A four-month bicycling event from Cape Town departed from Cairo. Jamie Furniss covers the unique Tour d'Afrique Last week, 60-odd cyclists taking part in the 7th annual Tour d'Afrique peddled off from in front of the pyramids, starting an 11,800 km human-powered journey to Cape Town. Participants aged 18 to 70 from 15 nations will cycle 96 separate stages, averaging 123 km a day, and will arrive in Cape Town in 120 days. The Tour d'Afrique, started as a business in 2003 by Canadians Henry Gold, a one-time documentary film-maker on African crises and founder of Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR), and Michael de Jong, actually bears limited resemblance to its namesake, the Tour de France. Not run according to International Cycling Association rules, the tour is more like a hardcore overland trip than a competitive cycling race. This year only about one in five riders is registered as a racer. Most riders register in the Expedition Rider category, which means they are not racing and are not timed. Their objective is just to finish, which will earn them the Every Inch prize Despite all being at very different stages in life and having highly varied personal goals, most riders agree they would rather stop, meet people, and "experience Africa" than suffer under the tyranny of the stopwatch. Some will skip a few legs along the way to allow for a side-trip to Zanzibar or a photographic safari, for example. "How many times are you going to get to Africa?" asked John Hinch, a retired educator from Oshawa, Ontario, explaining why he and two friends preferred to register in the expedition category. "You're probably going to get here once in your lifetime. So why do you want to put your head down, grind it out, kill yourself, get to camp when no one else is there, and wait for the truck with nothing else, there in the middle of the desert?" Also part charity, Tour d'Afrique uses a portion of each participant's entry fee to purchase bicycles for African healthcare workers so they can access remote areas and provide homecare to AIDS patients. Last year Tour d'Afrique donated 265 bicycles, said Randy Pielsticker, this year's tour coordinator and a veteran of five previous tours. "We also provide the opportunity for all of our clients to do individual, personal fundraising campaigns to also contribute to our bicycle donations. On top of that, we get a bunch of people who do fundraising campaigns for other causes. Some people do AIDS relief here in Africa, some people do Save the Rhinos, some people do Stephen Lewis Foundation... some people do something that is completely unrelated to Africa," said Pielsticker. This year three Egyptian riders -- Sherif, Mohamed and Ashraf -- are taking part in the tour. They will only ride as far as Aswan, an eight-day trip from Cairo, leaving the rest of the riders to complete the passage to Cape Town. "We tried hard to do the whole distance, but we couldn't because of a lack of resources. There is no funding," said Sherif, a former member of the Egyptian national cycling team, just before the race started. Last year there were four or five Egyptian riders but the number decreased this year, also because of a lack of funding, Sherif added. While funding for cycling may be hard to come by in Egypt, enthusiasm for the sport -- surprisingly perhaps -- is not. Ahmed El-Durghami, a member of the Cairo Cyclers Club, turned out with about 10 other club members to cheer on the Egyptian riders. Started less than a year ago as a Facebook group, Cairo Cyclers already has 1,700 members and spin- offs in Alexandria, Hurghada and Fayoum. For Cairenes who can't afford 7,900 euros for a ticket to travel 10,000 km under their own power to Cape Town with the Tour d'Afrique, Cairo Cyclers organises a wide range of events such as tours of historic Cairo by bicycle, beginners' rides, and mountain biking in Wadi Degla and Sinai. In addition to cycling, the club promotes environmental awareness about issues such as air pollution, the cleanliness of the streets, and noise. "More than just sports, we're into promoting the green lifestyle, urban cycling and lots of things that we're missing in Egypt, like encouraging girls to go out and cycle and exercise. We want people to enjoy the environment," El-Durghami said. His hope is that cycling will cease to be seen by Cairenes as something only men delivering baladi bread or those who cannot afford a car would do. "We're challenging this fear, this taboo," El-Durghami said. "It's like the chicken and the egg. You have to just go out there and people will start respecting cyclists. My personal experience is that I get a lot of respect on the street. People want to cycle, they want to exercise, and they want to have a healthier life."
