Gavin Bate organised and successfully led the Millennium Expedition, an attempt to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents during 2000, thereby attaining this world record for Britain. He is based in Kenya, where he works with an initiative to rehabilitate street children. Next year he will attempt to ski to the South Pole and aims to climb Mt Everest without oxygen. Although he travels worldwide, Africa continues to draw him back. He explains what the continent means to him.

Africa has given me some damned hard experiences and some of the finest I could hope for. I grew up reading about the Dark Continent, fascinated by the people who explored and mapped it - Burton, Speke, Livingstone and Rhodes. Only when I went there did I discover Africans themselves. In Kenya I found people who remain my finest friends.

Working with street children gives me insight into an almost unimaginable slice of society. I am so lucky: I can sit in a slum with a black kid, making contact in a way I could never have expected, and the two of us are forever moved and changed by the experience. Having grown up marvelling at the breed of people who "discovered" a continent, I've ended up forever touched by the people who live there.

I live in a two-room shack with occasional electricity and dodgy water, on the outskirts of a Nairobi shantytown. I eat and drink beer in local bars, and never imagined I'd enjoy it so much. It's not from some martyrish Western need to comment on life's unfairness - I gave up such mawkish thoughts long ago. It's because the people are my friends. I never preconceived that. You always imagine how a place will be, but never the people you'll meet there who might change your life forever.

Walking across the Sahara alone for six months was a benchmark in my life. It was my first really big expedition and probably the daftest: I knew nothing of desert travel. Luck and bloody-mindedness must have got me through. I like the fact that Africa constantly throws you onto your own resources to deal with life. I was arrested in Algiers for supposedly being a spy and had to bribe my way out of jail. I got lost once, searching for a waterhole when my water-sack was punctured by a thorn. Believe me, when you are completely on your own you discover how fine the line is between sanity and insanity.

When I was hardened to desert travel, thanks to timely intervention from a local Tuareg, I crossed part of the enormous Erg Chech Desert. Eventually arriving at the tiny outpost of Taghit, I realised the folly of seeking such a small settlement in such a huge ocean of nothingness, and completely broke down. That place moved me beyond belief.

Besides the Sahara, I don't know which parts of Africa appeal most. I have climbed Mt. Sinai at dawn, woken to the sight of an eagle hovering above me in the Fish River Canyon, played with a gorilla which wouldn't let go of my trouser leg in Rwanda, and waited two days while a single herd of wildebeest crossed the Serengeti. Ethiopia deserves more exploration; it seems literally unchanged since the dawn of time. But predominantly, it's Kenya that draws me back. So many characteristics make it special: its habitats, wildlife, history, culture and people.

Everything in Africa is extreme. My preconceptions never quite captured that. There is no compromise. Seeing corruption, famine, refugee camps, genocide and poverty, or people living a subsistent lifestyle being crushed by a power-hungry state, is desperately difficult to rationalise. I think Africa suffers under globalisation, the petrodollar, superpowers and market forces.

Our Western consciences are pricked and eroded to a point where the reason for charity becomes diluted. That's why I bring people to Kenya: to show them Africa's people and their lives, to put a name to a face, to bring people together. I take them for a drink in the shantytown and introduce them to the ex-street kids I'm putting through school (and employing in my safari company). Under globalisation, we lose track of the fact that these are real people; it's important to remind ourselves once in a while. These trips are increasingly popular, which gives me hope for Africa. Somebody once wrote to me after a trip, saying "I think I want to change my name, I have changed so much". Is that the essence of Africa: its power to change somebody? Maybe that's what drove Burton and Speke and Livingstone.

I once found a Kenyan girl called Beatrice, aged 7, half-dead on a rubbish tip. She had been prostituted for money and was so physically damaged that her family had dumped her. She recovered in hospital, but the shock caused loss of speech and the ability to show emotion. For two years she was zombie-like, a little face eerily devoid of expression. Then I took an expedition to Kenya and one of the white girls, aged 17, began looking after her. They were like mother and daughter. Beatrice spoke and smiled for the first time. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Now, several years on, she will soon start secondary school.

I don't want to fall into the "white man doing good in Africa" role - one I particularly dislike. I don't run a charity or an NGO, or tell people what to do. It's a relationship that cuts both ways. The people I know in Africa have given me the most important perspectives on life. I make mistakes constantly and learn something new every time I'm there. I don't know it all and I'm no bleeding heart brigade.

A former gang leader on Nairobi's streets, who is now like my son, once said to me "When I grow up I want to be a leader in my country. You've shown me that it is possible". If people like him do have the opportunity to play a part in Africa's future, I'd be very happy.

I've overheard people visiting Africa say things like "Ooh, you wouldn't get that at home, that's terrible!" And I wonder: why did you bother to come? Many things about Africa defy our concept of "how it should be", but there's no point in carrying all that Western baggage. You have to expect the unexpected, have an open mind and avoid the trap of judging too quickly. Africa is Africa. Make the effort to get to know the people a bit and you'll gain memories that will outlive your photo album.

Published in Travel Africa Edition Seventeen: Autumn 2001.Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)