I am hesitating to write about this part of my journey. But I’m gonna do it anyway.

So it’s about contrasts, right? It’s about trying different things. It’s about the fact that I like a challenge and maybe I enjoyed reading Huckleberry Finn a little too much as a kid.

Some weeks ago me and a friend spent two nights at a fancy hotel in Bilene in Mozambique.

This week I have started to hitchhike my way from Lisboa up north, and up until now I have been sleeping outside.

And I hesitate to tell my friends about this thing because I think they will worry and tell me to stop and think I am mad or stupid or both. And that’s probably true. And I have nothing to say to make it otherwise. So let’s just settle at that.

Call it urban camping if you don’t want to call it homelessness.

I imagine myself as a cowboy in a Western novel, resting his head on a rock, with his hat over his face and his feet crossed as he sleeps on his back next to a fire slowly dying out. I enjoy looking up at the trees that protect me and being surrounded by the sounds of crickets and birds.

Of course I am vigilant – the body is sensitive to the slightest changes in the surroundings, and I wake easily. Like, when the wind moves one of the capulanas, when the mosquitoes bite my fingers or when I feel a raindrop. I put my valuables near to my body. And I wake at dawn, together with the rest of the land. The sun rises and I change, pack, brush my teeth and head to the road.

And somehow I feel more at ease here, lying under the stars, than I did at the hotel with the X amount of stars. More at home fending off ants than in a bed someone else has made. A slow, quiet animal in its natural habitat.

And I also know that this is worse because I am not a man. A female body getting dirty in nature just does not have that same, cool, vagabond-y smell of freedom. Her sunburned cheeks and chest are not seen as attractively rough as his unshaved beard. She will always be met with worry first, and get told not to do it because she might get hurt by strangers.

And she might.

But, so, should I just not do the things I want because of my tits?

…

(This story told in pictures.)