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16 August 2008
The End - in Brief
by Jess
It's funny - we all knew the end was coming, but wanted to hold on to it for that moment longer, so it could hurt a touch more. Thus, I was both sorely disappointed and much relieved to find that the final "somewhere between 5 and 20 km" stretch to Lewa was flat and smooth and generally good for bicycling.
Cycling through a giant 'FINISH' banner and red ribbon at Lewa HQ was perfect. Barty tripped over the red ribbon, Chris and Andy were absorbed by a sea of relations gathering around them and brandishing wide-angle lenses, and I concentrated on not crying.
What a way to end the trip... as Barty has been saying, there really was nowhere else for us to go. Lewa, and in particular the work of Ian Craig and the Northern Rangelands Trust, provides us with the best possible place to put the expedition to bed. The work at Lewa is exemplary and far too much to go into detail about now, when I have just ten minutes in front of a screen before going to greet friends and family for the first time in four months.
But briefly, thank you so very much to Ian and Jane Craig, Batien and Melissa, Sarah Watson and everyone at Lewa who made the end so incredible - I'm thinking back to the banquet dinner put on for us on the 5th, the long-awaited finish date, and I'm still a little overwhelmed by the warmth and enthusiasm by which we were greeted. It really meant a great deal.
And now we're back in England and, well I never, the roads are so smooth here!! Other than that, milk seems colder and better than it used to be. Museli is far too plentiful for us to have a chance of maintaining our figures, and hairstyles that cut the mustard in Africa maybe don't work quite so well in the UK... Chris has yet to decide about his, but I vote KEEP IT.
Bizarrely, Chris, Barty and I are now all off to a 'Girls Aloud' concert. We'll be updating the site in the next day or so, so please check again - for photographs and less flippant thoughts.
Thanks and love from Bedford,
Jess
02 August 2008
Malewa Trust Community Cycle 'Race'
Update
A team of around 20 cyclists varying in abillity from serious Kenyan competitive cyclists to Barty's mum bicycled 40 or so kilometres around the shoulder of Longonot to Malewa, taking in Giraffe, Impala, Warthog, Zebra and some good bumpy roads en route. The day was a serious success - we got the chance to cycle alongside some brilliant characters and chat to them about life in Kenya.
Greeted by a beer upon arrival at Malewa, we then settled into a wonderful evening talking to Chris and Christine Campbell-Clause about their fantastic efforts here with the wildlife trust, and also to meet fellow Tusk expeditioners, who are driving from Alexandria to Cape Town, running across the Kalahari Desert on the way. Why not, eh? Having crossed the Kalahari ourselves on bicycles, we were able to tell them one thing - IT'S BLOODY SANDY.
Our sincerest thanks go to Chris, Christine and everyone else at Malewa who've made this possible and given us such an enjoyable and interesting few days. Also, best of luck to the Kalahari runners!
J
30 July 2008
Kenya, Mark Beaumont and 'end of term' delirium
Jessica Hatcher
Kenya.
Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya.
We're in Kenya.
Shall I say it again? Kenya, the one at the end of that list of countries that for so long sounded, and quite literally was, miles away.
Barty noted in his last communication his recent acquiescence in identifying himself as a cyclist. Here I would normally say that he has become perfectly at home in his lycra, but they have somehow shrunk quite dramatically in the last few days and whenever I'm wielding the film camera, his helmet lingers over his groin.
In other news, we have been joined by Mark Beaumont! For those of you who don't know, this beautiful mountain of a man recently hit the headlines for smashing the round the world cycling record by something ridiculous like 100 days. I think we were all secretly hoping that Mark would would exactly fit the criteria that Barty was most afraid of when he contemplated describing himself as a 'cyclist'. But Mark is, somewhat disappointingly, interesting, charming, entertaining and generally very good at stuff.
We were gleeful to discover he shaved his legs... but then when asked whether he really thought it made him go faster, he had frustratingly good reasons for doing it... i.e. rather hardcore, sporting fitness and health reasons. (Apparently cycling round the world in record time makes them self-evident). We did have a jolly good conversation around a fire in the bush about the relative merits of shaving, waxing, Veet (formerly Immac and comparable to de-icer), and epilating (like a combine harvester for plucking leg hair). It was almost like having female company for an evening.
We are lucky enough to have Mark with us because of a fortuitous synergy between what we are doing and what he has just done (apart from the fact that he went really fast, broke a major world record and is being capitulated to fame as a result). Mark shares the same sponsor as us, the fantastic Artemis Fund Managers, without whose support neither expedition would have been possible. Mark also chose Tusk Trust to be one of his beneficiary charities for his 'world cycle', and was keen to see for himself some of their projects that he'd heard so much about. So for us, there could not be a better way to end the trip, bringing together shared objectives and ideas and extending the network for their diffusion. We are most grateful indeed to Artemis for making this fantastic finale possible.
On arrival, Mark's baptism of fire was... well... pretty embarassing for us. All set for hardcore African terrain and a punishing cycling schedule, he arrived to find us sipping sodas and nibbling roasted cashews on a terrace overlooking the plains of the Masai Mara game reserve. We were staying with Ron and Pauline Beaton, and visiting the Koiyaki Guide School, a project supported by Tusk that is breaking the mould of the traditional, khaki-clad, white safari guide with a public school accent. The Koiyaki Guide School is yet another example of a truly exciting project that Tusk is behind. It trains young Masai men and women to be world experts in African wildlife and to get well-paid, highly respected jobs as guides in the travel industry. Each of the students has to be partly self-funded, on the basis that this is neccessary to engender in them the compulsion to succeed. Some come from communities where jobs are alien prospects, where daily life is a battle for survival against an arid climate and the threat of predators to their cattle. Instead of seeing wildlife as a competitor in the fight for life, they come to understand its' value. And that understanding proliferates - it is a slow process, as Dickson, one of the young Masai students tells me, but one that is empowering. "I feel proud to be able to go back to my friends and family with all this knowledge, and the ability to help them understand the value of wildlife".
Seeing the success of community involvement in preserving wildlife in the Mara is just icing the cake for us, in terms of the work we have seen on this trip. It's almost like onion layers of understanding are forming around our core mantra of 'community-based education' with every project we see, and I'm thoroughly excited to visit Lewa, our final stop next week, which has been billed as the most successful community conservation project in Africa and is a perfect showcase for Tusk's work.
There are around 400km to go 'til we get there, but they will be kilometres filled with fun: local folk joining us for various legs, celebrating Barty's 27th birthday on the 31st, savouring our last ever bush camp, and over-excited unions with the various friends and family who are coming out to see us.
I'd love to know how many times each of us has wearily turned over the phrase "are we nearly there, yet?" in our minds on this trip. Right now, for the first time, I think it's safe to say "yes, we're nearly there". There is no chance that any of us will close the Cycle of Life chapter in our lives any time soon, but a break from bicycles, lycra and bush poos will be welcome. That said, there's nothing quite like the view from the loo on the plains of the Masai Mara...
21 July 2008
Occupation: "cyclist"
25km to Kenya and some welcomed new arrivals
Having been on the back of a bike since mid-April, I felt somewhat justified
in filling in the 'occupation' box of my Tanzanian customs and immigration
form with one proud word: "Cyclist". After referring to myself as 'student',
'charity worker', 'conservationist' and 'neuroscientist' on entering various
different countries, it seemed only fair to let what is currently my most
time-consuming pursuit have its head.
The fact is, though, that I could never be a cyclist. This year, for the
first time, I'm showing real interest in the Tour de France - interest that
is hamstrung, of course, by being so far out of touch that I discovered only
last week that Boris was London's new Mayor - but despite spending my time
in much the same way as those athletes, there is more than just EPO
consumption that separates us...
Out here we hack spending all day on the world's most uncomfortable method
of transportation only because bikes afford us the best introduction
imaginable. Africans-on-bicycles have been ever-present roadside features
for the last two months, rattling along with a cargo that would strike fear
into the carburettors of most family hatchbacks. By joining the
bicycle-drawn ranks sweating our overloaded mounts up hills, we have imposed
a definite line between ourselves and the average tourist. Kids, caught by
surprise as we roll through their village, can't simply stare as they would
were we packed into a nice shiny Landcruiser. Instead they're often caught
between diving for cover between their laughing mother's legs, and dancing
up and down shouting "MzunguMzunguMzungu..." at the tops of their voices. In
some of the more rural areas it really is likely that these encounters are
the closest contact they've had with white people, so we've strapped an
orchestra of comedy horns to our handlebars to make sure we don't miss our
chance to impress!
Being on bicycles has given us the chance to travel through Africa with the
preconceptions cleared away ahead of us, but it is not enough to class us as
'cyclists'. Even Lockie couldn't call himself a cyclist, and he's been
travelling the world on his $200 bike for - seriously - all of the last four
years. We bumped into him outside Ruaha National Park in southern Tanzania
after he'd been tailing us since Zimbabwe, and immediately we all got on
brilliantly. Over the three days that we spent together, however, he made us
realise just how wet we are behind the ears: he had been marched into the
jungle at gunpoint in the Congo, fully expecting to be shot for his camera;
he had lain in a family's doorway in Nepal watching as a Maoist firefight
rained bullets down the street where he had just dropped his bike; and he
had been forced into breaking and entering to avoid death at the hands of
Yorkshire's climate! My attempt to tell him about the horrors of Kalahari
sand seemed a little tame...
Lockie couldn't bring himself to call himself a cyclist - he is a traveller
and an adventurer, and one day he will have a best-seller on his hands. Mark
Beaumont, though, undoubtedly falls under the cyclist banner (or yoke). Mark
is currently in possession of the world-record for getting around the world
on a bicycle in the fastest time - an astonishing 190-odd days. Somewhat to
his surprise, I suspect, he's also been roped into joining us for the
chaotic final leg of the Cycle of Life! Our main sponsors, Artemis
Investment Management, also supported Mark around the world, and,
brilliantly, they have paved the way for him to fly out and join us in
Kenya. Together we're planning to rope in a combination of local Kenyans,
competitive cyclists, and their bicycles to a couple of half-day 'Life
Cycles'. These will give Kenyan community members the chance to cycle
alongside a world-record holder; Mark the chance to humiliate us with his
speed; and us the opportunity to get our own back with some old-fashioned
'rubber snake in the sleeping bag' gags! It such an exciting way to bring
the Cycle of Life to a climax and none of us can wait to see it happen.
Kenya is so close now (just 25km from where I'm writing) and there is a
definite 'end-of-term' feel to the group. I have absolutely adored Tanzania
- the best roads, and the best hosts, in the world - but I'm finally ready
to bring this trip to its culmination. Roll on our hectic Kenya schedule!
Barty
Support the Cycle of Life...
Namibia - Botswana - Zimbabwe - Zambia - Malawi - Tanzania - Kenya
April to August 2008
Prince William, Patron of the charities Tusk Trust and Centrepoint: "The
expedition has my full support. In taking on such an extraordinary journey,
the Cycle of Life team will not only be raising money for such a great cause
but also awareness of the need for rural projects that help local
communities sustain livelihoods which benefit Africa's precious natural
environment."
13 July 2008
No Place Like Africa
Craig Acquaye
It’s been just over two weeks since I returned from Africa, and already I’m starting to slip back into an all too familiar pattern that is my life in England. Not to say that I don’t like the pattern, my life or England, it just that it’s no Africa.
As I sit here eating a triple-decker BLT (to be followed by a Cadbury’s mini roll) it is strange to think that not too long ago I was eating a plate of rice for the 7th time in 8 meals! Our paltry existence while on the road cycling is incomparable with western lifestyle, so much just ceases to matter. In fact all that really matters is kilometres and kilograms…distance covered and amount of rice or mealie meal eaten (and the odd piece of fruit or veg for Jess!).
Waking up at dawn with the knowledge that ahead of you are at least 6 hours of cycling is a feeling that few people experience and I imagine that few would want to. Nevertheless it was one that we all had to deal with. It was both enjoyable and, at times, immensely physically demanding, however each day delivered a new challenge and some of the roads we travelled on (while definitely not made for bicycles) took us to wonderfully interesting and beautiful places. There is no better example of this than our attempt to cycle the ‘corridor road’ that runs between the North and South Luangwa National Parks.
The beginning of this road saw us take 6 hours to climb 40km on rough sandy and rocky roads to the top of an escarpment. Hard as it was it turned out to be worth the effort as the view was absolutely unbelievable. The Luangwa Valley was spread out below us, a carpet of different shades of green that stretched to the horizon. We had previously been confused as to the exact nature of an escarpment, there is no longer nor will there ever be any such confusion again!
“In geomorphology, an escarpment is a transition zone between different physiogeographic provinces that involves a sharp, steep elevation differential, characterized by a cliff or steep slope.” … thank you Wikipedia.
Steep doesn’t do it justice, upon descending the slope we all had our brakes on full lock while simultaneously dodging fist sized rocks on the ‘road’! When we reached the bottom after a grueling 2 hour descent we were greeted with a building site and a river crossing. The builders were constructing a bridge and so we carried our bikes and panniers across a ‘bush bridge’ that consisted of uneven tree branches and weak planks. Once safely across we resumed the business of ‘cycling’ which had over the previous 2 days become a loose term and now denoted pushing heavy bikes through sand. Ironically it was at this point, on a seemingly soft surface, that we received a death blow in the form of multiple inner tube failure. We had slowly whittled through all our spare tubes since April and were now left quite helpless.
We spent the best part of a day and a half near at the Mutinondo river crossing waiting for what one of the construction workers described as the ‘Catholic bus’ to give us a lift to Nabwalya, a town 80km closer to our destination, Tafika Lodge. The 4 hours it took to get to Nabwalya was, in Barty’s words “one of the worst experiences of my life.” The bus turned up and was already jam packed. Somehow we managed to cram 4 bikes, 15 bags and 4 more people on. Barty fought for space, Chris crushed and African family and I struggled to stay on the vehicle as it ploughed headlong into deep river valleys. Meanwhile Jess was riding shotgun! That night we slept on the floor of the school after a meal of coconut biscuits. We finally arrived at Tafika lodge the next day at around 6pm after taking more religious based transport. To have actually ‘cycled’ the corridor road would have taken us about 1 week. We, ever the optimists, had given ourselves 2 days!
My time in Africa was riddled with moments and stories like this, which made for an truly wonderful experience. Before embarking on the expedition I was unsure whether I’d be up for the challenge and if you ask Barty I’m sure he’ll tell you that at lunch time on the 1st day of cycling he was probably thinking of how he could get me back to England and not lose time on the road such was the state of my fitness! However, I can say now with absolute conviction that it was the best thing I’ve ever done and probably the most unique thing I’ll ever do. Africa is an amazing continent with vast potential and wonderfully friendly people.
There really is no place like it.
12 July 2008
Tanzania - 2
Jessica Hatcher
We stayed in a hotel!! Seriously, a real hotel. And as the only girl, I even had my own room! This has never happened before, and was thanks to the incredible generosity of Peter Rowlands, of Tanzanian Tea. This extravagance in Tukuyu, southern Tanzania, was the first in a chain of remarkable gestures of hospitality. From there, we cycled to the Ngwazi Tea Research Station, where Emanuelle fed us not once but twice in one evening (I came to Emanuelle via a South African rice farmer who we also now love called Bruce who picked me up on a roadside - 'Jessica Hitcher'... long story) and following the hospitality of the Tea Research place, we are now being put up and wined and dined by the king of Tanzanian tea, Bruno, and his wife Maggie. We mainly have Chris' father to thank for the tea contacts - he worked 'in tea'. We love Tanzania and we love tea. (Although I should add that there has been plenty of cycling and bush-camping to punctuate these visits - we never arrive anywhere clean or well-fed).
Despite the distractions of hot showers and meals that contain more than one food group, we are managing to stay focussed. In the Irigina region, we visited Ruaha National Park, the largest National Park in Africa (we were told they added a chunk on recently in order to beat Kruger) - for this we have Sue Stollberger and Dr. Dulle to thank so very much for their kindness. We stayed at the Idodi secondary school on the edge of the park there, met the pupils and teachers and found out about life on the edge of a high-density wildlife area, and then had a day visiting Ruaha, seeing their plans for expansion, and thinking about ways to further involve the community with the park to mutual benefit. The density of wildlife at Ruaha is incredible - we saw a pride of 8 lion chilling in the midday sun which is apparently nearly unheard of - and we decided that it really does live up to its' reputation as one of Africa's hidden gems.
It's been a good couple of days for wildlife. On Thursday we crossed Mikumi National Park by bicyle and had a herd of elephant not more than 50 metres away from us, and then one or two right by the road at one point. Chris very nearly wet himself an hour or so later when about 30 giraffe cantered alongside us for a couple of minutes before crossing the road about 5 metres in front of us, a Battler Eagle circling above us all the while (Chris LOVES battler eagles). I was very excited too - less so about the eagle, but giraffes are TALL when you get up close to them! I was also most pleased to see that they run just like the ones in the Lion King.
Next stop, Mkomazi Game Reserve, one of Tanzania's newest National Parks, about 400km from here in Morogoro - we leave tomorrow (Sunday) and arrive Wednesday.
J x
Update brought to you by an inmarsat BGAN from the SatCom Group -
broadband quality internet from the doorstep of a Bushman in the
Kalahari
04 July 2008
Newsflash - two more down, two to go...
Jessica Hatcher
Yes, we have entered our penultimate country, Tanzania. The clock is ticking now, counting down to moment when this epic journey will become a thing of the past...
But before that time, something most exciting is happening - we are being joined by world record holding endurance cyclist Mark Beaumont for the last week or so of our pedalling! And if that isn't enough to cajole me over the mountain ranges of central Tanzania, I don't know what is - Mark pedalled around the world all on his own in 194 days 17 hours 0 minutes and if he can do that, I can do a few days of mountains in East Africa. Obviously he'll put us all to shame on the road - I would still not describe myself as a competent cyclist and puff up-hill.
He's joining us in Kenya, where we finish on the 5th August (when we'll spend 10 days 'on holiday' in Kenya before returning to the UK for the 16th).
Right now, we're overnighting at a very cool tea plantation in central Tanzania en route to Iringa. Our new buzz word is 'permaculture' - we saw some amazing schools in Malawi that have their pupils growing all sorts of fruit and veg for the community, manureing, composting... it was great, really productive, and has given me an excuse to hurl organic waste at anything I fancy - it's good for the soil!
The cycling has been arduous... we took the most beautiful small dirt road up Malawi to Livingstonia. It is hard to say whether the views or the near-perpedicular hills were more breathtaking. We had to do lots of bicycle pushing up-hill (apart from Captain PB, who seems to have turned into an iron-man version of his former self, and for whom no hill is too steep - seriously, I don't think I've seen him out of breath for weeks...) while I pulled a muscle in my quad. This meant that the last two days has seen Barty, Chris and New Boy Stephens cycling on their own, occasionally laughing and occasionally crying as I am driven past them on whatever form of African transport I can find, bicycle generally dangling from a roof or half poking out of a window. "Trust me" is a phrase that makes them nervous now.
The boys then cycled up a kilometre in two and a half hours after crossing the border into Tanzania... very hilly. It's a real shame every downhill free-wheel is tainted by the knowledge that "what goes down must come up".
More to come soon - we'll all be setting off together again tomorrow morning, cycling a gentle 110km and then spending the next few days seeing the community work that's going on around Iringa and the Ruaha National Park.
Thanks for listening folks -
Jess x
Update brought to you by an inmarsat BGAN from the SatCom Group - broadband quality internet from the doorstep of a Bushman in the Kalahari
04 July 2008
Cycling through Zimbabwe - a reflection
Jessica Hatcher
Reaching the border post after dusk, we were warned that the 5km of no-mans’ land between the two countries was no safe place to be at night. “Put your woman in the middle and prepare to fight”, said the Botswana Defence Force officer to fellow journalist Charlie Norton, who I suspect fights like a terrier and was looking thoroughly excited at the prospect. We had already been stamped out of Botswana, so options were limited. After a short time deliberating, a man with a gun emerged – we were not to go through without an armed escort. At this point, we decided it could wait until morning. Officially nowhere, we cadged a spot to camp by a rat-infested sewer behind the border post. I slept solemnly under the weight of the prophetic nature of our discomfort. I’d reassured friends and family that I was not about to be impounded for BBC allegiance and that Charlie had no political background, but there always remains a ‘what if’. In fact, we cruised through the Zimbabwean border the next morning looking far too disheveled to be anything but cyclists, lingering ‘eau de rat’ putting John Simpson’s baseball cap to shame. Before I knew it, we were propelled through a barrier and into a sea of gathered hecklers – “Zim dollars! Here, Miss! Taxi, let’s go!” – the usual African fayre. But like Slough on a Friday night, it’s the teenage boys tainted with boredom that scare me, and I know when to pedal. Pushing into the road, I put my head down and led an elated bunch of cyclists at race pace out into the gathering sunlight and onto the open road to Bulawayo. The crowds quickly thinned and we were able to appreciate our first achievement - getting into Zimbabwe. Bulawayo, the scene of Morgan Tsvangiri’s recent arrest and our first stop, is a delta of contra-indications. Swaths of immaculately uniformed school kids declare education and opportunity, while the jobless line the pavements and empty shops, urban graveyards of wasted minds. The white community displays a parallel ambiguity. John and Laura with whom we stayed in Bulawayo, are thriving in Zim. In fact, it seems that there are white men across the country having their cake and savouring it in the disquiet of the economy’s death rattle. They took us to dine at a candlelit steakhouse with tuxedoed waiters and introduced us to venture capitalists. The bill came to over 500 billion dollars. “In Zimbabwe, we have the best education in Africa”, John tells me, “so we will recover. As soon as he goes, it will be fine”, but he seems not to have an answer for quite when ‘He’ will go. This attitude, impregnable patience coupled with blind faith, pervades seemingly in the face of rationale. Tolerance of Mugabe’s regime is not only in the urban white communities. As we cycled north into Matabeleland, it was the hoards of people that we passed, who were gathered at empty shops waiting for nothing, that came to embody the nation for me – a nation in waiting. “Zimbabweans are not fighters. We don’t fight”, I was told gravely by a man named Innocent who works at the Painted Dog Conservation safari lodge. With a staff/guest ratio as inflated as the currency, the tables were still laid afresh every day in a farcical dance of cutlery and crystal, table to drawer and back again. Innocent, emboldened by the cover of a power cut and two glasses of red wine, shared with me his vision for the approaching re-run. “If he goes, I think nobody will go to work for three weeks!”. he beams at me. But his youthful hope is tempered with fear, and he speaks in hushed tones of “The President’ and “Himself”, diligent avoidance of Mugabe’s proper name reminiscent of Harry Potter. It strikes me that people have just become so used to living with this fear, they are no longer aware of it.
At 84, Mugabe is in his 28th year as the head of the Zimbabwean Government, but his wife, Grace, is forty years his junior. In a recent interview she announced, “Even if people vote for the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai will never step foot inside State House”. So much for democracy. With Lady M sharpening her daggers in the wings like this, new fears settle on the psyche. Who’s in charge here? A desperate man is a dangerous man, but a desperate woman is worse (trust me, I’m female).
On the road, we were waved through countless roadblocks by ostensibly benevolent but bemused policemen, and on a number of occasions I had to remind myself that this was Zimbabwe. But then what role does ‘the little man’ really play in Mugabe’s production? On the one hand a pawn, harmless without direction, but on the other, the straw that breaks the camel’s back. When Mugabe is not wielding his axe, it seems that his supporters, essential parts of the greater whole, are not altogether that threatening. “One good thing is that there’s actually very little crime now,” John told me on that evening in Bulawayo. “The crime, it is all on another level”. But in my book, be the people’s crime perceptible or not, a country imbalanced by the burden of fear must be treated with respect and caution.
Our bicycle trial is far from over, but of the countries we have visited thus far, (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia) it has ironically been in Zimbabwe that I have felt the safest. Maureen, a 28 year old Zimbabwean whose family are in Harare but who lives in Nairobi, surprised me when I met her in the relatively tranquil area of Hwange in the North West where she was holidaying. “Kenya, it was bad. Much, much worse than they reported. They kept a lot of killings and beatings a secret. But Harare – it is okay. The media, they paint a very bad picture”. It made me think. Kenya was under no overt reporting restrictions. But in Zimbabwe, even a BBC journalist on holiday is liable to imprisonment. Quite the opposite to what we assume, perhaps internationally, a censored media actually accentuates rather than conceals the worst of the sins.
Brought to you by an inmarsat BGAN from the SatCom Group - broadband quality internet from the doorstep of a Bushman in the Kalahari.
26 June 2008
Zambia - Big is Beautiful
If you ask Jess's Dad about Zambia, his eyes will glaze over as distant memories from his time in the Copperbelt flood back to him
Alternatively, if you ask Joe Bloggs about Zambia, you're likely to get an equally distant look as they rack their brains for one fact about the country. Unless you've lived there, it's certainly not somewhere that you will have heard much about. The Cycle of Life team's combined experience prior to a month ago summed to Barty's stint at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage over five years ago and my two fleeting visits, sticking firmly to the roads and rail between the main tourist spots. Therefore, when we were safely stamped out of Zimbabwe the enormous stretch of Africa to our north garnered more intrigue than excitement.
Zambia certainly knows how to make an entrance and our crossing of Bakota Gorge at Victoria Falls is almost unbeatable as a border post. After most of South-West Africa had experienced a long, late wet season earlier this year, the Zambezi River was on fighting form as it ploughed over the Falls. We timed our arrival perfectly as the early morning sun rose above the enormous plumes of spray that the crashing water launched skywards. This dramatic scene made up for the extortionate US$150 entrance visa, but with almost 1000 km from the Falls to our first conservation project, there was definitely a sense of ‘plaster removal' syndrome amongst the cycling team (reduced to three for most of Zambia as Jess fought, and won(!), an epic battle with customs to regain her video camera that had been shipped around Zimbabwe). However, this ‘quicker, the better' approach was soon forgotten as we discovered that Zambia has more to offer than we ever imagined.
A combination of excellent cycling conditions, a beautiful and varied landscape, but above all, thousands and thousands of smiling people made the long roads disappear beneath our tires faster than out speedometer gave us credit for. It seems that Zambians love to smile and the sight of three mzungus cycling past, grinning like fools and waving wildly is enough to turn one's cheeks. The glorious reaction that we got on the roads may well have been amplified by our surprisingly strong presence in the national media. The Sokotas, our fabulous hosts in the capital Lusaka, are wonderfully connected and a quick phone call set us up with ZNBC. Before we knew it, our interview was on the hourly radio news bulletin and a 15 minute interview with Zambia's answer to Loraine Kelly was scheduled for Saturday morning TV. This airplay was an excellent introduction to minor celebrityhood (pre-Telegraph article) and we were recognized numerous times along our route.
If the roads of Zambia were lined with new fans, we were welcomed at our various Zambian stops as if we were old friends. From the Sokotas in Lusaka, to the Rauchs and Siddles at Chimfunshi (thanks for an amazing 25th birthday!), up past the Farmers at Kasanka and ending with the schools and missionaries of the Luangwa Valley, we couldn't have asked for kinder hosts. Not only did these excellent people provide us with enough food to temper our aggressive appetites (big cycling requires big meals), but we were gifted to some once-in-a-lifetime experiences:
• At Chimfunshi I had the amazing pleasure of celebrating my quarter century with a troop of juvenile chimpanzees. Spending an hour playing with, being played with and generally grappling with our feisty young cousins is certainly an obscure hangover cure, but it worked nonetheless.
• Up at Kasanka, Edmund Farmer treated us to a low level flight over Bangweulu Swamps, one of the best kept secrets of Africa. This majestic location is where the wandering David Livingstone finally died, but he picked a good place to leave his heart (quite literally). Buzzing over stampeding herds of black lechwe while dodging the plentiful flocks of wildfowl is a sensation that I'll treasure for life.
• Along with his amazing hospitality at Tafika Lodge (South Luangwa), John Coppinger's greatest gift to us was dodgy route advice. Following his directions, we pushed our bikes up and over a sandy escarpment to be greeted by unforgettable views of the Luangwa Valley. Our voyage across the "very animal" valley floor coincided with severe bicycle breakdown leaving us somewhat stranded (for more on this story, see Craig's next blog).
• Finally, the performing arts and community bicycle tour performed by Kawasa Basic School and organized by Fiona of Robin Pope Safaris was an excellent example of how tourist dollars should be pumped back into the local community. Keep up the good work!
All in all, there is a lot of Zambia and even after three wonderful weeks I feel that I have still only scratched the surface of this land-locked giant. That said, all is not well in Zambia. Boasting the world's second worst deforestation rates per capita, the green stretches of Zambia that we experienced will not last for ever. Unfortunately, charcoal production, transport and burning seem to be firmly ingrained in the lives of many Zambians (maybe a job for Captain Planet?) So... I can safely say that this will not be last visit to Zambia. Whether I return for recreation (still unvisited Lower Zambezi, Kafue or bat-season at Kasanka?) or for vocation (sequestering some carbon!), there are more than enough reasons to come back to Zambia.
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26 June 2008
Snakes on a Plain!!
Snakes are an inevitable problem for cyclists on African roads.
They look really very like sticks. And the snake / stick differentiation seems to occur at pretty much exactly the same point as that at which your brakes are useless to stop you. So it proved for Craig on the road out of Kasanka national park the other day...
Craig had also been the unwilling subject of our first serious run-in with a dangerous snake: right back when we were in Namibia (it seems a horrifically long time ago now!) a spitting cobra had struck at his wheel after I had only seen and recognized it at the last minute. This time, the snake on show was a puff adder and it was simply invisible on the road. I cycled past without seeing a thing and inadvertently led Jess straight towards it. In fact she missed it by inches but obviously gave it a fright as it flinched enough for Chris to spot it from behind her. His shout of "snake!" came too late for Craig, though, who, as if faced with the inevitability of a firing squad, simply shut his eyes and shouldered arms (making use of the cyclists' maneuver universally recognizable as the ‘puddle splits') and drove straight over its midriff! Willing conservationists we all are, but the prospect of nursing a seriously angry puff adder back to fighting fitness was never much of a runner. Instead we made as hasty an exit as we could, all of us imagining every tree root we saw for the rest of the day to be a mamba or python.
Kasanka, like so much of Zambia, had been an extraordinarily beautiful surprise. Its hardly a tourist hot-spot, with a main attraction of the world's largest bat colony (sadly in October/November only). But its one of those hidden little gems that offers all sorts of things that Africa first-timers might often miss, like the Bangweulu swamplands that finally got the better of Dr Livingstone. Tusk has recently been helping Kasanka with various things, and it was the community development initiatives that most caught our eye: once Frederick Mbuwe had got over his amazement at how far we had cycled (he literally had his head in his hands for a full five minutes!), he explained the system they're pushing for the building of fences made not with electric wire, but chili-soaked cloth to keep mischievous elephants at bay. We were taken to see community gardens that had previously been decimated by the elephants, but were now protected and productive: growing saleable vegetables, and helping the community get over their latent fear and mistrust elephants at the same time.
The other great thing about Kasanka was its roads. They were a cyclists' dream: firstly a long long tar road in, down a gentle hill that we could zoom along four-abreast without fear of traffic, and then a selection of brilliant tracks that we got talked into using (as ever, we were suckers for the more adventurous, but less predictable route...), albeit with one more puff adder than we had hoped for! We were even accompanied by essential local knowledge to stop us from getting too miserably lost: Kingford rattled along serenely in front of us for a day of single-track bicycle paths through the forest.
As I mentioned, we developing a reputation for choosing to take the remote and seriously difficult roads, however bumpy they sound, rather than the sensible but boring alternative, and sure enough we came a cropper soon after leaving Kasanka... As most of the enthusiasm for throwing us and our bikes into the rocky horror-show that was the Luangwa corridor road came from yours truly, I suppose its fair that I leave the description up to someone else to avoid undue bias... So, in the words of Jess:
"We've had an extraordinary few days - Barty excelled himself by producing a road that was sandy, rocky and incredibly steep all at the same time. I thought I liked going downhill until I met the escarpment on the corridor road in between the North and South Luangua National Parks in Zambia. I felt like a chicken on a skateboard, skidding and humping my bicycle down the 1000 metres or so of descent into the beautiful Luangua Valley. At the bottom, our bicycles gave out a large sigh and decided to break en masse. We then had an extraordinary few days, waiting, getting hungry (supplies were getting low) and exploring alternative forms of transport...
We're now back on track, tubes mended and heading off to Malawi in two days, after visiting some community work in South Luangua."
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