Cet article est également disponible en : Français
In January 2023, Margaux, a young Parisian with no experience, embarked on a somewhat crazy adventure: crossing Africa by motorcycle. She returned to France just a month ago, after a true odyssey. Here is the portrait of an extraordinary young woman.
I spent a long time searching for the best way to present Margaux. I struggled so much that four days before the magazine was finalized, I hadn’t written a single line of an article for which I had conducted the interview four months earlier! Let’s just say that Collin, my editor-in-chief, was starting to get seriously on edge. Then suddenly, it hit me why I was experiencing this writer’s block. Margaux is like a precious gem. I couldn’t tell you if she’s a diamond, emerald, or ruby, but like these cut stones, she has many facets and faces depending on how you look at her. This complexity makes it difficult for a writer like me to present her in a way that does her justice. For a moment, I thought about comparing her to Calamity Jane. But she didn’t agree with that analogy. “That’s not who I am,” she told me emphatically. Because this young woman has character, likely from her Polish heritage on her father’s side. It’s this strong personality that initially made me think of the famous adventurer, along with her seasoned traveler look—covered in tattoos—next to her motorcycle. Beyond this personality, she also stands out for her sometimes slightly edgy humor. Didn’t she nickname her motorcycle ‘Katsumi,’ partly because it’s a Japanese name, like her Honda CB500 X, but also, and especially, because it’s the name of a ‘famous’ adult film actress, and her motorcycle, like the latter, ‘has taken a beating during this trip, yet every morning, it starts up fresh and ready to take on the day’?
So, that’s the somewhat provocative adventurer Margaux as she presents herself on social media. However, an hour of conversation with her reveals a quite different side. A person of deep kindness, not devoid of softness, and even intrinsic shyness.
She was born and raised in Paris, specifically in the Pigalle neighborhood. Her grandmother ran a hotel there. After high school, she enrolled in medical school without much conviction. She didn’t enjoy it and got a job in a bakery, which helped her realize one thing about herself: she loves human contact. Next door to the shop where she worked was a journalism school. She enrolled there. This is how she discovered, almost by accident, her calling: journalism. It was during an internship at a production company that she met someone who would change her life: ‘Captain Morgan.’ At that time, she didn’t have a car license—unnecessary for a Parisian—and even less of a motorcycle license. Then she met a man who had traveled by motorcycle in countries she could hardly locate on a map. This was early 2020. Covid was about to shake the world. Morgan and she went into lockdown together. In the few square meters of their apartment, an unsuspected world opened up to her. A world of adventure and motorcycles. Of sweat and laughter. Of hardships and twists of fate. Once the lockdown was over, she passed her motorcycle license in early 2021, not without difficulty and multiple failures. Her first bike was a Royal Enfield, quickly replaced by a Honda CB500X bought in July 2021. Two months later, she, who had barely left Paris, set off on her first road trip to Spain, which ended sadly with a broken foot from a fall in the Bardenas desert. In January 2022, Morgan went traveling with a friend across the American continents. She joined them briefly in Costa Rica, where she rented a KTM 690 to follow them. The most vivid memory she has of that first journey is fear. Fear of falling, fear of getting hurt again. Maxime and Morgan, seasoned travelers, preferred dirt tracks over roads.
In September 2022, the two friends returned to France and began preparing for the crossing of the African continent. They purchased Ténéré 700 bikes. This is when Morgan asked her THE question: ‘Do you want to cross Africa with me?’
At first, the answer is NO. She is too scared! Africa? Just that?! It’s insanity! Yet, almost on a whim and at the last minute, she put her Honda, which wasn’t yet named Katsumi, into the container that would take the Ténérés to Cape Town, South Africa. So, the little Parisian, who had hardly ever traveled, left the Parisian cobblestones for the African sands in January 2023.
At first, it was hard, extremely hard, in fact. Everything scared her. The exhausting tracks made her approach each morning with a knot in her stomach. The campsites, filled with a thousand mysterious and frightening noises for someone who had never camped before. ‘I was a real scaredy-cat,’ she admits. Often, she would hide to cry. In the mornings, sometimes she would fall even before starting the motorcycle. She felt guilty for being such a dead weight to her travel companions, who were extremely patient and supportive. For a moment, she considered giving up. But her pride prevented her. She would see it through to the end, just as her father raised her. So she kept going, come what may.
And Africa would give her her first lessons right from the start—lessons not only in riding but also, and more importantly, in humanity and solidarity.
One experience at the very beginning of the trip particularly perplexed the Parisian she was. That day, the small group decided to hit a track for the very first time on their crossing. It was the rainy season in South Africa, and the ground was particularly muddy. She kept falling. On one fall, slightly more violent, she twisted the crash bars and, more importantly, the gear selector, which became stuck in first gear. At low speed, under a threatening sky, they arrived, a bit disheartened, in front of the farm of an Afrikaner, to whom they asked if he had any tools to lend so they could make repairs. To her great surprise, this stranger completely took them in, offering them a place to rest, warm meals, and working late into the night to fix Margaux’s motorcycle. For her, used to Parisian indifference, it was a real culture shock. But why was he doing this? Especially since he refused any financial compensation. She didn’t understand. It seemed unreal, incomprehensible.
The journey continued. In Namibia, another Afrikaner took them for a week of riding in the Damaraland in the northwest of the country. The area was particularly sandy, and there she kept falling again. Learning was all the more laborious as the heat was intense. On the fourth day, when they were almost out of water, Margaux’s motorcycle chain broke. They had a quick link with them, but Maxime had it. And he had gotten ahead of the group. Margaux then set off alone on foot in pursuit of Maxime, leaving Morgan and Chris, the Namibian friend, trying to make repairs. Very quickly, she realized how easy it was to get lost in the desert. Nothing looks more like a dune than another dune, especially when you come from the 9th arrondissement of Paris. In the end, everything turned out well, and they could continue.
A few days later, Margaux and Morgan decided to explore another area even further north: the Kaokoland desert. It is the land of the Himba people, whose beauty is matched only by its isolation. And again, she kept falling. On one particularly severe fall, the motorcycle flipped, and the handlebars twisted completely. It was impossible to continue. They were alone in this almost empty desert with a limited water supply. The situation was critical. But the adventure offered her an important new life lesson: trust in her good fortune. To their incredulity, they saw a 4×4 approaching them like providence. The driver, a Black Namibian—solidarity knows no skin color—helped them load the motorcycle into the bed of his pickup truck to drop them off at the next village made up of three houses and a lodge under construction. The construction foreman made his tools available to them, allowing Morgan to repair the motorcycle.
Once repaired, they decided to turn back to return to civilization. However! The next day, Margaux realized that the frame of her motorcycle was broken. The engine was only held by a bolt on the top of the chassis. It was a miracle that they had managed to leave the desert without her motorcycle breaking into two pieces. This time, it was truly impossible to continue, and they had to wait more than a week in that remote village for the arrival of a truck that regularly supplies the local grocery stores. On the phone, the man asked for a hundred euros for the transport. But faced with their extreme poverty, he ultimately refused any payment for fear of divine punishment if he took advantage of their situation. So, he dropped them off for free in Swakopmund, a large city located on the coast.
In Europe, the motorcycle would have likely been declared a wreck. But Africa offered her another lesson: that of resourcefulness, so important on this continent. There, everything is fixable, and a few days later, they could continue their journey.
As the kilometers passed on these Namibian tracks, the falls continued, and the ground became her best friend. A somewhat tough friend, it must be said, but one that taught her the basics: how to read the track and where to place her wheels. Practice makes perfect. It’s by falling that you learn to lift your motorcycle and ultimately to prevent it from falling again. Little by little, she gained confidence, and a miracle happened: fear vanished, making way for wonder.
It was in Zambia that her transformation took place. The nature there is breathtakingly beautiful. At night, she almost feels like she can touch the Milky Way, it seems so close. One morning, a herd of elephants passes by as they step out of their tent. Another time, it’s a pack of wild dogs playing not far from their motorcycles. She even gets the chance to observe a mother leopard and her cub up close, an animal that is notoriously difficult to spot. Sometimes, Africa allows itself to play a few tricks on her. Like one morning when, having walked away from the tent to relieve herself, she sees a jogger approach, appearing out of nowhere, headphones in his ears. He passes by her, greeting her without looking.
In the months that followed, she learned more than she had in her entire life before. She became interested in geopolitics, the history and geography of the countries she crossed. She talked with thousands of strangers, some of whom became friends, even if it was just for the duration of a shared evening. The journey continued from country to country. She loved Zambia for its wildlife and landscapes but hated Tanzania, ravaged by mercantilism and mass tourism. More recently, her favorites were Liberia and Sierra Leone for the kindness of their inhabitants.
Finally, after 19 months of traveling, she and Morgan returned to France. They passed through the Bielsa-Aragnouet tunnel in the Pyrenees—the same one she should have used to return from her road trip in Spain three years before, had she not broken her foot.
She couldn’t hold back tears of emotion and rightful pride as she crossed that border: ‘I did it! I succeeded! I crossed Africa!’ Yes, Margaux, you did it! Congratulations, girl. Hats off.”
You can find her on her Instagram profile
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqhvSYkIcMz/
No Comments