Wrapping It Up!

I’m back…!

This last part of my story in many ways has been the most difficult to write… I feel the need to bring this saga to an end, and yet it in a way it could be the beginning of a whole new season of my life… We have all heard about “life-changing” experiences, and this might just be the one which sets my life on a new course… Yet there’s a part of me that does not want this story to end just yet… It’s as if I am waiting for something to make it one of those “happy ever after” events… In many ways I had probably hoped for this through much of my journey…

He’s back…!

I took the Big Fella into Auto Alpina to have him serviced and “made like new” and was greeted with enthusiasm by Denver and his team. A number of his customers gathered around the bike and asked the same questions I had been answering for weeks… I gave them a brief summary of my trip and received many a slap on the back in recognition of my efforts. I watched their eyes light up as I spoke of the long days in the saddle, the rain and the wind, and the places and countries I had been… I saw the look of wonder on some of their faces, disbelief on the faces of others… I knew then that I had achieved something special…

Stripped of all the gear, the “Big Fella” stands proudly in my driveway…home at last!!

Most of the guys gathered around were seasoned bikers and wanted to know how the bike and I had managed it all… I turned and pointed at the Big Fella, adorned with the flags of the countries I had visited, and said, “See for yourself…!” I could have sworn that I saw his tank puff up with pride as they stood around him, shaking their heads and pointing out various bits and pieces including the spot where his back mudguard used to be!! If he had a tail, I’m sure he would have wagged himself off his stand!! What a bike…and he was mine!!

I left them at the bike and walked away, back to Denver’s office where I sat chatting to him. Watching him shake his head from time to time as I answered his questions… Over the next half-hour I was greeted and congratulated by people whom I had never met, but had known about my trip through the BMW touring website… Many admonished me for not putting updates on the website while I was on my ride, and made me promise to get my story written and have copies distributed…post haste!!

I’m not sure when and where this bike became a part of me, maybe it was on the long run down the coast of Zululand, or on that rainy day through the Transkei to Port Elizabeth, where at times I was out of my depth in the wet and misty conditions… Maybe it was when I finally turned north from Cape Agulhas and knew that it was just the two of us from then on… Or after I crossed the Namibian border and left South Africa brooding in my side mirrors… At this point we were totally reliant on each other… Or maybe at some point I came to see the bike as my companion on this ride… Hell knows, I spoke to him often enough during those long and lonely stretches…

Despite being loaded to the limit, this bike did it all… Every time…everywhere…

I had every confidence in this 1200 GS, from the moment I left and on through all the places we rode. I am pretty sure the bike didn’t always feel the same way about me!! There were times when I rode badly, taking the wrong lines into corners, hitting potholes I could have avoided, braked too sharply when I needn’t have, and of course, dropping him in the mud of Ngonini… But this BMW took it all and could’ve taken a lot more… I fully intend affording him the opportunity to show just how much he can do and how far he can still go…

Visual lessons…

Before I take my next long trip (either another African Odyssey to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo, or a trip around that island called Australia…) I will ensure that I have a better camera with me… There were too many occasions where I could not capture what I was seeing and wished that I had at least taken my Canon 300D with me… I will also ensure that I have a voice activated Dictaphone in my helmet, linked to a camera built onto the helmet itself. If I think of all the clever things I said to myself, or the comments I thought of to add to my journal that night whilst on the bike, but forgot by the time I sat down to write about them, I feel sick to my stomach!!

A Helmet-Cam would also have allowed me to take many more videos than I did, and under safer conditions too!! I once shot a fifteen minute segment, riding one-handed through the Undzungwe National Park in Tanzania, dodging baboons and potholes, crossing sections of the road where mountain streams ran across them, watching for Allan in the side mirrors while he tried to overtake, and keeping an eye out for elephants who had left their dung in the road to make me aware that they were in residence… All this at about 100km/h!! I finally stopped filming when I almost rode through the railings of a bridge on a sharp bend…. Silly boy…!! I also dropped the little Sony Cybershot camera while riding along a potholed gravel road to Salima, in Malawi… How it still functioned after that, I’ll never know! But it did, even after I dropped it again on the way through Mikumi National Park in Tanzania… So, Helmet-Cam it is from now on!!

This photo was taken just after I dropped the camera while whizzing down a gravel road near Lake Malawi…

Still on a high…

It has been a week since I touched down, and despite the fact that I have more or less resumed my “normal” duties, I am still on a high! I still haven’t quite got the images of the amazing places and things I saw out of my mind… My dreams are a slide show of the photos I took and other scenes which I did not capture on camera…

Last night I was in Zambia, on the road to Lusaka, having left Allan in Livingstone… I was on the first section of road which sported huge potholes, detours through muddy strips of veld and a few kamikaze truckers who seemed intent on sending me careening off into the bush… The incessant rain beat a tattoo on my helmet and the Tank-Bag… I looked in my mirrors and saw that Doc and his intrepid rider were no longer there behind me and a wave of loneliness swept over me…

I woke with a deep sense of loss and realized again that Allan had had an affect on me that few other people have had… Somehow amongst all my grief and sadness, I had met and ridden with a kindred spirit, who had in many ways reminded me of who I was and what I could achieve if I put my mind and heart into it… He opened a window in my soul that I thought had been shut for good… “Good on ya, Dude…!”

Allan gives his usual “Thumbs Up” while we were being ferried out to the houseboat on the Chobe River, Botswana…

Thanks must go to…

There are a number of people whom I must thank for their advice and encouragement, both prior to my departure, as well as while I was eating up the kilometres on the long road around Southern and Eastern Africa… Without them, I may not have managed as well as I did…

My thanks must go to the team at BMW Auto Alpina Boksburg – Denver Biggs, Jonathan, Eldridge, Mannie and Jacques. Although they all seemed a little sceptical that I was actually going to make this journey on my own, they nevertheless ensured that I had all the right gear and advice to make a success of it…

To Barry and Vaughn from Trappers East Rand, who helped me with my Garmin GPS, on the morning of my departure…talk about “better late than never”… If they had not suggested and helped install the “Tracks for Africa” program on my Zumo, I would have ridden Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania “in the dark”…!! Not a pleasant thought, considering how much I came to rely on my GPS…

Special thanks must go to my friends in South Africa and Malawi, and those I made in

Tanzania and Mozambique, who either arranged or offered to accommodate me, or provided me with valuable information during the course of my journey:

·      John and Louise More in Plettenberg Bay;

·      Mr. and Mrs. Verwey, Hendrik’s parents in Port Elizabeth;

·      Volke Bachle for arranging for a place for me to stay in Port St. Johns;

·      Stoffel and Marli Fritz and Marli’s parents on their farm “Cnydas” in the Northern Cape;

·      Peter and Carol Kemp in Lilongwe, who very kindly allowed me to use their house as a stopover both to and from Dar es Salaam;

·      Steve Luker and Klaus in Dar es Salaam, fellow bikers, who without having ever met us, opened their home and hearts to us. (Not to mention their stock of beer…);

·      Grant Roux of Transcom Malawi, who despite having known me for only a few days, took the time to type out a list of the fuel stops and distances between points in Mozambique for me to use as a guide. This kind gesture gave me the confidence I needed to make my way through an area where not much information is available…

·      Uli Meiners in Vilanculos, who would have accommodated me, had the 6km road to his house not been knee deep in thick sand!! Buy a grader, Uli…!!

*******

Staying in Touch…

At this point I feel it is also important to mention the people who kept in touch with me throughout my journey, sending messages of support, encouragement, concern and love. On those days when my mental processes were threatening to shut down, I would go back through their text messages and somehow find the strength to go on… I was often spurred on by a simple message and the knowledge that there were people out there who cared for me and were genuinely interested in my progress… But when you receive a message which says “Keep going, Ronnie..!” you can hardly afford to turn back now, can you…? This despite the fact that many had misgivings about the timing and the reasons I wanted to undertake such a journey…?

Heartfelt thanks go out to the following people whose messages reached me wherever I was:

• My parents Raul and Maureen
• My sister Charmaine
• My daughters Roxanne and Robyn
• Charlotte Barnard (who replied to almost every sms update I ever sent!)
• Renske Verwey
• Guy and Jenny More
• Robert and Britt More
• Nick More
• Brian Downs
• Bradley Kidd
• Debbie Hopf
• John More
• Robert Barkhuizen
• The ladies at Florentine; Annette, Karien and Jenny
• Joanne Foster
• Peter Kemp
• Uli Meiners
• Janine Bachle
• Sherry Cromhout
• Anthea Wakefield and last but not least,
• Allan “World Rider” Karl, who still keeps me informed of his progress through North Africa (He has just advised me that he has reached Khartoum in Sudan!!)

Thanks again to one and all…!!

Your messages kept me going… Thanks to all who kept me motivated…

What was it really all about…?

I have asked myself what it is that I have been able to take from this trip…

The inner strength, which I knew I always had, was rekindled by the difficulties I encountered during the course of this trip. Riding in heavy rain for more than ten hours in a single day is a far cry from a ten hour, dry run, through the countryside…this I can vouch for… I can recall two separate occasions on the way up to Dar es Salaam, where I wanted to pull the bike over and give it all up… The first was on the road between Lusaka in Zambia, and Chipata on the Malawian border… I rode this stretch alone, and the terrible road conditions, coupled with monsoon like rain, had me battered and bewildered…

Taking shelter during a cloudburst on the way to Chipata, Zambia…

The second occasion was on the “hell ride to Iringa” in Tanzania, just one day away from Dar es Salaam… The heavy rain, coupled with the darkness Allan and I were riding in, made for the most difficult conditions I have ever ridden in…

I remember pulling over to the side of the road about 100kms outside of Iringa, ready to park the bike and walk into the trees on the roadside to lie down… It was about 8.00pm, and I was well and truly knackered…both physically and mentally… I had been about five minutes ahead of Allan, who had chosen to ride behind a big truck as he felt safer there, letting the truck figure out where the potholes were… Just as I kicked the side-stand out, Allan came riding up the road, head bent against the lashing rain… He pulled over next to where I was parked, lifted his helmet, then leaned forward and with his head on his tank, said, “Shit…” in one of those “small” voices… That was all he managed, but that one word spoke volumes for both of us… This was no fun by any stretch of the imagination… What the hell were we doing there, in the middle of the night, miles away from anywhere and anyone…?

The fact that I was ready to throw in the towel just a 525 km ride away from the destination I had set for myself, tells you how much that ride to Iringa took out of me… I had travelled over 11 000km to that point, and for a few crazy moments, decided that I had had enough…  

I am not sure what motivated me to pull the stand in again and press the starter button, but I did… We rode on into the dark night… We just did what we both knew, needed to be done… Somehow, we found the reserves of endurance and stamina that I think we always had, but had never needed to call on… This probably applies to all of us…

“Dig deep…”, goes the saying… We nearly “bottomed out” that night…

One of the things that I was reminded of on this journey was the beauty to be found in nature… I rode past and through areas in every country I visited, that left me in awe of my surroundings, be it the desolation in parts of Namibia and the Skeleton Coast, or the lush green of Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique, I couldn’t help stopping just to stare…

There is far more contact between biker and nature than there is when you’re safely cocooned in your car. For me, being on a bike is the only way you can get to interact with your surroundings… If you are going to travel through Africa in a car, you might as well stay at home and watch the Discovery Channel… Such is the difference for me…

With Market Day in full swing, I ride through Machinga on the road to Zomba, Southern Malawi.

I Remember…

I travelled to places that brought back many bitter-sweet memories; Black Mountain near Swakopmund had me thinking back to 1975/6, when as a young boy I prowled through the dunes looking for Horned Adders and Armadillo Lizards: the road sign indicating the turnoff to Ondangwa and Oshakati in Ovamboland, had me choking with emotion as I remembered the friends I lost during my National Service; the road to Rundu and through the Caprivi to Divundu brought back memories of sitting on the roof of an armoured carrier as it wound it’s way through the bush to replenish the bush camps in the Operational Area; revisiting Monkey Bay in Malawi brought flashbacks of the happy holiday I had spent there with my wife and daughters… I experienced such a broad spectrum of emotions on this trip that I came to appreciate the complexities of the human psyche, and accepted them as part of who I was, what I stood for, and what I wanted to be… Raw emotion will do that for you…

Allan catches me in a pensive moment… Kavango River, Western Caprivi…

“Did I…?”

And so to the title of my journal…”Taking Back My Heart”… The obvious question is “Did I?”… I guess I have to think about the reason I called it this… My intention was to somehow get to a point where I could tell myself that my heart no longer belonged to Vanessa, that no matter what she chose to do in future, it would no longer have an emotional effect on me… To this end, I have failed… The first time I heard her voice after my return, my throat closed up, I felt as though every scar on my heart had re-opened, the pain rushed back to engulf me…

I realise that I will always love her, and will always think of “what might have been”… But then every other divorced person probably does the same…why should I be any different? …. Because I just am…and I choose to be…! And that’s the way it will always be…

I feel that I have “lost” my children, and the chance to interact with them in an adult kind of way…that from now on I will be seen as a “provider” only… You can dress it up however you like, but at the end of the day, that’s what it really boils down to…for me anyway… And that is the saddest thing I will have to cope with… To me, my wife and daughters are a single unit in my mind, my family… I can’t separate them, and never will…

Through these misty eyes,

I’ve seen lonely skies,

All along this road, that’s led me on…

I’ve missed my family,

And my country,

Heaven knows where I belong…

Loaded my bike last night,

Always travelling light…

Who’s to say what I’ve done wrong…

******

It’s a mindset…mine!

Disillusioned? Cynical? You bet your sweet life I am!! I have learned that it is dangerous to dream about a long and happy life spent with that special person whom you love…and will dream no more of the “happy ever after” so many people seek… Rather dream about the physical things in life, like jumping on a bike and riding to the ends of the earth, relying on your wits and determination to get there… I can do that, I now know I can… And for those who try, and fail, you only have yourself to blame, but at least one can take solace in the fact that you tried… Rather that than feel the need to point a finger at people who you shouldn’t have relied on in the first place… People who made promises that they never kept…

I have begun to notice how many of the people I know and have recently met are divorced…and I have compared the reasons I have come to this place in my life, with the reasons they are now divorced… Almost every one of them confirmed that either infidelity or abuse of some kind was responsible… I am guilty of neither…yet here I am…same boat… Why…? I have become a victim of the “I love you, but I am not IN love with you” syndrome…

That Vanessa will use this to forever affect the lives of the three people who are closest to her, beats the life out me… We are financially comfortable, live in a 700m2 house on the top of a mountain, with amazing views of the city below us, my children have only ever seen the inside of private schools, we have taken overseas holidays, visited more than a dozen counties together… To exchange this for a life of strife and struggle just so she can say that she stood by her conviction that “If I am no longer in love with you, then we should no longer be married” will forever be beyond my understanding…

Until I realized that there was no possibility of her changing her mind, despite two years of pleading on my part, I lived by the vows that I made on the day we were married…and forever intended to…

I believe that love ebbs and flows, and that people today give up too easily when the tide is ebbing… I can understand if one of us felt that “special love” for a third party… Then by all means, go with that feeling and good luck for the future… But Vanessa is not in love with any other person, does not want a relationship with any other man…she just wants to find herself, revel in her independence… But can you still call yourself independent when you will rely on your ex-husband to fund your independence??

I think not…!!! So what is this independence that women seek so ardently…?? I think Bob Dylan summed it up well in a line from one of his songs…

“Everybody’s got to wonder… What’s the matter with this cruel world today…”

If women want to be such a big part of this “Man’s World”, then start lifting the heavy stuff too, ladies… Yes, dear friends, I’m beginning to identify with the chauvinists…

In summation…

I have left a part of me out there in the wilderness of Africa, and those that know me well will be able to vouch for this… The mental strain that I laboured under for months prior to my journey, has forever scarred a part of me… I have accepted this… The old “Mr. Dependable” has been replaced by “The Realist”…

The ambitions I once harboured are no longer a part of who I now am… I no longer feel the need to work my fingers to the bone to retire comfortably… I’ve spent twenty years playing that game, and am no longer prepared to spend the next twenty chasing the same ideal… I’ve run that race and maybe in the eyes of my wife, I ran the wrong race, chose the wrong tactics… Those are the breaks… I can’t undo what I felt I had to do…

My journey has awakened a restlessness in me that could have me up and in the saddle at short notice… There is no longer a purpose in following the “safe” options in life… I will now take life by the throat and live it…when and wherever I want to…

Entering my “Tree-house”… Ngepi Lodge, Caprivi, Namibia…

Does it look like I care…?

You sure…?

I am on my own now… Free of the complicated web that society once wove so tightly around me…

It’s been a ride to remember…

Ronnie Remeiro Gonçalves-Borrageiro

April 2008