The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa

Monika Rohlmann is an environmental/social consultant in Yellowknife,
Northwest Territories.

Neil Peart’s journey by bicycle through Cameroon in 1988 is the sort
of trip most people would never make. Heat, malaria, and dysentery are
the usual discomforts for a Westerner in Africa. Add the physical
exertion of bicycling 40 to 90 miles each day for a month, along with
very rustic accommodations and meals, and it becomes a survival course.
Some of Peart’s companions (there are three others in addition to a
trip leader) drag themselves grudgingly up hills and along the potholed,
rock-strewn roads, cursing the group for not resting or for the lack of
water.

Although Peart suffers the same discomforts, he moves on with an amused
grin, always trying to see what is new and who goes by. In doing so, he
shares with us a million details of the traveler’s life in Cameroon:
the busy marketplaces, the eateries that all seem to serve the same
thing (omelettes and “rice with junk on it”), hotels that are grimy
and without water or electricity, and the endless roadside check stops
that are a symbol of a huge and dysfunctional government bureaucracy.
Shared also are the many words and gestures that greet him, from
children laughing and chanting “Bicycle rider try your best!” to
calls of “White man! White man!”

There are few pictures in the book (another testament to a culture that
views white people with suspicion), but subjects not captured in photos
are admirably illustrated in words.

Peart also happens to be drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush,
which might explain

why his book reads like sweet music looming intensely on a heat-rippled
landscape.