After finding a team member on Explorers Connect, buying a vehicle and loading it with gear we were ready to leave in April 2020. But as some of you might remember, then world changed. Our plan to drive from Spain through Morocco and across Africa was a non starter when the Moroccan border closed. We searched for alternative routes, fruitlessly, for a year until suddenly, one day, a viable plan appeared. Ship the car to Dakar, and fly out to receive it. After such a long period of inactivity we were suddenly off. Of course, nothing quite went to plan. Hitches and delays at every step, but by the end of June we were in Senegal with the car, and at least part of our gear.
So the adventure finally began. We slowly meandered our way through Senegal and The Gambia, following vague recommendations, or rumours of a celebration. We had no fixed plan, just a desire to seek out different places with interesting people, and find stories to tell. The aim of our project is to tell interesting stories about the ordinary lives of people across Africa. The people we have met, across different nations and tribes, have been the kindest, most welcoming and generous people you could imagine. The ordinary people are far from ordinary, they are extraordinary. And their stories are full of passion, and magic, and most of all, humour.
We are currently in Mali, a country of war and terrorism, in you watch the news. But it is also a country of outstanding beauty, and of music and dance and oral history that goes back thousands of years. It is a country of warm smiles, of neat little vegetable gardens planted in rows, and great rivers that can lead you half way across the continent, to far away seas. And although the people have had more than their share of suffering and hardship, they break into laughter easily, especially when we make a poor attempt to greet them in Bambara. They invite us into their homes, they make us sit (sitting is obligatory), they offer water and start to talk. They show us round the village and where they work, with great pride. We feel like privileged guests, not tourists.
We have collected many fascinating stories, and many great photos and videos, that we have just started to publish on our website www.africaobjective.com Our hope is that visitors to our site can get a glimpse of normal life in Africa, away from the negative message of the news headlines. Africans are concerned with normal things like having a job, educating their children, having parties and watching the garden grow. In many ways just like people the world over. Obviously there are many differences too, like the struggle to get a clean water supply and hippo’s destroying your lettuces. But that ambiguity between the familiar and the strange is the root of many great stories. It is a continent of opposites, that somehow create a balance. Colonial yet African, modern yet traditional, chaotic yet organised. It’s just African life.
With the ever changing border closures, our route ahead has mainly been a mystery to us. But in the past few days we have just got visas and permission to cross to Burkina Faso, then Togo. So adventure lies ahead, with the savanna elephants in Burkina, maybe. Or possibly they will have good German beer in Togo. Truthfully though, we have no idea what we will find and what adventures we will have. That’s why we want to go.
We would like to thank Explorers Connect for all their support and help that enabled two like minded people to find each other and set off on this amazing adventure. We are also still looking for someone else to join us, so if you are still reading this, maybe you are the one. See you in Ouagadougou.
You can contact the team here teo.lazarova@gmail.com
You can see the original post here https://www.explorersconnect.com/inspire-stories/2019/2/12/writer-sought-to-travel-across-africa-with-africa-objective-azzgp