The Third World as seen from the saddle

My lockdown just got a whole bunch longer. I bust my bike and am now confined to Root Canal, my dreaded stationary bike, for the rest of lockdown. Forty minutes on Root Canal drags on for bloody hours. And it gets worse. I get to watch Jenny’s cooking channel whilst pedaling on the bloody thing, which is pain on top of pain. Alas. Here’s how I bust my bike. To break the monotony of a long Easter weekend in lockdown, I threw down the Great Garden Challenge gauntlet to the other Old Legs, a 20 km endurance event to be staged entirely in one’s back garden. Only Adam picked up the gauntlet but he cheated with a back garden that is acres and acres big, with two Zebras running around in it, to keep him awake.

I plotted a challenging 180-metre single track course around the garden, and rode around it 113 times, according to my Garmin watch that is. The people at Strava only credited me with 106 laps, leading me to believe they nodded off. My track was quite technical in places, especially through some thick bushes, one of which had thorns. There was also a viscous little climb, between the front door and the car port that I hadn’t previously noticed. Wallace my wingman was very excited, for the first two laps, especially when we rode up to the gate twice, but then he got the opposite of excited, when we didn’t ride through the gate and turned around instead. Manfully, he stuck with me for just one more lap and then he went back to the veranda and fell asleep, disgusted. I think he thinks I was teasing him.

I did the first 10 laps clockwise. To mix it up, I did the next 10 laps anti-clockwise. And so on, and so on, and so on for the next 2 hours. Stop start sprint over 180 meters and 28 hairpin bends turned out to be actually quite exciting, sort of like Formula One, but without the speed, the noise or the excitement. Apart from when I had a head-on encounter with some of Jenny’s chickens, intent on playing chicken. And then there was the lap when I hurtled around a blind corner, hurtle reads better than rode, almost straight into one of Chuck’s landmines that hadn’t been there on the previous lap. Some background on Chuck landmines. He is a big dog. And one minute he is full of shit, and then next minute he isn’t. Suffice to say dog waste removal duties in our garden are considered hard labour. Chuck’s poohs are why things like face masks were invented in the first place and you can’t be messing about with them on a bicycle, especially after he ate Jenny’s pin cushion. Alas. The only evasive action open to me was through a thorn bush. So, it was a no brainer, and through the thorn bush I went.

But for the rest, the same lap 113 times over and over is actually quite boring. Until the very last lap. Very cruelly, just 30 metres from the finish lines, for some reason best known only to Mark Johnson who sold me the bike, my back derailleur malfunctioned severely and got jammed in my back spokes, bringing proceedings and my bike and me to an abrupt halt. Well me not so much because I carried on for a little bit through the air. Luckily the ground broke my fall and I wasn’t hurt, apart from a jagged wound through my heart, when Jenny laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And even worse, she was able to capture the crash on video, allowing her to play it back over and over, so she could laugh some more. Oh, what fun she had. For the record, I am appalled at how slow breakneck speed looks on film. My derailleur is irreparable, even for an Allan Wilson boy, and now I’m stuck on my stationary bike for the duration of lockdown, until my replacement derailleur arrives from the Netherlands. Alas.

I worry that the isolation is getting to Jenny. She’s laughing a lot at things she is not supposed to laugh at. She was in the kitchen just after my not very horrific bike crash, cooking up a batch of her world-famous smoked chilli sauce when Daniel snuck into the kitchen to see what titbits he could pinch. He has an appetite marginally bigger than Chuck’s. Mistaking them for chocolate brownies, I’m not sure how, Dan surreptitiously popped one of Jenny’s recently smoked whole chillies in his mouth while she wasn’t watching. Jenny caught him in the act of chewing and accused him of pinching food. But Dan put on his best poker face and maintained his innocence. Poker faces and surreptitious are very hard acts to pull off when the inside of your mouth is tracking at three hundred degrees Celsius and it looks like someone turned a shower on inside your head. Whence upon Jenny laughed and laughed and then laughed some more. And then just this morning, when Jenny mistakenly brushed the dogs teeth, we’ve had a bad case of dead rat breath, using my tooth brush, just before I performed my morning ablutions, she laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Wallace and I are close, but not that close. But I must admit, hearing Jenny laugh at things she shouldn’t laugh at makes a pleasant change to 3 weeks of listening to talking heads on C.N.N. talking doom and gloom.

The number of confirmed Coronavirus cases around the world continues to spike horribly, we’re now up past 2 million, with a third of those in the U.S. The world remains divided on strategy, a herd immunity strategy like Sweden with businesses, bars and restaurants still open versus total lockdown like most of the rest of the World. Botswana are the bosses of self-flagellation with closed borders for 6 months and no booze. When eventually they get out of lockdown, I can see lots of illegal Botswanans illegally immigrating to Sweden. Churches and mosques in Tanzania are still open to full congregations, their bulldozer President has labelled the virus satanic and says the more people inside churches praying for it to go away, the better. North Korea have still got a clean sheet, thanks to their "strict top-class emergency anti-epidemic measures, consistency and compulsoriness in the nationwide protective measures”, which work a treat against Coronavirus, but not so much against pneumonia. To prove he can multi-task, Kim has also stepped up cruise missile testing. The anti-epidemic measures, consistency and compulsoriness in South Korea are obviously not as top-class because they’ve got the virus but have managed to deep their death toll under 1 percent by testing, testing, testing.

Zimbabwe is also getting busy. Yesterday, they tested 28 people countrywide, bringing the grand total of tests to date to 716. They also received 30 John Deere tractors this week, with another 1270 tractors on the way, to replace the last lot of free tractors they dished out to new farmers, which are now all broken. Not to point fingers at the Chinese, but the last lot of freebie tractors were made in China. And as part of the 40th Independence Celebrations, the government also opened a new multi-million-dollar Ministry of Information Call Centre that will keep Zimbabweans informed, although they haven’t told us yet whether our lockdown is going to be extended for another three weeks, the day after tomorrow. But we do know that the 2020 Independence Celebrations have been themed “Defining a decade towards 2030.” I think it’s a good theme, succinct, to the point and without any mention of compulsoriness. Government is also going to provide doctors and nurses in government hospitals with personal protective equipment like masks, because the High Court says they have to. And in other news, our annual rate inflation has almost reached 1000 percent and I saw an 8 kg packet of dog food in a supermarket that cost $2114.

In the vacuum spawned by no sport and absolutely zero other news, the world has gone bonkers. There almost as many conspiracy theories out there as there are people drinking shot glasses full of raw eggs, brown sugar and booze. So far, me, Mark Johnson and Dave Whitehead have manned up to the egg, sugar and booze challenge, Dave without a safety helmet on I might add, but Hans Steenberghe, Adam Selby and Bruce Fivaz are dithering. In England they’re blaming 5G towers for Coronavirus and burning them. In South Africa stupid people are burning schools, mostly probably because they want other people to also be stupid and bottle stores are getting looted by those who got caught with their pants down by the no booze in lockdown rule. Botswana beware There will be some big resets post Coronavirus. If I was a Chinese takeaway owner, I’d learn Thai and rebrand. After years of headlining on Chinese menus, hopefully pangolins will be able to sleep more easy at night going forward, ditto bats, rhinos, civet cats, snakes, elephants, lions, tigers, etc, etc, etc. For the first time in thirty years, people living in cities in the north of India can see the Himalayas when they look out. Almost as standout by Zimbabwe standards, for the first time in more than a year, I haven’t had a power cut in a week, and I was able to drive into a fuel station and buy fuel. And for the first time in more than ten years, there are more working traffic lights in Harare than broken ones, why I am not sure.

Hopefully more of all of that sort of stuff going forward.With regards personal resets, I haven’t missed sport on television at all, apart from the Giro d'Italia, and Liverpool winning the League, and Zimbabwe winning the Cricket Over 50’s World Cup, and the All Blacks period. And I’m also thinking it would be nice to able to fix broken things on my bike in future, but maybe not derailleurs just yet. I’ll leave them for after the next pandemic. We’re having to reset the Old Legs Tour. Our route will have to change because Botswana borders are closed for 6 months, we’ll have to re-route over the Vic Falls Bridge into Zambia, which will be epic, and then ride west for 224 kms as far as Katima Mulilo on roads described as abysmal. We worry about the support vehicles and trailers, more than riders on bicycles. But for sure it will add to the adventure. If our departure date is delayed by more than 2 weeks, I also worry that some riders will have to pull out of the Tour completely, because of business and family commitments. Alas.

Thankfully we’ve been kept busy during lockdown, delivering food and masks. We’ve finished delivering masks to Harare’s old age homes and we will shift supply to the Bulawayo homes from today onwards. And the 3000 surgical masks donated by Global Sourcing Services in Australia have made it as far Bahrain, awaiting the next scheduled movement. I think deep down, Carl Wilson is dreading the end of lockdown, because he is so loving looking after his group of pensioners, and also because I’ve told him he is in line for a big hug from me, as soon as all this social distancing crap is behind us. Carl is a Cape Epic rider and would rather a firm handshake, but I’ve told him bummer dude, you’re getting a hug. And whilst on the subject of getting hugs, I’m just finding out that favourable book reviews are almost up there with getting hugs from granddaughters. I got such a kick this week when I read 5 Star reviews for Running Dogs and Rose’s Children on Amazon from people I’ve never met.

Jean in Australia described it as a fabulous engaging story told with humour and love. She loved it from beginning to end. While Nick in the UK said it was a must-read for all those who know Zimbabwe...and for those who don't. He said the book had him in tears...of laughter...and sadness. Staring at empty computer screens aside, I am enjoying trying to be an author and am currently a third of the way through my first novel ‘War and other social diseases- a love story, sort of.’ Watch this space.

Until my next blog, survive and enjoy if you can

Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.

Photos below- bad news in amongst all the virus headlines, fake news or a broken promise, and my Garden Challenge track.