1. Why I Love Africa
I’m riding my twenty-first-century-technology steed through an ancient landscape which is largely unspoilt by “civilisation”. Outcroppings of Dwyka Tillite remind me that there was a time, billions—perhaps trillions—of years ago, when the Karoo was glaciated. Awestruck, I reflect on the fact that my God is older, and bigger, than all of this. In fact, He caused it all to be made. I feel small and relatively young.
I turn a corner in the road, carefully controlling the slide in the mud, and I behold a very rural-looking lady with a baby tied on her back. As I approach her, she reaches under the blanket that holds the child in place, produces a mobile phone, and takes a picture of me! Ensconced in my full-face helmet, I laugh at the paradox—the rural lady with the modern cellphone--while regretting the way in which the helmet isolates me from other people. I wave a cheerful greeting, hoping to offset my threatening war-of-the-worlds appearance.
She waves back, smiling, as I disappear round another corner and back into the splendid isolation of my self-inflicted cloud of mud.
2. The Ubuntu of the Wilds
I was reminded again of the solidarity amongst bikers and of the concern for others that is exhibited by non-city people. On Good Friday, I stopped in Rawsonville to put on some additional warm clothes. While I was stopped, two people on off-road bikes slowed and yelled at me to check if all was well. The following day, another biker also signalled me when I was stopped, to see that I was OK.
Later, I stopped at the end of a gravel road in the middle of nowhere to take some photographs. A lady, driving alone in a 4x4, stopped, rolled down her window, and asked if I needed help.
On my return trip to Cape Town, I stopped at Dutoitskloof Lodge and tried to take a photograph of myself and Linny II, using the self-timer on my camera. While I was trying to balance the camera on a stone, a man laden with braai impedimenta asked if I‘d like him to take the picture. When I accepted, he dropped his wood, briquettes, grid, matches, fire-lighters, tongs, etc., and obliged.
It‘s nice to see that there is still some ubuntu left in the world. I hope that I behave in the same way.
3. The Life of a “Celebrity” Biker
While I was relaxing and having a drink at Ronnie's Sex Shop, near Barrydale, I amused myself by taking clandestine photographs of people who were openly taking pictures of my heavily-laden, mud-caked bike. I was surprised at how much interest it engendered. In the midst of my photographic session, a young man rushed up to me and said “Oom (“uncle”— an honourific way to greet an older man in Afrikaans), didn‘t I see Oom (re-use of the title in place of a personal pronoun denotes respect) on his motorbike on the dirt road up near the Cango Caves yesterday?” He seemed quite excited, as if he thought that he‘d seen Elvis or, perhaps, Madiba. When I said that it probably was me, he said that he had recognised the bike, and my big boots and blue denims. He then departed, rejoicing, to tell his envious family that I was, indeed, the person they had seen, and that he had spoken to me. Autographs, anybody?