By Stephen Ssenkaaba
WHEN they graduate from school, many young French people think of one thing: finding a job and working hard to earn a living. Jeremy Marie, a 23-year-old tourism graduate was thinking along the same lines, but for a different reason- to earn a ‘leaving’.

In October last year, Jeremy left his small home town of Normandy with a bag containing clothes, a mosquito net, a camera, a notebook and a few thousand Euros.

He had worked one full year as a waiter and saved every last coin for what his family and many of his friends thought was a crazy adventure.

When he visited The New Vision, there was something striking about him. Something that made him stand out from the group of guests that sat patiently waiting at the reception area.

He was dressed in a navy blue, fairly tired T-shirt, jeans and spent sneakers. He carried a black rugged rucksack which seemed to weigh down his diminutive frame. His small clean-shaven round head betrayed fast-advancing signs of baldness.

At a glance, this man who stood at barely 5ft, looked like a tourist. Maybe he was. But if he was, then Jeremy Marie made a different kind of tourist.

Marie recently came to Uganda as part of his world tour. He has visited different parts of the country and hopes to visit several other African countries before proceeding to Asia, North and South America. His journey is likely to take three more years.

Hitch-hiking
When he set out to traverse the world, Marie decided to use the most adventurous and risky of means — hitch-hiking.

‘Un coup de pouce autour du monde’ (Giving a hand around the world) is the name of the tour that has so far taken him to 20 countries, covering a distance of 19,200 km. “I have always had an ambition to see the world,” he says. “This was my opportunity.”

At the end of his journey he plans to publish memoirs of his experience for circulation to different parts of France.
“My work will reflect the good side of humanity — the interesting cultures, the warmth and friendliness of the people that I met and interacted with,” he says.

Ultimately, he hopes that his adventure will lead to a better understanding of the world and foster a sense of peaceful coexistence among peoples of different cultures.

From Italy to Germany, Lithuania, Poland to Jordan, Syria Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia to Uganda, he has survived on sheer luck and the generosity of strangers.

Hitch-hiking is full of uncertainties. Marie knew this very well when he set out on his journey. That is why he gracefully moved on when a driver in Italy stopped and, instead of offering a much-needed lift to the young traveler, spat in his face.

“Italians have no time for strangers,” he says. Sometimes he found himself stranded in the middle of nowhere, as was the case on a snowy island in Bosnia. “It was cold and dark and there was nowhere to sleep,” he recalls.

With his bag, a bottle of drinking water and a coat over his cold body, Marie slept in a makeshift building. “I woke up in the morning to find the water in my bottle frozen,” he recalls. Many times motorists ignore his appeals for lifts.

And when this happens, he walks. At one point, in Italy, Marie walked 150 km in three days after a futile attempt to get a lift.

“It was raining and when night fell, I slept outside,” he recalls. It was after the third day that he secured a lift from a kind driver. Unable to speak many languages apart from his native French and broken English, Marie always struggled to communicate.

“In Italy, I went dumb,” he says. “I did not know a single Italian word, so I resorted to using gestures to get my messages across. When the gestures did not work, I chipped in a mixture of broken English and French.”

This often paid off with confused and angry stares from passersby. It was worse in the Arab countries. “In Egypt, Sudan and Syria, people would not even bother to listen because I did not make sense,” he says.

He started carrying around a book scribbled with a few Arabic words of greeting and requests for directions, accommodation and food. “Wherever I went, I presented these to people and I would be helped,” he says.

Marie braved the hostile neighborhoods of Western Europe, sleeping on the streets sometimes and going without food. “I spent a couple of nights at a petrol station in Germany.”

He worked as a waiter in Jordan to supplement his depreciating savings. “It was stressful,” he says.

On average, he spent four to three days in a place. Wherever he received a warm welcome he stayed longer and interacted with people, made new friends and toured the country.

He used his prolonged stay in the Arabia to visit some of the most phenomenal sites in the world. “The Egyptian Pyramids are for me some of the most spectacular scenes of my travels.

The giant magnificent conical slabs frolicking in the sandy terrain of Egypt made such an impression on me,” he says. That coupled with the Egyptian hospitality made life memorable, until time came for him to depart.

“I was denied a visa to travel to Sudan. All this was because of the strict Sudanese government immigration rules against Western visitors,” he says. Marie spent three weeks at the immigration department, stranded at the offices.

After an agonising wait, he traveled by truck to Sudan, to a hot, sandy and dusty welcome. “I was thirsty all the time.”
Broke and unable to use his visa card because of politico-economic bottlenecks, Marie depended on handouts from the local residents to survive in Sudan.

He left for Ethiopia and found life a little easier except for one problem. “When the kids saw me on the streets, they started following me, begging for money.”

After the scorching sun of the Arab world, the immigration hiccups of the Sudan to hordes of Ethiopian child beggars that trailed him through Adis Ababa streets, his visit to Uganda is a breath of fresh air.

“When I arrived in Kampala I set up base in Kamwokya where I lived with a European expatriate whose contact I got through www.couchsurfing.com, the site that connects world travelers.”

In Uganda, he visited Kampala, Jinja and enjoyed most of all the beautiful natural green landscape, the warm food and people. “Ugandans are very friendly, peaceful and religious.”

Jeremy left Uganda recently with fond memories of a warm, friendly and beautiful country. His journey continues to Tanzania, Zimbabwe down to South Africa.

But as he continues on his journey, he hopes that one or two people might gain from his experience.