Night is falling. I am finishing my first day of cycling to the Gambia; I left Dakar this morning. On Google maps I find my self barely 10 km away from The Village. On an impulse I shove aside the shyness and fear of rejection and call my friend to ask if I can stay the night.
“You are welcome,” he says, and I pedal just a little longer into the dark.

Somehow I find the right sand road turning off from the main road in the pitch black and somehow I remember the way to the small mosque, the one where we handed out sandwiches to the people breaking the fast that time during Ramadan. Everything is in the same place despite the months that have passed. The stars stretch out wide above. Crickets sing. The bicycle clicks softly and my feet skid a little on the sand. My friend meets up with a quiet voice and a torch that cuts a wide circle of light in the darkness and we walk to his house.

The dog is too excited and she jumps, bites and rips my sleeve as we cross the yard. The front door opens into a big, bright kitchen: a round room with high, yellow walls, a blue beam growing up in the middle and joining with other blue beams fanning out in the ceiling, spreading over the walls like a parasol. The floor is rough yet smooth and when I look closer it’s made of small white seashells cast into the concrete. I know my friend has built this house himself, but this is my first time to spend more time inside. His wife and another friend are waiting for us at the table.

We eat rice and thick, hot, sweet mango sauce, scooping the last-last-last of it from the bottom of the bowl with our fingers. Their Sierra Leonian recipe; my friend has spent the night cooking and I am lucky to have arrived this very evening. With bellies full we play music, dance and play dancing chairs, cheating and screaming, sitting on top of each other and running away with the chairs, wrestling, sweating and laughing until we can’t anymore. Later, on the matress in the guest room and with the mosquitoes eating away at me, despite the long day of cycling, I am too giddy and grateful for sleep.

At dawn the two friends accompany me through the bush to make sure I find the road. They have stuffed my bag with heavy mangoes. They insist on leading my bike for me. The light is somehow sharp through the morning mist. My friend points out how the ants follow the snake trails in the sand and I bend down to look closer. They really do! We talk quietly but mostly not at all. The baobab trees surround us like thick black pillars.

I can hear the big road coming closer. I take over leading my bike. The backpack tied to the carrier, I am ready. My friends head home and I continue to follow the sand tracks, the distance growing between our backs. For the second time in two days, I am leaving home.

…

The next time I arrive to The Village is a month later.

I have finished the Gambia-trip. I am tanned and full of new stories and colors and people. Once again it is late in the evening and I have a date to keep in Dakar; my rent is due just a few days ahead. But these few days I hope to spend here.

This night I have just gotten lost in the town, managed to charge my phone to 5% at some kind people’s home and pedaled like a madman to arrive before the sun would set and strand me in darkness in the big lagoon with no GPS and maybe robbers. I find my first hostess chatting with a neighbor on the patio. They are happy to see me despite the hour and despite me being covered with dirt and sweat, skidding in with a busted shoe and the front tire leaking air. I am happy to be back, too. The husband has left to work in France and my hostess stands more calm and steady in the absence of their tensions and fights.

For a few days I immerse in The Village again. I indulge. I say hi to my friends, take showers, spread out my stuff and try (fruitlessly) to mend my flat tire. I visit my Sierra Leonian friends and ask them to teach me how to cook sauce on cassava leaves and palm oil. Pulo and Pastek both smile when they see me and come out to run with me.

The rainy season is coming. I am not familiar with it, but I can feel the earth vibrating with all the life about to spring, seeds germinating and pushing from underneath. Everything is slightly, slightly more green. My heart aches to be back and I dream:

I want to see it all grow,
I want to cook with my friends,
I want to move aimlessely through the small trails running through the land, stray and see where they go. Eat mangoes and make baskets.

And I decide: I will move back here. I will stay here for my last month in Senegal. I will find a room, something, somehow. This is where I will wait out the rains and prepare to continue south through Africa, on my bicycle.

…

(This story told in pictures.)