Photograph: Ephraim carries his electric fan

When the pathway ended for me at the turnoff into Atteridgeville, I came across a neatly kept lawn under shady trees, flower beds and an irrigation hose at work, indicating much effort to keep the place beautiful.

I rested under a tree, watching a fellow cyclist some distance away on the other side of the road, carrying his bike above his shoulders as he crossed a marsh on a pathway that was a short cut between neighbouring Lotus Park and Atteridgeville.

Then I heard a snake-like hissing sound behind me; I looked back in horror to see that my rear wheel had deflated. 

Damn it!

It didn’t take long to fix but it was an awful nuisance untying my panniers and tying them up again. Panniers are the bags fitted on either side of the rear wheel of a bicycle in which you can store things. I hoped it wouldn’t be the first of too many such incidents.

When the cyclist who had been crossing the marsh reached me he stared at me and responded reservedly to my greeting, not reciprocating the message of “Hello, fellow cyclist, kindred spirit, blood brother” that I had hoped would connect to him.

A siren sounded for a few seconds up the road. It was a cop car, one of those “blue light” numbers that escorts important people around, sometimes at high speeds.

Some people think this is how top government people and politicians should travel; others feel they have no right to go around like this and are a menace on the roads when they do.

Lettering on the side of the car read “Diplomatic Policing”, which means that particular cop car is used to help people who work for governments of other countries in offices that are known as embassies, consulates and high commissions.

COMMENT: What do you think of the “blue light” brigade?

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My back wheel wasn’t quite the same after I had changed the tyre. It started to wobble but I could live with that. It was just a bit irritating, especially as I was not exactly fit.

However, the inconvenience caused me to slacken off when it came to absorbing my surroundings.

I pressed on towards a sign ahead that read “Mendi Memorial”, a memorial to the World War 1 sinking of a ship carrying members of the South African Native Labour Corps. Nearly 650 people died when the SS Mendi collided with another vessel in the sea between Britain and France. It was one of the most tragic incidents in South African military history but little was done to remember it during the apartheid era.

Many gathered on the deck of the ship where the chaplain, the Reverend Isaac Dvobha reportedly addressed them saying: 

“Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do … you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers … Swazis, Pondos, Basotho … so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies.”

Perhaps adding to my slackness on the day was the fact that Aunty Connie had recently passed on. She was an elderly family friend who, in her Welsh accent, would speak of the importance of “going the extra mile”.

I’ve often had the feeling I was hearing Aunty Connie’s voice advising me to do this while on assignments, prompting me to do so, but on this occasion her voice did not sound.

A kilometre or so later I started regretting not having gone to see the Mendi Memorial and I told myself that for the rest of the trip her message should jolly well come back to life.

The upside was the view that I turned around to see when I reached the shade of a bridge at the top of the long hill I had cycled up from central Pretoria. I saw the city’s skyscrapers nestled among the Magaliesberg mountains. Puffy clouds filled the blue sky. The slopes were bright green thanks to summer rains.

COMMENT: Did you know about the story of the Mendi before you read this?

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Moving on, the jacaranda-shaded pedestrian way was no more. All I had was the jagged edge of the tarmac and not even a yellow line to stay to the left of. In Gauteng and in this developed part of North West, these lines give out a half-hearted message that people other than motorists have a right to be on the road.

Not having a bike equipped with any bells and whistles I had no way of telling how far I had cycled unless there were kilometre stones on the road sides, or road signs indicating distances, which are usually ten kilometres apart.

However, shortly after Atteridgeville was a sign warning drivers to have their wits about them because the next four kilometres was a “hijack zone”.

I pedalled unperturbed, not believing I was personally threatened by what they were warning motorists of. Then there was another, similar sign giving the same warning about the two kilometres 

I figured I had done two kilometres between the signs!

COMMENT: What could be done to police “hijack zones” better?

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It was a long, hot climb towards Hartbeespoort for an unfit cyclist who eventually found shade from the sun and shelter from the fast-moving traffic where a thorn tree’s branches hung over a storm water canal that ran parallel to the road.

But at the top of the hill was the stunning view of the dam, two towns on its shoreline called Schoemansdal and Cosmos, and its mountains. I free-wheeled to a garage shop where I poured an energy drink down my throat.

Further on I took a rest in the shade of a high bush on a traffic island, which I shared with two people who were relaxing after work and another who was a fellow cyclist. His mountain bike had a huge box strapped to the handle bars.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s an electric fan,” replied the cyclist who later told me he was Ephraim, an itinerant worker from Nkhata Bay on the northern shore of Lake Malawi.

“My boss said I was not working well in the garden,” he explained.

“I told him it was because it’s getting so hot at night these days that I cannot sleep, so he bought me this fan.”

Ephraim seemed pleased to hear that I had been to his hometown. I rang off a few of the names I could remember: Chikali Beach and the names of the lake ferries that called in at Nkhata Bay – the Ilala, the Mtendere and the Chauncy Maples.

These boats go up and down Lake Malawi. Measured in miles it’s roughly as wide as there are weeks in the year and as long as there are days in the day.

A mile is 1,6 kilometres. In Malawi, as in most countries, distances are measured in kilometres.

Ephraim and I cycled up the road together, he heading off to his lodgings with his electric fan dangling from his handle bars, me on my way out of town to the backpackers’ lodge on a smallholding in the bush on the other side of the mountain.

COMMENT: Do you battle to sleep on hot, summer nights?