Riders for Health Experience Africa
Find out how you can join Riders for Health’s next incredible Experience Africa adventure in 2012. Email experienceafrica@riders.org for more information.
Experience Africa this way – and you will never forget it
We all like to do things for charity. But suppose we did something for a serious Africa-based social enterprise? Something that really called for getting up in the morning and facing the realities of rural Africa – out there where people really do live, in spite of everything.
This is Riders for Health’s Experience Africa.
Really experience Africa, close up and side by side with the team that is currently fighting the monster that is distance and isolation. 
Riding past gazelles and elephants, yes. Visiting Victoria Falls and see the sun set over Kariba, yes. But also riding to rural clinics and seeing at firsthand what the real problems are out there for health workers and the people they are sworn to care for.
Not everyone likes this kind of ride. Some off-road enthusiasts ride in Africa just to get that visor down and blast to the far horizon, bucking and sliding through some of the most beautiful scenery on Earth. If you happen to see it, in passing.
The Riders for Health ride in Zambia took place in late November, starting in Lusaka and making its very interesting way along sand and dirt roads through villages and farms and towns, stopping to talk, stopping to listen and stopping to understand what so many visitors to Africa miss: the vitality, the humour and the pretty-well unfailing good nature of the hospitable people in that hard but thrilling landscape. 
This trip, with GP legend Randy Mamola and current MotoGP star Alvaro Bautista, started at Lusaka and took its time to wend cross-country to the enchanted lagoon at Lochinvar national park and down to Kariba Lodge, beside the unforgettable lake.
'It is something that I will remember for the rest of my life' said Alvaro of his Experience Africa trip. Click here to read more about Alvaro's experiences in Zambia.
On to visit the health centre at Mochipapa, where the news was optimistic and hopeful because of the new Riders programme in Southern Province, and on at last to Livingstone, named after the first European tourist and a couple of miles from the wonder of the world – Mosi oa Tunya – the breathtaking falls Livingston renamed after his queen.
The falls were a little short of water just before the rainy season – in March you can’t see anything for spray – but were there any other regrets?
‘Just one’, said Randy. ‘I would really have loved to have ridden out to villages with health workers’.
Well, next time, when their training is complete and their routes all worked out, we’ll arrange it. And the chances are, if the health workers Riders have trained in other countries are anything to go by, even you will have a hard time keeping up!
To find out how you can join Riders for Health’s next Experience Africa adventure in 2012, email experienceafrica@riders.org for more information.
