Central Africa Republic (CAR) Claude Marthaler left his native Switzerland in March 1994 with a plan to cycle around the world. His journey has taken him through East Europe, the Baltic States, India and Nepal (he loves mountains!), China, Japan and from the northern-most point of North America through the length of South America. He is now travelling north through Africa on his way home. Claude rides under no fixed itinerary or schedule. His mission was simply to travel the world, and to meet people along the way - something made easy by cycling. In a series of letters to Travel Africa readers, Claude is sharing his thoughts on the African continent and its people as he progresses through his unusual African safari. This is his fourth such letter, covering his journey from April to July 2000.

As usual throughout Africa, the UN, NGOs, embassies, presidential palaces, freshly painted buildings and shining 4x4s created brutal contrasts within Bangui. Parts of it looked hit by a hurricane. Glass-less windows, missing roofs and blackened infrastructure bore testimony to three military insurrections.

For two weeks I wrote and rebuilt my health. The capital was a tourist desert. In the basketball stadium that Bokassa erected for his self-coronation as Emperor in 1976, no seats remained. Students were revising for exams "because here it's silent". They showed me a wall with the imprint of the golden eagle from Bokassa's throne. Nearby, I found its skeleton, symbolising the landlocked, ruined Republic itself - a rusted eagle, too heavy to fly.

The Ubangui river overlooked the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose equatorial forest and ongoing war increased my sense of oppression. I felt inexplicably claustrophobic, trapped by the dark, horizon-free forest. It was time to go. I left the pretentious "kilometer 0", the centre of Bangui, where everything officially began.

In Songho language one uses "thank you!" to reply to "hello!" so with a simple "thank you" you can't go wrong. I drank tea with a grandmother who'd never seen a tea bag. Our common vocabulary was limited to "Bonjour" and "Merci". We laughed together. I felt a simple cup of tea was sometimes worth an entire alphabet.

Cameroon

In the neglected office at Cameroon's border post, I woke a policeman from deep sleep beside his Suzuki motorbike. He was silent, astonished by my bicycle, noting my details with a calligrapher's dedication. Silence in a monastery feels appropriate, but in a police station it's unnerving. Surprisingly, he returned my passport with a smile, congratulating me: "It's a long journey, you're strong!"

It was 40 °C on the road. Music poured from shops on Garoua Boulai's main (and only) street. I heard a strange, aggressive sound: motors, rare in the gigantic rainforest. The flotilla of Cameroonian motorbike-taxis was comforting, closer to my perception of life. When I drank a soda to celebrate my border-crossing, villagers encircled me. A rider shouted mockingly "Hey, villagers!" I later learned that "villager" meant an uneducated person!

Migrating Peuls from the Sahel, with massive jewellery, intensely coloured clothes and fine bodies accustomed to walking, invaded local maize fields with their herds. Escaping the unbearable heat and the harshness of African life, I rested like a king in the Protestant mission, with lawns, church, swimming pool, school, cosy villas and hospital.

My worst enemy was invisible and defiant: wind. The sun made the patches on my inner tubes unglue regularly. Below numerous rivers' bridges, smashed vehicles rusted in ravines. I often heard: "Look, a white!" Skin colour still interferes in the slightest transaction between races, mostly in a financial way: whites pay more.

During one of my frequent rehydration stops, a Cameroonian summarised my trip: "Crazy". He was probably right and momentarily, I panicked.

"An African couldn't do that," he continued. "Why not?" "Too attached to his family, doesn't want to suffer, and what for? It's a white's thing, like Christopher Columbus. Africa is an extended family."

I bought kilos of strong, dark honey - excellent riding-fuel. Honey-hunters use traditional techniques, as the French National Geographic photographer Gilles Nicollet explained to me: "Bee hunters climb trees, smoke the nest, then cover it with mud to asphyxiate the bees. They return later, when the bees are stoned."

After twenty years, Gilles doesn't want to go home. Through his enthusiastic eyes Africa remains a huge, uncontrolled continent with total freedom of movement - paradise for his work. I was extremely happy to meet him: National Geographic had supported my childhood dreams.

Approaching the Nigerian border, I encountered a joyful group of teenage cyclists carrying huge empty yellow jerry cans. Nicknamed "The people of the forty" (after their biggest forty litre jerry can), they were fuel smugglers.

The bustling border post had tiny shops, pots of rice and meat in restaurants, active money-changers and numerous kids killing time. Smugglers drove Peugeot 504s packed with jerry cans, mattresses or powdered milk. The police turned a blind eye: these jobless people were not dangerous.

Nigeria

In Maiduguri women swept an infinite four-lane boulevard; men repainted the street markings by hand. Waves of plastic bags covered channels of stagnant water. One totally naked rasta-style vagabond walked in the street, undisturbed by the dense traffic. Fuel was sold everywhere: at numerous petrol-stations (often with miniature mosques, suggesting drivers could refuel spiritually while their cars did materially), but also in soda bottles or jerry cans.

The facts are inescapable: one out of six Africans is Nigerian; the country is as rich as Kuwait in oil reserves; smuggling is a national sport.

At a family-owned restaurant, I escaped the unbearable sun and convulsive streets. The "quantity factor" of food was as important to me as to Africans. Forget culinary aesthetics or balanced diet: the stomach needed filling. Chilli sauce burned my throat: eating surely remains the most primitive but fastest way to travel. Nigeria invaded me, outside and within, reminding me of India with its inflated population, spicy food and conviviality.

Policemen patrolling against "highway robbers" often stopped me for a chat. Drivers of taxis, minibuses and the suspiciously larger number of Mercedes greeted me with lights and hands. Greetings are essential in Africa, even if no conversation follows. Cyclists, like presidents, are the most greeted people on the continent.

In Damaturu, at a typical African hotel (packed benches, low beer-laden tables), loud music made conversation difficult, but with the Nigerians' warm welcome, speaking was unnecessary: I received numerous free sodas.

In the cities, people spoke fluent English, but surprisingly little had penetrated the countryside. Jailed between walls of bodies and curious eyes, then shown to a village chief, I sometimes felt like an Indian presented as a curious specimen to Elizabeth I. One morning, State TV appeared, followed closely by the security police, wandering why a white man was spying on a bike.

Nigerians were experiencing nightly power cuts, nicknaming their National Power Agency "Never Power Again". At night, my fan often stopped and I sweated hard. During daytime, my tyre patches unglued. Children bathed, cows and zebus drank from stagnant water pockets. Rivers had imprinted snake-like curves last year, but now water was absent from the dried landscape. My rear derailleur almost broke. I suddenly felt very remote, the emptiness of the semi-desert Sahel producing an unbearable solitude.

"Mister Claude!" yelled two thousand students of Potiskum's College of Agriculture, mobbing me. Excessively joyous, they'd seen me on TV. In six years of riding, I'd never felt so popular!

To counter loneliness and to read European news, I visited French schools or a Centre Culturel Français, present throughout Africa. In Kano, the director of L'Alliance Française, living with two monkeys, showed me streets full of open-air bars with prostitutes and Muslim extremists chasing them away. Northern Nigeria is an historic crossroads between the Sahara and the Gold Coast, with a strong Islamic influence.

A national strike took place against President Obasanjo's decision to increase fuel prices by fifty percent. Vehicles queued by the few open petrol pumps, whose owners - good businessmen but unfair citizens - often sold fuel for triple the former price. Many tricks were used: fuel was mixed with water or diesel; plastic jerry cans marked "25 ltr" contained only 20; the interior of cans was welded, keeping them half empty.

Divided between north and south, Nigeria's social situation was as volatile as fuel, mixing oil and religion in the fight for political power. With my tank needing only food for energy, I was happy to ride away.

Niger

Arriving in Niger, I slept at the police station. During the night, a sandstorm brought in the policemen who had been watching a kung fu video on the verandah.

From an ocean of bushes, marked only by radio antennas and windowless mud houses, the Sahel became a green garden. One villager checked his watch against the time on my speedometer. He knew nothing about Switzerland. I showed him the word "Suisse" written on every Nescafé box, the powder used innumerable times a day and served with bread. He couldn't read it - just as I was ignorant about cultivating sorghum or maize.

Over coffee, he asked why his tiny village was on my map "but not Suisseland?" I explained that my country was outside Africa. He understood adding "Is Suisseland in America, Asia or Europe?"

I soon realised that Africans believed Suisseland's ambassadors worldwide would welcome me into their residences and give me money. Surely I had assistance, a sponsor covering my journey's expenses, a reward? European notions of dedication, idealism and sacrifices were alien, impossible to grasp. Useless, because they brought no profit.

An official convoy of shining Mercedes and Peugeots whizzed past, red lights flashing and horns blaring. I rode on and the police stopped me: "In Niger, you can't pass a convoy!"

An advert proclaimed: "All Nigerians are under the same law". In fact, it was a continent-wide law of power abuse. In Birni-Nkonni, a "big man" with a "big car" said he often went to Switzerland to deposit money. He was Senegalese and rich, describing Switzerland as "extremely clean and meticulously accurate, separate from the world".

Throughout West Africa, men loved betting on French horse races, and dreamt about earning millions of CFA francs. Beer fuelled their fantastic expectations. Children sent into town by their parents, to attend Koran schools or beg for food, constantly asked me: Cadeau! (Gift!). A teacher told me that the rich Paris-Dakar rally, its advertising caravan distributing caps and stickers, generated these expectations.

In Niamey, camels magnificently ignored speed and traffic. I resolved to stop always for camels, but never for official convoys. I left one day after Libya's President Ghadaffi, visiting the region for an OAU summit in Togo. Ironically, the self-proclaimed "Guide of the world Islamic revolution" was campaigning in pure American style, an almost religious cult of personality.

Burkina Faso

From the border to Ouagadougou, every town had a freshly-painted Arc de Triomphe welcoming Ghadaffi. Children and villagers were bussed-in to line main roads, waiting in the sun for his arrival.

At a tea stall a day later, the radio reported Ghadaffi's departure. He'd pledged to finance a four-lane boulevard leading to "Ouaga 2000", worth five billion CFA francs. "Ouaga 2000" was Ouagadougou's future: a huge, megalomaniac government complex. Another dedication to inefficiency and vacuity financed by the West.

A teacher told me "African Unity is held together only by rubber". Indeed: tyres and inner tubes were used for patches; to hold anything on racks or trucks; to carry water; to manufacture sandals or bags; to chase birds, to attach a plough to zebus; for children's swings and clothes racks, or to hit a recalcitrant donkey.

Shortly after Niamey, my derailleur broke completely. I pedalled 500km to Ouagadougou with a single gear, appreciating the Sahel's flat landscape so much I almost forgot its monotony.

I met Eric, a Swiss hydrologist supervising the digging of 500 boreholes, horrified by the absence of Burkinabe estimates for how long the water would last. Then came Dayamba, a local travelling by bicycle. It was over 40 °C, but he wore jeans, sunglasses, hat and leather shoes. He looked American, but his mountain-bike ("Made in Nigeria") quickly betrayed his image. I was soon repairing his bottom bracket. Having never met any African long-distance cyclists, I was glad to encourage him, but after only 50km, even by "sucking" my wheels, Dayamba stopped for no apparent reason and took the bus.

Often, I slept in courtyards beneath my mosquito net. Staying with a family in Koupéla, I woke with the sun and the muezzin. The young father prayed eastwards towards Mecca, but his rasta-like brother listened to Bob Marley, despite Islamic prohibitions of music during prayers. The father practised body-building, like many young Africans. Both wore jeans, shiny leather shoes and jackets: Harlem-inspired Africans.

We went to the market for coffee and French baguettes, common throughout West Africa. Stretched between tradition and modernity, village and city lifestyles, I wondered how long rubber will hold Africa together.

Claude Marthaler, Ouagadougou, Burkina-Faso, 108,000km

Published in Travel Africa Edition Thirteen: Autumn 2000 Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)