Round Africa with a Surfboard

[garnaro]

In 5 days I'm headed across Europe and down the west coast of Africa.

Awhile back I go the idea into my head to strap a surfboard to my motorcycle and ride around looking for waves.



After a fair bit of fiddling and research, a more solid plan formed to tackle Africa. On September 30th 2013, I fly from California to London to meet my beloved DR650. I'd like to circumnavigate the continent in about a year or so, in search of good waves and good times. Route will be something like this:



The plan is to take about 8 months riding from London to Cape Town and if all goes well enough, carry on up the east coast, give the surfboard away to some kid in Tanzania, run up Kilimanjaro, cross the Middle east, and back to Europe. Maybe another 6 months for the return.

This is me:



I'm 37, working as an environmental scientist in Santa Cruz, California mostly trying to solve water pollution problems. I've felt overdue for a trip like this for a long time now. During the past few years, I got myself a bike, learned to ride it on the road and in the dirt, bolted tons of crap to it, learned how to fix as much stuff as possible, lurked on the HUBB, watched Mondo Enduro at least 23 times, and set off on a few short motosurf adventures along the California and Baja coasts (see bugsonmyboard.org).




Bike modifications completed, bike shipped, carnet acquired, vaccinations done, stuff sold, job quit, sanity checked, friends shocked, girlfriend kissed goodbye. Ready to move into my motorbike.



Stay tuned for updates...

[troos]

Looking forward to your updates

[The Cameraman]

Hi There,

of all the mental things I've ever heard of, on a bike, this one takes the biscuit!

So am I looking forward to any updates - You bet I am!

This should be a laugh, I hope you've shipped out the board with your bike or will you take it as hand luggage?

Regards

Reggie

[RTWbyBIKE.com]

Great stuff! Want to fo0llow this, GOOD LUCK!!!

If you cross through Germany (don´t know exactly where I will be but...) give me a PM!

Cheers

[garnaro]

Thanks guys, I'm stoked. Should be a laugh and a half.

I'll carry the board with me on the flight. Bike just got unloaded from the container in the UK! Hope that all is right with her when I turn up..

[garnaro]

In 4 days I fly to London, collect my motorbike, and point her south towards Africa. During the month before I sent loaded her onto the boat, I fussed neurotically about every mechanical detail, piece of gear, tool, and spare bolt that I might send her off with.<!--more--> At one stage I found myself lying in my driveway at midnight with two piles of bolts in front of me trying to decide which ones to bring and which to leave behind. This did not feel like normal behavior.

Nobody puts baby in the corner. Time for a moto makeover.







No matter how much you may plan not to ride in the dark, some times you just get caught doing exactly that. An LID headlight that puts out 1000 lumens should make it a bit safer when it happens.

Its amazing how the adjustment of just a few inches of plastic can have on your comfort level.






I slid all over the place in the mud in baja leading to less that graceful dismounts. I'd rather not repeat the performance somewhere in the middle of the Congo, but also need tires that can last a good distance rather than wear down quickly like knobbies do. I'm hoping that the Mefo Explorers prove a decent compromise between traction and durability.

Fresh drivetrain for a weary girl





I've run out of gas enough times to decide that I don't really like pushing my motorcycle for miles on end. A 5.5 gallon Acerbis tank should help reduce the problem.

Essential storage for items to keep Dyna running her best.





I broke some bits off in Baja that required some welding to reattach. I reinforced had all of the brackets on the frame that hold the exhaust and my toolbox.

Along with new heavier straight rate fork springs, Dyna got a fresh shock rebuild with a Race Tech gold valve installed to improve damping performance over the bumps and lumps.



An extended fuel screw provides easy adjustment of the air fuel mixture in the carburetor at anytime. It comes in very handy when gaining or dumping lots of altitude quickly.



I built a set of mini jumper cables with 10 gauge wire that live under the seat. Just in case...



Tappy valves are happy valves. Keep her tappy, keep her classy.



Scrub the Wyoming dust out of that carby..




She's Serengeti ready

[bdog1]

Epic report! Thx for sharing. Great photography too.


Sent by wing, prayer & ATT

[benniontour]

Awesome trip!!
Love your way of writing and your eye for great pictures!

I'll follow this thread. Have safe trip and stay healthy!

[garnaro]

Some of the most stoked surfers I’ve ever met are here at Bureh beach at the south end of Sierra Leone's Freetown peninsula. They have the bare minimum needed to surf, yet their enthusiasm for sliding on waves is undaunted and they are in the water anytime a ridable wave presents itself. They share waves, rip turns, switch stance, fall off, and shout for each other. Being in the water with these guys reminds me of learning to surf with my friends when I was 13 years old. There is no fighting for waves and no egos on display, only the stoke of learning something new every time they get in the ocean.





Sierra Leone was ripped apart during bloody civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002 well known for atrocities committed by rebel armies with large contingents of child soldiers and funded by the country’s productive diamond mines. For many in the developed world, the war in Sierra Leone entered into popular consciousness as the backdrop to the 2006 film ‘Blood Diamond’. The reality of war left a third of the population displaced, 50,000 dead, many more seriously injured or maimed. Operation ‘No Living Thing’ laid waste to Freetown. Doesn’t exactly sound like a place that you’d want to visit, right? However, this bloody episode in recent history stands in sharp contrast to what you find as a visitor to Sierra Leone. While the people and places still bear the scars of the conflict, I couldn’t imagine a friendlier, more welcoming place. Sierra Leone is now peaceful, and the economy is on the rise as people begin to discover what a great place it is to invest and to visit.








An Irish surfer named Shane O’Connor living in Freetown recently helped the local surfers start the Bureh Beach Surf Club. With his help, they are promoting surfing in Sierra Leone, training new surfers, and run a restaurant and some bungalows on the beach. As a non-profit, community-based organization, a cornerstone of the club’s business model is to use their natural resources in a sustainable way to the betterment of the entire Bureh community.









Bureh beach itself is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, with a turquoise meandering river emptying to the ocean near a rocky headland that tiny Bureh village sits upon, flanked by steep jungle covered hills. The river bar creates a pretty consistent left-hand wave and some rights that pop up here and there. The water is the absolute perfect temperature – cool enough to be refreshing, but you never get cold even after hours out in your boardshorts.





The guys here live like some romantic vision of the surfer lifestyle in California in the 1950’s. They sleep on the beach and cook communal meals together. For two weeks, I’ve made my home on their beach and shared meals with the Bureh beach surfers. They are the most welcoming surfers I’ve ever met. What little they have, they share with me and I feel honored to be their guest. The spirit of surfing is alive and well in this remote corner of West Africa and it humbles me to find it here.



Money earned by the club goes to purchase communal surfing equipment, upgrade the facilities, provides meals for the surfers working there, and into Bureh Village. They make most of what they need with simple hand tools.



Part of what they earn goes to supporting the 30 or so orphan kids in the village, many of whom lost their parents during the civil war. Seven thousand Leones (about $1.60) for each of them provides transport to and from the closest school and lunch 5 days a week. On Wednesdays and Fridays all the kids from the village come down to play and have some surf training. The beach is filled with little ones running about, dancing, singing and surfing. The energy on the beach on these days is truly joyful.






Grommets in flight:



Meet KK, the first female surfer in Sierra Leone:





This simple, slow living comes with some real hardship. The club has no electricity and there is one well with a hand pump for water. Meals are basic, consisting of mostly rice with a sauce of casaba leaf and minced fish. The cooks bring out a massive plate of the dish du jour and a pile of hungry surfers dig in.





There is nowhere to buy surfboards, leashes, or even wax in Sierra Leone and most of their equipment is delivered personally by traveling surfers from the UK and Europe. When everyone wants to surf, they take turns trading off boards. When their boards are damaged, they have no way to repair them. I spent an afternoon in Freetown looking anywhere and everywhere for some fiberglass cloth and polyester resin to no avail. Most people had no idea what I was talking about as all of the small boats here are made from wood rather than fiberglass. I added my board to the communal stock during my stay.





Shortly before I arrived, they made a trip to a left-hand pointbreak. It was the first time any of them had surfed anywhere besides their home beach, which is to say that it was the first time anyone in Sierra Leone had surfed anywhere besides Bureh beach, since they are the only surfers here. Welcome to the surfing frontier of West Africa.





Check out the Bureh Beach Surf Club on their facebook site. Donations to the club go directly to supporting a surfing community with very little means. If you happen to be traveling to Sierra Leone, bring a surfboard or a leash, or even just some surf wax!

[garnaro]

While surfing at Bureh Beach on the south end of the Freetown Peninsula I met a Spaniard named Coco who is building schools in the remote Wara Wara mountains of Sierra Leone. He invited Tony and to come for a visit and we spent two days chasing Coco around on jungle tracks getting to know the country and people of the region.





First, we had to get his extra bike running after it had been in hibernation for a few months, so Tony and I set to work checking for fuel, air, and spark. Soon enough, we had the Honda XL125 roaring back to life and ready to roll.





Well, almost ready to roll anyway. We made a quick stop at the local garage to replace the chain ring carrier rubbers and shock bushings that had disintegrated. While there we watched the guys in the most primitive of makeshift garages yank the engine out of another XL125, which are ubiquitous in the area, and have it half disassembled in about 20 minutes. They are fantastic mechanics who can bodge together about anything that you might need from what they have on hand. The parts we needed were made on the spot from scrap rubber.





The mechanics kids ran around the place and played with their toys. By toys, I mean greasy engine parts. They can probably already rebuild a carburetor.





Midway through the morning Tony’s rear tire punctured. After patching the tube, the tire was incredibly difficult to get back onto the rim. Tires for small dirt bikes like this are usually fairly easy compared to the bigger bikes like my DR650. After much grunting, sweating, and knuckle bashing, we managed it, only to find that we’d pinched the tube with the irons in our struggle to coax the tire back onto the rim. We’d fairly mangled the tube so that it wasn’t patchable. Now we had a problem.






Coco and I set off to the next village 7 miles ahead in the blind hope of finding a tube and left Tony to contend with the heat and incessant flies. The flies were so bad that he lit a fire by the roadside, so that the smoke would keep them at bay.


As small as it was, the next village was actually the capital of the Wara Wara region, called Bafodia. Luck was with us: the single tube available in Bafodia would fit the tire. Everyone in town knew Coco from his work in the area, but they were curious about the other visitor on the big bike. There are generally no bikes bigger 150cc here, and so the DR650 always gets plenty of attention and praise from the locals. ‘This moto is strong” they proclaim. Inevitably followed by the offer, “We trade, ya?”






We returned to rescue Tony from the flies, put his bike back together and we were off again, riding deeper and deeper into the mountains. We bounced along two tracks winding through the jungle, small stream crossings, and steep rocky hill climbs. It’s no wonder Coco rides a motorbike everywhere, as crossing this terrain in a 4x4 truck would be terribly arduous. On a motorbike it's tiring, but really lots of fun. In fact, Coco’s ride to work is what most dirt riders in the US or Europe would seek to ride on weekends or longer off-road trips.









This is the old school building.



This is the new one.






I met loads of cute kids and make them giggle showing them photos of themselves.







Coco really knows how to work the people of the villages there. It would be impossible to do this work without a good understanding the culture here and a willingness to adjust plans accordingly. Everyone knows the man on the little dirt bike and shout 'Mr. Coco!' as we ride past and they project incredible warmth towards a visitor like me. Places like this are the heart of ‘Sweet Salone' as the locals affectionately refer to their country.





In a nearby village, building of the school was still in progress. Bricks were being formed, timber cut, and walls were coming up.









It takes a special type of person to do this job. Coco's work reminded me the story portrayed in the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea about an American who runs around building schools in rural Pakistan by sheer force of his own with no resources or experience to begin with. I watched Coco talk with the village councils, keep workers on task, and try to track down some bags of cement that had gone missing. He bargains for the price of materials like a local and holds everyone to account for what they are meant to deliver and keeps a positive tone throughout struggles. He acts like every dollar wasted is a dollar that the village kids miss out on. Because it is.





The people here live a simple but difficult existence and are vulnerable to disease and hunger. Some villages don’t have access to clean water. Back in California, I spent most of my working hours helping find solutions to water pollution problems. As important as those problems are, being able to work on them seems like pure luxury in comparison to the very basic need of having clean water to drink which many of these people simply don’t have.





We raced down from the mountains, eager to return to the town of Kabala for some dinner, but our bike problems weren’t finished yet for the day. Coco’s front sprocket retainer had failed, the sprocket came off and let his chain jump off of the chain ring. While we probably could have towed Coco’s bike back the 7 miles to Kabala there were a number of steep rocky sections that may have been tricky. Instead, we pushed his bike to the nearest village and met with the chief, who agreed to let us leave Coco’s bike at his place for the night.






Coco and I rode 2 up on my bike back to Kabala and returned the next morning with a new front sprocket. We repaired Coco’s bike and shot into the mountains for another round for the day. The days in these Wara Wara have been some of the most memorable of the entire trip so far.

[garnaro]

In a remote mountain village called Kakonso, I got a bit caught up in the moment and promised some really cute kids that I would have a well built for the school in their village, where they currently have no access to clean water.




Since I’m presently an unemployed surfer living in a tent, I’m not exactly in a position to be funding village infrastructure projects. So, I’ve shot my mouth off to feel like a hero and now I want you, the person reading this post to help bail me out. Sound fair?


See what I mean about the cuteness?





This is Coco. He's the Hero.





I met him surfing at Bureh Beach near Freetown, where told me about the schools he was building in the severely impoverished Wara Wara mountains and he convinced me to come for a visit. He operates the Wara Wara Community Schools Project on a shoestring, barely pulling a salary to bring the most bang for donors bucks to the people of this region.
There are all kinds of good ways to spend your hard earned cash, so I’ll give you a few reasons that you should use a bit of it here.


In 2013, the UN Human Development Index (HDI) ranked Sierra Leone 177 of 187 nations assessed. Sixty-three percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. The province of Wara Wara Bafodea is one of the country’s poorest – it makes the Freetown peninsula beach villages with their burgeoning tourist industry look well-off by comparison. Wara Wara province has about 30,000 inhabitants spread over some 150 villages, many of which are very difficult to access due to the steep mountainous terrain. Coco rides a 125cc dirt bike everywhere. There are no hospitals. Two nurses and one paramedic serve the entire area. Less than half of the the rural population of Sierra Leone has access to clean water and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die every year from a water related illnesses across the country.


The primary school enrollment rate is one of the lowest in Sierra Leone as the government fails to address existing schooling needs. This is what the Kakonso school was like before Coco arrived.





Now it looks like this.





People here live in a beautiful natural setting in very basic mud brick houses with thatched or corrugated tin roofs.





This is the water source for the school and in fact the entire village.





These are some of the kids who live here.








Their warmth completely disarmed me. If you were standing in the same spot as me, you might also have found it hard to simply walk away. It's likely that without a clean water source, some of the kids that live in Kakonso village will die of a water borne disease. But that doesn't have to happen. Let's help these people.


This is the spot in Kakonso village where we want to drill the well, just below the new school.





Once drilled, it will be sealed with a concrete cap and a high quality hand pump installed to and bring water from about 100 feet or so below the surface. It will provide clean water to the more than 400 people in and around Kakonso village.





It will cost $4500 dollars to build and maintain this well. I told Coco that I would have the funds for the well by the time I reach Cape Town in June, 2014, so time is short.


If you like reading this blog as much as I like writing it, you can ensure that it continues by not making me pay for this well myself! In return, I’ll provide images and updates from the people of the Kakonso village so that you can see first-hand the good that your hard earned cash has done.


Sold yet? Come on…. give 20 bucks. I’m just going to keep interrupting the moto and surfing stuff until you do, like a funding drive on NPR. I might even call you at home like Ira Glass does.


A few clicks can change these people's lives. Please go to bugsonmyboard.org to make donation via Paypal and be part of the team to help get this done. And leave a comment if you like, so we can all know who is making this happen.


I'll keep this post at the top of the blog and update regularly with our progress.

[B1ke]

Hi Gary, just had a read of your latest posts. Looks and sounds great. We met you in Senegal at Zebrabar (we were on the strange tandem bicycle). Seems like an age ago. Safe travels.

Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk 2

[ridetheworld]

Oh dear threads like this do little to persaude me to stop travelling and get one of them "real jobs". Amazing stuff!!

[garnaro]

Originally Posted by B1ke

Hi Gary, just had a read of your latest posts. Looks and sounds great. We met you in Senegal at Zebrabar (we were on the strange tandem bicycle). Seems like an age ago. Safe travels.

Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk 2

Hey! Awesome to hear from you. I hope no more run-ins with trucks on the road for you two. I couldn't believe all of the bicylces when I got to the Gambia - I think bike projects like yours are having a big effect there! It does seem like a lifetime ago...

All the moto riders reading this if you think yourself a hardcore adventurer you should meet these two - England to the Gambia on a tandem bicycle!

[chris]

Originally Posted by garnaro

In 5 days I'm headed across Europe and down the west coast of Africa.


.............................



Stay tuned for updates...

What a great RR. Many thanks for sharing