This article was first published in Issue 138 of Rouleur
It’s 4am in Kigali. Tomorrow is day five of the Race Around Rwanda. Tomorrow is two hours away, when my driver Moses comes to pick us up, hoping we finally had a bit of sleep. I’ll be inspired rather than tired.
The Race Around Rwanda is a self-supported 1,000km gravel race. This year, about 130 participants from 23 countries took part. Four riders from Rwanda lined up, thanks to the help of the race organisation, led by Simon De Schutter, a Belgian cyclist who has lived in Rwanda for several years.
De Schutter created a hub for cyclists and the race itself, and he played a key role in forming a local gravel team, Rwanda Beyond, which competes in gravel races both in nearby countries and in Europe. Among the riders that the team has supported, one has made a name for herself more than the others: Violette Neza, who has been racing in Europe, including events like the Traka in Spain, the biggest gravel event in Europe, and Bright Midnight in Norway.
If Belgium is known as the heart of cycling culture in Europe, Rwanda could be considered the same for Africa. However, cycling in Rwanda isn’t just a sport, it’s an essential part of daily life. While we in the West might see bikes as recreational toys, Rwanda has a different view. Here, the bike is almost a survival tool, whether for aspiring talented pros or taxi riders. Also the cargo bikes here don’t come with fancy extensions or disc brakes. Any single-speed, heavy metal, brakeless bike will be used to carry up to 200 kilogrammes of goods, whether it’s coffee, water, bananas, livestock or the occasional pair of live pigs.
The country’s capital Kigali, seated at an altitude of 1,400 metres, gives a rough idea of the topography. In short, there is no flat road, and the country is famously nicknamed ‘the Land of a Thousand Hills’. Riders here, whether they like it or not, are more likely to be natural climbers than sprinters. Whether you’re a taxi rider or a young athlete, you can’t really cope with the land if you don’t enjoy the grind of climbing.
Rwanda is also a new destination for cycling tourism. Referred to sometimes as the ‘Switzerland of Africa,’ it is one of the cleanest countries on the continent. Rwanda has banned the use of plastic bags for over 10 years, implemented a broad recycling policy, and remains free of the trash-strewn fields of plastic seen elsewhere. To add to the Switzerland comparison, Rwanda is also safe for the traveller. From personal experience, I can say that if you lose your wallet or phone, chances are it will be returned to you before you even realise it’s gone.
Before the start of the race in Kigali, I had a conversation with Violette Neza, who I’ve known for a few years now. She reminded me that not everything in Rwanda is as easy as it seems. Being a female rider, cycling for sport, and wanting to race her bike around the world seemed nothing short of a crazy dream.
Neza said: “Starting cycling as a girl in Rwanda wasn’t easy at all. In the beginning, it was seen as something unusual, even unacceptable, because cycling was mostly considered as a sport for men. There were a lot of social barriers and many people believed that girls shouldn’t be riding bikes, and some thought it was unsafe or inappropriate.
“I faced scepticism, lack of resources and very few opportunities. There weren’t many teams and races for women, and even getting proper equipment was a challenge. Combining cycling with school was also tough because some teams were not accepting riders who were studying. They were saying they had to choose one thing. It cost me too much energy to stay in cycling and at one point I stopped. But soon after giving up cycling I resumed and changed from road to MTB and gravel. With road cycling there was no place for me anywhere, as I was following my studies.
“But things have changed. The number of girls riding bikes has increased, and people are starting to recognise that women can be strong cyclists too. There’s still a long way to go. Women’s cycling in Rwanda still lacks consistent race opportunities, proper funding and good equipment, but we are making progress and we hope the best is yet to come.
“Through my project, Komera Women Cycling Team, and with other women’s teams, more girls are getting inspired to ride, and we are building a community that supports each other. It’s not only just about racing, it’s also about showing that cycling can be for everyone, regardless of gender.
It’s been a journey, but I am proving that girls can be successful in cycling, and I’m excited to see how far we can go.”
Neza isn’t selling her team castles built on sand, nor is she promoting the unrealistic dream of turning pro. Instead, she’s sharing a passion for cycling, along with the commitment and discipline it takes. She isn’t feeding them the nearly impossible fantasy of a professional cycling career, which is a dangerous detour or dead end for most. As the race director De Schutter explains: “Basically, when they decide to go for a career, the most realistic scenario is that they ride for a couple of years until they’re 21, then the coach says they’re not good enough and they are left with no income from cycling and no future in cycling, and worst, no education. At this moment, the most optimistic career path is that they go to Europe for a couple of years, but they don’t have the necessary upbringing, education, cycling skills and cycling background to actually make it long term as a pro. No Rwandan has made it long term as a pro in the last two decades. So the best case scenario is a couple of years in Europe, saving money, which to be honest, in a Continental team which is not a full pro contract, won’t happen. But let’s say they did save a bit, they come back to Rwanda now and they still don’t have a future in cycling, they still don’t have a stable income. What we have taken away from them, I don’t know, but at least they would have stayed in school, because Rwanda does give these kinds of opportunities, gone to university for their education which leads to at least a stable income, at least saving for retirement. At this moment, many of the cyclists have neither.
They don’t have the education, and they don’t have the European opportunity so they are left with nothing.”
It might sound bleak, but cycling is, after all, a great sport and hobby. The lessons in resilience are little use for the Rwandans, as cycling here inherently requires quite a lot of it already, but there is more to cycling.
The federation is doing a better job nowadays at organising races and providing a healthy dose of fun for the kids. While they might not have the same future some equally or even less talented kids in Europe can hope for, they do have the present to fully enjoy the joy of competitive cycling.
Jean Ruberwa, Eric Ndwayu, Innocent Niyireba, and Mussa Dufutumuzika (known to all as Moses) lined up together in the Race Around Rwanda, proudly representing their country. Ndwayu and Niyireba both had to scratch from the race. Niyireba, who had been part of the lead group for most of the first day, had forgotten his feed bag and was running on empty by the end of the day. He suffered a serious heat stroke and had to be checked into the hospital. “I think I was too stressed with work before the race; my head just wasn’t fully in it,” he said.
Ndwayu blew out on day two. When I found him having lunch at checkpoint two, he simply said, “My body is stubborn and refuses to cooperate.”
Ruberwa, one of the most experienced riders, has had his fair share of glory in Rwanda. He’s come close to winning the international UCI Tour of Rwanda multiple times, earning the nickname ‘Campione’. The only things that rival his climbing abilities are his charm and sense of humour. “Why are we doing this to ourselves?” he asked with a laugh. “The first day I was dragging myself, but I treated it like a training camp, a hardcore training camp. I built strength kilometre by kilometre until I actually started feeling good and caught up with a few riders, gaining positions throughout the race.”
Dufutumuzika also struggled during the first two days, but his grit is unwavering. He never backed down, drawing from his solid experience in long races across the African continent. He discovered cycling while working as a cargo rider, transporting water from a nearby lake to his village. He would carry 120 litres on a single-speed bike, climb tough hills, and ride long miles – experiences that would later make him one of the most resilient riders.
He was standing still on his bike, taking shelter from the scorching sun that morning, I was there looking at him and his grace and I still had the headphones on, The Doors, The End, was playing loud in my ears. I had my camera down, I lowered the headphones just to make contact with him but we never said a word, and the music came back in my ears. He did that slow blink of the eyes for ‘yes’ when I showed the camera and my clear intention to photograph him. I felt like I was saying, ‘I just want to capture your grace in one shot!’ His slow blink felt like, ‘Yeah, I don’t really mind or care, you can try if you want.’
I went very slowly, Moses was parked further away under another tree and was almost asleep by now. Another racer passed in the background and I never shot him, not there at least. I only heard his freewheel as he started to coast the descent on the other side.
I circled slowly around him searching the best angle I could, from lower down. It felt like I had to bow down and lower myself in front of him – that was the natural angle. I forced it a bit too much but then I found the right balance, he looked at the camera with an almost defying air; there was power in his eyes, then there was also a sort of dramatic awareness of something I couldn’t grasp, I thought, ‘He knows something I don’t, maybe many things.’
When I went back to the car after a ‘thank you’ with the eyes, I couldn’t even turn my back on him, I jumped on the truck at the back, standing on the platform, still facing him, I banged the roof twice so that Moses would start driving away, I only turned back to face the way once my hero had disappeared at the next corner before the downhill. The race was not the centre of anything any more, it was merely the background of my shots, a distant character of the story.
My thoughts then turned to the very nature of ultra-distance cycling, why I was fascinated by cycling and did not take the family path of becoming a war photographer, or a more serious journalist.
The ‘why’ of these races had never fascinated me, which makes sense now I know that to me these races or long trips probably initiate a desire to escape the mundane. The ‘why’ was unconscious and yet too simple – it was only about escaping myself in the end. But there was more to it and I could understand that better in Rwanda. By following a race again, and a race so very far from home, in a country charged with electric and dramatic history but also hope, the whole reason behind it, the ‘why’ became the very effect this brain space creates.
Because through enduring the land, taking the roses in your face, their beauty and their thorns, their smell and their colours, while in that state of depleted resistance or lack thereof, opening to the elements all around you, the elements piercing through and coming closer and within, until they are almost inside you, under your skin, the resistance to the land slowly shifts in surrender.
Your skin becomes permeable, opening a portal to your soul, the gates of your conscience showing an eternal instinctive truth. The truth needs no defence system, no persuasion strategy.
Now that you are freed from the need of killing time and boredom, you are not consuming anything. You are being consumed yourself and you are letting the world whisper to your ear that it’s about to consume you even more, you can see, hear, grasp, sing and praise its grace, without any fact-check, you can understand this place you’re in.
Something changed, something clicked but it made no sound. The science of silence. Beauty has no mercy for the brave. Now you are pedalling but you’re not only pedalling, and it’s not just your wheels turning around, but the whole land turning under you, passing you by, gently, the right pace, the right amount of time and speed to understand, to feel, to breathe.
This is why maybe for some, ultra distance cycling races are not necessarily about racing a bike, they are not even really a sport but a spiritual journey, an adventure into the lands leading you inside yourself. You are now thinking with your guts and your brain is busy, elsewhere.
Maybe touring can get you there as well, but touring is an act of balance and management that adventure has no care or taste for. Touring is not detrimental enough to your mind and body, to get you in that special zone. A lot of tourers will look at ultra cyclists or racers or adventurers like exploration and connection wasters, gamblers of opportunities they would have had, had they taken the time.
But time for what?
The adventurers riding through the starry night, the explorers of the dark, not seeing but guessing, not knowing but hoping, hoping to trust the nature around them, not finding and picturing but aiming and sensing, they don’t need to convince anyone else, they don’t feel the need to contradict, argue, defend, discuss or elaborate this position and the passion with it. He who is really convinced will never try to convince anyone.
Mussa Dufutumuzika spent 26 hours on his bike at the Evolution gravel race in Tanzania, riding in the end on a front wheel bouncing left and right, bearings gone, vanished, so he had to give up. He had to scratch the race, but he had found a power that would never leave him again, no matter the circumstances or consequences – his mind could jump back to that night, when he pushed himself to a point that his body, mind and consciousness would have never imagined to be within reach. In the end it was Dufutumuzika’s bike that gave up, before he even considered it, while going hard on a rocky path down a mountain and feeling like maybe his life was actually at stake, and there was nothing he could do about that. After the second day in a mental and physical ditch, that very image of himself back in Tanzania was how he resurrected and finished the Race Around Rwanda with a big smile on his face.
This is the story of many people in the Race Around Rwanda, facing challenges yet never losing grasp of the beauty surrounding their struggle. And that very struggle feeding the beauty even more.
This is why racing in Africa, or far from the comfortable west, is so important and noble. It brings you to an appreciation of the world, an appreciation of nature, an appreciation of cultures, an appreciation of people and souls and minds and lifestyles that you wouldn’t get on a normal trip, a two-week getaway. There are moments where you will hate this place and resent everything that happens on your way, moments where you will suffer this place and endure it in ways you never signed up for. But there are moments where you will burst out of joy, or the joy will burst out of you.
You don’t get that after a good night’s sleep; you don’t reach that after a sterile meal, in a capital city or a lodge, on a trek or a safari.
I don’t think you can get that without paying a price; you can’t get that within the rational limits of tourism, and within the borders of extreme. You can’t get that without risking your privilege and your naivety.
And it’s when the way you take meets that little gnarly opening leading to the big void, that little detour sign where you still have, for one or two seconds, a choice to make or that option to refuse, the question mark at the end of the track.
That beautiful unknown is where sense will be made out of chaos, where you will develop a strong and tender relationship with this world, where you will become aware of what it is that is at stake and how high these stakes are.
You come back altered by the deep knowledge that this world was made in a way that your brain can’t compute but your heart can compass.
