Day South African on a bicycle trip through every country in Africa arrived Nigeria

When Ron Rutland set out on what he called a journey of discovery and adventure from Cape Town, South Africa, in June last year on a bicycle, he had in his mind a mission to cycle through every country on mainland Africa.

A keen rugby lover, his ultimate ambition is to arrive in London by September 2015 to watch the Springboks, South Africa national rugby union team, begin their campaign of reclaiming the Rugby World Cup (RWC). 

The 28 month, 43,000km (or so) bicycle expedition through every country on mainland Africa to the 2015 RWC in London, says Rutland, is geared towards celebrating health, vitality, mobility, adventure and life and creating awareness for self-development and actualisation of life goals.

On June 27, 2014, Rutland arrived in Lagos, a week after he left Cameroun for Nigeria. Nigeria is the 30th country in which he has stopped by.  He arrived in Nigeria on June 20, 2014.

“I arrived in Calabar on a ferry from Nembe. From Calabar, I passed Abia to Onitsha to Benin City, from Benin City to Ore and from Ore to Sagamu and finally from Sagamu to Lagos,” he told BD SUNDAY at Protea Hotel, Victoria Island, where he was given a warm reception by the hotel’s management team, South African High Commissioner, and other important dignitaries.

During his stay in Lagos, he was entertained with different trips around the city, masseur treatments and other VIP treats, courtesy of Protea Hotel.

“I started out in Cape Town, I went through Lesotho, Swaziland, into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia to Angola, back to Zambia, into DRC, back into Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, back to Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somali, Djibouti, back into Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, back into Sudan, Chad, Cameroun, Central Africa Republic, Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroun and now Nigeria,” he recalled fluently.

From Nigeria, he said he would be going to Benin, Togo, back into Benin, then into Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, then back into Burkina Faso, then Ghana down to Accra, from Accra to Egypt.

“I have never done anything like this before. But I have always been a great traveller. I have used a bicycle to get to work before,” he said, adding that nobody has ever done a trip in a vehicle to every country in Africa on one journey.

“I would have loved to circle through the Middle East but because of the problems in Syria and Iraq at the moment, it is going to be impossible do it on bike. I would probably be going to Lebanon or Israel then catch a ferry across to Turkey and from Turkey I will cycle through Europe and hope to get to London by September next year,” he said.

Aside from his involvement in rugby, Rutland had a stint in banking. “When I got to the UK, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I managed to get a job in a bank for a month project, and that one month turned to three years, and eventually a five years banking career in London. But I knew it wasn’t the industry for me. There are people who are passionate about banking, but for me it was just a job.”

He later moved to Thailand, where he worked in the cell phone industry. “I later went back into banking in Hong Kong for two years. I moved back to South Africa four or five years ago. I got back involved in rugby, but organising Rugby events as well as running a charity, providing school shoes to South African kids. And I was passionate about both of them. I started to realise that you get so much out of life if you are doing something you really want. So I got into cycling and I am in my dream of doing a big adventure.”

What inspired this adventure?

When we were growing up, we read stories about adventures and travels, and you know how interesting that could be. I have read stories about people doing amazing trips, people like Riaan Manser who happened to be the first cyclist in the world to cycle round the edge of Africa.

I was inspired by Manser’s ‘Around Africa on my bicycle’ and his extraordinary journey circumnavigating the entire continent by bicycle – something no one had ever achieved before.

I have read a lot of stories about people leaving their dreams. I told myself ‘I am proud to read other people’s stories, now I want to go and do it myself.’ Riaan went around Africa, but nobody has ever done a trip that goes through every country in Africa.

Challenges encountered?

The biggest challenge is visa application. I wish I talked about stories of lions and other animals attacking me. The biggest challenge was arranging visas. Like I got two passports to sustain me back to South Africa after all the journey in the process for visa application to keep going back and forth. However, I only had a one day delay from the visa point of view when I was getting into Equatorial Guinea. And the reason I had to push quite hard was because my Cameroun and Nigeria visas were both expiring on the 20th of June, 2014. So I had to be out of Cameroun by the 20th of June and take my leave same day to Nigeria, which I made just one day. I crossed over from Nembe and Cameroun on a ferry to Calabar, and I cycled from Calabar to Lagos and here I am today in Lagos.

Other challenge outside of logistics was traffic; I mean people and animal don’t scare me, but the traffic like I had to use by bicycle to travel all the way from Calabar on the express saw lots of traffic, which made me thought I will be spending like two years on the road from Calabar to Lagos. But I am here and very glad to be here.

The biggest challenge wasn’t so much of physical side of things but mentally. Day by day I cycle; I almost never know where I will pass the night – just me, my bicycle and my tent. I have been on this journey for almost a year and visited 30 countries; I have never ever once been turned down when I needed a place to put my tent. Even in the remote village in Angola, or Sudan, Chad or the Congo or Cameroun, or wherever I have been in need of a place to put my tent. I have been invited into people’s homes; I have been kept in schools, police stations, mosques, churches, restaurants, bars. I have slept everywhere.

If you read the newspapers, how often you get the impression of Africa of being a place full of despair and full of problems and issues like that, but at the end of the day, 99 percent of the people in Africa are awesome, every single day, I saw examples of that.

So talking about the challenges, the physical challenges you get over them, but the mental challenge is so much easier because people are good people and the journey is about the people you meet. They made all the challenges easy to overcome. If it wasn’t for the people of Africa, then I wouldn’t have found support and I would have run out of water, or I would not be sitting here today.

Didn’t you have language challenge? I am very stupid I don’t know one language aside from English. Language was definitely an issue, but it is amazing how luckily sign language is a universal thing. On the issue of language, I actually used sign language to communicate with people most times, and I also use what I called my magic letter – a one page letter explaining who I am and what I am doing and I also used the Google Translate to translate them into different languages.

 What for you is the significance of this feat? What does it mean for Africa, for South Africa and Nigeria?

The significance of the feat for me is not about physical ability. When I left South Africa, my friends and families were very encouraging, but they were a few comments like “you may catch some weird disease or be caught up in a civil war or your things are going to be stolen” – all those sort of the normal things that people love to generalise about Africa – and I don’t think if I believed that I would ever leave South Africa.

One thing about the journey is a proof that Africa isn’t such a bad place; there is a lot going for Africa. What I think I have been able to achieve with the trip is to show that there is a lot of good news in Africa.

I believe the bigger risk is spending my life not doing what I want on the bet I can buy myself the freedom to do it later. The motivation to push myself way beyond previous physical and mental limits, to complete a true adventure, and I hope in some small way inspire others to do the same, are powerful forces. 

This feat could encourage other people to go and leave their dreams. Anybody who makes his or her mind up can go and live their dreams. I feel very lucky doing that.

FEMI ASU