FEATURE
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RIDERS EXPERIENCE AFRICA
and better understand the importance of effective transportation
in rural Africa.
Mamola and company have
been doing the trip since 2011
and it has been a growing success. In fact there are no availabilities for next year's trip and
they are already accepting reservations for 2015.
Riders for Health, on the other
hand, has been around a lot longer, with their established programs in place they wanted to
share it.
"What's been going on is basically Riders for Health has been
around for over 20 years and
we now have such good up and
running programs," Mamola explained. "Especially this one in
Zambia that's kind of a big trophy
to us because it's a huge experiment with the Gates Foundation
and Stanford University that we're
working with.
"So what we decided to do
was to open it up. Get people
who are interested in riding offroad and actually go and ride with
the African people who use the
motorcycles and really see first
hand what the project's about.
Because we have fans and enthusiasts who like to ride we're inviting them to come to see Zambia.
And Zambia's a beautiful country
with great people like most of Africa. We can actually go and ride
with some of the health workers
that are going to outreach programs and see what they are do-
ing. There is nothing like it. The
experience of what you see."
You also don't have to be an
advanced off-road rider. Classes
are available before the 2014 trip
on March 14 in the UK, but they've
had riders without off-road riding
experience on the trip before.
"We have women and men that
have done it who have never ridden off-road," Mamola said. "The
bike that you ride is the exact
bike that we use in Africa. It's a little 200 Yamaha four-stroke. Real
simple to ride, real easy to climb
anything because it's geared the
way that it is."
Mamola had an anecdote to
highlight the different approach
to motorcycle riding that the
health workers have versus rec-
