Passes? We Don't Need No Stinking Passes!

I hate to start it with a quote, but when it's Hemingway, you get a little lee-way. Hemingway once said, about cycling,

"It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of the country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."

He wasn't half wrong, and in the past few days, I've learned this lesson through some very intense experiences with this stunning landscape.

In the previous five days of cycling, I have gone up and then down, or down and then up two mountain and ten river passes. Eleven if you count the Gouritsrivier, which we really should, because it looks like this:

See those cliffs? Fuck those cliffs.

So what have I learned from these beautiful, but beastly, roads?

Well, for one, the two are not created equal. Even if they're the same length and climb and descend the same distance, river passes are far preferable to mountain passes. I was due to stay with a host from Warm Showers who, I discovered after about ten kilometers, lived just off of "Seven Passes Road."

Dear Lord, I'd just spent the last three days battling with Tradouw, Cloete's, and du Plessis Passes on the back road from Barrydale to Herbertsdale. This would kill me.

Not at all, it turns out. It was actually one of the best days of riding I'd had yet. Unlike the mountain passes in the semi-desert of the Klein Karoo, the seven passes of the namesake road (actually eight: Black River, Kaaimansgat, Silver River, Touw River, Hoogekraal, Karatara, Homtini, and Phantom Pass) all dove down into valleys or gorges, completely shaded, cool, and wet. Moreover, they were amazing! Bombing down winding roads at 40 km/hr is just a ton of fun, and when you're doing about 100km per day, a mental boost, having fun on the bike, is one of the best ways to power you through a ride.

Mountain passes, on the other hand, give little indication of the terror that awaits. You hit the base of the pass, check the sign (Tradouw Pass - 14km), and start to climb. And climb. And CLIMB. AND HOLY FUCKING HELL WHEN WILL THIS EVER END?!

Okay, it looks like I'm almost, OH WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM?!

Mountains hide mountains that hide even greater mountains. Worse, what seems like the end of the climb is often just a level stage that gives you just enough breathing room to curse your ancestors and all the stupidity that ever took you on this trip before HITTING YOU WITH ANOTHER MOUNTAIN.

When you've finally overcome the pass, and you're on your way down, you're too exhausted to really enjoy it. You've sweated it out, often under the full blaze of a noonday sun (I seem to be hitting mountain passes right in the middle of the day), and now you have this amazing view...and all you want to do is roll into the ditch and die.

But you can't, because you're clipped into the pedals, and you've still barely learned to unclip in high traffic areas. So even if you died, your body would just carry on down the hill, strapped to the bike, flopping about like some wacky, Weekend at Bernie's set piece.

Where was I? Ah yes, passes.

The longer I'm on the bike, the more existential the ride seems to get. Hit a river pass, and everything is golden on the way down. Even when you hit the climb, the energy you've built up and the fun you've had make the challenge a lot more manageable. The difficulties faced as a result of a hard uphill climb, on the other hand, can strip you of your ability to truly enjoy the great things in life (like getting a wicked downhill ride).

So you have to attack the hills. Seriously, it's the only way to get through it. Attack the most challenging parts that life (or landscape) throws your way, then pause to enjoy it once you've overcome it. Don't forget to stop and take a look from the top, but then carry on. You have many more miles to go.

Cast of Characters: The Kid

It's the people you meet along the way that really make the journey, whether they invite you into their homes or whether you just meet for moments at a time between points A and B. I'll try to write up a few as I can. Here's the first of what I'm sure will be a series:

The Kid:

I rolled into Swellendam about ten in the morning. Time for second breakfast, something that's become pretty common on a trip where I'm burning in the realm of 6000 calories per day.


"Where are you headed?" - a tow-headed boy who could have been mistaken for Opie Taylor, sat on top of a red mountain bike.

Botswana.

"Whoa, that's far."

Yep.

"You got tubeless tires? That's important because there's lots of thorns here in South Africa. You should get some of these fingerless gloves though. I don't know about America, but here in South Africa, your hands will sweat real bad."

Cheers for the advice, kid. What's your name?

"Carl."


Now, I just have to say, I love the discrepancy of kids named Carl. It's the juxtaposition of a youth with an old fashioned name, like meeting a 78 year old Billy. Not Bill, Will, or William. Billy. It says something about an older guy's personality when he's committed to a nickname he really probably should have dropped in high school. But unlike a retired Billy, Carl didn't choose his name. He's just Carl.

And he's thirteen.


That's a good age. (I lied. Thirteen is a terrible age. Acne, growth spurts, awkward boners, there is nothing good about thirteen, but what else was I going to say?)

"Ya, it's okay. I go to school, way back that other way, on the other end of town."

By this time, we were moving, cycling slowly through the small town, as Carl gave me his personal guided tour.

"Are you Catholic? No? But Christian? That's the church there. It's really old. And over there is where my friends and I meet when we want to go swimming. Up at the old dam there's really good swimming, and we go after school sometimes. You want to go up to Barrydale? Well there's a hard pass and an easy pass."

Which is the easy pass?

"I don't know. But you should make sure to watch out for baboons. There are leopards too in the mountains but you really have to be careful with the baboons, especially if you're carrying food. I found that out the hard way. There's the road for the old dam, if you wanted to go swimming."

Found it out the HARD way? I had to know more, but the more Carl spoke, the more mesmerised I became. I thought I'd been transported to Andy Griffith's Mayberry, except it was real and everyone had a South African accent. I half expected Aunt Bea to walk by at any minute.

Is anyone getting any of these references, or did I watch WAY too much Nick at Nite as a kid? The point is, that the simplicity that exists in the Andy Griffith Show or maybe Leave it to Beaver still exists in the small town life in the Cape. It's bizarre, a world that you think can't possibly exist, and yet here it is, personified in a thirteen year old boy. You end up thinking, "This is too much. It's too idyllic. There have to be bodies buried here somewhere."

As we approached the edge of town, Carl stopped, turned his bike, and called out, "Okay, I'm going back now. Good bye."

Is that the N2 up there?

"I don't know."

Weren't you supposed to be showing me how to get back to the N2?

"I'm pretty sure that's it if you keep going up that way. See ya!"

See you around Carl.

I didn't want to look back, for fear that all of that was a dream. That the town didn't exist, and that Carl was nothing but a figment of my imagination. I mean, who names their kid Carl? He had to have been a piece of a dream.

Or maybe not. Maybe Carl is making a comeback in the name game. I can only hope that's the case. It'll give me a good excuse to start thinking up insane names for future children. Maybe something like Chester or Mabel. Martha or Calvin. Or maybe just Carl.

Carl - who rode his bike up and down the one street in Swellendam.

Carl - who went swimming down near the old dam.

Carl, who found out the hard way not to play with baboons.

What an odd kid.

Hills, Wind, and Rain

I've remained a few extra days in Cape Agulhas, waiting for a rain that I'd been watching with trepidation roll in from Cape Town. It's forced me inside and away from the road for the last several days.

I don't mind the rain, but when it's bucketing down, with no shelter along long stretches of road, it's not exactly ideal. Moreover, the rain brings with it 30 to 40 km/hr winds, and after surviving two days of these winds to finally crawl into Hermanus, I'm extra cautious. I respect the winds. Nay, I fear them.

I fear the mountains as well. They've come much sooner than I thought they would. I thought I might be able to build my strength before I hit Lesotho, 'the mountain kingdom.' Instead, they hit me hard on my third day of riding. Ten uphill kilometers, just climbing and climbing without cease, would destroy the spirits of any novice on a bike, and if nothing else, I am a novice to this type of riding. 

Give me London traffic, splitting lanes up Piccadilly, jumping a red light, cutting across stalled intersections, avoiding taxis (always the taxis), that's it, that's me. That's my element. That's where I cut my teeth as a cyclist (if you don't count the block off Wayne Street in Flora, Indiana, a scene that gets two or three cars an hour MAX on a busy summer day). 

But this cycling, long distances on dusty gravel roads, I just haven't done it before. It's amazing: the ride, the scenery, the pace of a heartbeat and the whir of wheels crunching stone. But it's a workout. I think my first leg, down to Cape Agulhas, 'the souhernmost point of Africa,' has been harder than anything I could've imagined. It's almost as if I set myself up to fail - especially as I've ridden into a southeasterly wind blowing constant and true at 20 knots as the miles slowly crawl by. But I've pushed through. It's north from here, a race against winter and the rains that accompany the season. 

I've got many  miles to go, and I'm still learning to take care of myself and the bike. The thing is, when it's good, it's so good. Once I'd crested the downs in the Overberg, I was flying through the backroads, through small towns with thatched fishing cottages, through fields of fynbos in Agulhas National Park, part of the UNESCO Cape Floral Region, through pastures dotted with sheep and ostrich. 

But when it's hard, it's the hardest thing I've done in a long time. Before I could get to the cottages, the fynbos, and the pasturelands, I had to muscle through ten kilometers of uphill cycling in the heat of a noonday African sun. 

That was bad, and when it's bad, it's enough to break you.

But when it's good, there's nothing like it.

A Return: Being and the Bike

I've been traveling for nearly two and a half months now, through Turkey and on to Cape Town, and I've been unable to write anything for nearly the entire time.

That changes now.

I got this crazy idea into my head to bike from Cape Town down to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa, to turn north and east along the coast and through South Africa's Garden Route, up through the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho, over the Drakensberg Mountains, and across the highveld to Zimbabwe.

I'm not entirely sure how this idea implanted itself in my brain, but it has firmly taken root, sprouted, and begun to branch out. I am now over 150 kilometers into a trip that will see me through over 2000km of Southern Africa. God willing.

I like to tell people I have no idea how I got to this point in my life, but if I really start to look back, I can see several narrative strands coming together, laying the prologue for what is sure to be a new chapter of my life.

I don't know exactly when all of this started. Maybe it was Jaime, between customers at Ronnie's, talking me through his tour through France. It's an arbitrary starting point, but it helps set the scene. Without encouragement, it would have been just the ghost of an idea, so maybe I should look towards James who, when I told him of my plan to travel north from Cape Town in search of work, said, "Oh ya, buy a bike and cycle through Africa." At the time, I thought it was insane. I think I even remember saying, "That is insane."

That should have been it right there. But then I met the four young Brits teaching English in Turkey. They told me a story of a girl cycling the entirety of Turkey, and beyond. They'd hosted her through a site called Warm Showers, which is a bit like couchsurfing for cyclists on tours. It seemed like a great idea, but it surely wouldn't ever apply to me.

Then I met the German cycling home from Israel. It seemed so cool what he was doing, and he didn't seem put out at all by the time or the distance.

I guess it all came together to pique my interest, and that seed that had been planted then germinated into this half-crazed romantic notion. But the more I researched it, the more possible it seemed to become. Maybe that's an illusion. Maybe it is just as crazy as it first appeared. There's only one way to find out, and that's by doing it.

From everything I've read, touring on a cycle, especially for a long period of time, is more an issue of will rather than physical fitness, experience, etc., so for me, this is a test of my willpower, much like Peace Corps was.

Hence, the new narrative chapter in my life. It just feels monumental in so many ways. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's all just an illusion doomed to fail. There's only one way to know it, and that's to do it.

Just get on the bike.

If it is all about willpower, then yesterday was an important test of that determination; one that I passed, if only barely. I left Gordon's Bay with a headwind of over 40 km/hr against me, pushing me to a near standstill and forcing me to walk the bike up particularly steep hills. I never knew it was possible to have such a wind in your face for probably 90% of a 75k ride.

It's not like I was ever going the same direction, either. The wind just stayed with me, and I have to say, it nearly broke me. It's so frustrating to look down at the speedometer and realize that you could probably run faster than you are currently biking. To top it all off, near the end of the ride, I dropped the bike. I was so exhausted by that point that I wasn't sure I'd be able to pick it up again. The strain on my physical energy had depleted my mental energy, which again acted on any reserves that remained.

But in the end, I made it. Exhausted, nearly broken, I managed to get in to Hermanus, where I am now. I don't know if you'd call it grit, pride, or just bull-headed obstinacy, but I made it. It was an important test, and even if it hurt, I knew I just had to get back on top.

There's a lesson in there somewhere. I'll try to keep it with me for next time.

People Remembered, Places Revisited

It’s been a long wait for this blog entry that I hope has been eagerly awaited. I’ve been running around quite a bit recently, reflecting on my trip, allowing the images and the feelings to ferment and gather strength without, hopefully, losing any potency with my lack of immediacy in recording them. Here it is then: reflections on my return to Niger.

Let me start by saying that this wasn’t an individual accomplishment. I was accompanied on my trip by my friend Jane, a Nigerian with a rugged sense of independence that surpasses that of nearly every other woman I know. She had to be tough: overall, I think we totaled 50 hours of travel time from Jos to Sokoto, Niamey, Tanka Lokoto and back in only eight days. Along the way, we were helped out by Ms. Lindsay Goldberg and her boyfriend Nasser who gave us succor in Niamey to break up the travel days. Lindsay is a former Volunteer who stayed behind in Niger after the Peace Corps evacuated, braving the capital even without a half-dozen, Mefloquine-crazed Volunteers lighting up the town and breaking the monotony of quiet, rice and bean flavored nights.

But that isn’t why you came to this blog today. In my last entry, I expressed real fear at the possibility that, upon returning to my village, the realization that one can never go back would tear through my gut like some hateful combination of barbed wire and amoebic dysentery. In my mind, any number of tragedies could have befallen my community in the two years since I left. Most involved the famine that affected the country in 2010, but in my wildest imaginings, which tend to run like an out of control train, certain individuals were vulnerable to anything from malaria to hyena attacks, complications in childbirth to that scene in Alien where the little baby creeper bursts out of the guy’s chest. These things happen in my mind even without government mandated anti-malarials.

So it was as I stepped out of the bush taxi, just pitching up in the village without any prior warning or word that I’d be returning. I’m a terrible guest; really, I am. Unloading from a bush taxi to the sand, sounds, and heat of a two year time capsule was a surreal experience. The men at the mosque seemed to take it in stride: “Hey, Mubarak, ni ka? Fonda kayan!” (Hey, Mubarak, you’ve come? Welcome back!) The children alternately mobbed me and went tearing off through the neighborhood screaming to everyone who could hear, “Mubarak ka! Mubarak ka!” (Mubarak came! Mubarak came!) My friends from all over the village came streaming out of the woodwork, their faces shifting from disbelief and confusion to smiles and laughter seconds after setting eyes on me. All day as they slowly made their way back from the fields, dirty and tired, neighbors and friends greeted me, none of whom I had seen or spoken to since I left. They’d heard news that I was in town and had dropped everything to come see me. And all day, I worried over this person or that until they visited and I saw him or her with my own eyes.

And you know, everyone was fine. Everyone is alive and well in Tanka Lokoto. The village was remarkably the same. They’d built a new mosque, bright, white, and shining even from the dunes north of town. All the children were present and accounted for, all a couple inches taller, their faces slowly smoothing away baby fat as they get older. And everyone had a new baby. I leave for a couple years and suddenly every single family has a brand new baby, most only a few weeks old. It’s something I should have expected in a country with such a high birth rate, but it’s one of those things you just don’t think about when you’ve been gone for so long.

I’m happy to report that my favorite kid, my attakurmizo, Razak, who grew from this kid at the beginning of my service:


To this kid by the end of my service:


And is now this kid:


And if that picture were expanded just a little bit, you’d see him with his little arms around a cute little girl. So maybe he learned a thing or two from hanging around me for two years.

Also, my friend Sekou, who I still maintain is one of the most clever, most amazing people I’ve ever met, is still doing great things for his community. In many ways, he’s still this guy:


He's the one in the blue-grey suit, speaking while everyone else just listens. A man so well respected that he commands attention just by the nature of who he is: a hardworking man diligently working to better himself and his community. He’s still kicking it, same as always, a little pensive in this shot from the top of the dune at sunset:


And in one off the cuff comment, he amazed me with his humility and his dedication to his home and his people. Though it had taken him five solid years, he told me, he had finally managed to acquire a car to act as an ambulance for the local medical center. If ever anyone is in dire need, they can be at the hospital in Niamey in a just a couple hours. Already, the ambulance has saved lives. And he mentioned this just as casually as he would a prediction of afternoon rain.

So, despite two years away, the village is still there. It hasn’t changed much. And in the few days since I’ve been home, I realize how similar my Nigerien village is to my American village. Nothing much changes. There’s a new building here or there, the kids grow a bit taller, the seasons change, but life keeps on going. I’ll tell people where I’ve traveled and they’ll be amazed without any real idea what those places are like, the people who live there, the cultures slowly changing just as cultures always do despite calls to nostalgia and “the way things were.”

I know now that things in Tanka Lokoto will continue without me, just as things in Flora, Indiana continue without me. I can leave these places behind and they’ll be secure in my heart. They don’t change. Or rather, they change with me. They’ll age alongside me, they’ll change as I change, but I don’t have to fear returning to a place I don’t recognize. As I grow older, these places seem smaller, like my childhood bed. I can still sleep there, but my feet hang over the edge. I haven’t outgrown it, but I’m just used to bigger things. I’ve never gotten used to being a big fish in a small pond. I don’t like it. There isn’t enough room to swim. And even if I feel a little lost sometimes, I like the freedom to explore that comes with being a little fish in the big, wide ocean. In the end, I feel a bit like Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. I’ve learned and grown, but I need to keep moving, to keep discovering, to know that I’ve left people behind that I care about but who I still carry with me in everything I do. These places and these people will always be there, but I’ve got to keep moving. So was it worth traveling over 1200km to learn such a simple lesson? I’ll leave it with a lesson from Hesse’s Siddhartha:

“Certainly I traveled for my own pleasure. Why else do it? I got to know people and places, I enjoyed amiability and confidences, I made friends…I have had good days, I learned, I enjoyed myself, I harmed neither myself nor others through vexation or excessive haste. And if ever I go back that way again, perhaps to purchase a subsequent harvest, or for any purpose whatsoever, friendly people will receive me amiably and cheerfully, and I will have myself to commend for that.”

I will always have a bed to rest my head; I will always have friends and neighbors, whether I’m living in a place or not. And I have only myself to commend for taking the time to build those relationships, for revisiting my past and realizing that I continue to carry a living memory wherever I go.

The Return: A Search for a Living Memory

I've been struggling with this decision for most of my time in Jos, but by nature of the fact that I just got the visa, I think I've resolved it: I'm going back to Niger.

I figure, why not? It's only a two-day trip on tortuous roads through the heat and dust of Northern Nigeria and that half-remembered road from Niamey to Zinder. After all, when will I honestly next get the chance to be a mere 1,271km road trip from the home that built me up, pulled me down, and, every day for two solid years, fundamentally changed the person I was and the person I was to be.

It's impossible to describe the emotion that goes into this decision. It's something I've been grappling seriously with for the last two weeks now. As this idea took shape and began to materialize, I realized that it isn't all Tuareg tea and starry nights. If I'm expecting life to have frozen there in my time away, I'll be sorely disappointed. The children will have grown, there will have been births, deaths, marriages, all the events of life that ground us and give us structure. And I'll have missed many of those.

In fact, I have no idea what has happened in the village in the nearly two years I've been away. I lost my Nigerien SIM card while I was traveling in West Africa. With that small piece of plastic and electronics, I lost my only living connection to my village. Every phone number I collected in Niger is now lost in some forgotten corner of Africa.

I remember meeting a young woman in Sierra Leone. She was set to leave the country and was a bit heartbroken by that fact. We commiserated over leaving a place that felt like home, and I mentioned how much I wanted to return to Niger. "Don't," she said, "I know how much you want something like that right now, but you can't ever go back. What is there for you? Things change."

In every way, she's right, and that's the biggest fear I hold. Two years is a long time in a country where the average life expectancy is 53, where 16% of children don't make to to the age of 5, where, as a woman, you have a 1 in 16 chance of dying during childbirth over the course of a lifetime that averages 7.6 children per woman. In my mind, I imagine this place held in time, where I'll step out of a bush taxi and have a horde of screaming children welcoming me back to village. In reality, there's every possibility that a few of those children will no longer be there to greet me. There's every possibility that the old men who spent their days napping in the shade of the neem trees will be fewer in number. There's every possibility that sometime during one of those hot, black nights of the past two years, someone I cared about has slipped into a malarial fever from which they couldn't recover.

And what can I do about that? Can I mourn time lost in a place I once called home? Or can I return and find a place that has continued on without me and be thankful that I was allowed such a profound experience? One that can never be shared, no matter how many words are spoken or how many photos were taken. Can I grow and plant this piece of myself, permanently locate it within my heart, and continue on, carrying this shard of experience with me, knowing that there is a piece of myself somewhere that continues to live, to grow, to flourish in the harsh, near-desert of the Sahel?

That is ultimately what has brought me to undertake this journey back to Niger. I don't know if I'd ever get the chance to do it again. Despite all the promises and assurances, I've met too many people who never got around to that great passion, experience, or dream that slowly faded into the soft pain of regret and a wistful nostalgia of a previous life.

If for no other reason, I want to go back in the hopes of seeing this kid again:



That's my attakurmizo, my little trickster, the kid who saw me through the trauma of leaving, who taught me more about love and friendship than I ever could have imagined, who did that all without being able to even properly say my name. That picture is the perfect representation of him. Whenever I think about him, that's how I see him, arms wrapped around my leg, wide-eyed affection without a trace of guile. I could keep him like this forever, like a glass ornament, precious and beautiful. But I want to see what he's become. As much as possible, I yearn for the living memory of this place, even if it has a few cracks and scratches. That's what this ultimately is about: the search for that living memory, even if it's painful or broken in some way. Tomorrow, I'll start that search, unsure of what I'll find but longing for it nevertheless.

The Peacemakers

I've been out of touch for a couple weeks now, traveling around Plateau State and conducting interviews with key stakeholders throughout seven of the seventeen local governments. One of the most enlightening aspects of the interviews came with this question: Who is most responsible for promoting peace in your local government?

In many of the local governments deemed "high conflict," the respondents had an immediate answer: Religious leaders, they'd say, followed closely by traditional leaders. Government sources tended to cite political efforts. One man confidently asserted that women were the most responsible for promoting peace. These answers, in and of themselves, gave us an idea of who was working in troubled communities and which groups needed support. Those with actual projects instead of platitudes are the mostly likely to be targeted.

However, arguably more interesting were the answers from communities that have known little to no conflict. When asked who was working the most toward peace, nearly every respondent had to pause to think. When pressed with suggested peace actors from other communities, respondents said that they couldn't measurably say who was working the most toward peace because nearly everyone was involved. Political leaders brought together religious and traditional leaders as well as women, youth, civil societies and NGOs. Each group has its own constituencies, and by bringing them together to work toward peace, these low-conflict LGAs were reaching every member of their community.

This seems like a straight-forward answer, but it inevitably is not. Every single Local Government Council praised the efforts of their chairmen calling together all actors for meetings and discussions. But there were subtle differences between those who have successfully resisted violence and those where violence has torn at the very fabric of the community.

These differences came from the interviews with non-governmental traditional, religious, women, and youth leaders. In conflict communities, many complained that when the government held meetings, they were just talking sessions. They met, they aired grievances, and they left. Nothing filtered down to the actors committing violence. Nothing was asked of the participants, and no practical action plans ever emerged from these monthly meetings.

The peace communities carried a different tone. Stakeholder representatives stressed that dialogue was important, but that dialogue couldn't stay within the upper echelons of these stakeholder groups. Representatives took their message to their constituents, and all were involved in forming individual community action plans: whether that involved inter-religious neighborhood watches, community relief, or any number of tangible interventions to control violence. The important introduction of women and youth leaders brought these messages to a wider audience, as these most vulnerable groups have often been ignored by local government officials who look for those in power to curb the violence, rather than looking at those most affected by violence.

It's difficult to stress how important this distinction is. By including typically disenfranchised groups in the decisions and the responsibilities of conflict and peace, the local governments in these areas have turned them from victims to actors. Rather than bemoan their lot, women realize that they have the power and the responsibility to affect change. Rather than participating in violence as little more than paid thugs, youth are tasked with the responsibility to avoid conflict. They realize then that the best way to protect their community is not to attack another, but to ensure peace through cooperation. In the end, it's a much more monumental task, one that asks something of everyone regardless of status or power. However, with that shared sacrifice comes the knowledge that everyone has something to lose if their efforts come to naught. By delegating responsibility to all, the Plateau's peace communities have fostered stronger, more resilient communities. After all, isn't this the truest responsibility of government? To prevent rather than to react? To build rather than divide?