African Brew Ha Ha

THANK YOU

After 18 months, the fundraising element of the African Brew Ha Ha is drawing to a (very successful) close. Followers of the blog and the trip have raised £40 for Riders for Health and around £4,000 for two good causes in Imizamu Yethu/Hout Bay - the ultimate destination of the journey.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

Half of the £4,000 will go to buy bi-lingual text books for primary school-age children, and the other half will go to Ukwabelana Trust which aims to build a community centre as a focus for disparate micro businesses and provide space for a creche, music studio and training kitchen.

If you would like to add to the total, your very welcome cheque should be made payable to:
Rotary Club of Blackpool Sunrise
c/o Alan Whelan
55 Clifton Drive
Lytham St Annes
FY8 1AL

Travel all year round from your armchair or desk

Horizons Unlimited , the pre-eminent website/group/organised meetings for long distance bikers, have a competition every year to find the best photographs taken on overland journeys around the world and then use them in the following year's calendar.

I entered just one picture, one of my favourites (below), and it has been chosen for September. WooHoo!

Click the link if you are looking for a unique Christmas present for the armchair traveller in your life.

Brew Ha Ha - The Show

A few people have emailed asking what has happened to me since the end of the African Brew Ha Ha. Did I just fall off the bike and collapse in a heap? Well, sort of.

It took me some time to return to my previous life during which I struggled to reconcile the indifference of everybody to the experience I had been through. That's a long-winded way of saying 'How can you possibly understand some of the things I have seen'.

But now, since writing about the trip, I see that I was the lucky one and am keen to tell the stories of Africa inasmuch as I can describe the indescribable. It was also very difficult to describe life in Britain to people I met on the road too, so there you go.

Speaking of writing about the trip, I have completed a manuscript which is now looking for a publisher, so wish me luck with that.

In the meantime, I have put together a bit of a talk with photos which will next be presented in sunny Blackpool on November 18, 7pm. We will try to raise a bit of money for projects in Cape Town at the same time.

Please let me know if you would like to come along - alan@inkwellpr.co.uk

How to Wash a Tiger

After coming in to see the guys who work at Original Tea Bag Designs over a cup of tea, show them some pictures of the trip and give them an idea of what some of the rest of Africa is like ... they suggested they would like to clean the bike: 'get rid of that African mud and dust, send you on your way in the same condition you arrived five months ago'.
It was a good idea.
We did our best with the soap and water but as we tried to polish her up it was clear the bike could not hide all the demanding miles, like a once-beautiful old trooper who must come to terms with the downside of advancing age, too much experience, the onset of wrinkles and a few age spots reflected in every pore. Much like myself, I suppose.

"You're doing a great job, Nicholas."

A soapy Nicholas looks up: "Whew. Taking  a Tiger for tea through Africa. That's a job!"

By the way, Happy St Patrick's Day - enjoy yourself today with any drink other than tea.

Ulysses Returns

There were dancers, singers, around a hundred curious tea drinkers (some from Lancashire but I don't think they were following me), a British diplomat, Olive (the missus), a couple of clean Triumphs putting the Tiger to shame, Jill Heyes and all the Tea Baggers, the South African flag, a Union Jack and the Irish Tricolour, and even a gumboot performance to welcome me to Hout Bay at the end of the African Brew Ha Ha.

Thank you everyone for coming out, it was terrific.

I managed half a cup of tea before I made an idiot of myself with a lachrymose speech about the trip and the 'blinding light' that kept me going during the last five months. I can't remember the journey without thinking about the people who have made the trip so unique, who helped me when I probably didn't deserve it, and of all the people left behind. And if that sounds soft, then so be it.\

Top Tea Bag Designs worker Nicholas said: "I know you had a soft heart today but you must have had a strong heart to make this trip and for that we all say thank you."

Ending in a Sea of Tea

February 20-21     The last two days of the Brew Ha Ha have been spent enjoying an alternative beverage in the Cape Winelands. But there is always time for tea: here are some super people I spent time with in Worcester.

Anne Lesch took me in and insisted on introducing me to everyone she knew. We spent the time either going to other places for tea or welcoming people to her home - for more tea.

Bloody hell it's hot here, somebody put the kettle on.

Soweto Legend, African Success Story

Sitting in a plush boardroom in offices within a purpose-built training centre and headquarters for the most famous football club in Africa, drinking tea with a local legend and post-Apartheid success story.

But Kaizer Motaung, he of the Kaizer Chiefs (note the spelling), is a modest, softly spoken man with an illustrious playing career behind him and a secure business future.

The Chiefs, now largely a family business, were created from nothing in the 1970s - the dark days of Apartheid when black teams were forbidden from playing at the best stadia, as they were in 'white' areas. Kaizer was playing for the Atlanta Chiefs in the US and was persuaded to return and build a new club around himself. He was personally very popular in South Africa, so the team grew very quickly. The new headquarters are now situated within a free kick of Soweto and the famous painted power station cooling towers which can be seen from the windows.

Arch rivals Orlando Pirates lost some of their team members to the Chiefs, which sparked a rivalry that exists to this day, and even divides people along political lines. But sometimes, to foreign eyes, it seems everything in South Africa is divided along political lines.

As the country approaches its showcase event of the 2010 World Cup, it is struggling to meet the demands of a growing population and economic growth. We are very aware of those demands as we are sitting in the boardroom during a regular power cut that has affected Johannesburg for the past few weeks. It's not the first time the tea has been warm, but welcome all the same.

Kaizer says: "There are worries about the 2010 World Cup and the impact on Africa's image in the world. For the sake of Africa we must get it right."

Rooibos with a Capetonian

February 15      Jeremy Muller, although his wife would describe as "a so-called coloured", prefers to be known simply as "a Capetonian". He escaped the Mother City to the relatively tranquil, and dusty, streets of Mariental, Namibia, some years ago.

"We don't have a tea ritual as you call it. You get Rooibos in a mug with us."

As national programme manager for the Namibia Development Trust he is involved in helping local people, often in remote settlements, set up small businesses for themselves, for instance to serve the growing tourist sector.

"Although you will notice that there is more money in Namibia than in many of the countries you've visited, the gap between the richest and the poorest is shocking. Even here in Mariental.

The one thing that would change Africa the most is if people would use their democratic rights to vote governments out that do not serve them. Why does the population vote back people like Mugabe in Zimbabwe?"

"It makes no sense to a European," I suggest.

"It makes no sense to a Capetonian either!"

Advice? "Enjoy the time you have left; don't speed down to Cape Town at 140kph, take time to look around."

A Vision near the Tropic of Capricorn

February 12    Windhoek is a big shock: the tarmac, the sidewalks, the western brand names, the white faces, legs and arms, the (mostly white) people who woosh past in washed four by fours with windows up, air conditioning on, eyes focused ahead - 'get out of my way'.

Frankly, I'm missing Africa, or what I have come to know as Africa over the last few months: the curiosity of the people, the openness, the easy smile, the wit, the physicality of the people, their attractiveness, the colour, the music blaring from every taxi, and I'm even missing the hassles, the touts, the hangers-on, the freeloaders, the beggars and the way life is played out on the street, in public. If I lived like that, I'd play my life out on the street, too.

I don't want to denigrate Windhoek or Namibia. The city is pleasant enough set amongst beautiful hills and has a gentle, slow pace of life. But for my time there it rains almost every day. One evening the lightning flashes for 25 minutes; it's so bright and so consistent I can read by its light. But up north people are struggling where there is no drainage in the villages. People stand outside their huts knee-deep in water, staring out from the front page of The Namibian newspaper living very different lives from those shopping in the malls and eating lunch under the parasols of Windhoek. Life is good for many Namibians, and who would deny them that.

Then, at a petrol station on the road south, I see a battered vision roll past me: a 1954 Triumph Thunderbird with two English aboard who left blighty a week before me but came the east coast route through Libya, Sudan and Kenya - and their sun-burned faces attested to the fact.

Well done to them, and well done to me too I suppose.

Riding the Rails to Pointe Noire

February 3     Three more guys make a leap for the boxcar and scramble aboard as it begins to get very crowded and very hot in the rusting tin can. There is only around three square metres of floor space left so the stowaways have to pick their way through the bundles, bags, sacks and crates of fruit to find a comfortable place to sit.

The guard shouts a warning which sends everyone scurrying over the mangoes and avocados in fear of being detected by the Chef de Gare. I am left alone at the sliding door and feel terribly exposed. I decide to follow my fellow boxcar companions and dive for cover behind the crates holding up the bike on the far side of the carriage. There are loud stage whispers, evidently talking about me and my dramatic leap over the mangoes, and then suppressed laughter, the kind you hear in church. The guard beckons me back to the open sliding door as the Chef de Gare takes a cursory look into the carriage - he idly acknowledges me and the guard - everything OK here - and moves on down the track. The stowaways are still acting like naughty kids in church and clearly appreciate my solidarity with them in my leap for cover. What they don't know is that I don't have a train ticket either but Le Blanc is not suspected or even questioned.

We're all relived when the train jolts to a start and moves away from Dolisie towards Pointe Noire with some stragglers running after the boxcar down the track.

I am instantly hungry but there is no way I can eat my meagre rations (chocolate chip cookie anyone?) without incurring the wrath of my fellow stowaways. I take out the packet and hand the biscuits round. They're an instant hit and they all decide I should eat some of their food. It is the start of a feast I wouldn't have thought the Congo was capable of.

They buy everything from women and small children who run to the train when it arrives in their village. We feast on grilled fish, boiled eggs, manioc wrapped in its own leaves, we suck ice lollies frozen in plastic bags, chew on corn on the cob, lick and suck a strange sour cooked fruit stuck on the end of a stick and eaten like an ice cream mivvi, eat more unidentifiable fruits with the taste of pineapples, lychees and guava, and to crown it all off we gorge ourselves on the ripening and now warm mangoes and tomatoes that surround us in the boxcar. As I finish one huge mango with the blissful utterance "fantastique!" the guard throws me two more stolen from a crate from across the carriage which I feast on until my teeth are stringy from the flesh and my lap dripping with the juice. Well, there needs to be some perks of riding the rails as a stowaway.

I'm feeling like a character in a Tom Waits song and look forward to Pointe Noire with renewed enthusiasm.