The Third World as seen from the saddle

I don’t get self-flagellation. It must hurt like hell and how can hurting yourself make you feel good? I’ve been watching the US self-flagellate at another level, because of George Floyd. I didn’t know George, but after 3 weeks of CNN headlining him, I’m sick of him, almost as sick as I am of coronavirus.

But before moving on, herewith my two-cents worth. Despite being a 5 times ex-con and a drug addict, George was by all accounts a likeable guy, unless of course you talk to the lady whose pregnant belly he stuck a gun to whilst robbing her, looking for money for drugs. For sure the cop shouldn’t have stood on George’s neck for 9 minutes when arresting him, but whether his death should inspire you to rush out and liberate a 42-inch television, often on the other side of the world, I don’t know so much. And on behalf of the pigeons of the world, what’s up with beating up on Christopher Columbus? Dead for 600 years, he had nothing to do with George’s death. Ditto Baden-Powell, ditto Winston Churchill. I come from a country where all pre-independence history didn’t happen, to the point where my old school honour boards all start at 1981. But you can’t paint over history.  I know we had Head Boys from Year Dot through to Seventy-Nine, ditto Captains of Rugby and Long Jump Champions, and men who were killed in action in the Bush War. And it is wrong to not remember them, and wrong to pretend they didn’t happen.

Carl Wilson flew over some of our 3200 km Lockdown Tour route last week, sort of like doing an aerial survey of the dental surgery the week before root canal. From a plane, the climb up the Chizarira Escarpment to our night stop overlooking the Mucheni Gorge looks enormous. I’m guessing from my saddle it will look even bigger. Currently, I am in a panic trying to get my head around riding up the Escarpment without jelly babies, especially the black ones which taste best, although the yellow ones, red ones, orange ones and green ones are also good, but not brown.

Because of a national stockout of gelatine, apparently the nation’s jelly baby manufacturers have ceased production, leaving strategic national levels close to zero. But before throwing myself off a low-level building, thankfully I suffer vertigo, I read the minutes of last week’s Cabinet Meeting to see how government intend solving the already loomed jelly baby disaster. But alas, jelly babies didn’t warrant a mention. Not a lot did. In a country where the fuel queues are longer than ever, I rode past one last week with fuel tankers stuck in it, where the price of a loaf of bread is now doubling every two weeks, where the black market currency rates are running fast like Usain Bolt, where ladies are abducted from police cells and tortured, beaten, sodomized and raped and then rearrested, the weightiest thing on the Cabinet minutes was the producer price for cotton. Alas. And possibly therein lies the root of all our problems. Instead of governing, instead of letting supply and demand dictate commodity prices for instance, we have a room full of Ministers deciding that already poorer than dirt farmers will be paid a pittance for their crops in a currency that will be worth less than half, the month after payday. The fiddling while Rome burns analogy comes to mind.

The logistics of our 3200 km 37-day Lockdown Tour are scary big, especially for me. I am the kind of camper who, when riding a camping edition of the 6-day 500 km Blue Cross event, remembered to pack my wife and granddaughter, but not the tent.

Now multiply the Blue Cross by 6, and with 4 in the support team, and 4 riders, all of whom will be burning calories equivalent to 16 cheeseburgers per day, apart from Carl who only eats broccoli, cauliflower and lettuces, and you’ll have an idea of our Lockdown Tour. But unlike on previous Tours where we knew we would ride past well stocked supermarkets every couple of hundred kilometres, on this Tour we ride through just 3 towns in 3200 kms where we can shop for essentials, like jelly babies, food, fuel, and cold beer but we worry that stock levels in the smaller centres will be even worse than Harare. So, what is a man to do? Too easy. You delegate to your wife, to Stu Chapman, to Vicky Bowen, to Mark Wilson and Carl Wilson, not related, and they make stuff happen.

They are all foragers extraordinaire and have unearthed this massive mountain of goodwill that is corporate Zimbabwe. As mentioned, fuel queues in Zimbabwe are long and full of fuel tankers, so huge thanks to Iona Fallon and her team at Strauss Logistics for sponsoring the fuel we’ll need to get our 2 Isuzu Double Max’s around Zimbabwe. And big thanks to Biddulphs for transporting the fuel to 6 resupply points around the country.

Thank you to Billy at Billy’s Meats and Glen at Supreme Butchery for best meat and best biltong ever. Because I am a good friend, I have agreed to eat Carl’s biltong for him. As partial payback, he can eat my lettuce.

Thank you to Jason and Dustin at Food Lover’s Honeydew for a hugely generous gift voucher. Man, but you guys have done us proud. I shopped for lentils and chickpeas and every other pulse imaginable today, Carl Wilson would have been proud, and had such fun doing it. What a nice shop.

Big thanks to Mike Boaler at J Mann for steel for our splendid Old Legs Stealth Bomber bike and luggage trailer. And big thanks to Zana at Dendairy for a mountain of milk, butter, yoghurt, and chocolate milk. Again, I’ll eat Carl’s share of the Dendairy products for him, but having run out of lettuce, he’ll owe me big for the favour.

And especially big thanks this week to Sean Lawler, Trish Hook and the team at Seapride Zimbabwe for storing our frozen meals at minus 40 and transporting them to our 6 resupply points. Jenny, Vicky, Stu, Tracy, Linda and friends have been flat out preparing delicious dinners for weeks. And also thank you to Seapride Zimbabwe for the eggs, wine and cheese. I worry that I will finish the Tour overweight.

That all of the above will happen seamlessly and like clockwork in a country with hyper-inflation, no fuel, no cash, no forex, no hope is testimony to the incredible resilience of Zimbabwe’s commerce and industry.

In other news, somehow Zim continues to dodge the coronavirus bullet with related deaths still on just 4. And in a rambling press conference last week, the Generals announced that they hadn’t planned another coup that wasn’t a coup, so ED can relax, unless of course the lower ranks didn’t get the memo. And apparently Kirsty Coventry, our Minister of Swimming has been gifted a farm previously gifted to Bob Mugabe’s nephew after being taken away from Bob Carey for being a white Zimbabwean.  If that’s not messed up and wrong, I don’t what is. We’re all waiting for Kirsty to tell us it ain’t so, but so far nothing. Alas. And if farm ownership is all to do with political patronage, better she also hope the coup rumours aren’t true.

We’re riding to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s beleaguered pensioners. Because the need on the ground is greater than ever, we are nearly doubling the length of our Lockdown Tour, from 3200 km to a whopping 5600 km!! How cool is this? The day after we arrive at Mt Nyangani on August 11th, the Zim team will hand over the relay baton to a South African  peloton gathered in Durban, headed up by Bruce Badger Fivaz, and including CJ Bradshaw, Dave and Dierdre Simpson and Ryan Moss. Unable to get across the border to join us on the Lockdown Tour, they are going to ride their own, 2400 km from Durban to Lambert’s Bay on the west coast, again to raise money for Zim pensioners. Their route is a monster with 4100 m of climb in the first 2 days, and includes the Hela Hela Pass, the Sani Pass, and Lesotho in winter, which is where small willys were invented. Ouch. Aged 74, Badger is proof that you are never too old to do epic. I am very bleak that because of coronavirus, I’m not riding the 2020 Old Legs Tour with Badger.

In closing, Jenny and I are very excited to share our adventure with my eldest son Gary who will be manning the cameras and the drone on the Zimbabwe Tour, while Ryan looks after the South African Tour. And thank you to all who shared their sore bottom remedies with me from afar. And also thank you to Leon and Lindy Snyman for the one and only pillow at the lunch table on Sunday. With your help and well wishes, my bottom is on the mend, thank you.

I’m cutting this blog short, possibly to watch rebellions on television.

Until next blog, enjoy, survive and pedal if you can.

Eric Chicken Legs de Jong

Photos below – extracts from the Lockdown Tour to come including the Chizarira escarpment, the Mucheni campsite and the Vic Falls, bigger and better than ever.