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 fifth such letter, covering his journey from July 11 to September 15, 2000.

Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou

At the first crossroads, a blue globe of the United Nations makes Ouagadougou feel "international", present on the world map. But soon, the contrast with the arrogant first-class avenue that leads to the presidential palace and carries half-broken, fully-packed Renault 4 bush-taxis zigzagging to avoid potholes, brings a more provincial and realistic picture of Burkina Faso.

Ouagadougou is very convivial, having a centre small enough to be crossed by foot, and hundreds of Maquis, cheap and popular family-owned restaurants where Burkinabés talk openly about music or politics. I stayed there for two weeks, sharing time with the local "cycling scene".

The Chief

The asphalt world finished in Ouhigouya, the last city before the Mali border. I went there to meet Nabo Guigma, the old and respected king of Yatenga. I entered his "palace", a simple but extended courtyard surrounded by a few mud houses. In Africa, richness is traditionally counted in possession of land and the number of wives, children and animals - not in golden candelabras.

After the usual greetings with him and a few of his grandsons sitting on the floor (even family members are not allowed to sit on the same level as the crown), my friends offered a French bottle of Pastis 51 to the Muslim king. He smiled. Knowing in advance what a VIP likes is essentially the preamble to any discussion.

When I asked him about the 1984-87 Sankara revolution, which destituted the traditional village chief's power, he said he had the right not to answer. "And what about the future then?" I added. "The future doesn't belong to me." Finally - and everybody was astonished - he let me sit beside him to take a picture.

On the Road

Numerous pockets of water were still not absorbed by the silent and muddy trail. I passed a rusty and broken sign: "Territoire de la Haute Volta", and remembered that contemporary African countries (if not their names themselves, always their borders) were a pure European product.

At the border post (an old barracks) the policeman let me go and wished me bonne route.

The ground became sandier with each kilometre, too dry to sustain mango trees. But there were Carités, green fruits the size of an egg and with a smooth consistency. There was also Wadwa: orange, with a hard shell and as big as a mango, a reservoir of vitamin C. As I rode, children stretched out their arms on both sides of the trail to sell Wadwa or chickens hanging by their feet. Others pulled captured lizards as a toy, playing less and trying harder to sell them the closer I approached.

Lonely baobabs broke the boring predictable straight line of the trail. During droughts, people open up the baobab's pods and grind the seeds to make what is known as "hunger flour". What appeared at first to me as worthless arid soil, slowly became a rich, sustainable biotope through the African's knowledge.

Cyclists' Meeting

On a continent three times the size of Europe, meeting other cyclists on the road is pure chance. Three Spanish cyclists slowed down. We approached a Dogon village, identified by its elevated grain reservoirs, and started to fill up our bottles, pushing energetically on the hand pump.

The chief of the village welcomed us warmly as we entered his courtyard. "Do you like chicken?" he asked. Chronically hungry, four cyclists could only say "Yes", but we felt sincerely honoured, knowing that the chicken, though always present in Africa, is the most expensive and appreciated food. One of his wives cut its throat then put it into boiling water to get rid of the feathers.

Pepe, Juli and Josechu cooked the chicken in the rest of the four litres of olive oil they had bought in Senegal, demonstrating once more that food habits, even for a traveller, are the ultimate cultural border among all. Candlelight and a deep sky pierced by luminous stars gave us such a timeless and spaceless sensation that we almost entered Mali without realising it. The customs officials were friendly and efficient. On a small monument was written: "To the martyrs and victims of the colonisation".

Mali

Le Pays Dogon

The modest Bandiagara range, though only a few hundred meters high, broke the vibrant horizon for the first time in months. The ungrateful trail became sand, pure sand. I celebrated my 40th birthday alone, in a deep anticlimax, pushing and pulling my bike for four hours to cover only 16km. At an age when men have a family anywhere in the world (in Africa, many children), I was wondering what exactly I was doing here. It was difficult to convince myself that doubts, which accompany any risk, are essential to any advancement.

The light was reflected violently by the sand. Some Malians, seeing me from far away, ran as fast as possible through it to ask me: "Tired?" a typically African indirect way to say something else, in this case to offer help - but only for money.

The sand gave place to stones and, to my surprise, the perception of distance changed dramatically. Up there and in the interstices of the cliffs, the Dogons had taken refuge, animists who had escaped the forces of Islam and slavery.

The rain fell down at once, heavily, and rivers flooded the road regularly. Sahel was no longer literally translated by "riverside", but transformed into a fully-wet sponge. Usually in most of Africa, domesticated animals move freely. Here, stone walls contained the animals. It gave a three-dimensional impression of solidity, of duration, like a cultural testimony of a civilisation, so absent in Africa.

Exhausted after a big effort, I disliked even more the children or adults asking me imperatively "Give me this!" - my water bottles, a Bic (now synonymous with "pen" throughout West Africa), a cigarette, money.

The Dogon had developed a unique civilisation in the Bandiagara cliffs. Once pursued by the Muslims, they had learned to chase the Toubabs ("the whites"), trying to transform their way of life. "If a tourist goes alone into forbidden places and gets caught, he would have to offer a sheep!" warned the young guides who had adopted western clothes and language.

A huge waterfall, which it was prohibited to approach, was a symbol of life dominating an unending semi-desert savannah.

I had both freedom and money, the Africans neither. To me money means nothing without freedom; to Africans freedom is abstract and means nothing without money (or at least symbols of money).

The 4200km-long River Niger was the last wall against desertification coming from the northern Sahara, and a way of communication during the rainy season. From the strength of the wind coming south, I easily imagined its vastness. Reaching the port of Mopti, the green curved rice fields took on an almost maritime appearance. Its mosque was dominated on one side by a lagoon. Here there were improvised shelters where everything was sold: pieces of salt, coffee, fresh goat's milk served in wide vegetable shells, motor oil and cigarettes. On the other side, pinasses, fine wooden boats overloaded with goods, brought fishes into the port.

Timbuktu

The trail to Timbuktu was impassable, so I embarked on a pinasse the same day. Three days later, I reached Korimé, the closest port to the mythical place. Kaboua, the former one, had already disappeared because of the desertification.

Even on the 9km stretch of asphalt to Timbuktu, there was a police checkpoint. "You come from Switzerland, but what are you looking for?" He pointed to the broken wall of his station, just behind him, and said "There is nothing here!"

I arrived at the Place de l'Indépendance, where a monument represents a man on a winged horse. It looked a bit like a mirror of myself. I met the guard of the Trésor Public (The National Bank). I asked if he had ever been afraid. He answered, smiling: "There is nothing!" At the police station, there was the same reaction: "We have no more entry tickets for the museum and the mosque; if you want a Timbuktu stamp, it costs 1000 CFA francs". I started to wonder what was left of the legendary crossroad, this tiny point on the world map, which has as many different spellings as means of transportation to reach it.

Timbuktu is divided between the worlds of the pirogue and the camel, illustrating on a smaller scale what, according to the geographer J. Weulersse, Africa is: "On one side, there is the desert where nothing is living, not even the vegetal; on the other side, the equatorial forest where nothing is living, only the vegetal".

This ancient crossroad of caravans and Islamic university centre (with its 333 saints) is 1500km from the ocean and 800km south of the Saharan gypsum and salt mines. Today, the town is no longer inaccessible, dangerous, or far away - an international airport will be operating in 2001.

Timbuktu, like Lhasa in Tibet or Samarkand in Uzbekistan, has known its glorious hours. The rush of explorers ("to be the first European to reach it", ironically a place inhabited for centuries), though alluring, has been nothing but innocent.After the pioneers Gordon Laing (1826) and René Cailler (1828), came the true "colonisers of the spirit": guides, travel agencies and journalists, who maintain a nostalgic 19th century approach to this symbol. They often evoked the "African flavour", taking care to never define it - Timbuktu is an untouchable myth.

As the day ends, the inhabitants walk onto their flat roofs to drink sweetened green tea and to eat some flat bread which cracks under the teeth - sand is everywhere. Killing time by watching people moving around while chatting and sharing tea (always offered) is part of the culture. Preparing tea in the Saharan style requires time and attention - to keep people together a bit longer. And because a tiny glass holds only a single mouthful, you have to drink three of them. As a saying goes: "The first tea, bitter as death, the second one, sweet as life, the third one sweetened as love".

The River Niger

The fourth class on the boat leaving Timbuktu is packed full with people lying on boards between transistors and braséros. A multitude of children circle their mothers, fat and protective, wearing magnificent coloured clothes. Among the noisy and voluminous chaos of people, animals and packages, women bring a kind of hope: peaceful, elegant, silent and dignified. People sleeping everywhere. In Africa, there is this incredible faculty to sleep anywhere, anytime and in any position. People going on greeting each other while walking in the opposite direction until far apart, to avoid any sign of impoliteness. People involved in close and animated conversations, maintaining eye contact to show their interest.

The boat docked in Diré. "Mamas" turned incredibly fat by richness arrived on board. They tried to betray the invisible sense of gravity, but slipped with their high heels on the wet narrow bridge. Their external voluminous size showed their importance, but their inner parallel transformation, lazy behaviour and poor health, was omitted without any concern. Young women were selling dried fish, beignets and sweet potatoes. Barefoot children, supple and curious, moved around, to play or to beg. Like fish in the River Niger, they swam into the chaotic flow of people and goods.

Suddenly a hospital bed being pushed by two men arrived incongruously on board. Then the driver of a small Renault car tried to come on board. Pushing like mad on the gas pedal, he was obviously not experienced, but eager to show his nouveau riche arrogance. A group of strong fishermen with a rural modesty and upper bodies shaped like local Rambos, lifted the front of the car. What through Europeans' eyes seems sometimes impossible without technical logistics is realised daily in Africa.

At nightfall the ship eventually left the port of Diré to join the central, deeper part of the River Niger. A typical rainy season tempest, violent, and sandy, moved the boat. Many passengers covered themselves with cotton sheets as a protection from mosquitoes - furtive images of a sea of corpses. African lethargy, which was all but a legend - like Timbuktu - needed much more to be disturbed. I started to wonder what.

Finally I slept alone in the dry first-class café - or so I thought. In the morning, it had been transformed spontaneously into a densely populated sleeping room for women and young children.

On the Road

Back in the saddle, I felt released. I wanted to pay for my breakfast in a tea stall, but the young owner refused: "It's mine, you deserve more than money. Riding the planet is not that easy! Money is nothing. Keep riding!"

African relationships are so "money-tarnished" that at first I couldn't believe it. I couldn't figure out either a strange billboard: "National Lottery: the fortune to the gamblers, the benefit to the Nation". I wondered if the notion of "development" was not precisely alien to Africa, because its basics are suffering and risk.

The radio was on, confirming my thoughts by mentioning the President's criminal behaviour. Though extremely popular,the Ivory Coast rebel reggae singer Alpha Blondy repeated his harsh but pertinent refrain: "The enemies of Africa are the Africans".

The Doctor

If Timbuktu is known through words, Djenné is known through its mosque, widely photographed and part of the UNESCO World Heritage. At night, the image of the town, multi-storey houses built entirely out of banco (mud, straw and water) takes a more realistic image of life.

I was sitting on the flat roof of a Malian doctor's house. Just across the narrow street, young children were repeating the verses of the Koran under candlelight. On another roof, TV was showing a Catholic church service, followed by a Protestant one. Here and there, one could hear energetic Zairian music. In the deep streets the children were dancing and playing. The full moon was dancing also, illuminating the human comedy.

The doctor was taking care of a French woman suffering from malaria. In Africa, there is no space for theory: bush medicine is unsentimental and pragmatic. He planted a nail with his shoe into the smooth mud wall and hung the infusion bottle (sometimes a mineral water one) with a plastic bag. Then he put the needle into her vein and regulated the flow of Quinimax, a strong drug. Malaria is still the sickness which kills the most humans in the world and especially in Africa - much more than Aids - and doesn't benefit from so much media coverage.

On the Road Again

Monsoon tempests are fantastic. They start with a strong wind. Within a few seconds the frightening lightning breaks all phone and electric connections and brings the village to darkness, sometimes for a long time over-illuminating the savannah in pure debauchery. Then the rain abounds like a release of tension, inundating the fields, washing over the trails, dripping noisily on the roofs, chasing humans into their houses. The next morning, intermittent rivers and lagoons appear as if by spontaneous generation; the sky is washed, cleaned, purified and the day is terribly hot.

This morning, along the road, someone had cut the throat of almost every animal with feet or wings: cows, pigs... chickens. Any speed bump was an opportunity for customs officials to harass the drivers. Villagers were selling roasted maize, fried meat, bananas, water flavoured with ginger, hot cups of green tea. With each arrival of a vehicle, they ran towards the open windows and doors to sell their produce.

The existence of a road had radically changed the village's life, boosting the micro-economy. Peuls women were selling hot milk and yoghurt in large vegetable shells, bottles of mineral water or jerry cans of motor oil. Luminously dressed with saturated coloured tissues and silver jewellery shining in the sun, they looked straight into my eyes, intensely; but their eyes remained to me a total enigma. I was perplexed, free to imagine anything coming from them. I was afraid that in one single moment my face would reveal the concentration of my lonely masculine journey's frustrations. The sun in zenith came right on time, just like a perfect excuse to remain even longer. I could have finished a full jerry can of milk but my thirst, not being of a climatic origin, was simply unquenchable.

The World Map

Along the road, villagers had set up chopped wood in piles. Fuel was sold from old transparent hand pumps screwed on top of canisters. Shops were selling Liberty cigarettes, peanuts roasted on fire, infinitesimal quantities of tea and sugar in tied-up plastic bags. There was a shortage of beer - until next Friday night. Customers were rare, people gathered around shops to avoid the sun and to chat. For a single cup of coffee they would stay all day long. Only local minibuses, music and radio stations were fighting the boredom.

The "African tam-tam" (efficient mouth to ear system) helps in any case to fight the government propaganda, censorship or simply the inefficient state-run system of communication. As a traveller I felt detached from international news, but very concerned about local news: would I be able to cross the next border?

More basic and frequent, the variation of road, food, sleep and love in quality and quantity changes the form of my mental approach. It is intricately a "respiratory geography" on the earth's skin, learned through the sweat of my pores. Cyclically, any sickness or major mechanical breakdown temporarily took away my moral, intellectual and panoramic world map (built by experience, reading and conversation).

Taking a rest under a tree, two Malians came out of a car. One of them asked to film me, the imminently exotic "White specimen by bike". "The White", as I was called throughout Africa, had different versions: in West Africa I became a Toubab (a deformation of Toubib, a French slang word for "physician"). I never really accepted it.

I said "yes". He gave me his business card and wrote his telephone number - "a mobile phone," he emphasised seriously. He was the receptionist in a luxury hotel in Bamako. They went back to their car and through the driver's window, he said: "Send me a postcard when you are back home!" I returned to my silent and splendid isolation (the next village was 50km away). I felt "openly ignored": To see someone and openly avoid him is a significant insult in Africa, but after all, we had never met before and driving a car allowed him logically to pass by. Without knowing it, he acted like an American. But despite all his attributes, a car, a video camera, western clothes and behaviour, he was definitely an African: "The stay of a tree trunk in water doesn't transform it into a crocodile" (Malian saying).

Bamako

I reached Bamako where Yvan, a friend of mine from Geneva working for the UNDP, received me warmly. For the first time in my journey, I felt totally understood, not only because of French, our common language, but mainly because of our similar backgrounds. Confronted daily with illiterate villagers, I was constantly missing the intense cultural life of a city in the West. I enjoyed cooking food, listening to music, reading a French newspaper and writing some articles to escape from the rough concrete African life. After some time, I urgently needed the "bushlife" again, wondering if one day I could really choose between the first and the second one. In ten days, I had seen almost nothing of the congested Bamako, but instead recharged my batteries.

The more I travelled, the more I felt my European, if not Swiss, roots.

Guinea

Heading south-west, the road imperceptibly left the Sahelian climatic zone to enter the coastal tropical one. An exuberant vegetation. While the children were bathing joyfully in new-born lagoons, inundated fields or parts of the road, their mothers, bent forward, washed their clothes. By counting them you could almost imagine the real size of a family, something like a minimum of six children.

At the Malian border post, the policemen were chatting under a tree. Their chief was reading Jeune Afrique, a Tunisian-based Africa-wide political weekly, quite critical. A TV set was set up in the dusty office. The picture of the president was missing, but this time I thought it was not a mistake.

I had no time to wonder about how Guineans would welcome me: an auspicious rain simply fell on my head, perfectly synchronised with an artificial borderline. The officer took note of my identity, but it was my body commanding me to lie down. Thus I immediately fell sleep on hard wooden planks. When I woke up (in a new country with a fresh eye) I felt safe and relaxed, though the painted portrait of the General with the caption "I swear Lansana Conté is a good president" put some doubts into my mind. Among the portraits of 17 African presidents that had dominated every border post or police station (sometimes even churches and shops), only Nelson Mandela had a smile.

The trail disappeared deep into water. I took off my sandals, fixed my two front bags on my handlebars and quietly followed Guinean farmers pushing their Peugeot bikes. There was not a single car around. The water stood higher than my wheels, but it was the only way to get across. From that precise point, Africa, known for its vastness, appeared even more vast and isolated from the rest of the world. I didn't have to force myself to believe intuitively, physically and literally that Africa was the cradle of humanity.

Chaos

Guinea, with its four very different climatic zones (mountainous, coastal, savannah and deep forest), offers certainly the most contrasting geography of the continent. As Sékou Touré used to describe it, "Guinea is a geological scandal, because all rivers meet here". But the country remains largely unknown by the outside world. Last year only 4000 people, mostly NGO staff and families, visited the country. In each village I stopped at floated the spectre of Sékou Touré, former dictator turned communist who had been in power from 1958 to 1984. Villagers were clearly afraid to speak. They said that at that time, someone, out of fear, would have already informed the police that a foreigner was around. Therefore crossing a country like Russia, China or Guinea automatically becomes a political act.

Local politicians welcomed me, offering me a roof and food. But asked what they think about the past, they contented themselves to say: "He was the man of all Guineans" like an emblematic figure, an unconscionable lively ghost. In the 1950s, Sékou Touré declared that "We prefer freedom in poverty to richness in slavery". A bit ashamed, but not surprised, a doctor showed me a newspaper where Guinea is reported to be 164th among 174 countries on the UN "IDH" indicator. A village chief even told me - and it was the only time in Africa I heard it - "Deep inside, Africans are sad, sad to be poor, but they will never show it. They will smile at your arrival". His words were sincere.

I reached the Fouta Jaloun range under a heavy rain. The very first real mountains since Mount Kenya, some eight months ago. From the grass fields with cows, the farms built by French colonisers, the "chanting" rivers emanated a kind of pastoral romanticism. I felt at home. In fact, I was simply in the so-called "Switzerland of Africa". People were also different, maintaining a strong spirit of independence towards Conakry.

In the city of Mamou, I met my Swiss friends Serge and Nicole Roetheli (Run For Kids: www.runforkids.org). They had left our native country on February 13, 2000. The real Forest Gump: accompanied by his wife on a motorbike, Serge had already run over 4600km across France, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Guinea.

Africans couldn't believe or understand that one could ride around the world. It was simply once more a "White man thing". But to run around the planet? And for charity? If a 40,000km marathon - one full turn of the earth - seemed totally abstract to them, five years on the road was perceived to be dangerous, useless and strange. To be able, by Internet, to fix an appointment in Africa between two world travellers was incomprehensible to them.

Serge and Nicole were perfectly organised, resembling the profile of the "techno-adventurer" of the 21st century. In contrast, I felt like a typical solitary 19th century traveller living on a tiny budget augmented by writings and spontaneous generosity. Spending time with villagers, with no deadline, trying to capture an atmosphere of a place with the risk of losing myself.

I reached the Atlantic Ocean in Conakry after 21,000km across Africa from Cape Town. For the first time in my journey, I was able to visualise precisely the remaining 7000km to reach Switzerland. The sudden foreseeable end of my journey slowed down my riding speed and altered my sense of observation, but Africa was Africa. Distance and time are essentially relative and a continent cannot be converted into mere kilometres.

A malaria crisis caught me in Conakry: I had not yet even started heading north. After all, a bike is a true time machine - fatal and slow. Africa, the "cradle of humanity", was leading me to Switzerland, my own one.

Claude Marthaler,

Published in Travel Africa Edition Fourteen: Winter 2000/2001 Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)