“TIA” – this is Africa. Seasoned travelers, country counters and a certain class of expats adore this phrase. I regret to say that I may have used it at one point in my life. Thankfully I have suppressed those memories long enough to not know when that was.
You are supposed to say TIA when you’ve been stranded at a border for 5 hours despite having all your documentation in order. When you spend 13 hours on a bus sitting on a jerrican in the middle of the aisle between a flock of rambunctious chickens and 100 kg sacks of millet. When you leave 8 hours late and 30 minutes into the trip, you are looking for some shade on the side of the road as the driver looks for a welder to repair his broken axel.
The expression is irritating (more irritating is the way it’s uttered as a badge of honor) because it puts dysfunction and hardship at the center of the Africa travel experience. As if the reason to travel Africa is to test your patience and expand your tolerance for suffering. The Andrew Hubermans of the world would have a lot of positive things to say about your dopamine levels and exposure to misery, but that is not the point here!
What about the cold beer with your feet in the sand at the beachside village? Sitting at a traffic circle during the golden hour and watching a town come to life after the late afternoon heat? Joking with the woman frying up some beignets who has a smile you will remember for the rest of your life? The phrase TIA belies these delightful moments. In a way, it suggests they don’t exist!
But. But. It is true that travel in many parts of Africa can be challenging. There is often little in the way of tourist infrastructure (and sometimes infrastructure generally), immigration and border crossing procedures can go south even when done “right,” and schedules and timetables are rarely worth asking about. An overlanding trip that bisects the continent requires herculean planning but also an ability to constantly adapt and improvise.
Lots of folks traverse the continent on their own. And there are a handful of companies that take groups of clients, typically in trucks that have been outfitted in such a way so as to be nearly amphibious. But I don’t know of any individual or company that has done a trans-Africa trip with clients on 110 cc motorbikes.
And that is what we are doing.
The reason this trip is even remotely possible is because of one Matthew Christie. Matt has been my friend and business partner for a minute now and I’ve referenced his skillset before, particularly when talking about our first jakarta safari back in 2017. On that trip we did over 4,000 kilometers on a loop around West Africa. This trip is 10,000 kilometers+ over 16 countries with five clients. It is ambitious to say the least.
I am back in Senegal after joining the trip for a few days. With my limited timetable, I mostly covered familiar ground but it was nice to get out on the road and hang with what looks to be a great group. I also got to see Matt firing on all cylinders.
The day before I returned home, there was a moment where Matt was supervising a welding project (further modifications to his panniers to save space and make his wet weather gear more accessible) while drinking a beer and cooking ramen. That was lightweight multitasking for him. The true marvel is behind the scenes.
At any given point, he is thinking about the weather, the road conditions, the position of the sun during an early morning ride, the perfect spot to take a break from the afternoon heat, the tide times that will effect when and if a water crossing is possible — it’s endless really — all while keeping in mind each client’s riding ability and the considerations of the group in general. The clients are mostly completely oblivious to this tireless choreography, which is itself a testament to his abilities.
None of this gets at his ingenuity. The panniers on the bikes are modified jerricans with locking lids. He made these on the roof of the Sleeping Camel in Bamako. He is a skilled welder, but he also engineers and designs things that he can’t make himself. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen him collaborate with a tailor to make something new and unexpected and incredibly useful.
Then there’s his intuition. I remember following him into the bush in western Mali back in 2017 after our first trip with clients. We had left the town of Kenieba in the early evening to look for a place to camp. If you have traveled near the equator you know how quickly you run out of daylight once the sun starts going down. Matt calmly led us off the road into a clearing that turned out to be the perfect camp site. It was completely invisible from the road. When I asked him how he knew it was there, he said something about the landscape giving him clues.
He has an additional internal compass that’s tuned to cold beers, tinned meats, pringles and vimto. Vimto is a hideous purple carbonated beverage but those other things are important staples for an overland expedition. The point is, he rarely goes astray. Except for one time when he ate a can of something called “chicken paste.” If I remember correctly, the first item in the list of ingredients on the label was hydrolyzed mechanically separated chicken.
It’s true that Matt has a lot of experience when it comes to both tourism and overlanding. He drove trucks of tourists around Africa for years. But what he is doing right now is something else. There are clients on our shorter trips that may not see or consider the things I mentioned above, but the folks on this trip to Cape Town certainly will.
This is someone in their prime doing the thing they were supposed to do. It’s a joy to witness and a privilege to know and learn from him.
The Coast to Coast trip is in Guinea now, on more adventurous terrain and at the debut of the rainy season no less. You can see the latest on our instagram.
Nailed it, Phil. Matt’s talents are so far and above that of most guides I’ve been around, even the really experienced ones. In addition to his ability to find cans Pringles in locations that simply should not contain them, he can then with one smooth motion of the wrist unleash those same chips (sorry, they’re not crisps) onto a serving platter and make them look like something out of a wedding reception. All while balancing a beer on his knee. Thankfully we had no chicken paste in Guinea, but sardines and that *absolutely perfect* French bread you seem to find at every wide spot in the road made for some tasty lunches. Glad to see you’ve changed the website oil and fired up the blog again. Hope to get back on a Jakarta with you soon!