ALBANY — Wanting to learn more about the world, Kevin Hickey hopped on a plane and then spent six years riding across Europe and Africa on a bicycle. He rode across 52 countries, covering a span 41,000 miles.

That was nearly three decades ago, when Hickey was 23.

He’s now an associate professor of English and Africana studies in the department of humanities and social sciences at Albany College of Pharmacy. He wants to increase global cultural awareness and realizes most people, including his pharmacy students, won’t do what he did.

So last year Hickey founded the college’s African Film Series. He’s hosting the second annual series this February for Black History Month. The series starts on Feb. 7, and will screen three films, each a week apart.

On the first night of the series, Hickey will present a slide show, set to music, of his travels around Europe and Africa.

Why travel"

Becoming the first American and fifth person ever to bike across the Sahara, Hickey said his love of travel began with his love of reading.

As an avid reader growing up, and throughout his academic career, Hickey said world literature fascinated him, but it was around his junior year in high school that his desire to learn about the world through literature turned into a desire to learn through travel.
"It started as a hitchhiking trip around the nation by the end of high school, then it turned into a bike trip around the world," Hickey said.

Although the hitchhiking trip never panned out, he surpassed his second goal; Hickey’s six-year trip is equivalent to traveling one-and-a-half times around the earth.

Hickey is a Cooperstown native who now lives in Guilderland.
"You can see me bicycling around Guilderland, but not on too many big trips anymore," said Hickey.

He has an impressive academic résumé outside of his globe-trotting adventures, and believes in the power of both reading and traveling.

Citing a story from when he was a teenager, Hickey shed some light on how far back his love of reading and African studies go. Right before Christmas during his freshman year in high school, Hickey stole his parents’ credit card, went to the local bookstore, and bought about 20 different African and African-American history books.

He doesn’t quite know where this interest in African studies came from at such a young age.
"Books were great, but I didn’t want to just learn from reading alone," said Hickey.

The journey

Beginning in 1978, after graduating with a bachelor-of-science degree in biology and pre-med studies from the University of Vermont, Hickey started his epic journey with $2,000.

That money lasted for only about a year-and-a-half, and Hickey lived on roughly $3 a day for all of his expenses. It was the generosity of locals, and a mix of other people like missionaries and Peace Corps workers, who helped him along the way.

To further fund his living expenses, Hickey performed various odd jobs including: collecting donations for playing his recorder on the street; giving slide-show presentations at schools, cultural centers, and embassies in Europe and Africa; writing newspaper and magazine articles published in Germany and Switzerland; publishing photographs from the trip; and even doing agricultural work in France.

With his bicycle strapped down with saddle bags, pouches, and backpacks, which could weigh from 100 to 150 pounds depending on the amount of water and food he carried, Hickey set out peddling across two continents.
Hickey said he was in "pretty good shape," as the result of cycling for at least five or six hours a day, some of it in mountain terrain. Hickey also dealt with multiple bouts of malaria and dysentery during his six years of travel overseas.

He had a full beard then, and weighed about 35 pounds less than now. As he traveled through unfamiliar lands, he saw many of the different indigenous animals and ate an array of unfamiliar cuisine.

Hickey has collected over 400 recipes from his travels and has eaten a foods that include: termites; grubs; grasshoppers; snakes; jungle snails and frogs; several monkeys; baboon; hippopotamus; camel; antelope; ostrich; chicken-head soup; raw pig liver; sea urchin; goat skin; and cane rat, boiled whole.

Many times relying on help from locals, Hickey found that people were very generous and kind to him during the trip. Accommodating people would often provide him with food, water, and shelter along the way, he said.

It was during this journey that Hickey met his future wife in Basel, Switzerland, at the Swiss Tropical Institute, where she worked studying diseases. His wife, Hanna, is currently a French and German language teacher at Guilderland High School. She joined Hickey through Africa during the last two years of his trip.

In his own words

Kevin Hickey is in the process of putting down his travel experiences on paper and writing a book. In the past, Hickey has written articles and travel pieces for cyclist magazines and various other publications. In a piece published in Cyclist magazine in 1988, he wrote:
"Curt [Hickey’s brother] sucks meat from the backbone of a giant rat. Masticated skin scurries down my throat. The woman with octopus hairdo sets a plate of baseball-sized snails before us. Kwami smiles as the people filling Kwami’s single-room home watch us eat. When we finish, the woman pours water over our hands.
"We lay out our mats and sleeping bags, hang our mosquito net....Our fourth-class tickets allow us deckspace amid the goats and poorest people. The passengers observe Ramadan so strictly that they don’t swallow their own saliva, and the decks are flung with spittle as if hosting hordes of small gray grasshoppers. But as we near Timbuktu on the third evening, the spitting stops and a calm overtakes the passengers."

In another piece Hickey submitted to Bicycling in 1982, he wrote:
"Other than awakening one morning to a tent covered with a passing battalion of army ants, I had nothing but good experiences. The day peaked at over 100 degrees, but there were always springs gushing with cold clear water along the way. Farmers looked on as children ran to the road, offering me buckets of just-picked apricots or plums. Restaurants gave me desserts and teas, gratis. I was welcomed into many homes. Turkey was the most wonderful place I had ever been."

The lone desert cyclist

Hickey crossed the Sahara alone on a bicycle, facing temperatures that ranged from 20 degrees up to 115 degrees. Other dangers in the Sahara included fierce sandstorms and dehydration.

Hickey said, near the end of his Sahara trip, when it was getting warmer due to spring approaching, he consumed up to 18 liters of water a day. He relied on traffic traveling across the desert to replenish his water supply. There were mainly traders crossing the desert for business, limited to three or four cars a day. Water conservation was key, says Hickey.

At one point during his trip, the roads disappeared, and Hickey was forced to dismount and pull his bike across the deep sands. The bike weighed over 100 pounds and the distance he covered on foot was 400 kilometers, which is roughly the distance between Albany and Buffalo.

Hickey makes a distinction between travel and tourism. While tourists go out to enjoy themselves and relax, travelers go out to discover new places. Tourists do not really connect with the locals, he said.
"You’re not really connecting with the people," said Hickey about tourists. He said traveling allows you to see how different cultures interact and gives a new perspective on the lives of others.

Traveling with a bicycle is also a much more intimate way to travel according to Hickey, because you are not locked up in a vehicle and you have to depend on the people more. If you’re out in the open, he said, you can experience the world around you.
"It is really utopian to think we can have one big happy world. Certainly, when you do travel...you see the importance of reaching out and connecting," Hickey said.
"We’re in this together, one world," said Hickey.

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The African Film Series will be shown at the O’Brien Building, room 218, at the Albany College of Pharmacy campus, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Feb. 7, 14, and 21. Admission is free and open to all Pharmacy students, faculty, staff, and to the public.

Allah Tantou (God’s Will) will be shown on Feb. 7. Directed by David Achkar, Allah Tantou follows the film-maker’s search for his father, a leading figure in the Ballets Africains who served as a United Nations ambassador for Guinea before being incarcerated for treason.

Ndeysaan (The Price of Forgiveness) will be shown Feb. 14. Directed by Namsour Sora Wade, the film chronicles the murder of a man by his best friend. It is based on a novel by Mbissane Ngom, who descends from the Lebou ethnic group of fishermen on the southern coast of Senegal.

Karmen Gei will be shown Feb. 21. In retelling Carmen in a contemporary Senegal setting, director Joseph Gai Ramaka has used indigenous Senegalese music and choreography mixed with a contemporary jazz score.

For more information on the film series, Christine Shields can be reached at the Albany College of Pharmacy, at 694-7389. Parking for the series can be found off of Holland Avenue in Albany, on Notre Dame Drive. Follow the signs for the film series to the O’Brien building on the college campus.