Oi mucker, are you out for a wee spin on yer bike, like?

So there we sitting in our flat on Tuesday afternoon, 2 days into the Easter break. Alison was quietly reading Girl Meets God and Clarke was footering with revision notes for his Java class. The phone rang. It was Mary Endersby, from Co. Down (originally), now from-up-the-road. This is an approximate paraphrase of our conversation:

“Hi – are you guys free this afternoon? You might want to meet the fourteen people from Northern Ireland who arrived in on their bicycles last night.”
“Sorry, I mis-heard you, I thought you said fourteen people cycled here from Northern Ireland.”
“Yes, that's right. Actually, they started in Morocco and they are finishing in South Africa. They are resting in the main SIL compound for a few days.”

We shouldn't have been surprised. We've learnt in our short time here that the assortment of people who pass through is not really that strange and we've got used to seeing people from all sorts of places. We even met a girl a couple of weeks ago, from Germany, who taught herself Scots Gaelic because she was a fan of Runrig. She went from that to a thesis on the future of Irish and Flemish. A year ago, that would have seemed unusual. Not so now.

So, fourteen people from NI on bicycles having a rest in Yaoundé and waiting for their support van to catch up. What could be more normal? To no great surprise, they were pretty tired (you would be too if you had cycled 60 km yesterday on bumpy roads). However, they were in pretty good spirits and seemed to be enjoying the journey. The basic idea seems to be the 'core' team do the whole thing while others fly out and join them for certain legs. Not a bad way to spend a gap year, is it?

Why are they here? To raise money for 'Hope Academy' – you can read more about their journey and the reasons for it at: www.cycleforhope.org

Typical of Northern Ireland, we discover plenty of mutual acquaintances that make it seem like NI is full of stalkers. “Well if you are from x, you must know so-and-so” (yes, his father is minister in my church). Or, “Well, if you live in x, do you know so-and-so” (Yes, him and the wife and the children – they are buying a house near my parents). Or, “If you are from Coleraine do you happen to know Alice McAlary?” (Yes, she's Alison's aunt and she was standing in this very spot two months ago!). People from outside NI think these coincidences are weird. However, as anyone from NI will tell you, it is possible to go anywhere on earth and have a very high probability of meeting the cousin of the guy you walked to school with.

That's as far as we got. Pastor Jean-Luc (who they heard about from someone who is now based in NI, or something like that) was taking them off to speak at a school. So, we promised to do dinner tomorrow night. No doubt we'll find out more such coincidences over BBQ'd chicken. For the first time in eight months it was nice to be able to: hold a conversation with a group of strangers and not have to repeat ourselves once and to have a bit of “crack” without being accused of drug use.

After harvesting a few mangos from a tree in the SIL compound (with the help of our friend Ceci), we walked home.