Photos, After the Fact

MinWah has posted some of our pictures.
View them here.

From Sea to Shining Sea

Posted from New York, New York

There it is - the Mediterranean. Its blue wonder is blocked by points of land and a metal fence.

MinWah and I arrive at Port Said suddenly; the last 30 km blow past and I expect the sea to be anticlimactic, but there's a rock in my stomach when I look at it.

We make our way down to the beach to dip our tires and I'm overcome with reverence.

We don't stay long. The beach extends the length of Port Said and we ride along the pedestrian path until we can go no further, then pull our bikes through a construction site and find ourselves on the other side of a major police checkpoint.

From Port Said to Damiette is a narrow strip of land dominated mostly by the highway. We don't bother to find out whether we can ride on it, but rather get out of there as fast as we can.

Some kilometers on the sun is going down and we wonder where we'll sleep. The narrow spit of land is hardly more than a causeway. Then we come upon an old caravan parked on the beach and think maybe it - or the small structure behind it - would hide us from the road. Upon closer inspection, I am surprised to find the caravan occupied.

Ahmed and Achmed are smoking from a hookah and watching the sun set. Achmed offers the hose to me. I've been curious about smoking from a "water pipe," so I accept.

Then Achmed, uses his vocal cords to produce a series of compressions of air and his lips and tongue to shape them into a word.

"Hasheesh," he says, and the race is on.

The vibrations expelled from Achmed's mouth create more vibrations in turn, which pass the information on to my ears as I bring the hose to my lips. Behind the eardrum, hammer meets anvil and little hairs in my cochlea lie down. They trigger tiny electrical impulses which run down neurons and jump synapses until they reach my auditory cortex. The auditory region of my brain turns these bits of electricity into vital information and pass it on to the frontal lobe, which takes enough time to say "oh, shit" before it sends the relevant command to my motor control center.

It's too late. The motor control center has already instructed my diaphragm to inflate my lungs and draw in a mixture of air and smoke.

I release the breath gingerly, as though if I'm gentle enough the chemicals in the smoke won't bind to my blood and I can expel the offending toxins without harm.

Meanwhile, I try to look unperturbed, and fail. Instead, I stare at Achmed with the expression of someone who just unsuspectingly bit into a habanero. He laughs at his joke and shows me a tin of tobacco.

There's a big ditch between the road and the sea, to protect the pavement from any waves that get out of control. Ahmed and Achmed stay in this old caravan and look after the pump that spits water from the gully back into the sea.

MinWah asks Achmed how many years he's been there.
"Katheer," he says. Many.

They allow us to camp and I go out past the ditch to take in the scene. To my right I can still see the lights of Port Said glittering across the water. To my left, equidistant and equally beautiful I can see another town, smaller but just as bright. Ahead, the lights of many ships speckle the sea. Above, the moon is nearly full. Behind me, Ahmed, wearing a gray robe and a white turban balances on the gunwale of a beached boat and prays to the East.

I throw my arms out, clench my fists and choke back a yell. Port Said was nice but for me, to camp here, to hear the thrumming pump, feel the spray of the sea, smell the salt water; this is the climax. From here we will work our way back to Cairo where a plane ticket to New York City awaits me. America, after so long, will be an adventure in itself.

Besides, I've never been to New York.

Do you speak English?

Posted from Zagazig, Egypt

We pedal a long Thursday into Addis Ababa. The Egyptian Embassy is only open until noon on Friday and we don't want to wait out the weekend to submit our visa application, so we try get close enough to Addis but stop far enough out that we can still find a place to camp.

We fail. The capital of Ethiopia and the fourth largest city in Africa, Addis is sprawled to the extent that we're within it before we know it. Between all the industry and the masses of people, we see nowhere to camp. A petrol station refuses our request. There's little green space and where there is it's urban, inappropriate and probably unsafe.

The sun goes down. We've come 100 km uphill and we're so tired that our decision-making is suffering. We stop to put our feet down and wonder about what to do.

"Can I help you?" a passerby says.
We tell him we need a place to stay. He indicates that he knows a place, but he's acting strangely and we realize early enough that it's probably not a good idea to follow him.
A couple of ladies walking by might be more help. We ask, but they only tell us there's a hotel up ahead somewhere, out of sight.

We go another hundred meters or so and see an industrial compound of some sort. It's dark so it's hard to tell what exactly it is. There's an old fire truck, presumably undergoing some sort of maintenance. There's a low building with a satellite dish on top. Most importantly, there's a fence around the place and a group of uniformed guards, one of whom is holding an automatic rifle.

Ethiopia is the only country in the world whose national language is Amharic. Amharic is difficult to begin with. It's got it's own script and it's full of sounds not found in English, like the "exploded" t and k. The syntax and grammar is different, and words addressed to women often have different suffixes than those addressed to men. Furthermore, we've been in Ethiopia for only a little more than a week. Suffice to say, we butcher our attempt to ask for a place to sleep.

Like the women we met before, the guards suggest a hotel down the road. We try to explain that we wish to sleep in a tent, that all we need is a small square of ground to put it on.

We fail. The Amharic word for tent is "dnkwan." We learn later that a dnkwan is actually a large canvas tent used in funeral celebrations, which can last up to three days. It doesn't really matter because we can't pronounce "dnkwan" anyway.

We're debating whether to keep trying here or move on and hope for better luck elsewhere when one of the guards steps forward.

"Do you speak English?" he says.

The Worst Road in Africa/A Song in the Wilderness

Posted from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (more or less)

Legend has it that Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, used to use the Great East-African Highway to visit Halie Selassie I, the emperor of Ethiopia. The two agreed, each would pave the portion of the highway that lay within his border. Selassie (also known as Ras
Tafari) followed through; Kenyatta did not. The unpaved Kenyan portion of the highway would come to be known as "the worst road in Africa," which, to borrow a phrase from the Coen Brothers, puts it high in the running for worst road world-wide.

The infamy of the "highway" is not limited to the quality of the road itself; tribal warfare, highway banditry and miles of inhospitable and tedious surroundings contribute to a whole package of desolation. From Isiolo, Kenya to Moyale, on the Kenya/Ethiopia border is 500
kilometers of wilderness that MinWah and I alone decided to traverse.

In Isiolo our group split permanently. Karen had already flown home from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Orian caught a truck up to Moyale - he's trying to reach Cairo in time to fly home for their anniversary; Quinn caught a lift back to Nairobi, and has since flown to Europe where
he'll spend the summer touring.

It's garbage burning day in Isiolo when we leave. (For all I know, that's every day in Isiolo). The foul gray smoke bites our nostrils as we pull into a petrol station to top off our stove. We've heard two stories regarding northern Kenya's bandits. In one version, the bandits are well organized and only go after convoys that they know are carrying something valuable.
In the other, they are involved in tribal warfare (mostly killing and stealing each others cattle) and leave foreigners mostly alone. These two are encouraging to us, but the gas-station attendant offers another perspective.

"There's no police, very long ways," he says fearfully.
"There are men who are not right," he continues, pointing to his head. Then
he pretends to hold a gun.
"They will...." he trails off as he pulls the imaginary trigger.

It's not the first time we've heard terrible stories about the place we're about to go, so we cruise downhill from Isiolo. It's tarmac at first, followed by flat graded gravel, preparation for future paving. It's fast going, but we know it can't last.
"The Chinese are building a road," the locals say. The sign says "Government of Kenya, Ministry of Roads and Public Works, Financed by the Governement of Kenya and the African Development Fund. Main Contracter: China Wu Yi Company."
Either way, the road shortly spits us out onto rough gravel.

We bump our way down into a dry river valley where about eight kids are letting their goats drink. As we pass, they ignore their herd and turn their attention to us. They run along side, shouting and waving their herding sticks, joking and having fun. At least that's how it seems until one of them hits me with their stick. I slam on the brakes and turn around. The kids scatter, dropping water bottles and sticks. The one who hit me drops his close enough for me to pick up,
so I do. I wave it at them and ask who it belongs to. They don't speak English (except for "give me"), but eventually they understand, and the biggest one acknowledges it is his.

I toss it in his direction, thinking this sign of goodwill will pacify them. Not so. As I pedal off up the other side of the valley, rocks throw up clouds of dirt near me. The little punks are throwing rocks at me; big enough to hurt, if I should be hit, but not big enough to do any real damage.

When the second volley flies, I stop and pick up one of my own; small enough to throw hard but big enough to do some serious damage. I toss it to myself and try to look menacing.

The kids keep their distance, but they're not leaving us yet. I consider throwing the baseball-sized rock in their direction, but I've reached the crest of the hill and the downhill ahead allows me to outdistance them.

I hope a lion ate one of their goats while they were chasing us.

Thoughts come in sound-bites when the road is rough. You barely have a chance to complete one before a wayward rock pulls your attention back to the road.

Even so, cycling in the desert gives you lots of time to think. It also gives you lots of time to lose motivation. Some people set goals for themselves. In South Africa Quinn referred to his left as his pizza pedal and his right as his beer pedal. Here in the desert, I've purged myself of external goals. I don't pedal because I'm trying to reach somewhere by a certain time. I push down with my left simply because it comes after my right.

You pedal because that's what you do. You go north because the road only goes two ways and you've come from the south. The scenery doesn't change much. Flat, with some thorn bushes on both sides. Sometimes the gravel is reddish, sometimes it's white.

A gray-bearded man in a southbound Land Rover stops to tell us the upcoming town of Merille - which doesn't appear on our map - had a cholera outbreak. It's true, acknowledged Yusuf, a youth we talk to when we reach the town. It happened a week ago, but only small children were affected. No food is available, but we can still get cool drinks.

MinWah says she's got repeating thought syndrome, common of desert-touring cyclists.

"I think to myself, 'God forsook this road'," she says. "Then I think, 'is forsook a word?' Then I decide I'd better just say 'this is a Godforsaken road.' Then it repeats."

I've been fortunate enough to evade such torture. Though, come to think of it, I know all the words to "House of the Rising Sun," yet just one verse keeps playing in my head.

Before nightfall we ride up to St. George Catholic Church to look for non-choleric water and a place to camp. Some kids help us look for the priest, but stop dead at the courtyard. They fear him like they would a ghost. Eventually, their curiosity overcomes their fear and they enter the compound and ask me questions and touch my hair. Then something spooks them and they dash for the gate. Before long they're playing tricks on each other, holding the gate shut to trap each other inside where, presumably, they'll get in trouble. Or eaten.

We camp at the church and when I lie down I can still feel my body rising and falling over the bumps - phantom bumps, like when you've spent the day at the wave pool. In the morning we get up and pedal back into the desert. I never did meet the priest. I was scared of him anyway.

The wind screams through the thorn trees (all the trees are thorn trees) like a faraway concert hall when Van Halen comes onstage. It's a constant. Not a constant direction, not a constant velocity, just a constant there. Other than the crunching of our tires, it's the only sound.

The white Land Rover passes again, going north this time, and the driver stops to invite us for tea at the Marsabit Anglican Church.

"We might be there by tomorrow," we tell him.
"As my mother would say, 'courage'," he says as he drives off, drawing out the oo and softening the gee: "coo-rage."

The short plants are are gray-brown here. The trees have no leaves, but the stems and branches themselves are green. These are covered with silver thorns that make the low forest look like it just received a heavy frost. Throw in some ostriches and camels and you could be
reading Dr. Seuss.

Most nights we camp in the bush. No tent, for it's far too stuffy and it's far too dry for mosquitoes. Our companions are birds, insects and a few small mammals that scuttle about. The breeze helps cool us and there's little risk of getting wet, tonight or any night. Kenya
has missed her rainy season this year; it's supposed to be March through May, but the months passed and the rain never materialized.

It is dry. It's so parched that when I take a leak on the ground it dries before I'm done shaking.

The next day we climb the hills to Marsabit, the half-way point. As we go, we encounter a family (or is it a whole village?) leading hundreds of goats and dozens of cows south. Some donkeys carry a little water, and dogs tag along.

I ask a man where they are going. He doesn't speak English, but his answer is clear all the same: "maji" means water.

From this one word I can imagine an unspoken epic of a village forced to migrate because the rainy season never came. Who knows how far they've come, leaving behind everything but their livestock. Where will they go? Hundreds of kilometers to Mount Kenya? The land there
is farmed; no space for herdsmen. Maybe the rains will come first, dampening the soil, offering rivers to drink of and green vegetation to eat.

Or could it be the cholera? Were they forced from a once-clean borehole by the disease that destroys the lining of the intestine, causes diarrhea and kills by dehydration?

When we get to Marsabit we go to the first church we see and try to ascertain whether it is the Anglican church. I ask a girl if it is Catholic.
"Yes."
Pentecostal?
"Yes."
Anglican?
"Yes."
Thanks very much for the help.

We find it anyway, and meet the friendly man in the Land Rover who is none other than the Anglican Bishop. Over tea Bishop Rob confirms the state of Kenya's drought.
"The rains have failed again. We may not get them now until October, November. I don't know how people will survive," he says.

We stop for fuel again on our way out of Marsabit. The attendant filled our bottle, about 750 mL and tried to charge us 200 shillings.
"How much is one liter?" MinWah asked, and I repeated in Swahili.
"moja liter shilingi ngapi?"
Eventually it comes out: one liter costs 91 shillings. So he tries to charge us 150 for filling a bottle that physically cannot hold more than 1L. We gave him 100 shillings and left.
"They don't even treat you as if you're a human being," MinWah said.
It's true; we're nothing but a pocketbook. He's the third person (that I know of) in Marsabit who has tried to cheat us. It's hard to have respect for a person who obviously has no respect for you.

Back in the desert, my bike is all but uncontrollable. The loose,
rocky sand gives no purchase for my tires. The wind picks up from the side and makes me wobble and with each wobble I over correct until I'm pulling my feet out of the pedals and slamming them down to keep from falling, wrestling with the bike to keep from dropping it and squishing the bread and bananas.

Tired of riding on rocks, we pull our bikes over some rocks, hide behind some other rocks and sleep on some more rocks.

Crows are the only birds we've seen in days. They haunt our campsites like they're waiting for us to expire. Today we travel into the worst of the desert, what Bishop Rob called a "lunar landscape." As we go, off to the right I hear a songbird. I don't know what he survives on,
but for me his song - nearly swept away by the wind - reminds me that it's not so far to Moyale, not so far to Cairo, not so far to home.

Just past Bubisa (another town not on the map) we pass a caravan of camels. Four women each lead five camels. When we stop for lunch, they catch up to us. I wonder how far they're going. I felt like we were making good progress, but they're putting us to shame, walking.

There's a little sandy berm where we can get out of the wind and out of sight from the road and sleep on sand rather than rocks. It's near a little village - just a few huts and a few more camels. I wonder how they survive. Do they eat rocks?

We're cooking dinner (rice, tomatoes carrots, onions, garlic, cabbage and salt, cayenne, turmeric and mustard seed; everything we have, all in one pot as usual) when a man walks up from the village. He's Gabra, just like the people in Bubisa. He's got a little white stubble and a shirt that says "Decastle Baseball 2004," and when he shakes my hand I notice a curled up little finger. He looks me in the eye when he talks and I'm startled to see his big black pupils are framed by bright blue.

We try to communicate but his Swahili isn't much better than ours. He squats and points at my bicycle and we try to explain what we're doing. He doesn't know Egypt, but he knows Moyale.

Again the caravan catches up to us and the man explains that the women had gone to Bubisa to get water, some 20 km away.

Before our rice is cooked our grizzled observer gets up. He points over the hill and shows me he's going off to bring in some camels for the night. He walks off with his stick over his shoulders, white turban and green and white sarong blowing in the wind. His sandals made from old tire leave indistinct footprints in the sand. I still wonder what he eats.

We're on the worst part of the road now. Rarely do I ride more than 100 meters without one or both of my wheels slipping out on the loose rock. I look ahead and there's only rock, no track that looks passable. The wind is still my enemy, broadsiding me, pushing me out of whatever path I find and into the rocks which jump out of the way and deny me foundation. Again and again I jump off and try to catch the bike before it further demolishes the bread.

It's a challenge - the road, the heavy bike, the wind, the sun, the nothingness. Physically, mentally, emotionally a challenge. But the real challenge is to let go of the anger, the frustration and enjoy where you are and what you are doing. If you can manage to put yourself in the moment, in perspective, it even becomes enjoyable. The wind, the rock, the solitude; you appreciate them for what they are. Ethiopia will come before we know it. Perhaps we'll miss the
quiet straight road and the difficult but uncomplicated task of following it.

We take a long break, eat a little, read a little. It's a reminder not to go to fast. There's no shade though. A falcon calls from the only tree.

When we go again the wind has stopped and for a little while it's easier to ride. But with no wind it's hard to stay cool and the sweat that dripped down my face before now cascades. Nothing is purely good or bad.

The next night another Gabra chats with us while we cook. He speaks good English, so I finally figure out what they eat. They eat meat. Goat meat, cow meat, camel meat (it tastes like beef, he says). They drink milk and blood. That answers one question, but raises another. What do the cows, goats and camels eat? Rocks?

In the morning we start to get out of the desert. The road is starting to improve and there are plants again. Some of them are even green. Ahead of us the Ethiopian highlands beckon blue in the distance.

By our last night in Kenya the desert has become bush. As the vegetation increased so did the people. With scarcely a moment unobserved, we dash off into the trees to find a place to sleep.

Even a relatively secluded spot is crisscrossed by livestock trails. We hear camel trains in the woods as we cook and by the time we bed down they're very close. We can hear the whistles and coos of the herders, the dull jangle of camel bells and the low, groaning bellow of the camels themselves. They make an unearthly-sounding procession and it even smells like a zoo.

Occasionally there's a loud hollow "thwack" as the herders swat their livestock with their sticks. In this way one group strolls past so close I can hear their footsteps and see the necks of the camels above the bushes. We must be found out, I thought.

Sure enough, a small animal comes rustling through the bushes towards us. It must be one of their dogs. What will it do? Bark and give us away? Snap at us? For a second it looks like it might head back to the group, though surely it sees us for it is but 10 feet away.
Then it freezes and as my eyes adjust I begin to see that it is not a dog. Still as it sits, it looks just like a prickly bush, and I realize what it is.

I sit up to see if my motion will scare the porcupine away, but it must feel safe with its protective covering. Before long it waddles off away from the camel train.
The herders never find us, though they pass just meters from our bikes.

We're finished with Kenya. I think back to that solitary bird and his song in the wilderness. His reminder that the end, though still far away, is approaching makes my bruised palms and the welt on my thigh (from a particularly nasty fall) seem nostalgic. The road was rough
and long but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Ol Doinyo Lengai

Posted from Arusha, Tanzania

We had reached a flat, higher part of the valley east and north of the Ngorongoro Crater when the clouds broke up enough to reveal Ol Doinyo Lengai. There's grass there instead of just shrubs and it supports herds of zebra, gazelles and wildebeest, as well as cows, donkeys, sheep and the Maasai who herd them. The loose gravel grabbed our tires and misdirected them. To pedal was exhausting. To walk through the gray stone, flecked with sparkling volcanic residue, too slow. We stopped for lunch, peanut butter and jelly under a small thorn tree, the only shade around. Crimas towered over us and Ol Doinyo Lengai brooded in the distance, calling us closer with its outstretched arms.

A young Maasai walked up and shared our little shade, just staring at us. The wind persisted and so did she; the mountain and the Maasai watched over us until we had rested and gone.

Ol Doinyo Lengai loomed closer and closer as we continued to follow directions given by Mohammed, a friendly bicyclist we met in Mtowambu (Swahili for "mosquito river"). From the turn to Gilai, Crimas is on the left and Ol Doinyo forward and to the left. Between them is a crater that we took to be "hole of the God," as Mohammed drew in my notebook. Straight ahead, at the top of the hill, a single baobab was silhouetted. We rode up ahead just to be sure of the turn and at the crest of the hill is another crater. This too could aptly be named "hole of the God." Only a couple hundred meters off the road, I ran up and took a look

It is an almost perfect circle, hundreds of feet deep. Would it be irreverant to climb down, I wondered? I didn't have the time anyway. MinWah was waiting with the bikes, and we had to find our turnoff and a place to camp.

Our group had split further. Quinn was on a safari with his visiting parents, so MinWah and I took a week to make a loop near Tanzania's most popular safari areas.

Back we went, past the baobab and down the hill. A left on a sandy dirt track took us down to the valley floor. The Maasai disappeared and our only companions were herds of zebra, wildebeest, gazelle and a few ostriches.

The wind was still whipping as we made camp under another thorn tree. It was near a watering hole, dry even though it's the end of the rainy season. The sun set behind Ol Doinyo Lengai and I thought about how lucky we were to be there.

Nobody brought us to that spot. We just looked at a map, got on our cycles and went. Nobody told us we could or could not camp there. Nobody even said we should or shouldn't. We're not on anybody's safari but our own and the rays reaching up over Ol Doinyo Lengai are so much sweeter for us having found it. How many before us have been so lucky to set up their tent in the shadow of the volcano to the tune of grunting wildebeest?

As it got darker still, two thunderheads, lit up from inside by lightning, marched around Ol Doinyo, but they never reached us. Maasai torches flickered on the distant hills like fireflies throughout the night.

---

The fear grabs you and it won't let you go, no matter which way you turn. No matter how many times you roll from your side to your back to your side again you still lie awake listening for sounds of your impending demise.

Then the inevitable: footsteps outside the tent. I lift my head and look, not willing to turn a blind eye to my doom. Whatever it is is startled and gallops quickly away; a goat or a small gazelle.

Occasionally there are voices on the road. Usually we're concerned about getting caught or molested, but now the voices have a soothing effect; others are out in the night as well.

A jeep goes by on the road. The headlights are on the tent and it slows. Maybe they'll stop and tell us we can't camp here, we must follow them into town. But it's just a trick of the road. The lights curve away and it speeds up. My secret wish for a savior fades with the engine noise.

It started with two Maasai warriors. They spotted us from the road as we finished dinner and hailed us.

"Tuna weza kuwa hapa?" MinWah asked. "Can we camp here?"

I didn't understand a lot of the following conversation (MinWah's Swahili is much better than mine). I was able to discern at one point that they wanted us to go with them rather than camp there. And I did understand the word "simba."

Lions.

This was the African bush. Literally, it was almost all thorn bushes.

"Lions like where there's more grass," MinWah said. I wasn't so sure.

We were just 50 kilometers from the the Ngorongoro crater and beside it is the Serengeti. These are places people go to look for lions. In fact, if you want to see a lion in the wild, you are probably more likely to succeed on a Serengeti safari than anywhere else.

The Maasai herd cattle, sheep and goats. We've seen them - even at night - with their animals. They couldn't do that if there were lions, MinWah suggested.

"Yes, but what do you think those spears are for?" I thought to myself. "Those aren't just for show."

Many of the Maasai carry long spears. A foot-long spike adorns one end and a flat, feathered blade maybe twice as long tops the other. I was told a Maasai can kill a lion singlehandedly with one of these.

With the dawn, the fears fade. The rationalizations that were so ineffective in the night seem more likely. Lions don't hunt humans, and even if one came by, what would she think of our tent? The spears are probably more for rustlers or the Maasai-Chagga war than for wild animals. And our two acquaintences, who were friendly and jovial characters, who laughed and smiled in our presence, well, they could have been putting us on.

Better to wonder than to see a silent feline shadow pass between the door of the tent and the stars and know for sure.

Oops

Posted from Moshi, Tanzania
It was one of those mistakes anyone could make. For the lucky, it's a near miss. For the hapless, it's disaster.

I thought I'd be clever. I'd pull Minwah's stick-stand off her rack while we were riding and hang onto it until she wondered where it was. The theft was perpetrated unnoticed, but I paid too little attention to where I was going. When I looked up I was facing the only rock in sight big enough to be a problem.

"Thou shall not pass," the rock said to my front wheel, and in an argument between a wheel and a rock the wheel is rarely the victor.

The rock, however, issued no such mandate to my person and therefore my body paid no attention to the abrupt halt enacted on my bicycle and continued its forward progress without the benefit of any supporting apparatus save the breeze.

Air molecules provide but brief support for airborne cyclists, so my continued easterly progress was short lived and I quickly got acquainted with the boulder's many smaller cousins that inhabited the gravel shoulder of the road.

The cousins, however, were much friendlier than their larger relative and welcomed me as though they were so many feathers convened specifically to gently receive any airborne cyclists who may be searching for an innocuous location to finally succumb to gravity and reacquaint themselves with terra firma.

As I sprang limberly to my feet, I gazed back at my bicycle. Parts and gear were strewn everywhere as though someone had set up a roadside stand selling cycle-touring equipment. But the tragedy lay with the fork.

It had snapped clear in twain within the head-tube, and now the fork and handlebars, like partially severed limbs, dangled by the brake cables.

Along with my miraculous escape from injury, my front wheel showed more resilience than I thought possible. When Ian from the Recyclery built my wheels, I could tell they were good. But I never expected a head-on collision with a rock would fail to dent the wheel or even knock it out of true.

Quinn, Minwah and I had split from Orian and Karen upon leaving Lusaka, Zambia, to ride at different paces. We stood and stared at the wreckage.

There was no way to continue. The fork must be replaced. We were in the country about 60 km east of Lusaka. We could find a farm, we decided, and I would leave my bike and bus back in to Lusaka to find a replacement while Minwah and Quinn continued on. A lone cyclist can travel much faster than a pair, and I would hopefully be able to catch them before the border to Malawi.

Then, as if fate or God provided, a lone cyclist rode up on one of the black "World Bicycle Relief" bikes that are so common. He noticed immediately that we were in trouble and introduced himself.

Absalom's farm was located just under a kilometer from there, he said, and we would be more than welcome to rest there while we sorted things out. Absalom's father, Michael, is the patriarch of the family, with eight children and many grandchildren who fill the farm with life and laughter.

I met Jessica first. She was walking home from school and stopped in Absalom's wake to help me roll my fractured bicycle. Soon she was joined by brothers, sisters and cousins and an entourage of kids wheeling or carrying pieces of my bicycle escorted me to Mr. Nkoloma's Farm. Quinn, who had ridden ahead with Absalom, returned to see our troupe.

"It's hard not to believe in fate when Absalom came along first, and then the kids were all with you when I came to get you," Quinn said to me. I don't believe in fate or karma, but it's hard not to see this as a strong argument in favor. The welcome I received from the gravel brethren was only exceeded by that which I received from Michael's family.

No less than 11 members of this family sat with us as we cooked, then around a candle and a corn roaster into the night. Michael's oldest daughter, Ruth, adopted Quinn because he's the same age as her eldest son, though she thought his habit of cooking made him very unmanly: "You cook like you are not a man."

From age 4 to age 70 they welcomed us in.

"I'm so happy to have met such strangers," said Michael. "I will do a dance for you." He got up and did a little three-step shuffle, swinging his arms back and forth, and it was hard to believe he was a 70-year-old man.

Later, one of Michael's sons arrived home from the bar. I could smell the shake-shake on him (see previous post), and he was in full-on broken-record mode.

He gave a benign and welcoming talk, though his proposals to Minwah became more and more frequent. The family was visibly uncomfortable with the repeating drunk in our presence. He asked Quinn if Quinn took alcohol. Quinn tried to respond "sometimes," but nobody seemed to understand what he meant. In the rural parts of Africa we've seen, you're either an alcoholic ("booze-bag," Quinn would say) or you don't touch the stuff. This lack of middle-ground, of responsible use of alcohol was further evidenced by the repeater's next question for Quinn: "what did you drink today?"

The next day I set off for Lusaka on my own, my frame and broken fork in tow. The Zambian countryside disappeared behind the minibus I rode in, the miles I'd just covered eaten up in rewind. The door of the blue Toyota squeaked open and closed, the hatchback rattled and someone smelled. I hoped it wasn't me.

In the space of an afternoon I found a fork and fit it to my frame. By nightfall I was back at Michael's farm working on my bike. His grandson Patrick sat with me while I worked late. Patrick didn't speak enough English for me to really explain what I was doing, but he gamely held my torch, eyes fascinated at my task.

Michael called me in to sup with him while his two youngest granddaughters watched and giggled. I thought I heard the word "uncle," but I wasn't sure; it may have been a word in the local language that just sounded similar. But Michael translated for me: "Uncle, will you come and visit us again?"

Michael's family sent me off in the morning with breakfast, a bath and bags of boiled peanuts and maize. But the most powerful memory of their kindness was from the night before.

As I carried my bike in the twilight from the bus stop to Michael's farm, his grandson Chris rode past in the other direction. He stopped his bike to say hi and welcome back, then continued on his way. Before he rode 10 meters, he stopped.

"Here," he said, and handed me a half-eaten cob of boiled maize he'd been chewing on.

He couldn't have known that in my haste to repair my bicycle I had barely eaten that day. I nearly broke down, right there in the road with gladness to be going back to Michael's farm in beautiful Zambia, and to experience such unknowing, uncompromised kindness when I needed it so badly.

Posted from Lusaka, Zambia
As is often our habit, the five of us cycled into town - Livingstone, Zambia, in this case - unsure where we would stay. Orian's trip to Boston necessitated a stopover of nine days and we unanimously sought a place where we could settle down and not worry about packing up every morning.

A sign indicated Fawlty Towers, a hostel that had been recommended to us, was just 80 meters to our right, so we inquired and those of us who still had money visited the neighboring Bureau de Change.

In any city in the United States a passerby viewing Karen, Quinn and I sitting on the sidewalk in our ragged, dirty clothes, bleary eyed from cycling 60 km and emitting a ripe odor from days of sun-baked sweat would make the reasonable assumption that we were begging. But not here. Livingstone is next to Victoria Falls and its proximity to one of CNN's Seven Natural Wonders of the World makes it a major tourist destination. As a rule, tourists here are white and wealthy. Poor white people don't exist here and so we were perceived as appropriate marks for the sale of 100 Trillion Zimbabwean Dollar bills and bracelets of copper or malachite, or for straight-up begging.

Gustave was hanging around the Bureau de Change soaking up the aircon when Orian and MinWah entered. Don't change your money here, Gustave asserted to what must have been the consternation of the owner of the Bureau. You'll get a better rate at the post office instead, he suggested. Orian asked if Gustave knew a place we could stay for nine days.

"Wait. I've got to call my granny," said Gustave, after which he said we must follow him, no time to get money or food.

He immediately left the tarmac in his little sky blue Mazda bakkie (a small pickup truck with a topper on the bed) for a potholed dirt road that jiggled Quinn's panniers right off his rack as it led out of town. Gustave rattled up the road ahead of us as if daring us to keep up and we passed low-income housing, railroad yards and a church converted into a bar. The road was lined with fields. Corn seemed to be planted everywhere it would fit and I wondered after a kilometer or two where this stranger was taking us.

Gustave moved from London just a month ago to live with his grandparents, Granny and Papa, and restore the remnants of their crayfish farm. It's the only crayfish farm in Zambia, Papa proudly told us, but it's been sold down to 12 acres from over 150.

Gustave has big plans for those 12 acres. He will dig out more ponds, he said, as well as put up a fence, raise purebred pit bulls and maybe start a guest house.

He talks fast and loud, out of habit from talking to his deaf grandpa and uncle, Terrance, who also lives at the farm, and has a habit of leaving his sentences dangling for the listener to finish, as though he's testing to see if you're paying attention. He told us why he needs dogs. One night he woke to the barking of Spotty, Tiger and Snoopy - the current canine residents of Crayfish Farm. He looked outside to see "either an angel or a devil" flaming in the sky. A bird had short circuited their transformer and gone down in flames. The telephone pole was on fire and Gustave was able to put it out before it destroyed the transformer - a nearly irreplaceable piece of equipment in Zambia.

The dogs also warn of and chase off intruders - human and hippo - and Spotty is an expert mamba and cobra killer. But Tiger and Spotty are vicious and uncontrollable. Each night Gustave lets them out of their pens but he immediately retreats into the house and doesn't venture out again without a large stick.

Gustave wants to get rid of the dogs so Scarface, his pit bull puppy who arrived at the farm the day before we did, can roam without threat of canine territoriality. But nobody will take them. Scarface is timid and a papas boy for now, but one day he'll be both protector and breeder for Gustave.

However, Gustave doesn't rely entirely on the dogs for protection. The day we arrived he pulled out his 12 gauge pump action shotgun to show us.

"I hate guns. I hate killing. I'm a naturalist," he professed, gun in hand. "I'm telling you, man, don't fuck with nature. Trust me." Crayfish farm borders the Maramba river, and low swampland lies between the house and the river for a hundred meters. We were told not to go down there, for fear of poisonous snakes, hippos and - most dangerous of all - crocodiles.

As we're staying for more than a week, we were eager to help with any projects on the farm. There are still crayfish tanks, chickens, lemons, oranges, bananas, guava and mangoes. But Gustave wouldn't put us to work.

"Trust me. It's farm life. This is Africa. There's nothing to do," he said.

"This is Africa, man." It's Gustave's favorite saying. It's a prefix or a suffix to all his stories, like how he got Scarface from a cousin of a cousin: "It's Africa. Everything you know is through people."

On a typical afternoon in Livingstone it was hot and we were lying around the living room. Then Gustave couldn't stand it anymore and we got up and piled into the bakkie. Over the days we spent in Livingstone, Gustave took us out with him to run errands, have a drink or just experience the place. He'd fly up and down the potholed road with us in the bed of his bakkie on our way to whatever adventure we had planned (or not planned) next.

We pulled over at a market and Gustave hopped out to get something or another. On the street a white, older man snapped pictures with a huge, irrationally expensive digital SLR camera with a characteristic white Canon lens. I mean, this thing was enormous. I'm surprised he didn't need a trailer to cart this thing around. He staggered around with his eyes on everything but his path, obviously out of place. No wonder everyone thinks white people are rich when they see tourists wander around with such an outrageous display of wealth slung over their shoulder.

"Don't hop out of the car," he said as we pulled into the "gangster" part of town to score a bud. "My dealer's gone to church, can you believe that shit?" he said, as he returned empty handed.

"This is Africa, man, they all slow down," was his response to a near miss on a narrow road. "If you see someone driving straight in Zambia... they're drunk!"

Four of us sat in the back while Quinn and Gustave popped out in search of a chessboard. I saw them briefly speak to a man on the street, and Gustave returned to tell us it's 50000 Kwacha (about $10). I was unsure this was a good deal, so I said I'd get out and take a look.

"No, no, he has to steal it first," said Gustave. I couldn't tell if he was joking.

On one of these many excursions Gustave brought us to Victoria Falls. I'm usually skeptical about tourist destinations but Vic Falls lived up to and exceeded every expectation. It lives up to its reputation as a wonder of the world, for it is truly wondrous.

The Zambian observation point is a line of paved trail that extends about 3/4 of the length of the falls. We walked past and ignored a stand renting raincoats, prepared to get wet but perhaps not realizing how wet. We walked and walked and walked and still the falls didn't end, for the Zambezi river is nearly a kilometer across at the falls.

The spray came down in sheets of rain like a movie set and Gustave stripped off his shirt saying "you're better off without it." He ran ahead with his customary boundless energy, laughing his machine gun rat-a-tat of a laugh like the crazy man he is.

We followed, overwhelmed, drenched and completely in awe, so much that Orian was motivated to call Niagara Falls a "total joke." The spray shades the sun and the bottom of the falls, all of 107 meters down, is completely obscured. And this isn't even the rainy season. Behind the falls must be where King Solomon's treasure is hidden, says Gustave, because no one will ever find it.

From the front of the falls we followed a group of tourists sporting white Par Excellence Safari ponchos that made them look like ghosts. Their pasty white legs led us up around to the top, where the water flows off into seeming oblivion leaving a cloud of steam that rises like smoke and lends it the name "the boiling point." Then we zoomed off again in Gustave's bakkie to our next adventure.

"How you like Africa? Awoooo!," I could hear him howl from the front.

I don't know where he gets his energy. He smokes cigarettes like it's his job, drinks brandy and Coke from a two-liter bottle and barely sleeps or eats ("I'm the only person in the world who hates food"). Yet he has an unflagging enthusiasm for whatever he's decided to do at any particular moment.

One morning, no sooner had I opened my eyes than Gustave said "want to go for a ride?" We went in search of minutes for his phone and by way of several unsuccessful attempts ended up at the Engen.

"Coke or sprite?" he asked as he took a returnable bottle inside. He returned instead with two beers. Apparently 6:30 a.m. isn't too early to start drinking in Livingstone. From there he took me down to the Royal Livingstone and the Zambezi Sun, posh hotel lodges that look over the top of the falls. After Guzy befriended the guards and got us in, we wandered around the grounds, beer in hand. "This is Africa. You do what the fuck you want," he explained.

Granny called to see where we were, and Gustave, as is his habit, lied, "we're at the market Granny."

The two hotels, Gustave said, are owned by South Africans, just like the grocery stores (SPAR and Shop Rite) and half of the rest of the town. This helps explain why Zambia is so expensive while its residents are so poor: so much of the money that comes in goes right back out to owners from other countries.

"This is the reason Africa will never improve," said Gustave as he showed us a glass mug. "Read it." The mug said "Zambia in the Sun."

"Now read this," he said, and pointed to the bottom: "Made in Taiwan."

Gustave is right. This is Africa, and you do do what you want, if you're privileged. This means you have the opportunity to exploit, exploit, exploit. So much money is sent out of the country. People are poor and can't do anything about it. There's no industry. Behind Crayfish Farm is a hot pepper farm - Elephant Chillies - and they are hot ("hot, potato, hot hot potato tato" Gustave would say.) These peppers are shipped to South Africa where they are turned into Zambezi Red Hot Pepper Sauce (and it's mighty good sauce) and shipped back to be sold here. There's no way to add value to products here. If Zambia wishes to drag itself out of the economic gutter, it needs not money or foreign aid but investments, businesses started. Even if they are foreign owned, Zambia must be able to create products.

"You can't help everyone," Gustave said, on another occasion. "You help one, two at a time." He asserted that, rather than giving money or aid, to help people you must help them prosper economically of their own accord. Help them start a business.

"You can't work for someone else. It's not profitable," he reminded us, because labor is so cheap. It's cheaper for his grandparents to employ a young man, Joseph, to weed-whack the yard with a slasher than it is to get a lawnmower.

On a Thursday morning, Gustave woke with a hangover. "I'm never drinking again," was the first thing he said. Granny took the car into town, so Gustave was restless.

"Let's go for a run," he said, about midday. I was non-decisive and Quinn was unenthusiastic. I nearly talked myself into going, but by then Gustave's attention was elsewhere.

"What d'you think would happen if I shot that bees nest?" he asked, and ran into his room. Before we realized what was happening, three loud shots rang out. Then he was laughing, "come and look at this!"

I peered out the window just in time to see a girl of about 10 go by the window, oblivious to the raging insects. This was Anastasia, Terrence's wife's adopted daughter, and she wasn't oblivious for long. Shortly after she passed out of sight she began to scream and didn't stop until she was in her house. Terrance, was asleep with the windows open and responded to the intrusion of the stinging insects somewhat less than gracefully. He ran from the house, pausing long enough to tell Anastasia not to follow. He plunged through farm fields to the road without his glasses, shoes or shirt. Rosie, the maid, pulled Anastasia into Granny's house.

"If she hadn't got her, that little girl probably would have died," said Gustave.

"That wasn't part of the plan," said Gustave, after the house was closed up. He had no idea Anastasia was coming home. "I'm not good with hangovers."

The bees were flying everywhere, in a total craze, stinging everything in sight. Later we learned that farmers on the next property over, maybe a kilometer away had to leave their work because they were getting stung. The three dogs outside were either confined or tied up. We could hear their yelping, but were helpless to do anything for fear of our own hides.

Then we received some really bad news. Anastasia had fainted. Gustave, covered in a white sheet, rushed across to Granny's house while Quinn - who had training as a wilderness EMT - donned pants, a coat and gloves before following with a first aid kit.

Confined to Gustave's house with Karen and MinWah, I had no idea how bad the situation was. I dressed in long clothes in case I had to do something. Then I took off the long sleeve. What do we do? I wondered. Granny was away with the truck. Our bicycles were the only transportation.

Papa is 84 and largely immobile. I don't know how long it's been since he left the house, but he would have been victimized if the bees had been able to get in. Instead, he spent the day spraying them on the screens with Raid.

"There were hundreds of them on the gauze and I could smell the poison," he said. "I killed them with poison and oh, you should have seen them, down they went."

Quinn administered what first aid he could to Anastasia, when he wasn't hindered by helpers. Fortunately, she wasn't unconscious. But she wouldn't move, and nobody told Quinn that she didn't speak English.

"Where does it hurt?" he asked. No answer.
"Where did you get stung?" Nothing.

The other adults, including Brenda (Terrence's wife) put her in a cold bath to calm her down, at Quinn's suggestion, but he couldn't keep them from splashing her in the face.

"Then Brenda poured her a glass of milk and it was rancid and she projectile vomited all over the place, and then Brenda fed her more milk," said Quinn.

Eventually the bees calmed down enough for Granny to bring the truck up to the house, and everybody involved piled in to take Terrance and Anastasia to the hospital. A visit to the doctor, including a hydrocortisone injection and electrolyte powder cost about 6000 Kwacha - just over a dollar.

By mid afternoon the dogs had stopped howling, though the bees were still flying around outside the house like little rockets. It didn't spell relief for the dogs, but something more sinister. Quinn went out again, and he could see Spotty lying still on the floor of her cage. Tiger was nowhere to be seen - there was blood on the top of his door from where he squeezed over (though nobody is sure how), but as he still hasn't returned, he's presumed dead. They were vicious dogs, and uncontrollable. Gustave was going to put them down. But nothing deserves to die that way. Snoopy was the only survivor. This reserved, sub-dominant dog broke his chain and escaped into the fields. He spent the next few days huddled and shivering in his garage.

There is little closure to such an incident. It fades with the sun, the bees return to their tree and the disruptions they caused disappear one at a time. Anastasia recovered fully, and opened up to we Americans. Though the dogs no longer protect the house at night, Gustave claims the beehive is now his protection against intruders - he'll just shoot it.

"They're better than dogs, Granny!" he said, and again I couldn't tell if he was serious.

We stayed with Gustave for his birthday, a relatively laid-back affair compared to his average day, it seemed. Fish and chips at the Boat Club, followed by a trip to the church-turned-bar for the local brew. Shake-shake is the proprietary eponym, so named because you have to shake it before drinking (or perhaps because that's what you tend to do after you've consumed a liter or two). Typically, it's served in one-liter cartons with a vent on top to release pressure as the active yeast contained within grows. The ingredients listed on the carton include maize meal, sorghum malt, food grade enzymes, lactic acid and treated water. The alcohol content is listed at 6 percent, but allows for the ever increasing fermentation with a plus/minus symbol.

Back in Botswana we were warned - often - not to drink shake-shake. It contains no alcohol, one police officer told us, but it gets you drunk and gives you energy. The first part confuses me still, but the second is attributed to its maize content, which includes enough mealy-meal that you wonder whether you should chew it instead of drinking.

At this bar the local equivalent of shake-shake was served not in cartons, but bottles cut in half. A woman in a little hut in the courtyard dipped a scoop into a plastic 50 gallon barrel and filled the bottle. The "beer" comes in two flavors - white and brown - and both bubble away in their respective barrels so that the substance seems alive. Which, come to think of it, it is. Brown is more pleasurable to me, for it contains less bitter sorghum and more gritty maize meal, and reminds me of drinking a smoothie with too much wheat germ.

Several days prior, Gustave shaved his head and goatee, leaving him to look eerily like Vin Diesel. But his personality remained vibrant, and his Gustave-isms remained constant. He'd call us "gov'nor" or "love" and still left his phrases dangling for us to finish.

"Oh, Malawi's lovely," he said of our next destination. "People are laid... drink man! Laid... drink! Laid... back."

At the Kazungula Ferry

Posted from Livingstone, Zambia

At a Kazungula restaurant Quinn gave Botswana one last goodbye while we waited for fatcakes. Meanwhile, I met Brian and Wisdom.

These two young men, dressed in imitation jerseys and knock-off sunglasses were waiting for Brian's brother to arrive in a truck. They were Zimbabweans on their way to Jo'burg to meet a 'client.' Wisdom asked for my phone number in the U.S. but as I no longer have a phone, I gave him my email instead. I figured he - like everyone else - wanted to come to America, but I was wrong, for next he asked under his breath if I knew anyone who was interested in the white. Ivory, he meant. I told him no, sorry, but asked him more about it.
"This is why we're outgoing with white people," Wisdom said. These two were hunters, he said - which I took to mean poachers, especially because they acknowledged it was a risky endeavor. They travel to South Africa to bring their clients up so that the clients must transport the ivory, not the poachers.

After this encounter we departed Botswana with little more than a "hello," a stamp and a "thank you" at the Kazungula Ferry Border Post.

The other side was a bit more hassle. The first encounter was a man trying to sell 3 trillion Zimbabwe dollar bills.

"Good souvenir," he said, immediately handing it to me and indicating its worthlessness. "Give me some South African change," he went on, but I told him I didn't have any.

"Pula then," he said, asking for Botswana currency. So I pulled out my wallet and showed him the cavernous emptiness.

"Trade for the wallet?" was his next question. I wondered shortly if these were counterfeit, before I came to the conclusion that it would be more expensive to counterfeit Zim dollars than they are worth.

My empty wallet nearly cost us a lot of time and money, for at immigration we were told visas cost $50. There was a money changer where we could get U.S. dollars, said the official, but had no local currency (of any type) with which to exchange, especially not so much. At stake was a trip back across to Botswana (and subsequent questions at immigration about why we were coming back when we had just left) and a 15 km bike ride to the nearest ATM, followed by two money changes: electronically from dollars to Pula, then back to dollars once we reached Zambia again. Fortunately we were able to scrape $250 together from money we had hidden on our bikes, and we rode into Zambia in heavy rain.

Partly it was the rain, but Zambia immediately felt like a different country. It's more humid, more topographical than Botswana. The typical greeting includes "how are you?" and they actually mean it. It's not complete until you assure them that you are well and ask them the same. Here we are in Livingstone, a touristy town next to Victoria Falls, and here we will remain for about another week while Orian flies to Boston to compete for a Hertz Fellowship.

North from Nata

Posted from Kasane, Botswana

This is the region we have been warned about constantly. There's wild animals there. Lions, elephants and buffalo (oh my). Be careful of elephants, some would say. Don't get closer than one kilometer; they can go from 0 to 40 kph instantly. Others say elephants are not dangerous, just big. However, watch out for buffalo. Or lions. Build fires after dark, we are told. Find an armed police escort. The military will provide one. There's leopards too. Don't worry, you'll be fine. Elephants are friendly. Don't go. You're not afraid of animals? Take a gun. The Massai warriors can kill a lion with just a spear. But not you. Build circles of fire all around you. Pour one liter of diesel fuel in a circle around your camp to keep the snakes and scorpions away. But most of all, just build a fire.

As we traveled north from Nata, the landscape changed abruptly. The trees gave way and all around was flat grassland, then a wide flat shrub land. This was the wilderness. There were no fences, no sign of human habitation except the long straight road and a radio tower on the horizon. The bushes encroached on the shoulder, but it wasn't a problem for us. There was virtually no traffic to contend with.

Soon, the shoulder disappeared. Here, the wilderness began taking back the road, one pothole at a time until they became craters and the traffic drove beside the road rather than on it.

In this place, elephant trails are common. I looked up to see a pair cross the road 200 meters in front of me. Then two more, off to the left, a cow and her baby. I made sure to give them lots of room.

We stopped for lunch under a shade tree, and Orian professed an appreciation for this road that we were all feeling.

"I'd recommend this route to any cycle tourist," he said.

"It's the best road we've ridden yet," added Quinn.

It was a great day for cycling. The tailwind gave us a strong boost. The sun continually disappeared and reemerged from the clouds until late afternoon when a storm system poured on us. Then it was sunny again, just long enough to dry us a bit before we stopped.

The land transitioned again, into a tropical dry forest. We flew through the warm rain for half an hour, then made for a radio tower in the distance. We hoped it would have a little road and maybe a clearing that wasn't frequented by elephants. Between the five of us we'd seen 10 in the 125 kilometers since Nata.

The tower was better than we could have imagined. There was an 8-foot fence topped with barbed wire and the gate was held closed only by a loop of wire. This is the way to secure yourself from animals.

"Now, we're in the fence," remarked Orian.

"When the animals can't be caged, we cage ourselves," said Quinn.

As we set up we heard noises in the bush so we rushed up the tower in time to spot four elephants moving away. To the west the rain we had endured obscured the sun and to the east the next system moved in.

We scaled the tower again in pre-dawn light to watch the sun rise. From 270 feet up the land is remarkably flat and you can see forever. Over 360 degrees there wasn't a single light. The complete lack of human habitation provided a very visual indication of just how far away we were.

You don't get to do that on the tour.

The trees grew from gray to vibrant green as the sun rose, darker green for the shrubs and lighter for the taller trees. Elephant paths networked through the forest, visible even from the top of the tower.

We climbed back down the swaying tower to regain the road. It really isn't that bad. The bathtub-sized potholes and heaps of elephant dung served mostly to slow down the cars and trucks rather than hinder us.

This day provided more elephants, zebra and some baboons. Midmorning we caught sight of a giraffe, then several more. We left our bikes by the side of the road and snuck into the bush to get a closer look.

You don't get to do that on the tour either.

Botswana, are you ready for us?

Posted from Gabarone, Botswana

I suppose I should make a big deal about our first border crossing, but it really wasn't. We lunched 17 km from the border and those 17 km flew by with little wind and much energy, buoyed as we were with excitement.

The border was as simple as could be. Just one question before I could leave South Africa:

"Number?" said Immigration Official T. Wilson.

"Excuse me?"

"Of your car."

"Oh. I'm on a bicycle."

"What is the number of the bicycle?"

"It has no number."

Without another word, he stamped my passport and the surmountable challenge of Botswana immigration didn't so much loom, but rather reared it's friendly head. To avoid including an address of our destination, said the official, we must simply check the "in transit" box. We have 30 days to reach Zambia.

Off we go.

Three Schools

Posted from Gabarone, Botswana

In the town of Bultfontein, as in so many others, we were welcomed into the home of strangers. A group of three families came together to put us up for the night and give us a braai (barbecue).

"This is not a guest house, but if the community needs rooms they are always welcome to stay over," said our host Elize.

In return for staying with the generous people of Bultfontein, we gave presentations at two different schools the next morning. But really, it was more of a reward than a payment. The first, Bultfontein High School, was in their morning assembly when we arrived.

BHS is an Afrikaaner school, and the principal introduced us in Afrikaans. Either he's a very funny man or we made quite a spectacle, because there was great merriment (at our expense?).
Orian gave a short talk about our trip.

"How many think this trip would be hard?" he asked. Yes, most of them nodded, they wouldn't want to do it.

"Is it difficult to ride one kilometer?" he said next. Most shook their heads. "Well, we just ride one kilometer, then we ride one kilometer again. It's not so hard to do that. And we do it again until we've ridden 80 kilometers. The next day we do it again, and in seven months we'll be in Cairo."

Then, quite unexpectedly, he called me out to play the piano. Thinking fast, I tried to evaluate my options.

"Do you know Mozart?" I asked. They did, so I played the only Mozart I know. This gave me time to think, and when I finished I had a plan.

"Does anybody play a musical instrument?" There were a few. "It's a bit like bike touring. It seems very hard when you think of the whole thing. But you just learn a little bit at first, then a little more, and soon....Mozart!"

The principal caught on to our theme and wrapped up by relating it to school: first one grade, then the next, like the baby steps of Dr. Leo Marvin. It went unsaid, but the larger message is you can do anything if you break it up into smaller accomplishments, and this is especially true of bike touring. There are always problems, and there are always solutions to those problems. And the hardest step is always the first.

We left the bobbing blond heads of the BHS students behind and pedaled 10 km into the country to visit our next school, the Sekgweng Combined School. Sekgweng is made up of two small, low buildings, avast difference from the stone, church like parochial school in Bultfontein. They wear uniforms too, not polos and jackets like BHS but blue work shirts and slacks of skirts. I'm not sure what they meant by "combined school," but there were no white kids. Perhaps "combined" referred to mixed economic status, for Carin, one of the teachers, informed us that there are rich and poor kids there. I couldn't tell which was which.

Orian repeated his speech, minus piano and principal. Afterward, the five-year-olds gather in front of us and belt out South Africa's national anthem at the top of their lungs. They speak Sotho until grade three, and English thereafter.

Later in the day we cross the Vaal river and enter the Northwestern Cape. We'd been promised a place to stay in Bloemhof, so we waited at the police station to meet Jeanne Boshoff.

While we waited we were corralled by Anlee, a communications officer. Anlee is a spectacle as well. She wanted to roll out the red carpet for us, but ended up arranging for us a morning visit to a school with Inspector Mathe, as part of an adopt-a-cop program. All the while, she insisted Jeanne - who had never met us until that moment - was in charge.

Jeanne was flustered at first, but turned out to be very laid back and a great host. To our surprise, her guest house was a registered B&B, the Vrolikheid Gastehuis.

"It's not that nice," she insisted. "South Africans are used to more luxury." The second statement may be true, but I take exception to the first. The guest house was formal while remaining homey, and the yard was exquisite with a fountain and gazebo.

The next morning we rode to Thuto-Lore, a high school on the outskirts of Bloemhof, in an informal "township." Larger than Sekgweng, it was also a series of low, long buildings reminiscent of a barracks. Like Skegweng, there was little hope of seeing a piano, but nobody seemed to suffer for the lack of it. From the parking lot I could hear many students singing in Southern Sotho in the courtyard.

As we entered the courtyard, their voices rose in unison to an almost deafening level and I realized: they were singing for us! Then they quieted, and began singing the Lord's Prayer in a call and response style.

Inspector Mathe introduced us. He spoke ponderously and formally with long pauses. After he said what everyone presumably knew already, he turned it over to Teboho Ledibane, chairperson of the Community Policing Forum. He gave us the ninth degree in front of the students and his motive was clear: public relations.

What has been your experience in South Africa? Crime? Safety? Why is it important for the community to interact with the police? If this is their usual demeanor, I can see why the police have trouble relating to students. Still, Anlee, Mathe and Ledibane are working very hard to make a positive change in their community. Edgewise throughout the visit we were able to disseminate some information about our trip and answer questions from the learners.

"Next time, come and sleep in the township so that you must get the vibe of our culture," Ledibane invited us at the end. This statement was a marked contrast to the advice of most of our white hosts. "Please don't sleep near black townships. Stay between white people. It's not safe," we had been told. It's no wonder race relations are strained. But the welcome we've received and the generosity has been unbeatable, independent of race.

Do we have a couple of minutes to see a dance routine, Ledibane asked as we finished. A group of learners stepped onto the platform with us and began an unscripted, humorous playacting dance routine to a clapped beat. The rest of the students cracked up and crowded around.

Finally, they sang again. Two girls, maybe 15 years old, took turns leading, soloing and after each phrase the whole school would repeat the hook. The two girls had beautiful voices and held their own to the rest of the school, everyone belting it out at full volume. There was no thought of self-consciousness here.

The sound of that school, and the welcome they gave us rang in my head throughout the day and ever since.

Upward and Inward

Posted from Bloemfontein, South Africa
From Port Elizabeth we turned north, and two changes became quickly apparent. We went up and into the mountainous high country of the Eastern and Northern Cape provinces, and as we crested the first ridge the vegetation and climate changed quickly. Bush and prickly pear gave way to brown grass, termite mounds and Aloe ferox, occasionally interrupted by a green farm supported by an irrigation system. The clouds have broken up and the climate is hot and dry.
The social atmosphere has changed as well. We proceeded to Cradock, where Romano's friend Sonya had promised us a place to stay. I think Cradock has more shantytown than town, miles of it, not cobbled together from scraps but uniform shacks. There was trash everywhere, broken bottles and other garbage carpeted the landscape.
Cradock was descriptive of most of the towns we passed on our way north. The area is poor, and often towns will have little in the way of a visible economy. I wonder where everybody works. But the people are still welcoming and generous, and the area seems to be profoundly religious.
We pedaled downtown to meet Sonya at the Good Samaritan Hospice. She left us to our own devices before dinner, and we had the place to ourselves overnight.
It was Quinn who first suggested the place was haunted. The hospital had an eerie feel. It's a green building like a one-story house in the front with a two story hospital wing attached to the back. The front is cozy and smells of laundry, but the wing smells like a hospital.
Sonya offered us three beds on the second floor. Quinn quietly pointed out to the rest of us: "People die in these beds."
We ate dinner in diminishing twilight of the kitchen because the light didn't work, and heard strange noises about the place. Orian fixed the light after dinner, or so we thought.
I was making a cup of tea in the kitchen when the fluorescent bulb fell. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it hit my tea cup and crash with a characteristic pop. Glass and powder flew everywhere, filling my cup and showering me and I was fortunate not to be cut.
None of the others decided to take a bed. I chose the one furthest down the hall, between the locked doors of two mysterious rooms. Why are there so many locked doors in this building, I wondered. Dogs barked outside my open window and cats yowled, an unearthly tone that set me on edge even after I identified it.
My room appeared neglected. The bed was on rollers, accompanied by a crib full of second-hand clothes. Do babies die here too? The room is adorned with a heating unit and a sink, upon which leans an Afrikaans children's book and though the translation (The Cat in the Box) is benign, the title in Afrikaans adds to the ominous feeling: Die Kat in die Bos.
Maybe I'd be more comfortable back in the cozy front of the building, with its green and pink tile flowers, close to my friends and the utility of the kitchen and the hum and clatter of the dryer. But a bed is a bed and I put these thoughts aside and slept.
Unlike Hospice in the United States, which deals primarily with cancer patients, Hospice South Africa is consumed with AIDS patients. They offer education, HIV tests and condoms, though the dispenser in the living room which claimed "AIDS kills, use a condom" was empty. Hospice received support for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs through President Bush's global AIDS plan, said Sonya. However, the plan only lasts five years, and Hospice's future ability to get ARVs is uncertain.
But ARVs are no good if the patients won't take them. Africans infected with HIV are eligible for disability if their white blood cell count drops below 200 per micro liter, said Sonya. If they take ARVs, their count will improve and they'll lose their disability.
Cradock has an especially bad problem - a 45% infection rate - because of high prostitution rates there, said Sonya. It's on a major truck route to Port Elizabeth and is a common stopover for truckers.
"It almost seems like a war you can't win," said Quinn. The culture itself is contradictory to the potential solutions.
Sonya doesn't come off as fatalistic, though. She acknowledges the problems in a matter-of-fact way that is common in South Africa, and focuses on the challenges.
"We cannot pay the same salaries as the government," she said. "We cannot provide the same benefits. We are here for the love of the work."
We left Cradock late in the morning, planning to push through to Middleburg because we had been promised a place to stay. But the day was hot and the wind was against us and by late afternoon we were nearly exhausted.
We came over Witkransnek pass as the sun began to set and it cast a golden glow on the yellow grass that filled the valley below. Just on the far side we could see Middleburg, with dozens of mesas protruding between us and our destination. We rode quickly along the straight, down sloping road. Though our bodies craved food and rest, a tailwind combined with the cooling temperature to give us new strength.
Finally, as we rode into town, the colors started to fade. The clouds, at first yellow, turned to pink, then purple.
It's a magical time to cycle. Quinn pulled out the remnants of a bottle of whisky, but he dropped the cap so we finished the last few swallows at 20 kph in the dusk. I don't remember the last time I enjoyed whisky that much.

Bike Shops and Soup Kitchens

Posted from Cradock, South Africa

Port Elizabeth was our first goal upon leaving Cape Town. Other towns and destinations came along the way, but all along we were counting down the kilometers to P.E.

The road to P.E. is a gradual descent, and with a tailwind I found myself wondering when I had last pedaled. I couldn't answer, but to coast into a place we had been seeking for so long was the first real sense of accomplishment on the trip.

Port Elizabeth was also a chance for us to catch our collective breath. We stayed with Romano

Satanassi and his daughters, Maria, Valentina and Martina. Friends of a friend, Orians family had mailed his yellow fever card to them and they hosted us for two days while we waited for it. Meanwhile, we ran errands, worked on our bikes and relaxed.

A touring bike is a lot like a bike tour. It never remains the same. You are always tweaking it, repairing it, adjusting it. It's a living entity. It adapts to you and you adapt to it. Like a marriage, it's not always perfect. There are rough times, frustrating neuroses. Little things that annoy the bejezus out of you. But it's a labor of love, and you're always making your relationship stronger.

I love the sound of a well tuned derailleur: silence. By turning the barrel adjuster on my rear derailleur, I can get eight of the nine gears in perfect alignment. But the second from the top just won't sit right. It tries to shift off of its own accord, so I get on and off and on and off and fiddle with it and eventually we have a manageable compromise.

I spent my time and money in P.E. replacing a handlebar stem and a pitted headset. Orian's bicycle underwent more invasive surgery - he replaced his drop-bars with a straight bar and mounted his shifters on the bar ends, "wing-nut bike tourist" style. Quinn went further still, and dismantled his bike entirely so it could be sandblasted and powder-coated.

"I think I'm a wannabe wing-nut cyclist," said MinWah, while adjusting some facet of her bike.

"It's not really something to aspire to," returned Orian. "It just happens to you. One day you wake up and realize you're that guy where you say 'man, he's been on the road a little too long.'"

On our second day in P.E. Romano's drove us to help out at a soup kitchen. We rode across town in his old diesel Land Cruiser, serenaded by Bocelli and entered the shantytown that contained the soup kitchen.

"I tell you, they have a problem with alcohol," said Romano, as we entered the neighborhood. Sure enough, the landscape was dominated by billboards advertising alcohol. Tall fences with barbed wire atop them thwarted the progress of windblown plastic bags and other trash.

The Ubomi Obutsha Centre serves kids twice a week. The little kids lined up, patient in the queue because they know exactly what gets them soup and what does not. It was mostly boys with a few girls and they were mostly dressed in the black and yellow of some school uniform.

They signed in with their names and received a blue, yellow or turquoise mug filled with a tomato-based noodle and vegetable concoction and a small piece of bread. They sat on upturned crates and dipped bread and drank soup. It was quiet at first, but as the little room filled they broke into animated chatter like any other cafeteria.

They spoke Xhosa, said Romano, one of 11 official languages in South Africa. More than anything this brought home to me how recently apartheid was institutional. English and Afrikaans are invasive, like the Canadian pine trees and the eucalyptus from Australia that dominate the landscape south of the Cape Fold mountain belt.

Among Elephants

Posted from Plettenberg Bay, South Africa
When Andras Kiss popped up next to us at the tourism information center in Riversdale, none of us could have guessed the adventures we would experience as a result.
Andras, it turns out, is manager of tourism in the Hessequa Municipality. He was intrigued by us and our journey, but I think what motivated him to help us out was a genuine belief that his community had something to offer, and a genuine desire to promote tourism in the region.
From Riversdale we traveled east between the mountains and the coast, assisted here and there by a network of tourism representatives. On Thursday, Orian received a call from Larry in the tourism department of Plettenberg Bay. He promised us a place to stay when we arrived on Saturday.
"We have plans for you," he said. We were told to go to the Knysna Elephant Park, just off the highway before we reached Plettenberg Bay, where we were greeted by Greg Vogt.
"Are you here to book in?" he asked.
Quinn, not quite expecting this, stammered a bit.
"You're the group of cyclists, yes?" asked Greg.
"We were sort of expecting to camp out," said Quinn, still thrown off.
"Last night we slept under a bridge," explained Orian. But they had two rooms reserved for us.
By two, I mean about eight. We were shown to two suites with separate bedrooms and kitchens. But these weren't just any suites. They were the 'elephant rooms.' For in between the suites was a lounge area and down below was the indoor area where the elephants sleep.
We relaxed in semi-darkness in the lounge with a bottle of Elephant Wine, made from grapes pressed by Harry, one of Knysna's elephants, while 13 elephants settled in below us for the night.
The next day we bicycled among the elephants.
Elephants have poor eyesight, said Greg, so they are easily startled by approaching objects and rely on sound to communicate when approaching each other.
True to Greg's word, as we approached on our bikes, Harry noticed us and moved towards me, menacing. Just as I began to get nervous, some staffers came over to distract him.
Once placated by a truckload of hay, Harry and the others calmed down enough to move about them, even with bicycles, and a photo session ensued.
The Knysna Elephant Park is a rescue operation. Tame and orphaned elephants are kept on a 200 acre ranch where the public can view them.
"We actively find other elephants homes," said Greg. "These guys just finance that."
To be in the presence of an elephant is an overwhelming experience. Their sheer size unnerves you, but they are gentle and their intelligence is apparent, especially when they explore you or your bicycle with their trunk. They are otherworldly, and more than anything I was left with a sense of awe at these great creatures.