LIFE IS LIKE THAT, SOMETIMES

A KIND OF A COVID STORY

Don’t get me wrong. I liked cycling and had ridden a bike since I was a kid. I loved seeing new places and, yes, there was even an adventurous gene in my genetic makeup, let’s call it ‘AG’, that was mostly dormant but periodically emerged asking, ‘what about me, I have needs too’. But really, what’s this about a bike?

It started as a joke or maybe it was a dare. It was the late eighties and I was at the height of my vigour. I was running a NGO I had co-founded, working in several African countries and dealing with a gamut of challenges, from health and hunger to environmental degradation. I was a partner in a feasibility study to set up the production of rugged, cheap bicycles for African markets in Kenya to help kick-start local economies.

I was also co-producing several documentaries about the developmental challenges Africa faced, from the HIV epidemic to appropriate development. So when our cameraman, a former Olympian, seeing a team of Russian cyclists training in the mountains of Ethiopia exclaimed, “Henry, its seems to me that you are bored and need something new in your life, a new challenge, how about organizing a cross Africa cycling race”, I laughed and so did everyone else in the car.

I never planned to cycle the world, not even one country from tip to tip. Certainly not Africa from Cairo to Cape Town! I definitely did not think that during my life, I would cycle through more than 80 countries on just about every continent. I was not a ravenous adventurer wanting to be the first in anything. But life is like that.

The filming done, I flew to Nairobi to meet my feasibility study partner. We discussed the challenge of setting up a new business with minimum funds. He asked, “Even if we get enough funds to set up the factory” he said, “how will we market these bikes with no money?” I replied,

“That’s easy. We will set up a bicycle race from Cairo to Cape Town, using our African made bikes and call it the Tour d’afrique. It will be so crazy, so out of left field, that the media from all over the world will cover it. Think of Richard Branson’s marketing stunts.”

The bicycle factory never happened. My partner preferred writing