A boy in a Bai village in Dali, China, shows off his Hella light.

Photo and journal by Nancy Olson

What’s brighter, their new Hella key chain lights, or their smiles?

In an earlier photo blog, we showed you images of some Cambodian kids who had just received some key chain flashlights that one of our sponsors, Hella (they make accessory lights for vehicles, especially off-road vehicles) gave to us to hand out to people who need them as we drive around the world. It is difficult to describe the amount of joy those tiny gifts have brought to the hundreds of kids and adults we have bestowed them upon throughout the LONGITUDE Expedition.

At the start of our expedition, we each had, I think, [500] lights per vehicle to hand out as we saw fit. The developing nations that we drive through all have villages set up along the roads, and few of these roads or villages have the luxury of streetlights. Some don’t have electricity at all, and the ones that do certainly don’t have enough of it to use on streetlights, floodlights, or even outhouse lights. Bulbs are burnt out in dark toilets and alleys all over the world. It’s amazing to us Westerners that so many people spend so much of their time in the dark. Hella’s generous donation has brought the gift of light to hundreds of people who otherwise would have none.

It is heartening to witness how much joy something as common as a teeny flashlight, something as simple as a keychain, and something no bigger than a silver dollar can bring to someone who has likely never owned any of those items before. At times, you’d think we’d just handed them a 50-dollar bill. The joy is palpable.

We have had to establish very strict rules to govern the handling of the Hella lights in order to prevent unmanageable situations from occurring enroute. For example, nobody is allowed to hand out any “Hellas” to kids at borders until we are leaving. If the crowd is too big, we cannot hand out Hellas to anybody. We must be very discriminating when handing out Hellas to adults; they’re meant to be for the children.

If you hand a light to a lone little kid who has been hanging out with you at a border, he or she will run off to show it to a friend or sibling. That one kid will point to you, or describe you to the other kids, and soon throngs of children, parents, grandparents, border agents, shopkeepers, and taxi drivers will be on your tail like moths to a flame. We want to give them to the needy kids and the occasional cute little old lady, but we don’t have enough for those others, and we can’t have everybody seeking us out and distracting us from the business of crossing a border with their pleas for a light. So we wait until we are ready to leave. And when we hand them out, it’s magical. Never has giving been such a selfish pleasure. I live for those smiles.

Whenever possible, we give the lights to the parents, so that they can have the pleasure of giving the lights to the kids. Sometimes the parents signal to us that it’s ok to hand the Hellas to the kids directly, and they always make sure we get a “thank you” from the pint-sized recipient.

Hella has given us an amazing gift with the donation of these key chain flashlights. Our friend Yvonne Pratt and the amazing people at Hella also gave us accessory roof-rack lights (we call them our alien abduction lights because they’re so bright), bumper-mounted Xenons, backing lights, and map lights, and those pieces of expedition equipment are indispensable to our team. They even gave us cash toward our cause. But of all the gifts that Hella has given us, our most beloved is the key chain lights.

With that gift, we get to elicit smiles across the globe, and those smiles are what light our way. Smiles, and freakishly bright Hella off-road lights…

Favorite Hella moments:

1) Walking down a very dark and uneven sidewalk in Antigua, Guatemala, we passed a poor, elderly man walking in the other direction. I felt in my pocket and realized I had a Hella light, and I ran back to hand it to the old man. His voice, his eyes, his whole body, were full infused with such gratitude and disbelief that he seemed younger as he bubbled out a hearty “muchas gracias!” and continued down a suddenly well-lit path.

2) During a photo shoot near a tiny village in Cuzco, Peru, the villagers wandered down to our location to watch what we were doing. We were taking pictures of the team with the vehicles and our equipment, and we showed them our cars and “stuff” and laughed with them as we tried to communicate with hand gestures. As dusk began to fall, we began passing out the Hella lights. Soon, everybody in this village of not more than 50 had a Hella key chain. They were amazed. As we packed up to leave, the villagers began to disperse, and we were delighted to see a line of lights like Chinese lanterns moving through the hills toward their homes.

3) At the roadhouse just before the intersection of the Great Central Road and the Gunbarrel Highway in Outback Australia, I met an Aboriginal man who wanted to sell me an ornate snake carved out of a stick. I didn’t have much cash on me (I never do), so I offered him three Hellas, two Red Bulls, and a dollar bill. It was a fair trade, and that snake stick is now in the back of D3. Since then, I have used Hellas as currency (in a pinch) on a couple of occasions.

A Lao boy shows off his new Hella light. (Check out his Land Rover Camel Trophy T-shirt...)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four Certified, Pre-Owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking HERE. One hundred percent of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research, and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.