African Brew Ha Ha

Anyone got a Band-Aid?

December 18              Thank you to everyone who has sent their best wishes and messages of support since the last posting. When things are going so well you hardly think of the possibility of your plans going pear-shaped (rather like my injured hip at the moment) and I can sense the surprise in people’s comments that anything knocked me off the route marked “Cape Town”.

I know many people say they have trouble with the Comments function (below) and are sending emails instead. Either way, thank you, I appreciate them all and please don’t stop.

There is no point pretending the fall last week didn’t hurt in a couple places but it’s nothing a three-foot Band-Aid can’t put right. So I expect to be up and mobile by the end of next month and plan to continue the abhaha to Cape Town using a more direct route.

In the meantime I plan to take it easy over Christmas and hope Santa brings a new pair of stabilisers for the bike and a fresh supply of anti-inflammatory tabs for me (O, and a big fat kiss from Olive!) and I leave you with a picture taken in happier – and muddier - times.

Cheers

Alan

2 Degrees South, then Ouch!

“Thé? Non.”

It was the final nail in the coffin of a black day on the African Brew Ha Ha. Not only was there no tea at l’Hopital Regional de Mouila but there was also no food of any description, no sheets or pillow for the bare mattress, and no medication or first aid supplies. What kind of a hospital is this, anyway?

I found a sympathetic nurse (not necessarily tautological), the wonderful Ngoma, who went to town for an omelette, bread and fruit juice for me after the end of his shift – and for some reason returned with a slice of stale cake and two Fantas – and I paid for someone to find a pharmacie to buy the drugs and dressings to treat me, so things generally were soon looking up.

After a brief visit to the drunk Brigade Secretariat, his side kick, and their two good-time girls in tow, I realised “le tourist” would get no help from the police to recover the stranded bike this night and returned to the hospital with Ngoma in the torrential rain to allow the events of the day to sink in.

I can remember lying on my side, knees up, feeling for signs of trauma as I looked over at the bike, which was positioned in a perfect mirror image of its prone rider: lying stranded in the road, its headlights staring back at me wild-eyed, its dirty body torn, broken and bruised, helpless as a baby.

Like the stricken Triumph, I could do nothing but wait for someone to right me, check me over, and get me back on the road. But something told me, not least the strange protrusion from where my collar bone should have been, it was not going to be so easy this time.

Lying on my hospital mattress that night, I prayed the Triumph was still where it came to rest on the dirt road to Ndendé, 2 degrees south of the equator on the Gabon/Congo border, where it did its valiant best to simultaneously avoid some death wish goats and remain upright. As you will have realised by now, it was less than successful. The general consensus among the hospital staff was that if it was not retrieved tonight from such a remote road to the frontier, I could say goodbye to ever seeing the bike again. That night I was haunted by the possibility that the abhaha might end right here, right now, in this grim environment. Ha Ha. A less suitable place for its conclusion I could not have found. And no tea.

But Africa is full of surprises. Not only did I become an in-patient at the less than fully-equipped Mouila Hospital under the care of the extraordinary Ngoma Serge Dimitri (on the left with Severin) but so too, the following day, did the bike.

9,000 miles for Bananas

December 7    

Considering I have just passed something of a milestone on the African Brew Ha Ha – crossing the equator – and have had a couple of fantastic days’ riding through the Gabon rain forest, I thought it appropriate to post an update from the Bananas Hotel & Bar, Lambaréné, on how the Triumph is holding up.

As Tabot, my guide from two weeks back might have said, "Mister Alan, we are moving." And apart from the problem with the clutch – which many readers may feel was actually a problem with the rider, I won’t argue that one – the Triumph has kept moving brilliantly well. [Incidentally, a new clutch from Triumph UK found its way to me in Douala, Cameroon, within 72 hours arranged by Blackburn dealer Philip Youles.]

I have travelled 9,000 miles since I left Lancashire on October 1 and it has to be said there has not been a hiccup. Well, just one … when it wouldn’t start in Agadir, Morocco; someone from a local garage came out, looked it over, said a prayer, and it roared into life. "Allah did it" he said, and left without any further explanation. Maybe it just needed a little divine encouragement as we were approaching the long desert stretch at the time.

Alright, that’s two things, but on a punishing journey like this something has to give.

Everyone loves the Triumph but has the same criticism: "It’s too heavy". Well, yes, it is a heavy bike but also a superbly comfortable one on tarmac, which is 95% of the trip. The remaining 5% is a challenge, there’s no doubt about that, but in the hands of a good rider (I’m getting better as the trip progresses!) it can be surprisingly adaptable.

I have taken it over roads that I wouldn’t have thought possible before the trip, so it has been a case of ‘the bike is better than you think it is’ – it just requires confidence … and as Tabot might have said: "With courage [and the Triumph], mister Alan, you will conquer your journey."

Super Allah at Wagga

November 14  There were a few mobile tea sellers doing a fair trade with the hot and sweaty workers in downtown Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

I tried some of this chap’s brew after I spotted his wagon was called The Super Allah 1.

If he is planning to branch out with Super Allah 2 and Super Allah 3 he will have to improve the taste of his cuppa (or glass, as you can see in the pic) but I wish him all the best.

Tropical Paradise - Banana Republic

November 1 Criticism of the President of The Gambia is not done lightly within the country, in fact it’s rarely done at all. My Tea Encounter was scathing about the current regime and of President Yahya Jammeh in particular.

Jammeh is doing his best to cultivate a personality cult with huge banners and posters of himself throughout the capital Banjul proclaiming all the apparent successes since he came to power in 1994: “13 Years of Peace and Prosperity”, “Healthcare Our Priority” etc. But still many people who criticise the regime find themselves arrested on trumped-up charges and spend long periods in prison while others ‘disappear’ for holding dissident views. When human rights organisations enquire about their well-being the government say they ‘can’t find them’. For this reason my Tea Encounter cannot be identified; I’ll refer to him as George.

George said: “A little learning is a very dangerous thing. When you have a high school graduate for a president running the country, it’s going to be a disaster. The whole country is corrupt, from the government to the hospitals to the policemen at the checkpoints you have to ride through. Nepotism and tribalism is killing Africa. A very few have a lot, while most of the people live in poverty.

I don’t blame the British for colonisation but I do blame them for not prosecuting our African leaders who keep most of their corrupt gains in European banks.”

A tourist guide book refers to The Gambia as “Africa for beginners” but the throwaway nickname, the benign exterior of the population and the international holiday resorts conceal a different story – one of repression and Autocracy.

Our tea together is cut short when we have to rush to the police station to try to release his cousin who is being held on false charges relating to his involvement unearthing minister-level corruption in the government. George suggests I stay in the car outside “otherwise the police will think you are a journalist and get jittery, it will only make matters worse”. George posts bail and is optimistic that his cousin will soon be released but it is another reason for him to be exasperated with the poor human rights and lack of due process in his country. It seems democracy is a long way off for George and The Gambia.

“What The Gambia, and Africa, needs more than anything” says George, “ is principle-centred leadership. Without it, things will continue as they are.”

Advice for the trip? “The smallest things can make the biggest difference to people’s lives. And, though you will find most Africans very hospitable, be careful they don’t take advantage of you.”

And, no, I didn’t leave a note on the windscreen

I thought it safe now to post this blog of the Triumph`s acquaintance with the Mauritanian ambassador`s car. If he`d seen it he certainly wouldn`t have invited me in for Ferrero Rocher.

October 12

The Mauritanian ambassador had a very nice car

A very nice car had he

Until along came a Triumph with a scratch and a bump

But the ambassador never did see

 

Three men had spied from across the street

And they all did see that bash

They said: “We won’t tell for we’ve just pinched

Three Merc’s for a fist full of cash.”

Stars 2 Demain

December 1 The X Factor virus has spread to central Africa in the form of Stars 2 Demain (‘Stars of Tomorrow’). The directors of the production company, which is on its third series here, kindly let me have a backstage view of the auditions at a swanky hotel in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

All the familiar elements were there: the excited friends egging each other on; the housewives in flip-flops (!); the lads there for a day out; the girls phoning home with the good/bad news; the ‘born to be a singer’ without a hope in hell of getting through.

One thing the TV does not convey is the uncontrollable nerves of many of the contestants – they may be singing calmly on the top half but their legs are often shaking uncontrollably like some exaggerated cartoon character. I was sure some were going to faint as they got closer to the head of the queue. When they got under the lights they often went to pieces.

You very quickly decide which ones you want to get through and will them to do well, but when it goes wrong it goes horribly wrong and like a Triumph heading for a pot-hole there is nothing you can do to save the situation, just avert your eyes, brace yourself and shout “next”.

There was also a ‘filtering’ room through which everybody had to pass to ensure they were bona fide contestants and to filter out the truly awful (of course British and American TV thrives on laughing at others’ misfortune and keeps these bits in). This was very funny as the truly tuneless are always the ones who are so convinced of their own talent that any contact with the real world is a shock to them and their egos. It always seems heartless when Simon Cowell laughs at someone’s hideous warbling but when you’re in the room with them it is impossible to stop yourself. The scrunched up faces belting out some local pop tune in an assumed voice of the devil is, it seems, common to all nations.

It’s good to find something else in common with the Cameroonais (the other being an abiding love for Guinness).

Cheers!

"With courage, you will conquer your journey."

November 24  We both drink the last of the tea from the flasks, wheel the bikes out of the restaurant where they took pride of place the previous evening, and take them down to the corner where the posse of boys are washing cars and bikes on this hot, sticky morning.

Tabot warns them that if he finds any mud on my bike after they have finished we won’t pay them a penny. They quickly go to work, each fighting over who will wash the Triumph even though it is twice the size of Tabot’s ‘Grande King 125 Made in Taiwan’.

“You must wash away the bad luck of the last few days. You can’t take it with you. I want your bike clean-clean for when you enter Douala.”

We sit back on the bench and watch the boys rinse off the worst of the caked-on mud with a hose before starting with the huge soapy rags. The church with no windows next door is getting into song, filling the run-down neighbourhood in Kumba with a joyous, and occasionally rapturous, sound, adding a poignant coda to the atmosphere.

Tabot is now fielding questions about the bike from the crowd that has gathered to stare and check out the “White man, white man”. His pidgin-English is very difficult to follow but I can tell what the subject is because he has no substitute for “England” “Eight thousand miles” “South Africa” and the answers to the most popular questions “Eleven thousand euros” and “One hundred and forty miles an hour”, which usually brought gasps of amazement.

The lazy Sunday morning crowd make me mock offers for the bike and slap each other’s backs with laughter as they get a positive response or an offer of a trade-in.

The fact is, I would have taken the trade-in for a lighter bike at any time during the last few days as Tabot and I struggled to bring the heavy Triumph through the Cameroon jungle, a journey which I had estimated would take a few hours but had taken four and a half gruelling days.

The original deal was for Tabot to guide me from the frontier through the worst of the pot-holes to the nearest big town. But the ‘road’ from the Nigeria border at Ekok to Kumba was a quagmire. Even the border police on both sides of the frontier were concerned that I was taking the route alone.

Tabot said: “You will be amazed what I will do for you on this road.”

He was right. I was amazed. Despite every natural and unnatural obstacle thrown in our way, despite ruts taller than the bike, despite mud up to our crotches, despite dropping the bike countless times, despite being permanently wet, despite burning out the clutch again in a three-foot-deep, muddy, water-filled pot-hole, despite spending 36 hours with a family who had so little food that I survived on oranges – just oranges, despite all the devastating effects of the late rains, we had succeeded and proved the positivity of Tabot’s catchphrase for me: “With courage, mister Alan, you will conquer your journey.”

With courage, yes, but also with Tabot’s blind optimism and astonishing ability to find solutions to difficulties long after I had given up. Armed with little more than a pair of Wellington boots and a charm that could win wars, he used his wits to make sure this part of my journey would succeed.

Now sitting in the shade with the soapy water draining around our feet, I knew the most physically demanding few days of my life was over and the muddy evidence was now being washed away before us. A perverse thought crossed my mind. I wanted it to continue.

“Are you sad, too?” I asked, without taking my gaze from the bikes.

"Yes, I am sad, too. It is over. If I could, I would continue with you to the border of Gabon to make sure you are fine. You must go on with your journey. You had courage and you have succeeded. "