Fundraising status: 5129,23€ or 45% reached, great to see that it is moving again! To highlight how important your support is, I can tell you that we discussed with a young lady in Chitimba and she told us that she could not go to school any more has her parents lost their jobs and are fighting for having enough food to feed their family and can therefore not pay any more the 80$ yearly tuition fees…80$ this is less than what many of us are spending on a simple pair of jeans but means a year of school here in Africa… Therefore feel free to participate to my fundraising, every amount is highly welcome, even the smallest one will help! Thanks a lot and If needed, the link is still here
Stage 57: Lilongwe to Chipata
KM: 153.05 km
HM: 779 m
Time: 4h48 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 5 + 1 sprite and a big bucket of ice cream
Strava link
Stage 58: Chipata to Petauke
KM: 175.26 km
HM: 1064 m
Time: 5h45 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 5
Strava link
And after a relaxing day in Lilongwe where I had the chance to buy a new cassette for my bike (most probably in gold if I look at the price) in the smallest bike shop I ever saw. It was time to sit again on the bike and ride towards our country n°7.
The first day of this tough section was not too hard with a rather flat and rolling 153 km between Malawi and Zambia. The scenery of that day was not special and the main events where the visit of a massive spider during our lunch time (I never saw such a big spider in my life) and a race that we had with some local riders. In regard to that, I can say that it is impressive to see that these guys tailed us for at least 10km on their old 1 gear heavy bike, quite often biking with flip flops or even barefoot! Respect to them, they are strong.
After these two major events ;-), we crossed the Zambian border (most probably the easiest border crossing we had so far) and started to enjoy the most beautiful road we had so far, thanks to the European union.
And after 4:48 of biking at an average speed of 32 km/h we reached the town of Chipata, where we managed to buy a new SIM card and eat a massive amount of ice cream (I’m going to like Zambia)
I started the second day with the same riders than the first one, meaning Baldr and Steve and as we went rather fast on the first one, Baldr stated that we should go for a recovery ride. I was definitely fine with this idea but something went wrong and the recovery ride changed quickly to a very challenging ride at high speed against crosswind. And as the landscape was not really interesting, we just went through these 175 km at an average speed of 30.5 km/h which is not what I call a recovery ride at all ,-). Therefore it is without saying that I was, at the end of that day slightly tired and enjoyed to the fullest the nice camping place we had by napping two hours in the afternoon.
Stage 59: Petauke to Luangwa bridge camp
KM: 172.02 km
HM: 1459 m
Time: 5h45 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4 + 3 very sweet undefined local soft drink
Strava link
Stage 60: Luangwa bridge camp to Jehova school camp
KM: 124.07 km
HM: 1738 m
Time: 5:22 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Litre of water: 5 + 2 Pineapple Juice (and a few beers…)
Strava link
Stage 61: Jehova school camp to Lusaka
KM: 103.1 km
HM: 830 m
Time: 4h00 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 3
Strava link
Third day of the section was again supposed to be kind of a recovery ride. And guess what, it failed again;-). After 80 km of unspectacular rolling hills that I rode again with Baldr and Steve at a very high speed, we reached our lunch break for some well deserved food. For the second part of the ride, Loraine and Alex decided to join our train and the five of us started to ride in a landscape which changed drastically as we went closer to the Luangwa river. Even if the ride was significantly harder due to the climbs and the heat (the temperature reached 42°) the beauty of the landscape kept us motivated. Our mian challenge on that afternoon was that there was no real coke stop and we found ourselves rather quickly out of water. Hopefully we found two very small local shops having a lot of alcohol (not very helpful) as well as some not very tasty super sweet local drinks that we almost enjoyed (and for the one asking the question, no they had no water). And after 172 km we finally reached our camp on the shore of the Luangwa river and Mozambique. Most probably the camp with the most amazing view we have had so far.
After three long days on the saddle, we were all looking forward for another challenging day but this time due to the climbing involved, 124 km only but 1738 hm, a walk in the park… I rode again with Baldr but we finally took a low pace (as if I would have been able to speed up…) and as the previous day, the beauty of the landscape we went through made it for the suffering of the climbs, what for a scenery ! On that day, we enjoyed a few stops and I made my longest coke stop ever which lasted for around 4 hours ;-). The reason is that we arrived just before our camp rather early at around 13:30 and as we knew that the camp was on a soccer field without shade, we decide to enjoy the shade of the local shop/bar. And as the local friendly young lady who was taking care of the place managed to bring a new batch of cold drinks (who said beers ;-)) and as Gerry came with some fresh peanuts we were doomed and therefore stayed there till 17:00 as we had to be in camp at 17:30 for the rider meeting. And we had the opportunity to discover the new Zambian Michael Jackson but I let you appreciate his performance
The fifth stage of this section started on my side with a very low motivation and very tired legs due to the last 4 days (the beers of the last coke stop might not have helped either…) and to be honest, my only aim was to be as early as possible in Lusaka to finally rest a bit. On that day I rode on my own and as I got taken over on a climb by a local guy on his 1 speed very heavy bike transporting 30 km of charcoal I realized that I was really tired and was definitely in need of a break ;-). Moreover as we arrived in Lusaka, I missed the flagging and went a few kilometres to far towards Lusaka. I therefore made a U-turn, came back and could enjoy the last 5 km of the day which were on an absolutely awful gravel road. Following what I heard from my fellow riders, we never sworn so much than on these horrendous last 5 km before our very nice camp based in the surrounding of Lusaka.
Education
As you do know, I use my tour d’Afrique to support a NGO named Lessons for life. I one question I heard a few time is why did I choose lessons for life and not another charity. And I want to use this blog post to explain a bit more the reasons of my choice.
The first reason is the following:
In 2014, I had the chance to climb the Kilimandjaro with my parents.
And as you might know, this experience is only possible with the support of local porters as they are the one bringing up tents, food and other essential items. And this guys are climbing the mountain with a more than basic equipment having up to 20 kg on their back day after day.
Among our porter was a young 22 years old guy named Joseph. Despite his very limited English and my even more limited Swahili, we get along quite well and stayed in touch through Facebook.
After some time and discussion Joseph asked if I could help him with a new backpack. As I do not wanted to send him any money, I sent him my old backpack (which was still in a very good condition), this did not costed me much (around 50€ thanks DHL..) but helped him a lot in his job as he is still using that bag on a daily basis 4 years later. As we kept on discussing it was clear to me that Joseph being without fanilly support (he is orphan) and having only his porter salary would never be in the position to improve his life by studying or improving his education as his only focus was to survive from on a daily basis
Therefore after some further discussion with him and feeling that he was really motivated for improving his condition, I decided to support his aim of being a guide and not any more a porter. The next steps was to support him with some English lessons and as he passed his English test brilliantly the next chapter was the guide school that I paid directly and that he finished brilliantly as well.
And now 4 years after we met and thanks to the improvement of his education, Joseph bought his own little house and is having a significantly better future than previously. It did not cost me a fortune but it changed his life perspective and it was absolutely amazing to meet him again in Arusha a few days ago
The second reasons is quite simply that I do believe that the only way to raise any poor population is through education.
Yes, there is many other needs in Africa: food, health, infrastructure are often missing and they need some support in that regard too.
But despite that I do believe that education is having the longest possible effect and can spread through the population too.
To make it more concrete you can see, on the left side, a few pictures I took in some schools in Malawi. Despite the high motivation of the kids to learn the availability of equipment is more than limited, no benches or chairs, a room for 70-100 kids, no boards to write and let us not even think about e-learning…
And the worse in all that is that these schools are already for kids which are “privileged” as the parents often need to pay a school fee (around 80$/year in some places in Malawi) which means that very poor parents will simply not send their kids to school as they cannot afford it!
And now I can only finish this “special topic” by reminding you that I make a fundraising for Lessons for life and that any amount is more than highly welcome. Thank you very much
And here we are, after 6944.1 km, 35337 hm and 273 hours and 50 minutes on the bike, the fourteenth section is over.
I’m still doing good, but this long section was very tiring and I’m therefore very much looking forward to the end of the next section and the 3 rest days we will have in Livingstone (Victoria Falls)