Dwayne Fields, explorer

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:44MUSIC PLAYS

1:00to reach the magnetic North Pole, has made TV programmes charting his adventures all over the world and co-created the We Too Foundation to take young people from challenging backgrounds like his on life-changing adventures. He was born in Jamaica, where he spent his early years happily exploring the countryside under his granny's care. But when he was six, he found himself uprooted and unhappily replanted in Hackney, wondering where the trees had gone. He found refuge at his local Cub Scout troop. As a teenager, growing up on a North London estate, he was exposed to gang violence. By his mid-twenties, he'd been robbed, stabbed and shot at.

1:40The natural world became his escape route and in 2010, he signed up for an Arctic adventure. It was a decision that changed his life. He says, I want to demonstrate that there are no limits to what you can achieve. That doesn't mean that climbing Everest or crossing Antarctica on foot are the be-all and end-all. It's not about planting flags, but about planting seeds. Duane Fields, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. What a speak up. Now to try and live up to all the things that you've just said about me. Well, it's literally just a list of things that you've done. So, I mean, I'm excited to get into it too.

2:14Let's start with that idea of not planting flags, but planting seeds. Tell me more about that. Generally speaking, we see adventure as this place where you challenge yourself to get to a point on a map, or in some cases a place on the map that hasn't been drawn yet. I actually think adventure should be about inspiring people. So you talk about a place you've been to or a place you'd like to go to in the hopes that you plant that seed of inquisitiveness, that seed of determination in young people in particular, but anyone who hears your story and gives them that idea, the notion that they can actually go on and do something.

2:48So it starts to grow. It's a spark of an idea that you've given them as opposed to planting a flag. they see you do it, plighting a seed means they think they can do it. So, you know, on these expeditions, as we've heard all over the globe, what is it like going back to everyday ordinary life? Well, it's a mind switch, isn't it? When you're out there, you are in what feels like sometimes, and I don't like it to feel like that, what can feel like survival mode. You're worried about what the conditions external are like. You're worried about, is your kit the right kit? Have you got the right foods?

3:21Are you moving in the right direction? How's the team doing? How are your energy levels? Is the terrain what you expected? If it's not what you expected, is it because you're going in the wrong direction? Or is the information you had beforehand correct? So there are lots of things going on and you're on hyper alert all the time. When you come back to day to day life, the worries are still there, but they're very different. It's right. Are the kids going to be in school on time? Have they all woken up? Have they all brushed their teeth? What's for dinner tonight? You've got five kids. I have five little kids.

3:53The admin must be extensive. You can imagine it's nonstop and they're all different ages. So their needs are all very different as well. And but equally, when I come back to regular life, I'm just dad. I'm the taxi driver. I am the walking wallet. I am the one that ties shoelaces. So it's completely different worlds, but both as demanding as the other. And is that good for you, do you think? It's like a check on your ego or something. I don't know. I'm thinking, you know, when you've when you've just stood off your shoulders and said, OK, you know, I'm the first Black Britain to reach a magnetic North Pole.

4:27And then you come home and it's like, Dad, stop doing that. Absolutely. There is. So kids are great because they don't let your ego grow. But equally, I just touching on the North Pole thing. I never thought of the North Pole and thought to myself, oh, I'm the first Black Brit. It almost makes me cringe a little bit. and anytime I try and tell my kids about something that I've done, it never impresses them. So I have no chance of, there's no risk of me growing an ego, especially within the household. Well, Dwayne, you've been working very hard to map out your discs, I know, and we've got eight to hear, so I think we should get started.

5:05Tell us about your first. My very first song is one that takes me back to a place in my life where I was a little kid in Jamaica, and Bob Marley's and the Wailers' Three Little Birds is the song that brings me back to that place. The wording reminds me so much of my great-grandmother and she was probably the most special person in my life. And what reminds me most of her in that song is, you know, baby, don't worry, everything's going to be all right. I remember going back to my great-grandma, crying from time to time because I'd fallen and scraped myself, being bitten by some animal I was trying to catch or, you know, just injured myself somehow.

5:45She would dust me off and say, I'll be fine. You dust me off and send me back out there. And I think as a young person, the best thing you can have in life is a safety net, a person who makes you feel safe, feel loved, feel supported, but they won't keep you from the risks in life. They'll expose you to risks in a safe way.

6:12Cause every little thing Gonna be alright Singing don't worry About a thing Cause every little thing Gonna be alright Rise up this morning Bob Marley and the Wailers and Three Little Birds Dwayne Fields, you were born in Linstead in Jamaica in 1982. It's a rural part of the island. And as we've heard, your great grandmother Loretta, who you called Granny, brought you up. How did you come to be in her care? The way it happened is, and I've been told this by my mum, she had a really difficult time when she found out she was pregnant with me. And my great grandma, being the person who she was, she stepped in and said, hey, listen, have this child.

7:05When the child is born, I'll take care of the child. And from that moment on, I was in my great grandma's care. And tell me about her. What kind of person was she? My great grandma was a beautiful, beautiful person. I remember running up to her and I have this image in my head. I'd run up and I'd hug her and I'd say granny and I'd ask her a silly question. And she wasn't an educated woman. So when I'd say, you know, granny, what's a star? She'd say in a really strong Jamaican accent, I'm not going to try and do it now because I'd sound silly. She'd say, I don't know. You'll have to go and find out and tell me.

7:39And I think that was really empowering to me to go out there and seek out answers so I could come back and deliver them to my great grandma, my granny. Oh, so you wanted to kind of explore the world together with her. Was she strict? Was she, I'm thinking, you know, was she tough, tough and loving? Like what kind of parenting style? My great grandma was the softest human being in existence. she now that said she didn't spare the rod um she was a church going woman she didn't spare the rod when she needed to but she was just so loving she would give me a spanking and then hug me afterwards and say listen i did tell you not to leave the the house at that time or i told you not to do this and you did it um come here don't let me have to do it again and we'd hug and make up and i remember the kind of person she was every morning she would take her small bench when we lived down the lane off the main road and she'd put it just outside the gate on the opposite side of the lane and as people walked past it could be the farmer it could be the person who lived in the amongst the bushes at the end of the lane and she would speak to every single one of them in the exact same way she wouldn't treat you differently because of what you had or what you didn't have and I think my ethos on life now is treat everyone fairly and I think I get that from my great grandma.

8:57Well thank goodness for your granny Loretta. So your mother meanwhile had come to London but your father lived locally to you. Were you in contact with either of them? My dad lived just up the road from me and every day he would ride his motorbike down the road to get to work and ride it back and for a very long time I would run out to the front when I heard the motorbike coming. And he would have known who you were? He knew exactly who I was. He knew that I was his son. He knew where to find me. Every single day he passed our house. As soon as I heard the motorbike coming, I'd run out to the front thinking, gosh, my dad rides a motorbike.

9:32I hope today he'll wave at me or I hope today he'll wink at me or just give me a gesture. Acknowledge you. Acknowledge me to let me know that he knows I'm alive. And no, he never did. And I think my great grandma watched me go out to the front gate every single day and watch this man ride past every single day. Sometimes he'd ride past with both hands on the handlebars. Other days he'd ride past. He's got his prize fighting cock in his hand because cock fighting was a thing back then. And he would never acknowledge me. And on this particular day, she followed me out and she grabbed me and she had tears in her eyes when she was, you know, she was shaking me saying, stop coming out here.

10:11Can't you see the man doesn't like you and can't you see he's not paying attention? And I remember in that moment, all the pride that I naively had for my dad, because here's a popular man who rides a bike and he looks good and he's cool and he's my dad. That was the day all the shine disappeared from my dad for me. And it disappeared because he made my grandma cry as far as I could tell. So I stopped going out to the front. So in short, no, I didn't have any contact with my dad and I had no contact with my mom. In fact, up until the time I came to the UK, I only remember seeing my mum maybe three times.

10:49I think conversations with my great grandma, my great aunt would be, oh, your mother's coming up. Go and put on some nice clothes. I think also that I brought a little bit of shame because I was quite a feral kid. I was completely happy, like most kids should be, running around with no shoes on and torn shirts and, you know, dirty shorts. You George of the Jungle. I was absolutely Mowgli or George of the Jungle. And that didn't seem to chime with what my mum expected of her kids. And we've never had a mother son relationship. And in fact, I call her by her name. And I didn't recognise her as my mum until much later in life.

11:31I think we'd better go to the music, Duane. It's time for your second piece today. What's it going to be and why have you chosen it? So this song is one that almost brings a tear to my eye. It's a song by Luther Vandross and it's called Dance With My Father. It reminds me of the love I had for my father, which is something I still struggle with. Deep inside somewhere, I feel like I love him. I feel like I shouldn't. But the truth is, I feel like I do. it's quite close to home because I want I want my kids to feel about me the way Luther Vandross talks about his father in this song. It's emotional for you I can see.

12:11It is. Let's hear it. Back when I was a child

12:20Before life removed all the innocence My father would lift me high And dance with my mother and me And then spin me around till I fell asleep Luther Vandross and Dance With My Father. So, Dwayne Fields, you'd been very happy in Granny Loretta's care, but I know that when you were six, life changed. What happened? when I was six my grandma got a letter saying right it's time for him to come and live in the UK now we're ready for him to come and live in the UK and I left everything that I'd known all the things that I loved and felt confident doing and a place where I felt like I belonged and I came to the UK to live with my mum and again this is somebody who I hardly knew and And I'm now living in this new world with this person.

13:22And what did you make of it? I mean, what do you remember about arriving in North London from rural Jamaica? It must have been such a culture shock, physical shock, everything. I remember we arrived at our house and initially I think it was in Archway. And because I hadn't seen any trees or many trees, no hills, no fields, no forests, no woodlands. I thought, right, that must all be out back. And I remember running through this masonette down four or five steps and I opened up the curtains that was to the window of the back door. And I remember seeing a brick wall and thinking, oh, my God, this is a completely different world.

13:57It just felt like my entire world had collapsed and everything that I'd known, everything that I'd become accustomed to, everything that I felt like I was the master of had been taken away. And I was in this completely foreign place. Dwayne, I think it's fair to say that your relationship with your mother didn't improve. Tell me about, you know, your experience in this new world that you were living in. Did you make friends easily? Again, the things that I knew in Jamaica and experiences I had in Jamaica, many of them weren't transferable. I'd never watched TV. We didn't have a TV. We had a small radio and that was it.

14:35when you meet kids at the age of seven or thereabouts, what they love to talk about are their favorite TV characters, their favorite cartoon characters, their favorite shows, their favorite action figures, their favorite toys. I had none of those things. I struggled to make friends. And in fact, for a long time, the only friend I had was the child that the teacher put me next to on that very first day. And I remember trying to make friends or recognising the need to make friends. And I went into the school gardens one day and I thought, right, my passion is the natural world. I love wildlife. I love animals.

15:14I'm going to teach them about insects. And I remember picking up a handful of wood lice and some centipedes and some other creatures, creepy crawlies and worms and other things, anything I could find. And I ran over to a group of kids in the class who I really wanted to be friends with. and I opened my hands and I was going to tell them about the female wood lice who keeps her young on her stomach. And every single one of them ran away screaming and pointing at me and saying, you're nasty. And I remember standing in the middle of that playground. And this was probably one of my lowest points at that age.

15:47And everyone ran away and they were just calling me nasty and dirty and look at your hands and you like bugs. And in that moment, I decided maybe Dwayne, maybe don't be you. If they're doing something, just fit in with what they're doing. And actually, that pattern of behaviour, I carried on for quite a long time. Well, I want to hear more about that, Dwayne, but I also want to make room for the music. It's time for your third piece. Tell us what we're going to hear next. In 1998, my great grandmother passed. And a while later, I heard this song from DMX. And it's about his grandmother, someone who meant a lot to him.

16:28And it sounds like she meant exactly to him what my great grandmother meant to me. And it's a song called I Miss You. And it's with DMX and Faith Evans. How did you cope with the grief when your granny died? I mean, it must have been so difficult for you. And obviously you were in an unhappy home, you know, an unhappy situation here. I remember I didn't cry because my great grandma and I, we spoke about death, just like we're speaking about Tuesday. You know, it was just the thing that she was happy for us to talk about and loss was something she was happy for us to talk about. So in many ways, I feel like she was preparing me.

17:05I've never cried about it. I've always felt sad about it. But I do try and focus on what she did for me and with me and how she has prepared me. It's a sad song nonetheless. And I miss her dearly.

17:48I miss you, DMX and Faith Evans. So Dwayne, we were talking before about you starting to learn to fit in and you'd enjoyed school in Jamaica, I think. How did you get on when you came here? Because I know that you know you're dyslexic now. Did anybody spot that then? I loved school as a kid. When you're a child in Jamaica in school, it's lots of repetition. It's not so much a focus on you working alone. When I came to school here in the UK, I remember sitting in English. This is something that I've learned that lots of people feel and maybe suffer from. When it was time to read, I would count how many people would be coming before me so I'd know what sentence I would have to read.

18:32And I would recite the sentence in my head multiple times to the point where when it got to me, I could just look at the teacher and say the words. And I recognize now that it was because of fear. Well, that's a coping strategy. That's a very clever coping strategy. Oh, God. I mean, it really was a coping strategy to compound that. I had an incident when I was really young and it was again when I first came to the UK. My mum saw me reading and there was a concept in the book. It was a it was a book about a superhero. And if you imagine again, I'm a child from rural Jamaica. The word super was never part of my vocabulary.

19:11I'd never heard the word before. But the word supper I had. I got to the word and I saw a purr supper. It didn't quite make sense to me, but I recognize it was making my mum angrier and angrier. And eventually she grabbed the book and sent me upstairs and don't come back down until you know the word. And as a result of that, I stopped reading in front of her. I avoided I enjoyed reading. And we had some books in the house when I first came to when we first came here. And I loved flicking through the books and I loved trying to figure out what was happening when I was looking at pictures of lions and tigers and animals.

19:49And whether it was a water system, whatever it was, a science experiment, I loved trying to figure it out by reading. And I stopped doing all of that when after that incident. I do know that the Cub Scouts was a place where you felt comfortable, though. Tell me about finding your way there. I love talking about scouts because I remember the first day and for me it was something that presented itself at the time that I needed it most. So this is you and your best mate Stavros? Yes, Stavros. Who you have made friends with. So Stavros is the boy who the teacher put me next to on day one. And Stavros was late for Cubs one day.

20:28His mum was busy and we were playing and she said, oh my God, Dwayne, I'll take you home once I've dropped Stavros off. And we jump in the car and Stavros gets dropped off and he runs inside and still playing. I chase him and I remember chasing him to the door and this man stood at the door and he says, oh, great, a new starter. And I freeze because I'm terrified. I've never met a man who looks like him before. He's tall. I'm still quite new to the country. And I freeze and I look at Stavros's mum and she looks at me and looks at him and she says, no, no, no, no, no. We're just here to drop off Stavros.

21:01And he says, nonsense. Let him come inside and stay. and they were building bridges across the two benches, those old PE style benches that you had in the hall in school. And I remember we were challenging ourselves to walk across planks of wood and they'd showed us how to tie things and I thought I knew what I was doing. So I'd tie some because again, in Jamaica, when I wanted a toy or a swing or whatever it was, I'd make it myself. So I felt at home and I felt like I had something to offer in this environment. Well we'll find out where that took you next Dwayne but first I want to hear some more music it's disc number four please what are we going to hear next?

21:38So this song takes me back to those really early days in school when I first came to this country and it's Kylie Minogue and it's The Locomotion So where are you when we hear this song where will it transport you to in your mind? My teacher Miss Dimitriou is the greatest teacher in history Miss Dimitri made you feel confident within yourself. And she would put this on. And I remember her throwing her arms up and dancing and saying, everyone, right, let's dance. Do your best movement. Do your best motion. And this was the first time I'd experienced an interaction like that with a teacher. Again, in Jamaica, you sit on your bench or you sit on your desk and you recite or you're told what to do.

22:22You're never part of any activities or any actions or any engagement on that kind of what feels like it's supposed to be fun. And this was the first time for me learning was made fun.

22:52It's easier than learning your ABCs. So come on, come on, do the locomotion with me. You've got to swing your head. Kylie Minogue and the locomotion. Dwayne Fields, by the time you'd reached your teens, you were living in Hackney, where you were surrounded by gang violence. You weren't in a gang yourself, but when you were 19, you were stabbed by a group of boys for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a very serious attack. You were lucky to recover from that. and then a few years later you found yourself in an even more frightening situation and that was over a moped of yours that had been stolen yeah so um i built this moped spent months in a cold wet shed with my younger brother we built this moped and it was stolen and we all know that when something's stolen in a particular area we know where it's going to end up in all likelihood and sure enough i head down to this estate and there are these guys tearing this bike apart and i I felt something I don't think I'd ever felt before.

23:54I felt this overwhelming sense of anger. And I felt that partly because of the bike, but also felt that partly because they'd pushed my brother off or hit him off the bike when they stole it. and I did what I think is probably the I made the worst decision when I said right I'm going to go down and get my bike back and I walk in the middle and I grab this bike and there's eight or nine boys tearing it apart and the second mistake I made on that night was once everyone had said yeah take take the bike it's rubbish we didn't want it anyway I should have left but I didn't there was one guy one guy holding a plastic panel that had no useful function to the bike and I should have let it go but I felt like there was some injustice in leaving any part of what I'd worked so hard on there and I remember I snatched it out of his hand and as I turned to walk away he pushed me and the third thing that I did which was really silly I pushed him back and he walked away and he came back and he had a loaded gun and I pushed my brother to the side as this guy raised the gun up and I put my hands up and before I could say the words you don't have to I heard a click and he's pointing this gun directly at me at my torso and he cocked it back and I heard I saw a round come out the side and he pulled the trigger again and before he could do it he was wrestling with a gun before he could do it a third time some of the boys kind of grabbed him and said oh don't worry it's not worth it and and they moved on the gun misfired twice and i had so many people saying mate what you're gonna do we we know where you can find him we know where he hangs out and i remember thinking i don't want to do anything to this guy i i genuinely i'm just happy to be here i'm happy i didn't get shot i'm not seeking retribution my conscience wouldn't allow me to do that kind of harm to someone, even someone who had attempted it to me.

26:02Duane, it's all so much to go through for such a young lad that you were then. What helped you psychologically? I know at this point, you know, this is when you kind of start to get back outdoors and find yourself again. What helped me in that moment actually was I thought to myself, right, you are losing who you are in all of what's happened. and happening to you? When were you the true version? When were you yourself? When were you bold enough? When did you have the courage to say to someone, hey, no, I'm not going left, I'm going right. And actually, the only time or the first time I recognised having that courage or developing those skills, that courage, was as a kid in Jamaica, when I'd climb those trees or I had courage when I would wade out into a pond that formed after heavy rain to look for what life lived underneath it.

26:55I had courage when I was inquisitive and I was exploring the world around me in Jamaica. And somewhere I lost that kid. I lost all of those learnings, those lessons. And I thought, right, how do I bring that kid who actually, that's the last time I really liked myself. How do I bring that kid back to the fore? And, you know, some time passed and I remember driving through Epping Forest, myself and a couple of friends were going to a party out in Essex somewhere. And I remember driving through Epping Forest and I remember thinking, hold on, there were woodlands on both sides of the car. I've never been here before.