Retrospectively

Time passes too quickly. One moment our plane touches down in Zurich in March and we lug the bikes over to our friend Rafal (he will bring them to Germany in May for our wedding); the next moment May is flowing slowing into June. We’ve tied the knot and it was a blast. Jo and Olive are slumbering in their boxes in a shed somewhere and we’ve been riding the emotional roller coaster of job applications for what seems like an eternity. It feels strange to imagine that, not so long ago, we were moving along on two wheels, our only care in the world being where to get a cold coke that day…

But still, that experience is in the bank and (along with the daily coffee and cake time) a frequent comfort to us. Now is not just the time to fret about the future, it’s also a time to look back and properly close the last chapter. And how better to reflect on a year of new and rich experiences than by getting out the spreadsheets and tallying up the numbers. So here we go:

• 14,322km cycled – It seems impressive now, but it really just added up little by little.
• 232 Days of cycling – Sometimes we enjoyed it, sometimes not, sometimes we couldn’t be bothered and did it anyway.
• 128 days off – Amazingly a 3rd of our time was spent lounging around (or hiking, safariing, or dying from food poisoning, etc.).
• 62km average distance per day – with an average elevation gain of 487m. Taking the days off into account, this is just a little more than Ben did on his Europe hike. CRAZY!
• Toughest day: Day 1 – It’s funny to think about it now, but it was the longest and most difficult day of the entire trip. All the new impressions, getting used to the heavy bikes, too much elevation gain and Ben’s puncture and slow leak late in the day. We remember thinking “will we really do that for a whole year?”
• Longest period without a rest day: 16 days – This was leaving Kenya with the rainy season wet on our heels. Lina really learned from that to take rest days in general, which led to that beautiful statistic above of 1/3 days off.
• 30 Breakdowns – For 2 bikes over 1 year (and mostly just small punctures) not too bad and we had way fewer punctures after putting sealant in our inner tubes. Jo and Olive each had one somewhat bigger issue, yet both were resolved in just a few days (thanks again to Graham in Harare).
• 23 Other cyclists met – It was amazing to see how many different characters are drawn to a life on the bike. From the crazy fast athletes to the wise and bumbling world travellers.
• 3 times seriously ill – Ben’s food poisoning in Tanzania and the antibiotics that almost made him waste away. In Zimbabwe he developed some sort of overuse injury on his shoulder. It’s still not fully healed. Lina’s stomach bug (probably Noro virus) just before we got to Cape Town. All in all we probably were quite lucky in this regard i.e. no malaria!
• 380 litres of soda consumed – It sounds pretty gross in hindsight, but it was the life essence that made this whole trip possible… and worthwhile. We want to thank the Coca Cola Company for their tireless efforts in making the whole world addicted to sugar. It really meant a lot to us.
• 1 life saved – It was a pleasant day by the rocky shore of lake Kivu in Rwanda. It was less pleasant for the man who had just fallen into the lake and was unable to swim. Ben, spotting the panic in the man’s eyes, jumped in after him and towed him back to shore. Even if Ben does nothing else in his life, for Evode he will always be a superhero.

What we will remember

Above all we will remember the warmth of people, waving hello a hundred times a day, everyone welcoming, everyone curious about these weird white people on bikes. There were a lot of language and cultural barriers that we could never quite bridge. Nonetheless the general attitude towards complete strangers was always friendly. Back in the beginning we called the smiles ubiquitous and they stayed that way. We can’t help but wonder how different their experience would be if they came to Europe on a cycling holiday…

Not that this is very likely, which is a second memory that will stick around. It’s humbling to see first-hand how differently people live their lives. Of course we knew beforehand that we were going to one of the poorest regions in the world, but still. We intentionally quit our jobs to go on a year-long cycling holiday. This sentence confused many a local. They just didn’t understand the word holiday, let alone that someone would give up secure employment to cycle thousands of kilometers far away from family. This doesn’t make sense to someone living in a thatched mud hut where the whole family sleeps on the floor of one single room. Their only concern is how to make it through the next day which led to many incredulous looks on their part.

You might be gripped by pity and guilt over the mismatch in lives (which we often were). You start thinking about how you can help. You might dole out cash, or build toilets or distribute antimalarial bed nets. There are many NGOs and lots of well-meaning individuals pursuing this path. They drive around in shiny Toyota landcruisers, have well-paid foreign staff and sleek websites. They give cash to individuals, but also to corrupt governments that couldn’t care less about improving infrastructure or education. All too often they care more about short term impact than long term change. As a result foreign aid is something we have become a little more cynical about. We found it works best on a small scale and over a long time horizon. A couple of well-meaning people might make a huge and lasting difference for a village if they stay there for decades. But hardly anyone ever does, because the landcruiser is leaving for another poor country tomorrow.

When we think of our time in Africa, we remember the heat, the villages flowing seamlessly into one another, the beautiful animals and the random everyday experiences (like reception buildings burning down, or passengers on a bus crowding around roadkill to get the best cut). We remember the strange relations between people of different skin colours and the remnants of colonialism. We remember colourful/loud/strangely shaped birds, lively Sunday services, giant sand dunes, the best pineapple in the world and so much more. What a crazy year it was!

A travel memento

As a rule we bought very few curios. We would have had to carry them on our bikes and this precluded anything bigger than a couple of ornaments for our future Christmas tree. But in a little village in Malawi we made an exception. The little hand-carved chess table just looked too cute and its maker Kelvin was very sweet (if a little bit high on happy brownies). He had promised us that he could send the table to Germany. He was even going to carve some special chess pieces and Lina couldn’t get the image of hippo pawns out of her mind. So, we threw caution to the wind and gave Kelvin the money. All 100 euros of it. In the months after buying the table we inquired again and again whether he had sent it. He kept assuring us that he was in the process and made up a variety of excuses why not. At some point we gave up on it, cursed our stupidity and moved on with our lives…

Enter Joel – a cyclist from Hamburg that we crossed paths with in Botswana. He was heading towards Malawi and had planned a holiday there with his girlfriend Malina. We joked about how he could just go to this little village, pick up any random table from Kelvin’s shop and send it back to Germany. Of course Germans don’t joke, so Joel and Malina actually went there, picked up a table and Malina took it on her flight back to Hamburg. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we finally got around to picking it up last week. How strange that it found its way to us after all this time. Of course the table top doesn’t really fit the stand and Lina will only ever dream of hippo pawns, but well… this was Africa after all!

A word of thanks

This is for you, dear reader. It has been a pleasure writing for you all these months. Sometimes it was the only ray of hope in a bad situation. “Don’t worry, soon we will only have to write about this in the blog.” Thank you for all the comments (on this site or privately). Thank you for all the support and encouragement throughout this weird and wonderful journey. We will inform you post hence, when we’re settled somewhere (spoiler alert: it will be in Malmö, Sweden). Then we’ll be adequately prepared to return the kindness you have shown us.

All the best,

Ben and Lina

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