“Get out, be brave, and explore the planet.” That’s Mario Rigby’s advice, and it’s something he’s put into practice in his own life.
Born in Turks and Caicos Islands, he moved to a village near Stuttgart, Germany, with his family in his youth and excelled like a track-and-field athlete. At 16 he gone to live in Canada with his mom and brother. Immersed in those vastly different cultures, he developed a profound sense of curiosity and what he calls “a great relationship with fear.”
“I don’t push it away, nor do I ignore it and try to compete with it,” he states. “I simply use it as fuel to propel me forward.”
His adventurous streak and fervour for the environment have fueled an unsupported, 89-day, 4,500-mile cycling trip across Canada and a 342-mile hike from Toronto to Montreal to advertise human-powered travel. But his longest and toughest act of adventuring and activism took him quite a few steps farther when he traversed the 7,460 miles from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt — on foot. He began in 2021 and completed the trek in 2021, one of only three people to accomplish the feat.
“I wanted to explore the world in a unique way that allowed me to experience the villages, tribes, and cultures without the convenience of just leaving any place at any time,” Rigby, 34, explains. “Should you walk, you can’t just leave during the night and go somewhere else. You have to arrive and then befriend strangers within minutes.”
Those strangers supplied him with water and food, allowing him to stretch his daily price range of a few dollars. Fearlessness kicked in as he contracted malaria, was jailed in Malawi (since the police didn’t believe he was who he said he was), and dodged rebel crossfire in Mozambique.
To stoke curiosity and adventure in other people — particularly black people, who often lack use of natural spaces — Rigby shared updates on social networking. “We are all filled with unimaginable potential; perhaps my adventures inspired others to maneuver away from their comfort zones and unleash theirs.”
Experience Life | Why did you start prioritizing adventure in your lifetime?
Mario Rigby | I was running fitness bootcamps at my own gym, and things were going very well. But I began to feel like I had been living in a bubble.
One day I had been sitting in my beautiful condo overlooking Toronto — it was like a bachelor’s-dream-come-true kind of thing — and I thought to myself: Why am I doing all this work and seeking to become this successful person to basically reside in this contained box?
I remembered that my dreams and aspirations have always been higher than just making a living and being “successful.” But I’d never allowed myself to tap into that. I’d focused on what I could get started doing now, that was training, because I’d done that all through university. My mentality was that I should become successful in whatever I had been trained in, even if I didn’t love it.
The turning point was when a friend asked, “Mario, if you could do anything in life, how would you react?” This is a common question, but I really took it seriously this time around and responded, “I would travel the planet in the most difficult-to-reach places, capture the cultures and also the environment, and share it with the remainder of the world.”
I had basically homed in on my small purpose: Travel in a challenging way, find out about other cultures and terrains, and share what I’ve learned with the world. I realized later how my purpose merged with my passions of writing, filmmaking, and creating environmental awareness — which is why I decided to do a human-powered trip.
EL | What exactly are some lessons you learned out of your trip that stick with you today?
MR | First, I discovered a different sense of humanity. There’s this philosophy of ubuntu, that is translated as “I am because we're.” [Ubuntu is defined as an understanding of the interconnectedness of life.] This philosophy, I believe, is hardwired in most Africans. I saw it all the time during my walk across the continent. There was this constant kindness and hospitality that I’ve never experienced before.
Africans are deeply curious and empathetic toward other people and aren’t afraid to show that. To me, that displays a lot courage. But to them, it wasn’t courage; it was normal.
Another thing I learned is that poverty isn’t as widespread as we think. Poverty happens in areas that people, in the West, have affected in Africa. An example is when we created borders that weren’t really said to be there because there are nomadic tribes that move between countries.
I actually walked using the Maasai tribe from Tanzania, and they just roam between borders without passports or visa checks, and it’s not really something they think about. They move based on where the grass and pasture is so their animals can graze, and they can gather other food sources.
I think this highlights another major distinction between Africa and the West. In Africa, the humanity and also the environment are the same. They don’t enter in the jungle to hike or meditate; there is no such separation or wall together and the earth.
In the West, we've created whole separate ecosystems from nature or have thought we could conquer or should fear nature, which has led to the troubles that we're in today with global warming and mass extinction.
EL | In the West, we tend to learn to not speak with strangers, which has led to some sharp divisions. How did you become so open to speaking with people you don’t know?
MR | It started with my mother — she was very strong about character building. I remember one time I came back from school, and I was so angry. My mother asked me what was wrong, and that i told her there was this kid who had been picking on me and saying racist things. At one point, I said, “I hate this person and I’m so fed up with him picking on me.”
My mom slammed the table and said, “Don’t you use the word ‘hate.’” She told me that hate is the ugliest thing you could ever have in your body and heart and that hate tells more about you than it does about the person that you’re talking about.
EL | What were some of the biggest challenges you’ve needed to overcome during your long journeys?
MR | Among the toughest was learning to enjoy my very own company. I was sometimes by myself for weeks at a time. The hard part of these long trips is staying motivated, and at times you simply want to quit.
So in order to keep going, you have to become your own best friend and keep fighting and go through the physical, emotional, and mental pain that you're feeling. What helped me get through it all was learning to feel a universal love for myself, other people, and all life, and also to approach whatever I was going through with a feeling of gratitude for the experiences.
EL | Inform us about your next trip to Africa.
MR | It’s called Project EVA. We’re basically planning to be the mascot for sustainable energy development in Africa. We know, based on United Nations estimates, that Africa’s population will triple to about 4 billion people by the year 2100. That means one in three people will live on the continent.
Africa has a unique opportunity to avoid the mistakes that we’ve produced in the West and leapfrog into the future by harnessing renewable energy and new technologies. If they succeed, all of us succeed. I want to be a part of that.
