On Monday May 10, the Globe and Mail’s world news site will be guest edited by a Kenyan blogger named Ory Okolloh. In the Globe’s words…

Ms. Okolloh has been invited to edit our world site in order to share with readers a view of Africa and African news not normally seen in Canada — “The Africa You Don’t Know.” We want to present our readers with a full experience of what the average news day looks like across the continent, featuring content from bloggers and smaller papers to mainstream media outlets.

I think what we are likely to find in Ms. Okolloh’s articles and links is a much wider variety of topics than what we are used to seeing coming out of Africa.

African bloggers have more on their minds then corruption, poverty, and war. These are certainly areas that are discussed often, but there is a lot of other things being said as well. There is everything from Tanzanian celebrity news on BongoCelebrity to internet trends and technologies on this Ghanaian blog.

You can find a whole range of African blogs on a variety of topics via sites that aggregate and rank the top African blogs. Two of the more popular ones are Afrigator and Global Voices Online, (the latter discussed previously here).

Spend some time visiting Africa on the web – you might be surprised what you find.

Flickr photo of Kenyan Ory Okolloh by Gregor Rohrig

Last week Toronto Mayoral candidate, Giorgio Mammoliti, announced that, if elected, he would introduce bicycle licensing as a way to help pay the cost of proposed new cycling lanes. This is an idea that has been raised before, and as the City of Toronto’s own website clearly states, ‘studies have concluded that licensing is not worth it.’

Besides this recent bicycle licensing idea, Mammoliti also proposed in 2007 that the army should be called in to the Jane and Finch community to curb gang violence. He also suggested a red light district on Toronto Island and a casino on the waterfront.

So the concept of licensing could simply be passed off as another outdated, off-the-wall idea, but Giorgio Mammoliti has been involved in provincial and municipal politics for two decades, and we should look at just how calculated this is.

Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail summed it up quite nicely last week. He asked, why were the candidates, like Mammoliti, spending so much time on the issues surrounding cycling?

Sad to say, the reasons are purely political. Our ranting candidates are trying to ride what they see as a wave of suburban anger over Mayor David Miller’s administration. For those who love to loathe Mr. Miller, bike lanes represent all the sins of an administration that favours pedal-happy downtowners over the ordinary guy fighting his way to work through traffic. They are nothing short of a conspiracy – the infamous “war on the car” – to rob motorists of their fundamental rights.

So if bicycle lanes are the sin, certainly bicycle licensing is redemption for the car driving citizens and a ticket into the Mayor’s office for Mammoliti?

I think Mr. Mammoliti knows that in practice bicycle licensing might be overly bureaucratic and may fail, but politically it reaches out to all those drivers that believe cyclists don’t contribute to the maintenance of the roadways, and that cycling infrastructure is detrimental to the majority automobile traffic. Dave Meslin puts some of these concerns to rest in his article last week at spacingtoronto.

If the average driver believes that cyclists have less right to be on the roads, then proposing bicycle licensing is appealing to every commuter who drives into the core of the city each day – and there are still many more of them than cyclists.

Certainly the idea of bicycle licensing may not by enough to get Giorgio Mammoliti elected, and licensing is likely not going to be put into effect even if he were elected. This idea, though, is enough to further the division between drivers and cyclists in the news instead of creating divisions – physical divisions in the form of cycling lanes – on the streets.

bicycle license photo by woody1778a

Upon arriving in Sudan a few weeks ago, a friend of mine joked that he had to travel halfway around the world to a country where the president is accused of war crimes to find real hospitality.

I have completed my time on the Tour d’Afrique for this year, and I am now back in Toronto. After the tour left Khartoum I had a few days before flying home, so I took one morning to visit souq Omdurman.

Omdurman is the twin city of Khartoum lying just across the River Nile. It was the site of a crucial battle in the Anglo-Sudan War. The 1898 engagement was known as the Battle of Omdurman, which saw the British reclaim control of Sudan until its eventual independence from colonial rule in 1956.

Another more recent battle in Omdurman happened on May 10 and 11, 2008 when JEM rebels made a daring advance far from their bases in Darfur to attack Sudanese government forces in what they refer to as Operation Long Arm. This major battle was deeply significant to regional politics yet it only briefly made the news in the west (more on this in a future blog post).

The Omdurman Souq, or market, is a sprawling busy place. Everything from brooms, to aluminum pots, to plastic toys, to vegetables and spices are sold here. While there I thought I would do a bit of shopping, but I also needed to find a cardboard box for my bike to transport it back home on the airplane.

As I wandered aimlessly through the corridors of the market, I was invited to sit and share tea with one of the spice sellers. His name was Mohamed. I asked if he knew where I could find a box for my bicycle. We finished our tea, and then he walked with me and he found a place and insisted on paying for the cardboard box.

I also thought it would be nice to take home a Sudanese style coffee pot I had seen many people using on the streets. Mohamed gave me one and refused to except any money for it.

Then again the following day, I sat having some tea at a sidewalk tea stop (one of many found on every street in Khartoum). Another man also sat drinking tea and greeted me as I arrived. Beyond ‘Salaam Aleykum‘ (typical arabic greeting) we exchanged no words and were not even seated next to each other. This did not stop the man from paying for his tea and mine before he finished. There was no expectation from him. I guess, he just felt it was an appropriate thing to do for a foreigner, a visitor to his city, his country.

I used to hesitate to talk positively about Sudan and its people. There is real suffering going on in Darfur and South Sudan. The government stands accused of crimes against humanity – against its own people. But being in Sudan again reminded me of something very simple… in every corner of the world, there are individuals who cannot be judged based on what we know of their country. They are only individuals and their intentions and outlook on life are often much less sinister than that of their leaders.

Some more photos from my last few days in Sudan…

morning soccer practice

Great Mosque next to Souq Omdurman

fresh juice in Souq Omdurman

tea stalls on the streets of Khartoum

Tour d’Afrique staff at ‘Dead Camel Camp’

photos by Shanny Hill

One rider on Twitter said it was ‘the hardest day of my life so far’ while another described it as the ‘biggest EFI massacre ever.’ (EFI? That’s Every Fucking Inch of the Tour d’Afrique without ever riding the support truck.)

It was an epic epic day… actually, from what I am told it was two giant days of riding in the untested roads approaching and inside Dinder National Park – a new route for us at Tour d’Afrique. These will surely be rides that live deep in the hearts of many riders, and surely for others it was simply two soul shattering, frustrating days.

I am in Khartoum tending to a rider who is on the mend from an earlier fall. The first reports I am getting from the tour suggests that it is an extraordinary and doable route, but it will need another day of riding to make it manageable for next year’s group.

As with years past, it has been our style to test new routes… enroute. We did it in Namibia last year and Ethiopia the previous year… both to great success, but not without hardship for the riders and long days for the staff. The cyclists do become part of our navigational experiments and our forays into lesser known, rarely traveled places. 

They don’t all thank us for it.

And, no doubt, we can appreciate why. For many these two days meant the end to their dream of riding EFI, and for others it was a shock to their system that they had not been eased into gently at all. This is the risk we run, and this is the style we like.

To all those cyclists enroute, you have many challenges ahead. But you are all graduates of Dinder National Park school of pain and we salute you for traveling this road with us…

A version of this post can also be found on Tour d’Afrique’s website.

I have mentioned to several riders on this tour that ‘back in my day’ (3 years ago) when I was in Sudan for the first time with Tour d’Afrique, the week of riding from Wadi Halfa to Dongola was one of the toughest on the entire tour.

Now with the completion of a paved road it is a whole new place. It wasn’t long ago that our schedule included five cycling days to get us from Wadi Halfa to Dongola. The days in the heat, sand, and corrugation were grueling but ever so serene in the evenings. The Nubian Desert then felt like a new world – uncharted territory to all of us.

Today, it still retains much of that serenity. And I must admit, as I cycled a relatively easy 150 km to our desert camp two days ago, I deeply enjoyed being able to cover such distances with the old sandy and bumpy road snaking back and forth underneath the groomed, and raised roadbed of this tarmac beauty.

On the old road the daily distances were as low as 70 or 80 km on some of the toughest days. And you never really got the same distance reading as the other riders in the group, because we all rode different tracks that spread like fingers through the desert – some a little longer and tougher than others – and most ending at our Nile campsites.

The road has changed a lot of things for the people in these regions. Some of the small villages that happened to be situated next to the new road will likely be benefiting from increased traffic and opportunity for income – selling drinks, snacks, and other essentials to the truckers, bus passengers, and tourists that pass through.

Though it is a shame now that some villages along the Nile, where the paved road no longer wanders, will likely see a sharp decrease in the traffic (not that there was much before).

There was also something to be said for arriving to a small village of just a handful of families by dirt road, and to cycle through and meet the people. The paved road allows us to pass more quickly to our destinations further along, but what time we gain, we perhaps have lost in the opportunity to have a true chance to interact with the people in these villages.

Unlike the heavy hand of the Sudanese government, regular Sudanese people are some of the friendliest of any place I have travelled. It is one of the few places where I feel as though I am treated as any other citizen on the street is treated, no worse and no better. This allows me to feel at ease, and able to explore and interact more freely.

From an organizational standpoint on the Tour d’Afrique, we have generally decided that with every kilometer of pavement that’s added to our route, we seek to return again to the days of dirt, and so we constantly explore new ways to challenge our clients after they have had the pleasure of riding such a comfortable stretch between Wadi and Dongola.

Our new route south of Khartoum promises a real off-road adventure, exploring a new ‘uncharted’ place, and hopefully having a better chance yet again to slow the pace down and interact with the Sudanese people we pass.

Dinder National Park… here we come! (stay tuned for a report from the new route in Dinder Park coming soon)

Some pictures from the past week…

Cyclists arrive to our desert lunch stop

Village scene in the midday heat

Poster of Sudanese President Bashir President Omar al-Bashir at roadside snack shop

Since the last few posts have been mainly news and politics oriented, I thought I’d throw in a lighter offering during this holiday season. Hopefully this will swing the balance of topics back towards cycling for a little while.

Over the last several months from my desk at Tour d’Afrique I often fielded the one question that always comes up with riders preparing for our company’s namesake African cycling expedition… What is the best bike for the Tour d’Afrique?

The answer is not a simple one. The terrain over the 12,000 km of our tour varies greatly as one could imagine. From the smoothest tarmac spread like chamois cream across the Nubian Desert to the harshest jagged lava rock roads of Northern Kenya; this tour sees it all.

Two words sum up the ideal bike for this tour: versatile and durable.

So as I spent some time this past week reviewing some of my favourite choices, I came across these two great options: the Salsa La Cruz* and the Soma Double Cross DC (pictured above).

In the age of aluminum and carbon fibre frame technology, these two are made of good ol’ fashioned steel – the material that all bikes used to be made of is now giving way to lighter alternatives.

Key Features of the Salsa and Soma bikes, explained:

• Equipped with cable disc brakes – these provide strong breaking power in any terrain or weather.
• Made with a steel frame – heavier than other aluminum, and carbon fibre equivalents, this bike’s frame will stand up to the harshest abuse, day-in day-out on the tour. Dropped the bike off the support truck?  Frame cracked? No problem, any local welder will be able to repair a steel frame.
• Has good tire clearance – both these bikes can accomodate tires more than twice the width of a typical road racing tire. That means whether you are on the smooth roads or the rough roads you can choose a tire that best suits the terrain.
• Built with durable wheels – An important feature of any bike is the wheels. If built properly with good hubs and strong rims, your wheels will be able to put up with the daily pounding.
• Comes with straightforward components – there is nothing overly fancy about this bike. The parts work, and can be easily serviced with relitively simple tools.

A couple other notable bikes along the same line:

• Lemond Poprad
• Kona Jake
• Surly Cross Check

For anyone considering taking part in the Tour d’Afrique or similar long cycling expeditions, my bicycle choices above are all within a similar style – the style I am confortable with. There are many other styles of bikes that will suit different riders just as well. Front suspension mountain bikes, and hybrid bikes being the two other major choices for participatns in our tours.

So this wasn’t really a showdown – more of a show-and-tell excercise. I hope you found it useful, and dont hesitate to send through your questions or leave me a comment.

*for 2010 the Salsa La Cruz will be discontinued and replaced with a new model, which I have heard will be called the Vaya.

This week I wanted to share a few websites I have come across recently. They are a mixed bag of different areas of interest and illustrate the wide skope of my blog thus far.

Global Voices Online

This is a collection of bloggers and editors that bring to the surface news items that might otherwise get overlooked.

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

So for some insight into far away places, or for a new perspective on an old story – check them out.

KE Adventure Travel

This is a company that has, for a while, caught my attention. Like Tour d’Afrique, where I’m employed, KE offers cycling and other adventurous holidays in some of the most distant and intriguing places on earth. From Bhutan, to Guatemala, to Tanzania, they have a huge variety of tours in many parts of the world. With the launch of a new website recently, its now much easier to navigate to the tour that interests you.

AFP’s Correspondent Blog

Similar to NBC’s World Blog – which I previously reported on here – Correspondent is the stories from reporters working for the AFP newswire service. You can browse by blogger/author (and there are many) or by region. It’s a great blog to find out some on-the-ground insight into stories in the news.

Al Jazeera Engligh English News

It’s the CNN of the middle east. Al Jazeera has some excellent reporting, and offers a good alternative point of view to the mainstream North American media.

i bike T.O.

Since I am based in Toronto, I had to include a little local flavour. This is a great blog covering both local and international cycling stories – usually focussing more on advocacy and not on competitive cycling. Watch the video at the end of this post, its quite funny.

ekoVenture

More and more I am seeing sites like ekoVenture that are offering new and unique ways to search for and find your next big trip or to read up on first hand accounts of others travellers experiences. Alot of these sites are embracing social media and finding all sorts of ways to utilize it. Some other honourable mentions here are whereivebeen.com, tourabout.com, gliider.com, and wayn.com.

The release of Canadian Amanda Lindhout, and Australian Nigel Brennan – who had been held captive for 15 months in Somali – has set off debate over the role of freelance journalists reporting in danger zones. Their capture in August, 2008 – reported here by the National Post – happened near the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Lindhout and Brennan along with their Somali fixers were on their way to a refugee camp when they were taken.

Toronto Star’s Michelle Shephard asked; was Amanda Lindhout a gutsy reporter or naive thrill-seeker? It seems as though talk around Toronto Star surrounds Amanda’s professionalism as another recent article illustrates:

Her Facebook site is filled with glamorous photos of her reporting from around the world… Local journalists had reportedly warned her against going into Somalia.

Though it is not clear what Facebook ’site’ Toronto Star is referring to, this group set up on Facebook (boasting 8750 members at time of writing) shows several photos of her. It’s important to remember these are personal photos – posted by friends and family – and perhaps shouldn’t be used as a basis to pass judgement on her credibility.

In contrast this Guardian article chose to focus on what hurdles there are for freelance journalists like Lindhout and Brennan.

The kidnappings of Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan underline the risks faced by freelancers who run into trouble abroad. Freelancers are unlikely to have insurance cover to bring them professional assistance if they are abducted.

Lindhout and Brennan have no doubt spent plenty time considering all the actions that led to their capture, but they are unlikely to be the last freelance journalists to head to dangers zones in pursuit of a story.

As a side note to this debate, the local fixers and local support acompanying Lindhout and Brennan have been somewhat overlooked through this ordeal. There is still no definitive number given on exactly how many others were captured with them. It is clear that Somali journalist Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi was one of them, and was subsequently released in January of this year. What is not clear is whether there were two additional security guards, or one other driver. Almost every article that covered this story had a different account of who the Somalis were.

Like everyone else, I travel with many skewed images and ideas about a place before I ever travel there and I am often happily surprised by what I find. Preconception is defined as an opinion formed beforehand without adequate evidence. As it relates to travel and tourism, all tourists who travel,  outside of the “western” comfort bubble, leave there with preconceptions. It’s impossible not to.

There are lots of reasons for this, and many of them are inter-related. I will not pretend to be an expert on the topic, but I have observed the sources of some of my own preconceptions.

The Big M

The most obvious is the media. That general term that describes the various newspapers, radio, television, film, and other outlets that feed us all sorts of information on people and places and stories all over the world. And of course online media are a huge part of this now as well – through blogs, travel forums, and booking sites.

For this post I will speak mostly about news media. The news media have helped us to have a glimpse into places that most of us will never go, but unfortunately through short news clips, and brief newspaper articles we often only see one small part of what a place is really like. Without any other information to the contrary, this becomes our picture of a place.

I have come to accept that this is simply a reality, and not the fault of news media (not entirely anyway). If we want to have quick, current reportage, it can’t be too in depth.

If a protest at a university in Lusaka begins to turn violent, we are not really going to know the details of why it turned violent by watching a 30 second news clip on CNN or BBC or CBC. We’ll have to dig deeper if we want more in depth info. So this is where we are at fault. If we really want more information, it is available, but we have to be willing to commit more time to the subject.

Travelers

Sometimes the most misguided information I have gotten on a place is from other travelers who have been to the place I am traveling to. When someone gives me their impression of a place, I sometimes forget that they are one single person, and even if they have spent a few months in a place, they cannot begin to truly understand it. If the thin line they tread through a different culture and a foreign land was rough, they will often make a general statement of what it is like in somewhat negative terms. We can never assume that we will have that same experience.

Government Travel Advisories

These can be one of the strongest sources of misinformation. Government travel advisories, in my opinion, purposefully paint the darkest possible picture of a place to cover their own ass. The last thing they want to do is to have their embassy in a particular country bail you out if something does go wrong.

Let’s use Canada’s current Kyrgyzstan Travel Advisory as an example. Personally, I found Kyrgyzstan to be one of the most hassle free places I have ever traveled to. I posted a brief report on it a couple years back which you can read here. It also had stunning mountain scenery, a unique cultural identity, and an interesting history. If you were heading to Kyrgyzstan having only read this travel warning – you would probably be pretty freaked out. Here’s an excerpt:

Organized gangs are common. Robbery, mugging, and pick-pocketing occur frequently near major hotels, bars, and parks, and on public transportation. Remain vigilant, and ensure personal belongings and documents are secure. Do not show signs of affluence and avoid carrying large sums of money.

Muggings are frequent? What does that mean exactly? If you were simply picking out events that have occurred in the recent past, I guess a travel warning for Canada could sound something like this:

Organized gangs are common. Robberies, muggings, and pick pocketing are frequent. Be-headings are less common, but keep your head up. If you are traveling in an automobile, there have been reports of automotive accidents, so you must remain vigilant. Do not carry large sums of money as you will be tempted to spend it at Walmart, Canadian Tire, or Mountain Equipment Co-op.

Ok, so I am being a little silly about it, but you get the point. I really do believe that these reports can have a value, but they must be read and viewed as a worst case scenario, and full of events that could just as easily happen in your home town.

Sensationalism

And so this brings me to the Top 10 List you will never see on this blog. On my meander through the web this morning I came across a blog with the “World’s 10 Most Dangerous Travel Destinations.” It was a blog post referring to a Forbes Travel article of the same subject. These sort of lists crop up from time to time, and they really bother me because they are purely sensationalism. They are purposefully focusing on negative misinformation because it’s catchy and some how alluring.

Here is the blog – take a look at some of the comments as well. You really get a sense of how everyone gets caught up in the negative sensationalized information. For some reason we are all drawn to things like “Worst Place On Earth” and “Most Dangerous Street in America” and “Poorest Countries in the World.”

Even if the Forbes list was based on some facts, it doesn’t matter. Its main purpose is to catch your attention, and not serving any higher purpose.

If this sort of list were put out by the UN or Amnesty International, we could perhaps take it more seriously and use as tool for change and improvement etc. But normally these lists and other tools of sensationalism are simply for our amusement and I believe terribly destructive by giving us a perception of the place that’s not entirely complete and sometimes false.

So those are my sources of my preconceptions. What are yours? Also, what positives can we draw from all of this?

Well all this misinformation is the opportunity to be surprised and energized by arriving to a foreign place, and experiencing a side of its culture, and land that was never properly presented to you before you arrived.

In my opinion, if you have a chance to travel to a far away place, take it. It’s important to remember that some of these sources above do contain important information for a traveler – and it’s important to be educated on the places you’re going too. Just always keep the information in perspective.

If you are not sure what to expect, and are somewhat nervous about where you’re traveling, that’s ok. Take a deep breath, open your eyes, and don’t assume the worst. Each traveler walks a different line, so let your experience unfold without letting the preconceptions slow you down.

So today I got out for a 70 km ride with some friends. I haven’t been cycling much lately, aside from my daily 10 km commute. I have noticed a sharp rise in angry drivers now that the school season is back in and there is simply more volume, and less space on the roads. Since the death of courier Darcy Sheppard a few weeks back, I have been more cautious and more understanding of the challenges that we all face commuting to work (cars and bikes alike). Similar advice is being given over at CommuteByBike.com.

Everytime we ride, we accept that on occasion we can have a anxious driver speed past us, someone sneer at us, or the odd honking horn directed our way. But today was a little more special. We were greeted not once, but twice by two different individuals who shouted out their window “FAGGOT!”

I really don’t understand this, I mean, of course, I get it – it’s the spandex, and the bright colours that have somehow equated someones sexual prefernces with their sport of choice. So until hockey players start wearing croptops, and pink helmets, us Faggot cyclists will continue to be in the firing line.

I guess it’s not that I don’t understand it; I think it’s just frustrating to be shouted at, regardless of what the comment is, but especially because the comment doesnt actually make any sense whatsoever. BUT, cooler heads did prevail, and we didn’t react to the drivers, just laughed about it afterwards, because really, what else can you do. As Tim Grahl at CommuteByBike said, it is sort of the bullying mentality.

So I want to open this one up for comment (by the way, the first comment on my blog gets a free lifetime subscription to my blog – value: $0.00 but priceless!).

• Has this happened to you?
• Have you ever heard this while cycling?
• Or maybe as a driver, you have shouted this comment yourself.
• What do you think the deep meaning and social commentary behind this statement might be?
• What are other common words that so eloquently flow off the lips of irrate drivers?

I look forward to your input!