listen to africa

Sheer chaos. Every hour or two, the doorbell rings with someone delivering spare tyres, USB sticks, microphone leads, a new passport, rechargeable batteries, books about Africa. In between answering the door, tax returns are being filled out, dentist appointments met (three this week…), insurance bought, farewell lunches organised and tea chests packed.

Meanwhile, our untouched bikes are sitting quietly in the corner, looking all shiny and new. And ominous. Yep, with one week to go before we set off, a terrible realisation is starting to dawn on me: “cycling across Africa” actually means doing a bit of cycling.

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The Listen to Africa expedition sound equipment. © Listen to Africa

Update: For the latest on the audio equipment, including a six month review on how the kit has performed and why we’ve made some recent additions, please read the six month update.

I’d like to welcome you to the first in a series of audio equipment blogs. This is also a first for me, having never written a blog before. I usually plod away in the background in my own little technical world and leave others to communicate with the wider world, so please forgive me if I’m not conforming to the norms – I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it in time!

Because our expedition will pass through a myriad of environments – from the extreme heat and dust of the Sahara to the hot, humid tropical rainforests of Central Africa (not forgetting Europe in winter) – equipment choice hasn’t been easy. Everything is inevitably a compromise between quality and robustness. Travelling unsupported by bicycle, weight and bulk are also important factors. And, because we will often have no access to mains electricity, sometimes for extended periods, low power consumption is crucial.

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I’ve been procrastinating for days over writing this introduction; explaining what we’re doing means also having to explain why we’re doing it, which I find strangely tricky.

The ‘what’ is easy: Listen to Africa is a cycling expedition from the UK to southern Africa, leaving on March 5th 2009 and ending up in Namibia around 18 months later.

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It’s been a caffeine-crazed, pizza-fuelled month, but listentoafrica.com is finally ready for launch. It’s still very much in beta (we’re ironing out bugs and adding new functionality), so if you have any thoughts or notice any foibles, now would be an excellent time to let us know – please comment away.

I’ll introduce the Listen to Africa expedition soon (for now, have a look around the about section) but, while it’s fresh in my mind and because it’s been quite a journey in its own right, I thought I’d begin with an introduction to the website – not least because the website has been built on a free platform, using a free theme and free plugins, and I’d like to thank the developers and the community for building stuff that even a confirmed non-programmer like me can cajole into behaving like a website. So apologies to the non-techies.

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