FIRST DONATION OF THE BIKES

Nairobi started with a surprise, a big surprise, a great surprise. One of those that cheers you, big time.... As I was pushing through the last hundred meters of the final day of stage 3 and was entering camp, I saw a guy standing on the road holding a video camera. He looked familiar and when I got closer, I could not believe it! Gerard, my uncle was here waiting for me at the finish line.... What a great surprise! He had flown all the way from Paris to surprise me in Nairobi! Now that's what I call dedication! Gerard had also organised a nice guest house for us in a quiet suburb of Nairobi where I could rest properly and enjoy some quiet moments. We had so much to talk about that we didn't even know where to start. Gerard had been in Nairobi for a few days already and had used Jana to find out where the TDA camp was. Now I understood better this mysterious French man who wanted to meet me and had asked for the arrival details... Gerard also brought from France a full bag of chocolate and energy bars, some energy drink powder and a cycling shirt signed by family and friends with support messages written all over... 2 months into this trip you can imagine that having a family member surprising you in such a way is more than a joy, it felt so nice.


Up to now, I have been focussing on the day when I will see Jaana, my wife, next and that is at the end of month 3 at the Victoria falls, so this is a nice emotional bridge to April 15 when Jaana and I will rejoin. We have been happily married for 23 years soon and this is our longest ever time apart. I am very proud of the way Jaana has not only supported me in this trip but also participated every day in doing the blogs updates. I just send her the emails with the text and pictures, she does the blog updates and layout. It is a perfect team work, it has allowed us to be so efficient since it would be very difficult to update the blog directly from Africa with slow connections, but by proceeding this way, Jaana can benefit from our home super fast Internet once she has received the emails. So don't forget to compliment her as well, she has played a crucial role in keeping this blog interesting and updated regularly.

So today was our first bike donation day, and what a day it was! We gave out 60 bicycles to organizations scattered all around Kenya. The bikes are going to be delivered to these people by various means of transport, small trucks and even bush taxis. Some representatives of the organisations benefiting from the donations were present and it was very moving to hear them telling us in simple words what an impact these bicycles have had on their communities. These donations have become an integrated part of TDA and by now, they have achieved amazing results already.

One woman stood up in front of the TDA group and with a very shy voice told us how the 3 bikes they got last year had helped her community of HIV infected women to raise money. They use these 3 bikes to carry milk and vegetables that they grow to the nearest city where they sell their products. With this small income, they are able to look after themselves and their children. These women are rejected from society as is unfortunately often the case in Africa once their HIV status is made public and have no source of income or support from nowhere. They have decided to get together and fight back by becoming a small independent farming unit. But for that you need transport... and that is where our bike donation is so efficient. Last year 3 bikes have helped these women to survive and to look forward for another day. This year they will be getting 3 more bikes and will be able to grow their deliveries and maybe start improving their living conditions further. So guys, as I have repeatedly said before, this is the most efficient way to help, each one of you who have contributed to my fund raising initiative can be proud tonight. We really hit it on the spot with these bicycles.

A group of Masai women and children was also there to thank us and to entertain us as well. Many Masai people are also in need of assistance and in the southern parts of Kenya, these tribes are sometimes living in so remote areas that the only way to deliver any kind of medical support is with a bicycle. So the lady representative of the Masai explained how the TDA bikes had helped delivering health care and HIV information to such areas. She also thanked us the TDA participants to cross Kenya on our own bicycles and by doing so, changing the mentalities of people who tend to see bikes as the "vehicle of the poor".

The children sung and danced for us. I am always amazed at the natural ability of African people to dance in the most gracious way. It just flows and when you look at them, it feels so natural, so beautiful. Africa might be the poorest continent, but watching these beautiful children confirmed that it is definitely the richest in talent...

                                                 Gerard and me with the Masai women

                                 The Masais pierce their ears at an early age and enlarge the hole
                                 to fit all these decorations , men do it as well.

                             Gerard showing the pictures he just took to the delighted Masai woman.

                               Me symbolically handing one bike to the representatives of this
                               Masai tribe. The bikes will actually be delivered by truck in remote
                               areas of Southern Kenya to them later that afternoon.

                             This Masai woman leader came all the way from a remote area
                             of southern Kenya with 5 others to explain the impact that our
                             bike donations have had within their communities and to thank us
                             personally for that.

                     This lady brought some pictures to show us how her small community of HIV
                     affected women (herself included) were benefiting from the bicycles and how
                     they are using them to raise cash and fund schooling for their children.
                                                

                                                   Masai children performing a dance for us

                       We are giving away 60 bicycles here in Nairobi today. There will be a total of
                       over 350 bicycles given away this year as we make opur way to Cape Town.
                       I contributed to almost a third of that thanks to your support dear friends and
                       family! We can all be proud of that!

                        There are different models of bikes depending on the usage they are meant for.
                        Some bikes have a frame in front for inserting a rack, this will be for the
                        purpose of delivering medecines in remote areas for example, whilst others are
                        meant to transport people and have a strong rack at the back.

                                 This girl was the cutest of the group and very photogenic as well

                                             Young girls singing a Masai song while dancing.

                            The Masai children performing a dance in front of the TDA participants.

WHAT A SUPPRISE!!!!

Tonight the text will be sweet and short, very sweet. Gerald got a huge supprise this afternoon at the arrival of they camping site, his uncle Gerard from France game to visit him. Sacré Tonton!!! I knew about it and I had to find out where they will arrive this afternoon, so thanks to TDA organizers, I got the address from them and then I told Gerald that somebody from Alliance Francais Nairobi would like to come and meet him, so that's how I got the arrival time to the camp. He is so happy tonight to see a family face and on the t-Shirt that he is wearing are messages for him. His sister wrote all our messages on it. Thank you Nadège for that...

They have been enjoying a nice meal together and few beers. Tomorrow will be a rest day, but the first bike donation will be in the morning at the camping area. I think we all are looking forward for that.

CROSSING THE EQUATOR

Welcome to the southern hemisphere part of this trip! As planed, we crossed the equator at 7h45 this morning. The small rusted sign that marks the place is a bit disappointing, but so what, we crossed the equator riding our bikes since Cairo and that is legendary. This sign has been there for quite a few years and would probably need an upgrade at some stage... Just a little hint to the Kenyan government, especially when you see that every single tourist that passes by stops there for a photo... Many of us are equipped with GPS and we all could see on our maps that the sign is actually on the wrong place, it is a few hundred meters too much south... Our GPS are by far much more accurate than the the one they used when placing that sign... So, here is another hint to the Kenyan government...

The 105 km stage would have been a nice one if it wasn't for my prostate troubles. I unfortunately had to ride this whole stage standing on by bicycle as I could not really sit on my saddle. Riding a bicycle in such a way is highly inefficient and much slower. I made it last to camp tonight, but at least I made it and preserved my EFI. Not a nice day. Everything you do differently on the bike has its consequences. Riding such a long distance standing hurts the knees and I can feel it tonight. Having 6500 km left to ride, it is not a good idea to damage the knees.

We crossed very fertile lands today. It was beautiful, hilly, green, lush and just about every kind of fruit or vegetable grows here. We passed mango trees, avocado trees, paw paw plantation, banana plantations, rice plantations, maize, coffee, beans, roses, you name it, they grow it here. The soil seems very fertile, the temperature here is just perfect and there is no shortage of water. The traffic on the road also picked up tremendously as we approach Nairobi. It made some part of the riding unpleasant as some minibuses kept on flying by us without making any effort of leaving an extra space between us and them. At one stage, one of those minibuses almost hit me, so close he was, just because he wanted to pick up a passenger 50 meters ahead of me. I got so upset that I stopped next to him as he was busy boarding that passenger. I told him in very rude English what I thought of his driving skills. Mistake.... Big mistake... Mini bus drivers are notoriously aggressive and stupid, so imagine now, me a white guy tuning one of them in his own country... As I finished telling him what an ars hole he was, he pulled a big metal pipe out of his door and screamed at me "I kill you!"... This was the end of my 30 seconds of glory... I came back to some sense of survival as fast as I had lost it by going after this guy, jumped on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could. He chased me with his taxi and tried to hit me, but I was expecting that so I jumped into the ditch next to the road as he came at full speed from behind me. Another great reason to have a mountain bike. The incident raised my adrenaline levels to such a point that I picked up speed for the next 20 kilometers. I still made it to camp last as my technique of riding standing gave me no chance to keep up even with the slower riders. Actually the real slow riders are not even riding today..Some have gone straight to Nairobi. Using private transports while others got some lifts to camp from local people.

Camp tonight is a proper camp site, the best we have had so far, it even has a swimming pool and is standing next to a river where you can practise white river rafting.
Tomorrow is the long ride to Nairobi, long because it is complicated. There is a convoy half way through the ride and we also avoid the city by going around it to get to the Indaba camp site which is situated in the Karen area. This means we will ride 135 km to get there, despite the fact that Nairobi is only 95 km away...

                        Our best and most beautiful camp so far along a river, 100 km north of Nairobi.
                          
                                                      Signage along the road for ball pens

                                      I had to take a picture of this signage for our Finnish friends.
                                     Abloy is a Finnish company producing some of the best locks
                                     in the world known as far as remote villages in Kenya as you can see...

                                Everything grows here in these warm climate blessed with rich soils.
                                Here are some mango trees as well as avocado trees in the back.

                                                                         Paw paw tree

                               Cane chairs manufacturers along the road. The guy on the bicycle is
                               busy delivering the raw material, freshly cut cane.

                               7h45 a.m. on March 11, a great moment as I step into the southern
                                hemisphere. Cape Town is all downhill from here...

                            The entire TDA group stands together at the equator for the group photo.

MUD, MOUNT KENYA AND MY NEW RELATIONSHIP

At kilometer 480, the ordeal was over. The Chinese are building at lightening speed a magnificent large paved highway and suddenly it felt like being upgraded from cattle class to first class on a BA flight.... Speed picked up to over 30 km per hour... Yes, double digits and no more hammering on our buds or sliding in the mud. Ultimate luxury, we could now even take our eyes off the road and enjoy the scenery... Of course this all sounds great and great it was, but at the speed this road is being built, this legendary section of TDA is bound to become a walk in the park, just like we had in Northern Sudan. We are probably one of the last group to face the full size challenge, actually, we were given a 30 km discount as they have already paved the first 30 km north of Isiolo. Previous tours had that terrible road all the way to Isiolo. Well, we won't complain, we had such floods that it certainly made up for the missing 30 km...


Once on the paved road, things change completely, more traffic, more speed, more stress and you realise how different riding in the dirt is from riding on tarred roads. I had so many occasions to greed the local tribal people and make pictures on that dirt road, but once on the paved road, you fly and at 30 km per hour, you are in a bubble disconnecting somehow from the people who are walking along the road. You become more focused on traffic, a survival rule in Africa and less on the people. That's why I love mountain biking, you are somehow closer to the terrain you are crossing.

Camp was nice, there was a small 10 rooms hotel where the fastest riders got the rooms and we could therefore have access to showers. They also had a small bar serving delicious cold beer. I saw a big barbecue and inquired at the kitchen of the hotel if they could cook us some goat meat for the evening. Of course all is possible in Africa and after some negotiations with the chef, we agreed that he would grill us 10 portions of goat meat accompanied by 10 plates of french fries and some tomato salad and samosas. I organised a small table to be set apart from the group as I noticed that most riders were already seriously intoxicated by the very cheap Kenyan beer and brandy. I was so hungry that I first thought of sharing this with only 3 other riders, eventually there was so much meat that we invited one more at our table. It was our first real big meat dish since we started this tour 2 months ago. It looked like a scene from an Asterix comic book. Shiny bones were littering the table top while the enormous plate of grilled meat was struggling to shrink. I am sure we had almost an entire goat here. And the 10 fries portions were meant for hungry cyclist.As for the samosas there were so many that David and Adam took the left overs as doggy bags. But we ate it all, the 5 of us, every piece of meat, every french fries and probably used 2 liters of ketchup as well...

Having eaten so little meat for so long, my stomach did remind me that night that I had overdone it a bit, but all stayed in and my rebuild body mass plan had now begun. It started again pouring with rain at about 5h00 am, just before any of us would wake up giving the ones in the tents no brake from the rain. It rained so heavily that water started flowing into my tent from underneath. Everything I have in that tent, except for the electronic bag which is well waterproofed was by now wet or soaked or muddy. I tried to start packing in an order of most important first. But the monsoon rain would not stop, so once again this week, I had to pack my tent under torrential downpour. It makes it a bit tricky as the tent poles tend to stick to the canvass and it hard to dismantle. The canvass itself just blows up as it gets wet and getting that into the tent bag is the next challenge. The Red clay mud that stick to the bottom of the tent is then splashed all over the tent top and sides. You already know it is not gonna be a pretty sight tonight when reopening this bag...

I had another bad surprise this morning. My prostate problems are back. I have a prostate inflammation and it is not going away. It is a difficult condition to treat as antibiotics have very low effect on the prostate.The last week of corrugated road and the riding in the water and humid conditions are the perfect factors for a prostatitis. So I need a special antibiotic for this. Luckily, at TDA the riders are full of resources. Gabriel happens to have a doctor friend and his girlfriend is joining us in Nairobi in 2 days. So he immediately sent her a text message and the latest news is that my special antibiotics are now on their way from Switzerland and will be hand delivered to me in Nairobi! Great! That's what I call making a plan....

There has been a considerable improvement in the level of education as we ride further south. From northern Sudan to southern Kenya, things are so different. People are a lot more business minded here. A good example are the coke stops. Here they realise that TDA riders mean money for them if we stop, so the many cold drink shops along the road have one of their guys standing on the road trying to get us to stop at their shop. Unfortunately not all is perfect and even the way the kids are begging along the road is a lot more sophisticated here. One thing that seem to be common across Africa is that the kids see us as ATM machines. The begging along the road is just everywhere. I had a really funny one two days ago. In northern Ethiopia the kids could hardly formulate a sentence in English and would just scream at us "Birr Birr" (the ethiopian currency). Further south, they would say "hey you you give me Birr" but in Kenya I had one kid walking straight at me and he said in the most impressive English "Hei you, give me all your money, right now!" We are not far from Somalia here, I wonder if he went to take some classes there, but it sounds like this young gentlemen is gonna be bad news a few years down the line...

Today we had a beautiful ride, it was pleasant. Despite me not feeling well at all on the saddle with my prostate inflammation, I still enjoyed the ride. We are heading for Nairobi and between Solo and Nairobi is Mount Kenya, the second tallest peak in Africa standing at 5200 meters. This meant that we would have to ride around Mount Kenya and that leads to one word: climbing! We went back from the 600 meter desert altitude to well over 2500 meters today, but this was all rewarded in the early afternoon as the rain clouds opened up and Mount Kenya covered in snow suddenly appeared on the left hand side. Wao, what a beauty! We climbed for exactly 34 kilometers after leaving camp and then we went down for the next 46 kilometers with a nice warm tail wind... The only dangers were the huge pot holes all over the road and a couple of crazy Kenyan taxi drivers, but it was so much fun to free wheel for kilometers and kilometers along Mont Kenya.

3 years ago to the day, I was lying in a Johannesburg hospital having a new ceramic hip fitted.Hip replacement is one of the most common operation in the world with a 95 % success rate. Mine had to be replaced at the age of 42 because of a bone disease when I was a kid. But I am the living proof that you can have a perfectly normal life with a hip protease. After going through the lava rock desert and hammering my hip for hundreds of kilometers, I am amazed at what a good job the South African doctors have done. It changed my life as I was under so much pain before I replaced it and it the best decision, I have ever taken.

So tonight we are sleeping exactly 3 kilometers from the equator still in the northern hemisphere. Tomorrow at exactly 7h45 local time the entire TDA will cross the equator together and there is gonna be celebrations and a million photos taken of course. We have passed the 5000 km mark already and Nairobi will be the half way point time wise. We will do more kilometers in the second half of the tour including some really long days with even over 200 kilometers in one case.

                                    Me at lunch today with Mount Kenya in the clouds behind.
                                   The white plastic green houses are flower farms, roses, proteas,
                                   etc. that make it up to Europe ovenight from Nairobi

                           At one stage the cloud cover opened up and there it was Mount Kenya,
                           the second highest peak in Africa culminating the equator at 5200 meters.

                                Clean toilets!!!! A great Unique Selling Proposition in Africa...

Kenyans are very talented with signage, they paint them on walls,

                                doors, shops, just about everywhere and some of of them are quite
                               amusing.

                                      This is taking my relationship with my bike to a new level.
                                      At home in Andorra, it slept with my bike in our bedroom,
                                      but now it  has made to the shower...

                                   Entire sections of road have been washed away by the floods
                                  and this mud is no fun to ride through. It is extremely slippery ans
                                  sticky as well.

                                Daniel at coke stop with the locals quite impressed by our journey
                                Here they know where Cairo is and appreciate what we have gone through.

                                 After a very painful 480 km of Northern Kenyan desert crossing,
                                 we reach the paved road that China is busy laying northwards. It is
                                 an impressive large and well built highway. Of course we are happy,
                                 very happy, suddenly our average speed explodes and our buds can
                                 now rest, but I also feel that once this section is fully paved to the
                                 Ethiopian border, TDA will never be the same again...

RAIN, RAIN, AND MUD

The local tribal woman wear these magnificent decorations around their necks and on their heads complimented with bright colour clothing. But it is so hard to have them accepting to be photographed. I had to try so many times before this group of 3 women finally accepted after much discussion and me trying to charm them.

There are two types of thunderstorms in Africa, the late afternoons one that usually last 1 or 2 hours and the late night, early morning storms that are the premise of a big humid front moving in and bringing big rains. So when I was woken up at 5h00 a.m. by lightning, I knew that this meant only one think, RAIN... I jumped out of my sleeping bag liner and immediately started packing my tent in the dark. Within 30 minute, hell broke loose on TDA camp site and I was one of the only few who made it dry... We were told when entering Kenya that this region was experiencing its worst drought in 10 years... Well, all they needed was me to arrive. I am quite famous for bringing extreme weathers where ever I go... Africa has always the same problem with water, it has either too little of it or too much. Today we were on the too much scenario... Far too much.... The storm literally dropped buckets loads of water on TDA with no place to hide. We all stood looking at each other hoping for this episode to end, but it did not, it got worst. Eventually within 15 minutes, we were all soaked and cold while the staff managed to put up one of the truck side covers acting like a giant umbrella where we could find some refuge from this downpour. Lightening was everywhere, hitting just above our heads. Some people found refuge under the trucks, but suddenly even there, water started flooding on the ground. By then breakfast plans had been abandoned and a big pot of boiled eggs was dropped on the ground by James the chef. This was all he could do as any kind of cooking was clearly impossible. The skies looked like things were not going to improve any time soon, so I decided to get going on my bike in the middle of this huge storm. There was nothing better I could think of. I was already completely soaked, and was now starting to get cold, so I thought that the only thing to do was to ride and get warmer. Many other riders followed that same strategy, while some just gave up and jumped on the trucks. This was a long, horrible day. The weather did not give us any brake until lunch time. It rained so heavily at times that I could hardly see where I was going. The road turned into something that felt at times like a river and at times like a giant wet sand pitch. On sand you have to spend at least twice the energy when pedaling, but on wet sand, you can add an extra 50%. Correction added to the challenge, at times it was ridiculous, you were either shaken like inside a tumble dryer or you were digging your front wheel into fat soft deep sand or you just hit water beds so deep you were almost swimming. Plenty of thorns carried by the water flowing through the roads added to the rider's misery and we all had a record number of punctures.It was a hard day, for us but also for our bikes. In Cairo, Kriss, the bike mechanic had told us that we should always avoid taking our bikes into the water and he recommended we always carry the bike over water... He he... Today, Kriss's talk was on our minds and it became the joke of the day... We would have carried our bikes the whole day, and even so, it rained so heavily that they would have been bathed anyway...


Tonight camp resemble a bike hospital after heavy fighting... The problem was that we are camping in the middle of the bush and there is no water available to wash ourselves or the bikes... So we used the muddy water from the potholes in front of camp... It is amazing how long 90 km can be when the conditions are so hard... Every 100 meters is hard and slow, so you almost don't want to look at the odometer, well actually, it is kind of useless as it is covered with mud and you can't read it...

We got a present from China at about 20 km from camp! Yes China! The Chinese are busy building a brand new tarred road and they have already built the base, so suddenly we were on good quality dirt without correction and raised above ground level so that water was not going through it. So this meant that our average speed exploded suddenly from 8 km per hour to 25... A welcome relief after so many hours in some of the toughest cycling conditions most of us had ever experienced.

Camp tonight is as bush camp as it gets, no cell phone reception, just the sounds of crickets, frogs and hyenas. Here in Kenya wild life roams freely, unlike in South Africa where it is restrained inside gated parks. Last night we had hyenas visiting our camp and this afternoon I kicked elephant dung out of the ground where I wanted to pitch my tent. Having a big tent is nice, at least they should not stumble on it...

Tomorrow we will be back on paved road and have successfully crossed this 500 km long desert stretch known to be the most difficult part of the tour. Now I understand why. I certainly did not expect so many different conditions from extreme heat to huge rain downpours, from lava rock to soft sands and so much correction, but this section has been fun to ride, and as Paul the race director told us, it is part of the legend of the tour. So completing this section is an achievement any rider can be proud of. Unfortunately, it seems that the Chinese plans to pave the roads all over Africa are going to change this and we might be one of the last TDA tour to enjoy it rough and untamed...

                                           Jason fixing a puncture between two rain downpours.

                                        TDA riders trying to find a dry spot from the thunderstorm

                                           Lanie found this "dry space" underneath the truck

                                             Hell braking loose on us as we were waking up.
                                             Breakfast turned into a flood survival operation.

                                      I stopped in the only small village we crossed today in this
                                     deserted region and immediately became the number one
                                     attraction for the kids.

                                                      Jethro fixing his punctured tubes

                                      The only water available at camp to wash ourselves and
                                      the bikes is the one on the road.... Still better than nothing...

                                                       Rod and Juliana cleaning their bikes

                                                       Bike shop is very busy tonight...

                                       Washing yourself with one 750 ml water bottle is not easy,
                                        but we have become quite good at it...

                              This is how camp looks like tonight, full of dirty dismanteled bicycles...

                                     Jos and me at arrival after what will be one of the toughest
                                     day of the tour (yet another one...)