Cyclists' 3,000-mile journey through rural Africa an awakening

The dust from the miles of dirt trails through Africa still clings to his well-worn bike, which leans against the wall in his Green Lake apartment. For Aaron Bodansky, it was his vehicle for a journey to change Americans' views of Africa and its people.

Bodansky and a friend, Eric Silverman, were studying in Capetown, South Africa, and quickly came to realize that the Africa they knew from occasional travels around the continent was a safer and friendlier place than most Americans realize. So the two created a nonprofit called Cycle for Understanding, raised several thousand dollars and planned to spend 70 days cycling from South Africa to Kenya.

Dozens of flat tires, many new bike chains and rims, several illnesses, lots of fatigue, and many new friends later, Bodansky and Silverman flew back to the United States — Silverman to school at Skidmore College in New York and Bodansky, a Lakeside High School graduate on a break from Washington University in St. Louis, home to Seattle.

Now the 22-year-olds are writing about their experience and turning the film they shot en route into a documentary to share their image of an Africa few in the West know — a primarily rural Africa filled with caring and friendly people.

When they began the journey, they discarded the idea of traveling by car, which would have given them some protection, and instead decided to ride mountain bikes 3,000 miles from Capetown to Nigeria. The mountain bikes meant they would potentially be exposed to climatic extremes, wild animals, political instability and crime. But they'd also be among, instead of isolated from, the African people.

"We didn't want to sugarcoat anything. We wanted to give people a chance to see what Africa is really like," Bodansky said. And it was a place where "you can ride your bicycle safely, being pretty much as vulnerable as you can get."

The U.S. State Department had issued precautions for virtually all the countries through which the two traveled.

But Bodansky and Silverman instead relied on the opinions of locals in making their travel decisions. And there were places they avoided, such as parts of Sudan, Somalia and Congo. But the most dangerous place, Bodansky said, was South Africa, because of the racial tension and segregation.

The two left in June — with bicycle panniers stuffed with energy bars, cornmeal, solar panels, a tent and a small video camera — and traveled through South Africa to Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, with a side trip to Zimbabwe.

Just that month, the State Department warned U.S. citizens to defer all travel to Zimbabwe, reporting cases of vote tampering, attacks on opposition supporters, farm invasions, arrests and beatings of election officials.

And yet, when Bodansky and Silverman traveled there, "we made friends, hung out with soldiers. They are just like us, if not friendlier."

Camping along the road at night, drinking water wherever they could find it (after treating it with iodine tablets) and cooking their cornmeal in a pot they carried, they journeyed deeper into the continent to places where they said some of the Africans had never seen a white person before.

"Children were fascinated and yet fearful," Bodansky said.

One morning, the two heard sounds outside their tent and opened the flap to see 50 Massai waiting outside.

Bodansky spoke enough Swahili to tell them the tent was their "moving house" and afterward there was a friendly exchange, Bodansky leaving with gifts of a lion's tooth and a pair of Massai shoes.

While urban areas came with problems — including graffiti and corruption — in the country, the rural people were similar everywhere, he said. "They were friendly, generous people and safety was not even a concern," Bodansky said.

The cyclists' parents understandably were frightened, but as the two began to call home — cellphone coverage being readily available even in remote areas — parents turned into supporters.

"As the trip progressed we got more and more comfortable," Joel Bodansky, Aaron's father, said. "We were impressed with how much thought and energy they had going into it. We were quite supportive of them."

Yet, the trip was not without its harrowing moments.

In Malawi, "We decided to try and save time and avoid mountain ranges by taking a dirt path along the lake. The path was fine at first, but we came to a point where the path turned unrideable and instead of going back and losing a day of riding, we decided to keep on going," Silverman said.

They said they reached a point where they were dragging bikes up steep hills of rocks and across rivers, hoping to find a village a few miles down the path by night.

"However, our calculations were incorrect and we were still walking our bikes long after sundown."

The next day they ran into several men who took them to a village.

"We were fortunate to run into these men because I don't think we would have made it out of the mountains that night, and we were short on food," Silverman said.

Back in New York, Silverman is in class. In Seattle, Bodansky, who is doing research here before returning later to the university for his pre-med studies, talked about his views before the trip and after.

"I definitely had a negative view of those countries. It's really just a huge misunderstanding," he said.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com

An earlier version of this story, published Wednesday, Sept. 23 and corrected Wednesday, Sept. 23, incorrectly identified the cyclists' destination. They rode from South Africa to Kenya.