The House Sitters

Sometime in the middle of June…

I fly through the form. I’ve done this drill four times in the last three months. Scribbling my name, date of birth and the letters “S.A.” in half of the empty blocks, I pause after I pen down the passport number I have by now memorized – “That’s right, I memorise number sequences bitches”, says the imaginary gangster voice in my head to absolutely nobody while I give a small, almost indistinguishable nod. I scratch “S.A.” in a couple more spaces. Don’t be fooled, I don’t put full stops between my letters - that would be horrendously inefficient in my quest to fill in the fastest immigration form ever.

Damn! I’ve done it again. I’ve paused at that one question that I can only imagine irks at the back of every Tom, Dick and Harriet cycling their way down Africa: ‘Occupation:’.  I’m the only one in the group unfortunate enough to be tied down to a nine-to-five job next year, so maybe ‘unemployed’ isn’t entirely accurate. Besides, that would be a dent to the pride. The other issue with that self-pity-filled answer is that I’m not so sure that your average immigration officer would be happy to let a bunch of unemployed people into their country. An issue indeed, but by no means an issue that an underhand bribe wouldn’t solve. “T.I.A., This Is Africa, bru”, chuckles Leo Di Caprio to himself as he finishes reading the second paragraph between shooting scenes of Blood Diamond 2.

I’ve thought about it now, and there are just far too many con’s to go the ‘unemployed’ route. I could be seen as having a laugh at the expense of so many people we have cycled passed since leaving Addis Ababa in Ethiopia three or so months ago – all the kids in scraggy clothing living off whatever their legitimately unemployed parents can put on the table. On top of that, one may have a justifiable suspicion that I might be a terrorist, what with the Amish looking beard I’ve got going on. I have been dubbed ‘Osama’ by more than a few completely random locals.

I’m definitely not self-employed - there is no way I could spin my last few months spent loafing around the Eastern Cape drinking beer and playing cricket as any form of employment  (public relations?) and I certainly didn’t earn any money from my negligible efforts. ‘Farmer’? Haha, classic! (That was a fake laugh by the way). My farming knowledge is so bare that my father would happily pay for a flight and bus ride to the Rwanda-Tanzania border to stand alongside me and have a fat laugh at my expense as I jot down the six letters that would constitute a scruffily written lie worthy of the world’s greatest con man.

Despite having cycled a couple thousand kilometres with eff-off heavy bags above my front and back wheels, I would be doing the ‘sport’ of cycling a rather heavy injustice by claiming to be of their lean, hairless species. Lacking imagination and still in the hunt for a personal best form-filling time, I revert to my safety answer: ‘student’.

Now…ish

It is now a month and a half later. In that month and a half I’ve cycled all but three-hundred kilometres of the length of Tanzania. Just before you think that I’m going soft, have a look at a map - Tanzania is a big fucking country. (Note to Mother: Please delete that sentence before showing Grandparents. Thank you). That thousand-plus kilometer trek across some very random terrain (which will be the focus of another piece when I get the gees to write it) was followed by an indulgent three weeks with the family and somewhat significant other in the Serengeti and Zanzibar. Casual. Our cocktail-filled, all-inclusive week at a Zanzibar resort with the whole team and three of our entire families was followed by a stint in Stone Town on Kait’s floor. Kait (our stalwart host who carried the C.V. trump card of having done her tertiary education at Rhodes) is the niece of a friend of a parent who also turned out to be the friend of one of my friends, which made her one of the most closely linked hosts we’ve had on the trip. Once we had lazed around enough for Kait to be told in no uncertain terms by her middle-aged grump of a digs mate that our time in the heart of the most extraordinarily beautiful city I have ever hung around was up, we headed back to Dar-es-Salaam.

We boarded the ferry back to Dar thinking we would only spend a couple of days in the house of Dave and Gill Legge before heading westward on the train to Mbeya before cycling down Lake Malawi, through Mozambique and Swaziland and into South Africa. These thoughts - coupled with the revelation that maybe all Kait’s slightly unfortunate looking digs mate needed in her seemingly endless pursuit of a personality might be a lay – were blasted out of our minds by the sight that awaited us on the boarding jetty. Encircled by a group of masked onlookers were three bodies, washed up from the ferry accident a week before. The bodies were white, or bleached - I’m no scientist. One was concealed by a sheet; the second had all but a stiff, creepily opaque arm covered, while the third body lay fully visible to all who dared to look.

We made it to Dar (insert that blackberry ‘phew’ emoticon). The planned date of departure from Dar came. The planned date of departure from Dar went. Dave and Gill had headed off to South Africa and kindly granted us the use of their beautiful three bedroom apartment as well as their vehicle. A good mate from varsity, Mark Ghaui, took off a few days from work to come and escort us around the better parts of Dar – why would we leave? Once our week of doing nothing was up and our third date of departure was on the horizon, I did it again. Drunken injuries seem to be my thing. I’ve knocked myself out on a table, rolled down an escalator and come off second best in a hand versus wall collision. The worst part of this one was that I am certain that I was the most sober of the four of us and at the very least in a far better state than birthday boy Tom who refused to be woken from the depths of his slumber at the back of the tuk-tuk that brought us home.

On getting no response from our audible but considerate bangs on the security gate I decided to climb over the towering security hurdle. Once up, I realized there was no way down the other side. My efforts seemed to finally have aroused the ineffectual security guards from a sleep that must have been comparable to Tom’s tuk-tuk nap. I panicked and jumped down the other side. Days of watching outrageous activities claiming to be Olympic events had clearly taught me nothing as I landed flat on my heels. Gymnasts all over the world were wincing. I was wincing. I was sore. Damn sore.

The pain emanating from my feet slash ankle region had me convinced that I had broken something - I hadn’t. After a visit to the hospital, departure date number four had to be optimistically scratched in to the diary that none of us keep. Whether it was the many hours spent with my two heavily bandaged ankles in the air or during the thought-provoking crawls between the couch and bathroom, the answer to the question that had nagged me so much a month and a half ago came to me like a vision; a vision clearer than the one that the Mormon fellow had when God came down and gave him a bunch of gold tablets with rules on them that nobody else could see.  Just in case you think I’m talking about Moses, I’m not – but I do understand how you might have thought that. (Note to mother: Maybe don’t show this to the grandparents at all).

Back to that vision…

Occupation: House Sitter

Boom!

Advert: (read it in your head with a cool, deep infomercial-type voice)

 Do you have a house placed conveniently on the route one might take going down Malawi, through Mozambique, Swaziland and into South Africa?

If so, do you need four strapping young gentlemen to look after it while you’re away?

If not, do you need four strapping young gentlemen to look after it while you’re there?

Either way, we’ve got just the thing for you!

Four haggard looking humans on three bicycles and an ancient, malfunctioning motorbike with a side car that Idi Amin would (literally) kill for are heading your way! With a vast array of experience at making themselves right at home in places owned by people that they had never met or even heard of a few months before, there can be no other group around who would truly treat your home as if it were theirs!

(Note: keep that infomercial voice going…)

Armed with an endless array of dinnertime stories, these four knights take the tagline; “make yourselves at home” to new heights. See for yourself!

Call us on 0800 31 32 33.

(Another note: don’t call that number. I think it’s for Dial-A-Bed)

Uganda: Welcome to Swaggerland

Another border, another country. It was country number three for me, four for Jim and nineteen for Tom and Matt. More notably, it was country number four for Frank, who remarkably made it to his first border alongside his posse of cyclists and, failing to disappoint, actually got through the border without being pushed, another first for the motorbike-sidecar combination that is threatening the mileage record for distance propelled by manpower - the current record being held by Fred Flinstone’s ‘Flintmobile’ (don’t blame me for the name, I googled it).

It hardly took an afternoon of cycling to provide us with fodder for comparisons between Kenya and Uganda, two countries that I naively thought would share a significant amount of similarities. As we cycled through thriving vegetation and dense forests of ‘The Pearl of Africa’, we immediately noticed a plethora of cyclists taking advantage of the flat terrain and brand new road; both resulting in eternal gratuity on our part. Mountains were all of a sudden a thing of the past, replaced by little conical hills that the roads easily bypassed. Bicycle taxis seemed the primary form of transport in the Busia border area and were made increasingly noticeable by the pink collared shirts worn by all the cyclists. Our afternoon ride was joined by what became a peloton of cyclists, the English speakers entertaining us by engaging in a bit of banter as we made our way west toward Jinja, our first significant stop. To add to the entertainment of the first day’s cycle, Chen and I were nudged off the road by a mental, monstrous truck only to be forced to swerve back onto the road to avoid a small family of baboons – one of those only-in-Africa moments. Our seven days of cycling in Uganda was a constant battle with mental bus drivers, a rather one-sided battle at that. It came to a head when a bus (filled with 50 or so passengers) decided to overtake a similar coach while the latter was overtaking me on a road that had little to no shoulder. With no traffic coming toward me, I didn’t bother to turn around to assess the situation, thinking it was just the solitary bus, only to be literally blown off the road by the bus that raced passed mere centimetres from my pannier bags without so much as a hoot of warning. Both busses (and every other passenger bus in the country for that matter) were emblazoned with massive stickers proclaiming: “Jesus is the answer”, and “God is good all the time”, giving off the impression that the drivers were in somewhat of a hurry to make their way upstairs and take a bit of a crowd with them.

The Ugandan roadside in general was littered with part-built brick houses, a testament to the completely different rural economic mindset, where the several step process of upgrading from earth houses is viewed as a manner to incentivize and channel any savings into investments toward their futures and that of their family while avoiding the short-termism that plagues those able to save only menial amounts on an irregular basis. The bit-part investment scheme of sorts is undertaken with disregard to the inefficiencies of the theory, sadly visible in the decaying brick walls of unroofed and unused houses.

Despite the unrivalled fertility of the land surrounding them (land that would grow a house if you planted a brick), the bulging stomachs of tiny children supported by skinny little legs portrayed a sad story. I say this with absolutely zero medical authority or experience (except for the knowledge that a combination of Zambuk and Panado works for anything and everything), but the problem of distension that would lead the superbly ignorant to wondering how the hell a 4-year-old boy became pregnant can only be a result of the poor nutritional intake of what must be the staple diet of Matoke and little else– a hard, green, starchy and ultimately tasteless banana that is grown anywhere and everywhere and with total disregard to the fact that the land would be better used by producing something that would find itself a bit better off on the demand-supply pricing scale. The distension could be a result of a number of other things, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Matoke or the Ugandan version of pap were the standard accompaniments to badly cut, tough and bony pieces of goat meat or beans in the village restaurants offering a change from Kenya only in the naming of the food. If a restaurant, any restaurant, was lucky enough to have a menu (there must be a rule that if a restaurant does have a menu, they are not to have more than three in total) a patron would be looked at skeptically and dismissively if they were to expect that the restaurant had everything that was on the menu. Another lesson learnt; keep it simple, stupid.

Despite trying to learn the basics of conversing with rural Ugandans (The basics being; ‘hello’, ‘how are you’ and ‘thank-you’) we soon gave up in the wake of kids using the Swahili greeting of ‘jambo’ despite not knowing much else of the particular language, although for all we know our Swahili was simply too limited (kak) to understand what was going on. English greetings it was to be then, mixed with a touch of Swahili greetings and a pinch of the language endemic to the region unrecognisably mispronounced. Although not quite as impressive as Kenya, most Ugandans spoke some level of English which meant our lack of understanding of regional Ugandan languages wasn’t the end of the world.

At the risk of criminal generalization, the Ugandans themselves were noticeably more reserved than their Kenyan counterparts. Rather than labeling them more reserved, more normal would probably be more appropriate. From being surrounded by inquisitive and flabbergasted Ethiopians at every stop to being engaged and entertained by almost every Kenyan we came across, we were oft left to our own devices through Uganda, watched from afar until we made the effort to greet and chat to the locals. At that point the guard quickly dropped, just as quickly as a smile and a wave would transform a passive expression into an excited one, and individuals became just as friendly as any other. Never was the lack of communication hostile, skeptical or even unfriendly. In retrospect, the responses we got would have most probably gone unnoticed were it not for the extremes of Ethiopia and Kenya that we had just experienced.

Just as the crazy mzungu’s cycling around with bags draped over their bikes accompanied by a motorbike dragging along what was labeled a boat by most fascinated onlookers provided locals with a somewhat exclusive sighting, the reactions we received from the kids lining the roads provided ample reciprocation of the entertainment we were giving the locals. The enthusiasm of waving children overflowed into little dance numbers that included a child of barely two dancing around a pole holding on tightly so as to avoid toppling over in pure exhilaration and another simply bobbing his shoulders to the beat provided by a back-up choir of kids chanting “amazungu” in melodic unison. One kid was so overcome that he had one of those ‘why-did-I-do-that?’ moments; stretching his arms forward in a ‘V’ and resorting to incoherent screaming. Some kids managed to keep their cool (unlike their counterparts who depicted a crowd at a Justin Bieber parade through Disney World) and reacted in what had become identified as typical Ugandan swagger, the best example being a thumbs-up turned on its side – too casual. The swagger emanating from some of the older teenagers we came across became one of the most defining traits of the Ugandan people. Every so often you’d come across an absolute gangster (gangsta?) sporting some classy shades, MTV-Base-style jeans, subtle yet optimal bling and walking with a well-timed bounce in their step that would leave the white folk on ‘Pimp My Ride’ taking notes and drooling with jealousy.

Another noticeable trait, alongside the tentative friendliness and extreme swagger of Ugandans, was the use of an expression that was almost an imitation of the sound made by so many hefty, charismatic mama’s back home in South Africa. On hearing about the length and nature of our journey, men would take a small step back and exclaim in a high pitch: “EH! Uh aaaaah!” As has become a routine sight so far, it is the men who spend all day on their stoeps chatting or on a street corner looking like they’re looking for work and therefore generally the men that we end up chatting to. From reading The State of Africa (Don’t mistake me for an intellectual, I read a short Sherlock Holmes story between every chapter) I learnt that Uganda’s president, Museveni (not to be seen without his beige wide-brim hat), was cruising into his 25^th year as head of state in what is no doubt a flourishing democracy (note: sarcasm). When we asked some locals about it on crossing the border, they simply laughed it off in a similar way that we laugh off Zuma’s six wives and twenty-one children. “We know it’s ridiculous but what can we do, he’s our president”.

In amongst the half-built houses and excitable children were sporadic lines of fruit stalls, all with similar, if not exactly the same fresh produce on offer. If any of these markets were near villages, they were always hidden behind a sea of vendors all wearing the same colour overall and vying aggressively for sales by shoving their cold cokes or dead-animal-on-a-stick kebabs into the windows of any trucks pulling over for a recess from terrorizing the roads of Uganda. The roads themselves were either brand new or absolutely torrid, the latter mostly currently or soon to be under construction. Despite bailout after bailout going on in Europe, the EU have commendably continued their undertaking to improve the battered roads that lead from Kampala to the new found oil reserves in the west of the country, a project that we benefited from by camping on the premises set up for the foreign engineers involved in the three-year process.

Our night camping was one of three on our trek through Uganda, the other two being in the town of Masaka where we slept on the property of a coffee trading company. Masaka had been preceded by a three night stay in Kampala where we saw nothing but the nightlife, a few nights with family friends of Jim’s near Jinja and a layover in a truck-stop town that is renowned for being one of the original HIV hotspots. Jinja is home to the source of the Nile, that lovely little stream that flows up to Egypt on which we forked out $125 to take part in our first seriously tourist-orientated activity. There’s little that can compare to the embarrassment the four of us felt as we headed along dirt roads through rural villages on our way to and from the base of Nile River Explorers’ white water rafting in an open back truck lined with benches. We were sat in amongst a group of NGO Americans on the return leg and cringed at the way they treated the scenery as a theme park ride - a lifetimes worth of “Oh MY God!” exclamations. The rafting itself was top notch even though two of the waterfalls on the route had been dammed up for hydro-electric purposes. After four rapids our boat was the laughing stock of the fleet as we capsized three times. It was probably no surprise that I was the laughing stock of the boat that was the laughing stock after I came out from under the raging water of the first rapid gasping for air and in a state of shock that had long since wiped out my air of bravado and “ag man, I’ve jumped off a bridge before” attitude. I can deal with water… as long as I can stand in it.

Uganda’s national bird is the Ugandan Crane, visible on their flag and a national treasure, the killing of which will land you a minimum seven years in prison. In a country where homosexuality is illegal, it is far more acceptable for someone to kill a gay guy than a bird with some red on its face and a sweet golden Mohawk. During the latter stages of our cycle through Uganda I noted to myself how the vegetation had, for the first time, turned into grazing lands from the rotations between dense bush and fields of matoke trees, sugar cane, onions, tea, coffee or maize. Deciding to point this out to Chen for lack of anything more interesting to say, I managed to point directly at what was to be our first sighting of Ugandan Cranes. This shocker, only a few weeks after naming a Crested Eagle a Fat Hoopoe, only helped to cement my place amongst the worst bird watchers of all time. Our last stop in Uganda was a relaxing weekend at a community-run eco-resort on an island in Lake Bunyonyi where we celebrated Jim joining the rest of us on the twenty-four year mark. The lake was a mere matter of kilometres from the Rwandan border and provided an idyllic yet impressively affordable end to our short Ugandan sojourn.

A lot of people ask us, “why the bikes?” and just as often I ask myself that, but the best aspect to taking our bikes is the ability to interact with almost every single person that we come to pass. With massive loads (and white skins) we have become more than just cyclists or travellers. Somehow the journey inspires a tremendous amount of goodwill from everyone we pass. The goodwill might come from some form of sympathy or possibly the eagerness to be involved in a story that, from the outside, seems like it could be an interesting one. Locals welcome us warmly and in some instances even cheer us on, the cheering and welcoming becoming more extreme the more ridiculous we seem – cycling with wifebeaters in the rain definitely won the fans over, a true underdog story. One guy went as far as calling me “smart and beautiful” before we had even exchanged names. Pure kindness is obviously a massive factor in why so many wonderful people have temporarily but unconditionally adopted us, but the ability to be part of the experience must be just as big, if not the deciding factor. In very few circumstances would one (myself included) accept four ragged, dirty, hungry strangers (one of which is sporting some horrid looking hairstyle almost resembling dreadlocks) into their homes, yet we have come into luck again and again. The trip is made by these moments of kindness, be it a local in the street guiding us toward the places we have no hope in finding or the folk that offer us a room, food and internet with a free laundry service to boot expecting absolutely nothing tangible in return. Every single person we have come across not only become part of our story, but has made the story a much easier read. As we headed out of Uganda toward Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, the sense of achievement of cycling through another country was overpowered by the excitement at having discovered and experienced yet another unique place on our extraordinarily diverse continent that offers so very much to every type of traveller. Far from having ticked something off, another line has been added to my bucket list.

Kenya to Kigali: Part 1

Kenya... a few unproductive weeks back

Keeping my diary up to date on a daily basis is a mission, kind of like how taking my malaria pills every night is a mission except that swallowing a pink pill takes all of two seconds and if I don’t do it there’s a slight chance I might die, or have a shitty headache. Fortunately, if I don’t write in my diary, nothing really happens.

It is, however, a supremely handy thing to have with me when I turn the ink into tiny little mini-bytes of computer storage stuff in the form of Word documents written on what I’m pretty sure is a pirated version of Microsoft Office due to the fact that there’s a panel on the right hand side of the screen that won’t piss off and insists on flashing a picture of some chap with a receding hairline that is annoyingly similar to mine. Add to that the fact that it’s a very cool leather-bound booklet that will make for a killer memento when I’m old and gray and one that my grandchildren can boast about on Grandparents Day when they are in the prep department at Kingswood Junior School – because they will be at Kingswood.

It’s a tight list of pro’s and con’s, almost too close to choose between (mainly due to the fact that keeping count never really occurred to me) but in the end, the diary will prevail. I hope.

Having not been particularly habitual about keeping the diary up-to-date since leaving Nakuru in Kenya, and becoming increasingly worse (or better) at finding excuses to persuade myself not to transfer the day to day happenings into some sort of readable computerized format I figured that it didn’t really matter when things happened and in what order, and if it did I could just make it up. I also realized that anyone reading my hard-to-follow-because-this-oke-can’t-keep-a-steady-train-of-thought writings wouldn’t really care whether I cycled 60km on Tuesday or 105km on Thursday, nor what I ate or where I ate it.

A month or so of being generally useless on the writing front later I find myself in the Rwandan capital of Kigali having left Kenya and cycled clean through Uganda without yet putting anything up on my website that has been made to look completely unremarkable in the shadow of the expertly done piece of work that is TomAndMattCycle.com (note that I tried to spruce mine up with a new background that magically doesn’t disappear when you scroll down. That took me a good half hour to figure out!). During this time I’ve also almost completely thrown in the towel as far as picture taking and video capturing is concerned, partly due to the fact I couldn’t be bothered to source new AA batteries for my camera that is so shit that it actually uses AA batteries, but more because I have at my disposal the photographic genius of Tom Perkins and his up-and-coming apprentice Matt ‘Hippy Jesus’ Chennells, whose documentation of the trip is sufficiently thorough and can be watched and re-watched in a quality that does not resemble a black and white broadcast of an SABC show received through a bunny-ears aerial in the valleys of the Transkei. Go on the point and shoot Kodak!

We left what had become and was referred to as another home with typical hesitance and a high degree of procrastination. After Kizzy’s home in Addis, the Mount Kenya retreat and the Blake’s house in Nairobi, our stay with the Robinson’s in Nakuru was another case of the four of us taking the throw-away line of: “make yourselves at home” far too literally. What increased the sluggishness of our departure was the long hiatus we’d had from the bike, something that is never easy to recover from. Having gone to Nairobi for the primary purpose of getting our hands on some Ugandan visas, we couldn’t help ourselves from staying more than double our intended length of time thanks to the amazing hospitality of Robert and Melanie Blake who fed us meals of roast beef and gammon, always followed by desserts and accompanied by a steady supply of South African wine to boot in their beautiful home in which Matt and I were fortunate enough to each have our own bedroom with a double bed and en-suite bathroom. I made a point of spreading myself diagonally across the bed in full knowledge that such luxuries would be few and far between in the coming months. After creating excuses and hangovers at will to delay our departure, we did eventually head back north toward Nakuru but not before stopping off for a couple of heavily discounted nights at the famous Fisherman’s Camp on Lake Naivasha, owned by a friend of a family friend of Jim’s.

Eventually though, set off we did. As sad as heading out of Kenya was, the cycle was absolutely exquisite in almost every aspect; serving up multitudes of different landscapes, each as breathtaking as the last and introducing us to a range of extraordinary characters amongst the masses of smiling, waving and laughing Kenyan people.

It wasn’t long after we set off on an extended gradual downward slope that we were met by the mountains we had been promised by our hosts from Nakuru and Naivasha. The hills became an afterthought amongst the long ranging views of green grazing land and some special interactions along the road. The standard stop-and-ask-for-distances-to-see-how-wrong-the-last-chap-was turned into a fantastic little gathering in God-knows-what village as two proficient English speakers took charge of conversing with us while keeping the rest of the 20-strong Swahili-only crew in the loop. In these situations, more so than any other, it was an absolute blessing that so many Kenyans (and later Ugandans) were able to speak good English. The standard send-off line of “safe journey” is said with such sincerity and kindness that your mind is instantly filled with thoughts of how you will go about visiting the country again sometime in the future, because there is no way that you cannot return to a country that offers as much as Kenya does amongst people as welcoming and appreciative as the Kenyan people are. “You are welcome”, and “Thank You” were both phrases uttered by the non-English speaking villagers as we cycled off up another hill in awe of where we were and how grateful people were to have us visiting their country.

Hill after hill in intense sun with Nelson’s chain slipping got the better of me as I started to hold up the team a bit in a perfect example of how a day on the bike can toy with ones emotions, oscillating between the extremes of ecstasy and anger. With no town anywhere near us, we found a police compound in which we were welcomed to sleep on the concrete floor of a foyer to a building that contained old jail cells. What was lacking in comfort was more than made up by the kindness and enthusiasm of the police officers that culminated in our departure the next morning being delayed by one of the officers who had gotten himself into serious story-telling mode. On our prompt as to the upcoming Kenyan elections (which have recently been delayed for a year), the officer launched into a personal narrative on his experience the previous time around. With finesse and gusto that can surely only be matched within the African story-telling culture, we were told how our story-teller was surrounded by angry, nominally armed protesters on the day that it was announced that incumbent president Kibaki was to serve a second term. He had wound up in the situation while transporting an injured election violence victim to a hospital, only to have two breakdowns and instructed to stay with the empty second broken-down vehicle. Bit by bit the story became more and more intense, the speaker’s tempo and volume rising and falling for maximum impact as he told how the mob turned on him as a symbol of the government and closed in angrily on the lone officer who possessed enough ammunition to harm but a third of the crowd. The story was told with a modesty that inadvertently served to heighten the heroics of the officer who placed all the acclaim on his faith rather than the cool and calm presence of mind he showed to lower his weapon and relate to the angry mass despite one particularly appalled individual ready to bring a brick down on his head.

The tough hills and frustratingly poor roads did not take long to dampen the morning’s inspiration, even though the beautiful views of tea country did their utmost to curb the frustrations of the road that eventually (in good partnership with my own thuggish stupidity) led to me snapping the hook on my pannier bag, forcing a make-do replacement of rope that would somehow hold out all the way to Kigali. The detour that we had embarked on at the advice of our three different Kenyan hosts soon expelled any negative sentiment toward the road and terrain to the very back of our minds as we entered the Kakamega Forest, a small patch of unique tropical rainforest in the west of Kenya. The incredible sights and sounds of the forest gave me flashbacks of running through the Knysna Forest with trees towering higher than my neck could stretch to see. While the shade was immensely welcomed, it served the rather unfortunate purpose of not alerting me to the fact that I was not wearing the sunglasses that I had set off in earlier that day. After all but punching myself in the head in frustration, I realized that I had left them at the turn off into the forest where I had waited at a little stall amongst boda-boda drivers (motorbike taxis) for Matt and Jim to realize that they had cycled clean past the turn off and down a hill I was less than eager to cycle back up.

With Frank unable to make it up the downhill that I had realized my somewhat inevitable idiocy, we resolved to keep going until I could find a boda-boda to head back with. 10km and almost 45 minutes later, we exited the forest and I negotiated a return ride with a driver called Smith, who had learned English from his uneducated father who had picked it up while working as a cook for a white Kenyan of British descent. Smith was subsequently named after his father’s boss and put his English to good use by offering guided tours of the exquisite forest as well as running his own dirt cheap campsite on the edge of the forest. The pursuit of my sunglasses proved to be a fascinating experience of the Kenyan psyche. Having arrived at the stall (which was no more than a wooden bus shelter used by taxi drivers waiting on a fare) we found it completely empty. I had mentioned to Smith that I would increase his pay from 400 to 500 Kenyan Shillings should I be lucky enough to locate the rather expensive sunglasses (unfortunately branded as ‘Dirty Dogs’ – thank the pope ‘Dogs’ is not spelt with a ‘z’) that my folks bought me for Christmas. Thanks to Smith’s patience and ability to act as a translator, as well as the obvious kicker of a 500 Shilling reward, some chap who had walked past us earlier and claimed to have no idea as to the location of my glasses came running up a small hill from a little house with my sunglasses held aloft, shouting: “money, give me the money” with a huge smile on his face.

Overcome by the combination of happiness and relief I was finally free to enjoy the full splendour of the forest as Smith sped me back to the other end so that we could resume the cycling that would take us through the tea plantations and into the sugar cane plantations of the western regions. The torrid dirt road and race to beat the imminent rainstorm was easily shrugged off on the back of recovering my sunglasses, although the high of emotion was brought to a crashing halt later that evening. It will be a day that will most certainly go down as one of the most dramatic in sporting history. People will know exactly where they were watching the moment Sergio Aguero somehow snatched back the Premiership title with the last kick of the season just as it seemed that Manchester City had gifted it to their fiercest rivals and my team of choice, Manchester United. The three United fans in our camp; Tom, Matt and myself, managed to quickly shrug off the loss so as best to appreciate the drama and local reactions along with the supreme effort Jim (an Arsenal fan) was making to hide his ecstasy and claim neutrality.

The next morning, our final one in Kenya, got off to a delayed start of extreme frustration with a hint of rage as I had to switch tyres. Having swopped the bulky tyres I had left South Africa with in Nakuru for an extra tyre that Tom was lugging around and Matt’s spare because of the super-human effort needed to change the originals in the event of a flat (I’d already had two flats), Matt needed his spare as one of his tyres had worn through after a good hall of 10 000km. Because I had brought along tubeless tyres even though I had tubes (yes, this sounds retarded, but I was advised to do as much by my uncle who is the clean-shaven Jesus of cycling in the Eastern Cape), I had to use screwdrivers rather than tyre levers to change them, which I found out that morning was actually puncturing the replacement tube. So, basically, cycling jargon crap aside, my tyres were shit and I was not a happy chappy. Nonetheless, Matt came to the rescue with a spare tube (I had now stabbed my way through my supply) and another tyre that had a slight tear. The tear has left us hoping and praying (to a mythical figure that is not the afore-mentioned clean-shaven Jesus) that it will make it to Tanzania where a decent replacement will be brought up by the ballies.

Arriving at the border with Uganda in 40 degree heat after the morning I had had was not exactly ideal, but neither was the fact that we were leaving the beautiful country of Kenya that had been so good to us during our time there. Life was not all doom and gloom though, as the ‘Pearl of Africa’ (as labeled by Winston Churchill) lay ahead in its full glory. Our journey through Kenya was poles apart to that in Ethiopia on almost every level. What stands out as the biggest difference as far as life on the bike is concerned is the extraordinary luck we had to be put in contact with so many people, all of which were immeasurably kind and hospitable as home after home was opened up to us. Ethiopia was an experience that I enjoyed thoroughly, but it was the experience itself that made Ethiopia; the experience of cycling through a country so phenomenally different to anything I had come across before. Kenya was different as we left it knowing that we had made the most of our stay there, yet had still left so much undone. There were mountains to climb, lakes to visit, cultures to experience, cities to explore, game to view, roads to [motor]cycle and beaches on which to do bugger all.

When we left Ethiopia, I crossed the border and said goodbye. To Kenya it was a case of: “’till we meet again”.

How About That Ride In?

Having jumped a rather opportunistic lift on Archie’s Hilux double cab out of Uganda’s capital, Kampala, we afforded ourselves a rest day in Masaka, about 130km south-west of Kampala along the highway headed to Kigali – pronounced Chigali by locals and travellers trying to sound ‘in’ – which was the first destination that had some form of time constraint as Matt and Tom were to spend a month working at a small school there.

Unlike normal rest days, the purpose of this one wasn’t to give our legs a break, nor was it to rest my ailing arse which had taken a non-homoerotic pounding in the last two cycling days. Instead, this rest day was a break for the brain. After an outrageously ambitious weekend of jolling lank with our host, Archie (a good school friend of Tom’s), our brains were operating slower than a virus-infected DOS-running Apple Mac. Talking had become a strenuous, mind-numbing affair even the day after we had been struck down with an extreme case of the Sunday blues akin to the type you feel after a heavy Varsity weekend with a line-up of unfinished tuts waiting on your desk - except that we had no tuts. Ever.

Tom and Matt decided to spend their day figuring out a general plan (probably the first bit of planning done since deciding to set off on the trip) for their month-long volunteering stint in Kigali (Chigali) as well as get a taste of a day in the life of a coffee trader, Archie’s new profession since hanging up his boots on the London scene.

While Jim had been on the verge of setting off with his bike and fishing rod to Lake Vic for a ‘fush’ (it’s hard to make fun of a Natal accent when you’re stuck with an Eastern Cape one, but what the hell) on the day we got to Masaka, I had chosen to head off in that very direction the next day. As far as I was concerned; bikes be damned, I was jumping on whatever form of transportation would get me there the cheapest while inflicting minimal pain on my rear.

Due to the fact that we had little to no idea how far away Bukakata was (our destination selected by pinpointing the closest lakeside dot on Chen’s now utterly destroyed map), nor what the roads were like, Jim caved in to join me on my lazy journey to catch a first glimpse of Lake Vic proper in a bid to get some writing done.

Having insignificant information on distances was by now standard issue as we have found a serious stubbornness in all of Ethiopia, Kenya and now Uganda. Instead of conceding that the distance to the next town is completely unknown to the person in question, it makes more sense to them to pick a random number (often not even a nice, round multiple of five) and get your hopes up (or down) by assertively guaranteeing the distance they just thumb-sucked while casting you a glance of mixed exasperation and contempt for doubting their level of knowledge of their local area – which turns out to be sweet fu*k all.

Having jumped on a motorbike taxi (known as a boda-boda and by far the most visible form of transport in and around towns) we asked vaguely to be taken to Bukakata road, taking advantage of the obviousness of Ugandan road names. Once on the road we were surrounded by a few fixers, a couple more boda-bodas and the standard bunch of interested onlookers hoping to experience a couple of mzungus getting absolutely ripped off or supremely confused by chatter in a language they wouldn’t even be able to name let alone understand. After a few conversations to confirm what we thought might have been either lost in translation or a web of lies, we settled on the fact that there were no taxis (mutatus in Kenya, the Ugandan eluded us) to Bukakata and were left with the option of a car for 5000UGX (Ugandan Shillings, just over 300 to one rand) each or 15000 for a boda-boda. The sedan, which was no bigger than my first ever car (an Opel Astra with tinted windows that trapped heat in a fashion that would rival any sauna but with less naked old men) was the obvious option and seemed all but ready to go with a man in the front seat and a woman in the back with her two very little children perched on her lap.

It was a sure-fire sign of things to come when, despite the obvious space in the back seat, I was ushered into the front seat alongside the adult male already there. It goes without saying that it was a sign that I missed or subconsciously ignored with the innocent naivety of a sixteen-year-old girl being offered free math lessons by the nerdy kid in the grade who all-to-often ended up getting into deep conversations about her like-life while deflecting any on his own by saying: “there’s this girl I like but I just don’t know how to tell her…” It can’t be love-life, they’re sixteen! And if I hadn’t kissed a girl by then there is no way in hell that the people I’ve just made up for metaphorical purposes can be dropping ‘L’ bombs.

Having ignored my usher and joined Jim in the backseat while internally questioning the intentions of the chap in the front seat who was far too keen to shift over, we sat and waited for the driver to get cracking. As time snuck by, a new passenger was squeezed into the car by the usher, shifting everyone else around between seats to maximize the space inside the vehicle, everyone except for the two white boys in the backseat who were slowly being forced closer together as one after the other filed into the car.

All we could do was laugh as the usher optimized his load with the precision of a chemical engineer, piling two men and two women into the backseat alongside the two of us and the woman with her two kids alongside the chap in the front who was by now probably regretting calling shotgun. Just when we thought all sardine-related records had been smashed, a man sat in the drivers’ seat. This man was not the driver. The driver propped himself onto the man’s lap just as I would have done way back when my feet didn’t reach the pedals and I ‘drove’ sitting on my father’s lap peering through the gap below the top arch of the steering wheel.

Twelve people had somehow squashed into that car and I can only assume that it was the dwindling of demand that convinced the driver to set off, head half out of his window, without tying a family to the roof of the car.

Halfway into the trip on the bumpy dirt road, Jim and I noted the tremendous oversight of the driver in not fitting in at least three people into the boot. A mere matter of minutes passed before the usage of the boot, or lack thereof, became abundantly clear as we hurtled past some traffic officers hailing us down. The driver eventually pulled over, jumped off of the lap he was occupying, opened the boot and jogged off to the officers with a live chicken in hand. He handed over the chicken without so much of a word to the officer and sauntered back to the car with a cheeky grin – simple as that.

Seven men, three women, two small children and one chicken had left Masaka that morning with all but the chicken somehow arriving safely at the Bukakata port on the shores of the expansive Lake Victoria. Unless it was standard operating procedure for police cops to arrive back at the station to clock out with a day’s spoils of chickens (which is more probable than one might originally think), I doubt the chicken arrived at her final destination as safely as we did.

Having jumped the free ferry (because it was free), we spent our few set aside hours on one of the Sesse Islands of Lake Victoria without actually knowing it before heading back to Masaka in the late afternoon, more than happy to pay the premium for a motorbike. If there was one thing taken from our little Lake Victoria expedition, it was the knowledge that ‘capacity’ is a word that has no direct translation into any African language.

On The Road In Kenya: Hills And Flats

On the morning of our departure from the lodge at the foothills of Mount Kenya in which we had lazed away the last 8 days, we got up and ready to leave with the speed and enthusiasm of an eight year old child being forced to go to an evening communion service – one of those drawn out ones where you drink cheap grape juice and attempt to digest a circular wafer of polystyrene – that coincided with the Sunday night movie, Shrek 6.

It was 10:30 by the time we got going, stomachs full and bikes loaded. Despite a bunch of gravel roads heading west, our new general direction en-route to the Ugandan capital of Kampala, we headed directly south on the tarred highway toward Nairobi before an acute turn at a T-junction lead us back in almost the same direction we came. The reason for our detour and sharp turn was not because of our lack of geometry skills but rather an attempt to avoid the unknown quantities that were the gravel roads that most of the locals pointed us down when asked for directions as any momentum garnered by our heavy homes-on-wheels would be rendered all but null-and-void and only cause damage to our bikes who – they have feelings – will need all the respite we can afford them on our long way down. As it stands Chen's bike, Joseph, is squeaking along with broken but usable front and rear pannier racks while Nelson and Sebastian, Jim’s bike, are largely intact.

Hills and more hills were the order of the day – the next three days in fact -, probably an appropriate punishment for our prolonged period of doing nothing, something that we have perfected into an art form. Thanks to the recent onset of the long rains, the Kenyan countryside has been an experience in itself. Forests and farmlands have been nothing but green, surrounding quaint towns and an impressive amount of schools, almost all of which offer boarding facilities. The frequency of schools, both in and out of town, is apparently largely due to an American programme that made finance available to builders of schools, many of which have been left half-built or consist of little more than the roadside sign itself and the lenders out of sight and mind. As interesting as the schools were themselves, the names were arguably more so. Prime examples displaying a disastrous lack of imagination are: ‘Shining Stars Academy’ and ‘Bright Future High School’.

As we ventured off the highway where white-driven vehicles – all 4x4s of course – passed us regularly, we were met with friendly and excited shouts of, “How are you!?” that evolved into a rhythmical chorus of kids chanting the line repeatedly in unison, obviously not as accustomed to our fairer complexions as the people around the tourist-friendly Nanyuki. The general reception was impressively positive with amazement being directed more at our heavily-laden bicycles than the weirdly clothed mzungu riders with a strange variety of hairstyles and, at best, inconsistent facial hair.

The third and final day of our trek to Nakuru was without doubt my favourite of the trip thus far. Having made our way to over two thousand metres above sea level, we came out on top of a mountain that overlooked an immense valley, part of the Great Rift Valley that runs 9600km’s from Israel to Mozambique, or so read the signs outside little curios shops. We did begin to question the accuracy and authenticity of the tourism signs, which, if all were to be believed, would mean we crossed the equator at least seven times on the day, sometimes crossing from north to south and back in less than fifty metres. Having undoubtedly being dealt the better hand with the downhill into the valley being twice the size of the uphill out of it and followed by a lengthy, gradual decline, we passed through more immaculate, arable land on which tea and banana trees seemed to be thriving amongst pastures of cows, sheep and goats operated by small-scale farmers.

In an attempt to become slightly more politically aware and, more importantly, better at 30 Seconds, I am currently reading: ‘The State of Africa’, from which one can gather an understanding –in my case a vague one at best - about the varying effects that colonialism had on African countries. No doubt a standout positive from my point of view is the introduction of ‘TNT’ into the road building process. In un-colonised Ethiopia, apart from a disgraceful lack of cricket and rugby, the roads rolled up over the peaks of hills and down through the troughs of the valleys. Terrain which would have tormented our leg muscles has all of a sudden become far more navigable as roads have been blasted out of the side of mountains avoiding the necessity of ‘cresting’ the hills – when you spend five hours a day on a bicycle you’re allowed to make up your own jargon: fact – and starting climbs from the lowest point possible.

Going back to the first night of the trip to Nakuru, we set up camp for the first time since I joined Team TomAndMattAndJimAndBusterCycleWithTomActuallyOnAMotorbike.com. Having heard from a girl called Brenner, who we met in Addis and was cycling solo up Africa, that Catholic Church gardens were the poor man’s Hilton Hotel equivalent campsites – except a lot freer – we ventured out in search of one in a small town called Mweiga. After a Titanic-scale failure of an attempt to communicate with the Church cleaner in English we knocked on the ‘Office’ door which, in a very unscriptural-like fashion, was not opened unto us. Everyone is allowed one bad and one cynical joke a day. I realise I have just used up both.

We resorted to parroting words out of a Swahili dictionary and eventually were pointed around the back of the church to a double story house with a garage of a couple smart-looking Rav 4’s. Daniel, who I can only assume was the minister’s domestic, phoned up his boss to come suss out our trio of vagabond cyclists. As we waited for the blessing or what would be a terribly awkward and un-Jesus like refusal of shelter from Father John we were scrutinised in pure fascination by a bunch students from a girls prep school situated within the confines of the Church property. Thankfully, Father John, a man who didn’t look like he went hungry too often, happily granted us permission to spend the night on the church grounds and went as far as calling us a blessing. Imagine that.

As we set up camp and cooked up a vegetarian storm – so more of a gentle drizzle I guess – we were keenly crept out by two girls of about ten who asked us to come to the church service in which they were dancing the next day. Between meeting the catechist, Samuel - whose role in the church I knew nothing about but found out that he gets his own office, cool robes and has the task of holding the microphone up to the mouth of the minister during the sermon and who was at best asexual -,the repeated use of the line: “Come to my house if you need anything. Anything” from Daniel and a decent dose of generalisation, I figured that it was probably a good thing that the school next door only catered for little girls. 

Having been woken up by - and therefore missed - the early morning English service the next day, we attended the first twenty minutes of the Kikuyu service (Kikuyu being a large Kenyan tribe that were displaced from the greater Nairobi area by British colonisers) after we had packed up. Despite the fact that pretty much everyone went through a ritual of bending a knee to the ground and using water from Dumbledore’s pensieve to do the crucifix sign that all the Brazilians do when they score a goal, one man sporting an Aston Villa shirt skipping the ritual was enough for us to feel ok about entering the church without doing the jig. We chose a seat on a bench right at the back on what turned out to be the side of the church designated for females so that we could make a stealthy exit after the dancing. Once the little dance routine had been performed with the cohesion of a Tin Roof dance floor bobbing to a dub-step track and in between a few lines by the minister that we pretended to understand, we snuck out the back door as unnoticed as three white okes wearing spandex can possibly be.

Having clocked up 1000km’s on the second day of the journey, a day after Chen passed ten times that distance, Nelson decided he wasn’t getting enough attention and ran a slow puncture on what had become a torrid stretch of tarmac which the 15-seater taxis with a capacity of thirty-three were neglecting in favour of the gravel tracks bordering the road, often on the wrong side – Kenyan driving licenses are rumoured to be the third highest selling commodity behind Tusker beer and goat meat. Despite a series of stops to blow up the tube, the slow puncture got less slow and forced us to pull over 15 kilometres short of our destination in the afternoon rain having made cycling as difficult as running in mud while piggy-backing your grandmother.

My rear tyre was as impossibly difficult to remove from the wheel as the front one had been a few weeks before. With the help of - slash thanks to the sole effort of – Jim, the tyre was stripped off and the tube replaced with the tube that was the victim of my first flat and which I had repaired in Karichota. Both back at home and when I arrived I was questioned and ridiculed for my lack of preparation; rightly so it seems as my first ever attempt at repairing a tube turned out to be a miserable failure. To pile on the misery, we only realised my ineptitude once Jim had put the bastard wheel back on, forcing us – well, Jim – to repeat the entire exhausting and frustrating process while Chen filmed the agony and I put on my best face of concern. After eventually getting Nelson on the road, an effort that has left me insurmountably indebted to Jim, we reached a small town 6km short of our intended destination where we had to pull over in imminent darkness and find the only hotel available so as to avoid setting up camp and cooking in the dark and the rain.

After an extensive breakfast consisting of a glorious mixed fry-up of tomato, onion, banana and baked beans on chipati cooked in full view of the thundering Thompson Falls, we headed off on our final days ride into Nakuru where we were to be kindly hosted by Bella, a friend of mine from Kingswood - good school. After a short stint on a highway bypassing the busy centre of Nakuru, we pushed our bikes up the dirt road that ran along Bella’s boundary fence with all seven of their dogs barking wildly at us until we reached the gate with a sign reading: “Beware. Puppies loose”.

Writing this on the stoep – it feels good to use a South African word – of a guest cottage on Bella’s tranquil and picturesque estate just outside Nakuru, home to an assortment of geese, guinea fowls, chickens, cats and dogs, we once again find ourselves surrounded by the unconditional kindness that this trip has thrived on since Tom and Matt set off from England. On the topic of kindness, a dream I had on the second night of our Nakuru leg reminded me about something I had not yet mentioned in my seemingly endless pages of bullshit. In my rather absurd dream I somehow managed to meet Eminem – it goes without saying that I played it cool and called him Marshall. We got along famously – obviously - and in conversation I subtly slipped in the fact that there was a charity based in Cape Town which we hoped would benefit from any exposure our trip created – almost as discreetly as I have just mentioned it here. Marshall ever so kindly donated a million US Dollars to the cause.

Although I don’t want to discourage a donation of that magnitude, it is by no means expected. Even if you decide to pass on the unbelievable opportunity of donating money, a quick look at the cause on Tom and Matt’s website and maybe a mention to the folks will – might – go a long way to helping the cause. The donation page can be found on the aptly named ‘Sponsor our Saddle Sores’ page (http://tomandmattcycle.com/sponsor-our-saddle-sores/) with more information on the cause itself on http://tomandmattcycle.com/the-cause/ .

The Yoga Experiment

What exactly it was that possessed me to embark on a run still escapes me. Maybe it’s the stomach that is shrinking at a frustratingly slow rate even after 860km’s in the saddle. To add to the stupidity, I was running with Jim, a fitness freak of nature who casually decided to run up a mountain in Addis, and I wasn’t fully recovered from a bout of some sickness that started as a throat irritation before proceeding to all but shut down the sinuses before landing me with a phlegm-ridden cough. My chest was tight and nose running faster than my legs when I turned into the driveway of our mountain retreat, adding to which I had a good dual stitch going on and my calf was one optimistic movement away from cramping. Unfortunately, the latter duo couldn’t be blamed on the illness, rather from the naivety that led me to believe that a week of playing cricket during the day and drinking at night would somehow have a positive effect on my fitness levels. At least life amongst Eastern Cape farmers offered the consolation that I wasn’t the only one to be misled in such a fashion.

Breathing heavily, I stumbled into the lounge only to find a little yoga session on the go, spearheaded by an outrageously flexible Roby, whose every move was being attempted, all less successfully, by Tom, Matt, Daddy and Roby’s boyfriend, Michael. Near the end of their session of breathing and stretching in relative silence, Tom was showing how inflexible he had become since his knee injury while I noted to myself that the gap between his fingers and toes in full stretch was half that of mine when I - at-most annually - did the identical stretch.

Foolishly – it seems it was my day to play the village idiot – I sat down next to Tom attempting to replicate his stretch. I failed dismally. By this time the rest of the yoga class had retired from their session for a good chuckle, leaving Daddy behind with the enormous challenge of trying to get my fingers closer to my toes than to my knees. Considering he spent Friday through Sunday teaching drama and music to disabled children in a nearby town, I can only imagine Daddy thought the challenge an easy one in comparison. How wrong he was.

Within the first minutes of my debut Yoga class – something I had avoided at all costs after being put to shame a few years back in a Taebo class full of Kenton pensioners who could kick their feet up twice the height I managed – I gathered that breathing had an integral part to play in what I always considered a series of stretching exercises designed for earth-loving hippies. With my inability to achieve any notable breathing through my ailing nose, the impetus on breathing was all but lost on me.

Add to the fact that I was breathing like a Kudu shot in the neck – not by me, I’m a horrible shot – that I am not supple by any stretch of the imagination and any spectator has a show on their hands worthy of a circus in the days when it was still OK to parade blue-painted midgets around with Christmas hats and diapers. I can’t cross my legs – my knees are so high when I try that they act as a chin rest -, I can’t touch my toes unless my knees are bent at 90 degrees and when I was told to lie down with the back of my hands against the floor, my fingers curled up like a 90 year old with severe arthritis – think cricket umpire, Billy Bowden signalling a six. Maybe the fact that I was English speaking in my Afrikaans pre-primary wasn’t the only reason I was picked on.

While Daddy was talking in quiet, calm tones as I struggled to keep my eyes closed amongst the odd snigger here and there, my mind raced and gladly accepted the hypothesis that the reason my disgraceful lack of athletic ability that saw me running neck-to-neck alongside the 1^st team props in the 100 metre trials in matric – we were all doing it as a joke although the hilarity wore off a bit when I heard my groin snap – despite my mother being awarded honours for her feats on the athletics track was simply because I had not unlocked the potential of my rusty old muscles on an eternal sabbatical. Wishful thinking.

Daddy muttered a number of things to me in an attempt to relax my body and mind, one of which was: “Think about what you’re going to do today”. Despite my struggles to synchronize my breathing in the hope that it might ease the pins and needles developing along my calf it wasn’t difficult to fit in the probable program for the day. Our days in the retreat have already become a blur of relaxation achieved through reading, writing and delving in a bit of Canasta and Scrabble with the last hours of the evening, after the days supply of solar power and the generators fuel has run out, spent staring into the blue and orange flickering flames keeping us warm on the patio of our forest hideout.

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry, Broken Lorry

Whereas last time I wrote what could probably be considered a short story about Ethiopia in the restaurant of a hotel that was so ridden with bed bugs that I am still scratching 4 days after leaving, in a town that had one computer with access to the internet that could only be used if you successfully coaxed the owners nephew from his umpteenth consecutive FIFA 98 game, I find myself writing this piece in a rather different setting: On the couch of a lodge tucked away in a forest at the foothills of Mount Kenya, a mere 10km south of the equator – which we crossed yesterday - after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and potato fritters made for us by the Lodge manager, Roby.

Having cooked up a storm including chipati – the Kenyan starch staple which is essentially a savoury pancake – and beef stew the night before, we negotiated our way through the awkwardness of not knowing if the meal she was cooking was for us or herself and her two friends, Daddy and Alacoque, who all work in various forms of theatre with the owner of the lodge, Keith Pearson. Supper was followed by a read on the outside porch in front of a roaring fire, keeping us warm from the crisp evening air. All the initial luxuries of our indefinite stay in Karichota Lodge, 15km south of Nanyuki, may seem somewhat out of character with the adventure we’re on and may even raise some eyebrows of those thinking of our trip as a year of roughing it, but I couldn’t care less, particularly in the light of the circumstances that landed us here from the Ethio-Kenya border town of Moyale.

Having crossed the border not long before the closing time of 6pm, Frank Alice Adams continued a little ritual of refusing to budge an inch every time he touched down on a new country’s soil. With Tom forced to push Frank with the help of ten locals at a time all laying a finger on Frank in an effort to claim a reward that Tom made perfectly clear he was not dishing out having not asked for nor needed the help, we found our way to a cheap hotel on the battered and excessively eroded dirt roads with the guidance of our self-appointed fixer, Alex – whose help we had also not requested let alone hinted at.

On the Ethiopian side of the border, prior to our in-the-nick-of-time crossing, we met Alex, a German cyclist a year out of high school who was cycling from Egypt to South Africa via a layover in Malawi to visit his girlfriend working on a school aid project (www.AidAndTravel.de). The five of us checked into a cheap hotel compound costing 300 shillings a person – a shilling having one-tenth the value of a rand -, rinsed ourselves off in a bucket shower and headed out in search of Kenya’s famous Tusker beer after warding off the mandatory attempt to rip us off by charging us for the unused bed in a 3 man room that we got placed into, despite the availability of a 2 man room a few rooms down. When it comes to dealings with the white man – Mzungu in Swahili as opposed to the previously loathed Ferengi in Amharic – locals are predictable in their attempts to wring us like a soaked towel of every last cent.

The next day we rose early, having to commandeer ourselves a truck after yet another failed attempt to grant us one at extortionate prices on the Ethiopian side the evening before to take us to the town of Isiolo, 560km south of Moyale, as the roads were all but impassable by bicycle and even more so by the fragile, beaten-to-shit Frank who was as mobile and useful as an 80-year-old man post heart-attack, stroke and triple bypass and one bout of flu away from being wheelchair bound for the rest of his existence. Add to the dilapidated roads the threat of bandits –shifters – fabled to patrol the roads, we decided it prudent to jump on the back of the lorry that parked outside our hotel just after 6 the next morning thanks to the fixer Alex, whose services we had dismissed the night before and his co-fixer, DJ Lia Lia dot com who we had chatted to the previous night, albeit somewhat circumspectly after we discovered a swastika scar that had been engraved into his skin on his upper arm – “young, stupid and drunk” was his excuse. The Lorry was already packed 6 bags of 90kg red kidney beans high and covered with a tarpaulin protecting it from the rain that had been coming down all morning.

We loaded our bicycle, bags and, with great effort, Frank onto the pile of beans hastily so as to allow the truck to negotiate the horrendous side-roads leading to our hotel in what had turned into driving rain. Having done so successfully, we were dropped off at a little café and treated ourselves to baked beans and chipati for breakfast as well as a cup of tea and coffee, both drinks severely lacking in quality compared to their Ethiopian counterparts. We had negotiated a price of 1500KES per person for the trip south, the same price for each bike and somewhat of a premium for Frank, who had to make the trip all the way to Nairobi for a standard patch up job.

Being the first ones on the back of the lorry, getting on an hour before our 10:30am departure, we found ourselves the most comfortable spots we could muster before locals started climbing the ladder and entering our little tarpaulin-covered cabin. The rain ceased as we took off in what we expected was a convoy of trucks, with the company of about 8 other people under the tarpaulin, 6 or so on top of it and about 5 crammed into the front of the lorry.
Although the border town of Moyale had a significant Ethiopian influence, the first two noticeable differences we encountered with the Kenyan people were the rounder cheeks and English proficiency, two traits that are in all likelihood after-effects of Kenya’s years as a British colony. Our fellow cabin-dwellers, mostly women, took to us somewhat after we started bouncing off Swahili words we had been learning. Despite the attempts at learning, picking up anything from conversations was futile as they were either too fast or not actually in Swahili but rather the language of the north, something starting with a ‘b’ – I’m no encyclopaedia, look it up yourself.

After a few bumps that gave us all a bit of airtime, no more so than Matt, Tom and Frank who were all placed directly above the rear axle of the 6-wheeler, and a moment where it seemed the truck was a touch away from toppling over onto its side, one particularly aggressive bump that would have led you to swear the driver had a career in motocross brought the truck to a halt as masses of dust entered the tarpaulin and settled amongst us, our bags and the bikes. Not surprisingly, the suspension had taken a serious knock, but seemingly not enough that the driver and his crew of 3 couldn’t beat back into working order after a delay of nearly an hour. Having peered above the tarpaulin for the first time in the trip we discovered that we were not, as previously suspected, in a convoy at all. We were just a lone, old, suspension-less truck trudging along barely recognisable roads at what couldn’t have been more than 30km/hour.

Not too long after we set off again – although time was somewhat of a mystery in the back of the truck that gave off the aura of a cargo hold in an old pirate ship with frayed ropes bearing a stark resemblance to Chen’s dreadlocks hanging down from metal beams – we heard the loud bang of the tyre bursting. The reactions of Tom and Alex were too much for the locals, who packed out laughing seemingly unperturbed by the fact that another delay was on the cards. The process of changing the tyre and tube was not a simple matter of chucking on the spares as it turned out that every spare tube was far from puncture-free and none in current working condition. Having tried, failed and tried again at fixing a number of the spare tubes with glue and pieces of rubber cut from the most unsalvageable of tubes we were once again mobile… some 3 hours later.

Day turned to night and our hopes of being in Isiolo on the evening of our departure had long since faded. It was midnight by the time we got to our halfway stop of Marsabit, where most of our fellow travellers jumped out. Without warning, the driver and his crew took off to a hotel for the night and left us trying desperately to find comfort and warmth amongst the bags of beans, bodies of travellers and accumulation of dust. The dust had gathered as much on our bodies and in our hair as it did on the bags and bikes and our filth was hardly a consideration amongst the largely failed attempts at coaxing ourselves into a slumber.

After repeated stops at checkpoints where friendly army and police officials requested the ID’s of passengers and the passports of Mzungu’s – unless you put on a sad face and said your passport was buried in the pile of bags under the cover – we clocked up our 24th hour in the back of the truck, documenting the moment in mock achievement in between two more breakdowns, one involving some form of engine failure and the other a broken bearing in the drive shaft that condemned us to the use of only the first 3 gears for the rest of the trip.

Having decided to write off the prospect of cycling the 100km distance between our initial destination of Isiolo and Karichota Lodge, near Nanyuki, we managed to get the driver – who happened not to be the man who had claimed to be the owner and driver in Moyale and with whom we had negotiated our journey – to agree to drop us off later on in his journey to Nairobi through a mixture of hand signals, broken English and the offering of a lukewarm Coke.

After dropping off the rest of the passengers in Isiolo, we were joined in our cabin by the 3 chaps forming the crew of the lorry and a 19 year old fellow on his way to work with his brother in Nairobi who had a relatively good grasp of the English language and explained how he had worked for his brother-in-law’s wholesaler for 3 years but didn’t receive a cent for his efforts after he had asked his sister’s husband to accumulate the money for him and pay him out at a later date. A camaraderie of sorts developed between the 9 of us as we shared the food we had been eating along the way – plain rolls, mini-vetkoeks, biscuits and a few bit-sized pieces of fudge. Our tarpaulins, spare jackets and a mat that I had used as a mattress the night before all became makeshift blankets for our new friends as our second truck-bound evening brought with it a chilly breeze.

Come 9 o’clock that evening, we finally pulled over on the side of the road in Nanyuki, the town which represented the end of our dusty, uncomfortable and most definitely unforgettable 36 hour experience having covered a mere 650km – a trip that would normally take a 6th of the time under normal circumstances back home. Jim, Alex and I said a temporary farewell to Tom and Matt - who had decided to leave his bike with us and go on to Nairobi to offer Tom some company and moral support – and pushed the four bicycles off into the crisp night air to find ourselves a bed for the night. After asking a few locals who were at an initial loss for words as to why the 3 of us were pushing around 4 bikes after 9 at night we were pointed in the direction of a hotel that allowed us to crash in a two man room at the standard price - 900KES for the room. Unbelievably, the hotel had a hot shower - which I flatly refused to believe after being told as much by one of the staff – as well as a little restaurant with four televisions showing DSTV.
The next morning, after a fantastic nights rest and an even better shower, we ventured into the city for a walk which included a visit to an internet café – the first one with a functioning connection since Addis – and a Spar-sized supermarket situated in amongst quaint and colourful shops offering a variety of goods and services, clean streets and overlooked by the snow-capped peak of Mount Kenya. With a week – give or take – at a mountainside retreat, I am in absolutely no rush to leave Kenya!

Ethiopa's Cycling Circus

I seem to recall that sometime in my high school English classes we touched on the topic of travel writing. If we did, I recall absolutely none of the skills the lessons were meant to embed. As far as the subject goes, my English career consisted of manufactured B’s and C’s achieved through minimal effort and scant enthusiasm. This changed somewhat when I managed to morph a topic into a chance to write or speak about sport. Humans are competitive souls - few more so than me -, sport is little more than formalised, score-keeping competition. Simple arithmetic (or is it algebra?)allowed me to relate most assignments with the slightest bit of wiggle room to some aspect of competition, and hence sport.

I now find myself a few thousand kilometres from the nearest bar televising Super Rugby and a few more thousand K’s from a cricket bat. Cycling isn’t really a sport, it’s an activity. At its most competitive, cycling is a race. Although I could pretend that cycling is a sport by referring to some obscure sports encyclopaedia like I am sure figure skaters and chess players oft do, this trip is about travel and my bicycle is no more than my means of transport - sorry Nelson.

We left Addis Ababa two weeks ago, and after an attempt to write about our stay there which I was not entirely happy with, I thought I’d give a journal format a bash. I’ve read a few of the kind, most notably Kingsley Holgate’s version of his ‘Africa Odyssey’, and tossed the book aside after a tiresome series of: “We got up, went there, did this, ate that, got bitten by mosquitoes, slept”. I might not have a glorious beard, but I’m hoping that where I lack facial hair of any significance, I can make up for it in telling a better story. Do not fear though, I am still working on the beard!

ETHIOPIA – THE CYCLING CIRCUS

Day 1 – Tuesday April 3^rd

Despite my body clock being significantly different to the rest of the chaps, waking up at 6:30am wasn’t as difficult as I had anticipated thanks to the pure excitement of hitting the road that had built up during my two week stay in the Ethiopian capital. The final stages of packing our lives into four pannier bags had to be completed in an equitable fashion so as not to avoid toppling over on my way out of the front gate, much to Tom and his cameras disappointment.

We navigated our way out the city with surprising ease thanks solely to a motorbike escort from Saeed, an avid motorbike traveller Matt had met in Sudan who had also volunteered his services to help Tom – who was staying in Addis - fashion Frank into a machine that resembled a working motorbike and not a museum centre-piece.

It took between 20-30 km’s of cycling to get out of the city itself thanks to a quick pitstop at Saeed’s home for a snack as well as the fact that suburbs on the edge of town are in the process of being built from nothing in an attempt to move all the inner-city shack dwellers to respectable looking apartments that will eventually be connected to the centre of town by some form of rail system.

While the sight of buildings and on-going construction subsided, the sight of people did not. The countryside outside of Addis was a mass of rolling, brown hills yearning for the start of the much talked about long rains that had hinted their arrival through almost nightly rainfall over our last week in Addis. We could hardly cycle 100m without passing human life gawking at our trio; helmet, sunglasses and spandex wearing aliens cruising bye. No matter the age, it seemed that most of the children and adults were out herding donkeys heavily laden with hay. On stopping for a break, a group of 6 young kids-come-herders watched intently as we sucked on our camelbacks and ate a few bananas while their donkeys continued on their merry way completely unattended.

The silent staring of our first stop was in complete contrast to the reactions we got when we cycled by. The sight of us would lead children to run back into their homes and notify all and sundry of our impending arrival or passing-by with shouts of: “Ferengi!” Having been warned by Matt and Jim about the excessive attention we would attract on our travels I had decided to adopt a ‘Smile and Wave’ approach to all onlookers, whether hostile or friendly. Hostility was very much a part of the first day, particularly as we passed through small villages. As my waves met deathly glares, the smile on my face became physically difficult to maintain, as it might in the 4^th retake of a family photo. Where we weren’t met by a glare or a reciprocation of the smile and wave, little kids would shout out: “money!” Whether all of them knew what the hell they were saying was highly doubtful because their cries were often accompanied by a smile and a wave from the safety of their little houses.

60km’s in, on our arrival in a small town, we considered calling it a day. The fact that the next town was a mere 10km’s away and that our arrival was far from well received with a stone being hurled at Matt followed by a close encounter with a panga-armed drunk lead us to push on a bit more before finally calling it a day.

A few hills, raw hands and a not-so-kind diagonal headwind meant that we were easily persuaded to call it a day at the first hotel we found in Lemen having covered 73km’s of a planned 280km before our first rest day. It didn’t take me long to realise that the word ‘hotel’ is used particularly liberally in Ethiopia with my first example being one with no electricity or running water and toilets that were no more than six door-less cubicles with holes in the ground that had been visited by apparently aimless patrons. The hotel set us back the equivalent of R20. The low price of hotels and the lack of any privacy absolutely anywhere on the road meant that camping had been set aside for emergencies only during our time in Ethiopia.

Distance: 73km                 Time on bike: 3h37

Day 2 – Wednesday April 4^th

With the unenviable start of a 2.5km climb to do with raw hands now covered with cycling gloves and a serious sunburn on the inside of my elbow where I had neglected to put any of what might be Ethiopia’s most scarce resource, sunblock, we set off for the reasonably sized, map-worthy town of Butajira. The tough start turned into a tough initial 20km’s where my lack of preparation showed as I trailed Matt and Jim by some way. The further South we went, the more noticeable was the tinge of green coming through where the yellow grass had been before. Also noticeable was an upturn in the friendliness of our many spectators. This friendliness came to the fore through the owner of a hotel who, after serving us a great variant shiro with injera – think a pizza sized, dark pancake – offered us a bed for a post-lunch nap free of charge. Even better news was that his hotel had a standard toilet, albeit flushed with a bucket – result!

The road became kind as we made our way to our destination, passing a few hundred school children on their way home and a group of friendly, talkative electricians who passed us a few times themselves as they made their rounds from one electrical pole to the next. We were also passed by a photographer on his way to capture the most remote parts of the tribal Omo Valley who Matt had previously met and whose guide I had met a few days earlier with Saeed. As they cruised off on their motorbikes up a long hill we were on our way up, I had to think long and hard about the rationalization of doing this trip on a bicycle and not something that didn’t involve excessive sweating, aching legs and a rather sore bottom.

Nonetheless, the second day of cycling was somewhat of a breakthrough mentally as I came to terms with the temporary pain that burnt through my quads during each and every uphill as well as the unavoidable tenderness of my backside that I hoped would cease to exist sooner rather than later.

With the clouds circling us and steadily closing in and the wind as fickle as the Newlands crowd - helping us up our last hill despite being a mortal enemy for most of the day - we managed to get into Butajira before the weather and deployed our fool-proof tactic of staying at the first hotel we found. After 150km’s of cycling I was all too happy to jump under my first shower on the road, no matter how cold it was.

Distance: 77km                 Time on bike: 4h00

Day 3 –Thursday April 5^th

Our third day on the bike got off to a cracking start.Before we stopped for a breather on top of a mountain overlooking Lake Ziway and plains that could have been used as a Hollywood alternative for a Serengeti set, we had covered 45km’s of flat road lined with friendly people by the dozen. I had also realised my first casualty when I noticed that my Camelback had fallen out from its perch under my pannier strap with spare spokes and spanner in tow. My only consolation was the thought of an astounded local figuring out the purpose of the water bladder. Our entrance into the town of Ziway – accompanied by a local who cycled into and out of town with us for a total of about 15km on his rickety, one-speed bike – marked our arrival on the main road which was flat for as far as we could see. The noticeable change from the greening, rolling hills to the flat, dry plains – other than the terrain itself of course – was the abundance of bicycles that were a rare sight anywhere else.

What the plains lacked in vegetation and views it made up for in a vast variety of birdlife. Jim is a bird enthusiast of note, pulling over every now and again for a closer look at a bird that, as far as I’m concerned, could be any of an eagle, a stork or a vulture. I was in no doubt – for a change – that the group of 20 or so birds fighting over the last pieces of a ravaged donkey carcass were vultures, even though I had earlier declared a tree full of storks as vultures.

The local hostility turned up a couple notches from our trouble free morning and shouts of “You” and “Ferengi” became all too common and more often than not said in an accusatory tone. Shouts of “money” were no longer accompanied by smiles and waves but with palms being thrust out expectantly. No more profoundly will the after effects of NGO’s be felt than in the reactions of children to white ‘ferengi’s’. Before a smile is shared or a greeting offered, kids on either side of the road shout phrases that they’ve learned to say before a simple “hello”: “give pen”, “give money”, “give exercise book”. The demanding attitude of the kids of school-going age is generally not shared by the excited toddlers or respectful older folk who, for wont of a better phrase say things like, “Where are you go?” without an inkling of what they might be asking, or “Good morning”, more often than not said in the afternoon.

Having arrived at a small town 80km’s into the day as early as lunch time, we decided to push on for another 40 after a break for lunch and a wait for some heavy rains to subside. The mind of a friendly local teacher was utterly blown when he was introduced to the technology of Matt’s Kindle – a primary source of entertainment after a long day of cycling.

Our lunch itself was the standard injera, which I have found to add a whole new aspect to cycling. With momentum being a key factor in assisting me up the small hills – no doubt due to the extra weight picked up after 5 months of doing very little back home – the flatulence brought on by the local staple does not have the much jested effect of a power booster. Instead I find myself in a post-lunch routine to maintain some sort of internal normality through the discomfort: pedal, bottoms up, release after burners, sit down, pedal. Not ideal.

After a day that was made tough by the sheer distance covered and time spent on my meagre excuse for a seat I had clocked up a personal distance record as well as a good case of the shakes from the days efforts… all too happy to find a bed, I crashed, and I crashed hard.

Distance: 127km               Time: 6h00

Day 4 – Friday April 6^th

Although we knew that this was our last day of cycling before my first rest day, we woke up and set off unsure of where exactly the rest would take place. Stopping in Shashemane for a relatively standard samosa snack, we called the Hot Springs nearby to inquire about prices. Succumbing to our budget befitting 3 jobless chaps fresh out of Varsity, we decided the Springs were a step too far for our wallets. Our other option was all but squashed by the previous days cycle as a detour toward a picturesque and highly recommended lakeside town of Arba Minch would entail 3 to 4 extra days of cycling as well as a foray back into the hills we had just escaped from. Although it might have been the least likely option a few days ago, we decided to take the easy gradual downhill to the town of Awasa for our day off.

Although the cycling side of the day was written off with relative ease due to the short, downhill nature of the journey, the social aspect wasn’t quite as palatable. Matt and Tom had decided that the four day period of cycling was an optimal solution both cycling-wise and socially. There are only so many days that you can smile and wave in response to rude demands and death stares, even though they might be in between a sea of friendliness. The day proved to be particularly testing as, no sooner had I left our mosquito-ridden hotel, I encountered immediate demands for money that took more than a little effort to restrain myself from responding with a backhand to the face. Stone-throwing is a much fabled pastime of Ethiopian kids with – according to a number of blogs written by similar adventurers – the targets being goats, cows and white cyclists. To try avoid this unfortunate reality I often resort to being overly friendly to adults in the hope that they will keep the youngsters in check, which they had done thus far. My first undertaking of evasive action was as a result of a child who could hardly be in school, a decent throw for someone that size but lacking the accuracy of a Dale Steyn bouncer, much to my relief. Not long before that some nitwit of a child had cracked a whip next to Matt’s bike which was returned by an angry flipping of the bird – the middle finger. With Jim always taking the lead, Matt was obviously not used to having me being at the back of the pack – something I’m sure he’ll be accustomed to in no time – and I had to pedal by the horrible, teenage, little shit thanking my lucky stars that the whip came down hard right next to my bike and not on Nelson, or on me.

On searching for lodging in Awasa, Matt managed to guide his rear wheel into a gap between concrete slabs acting as a bridge over a street-side gutter, damaging his derailer beyond our limits of repair. A search in town came up with a substitute that allowed him to use most of his gears and would have to do until a more suitable replacement could be sourced in Nairobi. The search for accommodation proved to be a particularly successful one as, for R50 (double our normal rate) we landed a place with carpeted floors, en-suite bathrooms with running water and a regular, flushing toilet, a basin that didn’t empty directly onto your feet, a cold but running shower with sufficient pressure,a mosquito net, electricity for the better part of the day, curtains that covered the width of the windows, linen that looked like it had been washed in the last year, a private gravelled courtyard and an owner who kindly allowed us to do some washing. All luxuries that we cannot afford to get too used to.

Distance: 50kmTime: 2h20

Total distance so far: 330km

One of the best things about writing is that it is considered a form of artistic expression, allowing the writer a certain amount of freedom. I’ve figured that if some fellow called EE Cummings can write poems and become famous for not using any punctuation and making very little sense at all, I can change the format of an article as I see fit… so excuse the inconsistency.

Our next stint of cycling saw us enter the highlands; mountain after mountain, hill after hill of tropical, fertile lands growing bananas, pineapples and chat (chut) by the bucket load, the latter a local favourite plant, the leaves of which are chewed one supermarket packet at a time. The bitter tasting plant gives the consumer a bit of a high - and exceptionally glazed eyes - while warding off tiredness and hunger. With our leg in Ethiopia landing in the middle of their pre-Easter fast, chat was a definite favourite with its uneaten stalks littering the floors of any little coffee joint. Playing the devil’s advocate, Chen (Matt) would often ask locals with a faint notion of the English language as to the reason that they have given up – or at least supposed to have given up – all food during daylight hours and meat, beer and sex for the entire arbitrary period of (+-)55 days. The answers were all different and all utterly nonsensical. To put it frankly, they had bugger-all idea behind the reason other than an apparent intention to please God, all the while having no qualms whatsoever with trying to charge us at least twice the rate for no other reason than our skin colour… and maybe Chen’s hair.

Chen and Jim had each had some sort of bicycle mishap in the first 20km’s of their respective trips. Although Nelson lasted a bit longer, after about 350km’s he decided he needed to make a name for himself and ran a flat on a downhill on what was an increasingly worsening road. As per usual, I was at the back of the pack and Jim failed to hear my shouts, leaving me alone with a crowd of more than 20 people that gathered within minutes to watch the white man fix his fancy bike with his shiny tools. My choice of fitting tubeless tyres with standard tubes proved to be somewhat problematic as I snapped a tyre lever and bent the other two in my attempt to remove the tube. After about half an hour of struggling, Matt and Jim appeared up a mountain having had to climb a couple of hills they had cruised down minutes earlier. Jim, being the most proficient on bicycle maintenance, jumped in to help but had similar difficulties – a relief to my ego. Fortunately, one of the onlookers offered a spanner which, unlike the file on my leatherman and the tyre lever, did not snap and managed to pry the tyre from the wheel while inflicting only slightly worrying scratches on the frame of the wheel.

The differing reactions we received were no more apparent than in our 4 days in the mountains. The odd, “fuck off” – commendable English my dear sir – and even an occasion of some little girl spitting at me – the little bitch missed -, along with a torrent of the usual phrases, most notably: “where you go” – asked repeatedly to all three of us and by every single person in a group of 10, all one metre apart, over and over again – couldn’t overshadow the reception we received during a 20km stretch in the mountains where hundreds of little children cheered us on with massive smiles and the friendliest of waves, shouting “ferengi’ in a tone of endearment, lacking all the aggression and scepticism of many of their fellow countrymen.

The mountains were an absolute bitch. Peak after peak, turn after turn, we were presented with nothing more than another uphill. I experienced massive sense of humour failures and the status of operation ‘Smile and Wave’: failed. Even though I reached speeds as mediocre as 5.5 km/hour, trucks were managing only marginally better up the steep ascents. At one point I grabbed a hold of a truck for a few metres before letting go, deciding to make my own way to the summit only to see Chen catch the lift a few hundred metres ahead of me.

Even though we only clocked 52km’s on my 6^th day on the bike, I was physically and mentally drained. That night, while sleeping in a shoddy room that smelt of rotten milk, I dreamt that I had sat myself down at a decent restaurant and chowed down toast topped with bacon, ham, salami and cheese – all but a sprinkling of cheese had escaped me thus far. One room down, while being chowed by bed bugs and kept up by a goat making human-like chundering and burping noises a few days before its imminent slaughter, Chen dreamt that we headed off only to go up more hills. One of our dreams came true the next day… and I only ate vegetarian food.

The mental setback of climbing even more after the previous day’s relief at having summited meant I was not one to mess with for the day. To keep my sanity amongst endless shouts of, “Where are you go?” and, “You, you, you” I made use of my i-pod for the first time thus far – don’t worry parents, I only put one ear in. Near the real peak, just after some despicable woman called out all the nearby children and instructed them to ask for money and pens, we met a Morden, a Danish, leather clad biker who had travelled down West Africa to SA and was on his way back up the East. Short as it was, it was terrific to be able to converse with someone on the side of the road with a decent grasp of English. Morden, an airline technician, had rewired his bike so that he had two of every cable and plenty of spares in the case of any problems popping up. His level of preparation didn’t help calm the nerves about poor old Frank, still sitting in Addis, waiting for some form of mechanical miracle to allow Tom to get on the road.

Having pulled into a smart looking hotel for lunch, we were on the wrong end of another rip-off scheme when we managed to land the only waiter who was happy to charge us 50% more than the normal price even after a nearby patron had told us the price he had paid for his injera. Matt won a small war when he managed to argue the price down with help from the receptionist, the only English speaking person on the staff. Settling in for a read after lunch to extend our break, we struck up a conversation with an Economist in the business of exporting power to Sudan and what turned out to be the owner of the hotel. Between the two of them they explained that the room prices are different for foreigners because the Ethiopian fiscal policy involved devaluing the currency to increase exports. This did not, however, explain the fact that it was only white foreigners who got the brunt of the step-pricing system.

For the first week I had managed to avoid doing my business in the hole-in-the-ground thanks to the sporadic appearances of regular toilets but I knew that my run had to come to an end. No pun intended. On the positive side, the ‘’’’toilet’’’’ at our hotel was the cleanest I had seen so far – which was to say that there wasn’t human excrement scattered around the hole -, that and the fact that we had toilet paper. There was, however, no shortage of negatives. The ‘toilet’ had no door and was right on the property boundary with a side street behind a fence of wooden slats a few centimetres apart with a woven mat covering most of the gaps. Every time someone spotted us cycling past they called their friends and had a good stare at us, so I didn’t have to let my imagination run wild to figure out what would happen if a little child saw a ferengi popping a squat. With a choice of two toilets I picked the one with the fewest cockroaches – it seems that human faeces is one helluva diet for these chaps because they were all bigger than my thumb! I stomped around them like an angry giant sending them crawling back down the hole and it was only a few days later that I discovered this particular cousin of the cockroach had the ability to fly. That could’ve ended badly. As far as the aiming was concerned, a basketball commentator would have described my effort with the phrase: “nothing but net”. To make the feat even more impressive, thiswas achieved while my quads were on absolute fire from a serious few days of cycling, not the ideal warming down activity.

Our last three days of cycling before reaching the border town of Moyale, which included a rest day in between, bore witness to yet another significant change in landscape. The highlands gave way to another flat plain of red earth, 3 metre tall termite mounds, thorn trees and other Acacia-type trees. We got an inkling of a feel of what it might be like cycling around game parks, seeing a Nyala spring across the road ahead of us, a few buck that might have been Steenbok skulking in the bushes, an aardvark and a honey badger – both in the form of road-kill –, baboons, nomadic herds of cattle and camels and a plethora of different kinds of birds. I have managed to categorise birds into three relatively broad types: an eagle (all big birds), Zazu’s (Simba’s ‘advisor’ in the Lion King – a hornbill apparently), and doves (all other birds, none of which are actually doves).

Despite a strange instance of both Chen and I being offered a child to take home with us on leaving a town – Chen was offered a baby and I was offered a 10 year old after I inquired as to why he wasn’t in school – I found the people of Southern Ethiopia to be very different from what I had experienced since leaving Addis. The people on the fringes of the road were all significantly calmer, even though just as surprised at our alien presence. The kids still waved enthusiastically, one of which doing so while taking a dump on the side of the road as we cycled by, but the chasing and demanding ceased to certain extent. Particularly out of the town, all women and young girls were adorned in colourful kikoya’s, often accompanied by beaded jewellery and corn-row hairstyles… an American tourist’s dream.

The cycling itself just never easy, no matter how much we wished it. If the terrain was kind, we would end up pushing on until we had very little left in the tank. By the end of a day Joseph’s breaks (Chen’s bike) would be chirping loud and clear above the Zazu’s and doves and Nelson’s chain wheezing like Graeme Smith after a quick single. We covered 300km’s in the last 3 cycling days to Moyale, where we settled into a cheap hotel, bed bugs and all, to wait – hope is probably a more accurate word – for Tom’s arrival on Frank. Our two full days in the Ethiopian border town have been spent reading, writing, scratching and meeting an interesting variety of people – including a man whose business is to smuggle Ethiopians to Nairobi before his brother takes them into South Africa -, many of which were somewhat inebriated in the middle of their week-late Easter celebrations, during which we managed to land a free chicken injera from the family running the hotel that quelled my insatiable appetite for meat to a small extent.

Ethiopia has been so different in so many ways. The people oscillate between friendly and hostile, helpful and rude in the mere matter of a couple hundred meters. The landscape, terrain, wind, rain and roads have shown their impressive ways of changing so as to always challenge our cycling circus. Reminders that I am far from my home in the Eastern Cape prop up a multitude of times in daily life with men holding hands in an expression of companionship as they walk down the littered streets and an unexplainable tolerance toward the Islamic calls to prayer that wake you up before the roosters get their crowing on and keep you up past our increasingly early bed-times in a country of predominantly Coptic Christians. Furthermore, the thought of watching a rugby match had to be banished from the mind so as not to avoid disappointment, leaving us to settle for watching Manchester United games in little make-do shacks packing in as many patrons as humanly possible.

 A tremendous pride in their avoidance of colonisation is blatantly obvious and oft a primary port of call in attempted conversations. This pride, along with the presence of NGO’s all too keen to signpost every little house or well that they had funded may be the fuel that fires the hostility we experienced every so often, most notably within 10km’s of completing our cycling in Ethiopia where a group of 6 kids, aged 12-16, created a mini wall ahead of me, only to follow me up a hill when I passed them demanding money while holding sticks that they resorted to throw at me after giving my bike a couple of provocative pushes from behind. Needless to say, so close to the end, I lost my shit, dropped my bike and picked up a golf-ball sized rock to hurl at the little fuckers as they scattered. Unfortunately, instead of sending them stumbling over rocks and head-first into a tree – that’s just me fantasizing -, I slipped on the loose gravel and rode away from my moment of rage with a graze down my leg. Matt wrote a piece on Ethiopia with the title including the word ‘pendulum’, and there is no better way to describe my time in a country I knew absolutely nothing about before embarking on this journey –other than the fact that their inhabitants can run for days. Just as the hills were a never ending series of ups and downs, so were the experiences in general. All in all though, the ups were worth the downs.

Distance covered in Ethiopia: 870km.