JEFF McLEAN'S BLOG | MARTY POUWELSE'S BLOG
- 01/10/2002 - Warts and all... (Mali)
- 14/10/2002 - Timbuktu...Tomboctou...however you say it, it's bloody far away... (Mali)
- 23/10/2002 - Goin' birko over bein' in "Burkina" (Burkina Faso)
- 05/11/2002 - Ouagadougou to Bolgatanga (someone get me a linguistomy fast!) (Ghana)
- 11/11/2002 - Roast to Coast (Ghana)
- 26/11/2002 - Ghana get to Benin and finish this thannnnnnnnnnnng... (Benin)
- 10/12/2002 - Currently slumping in the couch...for a little bit anyway... (Australia)
26/11/2002 - Ghana get to Benin and finish this thannnnnnnnnnnng... (Benin)
G'day all,
We've come all this way through Africa, but had no excitement like some of you may have expected. I'm sure some of you expected a lion story or two. EVERYONE THAT COMES TO AFRICA MUST HAVE A LION STORY...
Well, I'm glad to say that I can now provide one! (You may want a few grains of salt ready... )
(Only the names have remained factual to preserve some level of reality.... )
Just before leaving Ghana - a country full of wild animals, and the parks that house them - Marty and I find ourselves at 6pm with a nearly set sun, no village and no accommodation. The roads were too dangerous to ride at night so we decided to stop, get back to nature, and sleep 50 metres from the road on the forest floor.
All is fine and dandy, stars are aglow, insects "d-d-d-d-d-ding" like bellbirds (they do, really!) and nary another sound is heard as we slumber for the evening.
At about 3am (we can only tell this from the moon's position) I hear Marty rumbling and ruffling all over the place, with 'playgrowls' and think "Nah, I'll be tough - if I turn around and look now, he'll think I'm a big girl's blouse!"
Getting more peeved (and a little terrified) by the second, I turn over to see Marty completely still, eyes closed, but the sounds continue. For a split second I think that bloody David Strassman's a crap performer in comparison with the bloke beside me; surely, here lies the world's greatest ventriloquist...
2.5 nanoseconds of thought puts that theory waaaaaaaaaay out of reach.
"Marty, what the %^#^%$# is that?!" I half yell-whisper, half excrete.
As I mention this, Marty's eyes open wider than a ruttish owl's when it sees Miss Owl Australia standing before him, sporting nowt but a feather over her nether regions!
The lion appears from the high grass, 30 metres from where we lie.
Suddenly, constipation is not such a problem! Suddenly, I'm thinking back to every damned David Attenborough animal documentary that we watched and snored through in biology class at school. I try to remember where he said, 'Lions can be placated by inserting "A" into location "B", ripping out tab "C", and folding along line "D"'... more importantly, I'm trying to remember what the hell he said!
Instantly, the trike springs up as the obvious defensive choice.
It is sitting there freely on the ground, between us and the lion.
Slowly, I creep towards the trike.
The lion doesn't move - obviously he's too bloody interested in the contraption to register anything going on around him!!!
Slowly, and slyly, my right hand grips the centre pole of the trike - I know I can balance it at this point on the frame.
But NOW what do I do? Just wait until it goes away? What if it's hungry, and all it can see before it is two juicy human steaks?
Madness grips me in my panic. I will run at it screaming, wielding the trike and chase it away, frightening it to the extent of its existence.
Like a banshee who's run around the corner at the side of his house and stubbed his little toe on the corner brickwork (and I know how this feels!), I squeal.
Squeal like Hell.
Actually, I scream, making banshees look like a placid creature.
With the same moment, I lift the trike off the ground and launch at the lion.
Expecting to hear an almighty roar and a leap to capture on the next Toyota ad, I was amazed that the lion was still motionless. There was no doubt it was a lion, and that it was alive.
In the merest fraction of a second, my mind raced through calculations like a super computer. I noticed the eye movements of the lion, the breathing breast, the mouth slightly agape, the naturally piosed.... ah... what was that Mr. McLean? ... the mouth slightly agape???!!
Suddenly, it dawned on me that maybe the lion was just as stunned as every other damned Ghanaian by this weird horizontal contraption that moved quietly along the landscape.
By the time I was 10 metres away from the beast, I had started to falter. The unbalanced way I'd picked up the trike meant that it was beginning to sway off its axis and was becoming mightily unweildy. The front of the trike was slowly swinging around so I couldn't hold it, and opening me up to my destiny.
Still, the lion was there, moved only slightly to one side.
In the time since this incident, I have entertained myself with the thought that the lion was pissed off that it's view of the trike was being lessened and was moving to the side to get a better gawp.
Anyway, my lurch continued, but with every cm, I was becoming less sure-footed and utterly concerned about the lack of fear in the lion.
Why was I doing this? Why would a chicken with intelligence walk towards the hungry, axe-bearing farmer?
At that very moment, 3 metres from the lion, and now ridiculously close, I stumbled. The weight of the trike had shifted around 90 degrees now, so that the whole thing was pointing forward - not shielding me at all.
And I was being toppled to my right.
As luck would have it, my exposed chain ring was out the front and as I tripped, and sprawled out forwards, the front of the trike was pushed straight into the head of the hapless lion.
It was too late for him.
In those split seconds of acute awareness, I noticed it begin to move away. I noticed what was almost a slight sigh of impending expiry, but the poor old lion had copped it right in the eye.
We both went down - only I got up again.
Well, there's your lion story.
And the moral is.... Lyin' down and trikin' is always a good thing.
So, now to the facts. (Can I be bothered writing any more? The first bit was sooooo much fun...)
We set out from Cape Coast on our last leg - Accra bound we were, or more specifically, Kokrobite.
It seems that Shiva, the Hindu God of destruction had a heavy hand in making these roads. Why - oh why- does the road between the third largest city and the capital seem like tar has been put there only to create an extra annoyance in the sea of potholes, manic drivers, rocks and dust?
Granted, for the first 30kms out of Cape Coast I could have been forgiven for thinking that I was visiting the promised land of completed roadworks - the road was so smooth, wide and pleasurable that even steep undulations were fun. The early morning, as usual, was simply gorgeous to cycle in, and is so easily one of the greatest attractions to cycling that I'm surprised it hasn't been made illegal.
But then conditions became pearshaped and we went on as best we could, bumping and thumping over the road, with nought of a complaint from "Pete" the trike. We seemed to cover more distance up and down from the jolts of the road, than we did moving forwards.
We stopped for two nights in small towns, where we seemed like the only white men ("hey, WHITE man!" they will often yell to us - there is no probs at all with mentioning the colour of your skin here - pretty refreshing I've gotta say...) to have stopped there in many a long day.
Then we reached Kokrobite.
Kokrobite, unlike the venereal disease that it sounds, is so utterly desirable that you are attracted to it with much the same intensity as you aren't to a vile cesspit.
We stayed at Big Milly's backyard, lounging, loitering, lazing, lying - injesting, imbibing, immersing and introducing ourselves to the luxurious existence that we needed. Our cycling adventure was practically over - with only one easy 40km leg to go in Togo - 40 flat km running right beside the surf!
However, the Divine held a more varied hand of cards for us than I would have thought possible. There was one more stanza of this adventure that had to be written, and boy, was the author of that poetry FULL-ON...
At 4:10AM on Tuesday the 19th of November, Marty and I and two others that we had convinced, found ourselves lying on the beach, witnessing the Leonid meteor shower - a great display of shooting stars, and we were in the best place in the world (West Africa) to see a shower that happens once only every 33 years.
I won't bore you with the theft details - Marty has recounted the situation very well in his posts which you can read (see below) - but it took nearly seven days of exhaustive chasing and investigation to have the passport, air tickets, and everything else except the cash returned. Yes, even the thieves in West Africa have honour. All items that could not be sold, including Marty's diary, were returned with JUST enough time for us to high-tail it to Benin.
We caught buses, taxis, cycled across borders, and basically got to Benin with one day to spare. And we got there together too. Our departure as an "ensemble" (as the Francophones would say) could go ahead, even though for the last week it seemed we would have to split.
(I'll leave out the fact that in the end we did have to split because a miscalculation on my behalf, compounded by the lack of baggage staff at the airport, meant that I could not board the plane with the trike, and, as yet, I have not even left Benin. Hopefully, this happens tomorrow night! Normally, the trike is NEVER a problem to be put on the plane, regardless of the fact that it may seem too large to take. This tandem trike has been all over the world - no dismantling is necessary...)
So, how did the trike perform?
Incredibly.
Over 1000km here, the ride was a constant amazement. Had the conditions been more favourable (i.e. NOT oven-like, and the roads been less like bad goat trails) there would be no way I would entertain the thought of coming here any other way.
As usual, the "oddity" of the trike gave us a superior level of safety to any other vehicle on the road. Everyone slowed for us to look.
The ride, with the excellent frame flexibility and hardiness, stood up to a hell of a beating. And this trip was FAR from the first it has experienced. The only "problem" we had was a snapped gear cable that happened on the last day (though the cable was quite old and full of sand and rainwater from the bad conditions). The seats were excellent - Marty stood on them just about every time we left a village so that he could get some great footage of the reaction that followed us.
The trike was also well set-up from a camera mount perspective too. Almost every conceivable angle of the road and the trike could be covered while we were riding - high, low, front, side - due to the different configurations that we could select for the boom poles. I must thank Ian and the guys at Greenspeed for setting this up at such short notice.
And as for the ride? Impeccable. If Chesterfield made a lounge like the trike seat, I'd spend the 3000 on it... well... ummmm... don't hold me to that, will ya...
So, what are my lasting thoughts of Africa?
What of this tumultuous love affair that I have had with the place? (That I had any sort of love affair with the place at ALL after my first mail in Mali is surely amazing.)
I am left with the impression of a happy people that, quite frankly, are amazing for the fact that they ARE happy. Given the poverty, the oppression (from within their region and without), the general living conditions and most basically, the food, it amazes me that the Africans are so happy and so accepting. It shows a huge conditions-defying spirit that I have grown to love.
I will leave you with my beautiful, enduring memory of Africa.
It came on the afternoon that the passport was found. Marty and I, almost drunk from the feeling of relief that we could travel home together, and avoid the Hellishness of bureaucracy, were squashed into the back of a tro-tro (a beaten up old 14 seater van).
Seats were uncomfortable. Bums reacted accordingly.
I was looking out my window. The fresh breeze which cooled my face so wonderfully began to diminish as we slowed. We were nearing a stop in a village.
We pulled up to let others on. I continued looking out my window, across to the other side of the road.
In the distance was a mountain, framed by the gentle darkness of a blanket of high, formless cloud. That cloud prevented the biting heat that was so usual in the latter part of the afternoon, and almost promised rain.
In the foreground was a perfectly ordered pile of concrete bricks, waiting for the next building project. Whether they took one day or one year to be used was immaterial.
A hen scratched away in the dirt to the left.
Dogs lay in the diminishing heat in front of mud huts with grassed roofs. Nothing moved.
Sitting on top of the pile of bricks was a boy of about 13. He was doing nothing - just looking. His face was expressionless.
Our eyes met.
Just before that instance, I was just happy. Relieved.
Happy that I could now look at people and smile. Happy that the bitterness of theft had been washed well away, and the stupid, WRONG prejudice that I had been fighting off for the last few days had slipped away effortlessly.
Our eyes had met. Still his face was motionless, just like his relaxed body. I let out a little smile. A smile that encompassed my feeling at the time :
"Buddy, you're ace. All of your people are wonderful. Better in many ways than I could ever be. And I'll never really know you. How sad."
He sat up ever so slightly as I smiled.
In the instant that my mouth had curved up, so had his, to lay a great big, accepting smile back at me.
It was a smile that said, "We like you too mate."
I won't forget it.
Love,
Jeff
PS. Check out Marty's Posts (obviously being written while he's sitting comfortably on the back seat - "Are you REALLY pedalling back there Marty????") - at the website http://au.geocities.com/oilsbloke/africa_postings.htm - they go into much better detail than what I have provided on some things...and they're bloody funny too...
And I'll be making a final posting in a week or two, wrapping up the whole episode, mentioning what it's like to be at home, and thanking the many people who have brought this whole thing together. God bless you all...
".........................................................."
- Mark Knopfler, "Going Home" (well, I KNOW it's instrumental, but I just like the song, OK! :) )