Riaan Manser - Around Africa on My Bicycle

A performance which will inspire the youth of this continent!
Nelson Mandela

Riaan Manser was born in 1973 in Pretoria. He grew up in Zululand and attended John Ross College in Richards Bay. After studying Human Resources Management he took a job in the medical industry.

He has been a lifesaver, a surfer and a rugby player. His life changed dramatically when he made the decision to ride around Africa on his bicycle and made a commitment to something entirely extraordinary with his life.

On his return he became an author and a motivational speaker and his book Around Africa on my Bicycle continues to enjoy huge success.

In August 2008, Riaan set out to become the first person to kayak, alone and unaided, around the worlds fourth largest island Madagascar. He hopes to complete his journey around June 2009.

Around Africa on my bicycle

Riaan Manser

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

Johannesburg & Cape Town

Do you ever dream of giving up the rat race and doing something completely different? Most people do at some time or other, but almost none ever get down to it. Theres always a reason to put off the dream, isnt there? Too busy, too poor, too lazy. For most people, me included, its really a case of being too scared. Thats why for the majority these fantasies remain daydreams rather than fulfilled ambitions or even attempted ones. Then we get old and regret the fact that we never went for it. When I get old Ill wear purple. Remember the message in that book?

Occasionally we learn of people who decide not to die wondering. These are the minority who actually undertake the adventures, the ones who go for it. Some feel resentment towards these adventurers. Why is that? Maybe its a manifestation of underlying jealousy. Thats wrong. We should embrace these stars and celebrate the spirit of adventure winning through. In fact, through them we can in a way fulfil our own fantasies. We can employ imagination and travel with them.

We heard about Riaan Manser as he set out on his epic bike ride around Africa. We spoke to him early and learned of his ambitious plans. It was cool but just another interview on 702. After a few weeks I was amazed at all the e-mails and smss we were getting asking about his progress. We called again. He painted vivid word pictures and gave us observations that were fascinating and unusual. He was objective but a wonderful optimism shone through, even at the worst of times. Once again people pestered us for more. We

listened and decided to regularly hook up and, in a way, adopt his odyssey. It was one of the best decisions we made. You see, through Riaan many of us have now cycled from the Cape around the entire continent of Africa and back again.

Now its time to put even more flesh on the bones. His book, as promised, has arrived. His achievement is spectacular and a tribute to all people who above all fear being ordinary.

John Robbie

2007

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The great African explorers were the superstars of their time. They captured the imagination of people tied to their quotidian labours and inward concerns by economic necessity and limitations on travel. Now technology has enabled the masses to know more than ever before about what is out there and where it is. But its a superficial, two-dimensional knowledge that still requires latter-day explorers and adventurers like Riaan Manser to breathe life into it.

The Capetonian who took two years of his life to circumnavigate his continent might never achieve the acclaim of Livingstone or Stanley. His name should nonetheless be added to that distinguished roll of seekers who have enabled us better to understand our continent. Happily this roll remains open to additions. Even as this book is published, Kingsley Holgates team is driving around the continent, their vehicles retracing many of Riaans pedal strokes. Billy Benchley and Christine Henchie are riding horses down the length of Africa.

Very few of us understand what drives an explorer. The old adage goes that someone who asks how much a Maserati costs cant afford it. In the same way, those who question what drives the explorer to put it all on the line simply do not get it.

The best way of getting to know our continent is with a small bag on the shoulder and an unjaundiced eye. Riaan adapts this by carefully distributing his basic requirements for survival and travel

about a bicycle. More importantly he demonstrates the imperative for equal measures of grit and humour. And he shows how important it is to maintain the critical balance of these.

Inveterately a glass-half-full man, he has a modesty and earthiness underpinned by stubbornness and dogged determination. Often he tries in vain to find redeeming features in people who on the face of it do not merit such sympathetic understanding. He sees the best in situations when most people tell him to expect the worst. He encounters the most lamentable when he has every reason to anticipate much better.

Great explorers are perforce not fazed by hazards and fears that might deter the ordinary. Riaans phlegmatic approach transcends the ages. The perils he survives are not dissimilar to those that might have faced his predecessors in hobnailed boots and pith helmets. These included possible death by kudu, spaced-out Liberian rebels, dehydration and feral dogs. Unlike the explorers of yore who headed out with a file of porters, performed their deeds of derringdo and wrote about them afterwards suitably bathed, shaved and fed from the comfort of their studies, Riaan is forced to work with more immediacy. En route, he uses a palm top, e-mail and mobile phones to deliver regular newspaper columns and interviews with radio and television.

I spent an interesting weekend speaking to common acquaintances mentioned in his book as benefactors. Without exception they were even more fulsome in their praise of his qualities than he was about their generosity. He seems genuinely surprised that people should show him kindness and largesse when it is clear that all they wanted to do was to be part of his magnificent adventure.

Riaan shows an admirable set of priorities. Dalliances with round-ball games occur for diplomatic reasons. His passion for the altogether more seemly game of rugby makes him keep pace with the fortunes of his provincial and national teams in the most unlikely places throughout the two-year epic.

The book is a mlange as varied, tasty and often frightening as the range of cuisine he experienced. It is bright, entertaining and insightful travel writing about a continent that sorely needs a good

press. It is also motivational stuff for aspirant explorers and people seeking purpose and direction through testing themselves to the limit and, of course, it is an informative instruction book on cycling and athleticism.

We can never have enough books examining our continent particularly by Africans themselves. Equally we can never tire of illustrations of the triumph of the human spirit particularly by a compatriot who makes us very, very proud South Africans.

Jean-Jacques Cornish

2007

Chapter 1

What must it have been like for the explorers of old to get on a ship and sail into nowhere? The thought of leaving everything you are familiar with and heading for places you know nothing about is nearly inconceivable to most people. I think that in most cases they simply relied on the boat floating and the wind blowing, and took things as they came. I kept telling myself that I was in a way more favourable position because I knew sort of where I was going.