Manser - Around Africa On My Bicycle

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.

It all started with a dream, and dreams are powerful things that can come true, no matter how unlikely they might seem to some people. But it was not easily brought to fruition, and between the first dreaming and the eventual return a great many things happened to tell you about. I had much to learn when I set out from Cape Town, and I learnt all of it the hard way, which is actually the only way.

Why did I do it? Well, it started with a moment of revelation in Newlands Forest outside Cape Town. My girlfriend, Vasti, and I were in the habit of taking our dogs and meeting up there on Sundays with a few close friends, then going for a long walk among the trees and streams of the picture-perfect forest. I am sure anyone seeing us would have taken us at face value, a bunch of young people enjoying themselves in blissful unconcern about the week that lay ahead. If so, it would have been a misreading of what really lay in our minds. Most people I know dread a Sunday because it means that Monday lies in wait, with five days of toil ahead before the liberation of TGIF (Thank Goodness Its Friday).

I was one of them then, and I was about to burst out of the safe but confining straitjacket of the five-day week; I just didnt realise it till we stopped on the bank of a stream and slumped down to rest while the energetic dogs enjoyed a cool-down in the cold mountain water. Sitting on a large boulder, I drifted into thought while my friends chatted. Although I started by admiring the beauty of the scenery and my good luck in having such friends, quite suddenly I was surprised to find I was bluntly asking myself how happy I really was at this stage of my life. No hippy thoughts here, mind you just whether I was having a life that I would one day be able to look back on and consider a good one. That was one unspoken and unbidden question. The other was whether I was looking forward to going to work next day.

I was dismayed to discover that I couldnt answer yes to either question. All I could say for sure was that I had every prospect of earning more money. I had worked for the same national primary health-care company for five years, first as an employed manager and then later as an independent consultant, selling their product instead of managing it. The money was good and was likely to get even better. But I was not happier than I had been five years ago, just wealthier. And that is when, as I sat on that boulder with my companions voices echoing faintly in my ears as though they were far away, I faced up to the crunch questions. Did I want to change this feeling of empty inevitability? Yes! When did I want to do so? Soon! And that was when the decisive moment dawned.

If you make a decision now, its up to nobody else but yourself, I thought. You cannot lie to yourself or postpone things. If you take this decision now, Riaan, it will mean that you have to start acting NOW. Your life will have to change, NOW. Not later, NOW! All this was silent, of course, because it was going on strictly inside my head, but I could feel the movement of every cell in my body, I could feel each one of them being converted to thinking this way. I could feel that my life was about to change.

I was already on to the next question: WHAT? What was I going to do to deliver on this radical change in my life-commitment? Simple, I thought, something that my future family and I can look back to one day with huge pride. Something that will make history, that in turn will inspire others to change their lives.

But of course it wasnt that simple. Having accepted that vision, I had to turn it into reality, into something do-able.

It would have to have something to do with travel. I had always wanted to travel, even as a child, and see exotic places. One of my childhood heroes was Indiana Jones with his whips, temples of doom and lost arks this scary stuff had instilled a thirst for adventure in me. So next day I bought a world atlas and started studying each corner of our globe for places unventured to. I told no one about this first step on that journey of a thousand leagues that the old Chinese saying talks about: that would come when the time was ripe and I had something substantial to present. So for the moment it was strictly between myself, my new atlas and the tingling feeling that suffused my mind and body, waiting for a bush to start burning or a lightning-bolt to strike.

It took a while, because I wanted to go everywhere. But as time passed and I scratched through my atlas I realised that I kept coming back to Africa. On the face of it this was the worst possible choice, because Africa was in even more of a mess than usual. Media reports were full of things like the truly savage wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Jonas Savimbis assassination in Angola, the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the genocidal slaughter in the Great Lakes region. The war in Iraq was unfolding, with all that that implied regarding ripple-effect religious extremism in the North African Maghreb countries. Somalia had no government and seemed to be totally committed to its long process of self-destruction. The killing business was so overwhelming that poverty, famine and disease were way down on the list of calamities, even though malaria alone was wiping out more people every day than HIV/Aids. Even less highlighted were the efforts of President Thabo Mbeki to launch his brainchild, the New Partnership for African Development, or NEPAD, which he had been pushing since his days as Nelson Mandelas deputy.

So Africa seemed to be poised for another century of degradation, death and dishonesty. And that was my first choice?

But I had come to have a very different view of that sprawling chunk of earth, and every time I thought about it I became more convinced that my adventure could only take place in Africa. The final decision came one morning as I sat at my kitchen table, my third large cup of coffee in one hand, poring over a page in my atlas which showed the contours of the continent in detail, a great stretch of orangey, desert sandy shade which was almost tangible.

I sat there, virtually staring the page into submission. I wanted to do something great for Africa and in Africa, something no other person had ever attempted. I wanted to make history. And then, as if by magic, the way forward opened up. Would it be possible to circumnavigate this continent as the old-time sailors had circumnavigated the globe, travelling through each of its coastal countries till, eventually, I was back where I had started? In principle, yes.

Then the next question: how would I do it? By boat, or on foot? Well, neither. Sailing was old news, walking would take too long.

And then: OK, Ill go by bicycle!

I took a couple more sips of coffee. They tasted odd, and I realised that I wasnt thirsty any more, or even hungry. At the same time I was thrumming with sudden energy. Things had to start happening right away! I called my work colleague, Bernard, and told him I would be very late that day. He said OK, completely ignorant of the pot of adrenalin bubbling away at the other end of the line.

The first thing to be dealt with did not involve dramatic physical action: I had to satisfy myself as to whether anyone else had circumnavigated Africa on land as I intended to do. This entailed spending days on the Internet, riding the Google search engine till it was swaybacked if someone had pipped me at the post I would surely find a reference to it somewhere!