Fordcombe
couple, Mike and Sarah Bullett, celebrated their 60th birthdays by climbing
Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, and raising £8,244
(as at 10th November) for local charity, COMPAID Trust.The six-day climb ended for Mike and Sarah just short of the summit when Sarah found breathing difficult. “We were within 3 hours walk of the summit and I wanted to go on”, said Sarah: “but our guide said ‘BiBi (it means old woman in Swahili) you must go down now!’”. Sarah Bullett, a psychologist and volunteer and Trustee at COMPAID Trust’s Activity Centre at Pembury Hospital added: “I’ve taken lots of photos of the mountain because at COMPAID I meet people with all sorts of disabilities and the common factor they all have is the determination not to be held back by their disability. I know someone will ask me if it’s possible to get a wheelchair up to the top!”
The
Bulletts set out to raise money (£1 for every metre above sea level climbed)
for COMPAID Trust’s work with disabled adults, helping them to use computers
as an aid to communication. COMPAID has been in the news recently because it
is facing the loss of its home for the last 18 years when the redevelopment
of Pembury Hospital begins in June 2006. 
Sarah
says of the news: “I’ve been volunteering at COMPAID Trust for 12
years and the camaraderie and atmosphere at COMPAID’s Activity Centre
is uplifting. Over 100 disabled people use the centre every week and COMPAID’s
fleet of special-needs adapted minibuses regularly help 350 elderly, disabled
and vulnerable people a week, taking them to the shops and amenities. Unless
we can find new premises, and the funds needed to pay for them, the future for
disabled people in West Kent looks bleak”.