Richmond’s Esther Ho is leaving town Monday to take on the hardest challenge of her life. Ho is about to spend seven days in an African desert, racing 250 kilometres across sand in scorching temperatures while carrying almost everything she’ll need on her back.
Ready?
“Ready. Ready,” she quickly answers in a recent conversation with the Richmond News.
Afraid?
“That’s passed already.”
Why? She hears that question a lot. Ho, who turns 44 this weekend, has spent much of her life helping others. For the last 10 years she’s done so through organized charities.
What better way to mark a decade of charity work than signing up for a desert race?
Naturally, it’s also a fundraiser. Ho is being joined by five others from her E&E Global organization on the journey, which begins May 1 in Namibia.
“I’m looking forward to my whole team finishing the race,” she says.
“Before we registered we said if we can finish the first day, this is amazing. But right now during the very intensive training all of us wish (to) pass the finish line, holding hands together.”
Known as the Sahara Race, this year’s route has moved from Egypt due to safety concerns. In Namibia, the weather is expected to be dry and sunny with temperatures as high as 40 C during the day, and dropping below zero at night. Ho is one of 223 registered competitors.
Each must reach 30 checkpoints throughout the seven-day event before crossing the finish line.
Most competitors complete the course with a mix of running and walking, although some run or walk the entire distance. Ho and her teammates, who range in age from 23 to 61, have opted to walk at a brisk pace.
Making such a journey in the name of charity isn’t unlike Ho.
As a 12-year-old in Hong Kong, Ho started volunteering in her community. Then, as a teenager, Ho and her pals used weekends for good. Saturdays were for hospital visits, Sundays were for volunteering at a seniors’ home. Ho would play guitar to entertain the sick and elderly. She also had many meaningful conversations.
“I learned a lot about the meaning of life,” she says. “At that moment I had some vision that I needed to do something with my life instead of just enjoying life.”
As a young adult she worked as a substitute teacher, a role in which she developed a passion for helping children. She studied social work in university, despite pleas from her parents to find a “regular job” with “regular pay.”
Ho arrived in Canada in 1995, landing a job as a sushi maker at Yaohan Centre. A few years later she was ready to make a difference again.
She established an education centre, and later, in 2002, the Integration Youth Services Society. Ho found other community projects but still wanted to do more. She began working with international charity organizations — an experience that launched her own charity work.
Now, her desert race team is raising money for four organizations. The bulk of funds will go to the Care for Life Foundation — Ho serves as its president — to aid underprivileged kids in Taiwan and to provide shoes to schoolchildren in Africa.
In the meantime, training continues for Ho, who only starting a running program last year.
Several months after meeting her goal of completing the 10-kilometre Vancouver Sun Run, she signed up for the Sahara Race.
She invited others to join her — some of them were active, some were not. But they all started training together, pushing themselves harder each session.
“I still remember the first time (completing) 20 kilometres,” she says. “Tired, shaking and cold. It was a very, very, very horrible experience.”
But Ho remained optimistic.
“We still have time. We still have three months. We can do it,” she remembers telling her teammates.
The team worked itself up to 40-kilometre, eight-hour training walks. But then came the backpacks. They added more and more heft to their practice packs until they reached the 20-pound race weight.
“One time I felt so tired...I had to cry out so loud. It was so painful,” Ho remembers. “I didn’t take any medicine for over 20 years. For this training, I need (to).”
For the last two weeks the team has been walking on sand, making training twice as hard.
“(It’s) double power. And we’re predicting the Sahara will be more difficult because of the heat.”
On Saturday Ho and her team will leave as the first B.C. competitors in the race — held annually since 2005 — and the first group of Chinese-Canadians. Donations are being collected through the Care for Life Foundation website at CFLF.ca.
