I return home. Home is Liberté 6, is Dakar.

I bike the 60-something km from The Village in one day. I start too late, I have headwind and my front tire needs to be pumped every fifteen minutes; it is excruciatingly slow. When the night falls I am still on the highway, cars blasting by so close I can almost feel the metal on my skin. I am scared to get hit or to ride into a pothole in the bad light, am tired and stiff and blistered. I drink a Vimto and feel sorry for myself outside of a random gas station in the dark while mosquitoes feast on me. In Rufisque I pause by the highway market. Piles and piles of fruit lit up by fluorescent lights in a long colorful row, following the road. With the last coin I have left I buy a banana and the lady gives me an extra one. Maybe because I look so pitiful.

Finally I enter Dakar, turn off the highway and onto a dark road that leads through a shady area smelling like piss, with horse carts turned up for the night and minivans parked with people sleeping in them, dark nooks and roaming creatures. By Hann train station I pedal up the high bridge, cross the tracks and roll into a part of the city I am familiar with only to get deranged by construction work. I try to follow the signs but they cease and I get lost among apartment buildings and streets that look the same. Men shout after me in the dark, the usual hey white, hey beautiful, come here, are you lost. I don’t want to stop and I don’t want to look at them but I am lost and I need to ask for help sooner or later. A guy follows me on his moto, asking if I am lost and though I feel uncomfortable I finally say yes, I am, and where I need to go, hoping he will not insist on getting my number, getting money, getting attention or anything at all. But he brings me in the right direction and drives off when I say that I am somewhere familiar. Leaves me feeling grateful like the tail of a sigh.

I get off and pump my damn front tire again. Then I turn into the road with the empty market stands and stray cats, into the roundabout and finally my street, my gate, my four flights of stairs. Never before has it felt so easy to carry my bike up all these stairs!

It is around one in the morning. My rent is due tomorrow. I put my key in the lock and it doesn’t turn. It normally needs a wiggle, but this time is different; the lock must have been changed. I ring the bell and knock and my landlord finally comes to open, his face the usual gruff. I am happy to see him, though sorry I woke him up. He heads back into his room once he’s opened the door and here I am: home.

The familiar bed, the white tiled floors, the brown armchairs that make my skin itch. Cold running water in the bathroom, dropping sink and dirty dishes in the kitchen, the jars of spices standing where I left them. I have been away for barely a month; nothing has changed here yet everything is different. I feel bigger between the walls. I have finished my first bike tour in Africa, my first time camping in Africa, crossed borders and met people who have changed me. People who I didn’t know before but who will be happy and say “thank god” when I text them in the morning to say that I have arrived home allright.

Though I am tired it takes me a long time to fall asleep. I feel strange in a room instead of a tent, walls made of concrete that don’t move in the breeze. It is strange that I will not move on from here; it is strange to have arrived.

The next morning I wake up and go straight to the market, buy oil, flour, chocolate spread and fruits, and I spend an hour making pancakes on a fire that just comes from a tap.

…

(This story told in pictures.)