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Africa As One – 1 Year Ago!
One year ago today, the DHL Africa As One team made it to the UK! After an epic 11 month journey by car, through 44 countries (40 in Africa, 4 Europe). In each country, organising DHL customers functions, tag rugby clinics, eye tests, handing out school supplies and creating amazing content showcasing Africa. To have been trusted to organise and lead such an amazing, and at times not an easy project has been a highlight of my career so far! I hope it wasn’t a once in a lifetime opportunity! Thanks to my team for an incredible journey Lazarus, Jaco, Mohau, Ndumiso and Songi
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The End of Africa As One!
Well that’s it, the Africa As One project is done, the boys all went home 2 weeks ago, I delivered all the cars (bye Princess!) for shipping back to SA on Thursday and now, I am getting on a plane to go home to Cape Town, 1 year and 4 days after our big send off at the V&A Waterfront. It has been an incredible journey with some really great people (I miss you guys!). The things we have seen and experienced have been life changing, the challenges we met daily have made us all stronger and more resilient, we can handle and achieve anything now! We have met amazing…
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Mauritania, Western Sahara & Morocco
Mauritania – Country 39 Western Sahara /Morocco – Country 40 The wait for the boy’s Moroccan visas gave us a bit of a break from driving, but the wait also meant we were losing time to drive up to Morocco and the ferry across to Spain. It got to a point, I couldn’t wait anymore I needed to start driving if we were to keep on track. So I reluctantly arranged 3 drivers to assist me in driving from Dakar through Mauritania, Western Sahara to Morocco. To say my security wasn’t happy with my decision, was an understatement… I didn’t have a choice, I couldn’t wait and I couldn’t let…
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Senegal
Senegal – Country 38 I do love Senegal, this is my 3rd visit and I enjoy it more each time. The road from the Gambian border was one of the worst roads we had been on in a long time, big potholes, lots of flooding (which my car “Princess” loves, so I never miss a chance to go through a puddle and keep her happy…). Then about 50km outside Dakar, the roads became some of the best in Sub-Saharan Africa! Dakar is quite a cosmopolitan city, with lots of restaurants and nightlife (had to dress up a few nights, well, as ‘up’ as you can get after being on the…
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Gambia
Gambia – Country 36 Gambia is another English speaking country, which was a relief after our battles in Bissau. Our border crossing into Gambia again didn’t go as planned (what is it with West Africa!!!) We spent 2 hours trying to convince the officials that the boys all South African, were upstanding gentlemen. South Africa is on their list of I won’t say undesirables but not entirely welcome! Even though we had obtained visas in advance they still wanted clearance letters for each of them (the first we heard of it). When we eventually crossed over and we had an easy drive into Banjul. Banjul is a typical holiday town,…
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Guinea Bissau
Guinea-Bissau – Country 35 Guinea-Bissau is a Portuguese-speaking country. Now, this made things a lot more difficult for us, as none of us really spoke more than a few words, so getting what we wanted across was more than difficult and very frustrating!!! The police here are more open about what they want “give me money” (we never did), but thankfully this happened a lot less than in Guinea. Bissau is a very different capital to the rest of Africa, for those of you that live in Cape Town it is like a very run down Obs, the buildings are very similar in places. The roads are nice and wide…
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Guinea
Guinea – Country 34 After we finally got back with the Guinea visa from Bamako and crossed into Guinea. We had to go through the most tedious process before we were allowed to cross the border. We had a “fixer” with us who had lots of side conversations out of earshot with many different people, the amount of “officials” you had to go to was ludicrous. We even had to go and sit in front of some guy, still not sure who he was with the police and others, explain our trip and what were going to do in Guinea, he then declared we should be able to travel safely…
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Mali
Mali – Country 33 After our little border problems, we headed for Mali, we chose a little tiny border to go through, which came with sleeping officials, and bad roads (80km took over 5 hours…), almost felt like we were sneaking in! The scenery changed again and became green and lush, with grass that looked so soft you just wanted to roll around it. The towns, however, were dusty and dirty. A sandstorm came through one as we were driving that was quite wild. We stayed in Bamako, for about 10 days, longer than normal as we had some time spare now and a little break from driving was most…
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Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast – Country 32 For the Ivory Coast leg, we had two 2 guests joining us from DHL Norway. We have all been on the road so long I am never sure how people will handle travelling with us. We have got used to the long hours in the car, in sometimes insane traffic, the lack of healthy food, different beds most nights, the dust and the heat. Maarten and Michal were real champs and went with the flow and experienced what Africa has to offer, we even had Maarten driving the wrong way up the main road, through the mud and chaos (we would have been in traffic…
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Ghana
Ghana – Country 31 We drove down to Accra from Burkina Faso, good roads but very slow due to all the friendly police stops asking where we were going, not wanting anything just curious… On the way down the GPS decides to take us through the largest market in West Africa, 12000 stalls and 40,000 thousand people working there not to mention the shoppers, it was a mad noisy mess but quite fun! We did a few tourist things, visited a lighthouse and fishing villages, watched guys melt old aluminium frames, engine parts down and make cooking pots, guys hollowing out huge trees to make the base of large fishing…
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Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso – Country 31 After flying back to Niger from Chad we spent a day resting in the pool to beat the heat 6 hours in the water and it just kept getting hotter! Our first day in Ouagadougou we woke up to a sandstorm, it was quite scary, the sky got darker and darker the wind picked up and blew the sand in waves across the street (it looked like a scene from the Mummy!), then as suddenly as it started, the rain came and washed it all away and thankfully dropped the temperature to the 30’s for a day. The locals loved us as they thought we…
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Chad
Chad – country 29 Travelling to Chad, I did what I always tell myself not to, I went with a preconceived idea, that is it would be like Sudan – it’s not… Good roads, lots of development and lots of Chinese hotels and restaurants (didn’t mind that, love Chinese food…). The one thing that was hard to handle in Chad was the heat 40-45 degrees) it was relentless (even during the night), the sun felt like it was searing your skin off if you stood out in it too long. The Chadian people are a lot like the British – they talk about the weather a lot!! They delight in…
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Niger
Niger – Country 28 Niger is one of the friendliest places we have been, with the most respectful children we have met. Without asking the children come up to you to say hello and shake your hand. Even some street kids who came into the field to get empty water bottles all came over, shook my hand to say thank you – I was blown away. Niger is a very simple sparsely populated country and very sandy (it would be with the Sahara dessert as a neighbour…) it is also VERY hot. 40 degrees + is a bit much for us especially for organising outdoor functions! The Niger rugby team…
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Benin
Is another nice easy country with beautiful sunsets. Busier than Togo but no hassles, I was very comfortable driving around on my own exploring. We had a relatively relaxed time here as things are very close together so not much driving ( not complaining…). A lovely day trip to Ganvie a village built on stilts in the lake, apparently the firsts villagers “flew” across from the mainland to escape the slave traders! We also had one of the best school visits so far, dancing and singing greeted us on arrival so much fun (loved it, was getting hugs and kisses from the kids…). The DHL customer function was great, a…
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Togo
Togo – Country 26 What a cute, calm, HOT, country. Togo is a little sliver of a country sandwich between Benin and Ghana. We stayed in Lome on the beach front for a few days. Lome has a huge wide beach, which DHL has been planting 1000’s of palm trees along the roadside (good job DHL!). The beach is not used for sunbathing at all that I could see, but as a place to launch boats, have a lunch time snooze and a sports ground. The Togolese people of all shapes and sizes The beach is not used for sunbathing at all that I could see, but as a place…
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Nigeria
After the xenophobic attacks in SA, I was a bit worried about my team, so flew a few of the boys ahead while I drove the cars with my security. To make sure we were safe I hired an armed convoy to escort us from the border to Lagos. We had been able to organise a visa on arrival (as the Embassy in SA had stopped issuing) with this came a car with 5 armed guards to escort us to a town five hours away to collect the visa. So there is me with 11 armed Nigerian security/police/immigration officers and one of my regular security in 5 cars, I am…
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Cameroon
Cameroon – Country 23 I think Cameroon is one of my favourite countries so far, it really is a beautiful place, with HUGE, HUGE trees (I do love trees), the vegetation in the jungle is supersized, which makes the trees look normal until you get up close to them! The whole country has something to offer scenically (I am just not the photographer to showcase this…). We were in Douala for a few days and I fell in love with my bed, it was so comfortable, the last month I hadn’t slept in one comfortable one (my poor back!). A great visit with one of the ministers to hand out…
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Congo & Gabon
Congo Country 21 & Gabon Country 22 To cross the congo, we hired a ferry to take the 3 cars across. We were a little bit nervous when the cars were swinging in the air while they were loaded. Getting a car across the Congo River using this method can be quite expensive, especially on the Congo side when your cars are being held hostage…. After we crossed the Congo we stayed a couple of days in Brazzaville and then started the drive to Libreville to catch up with the rest of the team. We were 3 cars and only 3 drivers for this leg so we all had to…
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DRC
DRC – country 21 Wow, where to start, this has been the most challenging few weeks of my life, both physically and mentally. Driving through 1000kms of the DRC was never part of the plan, we were supposed to only do a short stretch of a few hundred km on “good ” roads. Due to visa problems, we couldn’t drive through Angola so had to enter through Zambia and drive from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa. I cannot explain how bad these roads are, huge messy deep mud trenches, rocks, water (well we did go in the rainy season…) the pics don’t show properly the depth of these trenches and what we…
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DRC – Road Tripping Through Mud!
Tomorrow we start our trip to Kinshasa, we were denied visas to Angola so had to find another way to get to Kinshasa, road transport, boat, plane were all no goes so we have to take the route from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa, a route I had researched and decided was too long and the roads too bad to make it even option. The Angola curve ball means we need to try it or the trip stalls to a grinding halt. We drove on Sunday from Windhoek and stayed in Rundu, the next day drove through the Caprivi to Livingston, and Tuesday made our way to Lusaka. I decided to not…
