It’s been two months. I’m not yet settled. From Uganda’s airport at Entebbe I hopped to Nairobi then to Khartoum then Cairo. Egypt was funny.  A stew of ancient high culture peppered with moments of anarchy, beautiful crumbling buildings to riot police in black with shields and bats. I guess revolutions do that.  I took a train down to Luxor to see the ancient ruins at Thebes. They were neat. And on the way back, the train was delayed for eight hours because mobs were killing Coptic Christians over the train tracks. It was fascinating though.  They joked about who would be president and it was funny because no one has half a clue. I got seriously scammed and apparently that’s normal. A solider dragged me across Tahir Square for taking photos. Egypt,  intimidating, but also beautiful.

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Kapoeta, South Sudan. Never mind that half the building was blown out and the walls were peppered with bullet holes, we were lounging in the restaurant to the town’s finest hotel and we were going to enjoy ourselves. A couple more beers, then we would camp in a local businessman’s backyard. Before we could leave though, a man wearing a yellow Hawaiian shirt announced, “I am from the government. These two are my responsibility. Nothing bad will happen to them.” It was arranged that we would stay in the hotel. Awkward, but okay. Not okay, and way more awkward, two hours later Ben was at the bottom of a twenty foot hole screaming for help. read more…

From South Sudan, we traveled east, into Kenya. The border town is Lokichogio, nicknamed Loki. When things were at their worst in Sudan, the United Nations and dozens of NGOs were headquartered there to disseminate food, shelter and medical aid. Loki’s airport was said to be busier than Nairobi’s. It’s an ironic sad story, to Loki, peace brought an economic catastrophe. Most of the NGOs have left. The airport takes in but a couple flights.

Traditionally, the people of northern Kenya were pastoralists. Many still are. They are called the Turkana. It was not uncommon to see a man with a bow and arrows tending to his flock of goats. The women are bare-breasted with giant colorful rings around their necks. We were on shinny bicycles with a lithium powered water filter and a computer navigation system listening to satellites thousands of miles away. It was a contrast that escaped no one. They would beg for food, water, anything.

Desertification, high birth rates and economic opportunity are transforming their way of life. From Loki south there is one road. It is dotted with towns overflowing with migrants attempting to escape a rough life dependent on the whims of nature.  NGOs are omnipresent. Most vehicles are Land Cruisers, stamped Norwegian Relief Council, Caritas International, World Vision, etc. It’s something you see all too often in Africa, the hopes of whole towns pinned to the West’s charity.

it was baren.

the Turkana people are pastoralists, traditional to the t

a camel!!

often times towns are not electrified. it's like a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, but real.

Kakuma Refugee Camp

Turkana man, Kukuma, Kenya

restuarant, Kakuma, Kenya

it's dry season; the rivers are empty. they do not build bridges. the road ends, then restarts.

host, Kakuma

is he going to bar or to the butcher?

host family, Lodwar (note the satelite dish!)

downtown center to the provinical capital, Lodwar

chicks are so cute. then they turn into chickens.

it was really hot and really really sunny.

deserts are pretty, just bring enough water.

Most Africans have black skin. Mine is white. It’s a simple fact. I was taught that it was like how some have brown eyes and others blue or green, it doesn’t matter and you shouldn’t care. But here, they know better.

Muzungu! Muzungu! Bonjour Monsieur Munzungu! Kids run after us. They yell, they scream. White person! White person! Hello Mr. White Person! You hear it from cars, from passing trucks, young, old but especially the rural poor. Though they’re truly uneducated, maybe an eighth grade education, they know that the average white person has more money than the average black person. It’s a simple fact. You want to believe it doesn’t matter, but it does.

This once, I got a flat tire right outside a roadside village and everyone came out to watch, from little kids to the village drunks. These two, maybe 13 and 14, they wanted to help. And no doubt, they were better at patching inner tubes than me. Cool. He asked me where I was from. America. Ah! America, where everything is good. I didn’t know how to respond. We started inflating the patched tube but the valve blew out and the tire shriveled. Their faces dropped. They couldn’t help me and I wasn’t going to help them. One of the kids asked, in America, there are jobs? In America, you just go to school? And that, that just breaks your heart.
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Burundi rarely makes the news. It’s a nation about the size of Massachusetts, but with more people and extreme poverty. It’s the twin to Rwanda, same ethnic strife, Hutu vs Tutsi, same Belgian colonial legacy, but Burundi is poorer and more forgotten. In the entire country, we saw but one working traffic light. From the Tanzanian border, the road was dirt. Our hiking trails are in better condition. In Burundi, most children suffer from chronic malnutrition. I have never been in a land so poor.

People were surprised to see us. Outside of the capital, especially closer to Tanzania, people would cheer as we cycled by. It’s like we were famous, like we were world class cyclists, like we were doing something noteworthy and important. And in a sense, maybe, we were. One man told me that I was the first white person he’d seen outside a car. It was just incredible.

At every little town, a crowd would gather. Once, the police asked us to move because the crowd around us blocked the main intersection. They would stare and gawk and sometimes manage a few questions in English. They asked us where we were from. America. America! They asked us why we were in their village, their town, in Burundi. We come as tourists. Tourist? And they would shake their heads, like they knew what the word meant but they’d never seen one before.
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Bicycling through Africa, excluding the big cities, I can easily imagine myself in a classic Western film. The land is dusty, sun omnipresent, buildings stout, industry absent, law more a suggestion and at every turn there’s the palpable sense of both opportunity and danger. The highway is littered with the hulking remains of automobiles stripped to the frame. Subsistence farmers with goat powered carts trot along as a 2011 BMW whizzes by. The highway is sparse, uninterrupted but for potholes and the few occasional cows.
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