Escape into life

July 10th 2014 – Bucharest, Romania

5 o’clock in the morning. I hear something in my dream. It’s kind of different. And it’s getting louder. Of course! It’s the alarm from my phone. Damn! “Just 3 hours of sleep, but still enough”, I’m thinking. The mirror in the bathroom says a different story. I’m a wreck! The backpack is ready. But am I ready? I have really no clue, but in just 20 minutes I’m in the subway station heading to the outskirts of Militari neighbourhood. Just a few minutes past 6 o’clock I’m sticking out my thumb on the right side of the road. Is this a good spot to start hitchhiking? Is there a PERFECT spot for that? I have no idea! Minutes pass by and nobody seems to care I’m there. “It’s gonna be a long day.”

Crossing the border

September 22nd 2013 – Robertsport, Liberia

It was still raining outside when we woke up. It was really early, but we knew that we need to be ahead of time since we had to travel a long distance that day. Our goal was to reach Kenema in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone before sunset. Abel was already outside making last adjustments to his car. We left behind the little town of Robertsport and followed the same road up until the junction.

Ocean Dive

September 21st 2013 – Barnesville, Liberia

In the morning, Emmanuel invited us to have breakfast together. There was no surprise there: rice and fish, but nonetheless it was really so tasty, I couldn’t stop eating until it was all finished. After, he called Abel and we agreed to leave for Robertsport at around 11 am. Before Abel came we had a photo frenzy. I wanted to have as many pictures as I could with Emmanuel’s family, so I can remember the good time we’ve spent at his place. All family members were at home so it was perfect. I left the camera near the window and we got a picture every 10 seconds. When we looked at the pictures, everyone was laughing because we were in all sorts of positions.

Christmas in September

September 20th 2013 – Barnersville, Liberia

We woke up really early after a good night sleep. The room were Emmanuel hosted us had a mosquito net in place so at least there weren’t any unwanted guests at night. All night it rained heavily, but we didn’t feel a thing. We stayed all morning on the terrace and Emmanuel joined us since he didn’t go to school to teach because everything was nearly flooded in his community. We were served the breakfast of champions : African food of course meaning rice and chicken meat. Seeing this family that had 11 members and knowing their everyday struggle to earn some money so they can buy food and you getting served like some kind of special guy, makes you want to leave everything to them. Including your life. Some of the kids from the house started playing with the ball that we brought. It reminded me of my childhood when I use to stay out for hours, playing with the kids from the block, doing all sort of crazy things and of my mom picking me late in the evening. So I just couldn’t resist and I joined in. In just a few minutes I taught them a really popular game : “ducks and hunters”. Everybody joined in including my friend and Emmanuel. Something priceless when you look at these kids playing and smiling.

“The love of liberty brought us here”

September 19th 2013 – Sukuta, The Gambia

As we expected sleeping the first night was very hard due to extreme humidity. At one point in time, mosquitoes started to bit us. It was madness. At 4 o’clock in the morning my friend woke up and he wanted to place the mosquito net. The mosquito net was designed for only one person, but we needed to fix it for 2. With the net in place, sleeping was again possible. The alarm clock was set a t 7:40, so we woke up and expected Malick and the taxi driver to arrive. Only a few hours of good sleep, but it was enough for us. We were ready to catch the flight to Monrovia.

Getting into Ifriqiya

17th of September – Bucharest, Romania

“Africa – a place that I wanted to visit because it fascinates me…I finally get to see Africa…I’m finally going there…A feeling that cannot be described in words…A place so different from what we are used to here in Europe…Two weeks…Damn…To many things to do, so little time…I should spend there a lifetime to discover it.” All the way from home to Otopeni International Airport, this was running through my mind. My trip is just starting, I’m thinking. But before getting into West Africa, I needed to change three flights : one from Bucharest to Rome, from Rome to Barcelona and finally from Barcelona to Banjul, The Gambia, right on the smiling coast of Africa. Me and my friend, Vladimir, we are finally doing it! After a few months of struggling to get everything fixed, here we were just outside the airport, looking one at each other and smiling for no obvious reason to anyone passing by.

It must have been past 4 o’clock in the afternoon. We finished our cigarettes and left our backpacks at the check-in point. We knew it would be a long and exhausting journey to enter Africa. But we were happy.  The airport staff was checking the usual things before take off. We found our seats in the plane and in no more then two hours we were in Rome.