Although he recently turned 49, Nick Korir’s youthful flare has not faded away. The reverend is not your average Bible-carrying padre leading his flock to Zion. He has an earthly mission, too.
To help change the lives of scores of youths through education. He is a man with a calling for the youth of Africa. The youth, as you get to learn from his inherent zeal when you sit with him, is the tabernacle on which his faith is expressed at its best.
About 20 of his 25 years of episcopal duties have been spent pastoring the youth. He is an avid adventure motorcyclist—the founding chair of the Private Bikers Association of Kenya and part of the continental leadership team of a private bikers’ outfit called Ubuntu.
His life can be crystalised into two blood-boiling passions: Youth and biking. A decade ago, he had a fork-in-the-road moment.
“I asked myself if my passions for biking and the youth could merge,” he tells BDLife.
His will created a way. “I found a place where they merged: riding to raise money. Since 2008, Nairobi Chapel has run a scholarship fund for students in high schools. We have managed to sponsor over 1,000 students through different high schools in Kenya under the Logos scholarship fund. In 2013, I organised a ride from Nairobi to Cape Agulus in South Africa to help the programme raise funds.”
He gathered six other men to accompany him down south and back to Nairobi on their big bikes.
Passi, as his youthful flock calls him, is on his second mission. This time, to set up a Sh50 million education endowment fund.
“I desire to set up a fund that will outlive me. One that doesn’t need to rely on donations now and then,” he says.
Before his 50th birthday in 2025, he hopes to hand over a cheque the campaign will have raised.
“Fifty is a significant birthday. A golden jubilee. Instead of receiving gifts, I want to gift the youth. Education gives them the chance to become more,” he says.
Accompanying him in this mission are four men and two women drawn from different professions and age, “We have a supply chain expert, a civil engineer, a lawyer, a humanitarian worker, two entrepreneurs in the transport industry, and of course a pastor. We all aged between 35 to 60.” When he made a call to his biking community about this audacious mission, the six responded.
Their trip they believe will be historic.
“This could be a Guinness Book of World Records material. No African has done this before. But much more than this, this is a legacy project for me. The nature of an endowment is that it keeps giving. Long after I am gone, it will still be there, educating the youth of Africa and giving them opportunities to dream bigger.”
At its inception, the plan was to take on the challenge in four separate trips.
“We planned to travel to the four extreme points of the continent in separate trips. As we refined our plan, we asked ourselves why not do the whole trip in one bold take?”
They went into research to contextualise themselves and mentally understand where they were going. “We have sat studying the map of Africa severally to acquaint ourselves with the four extreme points, we have watched videos and read about travellers and their experience.”
Their trip starts in Nairobi on December 12. They will go up the A2 to the Moyale border point accompanied by about 200 other motorcyclists. They will travel across Ethiopia, Djibouti and then Somalia up to Ras Xaafun point in the Horn of Africa. They will then travel back to Kenya for a brief stopover before proceeding south.
Their destination in the south of the continent is the Cape of Agulhas. From the south, they will travel to Pointe des Almadies in Senegal, and finally, Cape Angela in Tunisia.
“From Tunisia, we will ship our bikes back to Kenya and fly back to Nairobi,” he says.
The team has not made solid accommodation plans for the five-month journey.
“When a trip is too programmed you lose the adventure. We plan to seek accommodation on the go. In every country we enter, we shall be received by a local adventure motorcyclist who will show us around. It can’t be difficult to find a place to lay our heads.”
In their plan, they have set aside resting days as well.
“Every five days, we have a complete rest day where we don't sit on our bikes. We walk around the village or city that we're in, interact with the people, and tour significant sites. Anything but sitting on the bikes. It gives us not just physical rest, but it gives us psychological rest, just so that we get replenished and refreshed,” he says.
One-year sabbatical
Five months is too long a period to be away from work and family, how has the team planned around this? For Nick, the church has given him a one-year sabbatical.
“I feel for my friends because some of them will be working remotely while on the journey. In terms of family, I will try and incorporate them into the trip by taking advantage of rest days. My two boys will be on a school midterm in February next year, I intend to fly them to whichever country we will be in and spend two weeks with them before they return to Kenya.”
Money
The elephant in the room—or the jungle in their case—is how they are funding the trip.
“For each individual, just a ballpark figure, is it's going to cost us $100 (Sh13,000) a day. We project to be on the road for 150 days. So estimation for recurrent expenditure like fuel accommodation, and food is $15,000 (Sh2 million) per person. There are some costs that we have had to incur upfront. That’s an additional $1,000 (Sh130,000) to cover medical insurance, travel insurance, carne passage—which is a passport for the bike etc.”
Each individual caters for their own needs on the trip and they will be compiling their experience at the end of the five months to produce a documentary.
“We are recording on the go. These files are stored in a cloud and our team of video editors in Kenya will be piecing them together. As part of our preparations, we’ve had media training to sharpen our videography and photography skills,” he says.
The seven have the blessing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “We plan to make stops at all Kenyan consulates and diplomatic missions in every country we make a stop. The ministry is sending us out as goodwill ambassadors with an official Kenyan flag. This has also eased our visa processes, especially for West and North African countries.”
If anyone fails to complete the journey, including Nick himself, they have an understanding that the journey is not about a person and that the goal is to get to the finish line.
“For these kinds of things, there is a 95 percent chance that not all of us will make it to the end of the journey. We have promised ourselves that those who can finish for anyone that may, for one reason or the other, not make it to the end,” he says.
