use a
conference room as the venue for the interviews. I'd arranged to
meet each of the ten Cypriot candidates, one at a time, at 45-minute
intervals throughout the day. It was going to be exhausting and, at the end of it, I would have to decide which two women would be the contenders to represent Cyprus on the team. As my early-morning taxi wound its way through the suburbs to the university campus, the city felt abandoned. It was a major national holiday in Cyprus and most of Nicosia had packed up to head for the beach or the cool air of the mountains. I arrived at a modern glass and steel building in a large and empty car park. The doors were locked and it looked deserted. I noticed movement in a small office to one side and knocked on the window. The guard jumped and looked at me in astonishment. He made a throat-cutting motion. Either I was facing death or the place was completely shut. The guard rushed round to the door in a fluster. ‘Closed, closed!' he shouted through the glass.

‘I'm here to use conference room one hundred and fourteen,' I explained.

‘Closed, all closed. No one here,' insisted the guard emphatically.

He was an older man, overweight in a way that only men of a certain age can be, with a gloriously protruding belly. He wore open-toed sandals, crumpled trousers and a white vest under his blue shirt, despite the heat. It was clear that he had every intention of sending me away.

‘No,' I said firmly, shaking my head. ‘I have ten women arriving to be interviewed.' I wasn't sure how much English the guard understood but I hoped that the desperation I felt was clearly etched on my face. Our mutual miming pantomime went on for a while. Someone was called and I spoke to the voice on the phone. It was clear that no one was expecting me and I began to envisage being sent away to find a shady spot in the car park from which to conduct the interviews – not exactly the professional image I had hoped to project to potential team members. So it was a surprise when the voice on the phone began apologising. I handed the receiver to the guard and watched his face fall as he listened to the news that he was to play host to this troublesome English stranger who had turned up at his door on the biggest national holiday of the year.

Still surprised that I hadn't been forced to chain myself to the university building and demand a conference room, I prepared for my very first interview. Stephanie, the first candidate, arrived almost immediately. Dressed casually in a polo shirt, with her long dark hair pulled back into a hasty ponytail and not wearing any make-up or jewellery, she looked like she'd come straight from a game of hockey. Any nerves I might have had about meeting my first interviewee were totally obliterated by the sheer force of her energy and enthusiasm. She spoke with complete openness, as if we were old friends, and I soon found myself won over by her self-deprecating humour and ready laughter.

After Stephanie came Athina. She was smartly dressed and softly spoken, clearly nervous and genuinely incredulous to be shortlisted. Her application had been considered and thoughtful, one of the best. What's more, she was a satellite communications expert: an extremely useful skill to have within an expedition team. She was exactly the sort of woman I had been thinking of when putting the expedition together; someone who had so much to offer and yet couldn't see it herself. I knew that taking part in the expedition would transform her confidence; I knew it because I had seen it happen again and again when training women in the Arctic. However, her motivation was about patriotism rather than personal development. ‘Listening to the news here in Cyprus,' she explained, ‘you'd think that everybody knows about us, but people from other European nations don't actually know anything about the problems here. They don't even know about the occupation. This expedition will be an opportunity to tell everyone about our island, to let them know about Cyprus.'

Next to arrive was Nicky, the author of the very first application I had received. She had been the stand-out application for me, not just from Cyprus but from all the countries. Sure enough, we fell into easy conversation. She had all the right ideas about the expedition and I could picture her in my team. I could tell that she would be a great confidante and a huge support. The problem was that she had spent most of her life in New Zealand. I wasn't sure if women in Cyprus would be able to identify with someone who had grown up elsewhere. I brought up the point and her reply was that it was all about how you communicated. I agreed but couldn't get rid of the reservation. Although she was Cypriot through and through, she sounded like a New Zealander. I thought of the radio interviews – would people question if she was Cypriot enough?

Lia was the last of the ten candidates. She was a driving force behind the Cyprus Search and Rescue Team but found it difficult to convince people to volunteer. ‘People in Cyprus like to lead a comfortable life,' she started. ‘It is difficult to make them see beyond their house, their family, their car. Cyprus needs something like this expedition to wake them up! Young people are not very independent. They live with their parents until they are married. Some have flats of their own but they are usually paid for by their parents. Women get married, have children and look after their family. That is it!'

As I packed up to leave the university I felt incredibly weary. It had been a long day but the toughest part was still to come. I had promised everyone a decision by the end of the day, partly because I didn't want to unnecessarily prolong the uncertainty for the candidates and partly because the selection was based on gut feeling and that wouldn't change, no matter how long I left myself to mull it over. There were four clear contenders: Stephanie, Athina, Lia and Nicky. Nicky had been my favourite but I was concerned about the issue of nationality – a concern that was deepened, bizarrely, by the guard. As I left he asked if all the ladies had been Cypriots and seemed surprised when I assured him that they all were. ‘New Zealand!' he said. I realised he was referring to Nicky. I tried to explain that she was a Cypriot who had simply lived in New Zealand for a while but he shook his head, wagging his finger at me like a metronome. I shrugged and let him have the point but his reaction was exactly what I feared from the general Cypriot public. I wasn't ready to admit it yet, but in my heart I knew that I couldn't choose Nicky.