Africa by bicycle: Some Rambling Reflections

At this juncture, forced time away from the bicycles and all, it seemed fitting to reflect on everything we've learned so far on this trip. The regular posts show the pretty pictures and give the daily blow-by-blow, but they don't tell:

is Tour d'Afrique what we expected?

would we do it again?

What have we learned about where we've been?

how are we?

About Tour d'Afrique...

What we were not prepared was just how exhausting it would be.

The physical effort of a daily routine of six to seven hours sitting on the saddle and pedaling the bike, up hills, into the wind, and in incredible heat, and that does NOT count stops to take pictures, eat lunch, etc. No amount of weekend rides or rides to work prepare you for doing that day after day. Trust us, it's a whole lot more exhausting than we'd thought. We are amongst the slowest of riders in this excursion - a lot of the younger fitter folk are doing the daily ride in only half the time we are.

The daily routine is tiring in its own right - up before dawn every day, pack up the tent and the gear, eat breakfast, get on the bike, eat lunch, ride the bike again, get into camp, set up tent, clean bike, clean self if you can, eat, go to sleep. Seems like there is no real free time.

The mental exhaustion from dodging crowds of people and kids, the constant demand for money, the threat of sticks and stones.

Minor intestinal ailments have affected everybody including us and they tend to sap you of whatever energy you had - to some degree, we are all run down from seven weeks of constant physical, mental, and psychological demand on our bodies. Most of Ethiopia was close to 10,000 feet altitude and like runners after a marathon, immune systems are low.

The camping format - the problem (if there is one) is not the remote camps where there are no facilities, it is the places where the facilities are worse than basic. Rest days and hotels on those days - we have mixed feelings about that - TdA advertises camping, not hotels - it's just too bad that the room facilities at some of those locations have been of such poor quality. But this is a personal mind-over-matter issue. We have abandoned earlier expectations about the quality of hotel rooms - we'll take one for convenience when available and we'll be pleasantly surprised if the quality is good. If you are reading our blog wondering if you want to do this excursion, the key is to manage your expectations and not to expect too much in places where it simply doesn't exist.

The countries:

Egypt - disappointing for air quality, garbage especially plastic bags everywhere. There was no such thing as a simple financial transaction. Even in grocery stores in the city, you had to bargain or get ripped off. After agreeing on a price, it wasn't unusual for them to demand more. The local folk shouted at each other all the time - you really thought they were having an all out argument although they probably were not. There's lots of traffic and it is chaotic in cities. That said, truck drivers were usually extremely courteous to us and gave us lots of room on the road. Kids in Egypt were also present at roadside, usually asking for money, sometimes throwing stones or trying to put a stick in your spokes, but since they were fewer in number than in Ethiopia, one didn't feel under siege the same.

Sudan

We were immediately taken by how laid back the people were in Wadi Halfa when we got off the ferry. They were polite and friendly; you could say hello without being pestered; you seldom got ripped off and you didn't have to bargain for everything.

The desert between Wadi Halfa and Dongola was a highlight in terms of scenic beauty - exhausting riding, but worth it.

The 50-60-year old gentleman who did our laundry in Dongola stands out as an amazing guy - diligent in his work, gentle and polite in his manner. He worked in one of those small one-room sheds that serve sometimes as stores, other times as workshops, too small to be a garage. He sat on the floor and handwashed everything in a wide, shallow metal bowl (like an inverted coulee hat with some washboard corrugations). And even the articles that we took on this trip because they were expendable because they were so dilapidated after years of abuse - even these came back cleaner and brighter than when they were new.

Kids in Sudan like everywhere wanted to run to the roadside and wave at us, but there wasn't much in the way of sticks and stones.

Ethiopia.

We spent almost a month there, so not surprising that it left a significant impression. We were warned in advance that everything needed to be locked up or it would be pilfered, be that at the campsite or out of our backpacks or handlebar bags, and we were warned that kids would throw stones and try to poke sticks into your spokes. All that came true, and were overwhelmed by the constant presence of hundreds kids at the side of the road shouting 'money money money' and trying to grab you or your things, or hit you with hands and sticks and even whips, or throw stones.

We had the opportunity to speak with people from an NGO operating north of Addis Ababa and also to a former World Bank official who now volunteers for four months of the year to assist Ethiopia. We were forewarned that the country was the poorest of all of Africa, and it has been and continues to be the recipient of a large amount of international aid. Is it doing the job? And if not, what is needed?

Of course the answer is a mix of yes and no. There are obvious health problems. Diarrhea apparently is the greatest killer, linked to water quality and sanitation. Medical aid has done much to alleviate the death rate, and much is being done to address the water issues. But the underlying problem is over-population. The lives that are saved have little future where there is little food for the existing population and little employment. Family planning and birth control is unpopular in today's western political climate where the religious right and right-to-life movements have an overwhelming influence.

Education reportedly is improving - literacy rate is now 25% compared to 5% when Haille Selassie lost power, but obviously there is a long way to go. There are great new infrastructure projects in the country, but it suffers from lack of maintenance largely because there is a lack of education as to both the need for it and how to do it.

That probably is not a simple issue - the NGO said that they had installed many water pumps that no longer function. People had been trained to maintain and repair them but then because they have that education, they find better jobs elsewhere and so they leave without passing on the skill. The NGO is philosophical in that the skill usually stays in Ethiopia - that still leaves the NGO dependent on continued external funding to keep past infrastructure improvements functioning, but NGOs typically don't have a constant source of income.

We got one view that outside aid tended to address symptoms but not underlying problems, that they sometimes compounded the underlying problem (as with adding to the population) - that what was needed was something that could generate something self-sustaining. Economically, two principal sources of income for Ethiopia are agriculture and tourism.

In Canada, the US, and all of the EU, there are farm and agricultural subsidies and various other schemes that serve (intentionally or otherwise) to block the likes of Ethiopia out of our domestic markets for their products, the result being that it is impossible for Ethiopia to derive significant foreign income from their major product. One NGO said that if we really wanted to do something, we should write to our member of parliament or government representative and lobby for an abandonment of all such subsidies.

I think another way would be to buy an airline ticket to Addis Ababa and find a local agent who could arrange some travel in the country. Spend money in Ethiopia where it goes to Ethiopians. Somehow demand tourist infrastructure that is better than some of what we've seen. That would be incentive to maintain and improve and generate foreign income.