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Inside Cycling with John Wilcockson: On the road to Mali

Published: Jan. 8, 2007
Inside Cycling with John Wilcockson: On the road to Mali
Inside Cycling with John Wilcockson: On the road to Mali

I knew that this wasn’t going to be the usual bike-racing trip when the neatly dressed Arab businessman sitting next to me on the Royal Air Maroc flight from Paris-Orly to Casablanca Sunday night began chanting a prayer before we took off. He ended his salutation by blessing both me and his other neighbor, a young black West African.

Perhaps the man’s prayers ensured a safe trip, even though we were an hour late touching down in the Moroccan city. It took another 20 minutes before the plane’s door opened and we stepped down into a cool, misty night, lit by a waning, watery moon. After walking across the tarmac to an awaiting bus, passengers were hoping that we’d make our connections In theory, I had already missed my next flight, to Bamako, capital of the vast sub-Saharan nation of Mali.

Inside the terminal, an airline representative asked where I was headed; he told me to follow as he set off at a gallop through the near-empty Casablanca airport. The departure lounge for the Bamako flight was devoid of people, and the single security guard wasn’t in a hurry to inspect my passport. He didn’t even look at my Mali visa that almost didn’t arrive in time from the embassy in Washington, DC. I collected it at the FedEx office in Boulder only minutes before leaving for the Denver airport.

This whole trip had been touch and go, but the near-full plane for Bamako was waiting. I could finally sit back and relax. It was midnight Sunday and I’d already been traveling some 30 hours. There were other late arrivals, including a handsome Malian mother in ankle length, lemon-hued robes, her small son sleeping, papoose style, on her back. Then came some familiar faces: Italian journalist Gianfranco Josti of the Corriere della Sera, and Mauro Gianetti, the gregarious Swiss manager of Saunier-Duval-Prodir, the UCI ProTour team that is sponsoring this unusual African safari.

Saunier Duval’s project
The Boeing 737 lifted off smoothly through low clouds. The captain reported that touchdown in Bamako would be at 3:06 a.m. We were only a few minutes late, but after going through customs and passport inspection, it was another hour or so before helpers had loaded the Scott bikes in their black team bags along with a dozen suitcases onto the roof of a small bus. Our bags from Paris and Milan didn’t arrive, but with the Bamako hotel clock already past 5 a.m. I was just looking for sleep.

I had already done some research on Mali, so I knew it was, officially, the fourth poorest country in the world. Even so, it boasts the best music in the whole of Africa, it was once a mighty empire that produced most of the world’s gold, and it had bountiful agricultural lands — especially before the Sahara turned from fertile grassland to desert a few millennia ago.

The desertification is the reason why Gianetti, three of his staff, seven riders and five journalists had headed over the “bulge” of Africa to a distant destination. It’s said that, without reforestation, countries like Mali will be total deserts by 2020. And that’s where Saunier Duval comes in.

“Last year, we donated money to UNICEF for humanitarian work,” said Gianetti, “But much of it went to the organization, for administration. We wanted to do something more direct.”

The resulting project, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Saunier Duval heating and air conditioning company, is a project that has evolved into: “Recycling the world: 100 years for a million trees.” Without trees, the people can’t survive. But the country’s increasing population (it’s on pace to double from the current 11 million over the next 20 years) has been using more and more timber for heating and cooking, for building materials and furniture, as well as for native artwork.

The new project, to be launched Tuesday, is to plant a million trees in Mali over the course of the next 12 to 18 months. For every kilometer raced by the Saunier Duval riders this year, another tree will be planted — two-thirds of them eucalyptus, the rest fruit trees. The first kilometers will be ridden Tuesday in a race between Fatoma and Mopti — a city 600 kilometers east of Bamako — along with the symbolic planting of the first sapling.

The African cyclists who will compete against the ProTour septet left Bamako on a rickety bus at noon on Monday. Assuming they arrive safely, and assuming our early-morning flight to Mopti is on time, then we’ll witness a rather unusual start to the 2007 season. But more about that the next time I can get online.