listen to africa

Resting by a shop near Kenitra, North-West Morocco. © Listen to Africa

What with working on all the new sound recordings, I’ve run out of time to write a proper blog, so I’m just going to hit you with a series of impressions – pretty much as they hit me when our ferry pulled into Tangier and we pedalled into Africa.

Heat, dust, horns, potholes. Smells of ripe food, rubbish and the sea. Which side of the road are they driving on? (The middle?)

Children clap, shout, jump into the road as we pass; one throws himself on Huw’s bike. Teenagers shout “Bon voyage!” Groups of young women cheer us on, with extra whoops and laughs when I’m in front.

Outside Tangier, we’re pedalling alongside long, empty beaches in the late afternoon sun. I hear an eerie wailing behind me: Huw is singing. We both have huge beams on our faces: we’re in Africa. And there’s that strange, pleasant feeling of dislocation: we’re in Africa?

We stop at a supermarket. I have no idea why we have to show our passports to shop but we do, and the clerk seems to find it as amusing as we do. We keep grinning like buffoons.

We see our first camel. Peanut sellers and orange juice pressers sit by the roadside. Occasionally, a family sheltering under a tree calls out and invites us to join them for food. Every now and then – in a neat reversal of convention – a local takes a photo of us on their mobile phone as we cycle by.

One day we pedal through a festival. It’s May 1st, and thousands of people are walking into town, clapping, singing, drumming. Another day, there’s a funeral: the traffic stops as a body wrapped in a blanket is carried along the main road in an open, pallet-like coffin.

Young people we speak to complain of unemployment. Occasionally, in towns, children throw things at us – several oranges, a few stones and one potato so far. Usually a young adult stops them before they hit their (large and slow moving) targets.

Barley, sugar cane, wheat, potato and sunflower fields are dotted with men and women in bright red, sombrero-style hats. White birds (ibises?) flock behind tractors as they turn up the soil.

One day, a pony pulling a cart slips on some spilt diesel, falls down and can’t get up. Huw is the first to reach the driver to help. Every single person that passes by – pedestrian, cyclist, car driver or lorry driver – stops until there are enough people to lift the pony back onto his feet. It’s done quickly, naturally and almost wordlessly, and everyone slips away without fuss afterwards. (A sad indictment on Western Europe that I find this worth mentioning?)

All day, trucks zoom past us, their height nearly doubled by their cargoes. The passengers sitting on top wave, call out, offer us lifts, ask for cigarettes. Boys chase open-sided sugar cane trucks, trying to steal the odd stick. If they’re lucky, the driver slows down just long enough to let them.

We suffer in the heat for the first few days. Huw gets an insect bite on his eyelid, and a haircut. I find a reddish, palm-sized spider on my knee. I realise I don’t trust things with eight legs that are red.

We eat tagine, kefta, merguez, chicken and chips and our first bit of ‘Laughing Cow’ cheese – a staple of Africa. ‘Bike Fridge’ (a wet sock, to wrap around drinks and cool them by evaporation) makes its first appearance.

In one campsite, we meet a Swiss couple travelling by camper van. They’ve done plenty of cycle touring in their lives, and have crossed the Sahara by four-wheel drive. We talk about Africa, bikes, the Sahara and wildlife recordings. Understanding exactly what we miss, they give us their table and chairs for the evening and we luxuriate in the comfort.

Nearing Rabat, we pass the capital’s botanical gardens and decide to sit out the heat of the day in there, surrounded by birdsong. We reach Rabat, buy visas for Mauritania and get ready to pedal south again, Sahara-wards, just in time for high summer…