This is a guest post from Claire Le Hur who is cycling to China with her fiancé Stuart Block. The couple will start their journey in East Africa where they will follow new ‘silk roads’ charting the journey of key natural resources as part of an exciting new education project. Claire will be riding a bamboo bike, built by an African social enterprise and Stuart will ride a tandem, keeping the back seat free for those they meet en route. They will also be raising money and awareness for two great educational charities. Find out more about Claire’s big adventure here.
On Sunday, September 13, we left Kampala accompanied by the Kampala Group of Bikers (KGB), a talented bamboo bike maker called Kasoma, and his apprentice, Khalid. It was a pleasure to finally meet Kasoma, and for him to see me ride the beautiful bike he made me through Kampala. It wasn’t the nicest ride out of the city, mainly due to the huge number of heavy trucks passing by but we were soon back out on the open country road. Every hill we went up had a similar length descent which meant my legs got chance to rest. My kind of hills!
Me meeting Kasoma
We ended up as a core group of five cycling to Namagumo, a village near Masaka just South of the equator and 130km from Kampala.
At the Equator
As we ate our lunch we heard shouts of ‘Mzungu, Mzungu’ and ‘How are you?’ and people slowed down to take our photograph. When we started cycling again children would chase us along the roads.
Children running alongside us
We stayed two nights with John-Paul Rutagarama, or JP as we’ve come to know him. JP is an agriculture student in Kampala and he’s also the keeper of his grandfathers’ beautiful house in the hills above Masaka. This stop came about following a serendipitous encounter that Stu had last term at his school. One day he was having lunch with Michael, a supply teacher, and they were discussing our trip when Michael said he has a grandson in Kampala who would be happy to host us – it was JP!
JP took the back seat of Stu’s tandem (Thandie!) and we rode around local villages like Villa Maria, which is houses the oldest church in Uganda and a school that Michael is funding. Heading off the beaten track caused quite a stir; the children we met looked terrified. JP explained that we are possibly the first white people they’ve ever seen which was amazing given we we were just 10km from the main road.
Stu, JP and Khalid cycling around the banana plantations
The school built by Michael: the children loved staring at us while sheltering from the rain!
During dinner with JP we discovered that the heir to the throne is half Rwandan so conversation turned to relationships between Rwanda and Uganda. It turned out that JP and Khalid both have Rwandan roots. JP was born there, lived through the genocide in 1994 genocide and moved to live with the Ugandan side of his family in 1996 to seek a better and safer future. Sadly his father was poisoned in 1998 – they still don’t know why. His uncle (JB Rutagarama) worked as a translator for journalists in the refugee camps and then moved to the USA and made the famous film Back Home telling the story of his return to Rwanda to find his family after the genocide.
When we entered Rwanda a few days later, I thought back to these conversations many times. At the border was a poster advertising a $5,000,000 reward for information about perpetrators still at large. Then in Kigali we visited the moving genocide memorial museum and burial ground. Here we found JP’s relatives on the wall of names – three Rutagaramas were among the 250,000 buried at this site, around one quarter of the estimated one million Tutsis killed in 100 days in 1994.
The wall of names in the memorial
Stuart and I then continued South West with Khalid as our guide. Khalid is just 16 and wants to be a professional cyclist. “My dream is to cycle and win the World Championships, but a good bike will cost at least $500 and then I need the racing components. I come south to the hills to train as much as possible. I keep chickens and sell the eggs and also work for Kasoma when I am not in school to try to save money. I am staying at school so that if I cannot get sponsorship I can become and accountant. But this would not be my dream.”
En route we visited two schools and Stuart even taught some economic lessons. At the first school, West College, Mbarara, we camped in the headmaster’s garden. The students were so excited to see us. It was as if celebrities had arrived and they all rushed to shake our hands. We’d arrived in the middle of one of their mock O-Level examinations but we were still welcomed in.
Then we headed south to Kabale. Here the hills were tough but although it was hard work, the scenery more than made up for it. At one point the heavens opened, as they do most days here, so we took shelter at the top of the mountain as descending in the rain, at dusk dark would have been too dangerous. I’ve been surprised by how quickly darkness falls here, being so close to the equator.
At the end of a long day we were lucky enough to spend two nights in Khalid’s childhood home – his Grandfather’s house. It turned out that his grandfather was buried in the garden but it is still very much his house, as he explained: “My grandfather owned all the land here but my uncles sold it off and so we are left with just this house now… my three aunts, two uncles and their families live here and although my mum lives in Kampala, they still keep her room. My uncles have sold so much but we don’t know where the money has gone.” Stuart and I slept in his mother’s room and we really appreciated the family’s generous hospitality. They even boiled water so we could shower. We stood in the corner of the house courtyard in the dark pouring water over each other hoping Khalid aunts would not come out of their rooms!
Khalid in his home
We had a well deserved rest day in Kabale and met Khalid’s cousin, Mohammed Ali, who is, of course, a boxer! His father, Khalid’s uncle was the national champion boxers his day and Mohammed is trying to follow in his footsteps.
Khalid and Mohammed: ‘Strong arms and strong legs; boxer and cyclist’.
Then it was the final leg to Kigali. Khalid and Mohammed escorted us as far as the border. It was a mission trying to get across but we made it! We waved emotional goodbyes to our young guide with promises to keep in touch. He is a young man who will surely succeed if he if given the chance. It must only be a matter of time before a black African gets worldwide recognition in cycling… who knows, maybe Khalid will be the first.
We had one lovely long climb, with some super fit children running up faster than I was cycling and then it was freewheeling (or should have been if it were not for the headwind) all the way to Kigali.
Children chasing me up the hill
Our first impressions of Rwanda: absolutely beautiful! Very green, very hilly and so clean, tidy and quiet… it was actually quite unnerving to have people just walk over and stare, without the usual cries of ‘Mzungu, Mzungu’! For now we’re planning a few days rest days before heading north again to visit Team Rwanda at their cycling compound in Musanze and hopefully pop into Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
You can read more about our big cycling adventure in my next post on Tuesday, November 10.
Johanna in her studio
