The End of the Road and Just Some of the Stories That Can Now Be Told

Three weeks ago, the Baja and I rode into London. We reached the end of the road.

This was immensely thrilling and satisfying, but at the same time, tinged with melancholy. I had to stand on the side of a sunny English street and watch the Baja disappear into the distance on the back of a truck, naked but dignified. It’s the second time this trip I had to say goodbye to a beloved vehicle and it was no easier than farewelling the Bushpig.

However, at least on this occasion I said bye to the Baja with a heart full of good memories. This has given me the opportunity to reflect on the long road. To my estimation, it’s been over 20,000 kilometres, through 21 counties in 7 months, with another 20,000 kilometres through 12 countries in the Badger before that. I’ve experienced countless generosity from new friends, overcome innumerable obstacles and seen some things I will never forget.

In a word, it was incredible. In more words, it was beautiful, fulfilling, eye opening, character building and life lived at its edge. But it was also, stressful, confronting, gruelling and at times scary. I’ve tried to share as many of those experiences with you through this blog, except perhaps for that last one. If I’m honest, there were more than a few times on the trip that I was scared and upon reflection fear played a bigger part in this trip than I ever expected.

I have held back telling these stories mainly for my Mum’s wellbeing. But I was recently welcomed to the UK at Dover port by an excited Mum and Dad. For all her past reservations and stress, Mum finally confessed her affections for the Baja. Now that she has spent a couple of days with me alive and well (and even dared to take a ride on the back of the Baja as well) I feel that some of these stories can now be told.

JUST SOME OF THE STORIES THAT CAN NOW BE TOLD

Kisumu

During the time Cam and I were in Kenya, elections were scheduled. Typically, the opposition does not win in Kenya, but they usually go down swinging and making a bit of noise. For example, during the last elections in 2007-‘08, over 1000 people were killed in the subsequent civil unrest. We knew these elections were going on, but we were advised that so long as we avoided central Nairobi and certain suburbs (that we would have no interest in visiting anyway), we should be right.

Wallowing through the usual large-African-city traffic jam into Nairobi should have been frustrating but uneventful, but when you have the prospect of violent demonstrations in the back of your mind, things like a crazed, stringy, rabid-looking man charging towards your vehicle holding a rock the size of a child’s head take on a greater significance in the moment.

Bloodshot eyes bulging from his face, sinews straining out his skin under ragged clothing, he charged at the Badger screaming like a fast-zombie. My mind moved past whether he would throw the rock through the windscreen and began appraising the strength of the glass. My worry wasn’t the front, but that he would come through the side, right into Cam’s head, which at that point was on a swivel looking for a way out. Cam told me after, that his plan was to jump the kerb and drive along the storm drain if need be. But, a few seconds later we past the crazed man and a few seconds after that, satisfied ourselves that he wasn’t the frontrunner of an angry mob.

In hindsight, he was just a very unwell guy and it’s tragic that he had just been left by society to fester on the side of the road. He probably had more reason than most to be angry and I wonder if he is even still alive. I found out later that there many of these people in the large cities. In Nigeria in particular, it was not uncommon to be riding along and have to dodge not only potholes and trucks, but also naked guys just wandering in a daze on the highway. Sadly, there is even a specific name for these people, there are so many. I can’t remember it though.

We’d been warned about needing to keep your wits about you in large African cities and this experience was a good practical lesson in that.

After visiting the Masai Mara and having a fun/but hairy encounter with a crash of hippos in the night, we needed to pick the quickest route to Uganda. We had heard that the elections had been relatively un-eventful and that even though it was the seat of the opposition, it should be fine to pass through the city of Kisumu. The day began driving past zebra and giraffe, repairing a thrown bearing on the Badger (of course), then a couple of bum-steers by Google maps, but eventually we entered the province of Kisumu at about 3:00pm.

We were just grateful to be off claustrophobic dirt roads onto the one main road through the province. I’m not sure if it was just the afternoon rolling on, or that we were getting further into the province, but we started to feel that there was a tense, manic energy in the air and that we were drawing more stares than usual. Generally, people in Africa can stare like a rock full of iguanas, but there was something more to this. We realised that the charred piles of rusted wire mesh littering the roads were burnt out tyre fires and that there were no women and children to be seen. We then got a call from the hotel in Kisumu who informed us matter-of-factly, that they were closed and that it would not be safe for us to come to the city. In fact, if we were anywhere close, we should get away.

It was clear that we shouldn’t be where we were. But, to turn around would mean going back 80kms through the same trouble, though with the men having had more time drinking… It was another 20kms to the next turn off, so we decided to press on. Besides, apart from a few motorbiking youths and some shocked stares, we hadn’t encountered anything overtly hostile yet. A few turns later, we came over a rise and shit hit the fan about as quickly as my heart froze and sunk to the pit of my stomach. As we came over the hill, we found several hundred men around a massive tyre fire in the centre of the road, flames metres into the air spewing putrid black smoke. The crowd scattered and ran off the road. Later, we presumed this was because they thought we were government troops, but at the time it just looked scary. Apart from the tyre bonfire, they had also barricaded the road with shin high rocks. Cam put it pretty well when he said, “Oh man, I don’t like the look of this at all.”

There was no choice. We could not turn around, we could not stop. “Just go at a steady speed, smile and wave, but DO NOT stop.” The crowd realised what we were, began to re-merge and scream at us to stop; high on the vacuum of authority. They were beating corrugated iron, screaming, yelling and running up to the Badger. It was anarchy. With terrified forced smiles on our face, we drove through waving, bounced over the rocks and then Cam gave the Badger everything it had. A few came after us on motorbikes, but we just kept driving and driving down that road.

The only way I can describe the feeling is like this. You know when you are in a car and you have a moment where you think you might have a crash, or you think you are about to be hit, that moment of panic in your chest where your pulse fuses, it was like that feeling was frozen in there for 45 minutes. It was the scariest experience of my life.

Eventually though, we got to the first road away and within just a few kilometres, the atmosphere slackened, we started seeing women and children again and we realised we were out. The adrenaline wore off and I was enveloped in an extreme weary. I went to bed, promising I would never allow myself to be in such a position again.

“Ambazonia”

Around about the time this was going on in Kenya, we got wind that Nigeria had slammed its border shut with Cameroon. At that point, Nigeria was so far away, I didn’t really give it that much thought and I later heard that it was ‘just an isolated thing’. The border opened a few weeks later.

By the time Bastien and I got to Cameroon 6 months later, we had heard of a few more issues and that there was an anglophone area abutting most of the border, where certain groups were seeking independence from Francophone Cameroon. The strife apparently dated back to independence, when the border between Nigeria and Cameroon was drawn down the middle of a particular ethnic group; a fairly common story in post-Independence Africa.

However, when Bastien and I arrived in Cameroon, we were mostly just concerned about getting ourselves a Nigerian visa. We only had two weeks in Cameroon and we were swiftly knocked back at the first embassy we tried. When we eventually did get the Nigerian visa, we started looking a bit closer at what had been going on in this border area. It didn’t look great, some online articles referred to some protests and a few deaths, but nothing much worse than many other places and countries we’d been. All the border areas further north, up near Chad were definite no-gos, so the Anglophone area was the only option.

There was a 180km ride through this area to the border crossing and the first 40 kms went without incident. However, about mid-morning we had stopped for petrol in a particular town when we were approached by a well spoken man in a knitted top. He asked us where we going and we explained our route up to the border crossing. He then proceeded to try and scare the daylights out of us, with stories of kidnappings, killings and anyone who spoke French being a target. Bear in mind that Bastien is French.

But, when we pressed him about whether it would be safe for us, he seemed to conclude that it would be, so long as Bastien kept his mouth shut and hid his passport. An unfortunate fact of life travelling in Africa is that you simply can’t believe everything you are told. You need to collect a series of views before making any decision and basically, unless you hear the same things three times from three different sources, you should assume it’s a high percentage of bullshit. Also, we had no other way forward and neither of us wanted to look like a wuss in front of each other (isn’t masculinity a great thing…)

So, we pushed on until the next military checkpoint. There we were stopped by an officer, who impressed upon us a grave situation and concluded “you can proceed, but we cannot guarantee your safety from here on in”. At this point, we figured that the message seemed to consistently be, “stuff is going on, but you can still go through”, so we continued.

From there on though, things got spooky and the Kenyan-election feeling returned to my stomach. The villages were all abandoned, erratic spotfires seemed to be burning unattended. Though Bastien remained keen to blast through, my confidence was faltering and so I slowed, taking wide lines around each corner, to try and get as early a warning as possible for any unfriendly road blocks. Seeing a lone teenage male staring, then immediately reaching for his cell-phone fully freaked me out. When shortly thereafter we were stopped by the military, I was relieved. The military man insisted we stay with them and told us a story about some western mining workers who had been taken hostage the day before. Brave Bastien wanted to push on again, but for once in my life, I was happy to just follow orders.

We waited at that checkpoint for 5 hours before a military convoy came through at breakneck speed. The military man shouted at us to get on our bikes and we found ourselves speeding through the jungle, only able to keep up with the convoy when it slowed for the speed humps. From there on, it was thrilling. There were two military troopies, full of commandos, top-and-tailing a dark tinted SVU carrying the VIP. When we stopped for a pit-stop, the troops spread out a perimeter like in the movies. We got chatting with one of them and exchanged emails. At the border town that night, we met the police chief and were assigned an attache. From there we passed into Nigeria without incident.

Two days later, Bastien received an email from one of the commandos. The checkpoint we had been at for 5 hours was attacked the following day and several government troops killed. I guess sometimes it’s better to be lucky than wise.

Update

Since I last wrote, the Baja and I limped through Morocco repairing flat tyres and realising that it was time to leave Africa. We then spent some lazy weeks meandering through Europe. Within minutes of disembarking the ferry, I had a Spanish red in hand breathing sighs of relief onto a mound of shiny olives. Delightful days were spent in Grenada, wandering gardens and cobbled streets, and reintroducing myself to available spare parts, skilful mechanics and romantic dinners (with same said mechanic). We booted north for tapas, rioja and regrets in Barcelona, then dramatic mountain riding in the Pyrenees.

In France, we discovered the joy of hooning through skinny country laneways and little villages, each its own cornucopia brimming with quality wine and cheese. Cam and I realised that we might be able to rendezvous for the first time in 6 months, so we made for Marseille and Aix-en-Provence to fulfil a long-held plan to drink wine in the south of France. From there I spent a few days in a little provincial cottage without power and running water, but nice locals, plenty of firewood and reading time. Paris was simply Paris and if I didn’t have an engagement in Bruges, I may have never left.

I met my long-time mate and travel-brother Kristian in fairytale Bruges for a weekend of Belgian beer, waffles, soccer watching and a spot of haccy-sack, before it was on to the UK to meet Mum and Dad, and old and new friends in London.

From London, I flew to New York for a week where I was hosted beautifully by Neil Thomson and his lively girlfriend Amy. I also had the opportunity to catch up with some old mates including Tom Hickey and David Erickson (who I met in Syria almost 10 years ago).

I’m now finishing my my final week on the road in Venice Beach, Los Angeles with Kristian and his amazing wife Rina. To be honest, for the above scary tales, I feel luckier to have escaped London and New York intact.

Venice, LA, I’ve realised is the epicentre of global ultra-hipsterdom, a lifestyle I’ve tried to embrace using coffee and craft beer as a lens to see the return home as just the next adventure. I’m currently the only non-Apple laptop in an amphitheatre-style barista hall, that would make the most cutting-edge Brunswick café look old-school. This morning, Kristian and I woke up a little dusty, so we sat in the space between apartments and had a breakfast consisting of a flight of ham & raclette, tahini and pistachio croissants (halved with a pair of scissors), grapefruit juice and chocolate mousse. There are these electric ‘Bird’ scooters here that litter the streets. You download an app, then you can ride these scooters anywhere, get charged per km, then literally leave them lying where you finish, for the next person to pick up off the sidewalk or out of the gutter and use. The scooters are apparently not stolen or vandalised and I’m amazed it’s a system that works. To be honest, it’s probably the starkest single reminder that I’m now as far from Africa as I could be.

But I’ve loved writing this blog and the idea that it has brought others enjoyment, so I don’t want to end it with some privileged, white man’s, kale-fisted attempt to summarise or philosophise about the differences between Africa and the Western World. I don’t want to write that and you don’t want to read it. So instead, please forgive a bit of a flourish;

I don’t yet know precisely what this trip means to me, but I sense it has and will mean a lot. I’ve never really been able to well describe why I decided to do it, other than out of some fear of waking up old and having lived a boring life. I don’t yet know precisely all I’ve learned and I don’t’ feel greatly changed, but I do believe that for it all, my life is in some immeasurable way better. I’ve gotten greasy, dusty and dirty, zenful but belligerent, learning the art of battle with machines and mechanics. I’ve realised that socialisation is sustenance and that loneliness is fertiliser for your next chat; it’s possible to feel closer to people you’ve never met (other than through a smartphone), than to some people you’ve known for years. I’ve realised that like a machine, perspective needs tuning; you may have empathy, but sometimes it needs to be topped up or changed out; tolerance and self-awareness wears, privilege, intolerance and arrogance build up; if a part has a problem, it’s likely to flow on and damage other parts as well, so keep everything in check and check everything often. I’ve felt physically broken and enjoyed the strength and clarity that comes from deprivation weakness. I’ve looked a lion, a great white and a silverback in the eye and held a chameleon on my finger. I’ve ridden dirt, dust, sand and mud, and raced through the Sahara in the dead of night under a full moon with no headlights, guided only by silver light, dark tarmac and recklessness. I’ve seen countless people and cultures, the Congo Jungle, the Okavanga, the Great Lakes, the Nigerian Delta, the Sahel, the Sahara and the Serengeti. I’ve felt like I was standing on the wing of a plane, gazing from atop Kilimanjaro. I’ve loved and lost, made great friends and adversaries. I’ve done battle and felt both victory and defeat.

I did a bunch of stuff and it was many things, but it was never boring.

So, until I next roam,

Stuart