Over the course of 11 days, Elizabeth O'Neill '08 rode in 20 cars and trucks, boarded two ferries, slept in one Spanish onion field and took one shower on her way from England to Morocco.
She was participating in "the Hitch," an annual event organized by the nonprofit group Link Community Development, in which students hitchhike from England to either Morocco or Prague to raise money for children in Africa. The London-based group is dedicated to improving education in Ghana, Malawi, South Africa and Uganda.
Though the event mainly attracts British students, 52 non-Brits participated this year. O'Neill, who is spending a semester abroad at Cambridge University, was one of 16 Americans to take part.
O'Neill said the trip was "a great success, a lot easier than we thought." She said she and her travel partner, Cambridge first-year Matt Owens, did not have much trouble reaching their destination.
"We had a lot of rides quickly and rode in a lot of cars through France," O'Neill said. "Those people were very eager to pick up hitchers, but the rides were generally short, just between towns. In Spain, people were less likely to pick up hitchhikers, but we found a lot of long-distance truck drivers. ... So we made good time."
O'Neill said her favorite part of the trip was meeting and talking with the many drivers. Their first ride in France was with a Belgian truck driver who made regular trips from Belgium to France transporting liquid chocolate.
"He said it was good but didn't offer us any," O'Neill said.
Another French driver had traveled to Montana and was "a huge fan of Native-American philosophy," O'Neill said. He told them about his hopes to eventually move to America and work with American Indians.
But since neither O'Neill nor Owens speaks French or Spanish, most of their conversations were limited to sentences out of a phrasebook.
"We spoke about the weather, about whether they had hitched themselves, their names, and that's it," O'Neill said. "Conversations generally repeated themselves."
Even with communication barriers, O'Neill said, she was overwhelmed by people's generosity and friendliness.
"Hitchhiking restores your faith in humanity because people are so generous," she said. "People were concerned for our welfare and helped us out a lot."
A Turkish man with no language in common with O'Neill and Owens offered them the food he had in his truck. A French man who gave them a ride asked them back to his house for drinks with his wife. He gave them gourmet pizza, cookies and yogurt and brought them to a new spot to find their next ride later that night.
O'Neill and Owens brought a tent and sleeping bags and slept most nights either in the open or in their tent, depending on the weather.
"The worst place to sleep was in a farmer's field on a mountain," O'Neill said. "In southern Spain, it's all rocks and hills, and the only flat ground was in a farmer's field. We weren't going to lay the sleeping bags out on onions, but we found some reeds and spread those out (to sleep on)."
O'Neill said the only time she was concerned for her safety was on their last day in Morocco. Upon arriving in Fez, they learned that taxi drivers were on strike throughout the country, and they needed to get to the airport to catch their airplane.
"We didn't understand what was going on," O'Neill said. She said a stranger approached them and tried to explain the situation. "Not so many people offer advice and aid in Morocco without being paid, but this fellow was helping us by explaining about the taxi strike. We took an unregistered taxi on his recommendation. That was the iffiest situation, but it turned out okay."
On April 5, O'Neill and Owens flew back to England. This year, 696 students successfully navigated the 1,600 miles from Portsmouth, England, to Morocco. LCD hopes the hitchers will raise 300,000 pounds - or about $600,000 - according to Tina Sloane, the organization's events officer, up from about 295,000 pounds in 2006. Participants have until June to complete their fundraising efforts.
"The event is so important to us at LCD because it accounts for about 20 percent of LCD's U.K. income. Because this is unrestricted income, it allows us flexibility, which ensures that our partners in Africa can be confident that their projects will be supported in the long run and encourages sustainability," Sloane wrote in an email to The Herald.
The Herald reported on O'Neill's initial plans in its March 20 issue.
