Reflecting On Africa

I remember back to December 2008 when I first saw the Tour D’Afrique website. I was sitting in front of my computer contemplating doing something big for myself…You know maybe an ironman, maybe a vacation to a long lost dive site, maybe a volunteer job somewhere. When I came across the website after several random google searches, I knew I had found it. I immediately pulled out my credit card and paid the 100 Euro fee to save a spot. I thought to myself that if I just paid the deposit it would be enough of an incentive to do the trip without further ado. Biking across Africa seems to be a “do-able” challenge when you are warm and sitting on your couch 16000km away…The problem is, Africa is big, really really big. When I told my friends and family of the plan, they fully knew I was going to undertake this, as I rarely say I am going to do something that I don’t follow up on. Everyone was supportive but thought this was a crazy undertaking. I am not so sure exactly when I decided also that it was indeed a crazy undertaking. Maybe it was in Cairo when I heard the distances for the first week. Maybe it was on day two at 165km when the truck picked me up in the dark and I couldn’t make the last 3 kilometers because of the headwinds… Maybe it was in Dinder with the corrugation or when the kids were throwing rocks at me for the hundredth time in Ethiopia… or during the 22km climb out of the Blue Nile Gorge…or on the lava rocks in Northern Kenya or the aweful dirt roads in Tanzania or during the hail storm in Botswana. I don’t know exactly when it was, but there was a point I realized biking across Africa was not as easy as I had thought it would be.

Reflecting on the trip is difficult. Four months is a long time to remember. Not only is it long, we have been through a lot, on a personal level, as a group and as an expedition. We crossed through 10 countries, each one being so incredibly different and unique that each country felt like a trip in itself. We changed money and languages and terrain so often that each day felt fresh and exotic and new despite the fact that our routine was so ingrained in us. We would wake up and pedal and pedal and eat and pedal and sleep and then wake up and do it all again. Each day a new distance, new coke stops and new vistas. The constants of this trip for me were the familiar faces that I saw each day on the road, at lunch and at camp and the amazing friends that helped me get through each day no matter how long it was or how hard it was. The days I will never forget are the ones that seemed the hardest at the time, biking out of the blue nile gorge with Mark and Georgie, riding through the headwinds with Sam and Steve on day 2, having Dave make me a cheese sandwich as I changed a flat tire at 90km into Dinder at 5pm, my 11 hour day through Tanzania with Captain Erin, The non race day that my racer friends Rod and Juliana rode with me and days and days that Dan and Jenn painfully rode my speed and supported me even though they could have been in camp with their feet up.

Africa has changed each and everyone of us on this trip whether we wanted the change or not. We have seen and felt things we may or may not have been prepared for, we have pushed ourselves harder than we may have wanted to but at the end of the day we are coming back to our lives a little bit more knowledgeable and a little bit stronger for what we have experienced. The simplicity of this life we have lived for four months is refreshing and helps us to see we can live with so little and still have happiness.

This has been the hardest blog that I have written because I am sad it is over. My body is certainly glad it is over but this trip has changed my life in so many ways. I think that Dave Arman wrapped up the trip the best in his blog for the TDA, entitled “Looking Back” so I will copy and paste that blog post here, because no one can articulate it better than him!

Thank you Africa, for all you have taught me about myself. Thank you to the communities and villages that opened us with welcome arms. Thank you to the many people who stood along side the rode to cheer on strangers as we biked through your home towns. Thank you to my countless friends and family that have supported me along the way with emails and letters and packing help and drives to the airport and picking up bikes and spares. Thanks to my mom and sister who flew to Capetown to see me cross the finish line of this epic journey. Thank you to the other TDA riders with special thanks to those that rode with me and supported me through the tough times, as I passed over the laugh/cry barrier, as I struggled over the lava rocks and dirt and up and down the hills of Ethiopia and biked more than I ever dreamt was possible. Thank you to those who rode in the rain and wind with me and thank you to all the adventurers who shared this journey with me. Thank you to the staff of TDA and Indaba for the food and support and hard work and laughs.

And the last thank you is to my body for holding up despite the constant abuse and struggle I put you through- we did it, body soul and mind, we biked across Africa!

Looking Back
How do you describe the best/worst/most intense 4 months of your life? I’ve been asked to write up a little thing about the Tour D’Afrique, a four month-long bike ride from the top of Africa to the bottom. Ever since I was a boy I’ve dreamed of going to Egypt. Pictures of pyramids and mummies and The Sphinx captured my imagination. Now not only was I going, I was going to begin a huge journey there. On a chilly January morning, myself and about 60 other riders were taking off on the adventure of a lifetime. Bicycling from Cairo to Cape Town seemed like a good idea at the time. How hard can it be to ride a bike down a continent? Why do I do things like this?



Earlier today another rider and I were discussing the fact that we only have 747 more kilometres to go. This used to seem like a pretty big number to me. Now I’m not even remotely fazed by it. It almost seems too easy; is there a catch somewhere? There always is. We’ve ridden over every type of terrain imaginable: sand, loosely packed gravel, corrugated dirt roads, lava rocks, and occasionally even paved roads in good repair. We’ve ridden on bright sunny days, horrendous thunderstorms, bitter cold mornings, and I even got hailed on once (hail? Aren’t I in friggin’ Africa?). We’ve ridden through the deserts of Sudan where there wasn’t another soul on the road (I was listening to my ipod one day and forgot about the folks on the lunch truck that drove by; they had a good laugh at my expense when they caught me dancing whilst riding). We’ve ridden through Ethiopia where each and every child in every single village expects you to smile and wave at them (they’ll pelt you with rocks whether you wave or not). We’ve ridden past the pyramids of Egypt, the waterfalls in Malawi (life doesn’t get much better than getting off the bike and soaking yourself under a waterfall on a blisteringly hot day), and the barren wasteland that seems to compose most of Botswana. We’ve seen elephants, zebra, giraffe, springbok, and an entire barrel full of monkeys. We’ve met starving children in Zambia (I tried to give them my broccoli... Mom, they didn’t want it either). We’ve gotten rides in tuk tuks, cabs, backs of pickup trucks, matatus, the odd dump truck, and a few guys even rode camels for a bit. We bungee jumped from Victoria Falls (well I didn’t, I’m far too much of a coward to do something like that), climbed Kilimanjaro, visited monasteries in Ethiopia, went swimming in the Nile (never try to skip a stone when you’re wearing your keys around your wrist; swimming isn’t always just for fun) . We went on safari at the Ngorogoro Crater, and stayed in tiny villages where everyone who lived there was at least distantly related. We went from huge cities where no one noticed us, to small towns where all the people would come out and watch us stop and drink Fanta, and rode through the suburbs of Nairobi which look identical to suburbs everywhere. We’ve suffered from diarrhea, saddle sores, broken bones, back pain, leg cramps, and daily exhaustion. We’ve complained about poor service in restaurants, long days, each other, people watching your every move, each other, overly inquisitive children, mobs of unruly boys, and each other. Yet each day we’re up and ready to start again. Every day on this trip has brought some new adventure, which is kind of amazing since every day is fairly similar: wake up far too early, eat breakfast, ride your bike a ridiculously long distance, eat lunch, ride even further, eat dinner, then go to bed.



The one thing that has made this trip truly unforgettable is the people, individuals from 20 or so countries with nothing in common other than being idiotic enough to sign up for a trip like this. It sounds like the tag line to a bad reality show. People that you normally wouldn’t acknowledge if you passed them on the street suddenly become you’re best friend. I now know more about many people on this trip than their own relatives do. When you have a 6 hour day ahead of you, with nothing to occupy your time other than pedal and repeat, you start talking to folks quite a bit. You discover their dreams and aspirations. You discuss what really matters, because there is no TV. You also discuss your favourite episode of MASH and why Dick Sergent was better than Dick York. These are people and conversations that will stick with you for life. However, these same people wouldn’t recognize you if you were to get a different shirt, because they only know you in the three you wear every day.



I’ve been asked if I’d do this trip again, the answer never varies, “Not in a million years!” However would I recommend this trip to others, without a moment’s hesitation. This trip will make you appreciate what you have at home. It’ll also make you realize what your life has been lacking. It will make you weep with both joy and sorrow (occasionally at the same time). You will feel more alive than you’ve ever felt, often when wishing you were dead. You will be ecstatic to crawl into your tent every night and eating oatmeal in the morning will be the best thing you’ve ever tasted. You will never want to go home, but miss it with all your heart. I could never do this again, but in my head, and for the rest of my life I will be doing it daily.



-- Dave Arman