From Cairo to Cape Town - A Home To Head For by Eric Olverson

A Home To Head For is something of a marathon, not for the reader, but for the author, Eric Olverson. To be accurate, Eric’s tale is significantly more than a literal marathon, about twelve thousand kilometres more, in fact, because Eric’s tale describes how he cycled the length of Africa.

Tour d’Afrique (TDA for short) is an outfit that assists those wanting to cycle a long way – a very long way. Starting in Cairo, Egypt, their route heads south via Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia before reaching its destination of Cape Town in South Africa. Eric Olverson’s handlebar-mounted computer recorded a distance of 12,009 kilometres – including a detour or lost route or two along the way – which, in any language or circumstance, is a long way. It’s even further when much of it is across desert, or on dirt roads strewn with stones and pocked with potholes. In Eric’s case, the achievement goes way beyond even this.

Eric embarked upon the four month endeavour at the age of 59, having recently been seriously ill with bacterial meningitis and having lost bladder function as a result, causing him to require the use of catheters. If such facts are offered as detail, one must conclude that Eric must have been intensely motivated even to consider the challenge of cycling the length of Africa. And the fact that the motivation was to assist something outside of an unrelated to himself adds sincere respect to the awe felt at his achievement.

The motivation came from a desire to raise funds for a children’s home called Thamsanqa in Motherwell in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Eric visited in 2008, was impressed with what he saw and resolved to assist. Already a keen cyclist, a devotee of the mountain roads near his home in Spain, Eric latched onto the idea of a sponsored bike ride. And it’s not many of those that cover 12,000 kilometres! So, along with numerous other enthusiasts, and under the assisting wing of TDA, a company specialising in such cycling “holidays”, Eric set off from Cairo in a generally southerly direction.

The trip was organised so that the riders covered up to 200 kilometres a day, were generally fed from a support vehicle that preceded them and camped in recognised camp sites, sometimes associated with small hotels. Eric Olverson’s book, A Home To Head For, and his blog, ericonhisbike, are accounts of his trip. Indeed, anyone buying the book also donates to the Thamsanqa orphanage.

A Home To Head For is not a travel book. Nor is it a description of Africa as experienced as it was cycled. Neither, really, is it aimed at the cycling enthusiast keen to learn the detail of the challenge. In some ways it is more than any if these. The book is a tale of determination, Eric´s insistence on completing the task to the best of his ability. That he rarely allows doubt or low moments into the text is merely a reflection of how focused he remained on his challenge.

There was elation at the end, but relief too. Eventually, Eric was not one of the racers, but neither was he one of the tourists. By Cape Town, the reader has appreciated how much how much he wanted to do this trip and the determination he felt to see it through to completion. Don’t expect philosophising or much reflection, since in the four months there seemed to be little time for either. But do expect to feel the effort, even from your armchair, because Eric’s writing does communicate the experience. It was some achievement, and for a good cause.

Towards Asmara by Thomas Keneally

Towards Asmara by Thomas Keneally was eventually disappointing. As a process, the experience was strewn with beauty, vivid images and arresting phrases. The author, for instance, described desert vegetation ready to burst into life at the first “rumour” of moisture. The writing style has a quirky inventiveness that regularly surprises.

Where Towards Asmara eventually breaks down, however, is its inability to take the reader past the credibility hurdle that spans observer and participant. Not that one particularly wants to participate! War, famine, being shot at, placed under house arrest or being tortured are all experiences to avoid on most working days and Towards Asmara is packed with them. The journalistic skill with which the book’s events are described is enormous. We are introduced to enough history for context, enough current events to situate and enough political interests to begin an understanding. 

So if the style is good and the context is engaging, where is the problem? The answer is in the book’s characters. Darcy is an Australian, a bit mixed up after his ethnically Chinese wife ran off with an Aborigine jailbird back home. Now she won’t even deal with him. There’s Amna, an Eritrean guerrilla who has suffered every imaginable torture at the hands of the Dergue. There’s Julia, a British lady of some class who is researching women’s issues for the Anti-Slavery Society. There’s Masihi, a film maker, and Christine from France who finds a role working with him. And here is the problem. 

Towards Asmara claims the status of an African novel, but we never experience any aspect of the plot from within an African or local psyche. The place, its people and the events that unfold there are seen from without, via an external interpreter’s filter. The immediacy of war, ambush, famine, conflict becomes lost in the second nature of the characters’ experience. Also, the complications of the personal lives of these observers neither complement nor contrast with the exigencies of fighting for a cause. 

Eventually, everything seems unlikely, not least the very involvement of those involved with the events that unfold. At one point, there was a suggestion that Darcy’s ethnic minority wife back home in Australia might be offering an intellectual parallel with the Eritrean struggle. She, an apparent outsider, was allying herself and choosing to travel with an indigenous oppressed race, just like her estranged husband was doing with the Eritreans of Ethiopia. But that idea fizzled out, thankfully, because it could never have been sustained. Towards Asmara is a thoroughly enjoyable read. 

At times the style and language are a complete joy. But, when it avoids polemic, it approaches caricature. The reader, like its foreign observer participants, is left out of the understanding and experience the book promised to deliver. 

View this book on amazon Towards Asmara