Every day is green lush grass-song and every night the clouds stack and close in right above, despite me always always asking please not here, please not here…

Just after Fatick the sky goes black, the wind picks up and lightning flashes over the trees I am heading towards. I miscalculated; I should have found a place to camp before the town. Raindrops are making my phone screen spazz as I try to scout a camping spot on the satellite image.

The waterside is littered with trash. It smells like salt and decay and I stumble over plastic, cloth, old tires. I try to find a decent spot, out of sight and slightly elevated for water not to pool, with foliage to cover my not-so-waterproof tent. Thunder rumbles and the rain is steady now. Dogs are wandering around, eyes shiny into my flashlight.

There aren’t many options. I shove my bike and carriage into some bushes and start rigging. It’s too dark; I pray there aren’t thorns.

…

There were thorns. Everything is soaked and rain is still falling. By noon I reluctantly crawl out and feel all the tires. Two out of three are flat; the front wheel and the wheel of the carriage.

The tubes get moist from my fingers, the air; I swear from me just looking. The glue does nothing. Somehow I close the hole in the front tire but after six hours I’ve had no success on the five (yes, five) holes in the carriage. My daily goal is to leisurely pedal around 60 kilometers until the Gambian border; this day I make negative three when I push the bike and the floppy sorry flat carriage back into Fatick to ask for help as the sun is setting and the storm clouds are closing in again. I haven’t eaten and everything sucks.

But this is Africa and this is Senegal, so it takes about ten minutes for the first kind stranger to stop and drop all he is doing, call and convince his friend who sells bike tubes on the other side of town to open his shop just for me, then arrange for a moto-taxi to take himself to the shop so he can bring me the tube while I am left to wait with two of his friends. They offer me their seats. I go to the market and buy a pile of lovely, greasy spaghetti with egg and spices wrapped up in a newspaper. I offer to share, urge even, but am secretly happy for the refusals and to get the steaming carbs all to myself.

Under the street lights everything is black and yellow. My friend arrives back on the moto and hands me the tube. I have already payed for it and the ride, but he flat out refuses the money I try to give him for the effort and goes back to the canisters of water he was carrying. I fix the carriage in fifteen minutes, wave good-bye and head for the church I passed on the way to ask if I can spend the night sheltered from the coming rain and thorns.

…

(This story told in pictures.)